faithful to his trust, had declared that he did not know where his master was staying, I was standing in the hall of the chateau waiting for my card to be sent up.  I had taken care to write on it a reminder of our conversation of the year before, and this time, after a ten-minute wait in the hall, during which I noticed with singular curiosity and malice two very elegant and very pretty young women going out for a walk, I was admitted to his presence.  “Aha,” I said to myself, “this then is the secret of his exile; the interview promises well!”

The novelist received me in a cosy little room, with a window opening onto the park, already beginning to turn yellow with the advancing autumn.  A wood fire burned in the fireplace and lighted up the walls which were hung with flowered cretonne and on which could be distinguished several colored English prints representing cross-country rides and the jumping of hedges.  Here was the worldly environment with which Fauchery is so often reproached.  But the books and papers that littered the table bore witness that the present occupant of this charming retreat remained a substantial man of letters.  His habit of constant work was still further attested by his face, which I admit, gave me all at once a feeling of remorse for the trick I was about to play him.  If I had found him the snobbish pretender whom the weekly newspapers were in the habit of ridiculing, it would have been a delight to outwit his diplomacy.  But no!  I saw, as he put down his pen to receive me, a man about fifty-seven years old, with a face that bore the marks of reflection, eyes tired from sleeplessness, a brow heavy with thought, who said as he pointed to an easy chair, “You will excuse me, my dear confrere, for keeping you waiting.”  I, his dear confrere!  Ah! if he had known!  “You see,” and he pointed to the page still wet with ink, “that man cannot be free from the slavery of furnishing copy.  One has less facility at my age than at yours.  Now, let us speak of yourself.  How do you happen to be at Nemours?  What have you been doing since the story and the verses you were kind enough to send me?”

It is vain to try to sacrifice once for all one’s youthful ideals.  When a man has loved literature as I loved it at twenty, he cannot be satisfied at twenty-six to give up his early passion, even at the bidding of implacable necessity.  So Pierre Fauchery remembered my poor verses!  He had actually read my story!  His allusion proved it.  Could I tell him at such a moment that since the creation of those first works I had despaired of myself, and that I had changed my gun to the other shoulder?  The image of the Boulevard office rose suddenly before me.  I heard the voice of the editor-in-chief saying, “Interview Fauchery?  You will never accomplish that;” so, faithful to my self-imposed role, I replied, “I have retired to Nemours to work upon a novel called The Age for Love, and it is on this subject that I wished to consult you, my dear master.”