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
manuscript 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.

Other works of art were pinned in the cheap sea-green wall-paper.
These consisted of nine pen-and-ink illustrations for _Le Solitaire_.
The work had attained to such an unheard-of European popularity, that
journalists evidently were tired of it.--"The Solitary makes his first
appearance in the provinces; sensation among the women.--The Solitary
perused at a chateau.--Effect of the Solitary on domestic animals.
--The Solitary explained to savage tribes, with the most brilliant
results.--The Solitary translated into Chinese and presented by the
author to the Emperor at Pekin.--The Mont Sauvage, Rape of Elodie."
--(Lucien though this caricature very shocking, but he could not help
laughing at it.)--"The Solitary under a canopy conducted in triumphal
procession by the newspapers.--The Solitary breaks the press to
splinters, and wounds the printers.--Read backwards, the superior
beauties of the Solitary produce a sensation at the Academie."--On a
newspaper-wrapper Lucien noticed a sketch of a contributor holding out
his hat, and beneath it the words, "Finot! my hundred francs," and a