literature made an impression upon
him.

In the Rue du Coq he stopped in front of a modest-looking shop, which he
had passed before. He saw the inscription DOGUEREAU, BOOKSELLER, painted
above it in yellow letters on a green ground, and remembered that he
had seen the name at the foot of the title-page of several novels at
Blosse's reading-room. In he went, not without the inward trepidation
which a man of any imagination feels at the prospect of a battle.
Inside the shop he discovered an odd-looking old man, one of the queer
characters of the trade in the days of the Empire.

Doguereau wore a black coat with vast square skirts, when fashion
required swallow-tail coats. His waistcoat was of some cheap material,
a checked pattern of many colors; a steel chain, with a copper key
attached to it, hung from his fob and dangled down over a roomy pair of
black nether garments. The booksellers' watch must have been the size
of an onion. Iron-gray ribbed stockings, and shoes with silver buckles
completed is costume. The old man's head was bare, and ornamented with
a fringe of grizzled locks, quite poetically scanty. "Old Doguereau," as
Porchon styled him, was dressed half like a professor of belles-lettres
as to his trousers and shoes, half like a tradesman with respect to the
variegated waistcoat, the stockings, and the watch; and the same odd
mixture appeared in the man himself. He united the magisterial, dogmatic
air, and the hollow countenance of the professor of rhetoric with the
sharp eyes, suspicious mouth, and vague uneasiness of the bookseller.

"M. Doguereau?" asked Lucien.

"That is my name, sir."

"You are very young," remarked the bookseller.

"My age, sir, has nothing to do with the matter."

"True," and the old bookseller took up the manuscript. "Ah, begad! _The
Archer of Charles IX._, a good title. Let us see now, young man, just
tell me your subject in a word or two."

"It is a historical work, sir, in the style of Scott. The character
of the struggle between the Protestants and Catholics is depicted as a
struggle between two opposed systems of government, in which the throne
is seriously endangered. I have taken the Catholic side."

"Eh! but you have ideas, young man. Very well, I will read your book, I
promise you. I would rather have had something more in Mrs. Radcliffe's
style; but if you are industrious, if you have some notion of style,
conceptions, ideas, and the art of telling a story, I don't