IV

George Duroy slept badly, so excited was he by the wish to see his article in print. He was up as soon as it was daylight, and was prowling about the streets long before the hour at which the porters from the newspaper offices run with their papers from kiosk to kiosk. He went on to the Saint Lazare terminus, knowing that the Vie Francaise would be delivered there before it reached his own district. As he was still too early, he wandered up and down on the footpath.

He witnessed the arrival of the newspaper vendor who opened her glass shop, and then saw a man bearing on his head a pile of papers. He rushed forward. There were the Figaro , the Gil Blas , the Gaulois , the Evenement , and two or three morning journals, but the Vie Francaise was not among them. Fear seized him. Suppose the “Recollections of a Chasseur d’Afrique” had been kept over for the next day, or that by chance they had not at the last moment seemed suitable to Daddy Walter.

Turning back to the kiosk, he saw that the paper was on sale without his having seen it brought there. He darted forward, unfolded it, after having thrown down the three sous, and ran through the headings of the articles on the first page. Nothing. His heart began to beat, and he experienced strong emotion on reading at the foot of a column in large letters, “George Duroy.” It was in; what happiness!

He began to walk along unconsciously, the paper in his hand and his hat on one side of his head, with a longing to stop the passersby in order to say to them: “Buy this, buy this, there is an article by me in it.” He would have liked to have bellowed with all the power of his lungs, like some vendors of papers at night on the boulevards, “Read the Vie Francaise ;