“The buck of the Empire,” he wrote, “is invariably long, slender, and well preserved. He wears a corset and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. His name was originally Potelet, or something very like it; but to stand well with the Court, he conferred a _du_ upon himself, and _du_ Potelet he is until another revolution. A baron of the Empire, a man of two ends, as his name (_Potelet_, a post) implies, he is paying his court to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, after a youth gloriously and usefully spent as the agreeable trainbearer of a sister of the man whom decency forbids me to mention by name. Du Potelet has forgotten that he was once in waiting upon Her Imperial Highness; but he still sings the songs composed for the benefactress who took such a tender interest in his career,” and so forth and so forth. It was a tissue of personalities, silly enough for the most part, such as they used to write in those days. Other papers, and notably the _Figaro_, have brought the art to a curious perfection since. Lousteau compared the Baron to a heron, and introduced Mme. de Bargeton, to whom he was paying his court, as a cuttlefish bone, a burlesque absurdity which amused readers who knew neither of the personages. A tale of the loves of the Heron, who tried in vain to swallow the Cuttlefish bone, which broke into three pieces when he dropped it, was irresistibly ludicrous. Everybody remembers the sensation which the pleasantry made in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it was the first of a series of similar articles, and was one of the thousand and one causes which provoked the rigorous press legislation of Charles X. An hour later, Blondet, Lousteau, and Lucien came back to the drawing-room, where the other guests were chatting. The Duke was there and the Minister, the four women, the three merchants, the manager, and Finot. A printer’s devil, with a paper cap on his head, was waiting even then for copy. “The men are just going off, if I have nothing to take them,” he said. “Stay a bit, here are ten francs, and tell them to wait,” said Finot. “If I give them the money, sir, they would take to tippleography, and good-night to the newspaper.” “That boy’s common-sense is appalling to me,” remarked Finot; and the Minister was in the middle of a prediction of a brilliant future for the urchin, when the three came in. Blondet read aloud an extremely clever article against the Romantics; Lousteau’s paragraph drew laughter, and by the Duc de Rhétoré’s advice an indirect eulogium of Mme. d’Espard was slipped in, lest the whole Faubourg Saint-Germain should take offence. “What have _you_ written?” asked Finot, turning to Lucien. And Lucien read, quaking for fear, but the room rang with applause when he finished; the actresses embraced the neophyte; and the two merchants, following suit, half choked the breath out of him. There were tears in du Bruel’s eyes as he grasped his critic’s hand, and the manager invited him to dinner.