"Keep your teeth in him and he will come round to me," said Finot; "and it will look as if I were obliging him by appeasing you. He can say a word to the Ministry, and we can get something or other out of him—an assistant schoolmaster's place, or a tobacconist's license. It is a lucky thing for us that we flicked him on the raw. Does anybody here care to take a serious article on Nathan for my new paper?"
"Give it to Lucien," said Lousteau. "Hector and Vernou will write articles in their papers at the same time."
"Good-day, gentlemen; we shall meet each other face to face at
Barbin's," said Finot, laughing.
Lucien received some congratulations on his admission to the mighty army of journalists, and Lousteau explained that they could be sure of him. "Lucien wants you all to sup in a body at the house of the fair Coralie."
"Coralie is going on at the Gymnase," said Lucien.
"Very well, gentlemen; it is understood that we push Coralie, eh? Put a few lines about her new engagement in your papers, and say something about her talent. Credit the management of the Gymnase with tack and discernment; will it do to say intelligence?"
"Yes, say intelligence," said Merlin; "Frederic has something of
Scribe's."
"Oh! Well, then, the manager of the Gymnase is the most perspicacious and far-sighted of men of business," said Vernou.
"Look here! don't write your articles on Nathan until we have come to an understanding; you shall hear why," said Etienne Lousteau. "We ought to do something for our new comrade. Lucien here has two books to bring out—a volume of sonnets and a novel. The power of the paragraph should make him a great poet due in three months; and we will make use of his sonnets (Marguerites is the title) to run down odes, ballads, and reveries, and all the Romantic poetry."
"It would be a droll thing if the sonnets were no good after all," said Vernou.—"What do you yourself think of your sonnets, Lucien?"