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Updated: June 23, 2025
He will calculate you the specific gravity of the heaviest German metaphysician at a glance, and is capable of floating even the works of Monsieur Thiers, if put to the test." "Monsieur can swim?" said the master, addressing me, with a nautical scrape. "I think so," I replied. "Many gentlemen think so," said Monsieur Barbet, "till they find themselves in the water."
"I have done nothing to obtain your gratitude. You are quite mistaken." "Ah, that is frankness indeed!" said the former magistrate. "Well, it pleases me. I was about to reproach you; pardon me, I now esteem you. So you are a publisher, and you have come here to get my work away from Barbet, Metivier, and Morand? All is now explained.
I was so certain you were a ninny! Look here, will you guarantee me a thousand francs? As sure as the sun shines, my old Barbet and Monsieur Metivier have promised me five hundred to keep my eyes open for them." "They! five hundred francs! nonsense!" cried Godefroid. "I know their ways; two hundred is the very most, my good woman, and even that is only promised; you can't assign it.
If an author was in difficulties, he would discount a bill given by a publisher at fifteen or twenty per cent; then the next day he would go to the publisher, haggle over the price of some work in demand, and pay him with his own bills instead of cash. Barbet was something of a scholar; he had had just enough education to make him careful to steer clear of modern poetry and modern romances.
The affair isn't in their names; they have put it into the hands of a publisher whom Barbet set up on the quai des Augustins." "What, that little fellow?" "Yes, that little Morand, who was formerly Barbet's clerk. It seems they expect a good bit of money out of the affair." "There's a good bit to spend," said Godefroid, with a significant grimace.
Then it would be a green barbet, with bristle-armed beak and bright blue and scarlet feathers to make it gay. Or again, one of the cuckoo trogons, sitting on some twig, like a ball of feathers of bronze, golden green, and salmon rose. But this was not a collecting trip.
Monsieur lends him money on his compositions." "Monsieur? who is he?" "The proprietor of the house, Monsieur Barbet, the old bookseller. He is a Norman who used to sell green stuff in the streets, and afterwards set up a bookstall, in 1818, on the quay. Then he got a little shop, and now he is very rich.
Come, messieurs, close up the ranks," he added, gaily. "Tiens!" said one of the hungry journalists, who had cast his eyes into the garden of the Palais-Royal, on which the dining-room of the restaurant opened, "there's Barbanchu going by; suppose I call him in?" "Yes, certainly," said Barbet junior, "have him up." "Barbanchu! Barbanchu!" called out the journalist.
"Eh! my boy," returned Barbet in a familiar tone; "I have six thousand volumes of stock on hand at my place, and paper is not gold, as the old bookseller said. Trade is dull."
At the sight of the fair, dead face smiling at Eternity, while Coralie's lover wrote tavern-catches to buy a grave for her, and Barbet paid for the coffin of the four candles lighted about the dead body of her who had thrilled a great audience as she stood behind the footlights in her Spanish basquina and scarlet green-clocked stockings; while beyond in the doorway, stood the priest who had reconciled the dying actress with God, now about to return to the church to say a mass for the soul of her who had "loved much," all the grandeur and the sordid aspects of the scene, all that sorrow crushed under by Necessity, froze the blood of the great writer and the great doctor.
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