“Journalism is, in fact, the People in folio form,” interrupted Blondet.

“The people with hypocrisy added and generosity lacking,” said Vignon.  “All real ability will be driven out from the ranks of Journalism, as Aristides was driven into exile by the Athenians.  We shall see newspapers started in the first instance by men of honor, falling sooner or later into the hands of men of abilities even lower than the average, but endowed with the resistance of flexibility of india-rubber, qualities denied to noble genius; nay, perhaps the future newspaper proprietor will be the tradesman with capital sufficient to buy venal pens.  We see such things already indeed, but in ten years’ time every little youngster that has left school will take himself for a great man, slash his predecessors from the lofty height of a newspaper column, drag them down by the feet, and take their place.

“Napoleon did wisely when he muzzled the press.  I would wager that the Opposition papers would batter down a government of their own setting up, just as they are battering the present government, if any demand was refused.  The more they have, the more they will want in the way of concessions.  The parvenu journalist will be succeeded by the starveling hack.  There is no salve for this sore.  It is a kind of corruption which grows more and more obtrusive and malignant; the wider it spreads, the more patiently it will be endured, until the day comes when newspapers shall so increase and multiply in the earth that confusion will be the result—­a second Babel.  We, all of us, such as we are, have reason to know that crowned kings are less ungrateful than kings of our profession; that the most sordid man of business is not so mercenary nor so keen in speculation; that our brains are consumed to furnish their daily supply of poisonous trash.  And yet we, all of us, shall continue to write, like men who work in quicksilver mines, knowing that they are doomed to die of their trade.

“Look there,” he continued, “at that young man sitting beside Coralie —­what is his name?  Lucien!  He has a beautiful face; he is a poet; and what is more, he is witty—­so much the better for him.  Well, he will cross the threshold of one of those dens where a man’s intellect is prostituted; he will put all his best and finest thought into his work; he will blunt his intellect and sully his soul; he will be guilty of anonymous meannesses which take the place of stratagem, pillage, and ratting to the enemy in the warfare of condottieri.  And when, like hundreds more, he has squandered his genius in the service of others who find the capital and do no work, those dealers in poisons will leave him to starve if he is thirsty, and to die of thirst if he is starving.”

“Thanks,” said Finot.

“But, dear me,” continued Claude Vignon, “I knew all this, yet here am I in the galleys, and the arrival of another convict gives me pleasure.  We are cleverer, Blondet and I, than Messieurs This and That, who speculate in our abilities, yet nevertheless we are always exploited by them.  We have a heart somewhere beneath the intellect; we have NOT the grim qualities of the man who makes others work for him.  We are indolent, we like to look on at the game, we are meditative, and we are fastidious; they will sweat our brains and blame us for improvidence.”