attached to it, hung from his fob and dangled down over a roomy pair
of black nether garments. The booksellers' watch must have been the
size of an onion. Iron-gray ribbed stockings, and shoes with silver
buckles completed is costume. The old man's head was bare, and
ornamented with a fringe of grizzled locks, quite poetically scanty.
"Old Doguereau," as Porchon styled him, was dressed half like a
professor of belles-lettres as to his trousers and shoes, half like a
tradesman with respect to the variegated waistcoat, the stockings, and
the watch; and the same odd mixture appeared in the man himself. He
united the magisterial, dogmatic air, and the hollow countenance of
the professor of rhetoric with the sharp eyes, suspicious mouth, and
vague uneasiness of the bookseller.

"M. Doguereau?" asked Lucien.

"That is my name, sir."

"You are very young," remarked the bookseller.

"My age, sir, has nothing to do with the matter."

"True," and the old bookseller took up the manuscript. "Ah, begad! _The
Archer of Charles IX._, a good title. Let us see now, young man, just
tell me your subject in a word or two."

"It is a historical work, sir, in the style of Scott. The character of
the struggle between the Protestants and Catholics is depicted as a
struggle between two opposed systems of government, in which the
throne is seriously endangered. I have taken the Catholic side."