his face, which I admit, gave me all at once a feeling of remorse for the
trick I was about to play him. If I had found him the snobbish pretender
whom the weekly newspapers were in the habit of ridiculing, it would have
been a delight to outwit his diplomacy. But no! I saw, as he put down his
pen to receive me, a man about fifty-seven years old, with a face that
bore the marks of reflection, eyes tired from sleeplessness, a brow heavy
with thought, who said as he pointed to an easy chair, "You will excuse
me, my dear confrère, for keeping you waiting." I, his dear confrère! Ah!
if he had known! "You see," and he pointed to the page still wet with ink,
"that man cannot be free from the slavery of furnishing copy. One has less
facility at my age than at yours. Now, let us speak of yourself. How do
you happen to be at Nemours? What have you been doing since the story and
the verses you were kind enough to send me?"

It is vain to try to sacrifice once for all one's youthful ideals. When a
man has loved literature as I loved it at twenty, he cannot be satisfied
at twenty-six to give up his early passion, even at the bidding of
implacable necessity. So Pierre Fauchery remembered my poor verses! He had
actually read my story! His allusion proved it. Could I tell him at such a
moment that since the creation of those first works I had despaired of
myself, and that I had changed my gun to the other shoulder? The image of
the Boulevard office rose suddenly before me. I heard the voice of the
editor-in-chief saying, "Interview Fauchery? You will never accomplish
that;" so, faithful to my self-imposed rôle, I replied, "I have retired to
Nemours to work upon a novel called The Age for Love, and it is on this
subject that I wished to consult you, my dear master."

It seemed to me--it may possibly have been an illusion--that at the
announcement of the so-called title of my so-called novel, a smile and a
shadow flitted over Fauchery's eyes and mouth. A vision of the two young