of making the plunge into journalism; and
time after time did his friends reply with a "Mind you do nothing of the
sort!"

"It would be the tomb of the beautiful, gracious Lucien whom we love and
know," said d'Arthez.

"You would not hold out for long between the two extremes of toil and
pleasure which make up a journalist's life, and resistance is the very
foundation of virtue. You would be so delighted to exercise your power
of life and death over the offspring of the brain, that you would be an
out-and-out journalist in two months' time. To be a journalist--that is
to turn Herod in the republic of letters. The man who will say anything
will end by sticking at nothing. That was Napoleon's maxim, and it
explains itself."

"But you would be with me, would you not?" asked Lucien.

"Not by that time," said Fulgence. "If you were a journalist, you would
no more think of us than the Opera girl in all her glory, with her
adorers and her silk-lined carriage, thinks of the village at home and
her cows and her sabots. You could never resist the temptation to pen
a witticism, though it should bring tears to a friend's eyes. I come
across journalists in theatre lobbies; it makes me shudder to see them.
Journalism is an inferno, a bottomless pit of iniquity and treachery
and lies; no one can traverse it undefiled, unless, like Dante, he is
protected by Virgil's sacred laurel."

But the more the set of friends opposed the idea of journalism, the more
Lucien's desire to know its perils grew and tempted him. He began to
debate within his own mind; was it not ridiculous to allow want to find
him a second time defenceless? He bethought him of the failure of his
attempts to dispose of his first novel, and felt but little tempted
to begin a second. How, besides, was he to live while he was writing
another romance? One month of privation had exhausted his stock of
patience. Why should he not do nobly that which journalists did ignobly
and without principle? His friends insulted him with their doubts; he
would convince them of his strength of mind. Some day, perhaps, he would
be of use to them; he would be the herald of their fame!

"And what sort of a friendship is it which recoils from complicity?"
demanded he one evening of Michel Chrestien; Lucien and Leon Giraud were
walking home with their friend.

"We shrink from nothing," Michel Chrestien made reply. "If you were so
unlucky as to kill your mistress, I would help you to hide