Two or three young ladies, some of the younger men, and the elder women stared at Lousteau as if he were a mountebank.
“Monsieur Gatien Boirouge declares that Monsieur Lousteau makes twenty thousand francs a year by his writings,” observed the Mayor’s wife to Madame de Clagny. “Can you believe it?”
“Is it possible? Why, a Public Prosecutor gets but a thousand crowns!”
“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: