Had any observant passer-by happened to hear these two lines from Victor Hugo he would have recognised a man of letters by the way in which they were delivered. The solitary speaker bore indeed a name well to the fore in the literature of the day. But names so quickly disappear and get forgotten in the incessant onward rush of new works, self-assertive claims, and fleeting reputations that the successes of ten years ago seem as distant and as vague as those of another age. Two dramas of modern life, a little too directly inspired by the younger Dumas, had brought this young man--he was thirty-five or more, but he looked barely thirty--momentary renown, and he had not yet spoilt his name by putting it at the bottom of hastily written articles or upon the covers of indifferent novels. He was known only as the author of 'La Goule' and 'Entre Adultères,' two plays of unequal merit, full of a pessimism frequently conventional, but powerful in their trenchant analysis, their smart dialogue, and their painful striving after the Ideal. In 1879 these plays were already three years old, and Claude Larcher, who had allowed himself to drift into a life of idle pleasure, was beginning to accept lucrative and easy work, being no longer fit to make any fresh and long-sustained effort. Like many analytical writers, he was accustomed to study and probe himself incessantly, though all his introspection had not the least influence upon his actions. The most trifling occurrences served as a pretext for indulging in examination of himself and his destiny, but long-continued dualism of this kind only resulted in keeping his perceptive faculties uselessly and painfully alert. The sight of this peaceful street and the thought of Victor Hugo immediately reminded him of the resolutions he had been vainly formulating for some months past to lead a retired life of regular work. He reflected that he had a novel on order for a magazine, a play to write that had already been accepted, and reviews to send to a 'daily,' whilst, instead of being seated at his table in the Rue de Varenne, here he was gadding about at ten o'clock at night dressed like an idler and a snob. He would pass the remainder of the evening and a part of the night at a _soirée_ given by the Comtesse Komof, a Russian lady of fashion living in Paris, whose receptions at the grand mansion in the Rue de Bel-Respiro were as magnificent as they were mixed. He was about to do even worse. He had come to fetch another writer, ten years younger than himself, who had till that moment led precisely the noble life of hard work for which he himself so longed, in one of the houses in this modest and quiet Rue Coëtlogon.