“I have prepared a list,” I replied, and took from my pocket a sheet of paper.  I had jotted down the names of a number of celebrities whom I proposed to interview on this all-important question, and I began to read over my list.  It contained two ex-government officials, a general, a Dominican father, four actresses, two cafe-concert singers, four actors, two financiers, two lawyers, a surgeon and a lot of literary celebrities.  At some of the names my chief would nod his approval, at others he would say curtly, with an affectation of American manners, “Bad; strike it off,” until I came to the name I had kept for the last, that of Pierre Fauchery, the famous novelist.

“Strike that off,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.  “He is not on good terms with us.”

“And yet,” I suggested, “is there any one whose opinion would be of greater interest to reading men as well as to women?  I had even thought of beginning with him.”

“The devil you had!” interrupted the editor-in-chief.  “It is one of Fauchery’s principles not to see any reporters.  I have sent him ten if I have one, and he has shown them all the door.  The Boulevard does not relish such treatment, so we have given him some pretty hard hits.”

“Nevertheless, I will have an interview with Fauchery for the Boulevard,” was my reply.  “I am sure of it.”

“If you succeed,” he replied, “I’ll raise your salary.  That man makes me tired with his scorn of newspaper notoriety.  He must take his share of it, like the rest.  But you will not succeed.  What makes you think you can?”

“Permit me to tell you my reason later.  In forty-eight hours you will see whether I have succeeded or not.”

“Go and do not spare the fellow.”

Decidedly.  I had made some progress as a journalist, even in my two weeks’ apprenticeship, if I could permit Pascal to speak in this way of the man I most admired among living writers.  Since that not far-distant time when, tired of being poor, I had made up my mind to cast my lot with the multitude in Paris, I had tried to lay aside my old self, as lizards do their skins, and I had almost succeeded.  In a former time, a former time that was but yesterday, I knew—­for in a drawer full of poems, dramas and half-finished tales I had proof of it—­that there had once existed a certain Jules Labarthe who had come to Paris with the hope of becoming a great man.  That person believed in Literature with a capital “L;” in the Ideal, another capital; in Glory, a third capital.  He was now dead and buried.  Would he some day, his position assured, begin to write once more from pure love of his art?  Possibly, but for the moment I knew only the energetic, practical Labarthe, who had joined the procession with the idea of getting into the front rank, and of obtaining as soon as possible an income of thirty thousand francs a year.  What would it matter to this second individual if that vile Pascal should boast of having stolen a march