“Well,” said Lousteau, “shall we go on with our business?”

“Eh! my boy,” returned Barbet in a familiar tone; “I have six thousand volumes of stock on hand at my place, and paper is not gold, as the old bookseller said.  Trade is dull.”

“If you went into his shop, my dear Lucien,” said Etienne, turning to his friend, “you would see an oak counter from some bankrupt wine merchant’s sale, and a tallow dip, never snuffed for fear it should burn too quickly, making darkness visible.  By that anomalous light you descry rows of empty shelves with some difficulty.  An urchin in a blue blouse mounts guard over the emptiness, and blows his fingers, and shuffles his feet, and slaps his chest, like a cabman on the box.  Just look about you! there are no more books there than I have here.  Nobody could guess what kind of shop he keeps.”

“Here is a bill at three months for a hundred francs,” said Barbet, and he could not help smiling as he drew it out of his pocket; “I will take your old books off your hands.  I can’t pay cash any longer, you see; sales are too slow.  I thought that you would be wanting me; I had not a penny, and I made a bill simply to oblige you, for I am not fond of giving my signature.”

“So you want my thanks and esteem into the bargain, do you?”

“Bills are not met with sentiment,” responded Barbet; “but I will accept your esteem, all the same.”

“But I want gloves, and the perfumers will be base enough to decline your paper,” said Lousteau.  “Stop, there is a superb engraving in the top drawer of the chest there, worth eighty francs, proof before letters and after letterpress, for I have written a pretty droll article upon it.  There was something to lay hold of in Hippocrates refusing the Presents of Artaxerxes.  A fine engraving, eh?  Just the thing to suit all the doctors, who are refusing the extravagant gifts of Parisian satraps.  You will find two or three dozen novels underneath it.  Come, now, take the lot and give me forty francs.”

“Forty francs!” exclaimed the bookseller, emitting a cry like the squall of a frightened fowl.  “Twenty at the very most!  And then I may never see the money again,” he added.

“Where are your twenty francs?” asked Lousteau.

“My word, I don’t know that I have them,” said Barbet, fumbling in his pockets.  “Here they are.  You are plundering me; you have an ascendency over me——­”

“Come, let us be off,” said Lousteau, and taking up Lucien’s manuscript, he drew a line upon it in ink under the string.

“Have you anything else?” asked Barbet.

“Nothing, you young Shylock.  I am going to put you in the way of a bit of very good business,” Etienne continued ("in which you shall lose a thousand crowns, to teach you to rob me in this fashion"), he added for Lucien’s ear.

“But how about your reviews?” said Lucien, as they rolled away to the Palais Royal.