own his disappointment and read another, a favorite with Mme. de
Bargeton and with some of his friends in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.

"This one, perhaps, will draw a word from him," he thought.

THE MARGUERITE.

I am the Marguerite, fair and tall I grew
In velvet meadows, 'mid the flowers a star.
They sought me for my beauty near and far;
My dawn, I thought, should be for ever new.
But now an all unwished-for gift I rue,
A fatal ray of knowledge shed to mar
My radiant star-crown grown oracular,
For I must speak and give an answer true.
An end of silence and of quiet days,
The Lover with two words my counsel prays;
And when my secret from my heart is reft,
When all my silver petals scattered lie,
I am the only flower neglected left,
Cast down and trodden under foot to die.

At the end, the poet looked up at his Aristarchus. Etienne Lousteau was
gazing at the trees in the Pepiniere.

"Well?" asked Lucien.

"Well, my dear fellow, go on! I am listening to you, am I not? That fact
in itself is as good as praise in Paris."

"Have you had enough?" Lucien asked.

"Go on," the other answered abruptly enough.

Lucien proceeded to read the following sonnet, but his heart was dead
within him; Lousteau's inscrutable composure froze his utterance. If
he had come a little further upon the road, he would have known
that between writer and writer silence or abrupt speech, under such
circumstances, is a betrayal of jealousy, and outspoken admiration means
a sense of relief over the discovery that the work is not above the
average after all.

THE CAMELLIA.

In Nature's book, if rightly understood,
The rose means love, and red for beauty glows;
A pure, sweet spirit in the violet blows,
And bright the lily gleams in lowlihood.

But this strange bloom, by sun and wind unwooed,
Seems to expand and blossom 'mid the snows,
A lily sceptreless, a scentless rose,
For dainty listlessness of maidenhood.

Yet at the opera house the petals trace
For modesty a fitting aureole;
An alabaster wreath to lay, methought,
In dusky hair o'er some fair woman's face
Which kindles ev'n such love within the soul
As sculptured marble forms by Phidias wrought.

"What do you think of my poor sonnets?" Lucien asked, coming straight to
the point.

"Do you want the truth?"

"I am young enough to like the truth, and so anxious to succeed that I
can h