editor-in-chief? I had, as a matter of fact, a sure means of obtaining the
interview. It was this: When I was young and simple I had sent some verses
and stories to Pierre Fauchery, the same verses and stories the refusal of
which by four editors had finally made me decide to enter the field of
journalism. The great writer was traveling at this time, but he had
replied to me. I had responded by a letter to which he again replied, this
time with an invitation to call upon him. I went I did not find him. I
went again. I did not find him that time. Then a sort of timidity
prevented my returning to the charge. So I had never met him. He knew me
only as the young Elia of my two epistles. This is what I counted upon to
extort from him the favor of an interview which he certainly would refuse
to a mere newspaper man. My plan was simple; to present myself at his
house, to be received, to conceal my real occupation, to sketch vaguely a
subject for a novel in which there should occur a discussion upon the Age
for Love, to make him talk and then when he should discover his
conversation in print--here I began to feel some remorse. But I stifled it
with the terrible phrase, "the struggle for life," and also by the
recollection of numerous examples culled from the firm with which I now
had the honor of being connected.

The morning after I had had this very literary conversation with my
honorable director, I rang at the door of the small house in the Rue
Desbordes-Valmore where Pierre Fauchery lived, in a retired corner of
Passy. Having taken up my pen to tell a plain unvarnished tale I do not
see how I can conceal the wretched feeling of pleasure which, as I rang
the bell, warmed my heart at the thought of the good joke I was about to
play on the owner of this peaceful abode.

Even after making up one's mind to the sacrifices I had decided upon,
there is always left a trace of envy for those who have triumphed in the