Nevertheless,upstairs he went,and found the offices in the low entresol between the ground floor and the first story.The first room was divided down the middle by a partition,the lower half of solid wood,the upper lattice work to the ceiling.In this apartment Lucien discovered a one-armed pensioner supporting several reams of paper on his head with his remaining hand,while between his teeth he held the passbook which the Inland Revenue Department requires every newspaper to produce with each issue.This ill-favored individual,owner of a yellow countenance covered with red excrescences,to which he owed his nickname of "Coloquinte,"indicated a personage behind the lattice as the Cerberus of the paper.This was an elderly officer with a medal on his chest and a silk skull-cap on his head;his nose was almost hidden by a pair of grizzled moustaches,and his person was hidden as completely in an ample blue overcoat as the body of the turtle in its carapace.
"From what date do you wish your subion to commence,sir?"inquired the Emperor's officer.
"I did not come about a subion,"returned Lucien.Looking about him,he saw a placard fastened on a door,corresponding to the one by which he had entered,and read the words--EDITOR'S OFFICE,and below,in smaller letters,No admittance except on business.
"A complaint,I expect?"replied the veteran."Ah!yes;we have been hard on Mariette.What would you have?I don't know the why and wherefore of it yet.--But if you want satisfaction,I am ready for you,"he added,glancing at a collection of small arms and foils stacked in a corner,the armory of the modern warrior.
"That was still further from my intention,sir.I have come to speak to the editor.""Nobody is ever here before four o'clock.""Look you here,Giroudeau,old chap,"remarked a voice,"I make it eleven columns;eleven columns at five francs apiece is fifty-five francs,and I have only been paid forty;so you owe me another fifteen francs,as I have been telling you."These words proceeded from a little weasel-face,pallid and semi-transparent as the half-boiled white of an egg;two slits of eyes looked out of it,mild blue in tint,but appallingly malignant in expression;and the owner,an insignificant young man,was completely hidden by the veteran's opaque person.It was a blood-curdling voice,a sound between the mewing of a cat and the wheezy chokings of a hyena.
"Yes,yes,my little militiaman,"retorted he of the medal,"but you are counting the headings and white lines.I have Finot's instructions to add up the totals of the lines,and to divide them by the proper number for each column;and after I performed that concentrating operation on your copy,there were three columns less.""He doesn't pay for the blanks,the Jew!He reckons them in though when he sends up the total of his work to his partner,and he gets paid for them too.I will go and see Etienne Lousteau,Vernou----""I cannot go beyond my orders,my boy,"said the veteran."What!do you cry out against your foster-mother for a matter of fifteen francs?
you that turn out an article as easily as I smoke a cigar.Fifteen francs!why,you will give a bowl of punch to your friends,or win an extra game of billiards,and there's an end of it!""Finot's savings will cost him very dear,"said the contributor as he took his departure.
"Now,would not anybody think that he was Rousseau and Voltaire rolled in one?"the cashier remarked to himself as he glanced at Lucien.
"I will come in again at four,sir,"said Lucien.
While the argument proceeded,Lucien had been looking about him.He saw upon the walls the portraits of Benjamin Constant,General Foy,and the seventeen illustrious orators of the Left,interspersed with caricatures at the expense of the Government;but he looked more particularly at the door of the sanctuary where,no doubt,the paper was elaborated,the witty paper that amused him daily,and enjoyed the privilege of ridiculing kings and the most portentous events,of calling anything and everything in question with a jest.Then he sauntered along the boulevards.It was an entirely novel amusement;and so agreeable did he find it,that,looking at the turret clocks,he saw the hour hands were pointing to four,and only then remembered that he had not breakfasted.
He went at once in the direction of the Rue Saint-Fiacre,climbed the stair,and opened the door.
The veteran officer was absent;but the old pensioner,sitting on a pile of stamped papers,was munching a crust and acting as sentinel resignedly.Coloquinte was as much accustomed to his work in the office as to the fatigue duty of former days,understanding as much or as little about it as the why and wherefore of forced marches made by the Emperor's orders.Lucien was inspired with the bold idea of deceiving that formidable functionary.He settled his hat on his head,and walked into the editor's office as if he were quite at home.
Looking eagerly about him,he beheld a round table covered with a green cloth,and half-a-dozen cherry-wood chairs,newly reseated with straw.The colored brick floor had not been waxed,but it was clean;so clean that the public,evidently,seldom entered the room.There was a mirror above the chimney-piece,and on the ledge below,amid a sprinkling of visiting-cards,stood a shopkeeper's clock,smothered with dust,and a couple of candlesticks with tallow dips thrust into their sockets.A few antique newspapers lay on the table beside an inkstand containing some black lacquer-like substance,and a collection of quill pens twisted into stars.Sundry dirty scraps of paper,covered with almost undecipherable hieroglyphs,proved to be manu articles torn across the top by the compositor to check off the sheets as they were set up.He admired a few rather clever caricatures,sketched on bits of brown paper by somebody who evidently had tried to kill time by killing something else to keep his hand in.
