“Mademoiselle only went to bed at three o’clock this morning,” said the servant, “and no one would dare to disturb her until she rings.”
“When does she ring?”
“Never before ten o’clock.”
Then Lucien wrote one of those harrowing appeals in which the well-dressed beggar flings all pride and self-respect to the winds. One evening, not so very long ago, when Lousteau had told him of the abject begging letters which Finot received, Lucien had thought it impossible that any creature would sink so low; and now, carried away by his pen, he had gone further, it may be, than other unlucky wretches upon the same road. He did not suspect, in his fever and imbecility, that he had just written a masterpiece of pathos. On his way home along the Boulevards, he met Barbet.
“Barbet!” he begged, holding out his hand. “Five hundred francs!”
“No. Two hundred,” returned the other.
“Ah! then you have a heart.”
“Yes; but I am a man of business as well. I have lost a lot of money through you,” he concluded, after giving the history of the failure of Fendant and Cavalier, “will you put me in the way of making some?”
Lucien quivered.
“You are a poet. You ought to understand all kinds of poetry,” continued the little publisher. “I want a few rollicking songs at this moment to put along with some more by different authors, or they will be down upon me over the copyright. I want to have a good collection to sell on the streets at ten sous. If you care to let me have ten good drinking-songs by to-morrow morning, or something spicy,—you know the sort of thing, eh!—I will pay you two hundred francs.”