Part 20 (2/2)
”Good,” thought Rodolphe, ”if I turn out twenty francs' worth of copy for him he cannot refuse me five. I must warn you,” said he to the critic, ”that my opinions are not quite novel. They are rather worn at the elbows. Before printing them I yelled them in every cafe in Paris, there is not a waiter who does not know them by heart.”
”What does that matter to me? You surely do not know me. Is there anything new in the world except virtue?”
”Here you are,” said Rodolphe, as he finished.
”Thunder and tempests, there is still nearly a column wanting. How is this chasm to be filled?” exclaimed the critic. ”Since you are here supply me with some paradoxes.”
”I have not any about me,” said Rodolphe, ”though I can lend you some.
Only they are not mine, I bought them for half a franc from one of my friends who was in distress. They have seen very little use as yet.”
”Very good,” said the critic.
”Ah!” said Rodolphe to himself, setting to write again. ”I shall certainly ask him for ten francs, just now paradoxes are as dear as partridges.” And he wrote some thirty lines containing nonsense about pianos, goldfish and Rhine wine, which was called toilet wine just as we speak of toilet vinegar.
”It is very good,” said the critic. ”Now do me the favor to add that the place where one meets more honest folk than anywhere else is the galleys.”
”Why?”
”To fill a couple of lines. Good, now it is finished,” said the influential critic, summoning his servant to take the article to the printers.
”And now,” thought Rodolphe, ”let us strike home.” And he gravely proposed his request.
”Ah! my dear fellow,” said the critic, ”I have not a sou in the place.
Lolette ruins me in pommade, and just now she stripped me of my last copper to go to Versailles and see the Nereids and the brazen monsters spout forth the floods.”
”To Versailles. But it is an epidemic!” exclaimed Rodolphe.
”But why do you want money?”
”That is my story,” replied Rodolphe, ”I have at five this evening an appointment with a lady, a very well bred lady who never goes out save in an omnibus. I wish to unite my fortunes with hers for a few days, and it appears to me the right thing to enable her to take the pleasures of this life. For dinner, dances, &c., &c., I must have five francs, and if I do not find them French literature is dishonoured in my person.”
”Why don't you borrow the sum of the lady herself?” exclaimed the critic.
”The first time of meeting, it is hardly possible. Only you can get me out of this fix.”
”By all the mummies of Egypt I give you my word of honor that I have not enough to buy a sou pipe. However, I have some books that you can sell.”
”Impossible today, Mother Mansut's, Lebigre's, and all the shops on the quays and in the Rue Saint Jacques are closed. What books are they?
Volumes of poetry with a portrait of the author in spectacles? But such things never sell.”
”Unless the author is criminally convicted,” said the critic. ”Wait a bit, here are some romances and some concert tickets. By setting about it skillfully you may, perhaps, make money of them.”
”I would rather have something else, a pair of trowsers, for instance.”
”Come,” said the critic, ”take this copy of Bossuet and this plaster cast of Monsieur Odilon Barrot. On my word of honor, it is the widow's mite.”
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