"Very good," said the critic.
"Ah!" said Rodolphe to himself, setting to write again. "I shall certainly ask him for ten francs, just now paradoxes are as dear as partridges." And he wrote some thirty lines containing nonsense about pianos, goldfish and Rhine wine, which was called toilet wine just as we speak of toilet vinegar.
"It is very good," said the critic. "Now do me the favor to add that the place where one meets more honest folk than anywhere else is the galleys."
"Why?"
"To fill a couple of lines. Good, now it is finished," said the influential critic, summoning his servant to take the article to the printers.
"And now," thought Rodolphe, "let us strike home." And he gravely proposed his request.
"Ah! my dear fellow," said the critic, "I have not a sou in the place. Lolette ruins me in pommade, and just now she stripped me of my last copper to go to Versailles and see the Nereids and the brazen monsters spout forth the floods."
"To Versailles. But it is an epidemic!" exclaimed Rodolphe.
"But why do you want money?"
"That is my story," replied Rodolphe, "I have at five this evening an appointment with a lady, a very well bred lady who never goes out save in an omnibus. I wish to unite my fortunes with hers for a few days, and it appears to me the right thing to enable her to take the pleasures of this life. For dinner, dances, &c., &c., I must have five francs, and if I do not find them French literature is dishonoured in my person."