"The Emperor's joke."

"The Emperor's?"

"Yes. His or one of his people's...."

"How awful! You'll see it to-morrow on the front page!"

Christophe shuddered. But, next day, what he saw was a description of
his room, which the journalist had not seen, and a report of a
conversation which he had not had with him.

The facts were more and more embellished the farther they spread. In the
foreign papers they were garnished out of all recognition. Certain
French articles having told how in his poverty he had transposed music
for the guitar, Christophe learned from an English newspaper that he had
played the guitar in the streets. He did not only read eulogies. Far
from it. It was enough for Christophe to have been taken up by the
_Grand Journal_, for him to be taken to task by the other papers.
They could not as a matter of dignity allow the possibility of a rival's
discovering a genius whom they had ignored. Some of them were rabid
about it. Others commiserated Christophe on his ill-luck. Goujart,
annoyed at having the ground cut away from under his feet, wrote an
article, as he said, to set people right on certain points. He wrote
familiarly of his old friend Christophe, to whom, when he first came to
Paris, he had been guide and comforter: he was certainly a highly gifted
musician, but--(he was at liberty to say so, since they were
friends)--very deficient in many ways, ill-educated, unoriginal, and
inordinately vain; so absurdly to flatter his vanity, as had been done,
was to serve him but ill at a time when he stood in need of a mentor who