“And betray such an angel? . . .  Why, just look at him, you old fossil, and look at yourself!” and her eyes turned to her poet.  Camusot had pressed Lucien to drink till the poet’s head was rather cloudy.

There was no help for it; Camusot made up his mind to wait till sheer want should give him this woman a second time.

“Then I can only be your friend,” he said, as he kissed her on the forehead.

Lucien went from Coralie and Camusot to the Wooden Galleries.  What a change had been wrought in his mind by his initiation into Journalism!  He mixed fearlessly now with the crowd which surged to and fro in the buildings; he even swaggered a little because he had a mistress; and he walked into Dauriat’s shop in an offhand manner because he was a journalist.

He found himself among distinguished men; gave a hand to Blondet and Nathan and Finot, and to all the coterie with whom he had been fraternizing for a week.  He was a personage, he thought, and he flattered himself that he surpassed his comrades.  That little flick of the wine did him admirable service; he was witty, he showed that he could “howl with the wolves.”

And yet, the tacit approval, the praises spoken and unspoken on which he had counted, were not forthcoming.  He noticed the first stirrings of jealousy among a group, less curious, perhaps, than anxious to know the place which this newcomer might take, and the exact portion of the sum-total of profits which he would probably secure and swallow.  Lucien only saw smiles on two faces—­Finot, who regarded him as a mine to be exploited, and Lousteau, who considered that he had proprietary rights in the poet, looked glad to see him.  Lousteau had begun already to assume the airs of an editor; he tapped sharply on the window-panes of Dauriat’s private office.

“One moment, my friend,” cried a voice within as the publisher’s face appeared above the green curtains.

The moment lasted an hour, and finally Lucien and Etienne were admitted into the sanctum.

“Well, have you thought over our friend’s proposal?” asked Etienne Lousteau, now an editor.

“To be sure,” said Dauriat, lolling like a sultan in his chair.  “I have read the volume.  And I submitted it to a man of taste, a good judge; for I don’t pretend to understand these things myself.  I myself, my friend, buy reputations ready-made, as the Englishman bought his love affairs.—­You are as great as a poet as you are handsome as a man, my boy,” pronounced Dauriat.  “Upon my word and honor (I don’t tell you that as a publisher, mind), your sonnets are magnificent; no sign of effort about them, as is natural when a man writes with inspiration and verve.  You know your craft, in fact, one of the good points of the new school.  Your volume of Marguerites is a fine book, but there is no business in it, and it is not worth my while to meddle with anything but a very big affair.  In conscience, I won’t