Have woven for me my vesture fair and fine,
Of threads of sunlight and of purple stain;
No flower so glorious in the garden bed,
But Nature, woe is me, no fragrance shed
Within my cup of Orient porcelain.


"Well?" asked Lucien after a pause, immeasurably long, as it seemed to
him.

"My dear fellow," Etienne said, gravely surveying the tips of Lucien's
boots (he had brought the pair from Angouleme, and was wearing them
out). "My dear fellow, I strongly recommend you to put your ink on
your boots to save blacking, and to take your pens for toothpicks, so
that when you come away from Flicoteaux's you can swagger along this
picturesque alley looking as if you had dined. Get a situation of any
sort or description. Run errands for a bailiff if you have the heart,
be a shopman if your back is strong enough, enlist if you happen to
have a taste for military music. You have the stuff of three poets in
you; but before you can reach your public, you will have time to die
of starvation six times over, if you intend to live on the proceeds of
your poetry, that is. And from your too unsophisticated discourse, it
would seem to be your intention to coin money out of your inkstand.

"I say nothing as to your verses; they are a good deal better than all
the poetical wares that are cumbering the ground in booksellers'
backshops just now. Elegant 'nightingales' of that sort cost a little
more than the others, because they are printed on hand-made paper, but
they nearly all of them come down at last to the banks of the Seine.
You may study their range of notes there any day if you care to make