on the most delicate, the most powerful of the heirs of Balzac, since I, the new Labarthe, was capable of looking forward to an operation which required about as much delicacy as some of the performances of my editor-in-chief?  I had, as a matter of fact, a sure means of obtaining the interview.  It was this:  When I was young and simple I had sent some verses and stories to Pierre Fauchery, the same verses and stories the refusal of which by four editors had finally made me decide to enter the field of journalism.  The great writer was traveling at this time, but he had replied to me.  I had responded by a letter to which he again replied, this time with an invitation to call upon him.  I went I did not find him.  I went again.  I did not find him that time.  Then a sort of timidity prevented my returning to the charge.  So I had never met him.  He knew me only as the young Elia of my two epistles.  This is what I counted upon to extort from him the favor of an interview which he certainly would refuse to a mere newspaper man.  My plan was simple; to present myself at his house, to be received, to conceal my real occupation, to sketch vaguely a subject for a novel in which there should occur a discussion upon the Age for Love, to make him talk and then when he should discover his conversation in print—­here I began to feel some remorse.  But I stifled it with the terrible phrase, “the struggle for life,” and also by the recollection of numerous examples culled from the firm with which I now had the honor of being connected.

The morning after I had had this very literary conversation with my honorable director, I rang at the door of the small house in the Rue Desbordes-Valmore where Pierre Fauchery lived, in a retired corner of Passy.  Having taken up my pen to tell a plain unvarnished tale I do not see how I can conceal the wretched feeling of pleasure which, as I rang the bell, warmed my heart at the thought of the good joke I was about to play on the owner of this peaceful abode.

Even after making up one’s mind to the sacrifices I had decided upon, there is always left a trace of envy for those who have triumphed in the melancholy struggle for literary supremacy.  It was a real disappointment to me when the servant replied, ill-humoredly, that M. Fauchery was not in Paris.  I asked when he would return.  The servant did not know.  I asked for his address.  The servant did not know that.  Poor lion, who thought he had secured anonymity for his holiday!  A half-hour later I had discovered that he was staying for the present at the Chateau de Proby, near Nemours.  I had merely had to make inquiries of his publisher.  Two hours later I bought my ticket at the Gare de Lyon for the little town chosen by Balzac as the scene for his delicious story of Ursule Mirouet.  I took a traveling bag and was prepared to spend the night there.  In case I failed to see the master that afternoon I had decided to make sure of him the next morning.  Exactly seven hours after the servant,