competition with the work of living artists.

They stopped each other to hear the takings of such and such a theater on
the preceding evening. They all went into ecstasies over the fortune of
a veteran dramatist, famous in two continents--a man whom they despised,
though they envied him even more. From the incomes of authors they passed
to those of the critics. They talked of the sum--(pure calumny, no
doubt)--received by one of their colleagues for every first performance
at one of the theaters on the boulevards, the consideration being that he
should speak well of it. He was an honest man: having made his bargain he
stuck to it: but his great secret lay--(so they said)--in so eulogizing the
piece that it would be taken off as quickly as possible so that there might
be many new plays. The tale--(or the account)--caused laughter, but nobody
was surprised.

And mingled with all that talk they threw out fine phrases: they talked of
"poetry" and "art for art's sake." But through it all there rang "art for
money's sake"; and this jobbing spirit, newly come into French literature,
scandalized Christophe. As he understood nothing at all about their talk of
money he had given it up. But then they began to talk of letters, or rather
of men of letters.--Christophe pricked up his ears as he heard the name of
Victor Hugo.

They were debating whether he had been cuckolded: they argued at length
about the love of Sainte-Beuve and Madame Hugo. And then they turned to
the lovers of George Sand and their respective merits. That was the chief
occupation of criticism just then: when they had ransacked the houses of
great men, rummaged through the closets, turned out the drawers, ransacked
the cupboards, they burrowed down to their inmost lives. The attitude
of Monsieur de Lauzun lying flat under the bed of the King and Madame