“Oh!—ah, yes! Finot has sold his paper. I heard about it. He is getting on, is Finot. I have asked him to dine with me at the end of the week; if you will do me the honor and pleasure of coming, you may bring your ladies, and there will be a grand jollification. Adèle Dupuis is coming, and Ducange, and Frédéric du Petit-Méré, and Mlle. Millot, my mistress. We shall have good fun and better liquor.” “Ducange must be in difficulties. He has lost his lawsuit.” “I have lent him ten thousand francs; if _Calas_ succeeds, it will repay the loan, so I have been organizing a success. Ducange is a clever man; he has brains——” Lucien fancied that he must be dreaming when he heard a _claqueur_ appraising a writer’s value. “Coralie has improved,” continued Braulard, with the air of a competent critic. “If she is a good girl, I will take her part, for they have got up a cabal against her at the Gymnase. This is how I mean to do it. I will have a few well-dressed men in the balconies to smile and make a little murmur, and the applause will follow. That is a dodge which makes a position for an actress. I have a liking for Coralie, and you ought to be satisfied, for she has feeling. Aha! I can hiss any one on the stage if I like.” “But let us settle this business about the tickets,” put in Lousteau. “Very well, I will come to this gentleman’s lodging for them at the beginning of the month. He is a friend of yours, and I will treat him as I do you. You have five theatres; you will get thirty tickets—that will be something like seventy-five francs a month. Perhaps you will be wanting an advance?” added Braulard, lifting a cash-box full of coin out of his desk. “No, no,” said Lousteau; “we will keep that shift against a rainy day.” “I will work with Coralie, sir, and we will come to an understanding,” said Braulard, addressing Lucien, who was looking about him, not without profound astonishment. There was a bookcase in Braulard’s study, there were framed engravings and good furniture; and as they passed through the drawing room, he noticed that the fittings were neither too luxurious nor yet mean. The dining-room seemed to be the best ordered room, he remarked on this jokingly. “But Braulard is an epicure,” said Lousteau; “his dinners are famous in dramatic literature, and they are what you might expect from his cash-box.” “I have good wine,” Braulard replied modestly.—“Ah! here are my lamplighters,” he added, as a sound of hoarse voices and strange footsteps came up from the staircase.