but on
conditions. Let us step into your office."

"Come in, my boy," answered Dauriat, allowing Finot to pass before him.
Then, intimating to some ten persons still waiting for him that he was
engaged, he likewise was about to disappear when Lucien impatiently
stopped him.

"You are keeping my manuscript. When shall I have an answer?"

"Oh, come back in three or four days, my little poet, and we will see."

Lousteau hurried Lucien away; he had not time to take leave of Vernou
and Blondet and Raoul Nathan, nor to salute General Foy nor Benjamin
Constant, whose book on the Hundred Days was just about to appear.
Lucien scarcely caught a glimpse of fair hair, a refined oval-shaped
face, keen eyes, and the pleasant-looking mouth belonging to the man who
had played the part of a Potemkin to Mme. de Stael for twenty years, and
now was at war with the Bourbons, as he had been at war with Napoleon.
He was destined to win his cause and to die stricken to earth by his
victory.

"What a shop!" exclaimed Lucien, as he took his place in the cab beside
Lousteau.

"To the Panorama-Dramatique; look sharp, and you shall have thirty
sous," Etienne Lousteau called to the cabman.--"Dauriat is a rascal who
sells books to the amount of fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand francs
every year. He is a kind of Minister of Literature," Lousteau continued.
His self-conceit had been pleasantly tickled, and he was showing off
before Lucien. "Dauriat is just as grasping as Barbet, but it is on a
wholesale scale. Dauriat can be civil, and he is generous, but he has a
great opinion of himself; as for his wit, it consists in a faculty
for picking up all that he hears, and his shop is a capital place to
frequent. You meet all the best men at Dauriat's. A young fellow learns
more there in an hour than by poring over books for half-a-score of
years. People talk about articles and concoct subjects; you make the
acquaintance of great or influential people who may be useful to you.
You must know people if you mean to get on nowadays.--It is all luck,
you see. And as for sitting by yourself in a corner alone with your
intellect, it is the most dangerous thing of all."

"But what insolence!" said Lucien.

"Pshaw! we all of us laugh at Dauriat," said Etienne. "If you are in
need of him, he tramples upon you; if he has need of the _Journal des
Debats_, Emile Blondet sets him spinning like a top. Oh, if you take
to literature, you will see a good many qu