eau, and taking up Lucien's manuscript,
he drew a line upon it in ink under the string.

"Have you anything else?" asked Barbet.

"Nothing, you young Shylock. I am going to put you in the way of a bit
of very good business," Etienne continued ("in which you shall lose a
thousand crowns, to teach you to rob me in this fashion"), he added for
Lucien's ear.

"But how about your reviews?" said Lucien, as they rolled away to the
Palais Royal.

"Pooh! you do not know how reviews are knocked off. As for the _Travels
in Egypt_, I looked into the book here and there (without cutting the
pages), and I found eleven slips in grammar. I shall say that the writer
may have mastered the dicky-bird language on the flints that they call
'obelisks' out there in Egypt, but he cannot write in his own, as I will
prove to him in a column and a half. I shall say that instead of giving
us the natural history and archaeology, he ought to have interested
himself in the future of Egypt, in the progress of civilization, and the
best method of strengthening the bond between Egypt and France. France
has won and lost Egypt, but she may yet attach the country to her
interests by gaining a moral ascendency over it. Then some patriotic
penny-a-lining, interlarded with diatribes on Marseilles, the Levant and
our trade."

"But suppose that he had taken that view, what would you do?"

"Oh well, I should say that instead of boring us with politics, he
should have written about art, and described the picturesque aspects
of the country and the local color. Then the critic bewails himself.
Politics are intruded everywhere; we are weary of politics--politics
on all sides. I should regret those charming books of travel that dwelt
upon the difficulties of navigation, the fascination of steering between
two rocks, the delights of crossing the line, and all the things that
those who never will travel ought to know. Mingle this approval with
scoffing at the travelers who hail the appearance of a bird or a
flying-fish as a great event, who dilate upon fishing, and make
transcripts from the log. Where, you ask, is that perfectly
unintelligible scientific information, fascinating, like all that is
profound, mysterious, and incomprehensible. The reader laughs, that is
all that he wants. As for novels, Florine is the greatest novel reader
alive; she gives me a synopsis, and I take her opinion and put a review
together. When a novelist bores her with 'author's stuff