[Illustration: "THE SAME 'INDIAN.'"]

* * * * *

After breakfast, that indefatigable man of business, that intolerable
bore, who incessantly bangs the doors and brings his stock-in-trade to
the cars, came and whispered in my ears:

"New book--just out--a forbidden book!"

"A forbidden book! What is that?" I inquired.

He showed it to me. It was "Manon Lescaut."

[Illustration: "NEW BOOK JUST OUT--A FORBIDDEN BOOK!"]

Is it possible? That literary and artistic _chef-d'oeuvre_, which has
been the original type of "Paul et Virginie" and "Atala"; that touching
drama, which the prince of critics, Jules Janin, declared would be
sufficient to save contemporary literature from complete oblivion,
dragged in the mire, clothed in a dirty coarse English garb! and
advertised as a forbidden book! Three generations of French people have
wept over the pathetic story. Here it is now, stripped of its unique
style and literary beauty, sold to the American public as an improper
book--a libel by translation on a genius. British authors have
complained for years that their books were stolen in America. They have
suffered in pockets, it is true, but their reputation has spread through
an immense continent. What is their complaint compared to that of the
French authors who have the misfortune to see their works translated
into American? It is not only their pockets that suffer, but their
reputation. The poor French author is at the mercy of incapable and
malicious translators hired at starvation wages by the American pirate
publisher. He is liable to a species of defamation ten times worse than
robbery.

And as I looked at that copy of "Manon Lescaut," I almost felt grateful
that Prevost was dead.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FOR THE FIRST TIME I SEE AN AMERICAN PAPER ABUSE ME--ALBANY TO NEW
YORK--A LECTURE AT DALY'S THEATER--AFTERNOON AUDIENCES.

_New York, February 23._

The American press has always been very good to me. Fairness one has a
right to expect, but kindness is an extra that is not always thrown in,
and therefore the uniform amiability of the American press toward me
could not fail to strike me most agreeably.

Up to yesterday I had not seen a single unkind notice or article, but in
the Albany _Express_ of yesterday morning I read:

This evening the people of Albany are asked to listen to a lecture by
Max O'Rell, who was in this country two years ago,