ask better
than to be of use to you. What do we want but good manuscripts?"

"When can I come back?"

"I am going into the country this evening; I shall be back again the day
after to-morrow. I shall have read your manuscript by that time; and if
it suits me, we might come to terms that very day."

Seeing his acquaintance so easy, Lucien was inspired with the unlucky
idea of bringing the _Marguerites_ upon the scene.

"I have a volume of poetry as well, sir----" he began.

"Oh! you are a poet! Then I don't want your romance," and the old man
handed back the manuscript. "The rhyming fellows come to grief when
they try their hands at prose. In prose you can't use words that mean
nothing; you absolutely must say something."

"But Sir Walter Scott, sir, wrote poetry as well as----"

"That is true," said Doguereau, relenting. He guessed that the young
fellow before him was poor, and kept the manuscript. "Where do you live?
I will come and see you."

Lucien, all unsuspicious of the idea at the back of the old man's head,
gave his address; he did not see that he had to do with a bookseller of
the old school, a survival of the eighteenth century, when booksellers
tried to keep Voltaires and Montesquieus starving in garrets under lock
and key.

"The Latin Quarter. I am coming back that very way," said Doguereau,
when he had read the address.

"Good man!" thought Lucien, as he took his leave. "So I have met with a
friend to young authors, a man of taste who knows something. That is the
kind of man for me! It is just as I said to David--talent soon makes its
way in Paris."

Lucien went home again happy and light of heart; he dreamed of glory. He
gave not another thought to the ominous words which fell on his ear as
he stood by the counter in Vidal and Porchon's shop; he beheld himself
the richer by twelve hundred francs at least. Twelve hundred francs! It
meant a year in Paris, a whole year of preparation for the work that he
meant to do. What plans he built on that hope! What sweet dreams, what
visions of a life established on a basis of work! Mentally he found new
quarters, and settled himself in them; it would not have taken much to
set him making a purchase or two. He could only stave off impatience by
constant reading at Blosse's.

Two days later old Doguereau come to the lodgings of his budding Sir
Walter Scott. He was struck with the pains which Lucien had taken with
the style of this his first work, delighte