'Arthez in the
Ministerialist and Ultra papers are set down to you. The _Reveil_ is
poking fun at the set in the Rue des Quatre-Vents, and the hits are the
more telling because they are funny. There is a whole serious political
coterie at the back of Leon Giraud's paper; they will come into power
too, sooner or later."

"I have not written a line in the _Reveil_ this week past."

"Very well. Keep my short articles in mind. Write fifty of them straight
off, and I will pay you for them in a lump; but they must be of the same
color as the paper." And Finot, with seeming carelessness, gave Lucien
an edifying anecdote of the Keeper of the Seals, a piece of current
gossip, he said, for the subject of one of the papers.

Eager to retrieve his losses at play, Lucien shook off his dejection,
summoned up his energy and youthful force, and wrote thirty articles of
two columns each. These finished, he went to Dauriat's, partly because
he felt sure of meeting Finot there, and he wished to give the articles
to Finot in person; partly because he wished for an explanation of the
non-appearance of the _Marguerites_. He found the bookseller's shop full
of his enemies. All the talk immediately ceased as he entered. Put
under the ban of journalism, his courage rose, and once more he said
to himself, as he had said in the alley at the Luxembourg, "I will
triumph."

Dauriat was neither amiable or inclined to patronize; he was sarcastic
in tone, and determined not to bate an inch of his rights. The
_Marguerites_ should appear when it suited his purpose; he should wait
until Lucien was in a position to secure the success of the book; it was
his, he had bought it outright. When Lucien asserted that Dauriat was
bound to publish the _Marguerites_ by the very nature of the contract,
and the relative positions of the parties to the agreement, Dauriat
flatly contradicted him, said that no publisher could be compelled by
law to publish at a loss, and that he himself was the best judge of the
expediency of producing the book. There was, besides, a remedy open to
Lucien, as any court of law would admit--the poet was quite welcome
to take his verses to a Royalist publisher upon the repayment of the
thousand crowns.

Lucien went away. Dauriat's moderate tone had exasperated him even
more than his previous arrogance at their first interview. So the
_Marguerites_ would not appear until Lucien had found a host of
formidable supporters, or grown formid