one hundred and fifty were sold--about fifty in each department. This
average of tender and poetic souls in three departments of France is
enough to revive the enthusiasm of writers as to the _Furia Francese_,
which nowadays is more apt to expend itself in business than in books.

When Monsieur de Clagny had given away a certain number of copies,
Dinah still had seven or eight, wrapped up in the newspapers which had
published notices of the work. Twenty copies forwarded to the Paris
papers were swamped in the editors' offices. Nathan was taken in as
well as several of his fellow-countrymen of Le Berry, and wrote an
article on the great man, in which he credited him with all the fine
qualities we discover in those who are dead and buried.

Lousteau, warned by his fellow-schoolfellows, who could not remember
Jan Diaz, waited for information from Sancerre, and learned that Jan
Diaz was a pseudonym assumed by a woman.

Then, in and around Sancerre, Madame de la Baudraye became the rage;
she was the future rival of George Sand. From Sancerre to Bourges a
poem was praised which, at any other time, would certainly have been
hooted. The provincial public--like every French public, perhaps--does
not share the love of the King of the French for the happy medium: it
lifts you to the skies or drags you in the mud.

By this time the good Abbe, Madame de la Baudraye's counselor, was
dead; he would certainly have prevented her rushing into public life.
But three years of work without recognition weighed on Dinah's soul,
and she accepted the clatter of fame as a substitute for her
disappointed ambitions. Poetry and dreams of celebrity, which had
lulled her grief since her meeting with Anna Grossetete, no longer