At this victorious stroke, glory burst forth, falling in luminous sparks, making this new name--his name--flash with a brilliancy too dearly paid for not to be lasting.
At the time of which we speak, Octave had conquered every obstacle in the literary field.

With a versatility of talent which sometimes recalled Voltaire's "proteanism," he attacked in succession the most difficult styles.

Besides their poetic value, his dramas had this positive merit, the highest in the theatre world they were money-makers; so the managers greeted him with due respect, while collaborators swarmed about him.

The journals paid for his articles in their weight in gold; reviews snatched every line of his yet unfinished novels; his works were illustrated by Porret and Tony Johannot--the masters of the day--and shone resplendent behind the glass cases in the Orleans gallery.

Gerfaut had at last made a place for himself among that baker's dozen of writers who call themselves, and justly, too, the field-marshals of French literature, of which Chateaubriand was then commander-in-chief.
What was it that had brought such a person a hundred leagues from the opera balcony, to put on a pretty woman's slipper?
Was the fair lady one of those caprices, so frequent and fleeting in an artist's thoughts, or had she given birth to one of those sentiments that end by absorbing the rest of one's life?
The young man seated opposite Gerfaut was, physically and morally, as complete a contrast to him as one could possibly imagine.