"You don't seem to be fond of journalists?"
"I think very highly of them when they are intelligent and their criticisms are decent. I once knew a very popular literary man, who laughed till he cried over the savage attacks that the journalists made upon his works. 'If I were not successful,' he would say, 'those fellows would not honor me with their hatred. They would not say anything about me unless it were to offer me some patronizing compliment. Ah! my dear fellow, congratulate me! Everybody cannot have enemies.'—But, to return to Monsieur Saint-Bergame: for what newspaper does he write?"
"Really, I can't tell you; for some new sheet—more than one, perhaps. He has the reputation of being very bitter, and prides himself on it."
"He has no reason to. Nothing is so easy as to say unkind things; the conversation of cooks and concierges is principally made up of them."
"I believe, too, that Saint-Bergame has had a long play in verse accepted at the Odéon, or at the Français, or perhaps at the Théâtre-Historique. But he's been talking about it a long, long while, and nobody else ever mentions it."
"And are these monsieur's only titles to the admiration of his contemporaries?"
"I know of no others. However, he's a good-looking fellow, dresses well, and follows all the fashions. He's a beau cavalier; so you must not be surprised if all the ladies fight for the honor of capturing him."
"Oh! I am surprised at nothing."
"But do you not cultivate the arts, Monsieur Rochebrune? I should say that I had heard of songs and ballads of which you are doubly the author, having composed both words and music."
"Yes, monsieur, that is true. But one is no more a literary man because one can write a ballad, than one is a composer because one has composed an air and worked out a piano accompaniment for it."