as I stay here.

Well, I arrived this morning, Monday, and took up my quarters as usual
in my quiet little hotel in the Rue Servandoni, where the only sounds
of the great city which reach me are the bells of Saint Sulpice, and
the continual noise from a neighbouring forge, a sound of the rhythmical
beating of iron, which I love because it reminds me of our village. I
rushed off at once to my publisher. 'Well, when do we come out?'

'Your book? Why, it came out a week ago.'

Come out, indeed, and gone in too--gone into the depths of that grim
establishment of Manivet's, which never ceases to pant and to reek with
the labour of giving birth to a new volume. This Monday, as it happened,
they were just sending out a great novel by Herscher, called _Satyra_.
The copies struck off--how many hundreds of thousands of them I don't
know--were lying in stacks and heaps right up to the very top of the
establishment. You can fancy the preoccupation of the staff, and the
lost bewildered look of worthy Manivet himself, when I mentioned my poor
little volume of verse, and talked of my chances for the Boisseau prize.
I asked for a few copies to leave with the members of the committee
of award, and made my escape through _streets_--literally streets--of
_Satyra_, piled up to the ceiling. When I got into my cab, I looked at
my volume and turned over the pages. I was quite pleased with the solemn
effect of the title, 'God in Nature.' The capitals are perhaps a trifle
thin, when you come to look at them, not quite as black and impressive
to the eye as they might be. But it does not matter. Your pretty name,
'Germaine,' in the dedication will bring us luck. I left a couple of
copies at the Astiers' in the Rue de Beaune. You know they no longer
occupy their rooms at the Foreign Office. But Madame Astier has still
her 'Wednesdays.' So of course I wait till Wednesday to hear what my old
master thinks of the book; and off I went to the Institute.

There again I found them as busy as a steam factory. Really the industry
of this big city is marvellous, especially to people like us, who spend
all the year in the peace of the open country. Found Picheral--you
remember Picheral, the polite gentleman in the secretary's office,
who got you such a good place three years ago, when I received my
prize--well, I found Picheral and his clerks in the midst of a wild
hubbub of voices, shouting out names and addresses from one desk to
another, and surrounded