Part 9 (2/2)

”n.o.body 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 out of it, mild blue in tint, but appallingly malignant in expression; and the owner, an insignificant young man, was completely hidden by the veteran's opaque person. It was a blood-curdling voice, a sound between the mewing of a cat and the wheezy chokings of a hyena.

”Yes, yes, my little militiaman,” retorted he of the medal, ”but you are counting the headings and white lines. I have Finot's instructions to add up the totals of the lines, and to divide them by the proper number for each column; and after I performed that concentrating operation on your copy, there were three columns less.”

”He doesn't pay for the blanks, the Jew! He reckons them in though when he sends up the total of his work to his partner, and he gets paid for them too. I will go and see Etienne Lousteau, Vernou----”

”I cannot go beyond my orders, my boy,” said the veteran. ”What! do you cry out against your foster-mother for a matter of fifteen francs? you that turn out an article as easily as I smoke a cigar. Fifteen francs!

why, you will give a bowl of punch to your friends, or win an extra game of billiards, and there's an end of it!”

”Finot's savings will cost him very dear,” said the contributor as he took his departure.

”Now, would not anybody think that he was Rousseau and Voltaire rolled in one?” the cas.h.i.+er remarked to himself as he glanced at Lucien.

”I will come in again at four, sir,” said Lucien.

While the argument proceeded, Lucien had been looking about him. He saw upon the walls the portraits of Benjamin Constant, General Foy, and the seventeen ill.u.s.trious orators of the Left, interspersed with caricatures at the expense of the Government; but he looked more particularly at the door of the sanctuary where, no doubt, the paper was elaborated, the witty paper that amused him daily, and enjoyed the privilege of ridiculing kings and the most portentous events, of calling anything and everything in question with a jest. Then he sauntered along the boulevards. It was an entirely novel amus.e.m.e.nt; and so agreeable did he find it, that, looking at the turret clocks, he saw the hour hands were pointing to four, and only then remembered that he had not breakfasted.

He went at once in the direction of the Rue Saint-Fiacre, climbed the stair, and opened the door.

The veteran officer was absent; but the old pensioner, sitting on a pile of stamped papers, was munching a crust and acting as sentinel resignedly. Coloquinte was as much accustomed to his work in the office as to the fatigue duty of former days, understanding as much or as little about it as the why and wherefore of forced marches made by the Emperor's orders. Lucien was inspired with the bold idea of deceiving that formidable functionary. He settled his hat on his head, and walked into the editor's office as if he were quite at home.

Looking eagerly about him, he beheld a round table covered with a green cloth, and half-a-dozen cherry-wood chairs, newly reseated with straw.

The colored brick floor had not been waxed, but it was clean; so clean that the public, evidently, seldom entered the room. There was a mirror above the chimney-piece, and on the ledge below, amid a sprinkling of visiting-cards, stood a shopkeeper's clock, smothered with dust, and a couple of candlesticks with tallow dips thrust into their sockets. A few antique newspapers lay on the table beside an inkstand containing some black lacquer-like substance, and a collection of quill pens twisted into stars. Sundry dirty sc.r.a.ps of paper, covered with almost undecipherable hieroglyphs, proved to be ma.n.u.script articles torn across the top by the compositor to check off the sheets as they were set up.

He admired a few rather clever caricatures, sketched on bits of brown paper by somebody who evidently had tried to kill time by killing something else to keep his hand in.

Other works of art were pinned in the cheap sea-green wall-paper. These consisted of nine pen-and-ink ill.u.s.trations for _Le Solitaire_. The work had attained to such an unheard-of European popularity, that journalists evidently were tired of it.--”The Solitary makes his first appearance in the provinces; sensation among the women.--The Solitary perused at a chateau.--Effect of the Solitary on domestic animals.--The Solitary explained to savage tribes, with the most brilliant results.--The Solitary translated into Chinese and presented by the author to the Emperor at Pekin.--The Mont Sauvage, Rape of Elodie.”--(Lucien though this caricature very shocking, but he could not help laughing at it.)--”The Solitary under a canopy conducted in triumphal procession by the newspapers.--The Solitary breaks the press to splinters, and wounds the printers.--Read backwards, the superior beauties of the Solitary produce a sensation at the Academie.”--On a newspaper-wrapper Lucien noticed a sketch of a contributor holding out his hat, and beneath it the words, ”Finot! my hundred francs,” and a name, since grown more notorious than famous.

Between the window and the chimney-piece stood a writing-table, a mahogany armchair, and a waste-paper basket on a strip of hearth-rug; the dust lay thick on all these objects. There were short curtains in the windows. About a score of new books lay on the writing-table, deposited there apparently during the day, together with prints, music, snuff-boxes of the ”Charter” pattern, a copy of the ninth edition of _Le Solitaire_ (the great joke of the moment), and some ten unopened letters.

Lucien had taken stock of this strange furniture, and made reflections of the most exhaustive kind upon it, when, the clock striking five, he returned to question the pensioner. Coloquinte had finished his crust, and was waiting with the patience of a commissionaire, for the man of medals, who perhaps was taking an airing on the boulevard.

At this conjuncture the rustle of a dress sounded on the stair, and the light unmistakable footstep of a woman on the threshold. The newcomer was pa.s.sably pretty. She addressed herself to Lucien.

”Sir,” she said, ”I know why you cry up Mlle. Virginie's hats so much; and I have come to put down my name for a year's subscription in the first place; but tell me your conditions----”

”I am not connected with the paper, madame.”

”Oh!”

”A subscription dating from October?” inquired the pensioner.

”What does the lady want to know?” asked the veteran, reappearing on the scene.

The fair milliner and the retired military man were soon deep in converse; and when Lucien, beginning to lose patience, came back to the first room, he heard the conclusion of the matter.

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