s
article in print. He was up as soon as it was daylight, and was prowling
about the streets long before the hour at which the porters from the
newspaper offices run with their papers from kiosque to kiosque. He went
on to the Saint Lazare terminus, knowing that the _Vie Francaise_ would
be delivered there before it reached his own district. As he was still
too early, he wandered up and down on the footpath.

He witnessed the arrival of the newspaper vendor who opened her glass
shop, and then saw a man bearing on his head a pile of papers. He rushed
forward. There were the _Figaro_, the _Gil Blas_, the _Gaulois_, the
_Evenement_, and two or three morning journals, but the _Vie Francaise_
was not among them. Fear seized him. Suppose the "Recollections of a
Chasseur d'Afrique" had been kept over for the next day, or that by
chance they had not at the last moment seemed suitable to Daddy Walter.

Turning back to the kiosque, he saw that the paper was on sale without
his having seen it brought there. He darted forward, unfolded it, after
having thrown down the three sous, and ran through the headings of the
articles on the first page. Nothing. His heart began to beat, and he
experienced strong emotion on reading at the foot of a column in large
letters, "George Duroy." It was in; what happiness!

He began to walk along unconsciously, the paper in his hand and his hat
on one side of his head, with a longing to stop the passers-by in order
to say to them: "Buy this, buy this, there is an article by me in it."
He would have liked to have bellowed with all the power of his lungs,
like some vendors of papers at night on the boulevards, "Read the _Vie
Francaise_; read George Duroy's article, 'Recollections of a Chasseur
d'Afrique.'" And suddenly he felt a wish to read this article himself,
read it in a public place, a _cafe_, in sight of all. He looked about
for some establishment already filled with customers. He had to walk in
search of one for some time. He sat down at last in front of a kind of
wine shop, where several customers were already installed, and asked for
a glass of rum, as he would have asked for one of absinthe, without
thinking of the time. Then he cried: "Waiter, bring me the _Vie
Francaise_."

A man in a white apron stepped up, saying: "We have not got it, sir; we
only take in the _Rappel_, the _Siecle_, the _Lanierne_, and the _Petit
Parisien_."

"What a den!" exclaimed Duroy, in a tone of anger and disg