ing
space.

"Outside the world of letters," Etienne Lousteau continued, "not a
single creature suspects that every one who succeeds in that world--who
has a certain vogue, that is to say, or comes into fashion, or gains
reputation, or renown, or fame, or favor with the public (for by these
names we know the rungs of the ladder by which we climb to the higher
heights above and beyond them),--every one who comes even thus far is
the hero of a dreadful Odyssey. Brilliant portents rise above the mental
horizon through a combination of a thousand accidents; conditions change
so swiftly that no two men have been known to reach success by the same
road. Canalis and Nathan are two dissimilar cases; things never fall out
in the same way twice. There is d'Arthez, who knocks himself to pieces
with work--he will make a famous name by some other chance.

"This so much desired reputation is nearly always crowned prostitution.
Yes; the poorest kind of literature is the hapless creature freezing at
the street corner; second-rate literature is the kept-mistress picked
out of the brothels of journalism, and I am her bully; lastly, there is
lucky literature, the flaunting, insolent courtesan who has a house
of her own and pays taxes, who receives great lords, treating or
ill-treating them as she pleases, who has liveried servants and a
carriage, and can afford to keep greedy creditors waiting. Ah! and
for yet others, for me not so very long ago, for you to-day--she is a
white-robed angel with many-colored wings, bearing a green palm branch
in the one hand, and in the other a flaming sword. An angel, something
akin to the mythological abstraction which lives at the bottom of a
well, and to the poor and honest girl who lives a life of exile in the
outskirts of the great city, earning every penny with a noble fortitude
and in the full light of virtue, returning to heaven inviolate of
body and soul; unless, indeed, she comes to lie at the last, soiled,
despoiled, polluted, and forgotten, on a pauper's bier. As for the men
whose brains are encompassed with bronze, whose hearts are still warm
under the snows of experience, they are found but seldom in the country
that lies at our feet," he added, pointing to the great city seething in
the late afternoon light.

A vision of d'Arthez and his friends flashed upon Lucien's sight, and
made appeal to him for a moment; but Lousteau's appalling lamentation
carried him away.

"They are very few and