at he was trying to go ahead too fast, and
that Forestier's hand alone could help him on his way. He did not
therefore say anything more about the "Recollections of a Chasseur
d'Afrique," promising himself to be supple and cunning since it was
needful, and while awaiting something better to zealously discharge his
duties as a reporter.

He learned to know the way behind the scenes in theatrical and political
life; the waiting-rooms of statesmen and the lobby of the Chamber of
Deputies; the important countenances of permanent secretaries, and the
grim looks of sleepy ushers. He had continual relations with ministers,
doorkeepers, generals, police agents, princes, bullies, courtesans,
ambassadors, bishops, panders, adventurers, men of fashion,
card-sharpers, cab drivers, waiters, and many others, having become the
interested yet indifferent friend of all these; confounding them
together in his estimation, measuring them with the same measure,
judging them with the same eye, though having to see them every day at
every hour, without any transition, and to speak with them all on the

same business of his own. He compared himself to a man who had to drink
off samples of every kind of wine one after the other, and who would
soon be unable to tell Chateau Margaux from Argenteuil.

He became in a short time a remarkable reporter, certain of his
information, artful, swift, subtle, a real find for the paper, as was
observed by Daddy Walter, who knew what newspaper men were. However, as
he got only centimes a line in addition to his monthly screw of two
hundred francs, and as life on the boulevards and in _cafes_ and
restaurants is costly, he never had a halfpenny, and was disgusted with
his poverty. There is some knack to be got hold of, he thought, seeing
some of his fellows with their pockets full of money without ever being
able to understand what secret methods they could make use of to procure
this abundance. He enviously suspected unknown and suspicious
transactions, services rendered, a whole system of contraband accepted
and agreed to. But it was necessary that he should penetrate the
mystery, enter into the tacit partnership, make himself one with the
comrades who were sharing without him.

And he often thought of an evening, as he watched the trains go by from
his window, of the steps he ought to take.

V

Two months had gone by, September was at hand, and the rapid fortune
which Duroy had hoped for see