What books are they?
Volumes of poetry with a portrait of the author in spectacles?
But such things never sell." "Unless the author is criminally convicted," said the critic.

"Wait a bit, here are some romances and some concert tickets.

By setting about it skillfully you may, perhaps, make money of them." "I would rather have something else, a pair of trowsers, for instance." "Come," said the critic, "take this copy of Bossuet and this plaster cast of Monsieur Odilon Barrot.

On my word of honor, it is the widow's mite." "I see that you are doing your best," said Rodolphe.

"I will take away these treasures, but if I get thirty sous out of them I shall regard it as the thirteenth labor of Hercules." After having covered about four leagues Rodolphe, by the aid of an eloquence of which he had the secret on great occasions, succeeded in getting his washerwoman to lend him two francs on the volumes of poetry, the romances and the bust of Monsieur Barrot.
"Come," said he, as he recrossed the Seine, "here is the sauce, now I must find the dish itself.