“I would endeavor even to be dull,” said Gaillard, “to vex De Brie.”
“But see here,” said Toto. “What is the use of another paper? There are hundreds of papers.”
“There is no paper like mine,” said Pelisson. “Wait till you see it! it will begin with a grunt and end in a yell. Ma foi! yes. There are a hundred dull papers pretending to be clever, but there is no clever paper pretending to be dull. I am going to be respectable, and wear a scorpion’s tail. I am going to give more business news than any other paper. M. Prudhomme will read me after dinner; and I will tickle him under the ribs, and then some day I will bite him behind, and make him jump from his easy-chair and pull things down. You will hear Paris crack. Here we are!”
They had reached the Café de la Paix; De Nani and Wolf were there already.
“For goodness’ sake, Pelisson,” said Gaillard, “give this wretched Wolf his hundred francs, or he will be making innuendoes all dinner-time! It is a way he has; he is most spiteful and has no reserve.”
Wolf was a journalist, with a long black beard, a high forehead, and spectacles. His forte was interviewing. He entered one’s house like a wolf, and swallowed one—house, wife, furniture, and all; the backyard and the front garden were not beneath him. Then he vomited the remains into the columns of fifty papers, and went and devoured someone else. But he was a good-natured wolf, ready to lend to a friend in distress, but a terrible creditor, for, to use Gaillard’s expression, he tortured one so.
Pelisson drew him aside and promised him payment, and then they dined, the journalist sketching out his plan between the courses to the delight of his listeners, excepting Toto.
The wretched Toto had no part in the scheme; they asked him for money to help them, but they did not invoke his brains. He felt the slight, but not severely; literature was not his path. He had no hankering after distinction as a journalist, so he agreed to supply the hundred thousand francs, if he could get them.
“I will give you bills at three months, and leave you to discount them. I am going to Corsica to shoot moufflon.” And he touched Gaillard’s foot under the table to remind him of Célestin and the attic in Bohemia.