this chasm to be filled?" exclaimed the critic. "Since you are here
supply me with some paradoxes."

"I have not any about me," said Rodolphe, "though I can lend you some.
Only they are not mine, I bought them for half a franc from one of my
friends who was in distress. They have seen very little use as yet."

"Very good," said the critic.

"Ah!" said Rodolphe to himself, setting to write again. "I shall
certainly ask him for ten francs, just now paradoxes are as dear as
partridges." And he wrote some thirty lines containing nonsense about
pianos, goldfish and Rhine wine, which was called toilet wine just as
we speak of toilet vinegar.

"It is very good," said the critic. "Now do me the favor to add that the
place where one meets more honest folk than anywhere else is the
galleys."

"Why?"

"To fill a couple of lines. Good, now it is finished," said the
influential critic, summoning his servant to take the article to the
printers.

"And now," thought Rodolphe, "let us strike home." And he gravely
proposed his request.

"Ah! my dear fellow," said the critic, "I have not a sou in the place.
Lolette ruins me in pommade, and just now she stripped me of my last
copper to go to Versailles and see the Nereids and the brazen monsters
spout forth the floods."

"To Versailles. But it is an epidemic!" exclaimed Rodolphe.

"But why do you want money?"

"That is my story," replied Rodolphe, "I have at five this evening an
appointment with a lady, a very well bred lady who never goes out save
in an omnibus. I wish to unite my fortunes with hers for a few days, and
it appears to me the right thing to enable her to take the pleasures of
this life. For dinner, dances, &c., &c., I must have five francs, and if
I do not find them French literature is dishonoured in my person."

"Why don't you borrow the sum of the lady herself?" exclaimed the
critic.

"The first time of meeting, it is hardly possible. Only you can get me
out of this fix."

"By all the mummies of Egypt I give you my word of honor that I have not
enough to buy a sou pipe. However, I have some books that you can sell."

"Impossible today, Mother Mansut's, Lebigre's, and all the shops on the
quays and in the Rue Saint Jacques are closed. What books are they?
Volumes of poetry with a portrait of the author in spectacles? But such
things never sell."

"Unless the author is criminally convicted," said the critic. "Wait a
bit, here are some romances and so