s friends
could not fail to offer, as the dispatch had appeared in his paper
alone.

The sanctum had not an attractive look; in fact, it was rather
dilapidated, while, in addition, the disorder occasioned by the previous
night's work had not been repaired, and all was chaos and confusion.

Beauchamp was busily engaged in glancing over the rival morning papers
when Lucien Debray entered and seated himself at another desk. The
Ministerial Secretary smiled upon the journalist in a knowing way, and
the latter, nodding to him with an air of triumph, silently pointed to
the pile of journals he had finished examining. Lucien took them up,
and without a word began scanning their contents.

"Glorious news that from the army in Algeria!" cried Chateau-Renaud,
rushing into the sanctum.

"Glorious, indeed!" replied the editor, looking up from the paper over
which he was hurriedly skimming. On the huge table at his side, as well
as beneath it, and under his feet and his capacious arm-chair, nothing
was to be seen but newspapers.

"Take a chair, Renaud, if you can find one, and help yourself to the
news. You see I have Lucien similarly engaged yonder."

The Ministerial Secretary glanced up from his papers, returned his
friend's salutation and resumed his reading. He was dressed with his
customary elegance and richness, but his form and face were fuller than
when last before the reader, and his brown hair was besprinkled with
gray.

"I congratulate you, Beauchamp, on being the first to give the news,"
continued Chateau-Renaud. "Not a paper in Paris but your own has a line
from the army this morning."

"Rather congratulate me and my paper on having a friend at court."

"Ha! and that explains the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that an
opposition journal has intelligence, which only the Bureau of War could
have anticipated! Treason--treason!"

The editor and the Secretary exchanged significant smiles.

"Oh! I don't doubt that your favors are reciprocal," continued the
young aristocrat, laughing. "I've half a mind to be something useful
myself--Minister--editor--anything but an idler and a law-giver--just to
experience the exquisite sensation of a new pleasure--the pleasure of
revealing and publishing to the world something it knew not before. Why,
you two fellows, in this dark and dirty little room, are the two
greatest men in Paris this morning--or were, rather, before your paper,
Beauchamp, laid before the world what only