“Pooh! you do not know how reviews are knocked off.  As for the Travels in Egypt, I looked into the book here and there (without cutting the pages), and I found eleven slips in grammar.  I shall say that the writer may have mastered the dicky-bird language on the flints that they call ‘obelisks’ out there in Egypt, but he cannot write in his own, as I will prove to him in a column and a half.  I shall say that instead of giving us the natural history and archaeology, he ought to have interested himself in the future of Egypt, in the progress of civilization, and the best method of strengthening the bond between Egypt and France.  France has won and lost Egypt, but she may yet attach the country to her interests by gaining a moral ascendency over it.  Then some patriotic penny-a-lining, interlarded with diatribes on Marseilles, the Levant and our trade.”

“But suppose that he had taken that view, what would you do?”

“Oh well, I should say that instead of boring us with politics, he should have written about art, and described the picturesque aspects of the country and the local color.  Then the critic bewails himself.  Politics are intruded everywhere; we are weary of politics—­politics on all sides.  I should regret those charming books of travel that dwelt upon the difficulties of navigation, the fascination of steering between two rocks, the delights of crossing the line, and all the things that those who never will travel ought to know.  Mingle this approval with scoffing at the travelers who hail the appearance of a bird or a flying-fish as a great event, who dilate upon fishing, and make transcripts from the log.  Where, you ask, is that perfectly unintelligible scientific information, fascinating, like all that is profound, mysterious, and incomprehensible.  The reader laughs, that is all that he wants.  As for novels, Florine is the greatest novel reader alive; she gives me a synopsis, and I take her opinion and put a review together.  When a novelist bores her with ‘author’s stuff,’ as she calls it, I treat the work respectfully, and ask the publisher for another copy, which he sends forthwith, delighted to have a favorable review.”

“Goodness! and what of criticism, the critic’s sacred office?” cried Lucien, remembering the ideas instilled into him by the brotherhood.

“My dear fellow,” said Lousteau, “criticism is a kind of brush which must not be used upon flimsy stuff, or it carries it all away with it.  That is enough of the craft, now listen!  Do you see that mark?” he continued, pointing to the manuscript of the Marguerites.  “I have put ink on the string and paper.  If Dauriat reads your manuscript, he certainly could not tie the string and leave it just as it was before.  So your book is sealed, so to speak.  This is not useless to you for the experiment that you propose to make.  And another thing:  please to observe that you are not arriving quite alone and without a sponsor in the place, like the youngsters who make the round of half-a-score of publishers before they find one that will offer them a chair.”