"If you succeed," he replied, "I'll raise your salary. That man makes me
tired with his scorn of newspaper notoriety. He must take his share of it,
like the rest. But you will not succeed. What makes you think you can?"

"Permit me to tell you my reason later. In forty-eight hours you will see
whether I have succeeded or not."

"Go and do not spare the fellow."

Decidedly. I had made some progress as a journalist, even in my two weeks'
apprenticeship, if I could permit Pascal to speak in this way of the man I
most admired among living writers. Since that not far-distant time when,
tired of being poor, I had made up my mind to cast my lot with the
multitude in Paris, I had tried to lay aside my old self, as lizards do
their skins, and I had almost succeeded. In a former time, a former time
that was but yesterday, I knew--for in a drawer full of poems, dramas and
half-finished tales I had proof of it--that there had once existed a
certain Jules Labarthe who had come to Paris with the hope of becoming a
great man. That person believed in Literature with a capital "L;" in the
Ideal, another capital; in Glory, a third capital. He was now dead and
buried. Would he some day, his position assured, begin to write once more
from pure love of his art? Possibly, but for the moment I knew only the
energetic, practical Labarthe, who had joined the procession with the idea
of getting into the front rank, and of obtaining as soon as possible an
income of thirty thousand francs a year. What would it matter to this
second individual if that vile Pascal should boast of having stolen a
march on the most delicate, the most powerful of the heirs of Balzac,
since I, the new Labarthe, was capable of looking forward to an operation
which required about as much delicacy as some of the performances of my