Andoche Finot had risen by his acute perception of the commercial future of journalism. We meet him in his early days in "César Birotteau," abandoning the puffing of actresses and writing of articles to less perspicuous journalists, and devoting himself to what is now grandly called "publicity." It was he who helped the worthy young Anselme Popinot to push the _huile céphalique_ which repaired Birotteau's shattered fortunes. In "Illusions Perdues" we find him again, first proprietor of a small paper, then spending his profits and straining his credit in buying a larger one--one of the spiders into whose web poor Lucien fell. By 1836 he is a lord of the Press, a fictitious counterpart of Emile de Girardin, who with Lautour-Mézéray, another _viveur_, made a fortune by selling _La Presse_ at half the price of other newspapers. Couture is a very minor character, a financial speculator, who only hung on the fringe of the _viveurs_. Blondet and Bixiou are more important. The former had many counterparts in Paris of the day. He was "a newspaper editor, a man of much intelligence, but slipshod, brilliant, capable, lazy, knowing, but allowing himself to be exploited, equally faithless and good-natured by caprice; one of those men one likes, but does not respect. Sharp as a stage _soubrette_, incapable of refusing his pen to anyone who asked for it or his heart to anyone who would borrow it." Bixiou is no longer young in 1836. Balzac gives an earlier portrait of him in "Les Employés," when he is a minor official, caricaturist and journalist, poor, ambitious, a real liver of _la vie de Bohème_. But, says Balzac, "he is no longer the Bixiou of 1825, but that of 1836, the misanthropical buffoon whose fun is known to have the most sparkle and the most acidity, a wretch enraged at having spent so much wit at a pure loss, furious at not having picked up his bit of flotsam in the last revolution, giving everyone a kick like a true Pierrot at the play, having his period and its scandalous stories at his fingers' ends, decorating them with his droll inventions, jumping on everybody's shoulders like a clown, and trying to leave a mark on them like an executioner." Such, in general, were the _viveurs_ who postured in the front of the Parisian stage--equally at home on the steps of Tortoni's or in the Café de Paris, in the Princess Belgiojoso's drawing-room or the luxurious boudoir of a Coralie or Florine, making the talk and spreading the gossip, blowing up the reputations and blasting the characters of the town. To know their habits and eccentricities places those of the true Bohemia in a proper light. In drawing a composite picture of them I have drawn upon fiction, but in another chapter I will justify these generalizations by introducing some of the real heroes of _le tout Paris_. [Illustration: Fashionables] V LES VIVEURS