“Certainly,” said Thuillier, with humility, “you would make a better deputy than I; but you are not of the required age, I think.”

“There’s a better reason than that,” said la Peyrade; “you are my friend; I find you again what you once were, and I shall keep the pledges I have given you.  As for the election, I prefer that people say of me, ‘He makes deputies, but will be none himself.’  Now I must leave you and keep my appointment.  To-morrow in my own rooms, come and see me; I shall have something to announce.”

Whoso has ever been a newspaper man will ever be one; that horoscope is as sure and certain as that of drunkards.  Whoever has tasted that feverishly busy and relatively lazy and independent life; whoever has exercised that sovereignty which criticises intellect, art, talent, fame, virtue, absurdity, and even truth; whoever has occupied that tribune erected by his own hands, fulfilled the functions of that magistracy to which he is self-appointed,—­in short, whosoever has been, for however brief a span, that proxy of public opinion, looks upon himself when remanded to private life as an exile, and the moment a chance is offered to him puts out an eager hand to snatch back his crown.

For this reason when Etienne Lousteau went to la Peyrade, a former journalist, with an offer of the weapon entitled the “Echo de la Bievre,” all the latter’s instincts as a newspaper man were aroused, in spite of the very inferior quality of the blade.  The paper had failed; la Peyrade believed he could revive it.  The subscribers, on the vendor’s own showing, were few and far between, but he would exercise upon them a “compelle intrare” both powerful and irresistible.  In the circumstances under which the affair was presented to him it might surely be considered provincial.  Threatened with the loss of his position at the bar, he was thus acquiring, as we said before, a new position and that of a “detached fort”; compelled, as he might be, to defend himself, he could from that vantage-ground take the offensive and oblige his enemies to reckon with him.

On the Thuillier side, the newspaper would undoubtedly make him a personage of considerable importance; he would have more power on the election; and by involving their capital in an enterprise which, without him, they would feel a gulf and a snare, he bound them to him by self-interests so firmly that there was nothing to fear from their caprice or ingratitude.

This horizon, rapidly taken in during Etienne Lousteau’s visit, had fairly dazzled the Provencal, and we have seen the peremptory manner in which Thuillier was forced into accepting with some enthusiasm the discovery of this philosopher’s-stone.

The cost of the purchase was ridiculously insignificant.  A bank-note for five hundred francs, for which Etienne Lousteau never clearly accounted to the share-holders, put Thuillier in possession of the name, property, furniture, and good-will of the newspaper, which he and la Peyrade at once busied themselves in reorganizing.