In vain did Christophe beg to be excused on the score of his clothes.
Sylvain Kohn carried him off.

They entered a restaurant on one of the boulevards, and went up to the
second floor. Christophe found himself among about thirty young men, whose
ages ranged from twenty to thirty-five, and they were all engaged in
animated discussion. Kohn introduced him as a man who had just escaped
from a German prison. They paid no attention to him and did not stop their
passionate discussion, and Kohn plunged into it at once.

Christophe was shy in this select company, and said nothing: but he was
all ears. He could not grasp--he had great difficulty in following the
volubility of the French--what great artistic interests were in dispute.
He listened attentively, but he could only make out words like "trust,"
"monopoly," "fall in prices," "receipts," mixed up with phrases like "the
dignity of art," and the "rights of the author." And at last he saw that
they were talking business. A certain number of authors, it appeared,
belonged to a syndicate and were angry about certain attempts which had
been made to float a rival concern, which, according to them, would dispute
their monopoly of exploitation. The defection of certain of their members
who had found it to their advantage to go over bag and baggage to the rival
house had roused them, to the wildest fury. They talked of decapitation.
"... Burked.... Treachery.... Shame.... Sold...."

Others did not worry about the living: they were incensed against the dead,
whose sales without royalties choked up the market. It appeared that the
works of De Musset had just become public property, and were selling far
too well. And so they demanded that the State should give them rigorous
protection, and heavily tax the masterpieces of the past so as to check
their circulation at reduced prices, which, they declared, was unfair