“Eh! what does that matter, so long as you turn an honest penny?” cried Lousteau.  “Besides, my boy, what grudge had you against the theatre?  You must have had some reason for it, or you would not have cut up the play as you did.  If you slash for the sake of slashing, the paper will get into trouble, and when there is good reason for hitting hard it will not tell.  Did the manager leave you out in the cold?”

“He had not kept a place for me.”

“Good,” said Lousteau.  “I shall let him see your article, and tell him that I softened it down; you will find it serves you better than if it had appeared in print.  Go and ask him for tickets to-morrow, and he will sign forty blank orders every month.  I know a man who can get rid of them for you; I will introduce you to him, and he will buy them all up at half-price.  There is a trade done in theatre tickets, just as Barbet trades in reviewers’ copies.  This is another Barbet, the leader of the claque.  He lives near by; come and see him, there is time enough.”

“But, my dear fellow, it is a scandalous thing that Finot should levy blackmail in matters intellectual.  Sooner or later——­”

“Really!” cried Lousteau, “where do you come from?  For what do you take Finot?  Beneath his pretence of good-nature, his ignorance and stupidity, and those Turcaret’s airs of his, there is all the cunning of his father the hatter.  Did you notice an old soldier of the Empire in the den at the office?  That is Finot’s uncle.  The uncle is not only one of the right sort, he has the luck to be taken for a fool; and he takes all that kind of business upon his shoulders.  An ambitious man in Paris is well off indeed if he has a willing scapegoat at hand.  In public life, as in journalism, there are hosts of emergencies in which the chiefs cannot afford to appear.  If Finot should enter on a political career, his uncle would be his secretary, and receive all the contributions levied in his department on big affairs.  Anybody would take Giroudeau for a fool at first sight, but he has just enough shrewdness to be an inscrutable old file.  He is on picket duty; he sees that we are not pestered with hubbub, beginners wanting a job, or advertisements.  No other paper has his equal, I think.”

“He plays his part well,” said Lucien; “I saw him at work.”

Etienne and Lucien reached a handsome house in the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple.

“Is M. Braulard in?” Etienne asked of the porter.

“Monsieur?” said Lucien.  “Then, is the leader of the claque ’Monsieur’?”

“My dear boy, Braulard has twenty thousand francs of income.  All the dramatic authors of the Boulevards are in his clutches, and have a standing account with him as if he were a banker.  Orders and complimentary tickets are sold here.  Braulard knows where to get rid of such merchandise.  Now for a turn at statistics, a useful science enough in its way.  At the rate of fifty complimentary tickets every evening