owed this to the man seated there,--a prodigious man.

"Cher poete," said Lebeau, breaking silence, "it gives me no mean
pleasure to think I am opening a career to one whose talents fit him for
those goals on which they who reach write names that posterity shall
read. Struck with certain articles of yours in the journal made
celebrated by the wit and gayety of Savarin, I took pains privately to
inquire into your birth, your history, connections, antecedents. All
confirmed my first impression,--that you were exactly the writer I wish
to secure to our cause. I therefore sought you in your rooms,
unintroduced and a stranger, in order to express my admiration of your
compositions. _Bref_, we soon became friends; and after comparing minds,
I admitted you, at your request, into this Secret Council. Now, in
proposing to you the conduct of the journal I would establish, for which
I am prepared to find all necessary funds, I am compelled to make
imperative conditions. Nominally you will be editor-in-chief: that
station, if the journal succeeds, will secure you position and fortune;
if it fail, you fail with it. But we will not speak of failure; I must
have it succeed. Our interest, then, is the same. Before that interest
all puerile vanities fade away. Nominally, I say, you are editor-in-
chief; but all the real work of editing will, at first, be done by
others."

"Ah!" exclaimed Rameau, aghast and stunned. Lebeau resumed,

"To establish the journal I propose needs more than the genius of youth;
it needs the tact and experience of mature years."

Rameau sank back on his chair with a sullen sneer on his pale lips.
Decidedly Lebeau was not so great a man as he had thought.