“Yes, you were right,” said Lucien.  “My experience in that shop was even more painful than I expected, after your programme.”

“Why do you choose to suffer?  You find your subject, you wear out your wits over it with toiling at night, you throw your very life into it:  and after all your journeyings in the fields of thought, the monument reared with your life-blood is simply a good or a bad speculation for a publisher.  Your work will sell or it will not sell; and therein, for them, lies the whole question.  A book means so much capital to risk, and the better the book, the less likely it is to sell.  A man of talent rises above the level of ordinary heads; his success varies in direct ratio with the time required for his work to be appreciated.  And no publisher wants to wait.  To-day’s book must be sold by to-morrow.  Acting on this system, publishers and booksellers do not care to take real literature, books that call for the high praise that comes slowly.”

“D’Arthez was right,” exclaimed Lucien.

“Do you know d’Arthez?” asked Lousteau.  “I know of no more dangerous company than solitary spirits like that fellow yonder, who fancy that they can draw the world after them.  All of us begin by thinking that we are capable of great things; and when once a youthful imagination is heated by this superstition, the candidate for posthumous honors makes no attempt to move the world while such moving of the world is both possible and profitable; he lets the time go by.  I am for Mahomet’s system—­if the mountain does not come to me, I am for going to the mountain.”

The common-sense so trenchantly put in this sally left Lucien halting between the resignation preached by the brotherhood and Lousteau’s militant doctrine.  He said not a word till they reached the Boulevard du Temple.

The Panorama-Dramatique no longer exists.  A dwelling-house stands on the site of the once charming theatre in the Boulevard du Temple, where two successive managements collapsed without making a single hit; and yet Vignol, who has since fallen heir to some of Potier’s popularity, made his debut there; and Florine, five years later a celebrated actress, made her first appearance in the theatre opposite the Rue Charlot.  Play-houses, like men, have their vicissitudes.  The Panorama-Dramatique suffered from competition.  The machinations of its rivals, the Ambigu, the Gaite, the Porte Saint-Martin, and the Vaudeville, together with a plethora of restrictions and a scarcity of good plays, combined to bring about the downfall of the house.  No dramatic author cared to quarrel with a prosperous theatre for the sake of the Panorama-Dramatique, whose existence was, to say the least, problematical.  The management at this moment, however, was counting on the success of a new melodramatic comedy by M. du Bruel, a young author who, after working in collaboration with divers celebrities, had now produced a piece professedly entirely his own.  It had been specially composed for the leading lady, a young actress who began her stage career as a supernumerary at the Gaite, and had been promoted to small parts for the last twelvemonth.  But though Mlle. Florine’s acting had attracted some attention, she obtained no engagement, and the Panorama accordingly had carried her off.  Coralie, another actress, was to make her debut at the same time.