looking round for any excuse for not fulfilling the promises they made to that boy.  Help them to some; you will do the greatest possible service to the two women, and some day or other they will remember it.  I am in their secrets; I was surprised to find how much they hated the little fellow.  This Lucien might have rid himself of his bitterest enemy (Mme. de Bargeton) by desisting from his attacks on terms which a woman loves to grant—­do you take me?  He is young and handsome, he should have drowned her hate in torrents of love, he would be Comte de Rubempre by this time; the Cuttlefish-bone would have obtained some sinecure for him, some post in the Royal Household.  Lucien would have made a very pretty reader to Louis XVIII.; he might have been librarian somewhere or other, Master of Requests for a joke, Master of Revels, what you please.  The young fool has missed his chance.  Perhaps that is his unpardonable sin.  Instead of imposing his conditions, he has accepted them.  When Lucien was caught with the bait of the patent of nobility, the Baron Chatelet made a great step.  Coralie has been the ruin of that boy.  If he had not had the actress for his mistress, he would have turned again to the Cuttlefish-bone; and he would have had her too.”

“Then we can knock him over?”

“How?” des Lupeaulx asked carelessly.  He saw a way of gaining credit with the Marquise d’Espard for this service.

“He is under contract to write for Lousteau’s paper, and we can the better hold him to his agreement because he has not a sou.  If we tickle up the Keeper of the Seals with a facetious article, and prove that Lucien wrote it, he will consider that Lucien is unworthy of the King’s favor.  We have a plot on hand besides.  Coralie will be ruined, and our distinguished provincial will lose his head when his mistress is hissed off the stage and left without an engagement.  When once the patent is suspended, we will laugh at the victim’s aristocratic pretensions, and allude to his mother the nurse and his father the apothecary.  Lucien’s courage is only skindeep, he will collapse; we will send him back to his provinces.  Nathan made Florine sell me Matifat’s sixth share of the review, I was able to buy; Dauriat and I are the only proprietors now; we might come to an understanding, you and I, and the review might be taken over for the benefit of the Court.  I stipulated for the restitution of my sixth before I undertook to protect Nathan and Florine; they let me have it, and I must help them; but I wished to know first how Lucien stood——­”

“You deserve your name,” said des Lupeaulx.  “I like a man of your sort——­”

“Very well.  Then can you arrange a definite engagement for Florine?” asked Finot.

“Yes, but rid us of Lucien, for Rastignac and de Marsay never wish to hear of him again.”

“Sleep in peace,” returned Finot.  “Nathan and Merlin will always have articles ready for Gaillard, who will promise to take them; Lucien will never get a line into the paper.  We will cut off his supplies.  There is only Martainville’s paper left him in which to defend himself and Coralie; what can a single paper do against so many?”