"I agree to that."
"To your fame!" and Dauriat raised his glass.
"I see that you have read the Marguerites," said Lucien.
Dauriat was not disconcerted.
"My boy, a publisher cannot pay a greater compliment than by buying your Marguerites unread. In six months' time you will be a great poet. You will be written up; people are afraid of you; I shall have no difficulty in selling your book. I am the same man of business that I was four days ago. It is not I who have changed; it is you. Last week your sonnets were so many cabbage leaves for me; to-day your position has ranked them beside Delavigne."
"Ah well," said Lucien, "if you have not read my sonnets, you have read my article." With the sultan's pleasure of possessing a fair mistress, and the certainty of success, he had grown satirical and adorably impertinent of late.
"Yes, my friend; do you think I should have come here in such a hurry but for that? That terrible article of yours is very well written, worse luck. Oh! you have a very great gift, my boy. Take my advice and make the most of your vogue," he added, with good humor, which masked the extreme insolence of the speech. "But have you yourself a copy of the paper? Have you seen your article in print?"
"Not yet," said Lucien, "though this is the first long piece of prose which I have published; but Hector will have sent a copy to my address in the Rue Charlot."
"Here—read!" . . . cried Dauriat, copying Talma's gesture in Manlius.
Lucien took the paper but Coralie snatched it from him.