This position may be described as follows:  Thanks to a sort of reciprocal support extended to each other, and which an ingenious writer has called “Mutual Admiration,” Adolphe often sees his name cited among the names of celebrities, either in the prospectuses of the book-trade, or in the lists of newspapers about to appear.  Publishers print the title of one of his works under the deceitful heading “IN PRESS,” which might be called the typographical menagerie of bears.[*] Chodoreille is sometimes mentioned among the promising young men of the literary world.

[*] A bear (ours) is a play which has been refused by a multitude of
    theatres, but which is finally represented at a time when some
    manager or other feels the need of one.  The word has necessarily
    passed from the language of the stage into the jargon of
    journalism, and is applied to novels which wander the streets in
    search of a publisher.

For eleven years Adolphe Chodoreille remains in the ranks of the promising young men:  he finally obtains a free entrance to the theatres, thanks to some dirty work or certain articles of dramatic criticism:  he tries to pass for a good fellow; and as he loses his illusions respecting glory and the world of Paris, he gets into debt and his years begin to tell upon him.

A paper which finds itself in a tight place asks him for one of his bears revised by his friends.  This has been retouched and revamped every five years, so that it smells of the pomatum of each prevailing and then forgotten fashion.  To Adolphe it becomes what the famous cap, which he was constantly staking, was to Corporal Trim, for during five years “Anything for a Woman” (the title decided upon) “will be one of the most entertaining productions of our epoch.”

After eleven years, Chodoreille is regarded as having written some respectable things, five or six tales published in the dismal magazines, in ladies’ newspapers, or in works intended for children of tender age.

As he is a bachelor, and possesses a coat and a pair of black cassimere trousers, and when he pleases may thus assume the appearance of an elegant diplomat, and as he is not without a certain intelligent air, he is admitted to several more or less literary salons:  he bows to the five or six academicians who possess genius, influence or talent, he visits two or three of our great poets, he allows himself, in coffee-rooms, to call the two or three justly celebrated women of our epoch by their Christian names; he is on the best of terms with the blue stockings of the second grade,—­who ought to be called socks,—­and he shakes hands and takes glasses of absinthe with the stars of the smaller newspapers.

Such is the history of every species of ordinary men—­men who have been denied what they call good luck.  This good luck is nothing less than unyielding will, incessant labor, contempt for an easily won celebrity, immense learning, and that patience which, according to Buffon, is the whole of genius, but which certainly is the half of it.