"
"I came here with a heart full of gratitude to you all," said Lucien.
"You have changed my alloy into golden coin."
"Gratitude! For what do you take us?" asked Bianchon.
"We had the pleasure," added Fulgence.
"Well, so you are a journalist, are you?" asked Leon Giraud. "The fame
of your first appearance has reached even the Latin Quarter."
"I am not a journalist yet," returned Lucien.
"Aha! So much the better," said Michel Chrestien.
"I told you so!" said d'Arthez. "Lucien knows the value of a clean
conscience. When you can say to yourself as you lay your head on the
pillow at night, 'I have not sat in judgment on another man's work; I
have given pain to no one; I have not used the edge of my wit to deal
a stab to some harmless soul; I have sacrificed no one's success to a
jest; I have not even troubled the happiness of imbecility; I have not
added to the burdens of genius; I have scorned the easy triumphs of
epigram; in short, I have not acted against my convictions,' is not
this a viaticum that gives one daily strength?"
"But one can say all this, surely, and yet work on a newspaper," said
Lucien. "If I had absolutely no other way of earning a living, I
should certainly come to this."
"Oh! oh! oh!" cried Fulgence, his voice rising a note each time; "we
are capitulating, are we?"
"He will turn journalist," Leon Giraud said gravely.
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