-stained wood, with rows of labeled cardboard cases
on the shelves, stood between the two crazy windows. A gaunt, painted
wooden bedstead, of the kind seen in school dormitories, a night-table,
picked up cheaply somewhere, and a couple of horsehair armchairs, filled
the further end of the room. The wall-paper, a Highland plaid pattern,
was glazed over with the grime of years. Between the window and
the grate stood a long table littered with papers, and opposite the
fireplace there was a cheap mahogany chest of drawers. A second-hand
carpet covered the floor--a necessary luxury, for it saved firing. A
common office armchair, cushioned with leather, crimson once, but now
hoary with wear, was drawn up to the table. Add half-a-dozen rickety
chairs, and you have a complete list of the furniture. Lucien noticed an
old-fashioned candle-sconce for a card-table, with an adjustable screen
attached, and wondered to see four wax candles in the sockets. D'Arthez
explained that he could not endure the smell of tallow, a little
trait denoting great delicacy of sense perception, and the exquisite
sensibility which accompanies it.

The reading lasted for seven hours. Daniel listened conscientiously,
forbearing to interrupt by word or comment--one of the rarest proofs of
good taste in a listener.

"Well?" queried Lucien, laying the manuscript on the chimney-piece.

"You have made a good start on the right way," d'Arthez answered
judicially, "but you must go over your work again. You must strike out a
different style for yourself if you do not mean to ape Sir Walter Scott,
for you have taken him for your model. You begin, for instance, as he
begins, with long conversations to introduce your characters, and only
when they have said their say does description and action follow.

"This opposition, necessary in all work of a dramatic kind, comes
last. Just put the terms of the problem the other way round. Give
descriptions, to which our language lends itself so admirably, instead
of diffuse dialogue, magnificent in Scott's work, but colorless in
your own. Lead naturally up to your dialogue. Plunge straight into the
action. Treat your subject from different points of view, sometimes in
a side-light, sometimes retrospectively; vary your methods, in fact,
to diversify your work. You may be original while adapting the Scots
novelist's form of dramatic dialogue to French history. There is
no passion in Scott's novels; he ignores passion, or per