urrying back again, he saw
d'Arthez resting an elbow on the table in a corner of the restaurant,
and knew that his friend was watching him with melancholy eyes, but he
would not see d'Arthez just then; he felt the sharp pangs of poverty,
the goadings of ambition, and followed Lousteau.

In the late afternoon the journalist and the neophyte went to the
Luxembourg, and sat down under the trees in that part of the gardens
which lies between the broad Avenue de l'Observatoire and the Rue de
l'Ouest. The Rue de l'Ouest at that time was a long morass, bounded by
planks and market-gardens; the houses were all at the end nearest
the Rue de Vaugirard; and the walk through the gardens was so little
frequented, that at the hour when Paris dines, two lovers might fall out
and exchange the earnest of reconciliation without fear of intruders.
The only possible spoil-sport was the pensioner on duty at the little
iron gate on the Rue de l'Ouest, if that gray-headed veteran should
take it into his head to lengthen his monotonous beat. There, on a
bench beneath the lime-trees, Etienne Lousteau sat and listened to
sample-sonnets from the _Marguerites_.

Etienne Lousteau, after a two-years' apprenticeship, was on the staff
of a newspaper; he had his foot in the stirrup; he reckoned some of the
celebrities of the day among his friends; altogether, he was an imposing
personage in Lucien's eyes. Wherefore, while Lucien untied the string
about the _Marguerites_, he judged it necessary to make some sort of
preface.

"The sonnet, monsieur," said he, "is one of the most difficult forms of
poetry. It has fallen almost entirely into disuse. No Frenchman can hope
to rival Petrarch; for the language in which the Italian wrote, being
so infinitely more pliant than French, lends itself to play of thought
which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression) rejects. So
it seemed to me that a volume of sonnets would be something quite new.
Victor Hugo has appropriated the old, Canalis writes lighter verse,
Beranger has monopolized songs, Casimir Delavigne has taken tragedy, and
Lamartine the poetry of meditation."

"Are you a 'Classic' or a 'Romantic'?" inquired Lousteau.

Lucien's astonishment betrayed such complete ignorance of the state of
affairs in the republic of letters, that Lousteau thought it necessary
to enlighten him.

"You have come up in the middle of a pitched battle, my dear fellow;
you must make your decision at once. Literatur