“Monsieur Gatien,” said Madame Chandier, “get Monsieur Lousteau to talk a little louder. I have not heard him yet.”
“What pretty boots he wears,” said Mademoiselle Chandier to her brother, “and how they shine!”
“Yes—patent leather.”
“Why haven’t you the same?”
Lousteau began to feel that he was too much on show, and saw in the manners of the good townsfolk indications of the desires that had brought them there.
“What trick can I play them?” thought he.
At this moment the footman, so called—a farm-servant put into livery—brought in the letters and papers, and among them a packet of proof, which the journalist left for Bianchon; for Madame de la Baudraye, on seeing the parcel, of which the form and string were obviously from the printers, exclaimed:
“What, does literature pursue you even here?”
“Not literature,” replied he, “but a review in which I am now finishing a story to come out ten days hence. I have reached the stage of ‘To be concluded in our next,’ so I was obliged to give my address to the printer. Oh, we eat very hard-earned bread at the hands of these speculators in black and white! I will give you a description of these editors of magazines.”
“When will the conversation begin?” Madame de Clagny asked of Dinah, as one might ask, “When do the fireworks go off?”