ief in them, he arrived in the Rue Saint-Fiacre off the Boulevard
Montmartre. Before a house, occupied by the offices of a small
newspaper, he stopped, and at the sight of it his heart began to throb
as heavily as the pulses of a youth upon the threshold of some evil
haunt.

Nevertheless, upstairs he went, and found the offices in the low
_entresol_ between the ground floor and the first story. The first room
was divided down the middle by a partition, the lower half of solid
wood, the upper lattice work to the ceiling. In this apartment Lucien
discovered a one-armed pensioner supporting several reams of paper on
his head with his remaining hand, while between his teeth he held the
passbook which the Inland Revenue Department requires every newspaper to
produce with each issue. This ill-favored individual, owner of a yellow
countenance covered with red excrescences, to which he owed his nickname
of "Coloquinte," indicated a personage behind the lattice as the
Cerberus of the paper. This was an elderly officer with a medal on his
chest and a silk skull-cap on his head; his nose was almost hidden by a
pair of grizzled moustaches, and his person was hidden as completely in
an ample blue overcoat as the body of the turtle in its carapace.

"From what date do you wish your subscription to commence, sir?"
inquired the Emperor's officer.

"I did not come about a subscription," returned Lucien. Looking about
him, he saw a placard fastened on a door, corresponding to the one by
which he had entered, and read the words--EDITOR'S OFFICE, and below, in
smaller letters, _No admittance except on business_.

"A complaint, I expect?" replied the veteran. "Ah! yes; we have
been hard on Mariette. What would you have? I don't know the why and
wherefore of it yet.--But if you want satisfaction, I am ready for you,"
he added, glancing at a collection of small arms and foils stacked in a
corner, the armory of the modern warrior.

"That was still further from my intention, sir. I have come to speak to
the editor."

"Nobody is ever here before four o'clock."

"Look you here, Giroudeau, old chap," remarked a voice, "I make it
eleven columns; eleven columns at five francs apiece is fifty-five
francs, and I have only been paid forty; so you owe me another fifteen
francs, as I have been telling you."

These words proceeded from a little weasel-face, pallid and
semi-transparent as the half-boiled white of an egg; two slits of
eyes looked