“I am delighted at what has happened.  If we had sold a hundred copies it would trouble me far more than the fifteen hundred now on our hands; that’s what I call hanging fire; whereas this insignificant sale only proves that the edition will go off like a rocket.”

“But when?” asked Thuillier, who thought this view paradoxical.

“Parbleu!” said Barbet, “when we get notices in the newspapers.  Newspaper notices are only useful to arouse attention.  ‘Dear me!’ says the public, ‘there’s a publication that must be interesting.’  The title is good,—­’Taxation and the Sliding-Scale,’—­but I find that the more piquant a title is, the more buyers distrust it, they have been taken in so often; they wait for the notices.  On the other hand, for books that are destined to have only a limited sale, a hundred ready-made purchasers will come in at once, but after that, good-bye to them; we don’t place another copy.”

“Then you don’t think,” said Thuillier, “that the sale is hopeless?”

“On the contrary, I think it is on the best track.  When the ‘Debats,’ the ‘Constitutionnel,’ the ‘Siecle,’ and the ‘Presse’ have reviewed it, especially if the ‘Debats’ mauls it (they are ministerial, you know), it won’t be a week before the whole edition is snapped up.”

“You say that easily enough,” replied Thuillier; “but how are we to get hold of those gentlemen of the press?”

“Ah!  I’ll take care of that,” said Barbet.  “I am on the best of terms with the managing editors; they say the devil is in me, and that I remind them of Ladvocat in his best days.”

“But then, my dear fellow, you ought to have seen to this earlier.”

“Ah! excuse me, papa Thuillier; there’s only one way of seeing to the journalists; but as you grumbled about the fifteen hundred francs for the advertisements, I did not venture to propose to you another extra expense.”

“What expense?” asked Thuillier, anxiously.

“When you were nominated to the municipal council, where was the plan mooted?” asked the publisher.

“Parbleu! in my own house,” replied Thuillier.

“Yes, of course, in your own house, but at a dinner, followed by a ball, and the ball itself crowned by a supper.  Well, my dear master, there are no two ways to do this business; Boileau says:—­

  “’All is done through the palate, and not through the mind;
  And it is by our dinners we govern mankind.’”

“Then you think I ought to give a dinner to those journalists?”

“Yes; but not at your own house; for these journalists, you see, if women are present, get stupid; they have to behave themselves.  And, besides, it isn’t dinner they want, but a breakfast—­that suits them best.  In the evening these gentlemen have to go to first representations, and make up their papers, not to speak of their own little private doings; whereas in the mornings they have nothing to think about.  As for me, it is always breakfasts that I give.”