30th."

"And M. Finot?" asked Lucien, having caught the editor's name.

"He is in the Rue Feydeau, that's where he lives. Coloquinte, old chap,
just take him everything that has come in to-day when you go with the
paper to the printers."

"Where is the newspaper put together?" Lucien said to himself.

"The newspaper?" repeated the officer, as he received the rest of the
stamp money from Coloquinte, "the newspaper?--broum! broum!--(Mind you
are round at the printers' by six o'clock to-morrow, old chap, to send
off the porters.)--The newspaper, sir, is written in the street, at
the writers' houses, in the printing-office between eleven and twelve
o'clock at night. In the Emperor's time, sir, these shops for spoiled
paper were not known. Oh! he would have cleared them out with four men
and a corporal; they would not have come over _him_ with their talk. But
that is enough of prattling. If my nephew finds it worth his while, and
so long as they write for the son of the Other (broum! broum!)----after
all, there is no harm in that. Ah! by the way, subscribers don't seem to
me to be advancing in serried columns; I shall leave my post."

"You seem to know all about the newspaper, sir," Lucien began.

"From a business point of view, broum! broum!" coughed the soldier,
clearing his throat. "From three to five francs per column, according to
ability.--Fifty lines to a column, forty letters to a line; no blanks;
there you are! As for the staff, they are queer fish, little youngsters
whom I wouldn't take on for the commissariat; and because they make fly
tracks on sheets of white paper, they look down, forsooth, on an old
Captain of Dragoons of the Guard, that retired with a major's rank after
entering every European capital with Napoleon."

The soldier of Napoleon brushed his coat, and made as if he would go
out, but Lucien, swept to the door, had courage enough to make a stand.

"I came to be a contributor of the paper," he said. "I am full of
respect, I vow and declare, for a captain of the Imperial Guard, those
men of bronze----"

"Well said, my little civilian, there are several kinds of contributors;
which kind do you wish to be?" replied the trooper, bearing down on
Lucien, and descending the stairs. At the foot of the flight he stopped,
but it was only to light a cigar at the porter's box.

"If any subscribers come, you see them and take note of them, Mother
Chollet.--Simply subscribers, never know anything but sub