dance on the booksellers for another three years,
or starved like d'Arthez in a garret. By the time that d'Arthez is as
learned as Bayle and as great a writer of prose as Rousseau, we
shall have made our fortunes, you and I, and we shall hold his in our
hands--wealth and fame to give or to hold. Finot will be a deputy and
proprietor of a great newspaper, and we shall be whatever we meant to
be--peers of France, or prisoner for debt in Sainte-Pelagie."

"So Finot will sell his paper to the highest bidder among the Ministers,
just as he sells favorable notices to Mme. Bastienne and runs down
Mlle. Virginie, saying that Mme. Bastienne's bonnets are superior to the
millinery which they praised at first!" said Lucien, recollecting that
scene in the office.

"My dear fellow, you are a simpleton," Lousteau remarked drily. "Three
years ago Finot was walking on the uppers of his boots, dining for
eighteen sous at Tabar's, and knocking off a tradesman's prospectus
(when he could get it) for ten francs. His clothes hung together by some
miracle as mysterious as the Immaculate Conception. _Now_, Finot has
a paper of his own, worth about a hundred thousand francs. What with
subscribers who pay and take no copies, genuine subscriptions, and
indirect taxes levied by his uncle, he is making twenty thousand francs
a year. He dines most sumptuously every day; he has set up a cabriolet
within the last month; and now, at last, behold him the editor of a
weekly review with a sixth share, for which he will not pay a penny, a
salary of five hundred francs per month, and another thousand francs for
supplying matter which costs him nothing, and for which the firm pays.
You yourself, to begin with, if Finot consents to pay you fifty francs
per sheet, will be only too glad to let him have two or three articles
for nothing. When you are in his position, you can judge Finot; a man
can only be tried by his peers. And for you, is there not an immense
future opening out before you, if you will blindly minister to his
enmity, attack at Finot's bidding, and praise when he gives the word?
Suppose that you yourself wish to be revenged upon somebody, you
can break a foe or friend on the wheel. You have only to say to me,
'Lousteau, let us put an end to So-and-so,' and we will kill him by a
phrase put in the paper morning by morning; and afterwards you can slay
the slain with a solemn article in Finot's weekly. Indeed, if it is a
matter of capital importan