“What is he doing?” asked Blondet of the head-clerk, who rose to bid him good-evening.
“He is buying a weekly newspaper. He wants to put new life into it, and set up a rival to the Minerve and the Conservateur; Eymery has rather too much of his own way in the Minerve, and the Conservateur is too blindly Romantic.”
“Is he going to pay well?”
“Only too much—as usual,” said the cashier.
Just as he spoke another young man entered; this was the writer of a magnificent novel which had sold very rapidly and met with the greatest possible success. Dauriat was bringing out a second edition. The appearance of this odd and extraordinary looking being, so unmistakably an artist, made a deep impression on Lucien’s mind.
“That is Nathan,” Lousteau said in his ear.
Nathan, then in the prime of his youth, came up to the group of journalists, hat in hand; and in spite of his look of fierce pride he was almost humble to Blondet, whom as yet he only knew by sight. Blondet did not remove his hat, neither did Finot.
“Monsieur, I am delighted to avail myself of an opportunity yielded by chance——”
(“He is so nervous that he is committing a pleonasm,” said Félicien in an aside to Lousteau.)
“——to give expression to my gratitude for the splendid review which you were so good as to give me in the Journal des Débats. Half the success of my book is owing to you.”