"Bravo!" cried Nathan.
"Is it a nickname?" Merlin inquired, looking maliciously from Finot to
Lucien.
"If you go on at this pace, you will be quite beyond us," said
Dauriat; "these gentlemen" (indicating Camusot and Matifat) "cannot
follow you as it is. A joke is like a bit of thread; if it is spun too
fine, it breaks, as Bonaparte said."
"Gentlemen," said Lousteau, "we have been eye-witnesses of a strange,
portentous, unheard-of, and truly surprising phenomenon. Admire the
rapidity with which our friend here has been transformed from a
provincial into a journalist!"
"He is a born journalist," said Dauriat.
"Children!" called Finot, rising to his feet, "all of us here present
have encouraged and protected our amphitryon in his entrance upon a
career in which he has already surpassed our hopes. In two months he
has shown us what he can do in a series of excellent articles known to
us all. I propose to baptize him in form as a journalist."
"A crown of roses! to signalize a double conquest," cried Bixiou,
glancing at Coralie.
Coralie made a sign to Berenice. That portly handmaid went to
Coralie's dressing-room and brought back a box of tumbled artificial
flowers. The more incapable members of the party were grotesquely
tricked out in these blossoms, and a crown of roses was soon woven.
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