critics and dilettanti, Olivier never let slip an opportunity of talking
about Christophe: and for some time past he had been surprised to find
that they listened to him. He could feel a sort of current of curiosity,
a mysterious rumor flying about literary and polite circles. What was
its origin? Were there echoes of newspaper opinion, following on the
recent performances of Christophe's work in England and Germany? It
seemed impossible to trace it to any definite source. It was one of
those frequent phenomena of those men who sniff the air of Paris, and
can tell the day before, more exactly than the meteorological
observatory of the tower of Saint-Jacques, what wind is blowing up for
the morrow, and what it will bring with it. In that great city of
nerves, through which electric vibrations pass, there are invisible
currents of fame, a latent celebrity which precedes the actuality, the
vague gossip of the drawing-rooms, the _nescio quid majus nascitur
Iliade_, which, at a given moment, bursts out in a puffing article,
the blare of the trumpet which drives the name of the new idol into the
thickest heads. Sometimes that trumpet-blast alienates the first and
best friends of the man whose glory it proclaims. And yet they are
responsible for it.

So Olivier had a share in the article in the _Grand Journal_. He
had taken advantage of the interest displayed in Christophe, and had
carefully stoked it up with adroitly worded information. He had been
careful not to bring Christophe directly into touch with the
journalists, for he was afraid of an outburst. But at the request of the
_Grand Journal_ he had slyly introduced Christophe to a reporter in
a cafe without his having any suspicion. All these precautions only
pricked curiosity, and made Christophe more interesting. Olivier had
never had anything to do with publicity before: he had not stopped to
consider that he was setting in motion a machine which, once it got