is still time, before you set your foot on the lowest
step of the throne for which so many ambitious spirits are contending,
and do not sell your honor, as I do, for a livelihood." Etienne's eyes
filled with tears as he spoke.

"Do you know how I make a living?" he continued passionately. "The
little stock of money they gave me at home was soon eaten up. A piece
of mine was accepted at the Theatre-Francais just as I came to an end
of it. At the Theatre-Francais the influence of a first gentleman of the
bedchamber, or of a prince of the blood, would not be enough to secure
a turn of favor; the actors only make concessions to those who threaten
their self-love. If it is in your power to spread a report that the
_jeune premier_ has the asthma, the leading lady a fistula where you
please, and the soubrette has foul breath, then your piece would be
played to-morrow. I do not know whether in two years' time, I who speak
to you now, shall be in a position to exercise such power. You need so
many to back you. And where and how am I to gain my bread meanwhile?

"I tried lots of things; I wrote a novel, anonymously; old Doguereau
gave me two hundred francs for it, and he did not make very much out of
it himself. Then it grew plain to me that journalism alone could give me
a living. The next thing was to find my way into those shops. I will not
tell you all the advances I made, nor how often I begged in vain. I will
say nothing of the six months I spent as extra hand on a paper, and was
told that I scared subscribers away, when as a fact I attracted them.
Pass over the insults I put up with. At this moment I am doing the plays
at the Boulevard theatres, almost _gratis_, for a paper belonging to
Finot, that stout young fellow who breakfasts two or three times a
month, even now, at the Cafe Voltaire (but you don't go there). I live
by selling tickets that managers give me to bribe a good word in the
paper, and reviewers' copies of books. In short, Finot once satisfied,
I am allowed to write for and against various commercial articles, and I
traffic in tribute paid in kind by various tradesmen. A facetious notice
of a Carminative Toilet Lotion, _Pate des Sultanes_, Cephalic Oil, or
Brazilian Mixture brings me in twenty or thirty francs.

"I am obliged to dun the publishers when they don't send in a sufficient
number of reviewers' copies; Finot, as editor, appropriates two and
sells them, and I must have two to sell. If a book of cap