'It is enthusiasm-enthusiasm, sir, that must carry the day.'

'The readers of the Glaneuse are not, I fear, enthusiastic about poetry.'

'Then I will make them enthusiastic. I will show them the immortal glory of the man they despise.'

'Are you so sure, sir, that his glory is immortal?' said the man at the green baize table; and the scratching of the pen ceased for the first time.

'I am as certain of it as that I sit here in this chair, with my back to the light.'

'With your back to the light!' observed the other reflectively. Now, for my part I think that if there were only one single line of Corneille left, that one single line would be remembered when all the voluminous works of this young Hugo are forgotten.'

Lucien tore off the last blank page of his article, scribbled a few words, and handed it to the editor. Will you

'I do not know your contributor's name. kindly give him this from me, assuring him that I am ready to make good my words with sword or pistol, whichever he may choose. Blum here will be my second.'

'Permit me to observe,' said the person alluded to, ' that I cannot at this moment see well enough to read any communication, however important. The Jewish Rabbis cut twilight in half. The first half, they maintain, belongs to the day; they call it the twilight of the dove! The second belongs to the night-that is the twilight of the raven. The twilight of the raven draws on apace.'

Lucien scarcely listened. Since the evening before, Victor Hugo had become the only man alive to him—

all the rest were mere shadows: but at that moment a shadow with a loud voice burst noisily into the office, chanting the first lines of the Song for which Lucien had just escaped arrest.

'Ever hear it before?' he cried, seizing the little editor by the shoulders and dinning it into his ear.

'Hear it before!' said the editor testily. 'I should think so. Why, I have heard nothing else all day. I could not eat my breakfast for it this morning. I was deafened with it at dinner-time. I do not suppose I shall get a wink of sleep for it to-night.'

'It is the finest Song that ever was sung in Lyons. You have a finger in every pie. You know who wrote it, I suppose?'

'Plague take the man, whoever he may be!' said the editor.

They say he is-hush!-they say he is Victor Hugo.'

'I do not think so,' observed the man at the green baize table.

'I am not at liberty to mention.' The editor spoke like an editor, with dignity and reserve.

'You can give me the last lines of the Song, at any rate. I do not mean to leave your office without them. The fellow I met could only recollect the beginning. Give me the last lines at once. I will not leave the room till I have got them.'

'I am not at liberty to give them.'

'But I am,' said Lucien. 'I happened to hear the Song last night. I can oblige the gentleman;' and he trolled out the last stanza.

The young man waited not an instant. He darted from the office, shouting it as he ran. The tune was

taken up in chorus by a number of others outside, under the leadership of a handsome boy. The goblin look returned to Lucien's eyes as he sat in the twilight. As the chorus crashed out the second time in full vigour, the editor turned to him.

'I see, sir,' said he,' that I have the honour of speaking to a distinguished poet. May I say that I shall be happy to retain your services for my journal at a salary of'

'You make a mistake, sir,' said Lucien brusquely. 'I am not the author of that Song. It is by a friend of mine.'

The editor's countenance fell.

'What the devil do you mean, Lucien?' cried Blum. My friend is modest,' he added, turning again in deprecation to the editor.

'Perhaps your friend is cautious,' said the man at the bureau. 'He cannot fail to know that the author of that Song will shortly be in prison.'

'I wrote the Song,' said Lucien. 'I do not care who knows that I wrote it. And I will write a hundred others like it-but not for your money.'

He rose and walked out.

CHAPTER VI

THE QUEEN OF HEARTS

'But how do you intend to live?' said Blum, when he rejoined his friend a little later on.

Lucien was gazing in at the window of a fruit-shop. The rosy apples for eating, the crude green apples for cooking, the pippins, the amber and purple grapes heaped up in baskets, the figs, the early strawberriesthese charmed his eye. Sprays of the rare white lilac blooming even now underground in the dark warmth of a cellar; tiny branches of lily of the valley were scattered here and there among them. Overhead hung a wreath of violets.

'The golden violet!' flashed through Lucien's mind. 'The golden violet that the poets won-the crowning prize, of three, at the Court of Love!'

In front, a row of tawny pineapples, crowned each with stiff gray leaves, lay prostrate-fallen monarchs— along the centre. The pale, thick yellow of the lemon relieved the splendour of a gorgeous heap of oranges. From the contemplation of all this gold Lucien turned reluctantly, as Blum repeated his question.

'Let me see! I have got fifty francs somewhere in an old box-I know I have. My foster-mother left them to me to buy a mourning ring.'

'Is that all?'

'Oh dear no! The shoemaker opposite owes me

twenty. I can make him pay up at once-unless that baby of his is ill.'

'Fifty and twenty makes seventy. Anything else? 'Certainly. I saw a ten-franc piece in my drawer when I opened it.'

'Besides,' said Lucien, with brisk emphasis, 'I must be able to raise sixty at least on my watch and chain. They are quite worth forty.'

6

Eighty and sixty—it makes a hundred and forty.' 'Who said it did not? The Minister of Finance could not add up the figures more correctly.

'You have saved nothing?'

'I tell you I saved ten francs last week.'

Is there nothing to come to you from your relations?'

'Not a farthing. I have no relations. I do not know who my father and mother were. My fostermother left me a key which I wear round my neck, and two or three mysterious words. When I find the person who has the key to the words and the lock for the key, I shall be rich.'

That is all nonsense,' said Blum decisively. 'A hundred and forty francs! Well, with economy you can live two months upon that! What do you propose to do afterwards?'

'Die, I suppose, if nothing better occurs to me.' 'It is a pity that you have no convictions.'

Why?'

Because a man with convictions can always earn his living. If I could persuade you to listen to me for half an hour, you would be a convinced Republican, as