Coralie made a sign to Berenice.  That portly handmaid went to Coralie’s dressing-room and brought back a box of tumbled artificial flowers.  The more incapable members of the party were grotesquely tricked out in these blossoms, and a crown of roses was soon woven.  Finot, as high priest, sprinkled a few drops of champagne on Lucien’s golden curls, pronouncing with delicious gravity the words—­“In the name of the Government Stamp, the Caution-money, and the Fine, I baptize thee, Journalist.  May thy articles sit lightly on thee!”

“And may they be paid for, including white lines!” cried Merlin.

Just at that moment Lucien caught sight of three melancholy faces.  Michel Chrestien, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence Ridal took up their hats and went out amid a storm of invective.

“Queer customers!” said Merlin.

“Fulgence used to be a good fellow,” added Lousteau, “before they perverted his morals.”

“Who are ’they’?” asked Claude Vignon.

“Some very serious young men,” said Blondet, “who meet at a philosophico-religious symposium in the Rue des Quatre-Vents, and worry themselves about the meaning of human life——­”

“Oh! oh!”

“They are trying to find out whether it goes round in a circle, or makes some progress,” continued Blondet.  “They were very hard put to it between the straight line and the curve; the triangle, warranted by Scripture, seemed to them to be nonsense, when, lo! there arose among them some prophet or other who declared for the spiral.”

“Men might meet to invent more dangerous nonsense than that!” exclaimed Lucien, making a faint attempt to champion the brotherhood.

“You take theories of that sort for idle words,” said Felicien Vernou; “but a time comes when the arguments take the form of gunshot and the guillotine.”

“They have not come to that yet,” said Bixiou; “they have only come as far as the designs of Providence in the invention of champagne, the humanitarian significance of breeches, and the blind deity who keeps the world going.  They pick up fallen great men like Vico, Saint-Simon, and Fourier.  I am much afraid that they will turn poor Joseph Bridau’s head among them.”

“Bianchon, my old schoolfellow, gives me the cold shoulder now,” said Lousteau; “it is all their doing——­”

“Do they give lectures on orthopedy and intellectual gymnastics?” asked Merlin.

“Very likely,” answered Finot, “if Bianchon has any hand in their theories.”

“Pshaw!” said Lousteau; “he will be a great physician anyhow.”

“Isn’t d’Arthez their visible head?” asked Nathan, “a little youngster that is going to swallow all of us up.”

“He is a genius!” cried Lucien.

“Genius, is he!  Well, give me a glass of sherry!” said Claude Vignon, smiling.