"I have a volume of poetry----"

"M. Porchon!" somebody shouted.

"_Poetry_!" Porchon exclaimed angrily. "For what do you take me?" he
added, laughing in Lucien's face. And he dived into the regions of the
back shop.

Lucien went back across the Pont Neuf absorbed in reflection. From all
that he understood of this mercantile dialect, it appeared that books,
like cotton nightcaps, were to be regarded as articles of merchandise
to be sold dear and bought cheap.

"I have made a mistake," said Lucien to himself; but, all the same,
this rough-and-ready practical aspect of literature made an impression
upon him.

In the Rue du Coq he stopped in front of a modest-looking shop, which
he had passed before. He saw the inscription DOGUEREAU, BOOKSELLER,
painted above it in yellow letters on a green ground, and remembered
that he had seen the name at the foot of the title-page of several
novels at Blosse's reading-room. In he went, not without the inward
trepidation which a man of any imagination feels at the prospect of a
battle. Inside the shop he discovered an odd-looking old man, one of
the queer characters of the trade in the days of the Empire.

Doguereau wore a black coat with vast square skirts, when fashion
required swallow-tail coats. His waistcoat was of some cheap material,
a checked pattern of many colors; a steel chain, with a copper key