PART I

Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien de Rubempre had left Angouleme behind, and

were traveling together upon the road to Paris. Not one of the party

who made that journey alluded to it afterwards; but it may be believed

that an infatuated youth who had looked forward to the delights of an

elopement, must have found the continual presence of Gentil, the

man-servant, and Albertine, the maid, not a little irksome on the way.

Lucien, traveling post for the first time in his life, was horrified

to see pretty nearly the whole sum on which he meant to live in Paris

for a twelvemonth dropped along the road. Like other men who combine

great intellectual powers with the charming simplicity of childhood,

he openly expressed his surprise at the new and wonderful things which

he saw, and thereby made a mistake. A man should study a woman very

carefully before he allows her to see his thoughts and emotions as

they arise in him. A woman, whose nature is large as her heart is

tender, can smile upon childishness, and make allowances; but let her

have ever so small a spice of vanity herself, and she cannot forgive

childishness, or littleness, or vanity in her lover. Many a woman is

so extravagant a worshiper that she must always see the god in her

idol; but there are yet others who love a man for his sake and not for

their own, and adore his failings with his greater qualities.

Lucien had not guessed as yet that Mme. de Bargeton's love was grafted

on pride. He made another mistake when he failed to discern the

meaning of certain smiles which flitted over Louise's lips from time

to time; and instead of keeping himself to himself, he indulged in the

playfulness of the young rat emerging from his hole for the first

time.

The travelers were set down before daybreak at the sign of the

Gaillard-Bois in the Rue de l'Echelle, both so tired out with the

journey that Louise went straight to bed and slept, first bidding

Lucien to engage the room immediately overhead. Lucien slept on till

four o'clock in the afternoon, when he was awakened by Mme. de

Bargeton's servant, and learning the hour, made a hasty toilet and

hurried downstairs.

Louise was sitting in the shabby inn sitting-room. Hotel accommodation

is a blot on the civilization of Paris; for with all its pretensions

to elegance, the city as yet does not boast a single inn where a

well-to-do traveler can find the surroundings to which he is accustomed

at home. To Lucien's just-awakened, sleep-dimmed eyes, Louise was

hardly recognizable in this cheerless, sunless room, with the shabby

window-curtains, the comfortless polished floor, the hideous furniture

bought second-hand, or much the worse for wear.

Some people no longer look the same when detached from the background

of faces, objects, and surroundings which serve as a setting, without

which, indeed, they seem to lose something of their intrinsic worth.

Personality demands its appropriate atmosphere to bring out its

values, just as the figures in Flemish interiors need the arrangement

of light and shade in which they are placed by the painter's genius if

they are to live for us. This is especially true of provincials. Mme.

de Bargeton, moreover, looked more thoughtful and dignified than was

necessary now, when no barriers stood between her and happiness.

Gentil and Albertine waited upon them, and while they were present

Lucien could not complain. The dinner, sent in from a neighboring

restaurant, fell far below the provincial average, both in quantity

and quality; the essential goodness of country fare was wanting, and

in point of quantity the portions were cut with so strict an eye to

business that they savored of short commons. In such small matters

Paris does not show its best side to travelers of moderate fortune.

Lucien waited till the meal was over. Some change had come over

Louise, he thought, but he could not explain it.

And a change had, in fact, taken place. Events had occurred while he

slept; for reflection is an event in our inner history, and Mme. de

Bargeton had been reflecting.

About two o'clock that afternoon, Sixte du Chatelet made his

appearance in the Rue de l'Echelle and asked for Albertine. The

sleeping damsel was roused, and to her he expressed his wish to speak

with her mistress. Mme. de Bargeton had scarcely time to dress before

he came back again. The unaccountable apparition of M. du Chatelet

roused the lady's curiosity, for she had kept her journey a profound

secret, as she thought. At three o'clock the visitor was admitted.

"I have risked a reprimand from headquarters to follow you," he said,

as he greeted her; "I foresaw coming events. But if I lose my post for

it, YOU, at any rate, shall not be lost."

"What do you mean?" exclaimed Mme. de Bargeton.

"I can see plainly that you love Lucien," he continued, with an air of

tender resignation. "You must love indeed if _you_ can act thus

recklessly, and disregard the conventions which you know so well. Dear

adored Nais, can you really imagine that Mme. d'Espard's salon, or any

other salon in Paris, will not be closed to you as soon as it is known

that you have fled from Angouleme, as it were, with a young man,

especially after the duel between M. de Bargeton and M. de Chandour?

The fact that your husband has gone to the Escarbas looks like a

separation. Under such circumstances a gentleman fights first and

afterwards leaves his wife at liberty. By all means, give M. de

Rubempre your love and your countenance; do just as you please; but

you must not live in the same house. If anybody here in Paris knew

that you had traveled together, the whole world that you have a mind

to see would point the finger at you.

"And, Nais, do not make these sacrifices for a young man whom you have

as yet compared with no one else; he, on his side, has been put to no

proof; he may forsake you for some Parisienne, better able, as he may

fancy, to further his ambitions. I mean no harm to the man you love,

but you will permit me to put your own interests before his, and to

beg you to study him, to be fully aware of the serious nature of this

step that you are taking. And, then, if you find all doors closed

against you, and that none of the women call upon you, make sure at

least that you will feel no regret for all that you have renounced for

him. Be very certain first that he for whom you will have given up so

much will always be worthy of your sacrifices and appreciate them.

"Just now," continued Chatelet, "Mme. d'Espard is the more prudish and

particular because she herself is separated from her husband, nobody

knows why. The Navarreins, the Lenoncourts, the Blamont-Chauvrys, and

the rest of the relations have all rallied round her; the most

strait-laced women are seen at her house, and receive her with respect,

and the Marquis d'Espard has been put in the wrong. The first call that

you pay will make it clear to you that I am right; indeed, knowing

Paris as I do, I can tell you beforehand that you will no sooner enter

the Marquise's salon than you will be in despair lest she should find

out that you are staying at the Gaillard-Bois with an apothecary's

son, though he may wish to be called M. de Rubempre.

"You will have rivals here, women far more astute and shrewd than

Amelie; they will not fail to discover who you are, where you are,

where you come from, and all that you are doing. You have counted upon

your incognito, I see, but you are one of those women for whom an

incognito is out of the question. You will meet Angouleme at every

turn. There are the deputies from the Charente coming up for the

opening of the session; there is the Commandant in Paris on leave.

Why, the first man or woman from Angouleme who happens to see you

would cut your career short in a strange fashion. You would simply be

Lucien's mistress.

"If you need me at any time, I am staying with the Receiver-General in

the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, two steps away from Mme. d'Espard's.

I am sufficiently acquainted with the Marechale de Carigliano, Mme. de

Serizy, and the President of the Council to introduce you to those

houses; but you will meet so many people at Mme. d'Espard's, that you

are not likely to require me. So far from wishing to gain admittance

to this set or that, every one will be longing to make your

acquaintance."

Chatelet talked on; Mme. de Bargeton made no interruption. She was

struck with his perspicacity. The queen of Angouleme had, in fact,

counted upon preserving her incognito.

"You are right, my dear friend," she said at length; "but what am I to

do?"

"Allow me to find suitable furnished lodgings for you," suggested

Chatelet; "that way of living is less expensive than an inn. You will

have a home of your own; and, if you will take my advice, you will

sleep in your new rooms this very night."

"But how did you know my address?" queried she.

"Your traveling carriage is easily recognized; and, besides, I was

following you. At Sevres your postilion told mine that he had brought

you here. Will you permit me to act as your harbinger? I will write as

soon as I have found lodgings."

"Very well, do so," said she. And in those seemingly insignificant

words, all was said. The Baron du Chatelet had spoken the language of

worldly wisdom to a woman of the world. He had made his appearance

before her in faultless dress, a neat cab was waiting for him at the

door; and Mme. de Bargeton, standing by the window thinking over the

position, chanced to see the elderly dandy drive away.

A few moments later Lucien appeared, half awake and hastily dressed.

He was handsome, it is true; but his clothes, his last year's nankeen

trousers, and his shabby tight jacket were ridiculous. Put Antinous or

the Apollo Belvedere himself into a water-carrier's blouse, and how

shall you recognize the godlike creature of the Greek or Roman chisel?

The eyes note and compare before the heart has time to revise the

swift involuntary judgment; and the contrast between Lucien and

Chatelet was so abrupt that it could not fail to strike Louise.

Towards six o'clock that evening, when dinner was over, Mme. de

Bargeton beckoned Lucien to sit beside her on the shabby sofa, covered

with a flowered chintz--a yellow pattern on a red ground.

"Lucien mine," she said, "don't you think that if we have both of us

done a foolish thing, suicidal for both our interests, it would only

be common sense to set matters right? We ought not to live together in

Paris, dear boy, and we must not allow anyone to suspect that we

traveled together. Your career depends so much upon my position that I

ought to do nothing to spoil it. So, to-night, I am going to remove

into lodgings near by. But you will stay on here, we can see each

other every day, and nobody can say a word against us."

And Louise explained conventions to Lucien, who opened wide eyes. He

had still to learn that when a woman thinks better of her folly, she

thinks better of her love; but one thing he understood--he saw that he

was no longer the Lucien of Angouleme. Louise talked of herself, of

_her_ interests, _her_ reputation, and of the world; and, to veil her

egoism, she tried to make him believe that this was all on his

account. He had no claim upon Louise thus suddenly transformed into

Mme. de Bargeton, and, more serious still, he had no power over her.

He could not keep back the tears that filled his eyes.

"If I am your glory," cried the poet, "you are yet more to me--you are

my one hope, my whole future rests with you. I thought that if you

meant to make my successes yours, you would surely make my adversity

yours also, and here we are going to part already."

"You are judging my conduct," said she; "you do not love me."

Lucien looked at her with such a dolorous expression, that in spite of

herself, she said:

"Darling, I will stay if you like. We shall both be ruined, we shall

have no one to come to our aid. But when we are both equally wretched,

and every one shuts their door upon us both, when failure (for we must

look all possibilities in the face), when failure drives us back to

the Escarbas, then remember, love, that I foresaw the end, and that at

the first I proposed that we should make your way by conforming to

established rules."

"Louise," he cried, with his arms around her, "you are wise; you

frighten me! Remember that I am a child, that I have given myself up

entirely to your dear will. I myself should have preferred to overcome

obstacles and win my way among men by the power that is in me; but if

I can reach the goal sooner through your aid, I shall be very glad to

owe all my success to you. Forgive me! You mean so much to me that I

cannot help fearing all kinds of things; and, for me, parting means

that desertion is at hand, and desertion is death."

"But, my dear boy, the world's demands are soon satisfied," returned

she. "You must sleep here; that is all. All day long you will be with

me, and no one can say a word."

A few kisses set Lucien's mind completely at rest. An hour later

Gentil brought in a note from Chatelet. He told Mme. de Bargeton that

he had found lodgings for her in the Rue Nueve-de-Luxembourg. Mme. de

Bargeton informed herself of the exact place, and found that it was

not very far from the Rue de l'Echelle. "We shall be neighbors," she

told Lucien.

Two hours afterwards Louise stepped into the hired carriage sent by

Chatelet for the removal to the new rooms. The apartments were of the

class that upholsterers furnish and let to wealthy deputies and

persons of consideration on a short visit to Paris--showy and

uncomfortable. It was eleven o'clock when Lucien returned to his inn,

having seen nothing as yet of Paris except the part of the Rue

Saint-Honore which lies between the Rue Neuve-de-Luxembourg and the Rue

de l'Echelle. He lay down in his miserable little room, and could not

help comparing it in his own mind with Louise's sumptuous apartments.

Just as he came away the Baron du Chatelet came in, gorgeously arrayed

in evening dress, fresh from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, to

inquire whether Mme. de Bargeton was satisfied with all that he had

done on her behalf. Nais was uneasy. The splendor was alarming to her

mind. Provincial life had reacted upon her; she was painfully

conscientious over her accounts, and economical to a degree that is

looked upon as miserly in Paris. She had brought with her twenty

thousand francs in the shape of a draft on the Receiver-General,

considering that the sum would more than cover the expenses of four

years in Paris; she was afraid already lest she should not have

enough, and should run into debt; and now Chatelet told her that her

rooms would only cost six hundred francs per month.

"A mere trifle," added he, seeing that Nais was startled. "For five

hundred francs a month you can have a carriage from a livery stable;

fifty louis in all. You need only think of your dress. A woman moving

in good society could not well do less; and if you mean to obtain a

Receiver-General's appointment for M. de Bargeton, or a post in the

Household, you ought not to look poverty-stricken. Here, in Paris,

they only give to the rich. It is most fortunate that you brought

Gentil to go out with you, and Albertine for your own woman, for

servants are enough to ruin you here. But with your introductions you

will seldom be home to a meal."

Mme. de Bargeton and the Baron de Chatelet chatted about Paris.

Chatelet gave her all the news of the day, the myriad nothings that

you are bound to know, under penalty of being a nobody. Before very

long the Baron also gave advice as to shopping, recommending Herbault

for toques and Juliette for hats and bonnets; he added the address of

a fashionable dressmaker to supersede Victorine. In short, he made the

lady see the necessity of rubbing off Angouleme. Then he took his

leave after a final flash of happy inspiration.

"I expect I shall have a box at one of the theatres to-morrow," he

remarked carelessly; "I will call for you and M. de Rubempre, for you

must allow me to do the honors of Paris."

"There is more generosity in his character than I thought," said Mme.

de Bargeton to herself when Lucien was included in the invitation.

In the month of June ministers are often puzzled to know what to do

with boxes at the theatre; ministerialist deputies and their

constituents are busy in their vineyards or harvest fields, and their

more exacting acquaintances are in the country or traveling about; so

it comes to pass that the best seats are filled at this season with

heterogeneous theatre-goers, never seen at any other time of year, and

the house is apt to look as if it were tapestried with very shabby

material. Chatelet had thought already that this was his opportunity

of giving Nais the amusements which provincials crave most eagerly,

and that with very little expense.

The next morning, the very first morning in Paris, Lucien went to the

Rue Nueve-de-Luxembourg and found that Louise had gone out. She had

gone to make some indispensable purchases, to take counsel of the

mighty and illustrious authorities in the matter of the feminine

toilette, pointed out to her by Chatelet, for she had written to tell

the Marquise d'Espard of her arrival. Mme. de Bargeton possessed the

self-confidence born of a long habit of rule, but she was exceedingly

afraid of appearing to be provincial. She had tact enough to know how

greatly the relations of women among themselves depend upon first

impressions; and though she felt that she was equal to taking her

place at once in such a distinguished set as Mme. de d'Espard's, she

felt also that she stood in need of goodwill at her first entrance

into society, and was resolved, in the first place, that she would

leave nothing undone to secure success. So she felt boundlessly

thankful to Chatelet for pointing out these ways of putting herself in

harmony with the fashionable world.

A singular chance so ordered it that the Marquise was delighted to

find an opportunity of being useful to a connection of her husband's

family. The Marquis d'Espard had withdrawn himself without apparent

reason from society, and ceased to take any active interest in

affairs, political or domestic. His wife, thus left mistress of her

actions, felt the need of the support of public opinion, and was glad

to take the Marquis' place and give her countenance to one of her

husband's relations. She meant to be ostentatiously gracious, so as to

put her husband more evidently in the wrong; and that very day she

wrote, "Mme. de Bargeton _nee_ Negrepelisse" a charming billet, one of

the prettily worded compositions of which time alone can discover the

emptiness.

"She was delighted that circumstances had brought a relative, of whom

she had heard, whose acquaintance she had desired to make, into closer

connection with her family. Friendships in Paris were not so solid but

that she longed to find one more to love on earth; and if this might

not be, there would only be one more illusion to bury with the rest.

She put herself entirely at her cousin's disposal. She would have

called upon her if indisposition had not kept her to the house, and

she felt that she lay already under obligations to the cousin who had

thought of her."

Lucien, meanwhile, taking his first ramble along the Rue de la Paix

and through the Boulevards, like all newcomers, was much more

interested in the things that he saw than in the people he met. The

general effect of Paris is wholly engrossing at first. The wealth in

the shop windows, the high houses, the streams of traffic, the

contrast everywhere between the last extremes of luxury and want

struck him more than anything else. In his astonishment at the crowds

of strange faces, the man of imaginative temper felt as if he himself

had shrunk, as it were, immensely. A man of any consequence in his

native place, where he cannot go out but he meets with some

recognition of his importance at every step, does not readily accustom

himself to the sudden and total extinction of his consequence. You are

somebody in your own country, in Paris you are nobody. The transition

between the first state and the last should be made gradually, for the

too abrupt fall is something like annihilation. Paris could not fail

to be an appalling wilderness for a young poet, who looked for an echo

for all his sentiments, a confidant for all his thoughts, a soul to

share his least sensations.

Lucien had not gone in search of his luggage and his best blue coat;

and painfully conscious of the shabbiness, to say no worse, of his

clothes, he went to Mme. de Bargeton, feeling that she must have

returned. He found the Baron du Chatelet, who carried them both off to

dinner at the _Rocher de Cancale_. Lucien's head was dizzy with the

whirl of Paris, the Baron was in the carriage, he could say nothing to

Louise, but he squeezed her hand, and she gave a warm response to the

mute confidence.

After dinner Chatelet took his guests to the Vaudeville. Lucien, in

his heart, was not over well pleased to see Chatelet again, and cursed

the chance that had brought the Baron to Paris. The Baron said that

ambition had brought him to town; he had hopes of an appointment as

secretary-general to a government department, and meant to take a seat

in the Council of State as Master of Requests. He had come to Paris to

ask for fulfilment of the promises that had been given him, for a man

of his stamp could not be expected to remain a comptroller all his

life; he would rather be nothing at all, and offer himself for

election as deputy, or re-enter diplomacy. Chatelet grew visibly

taller; Lucien dimly began to recognize in this elderly beau the

superiority of the man of the world who knows Paris; and, most of all,

he felt ashamed to owe his evening's amusement to his rival. And while

the poet looked ill at ease and awkward Her Royal Highness'

ex-secretary was quite in his element. He smiled at his rival's

hesitations, at his astonishment, at the questions he put, at the

little mistakes which the latter ignorantly made, much as an old salt

laughs at an apprentice who has not found his sea legs; but Lucien's

pleasure at seeing a play for the first time in Paris outweighed the

annoyance of these small humiliations.

That evening marked an epoch in Lucien's career; he put away a good

many of his ideas as to provincial life in the course of it. His

horizon widened; society assumed different proportions. There were

fair Parisiennes in fresh and elegant toilettes all about him; Mme. de

Bargeton's costume, tolerably ambitious though it was, looked dowdy by

comparison; the material, like the fashion and the color, was out of

date. That way of arranging her hair, so bewitching in Angouleme,

looked frightfully ugly here among the daintily devised coiffures

which he saw in every direction.

"Will she always look like that?" said he to himself, ignorant that

the morning had been spent in preparing a transformation.

In the provinces comparison and choice are out of the question; when a

face has grown familiar it comes to possess a certain beauty that is

taken for granted. But transport the pretty woman of the provinces to

Paris, and no one takes the slightest notice of her; her prettiness is

of the comparative degree illustrated by the saying that among the

blind the one-eyed are kings. Lucien's eyes were now busy comparing

Mme. de Bargeton with other women, just as she herself had contrasted

him with Chatelet on the previous day. And Mme. de Bargeton, on her

part, permitted herself some strange reflections upon her lover. The

poet cut a poor figure notwithstanding his singular beauty. The

sleeves of his jacket were too short; with his ill-cut country gloves

and a waistcoat too scanty for him, he looked prodigiously ridiculous,

compared with the young men in the balcony--"positively pitiable,"

thought Mme. de Bargeton. Chatelet, interested in her without

presumption, taking care of her in a manner that revealed a profound

passion; Chatelet, elegant, and as much at home as an actor treading

the familiar boards of his theatre, in two days had recovered all the

ground lost in the past six months.

Ordinary people will not admit that our sentiments towards each other

can totally change in a moment, and yet certain it is, that two lovers

not seldom fly apart even more quickly than they drew together. In

Mme. de Bargeton and in Lucien a process of disenchantment was at

work; Paris was the cause. Life had widened out before the poet's

eyes, as society came to wear a new aspect for Louise. Nothing but an

accident now was needed to sever finally the bond that united them;

nor was that blow, so terrible for Lucien, very long delayed.

Mme. de Bargeton set Lucien down at his inn, and drove home with

Chatelet, to the intense vexation of the luckless lover.

"What will they say about me?" he wondered, as he climbed the stairs

to his dismal room.

"That poor fellow is uncommonly dull," said Chatelet, with a smile,

when the door was closed.

"That is the way with those who have a world of thoughts in their

heart and brain. Men who have so much in them to give out in great

works long dreamed of, profess a certain contempt for conversation, a

commerce in which the intellect spends itself in small change,"

returned the haughty Negrepelisse. She still had courage to defend

Lucien, but less for Lucien's sake than for her own.

"I grant it you willingly," replied the Baron, "but we live with human

beings and not with books. There, dear Nais! I see how it is, there is

nothing between you yet, and I am delighted that it is so. If you

decide to bring an interest of a kind hitherto lacking into your life,

let it not be this so-called genius, I implore you. How if you have

made a mistake? Suppose that in a few days' time, when you have

compared him with men whom you will meet, men of real ability, men who

have distinguished themselves in good earnest; suppose that you should

discover, dear and fair siren, that it is no lyre-bearer that you have

borne into port on your dazzling shoulders, but a little ape, with no

manners and no capacity; a presumptuous fool who may be a wit in

L'Houmeau, but turns out a very ordinary specimen of a young man in

Paris? And, after all, volumes of verse come out every week here, the

worst of them better than all M. Chardon's poetry put together. For

pity's sake, wait and compare! To-morrow, Friday, is Opera night," he

continued as the carriage turned into the Rue Nueve-de-Luxembourg;

"Mme. d'Espard has the box of the First Gentlemen of the Chamber, and

will take you, no doubt. I shall go to Mme. de Serizy's box to behold

you in your glory. They are giving _Les Danaides_."

"Good-bye," said she.

Next morning Mme. de Bargeton tried to arrange a suitable toilette in

which to call on her cousin, Mme. d'Espard. The weather was rather

chilly. Looking through the dowdy wardrobe from Angouleme, she found

nothing better than a certain green velvet gown, trimmed fantastically

enough. Lucien, for his part, felt that he must go at once for his

celebrated blue best coat; he felt aghast at the thought of his tight

jacket, and determined to be well dressed, lest he should meet the

Marquise d'Espard or receive a sudden summons to her house. He must

have his luggage at once, so he took a cab, and in two hours' time

spent three or four francs, matter for much subsequent reflection on

the scale of the cost of living in Paris. Having dressed himself in

his best, such as it was, he went to the Rue Nueve-de-Luxembourg, and

on the doorstep encountered Gentil in company with a gorgeously

be-feathered chasseur.

"I was just going round to you, sir, madame gave me a line for you,"

said Gentil, ignorant of Parisian forms of respect, and accustomed to

homely provincial ways. The chasseur took the poet for a servant.

Lucien tore open the note, and learned that Mme. de Bargeton had gone

to spend the day with the Marquise d'Espard. She was going to the

Opera in the evening, but she told Lucien to be there to meet her. Her

cousin permitted her to give him a seat in her box. The Marquise

d'Espard was delighted to procure the young poet that pleasure.

"Then she loves me! my fears were all nonsense!" said Lucien to

himself. "She is going to present me to her cousin this very evening."

He jumped for joy. He would spend the day that separated him from the

happy evening as joyously as might be. He dashed out in the direction

of the Tuileries, dreaming of walking there until it was time to dine

at Very's. And now, behold Lucien frisking and skipping, light of foot

because light of heart, on his way to the Terrasse des Feuillants to

take a look at the people of quality on promenade there. Pretty women

walk arm-in-arm with men of fashion, their adorers, couples greet each

other with a glance as they pass; how different it is from the terrace

at Beaulieu! How far finer the birds on this perch than the Angouleme

species! It is as if you beheld all the colors that glow in the

plumage of the feathered tribes of India and America, instead of the

sober European families.

Those were two wretched hours that Lucien spent in the Garden of the

Tuileries. A violent revulsion swept through him, and he sat in

judgment upon himself.

In the first place, not a single one of these gilded youths wore a

swallow-tail coat. The few exceptions, one or two poor wretches, a

clerk here and there, an annuitant from the Marais, could be ruled out

on the score of age; and hard upon the discovery of a distinction

between morning and evening dress, the poet's quick sensibility and

keen eyes saw likewise that his shabby old clothes were not fit to be

seen; the defects in his coat branded that garment as ridiculous; the

cut was old-fashioned, the color was the wrong shade of blue, the

collar outrageously ungainly, the coat tails, by dint of long wear,

overlapped each other, the buttons were reddened, and there were fatal

white lines along the seams. Then his waistcoat was too short, and so

grotesquely provincial, that he hastily buttoned his coat over it;

and, finally, no man of any pretension to fashion wore nankeen

trousers. Well-dressed men wore charming fancy materials or immaculate

white, and every one had straps to his trousers, while the shrunken

hems of Lucien's nether garments manifested a violent antipathy for

the heels of boots which they wedded with obvious reluctance. Lucien

wore a white cravat with embroidered ends; his sister had seen that M.

du Hautoy and M. de Chandour wore such things, and hastened to make

similar ones for her brother. Here, no one appeared to wear white

cravats of a morning except a few grave seniors, elderly capitalists,

and austere public functionaries, until, in the street on the other

side of the railings, Lucien noticed a grocer's boy walking along the

Rue de Rivoli with a basket on his head; him the man of Angouleme

detected in the act of sporting a cravat, with both ends adorned by

the handiwork of some adored shop-girl. The sight was a stab to

Lucien's breast; penetrating straight to that organ as yet undefined,

the seat of our sensibility, the region whither, since sentiment has

had any existence, the sons of men carry their hands in any excess of

joy or anguish. Do not accuse this chronicle of puerility. The rich,

to be sure, never having experienced sufferings of this kind, may

think them incredibly petty and small; but the agonies of less

fortunate mortals are as well worth our attention as crises and

vicissitudes in the lives of the mighty and privileged ones of earth.

Is not the pain equally great for either? Suffering exalts all things.

And, after all, suppose that we change the terms and for a suit of

clothes, more or less fine, put instead a ribbon, or a star, or a

title; have not brilliant careers been tormented by reason of such

apparent trifles as these? Add, moreover, that for those people who

must seem to have that which they have not, the question of clothes is

of enormous importance, and not unfrequently the appearance of

possession is the shortest road to possession at a later day.

A cold sweat broke out over Lucien as he bethought himself that

to-night he must make his first appearance before the Marquise in this

dress--the Marquise d'Espard, relative of a First Gentleman of the

Bedchamber, a woman whose house was frequented by the most illustrious

among illustrious men in every field.

"I look like an apothecary's son, a regular shop-drudge," he raged

inwardly, watching the youth of the Faubourg Saint-Germain pass under

his eyes; graceful, spruce, fashionably dressed, with a certain

uniformity of air, a sameness due to a fineness of contour, and a

certain dignity of carriage and expression; though, at the same time,

each one differed from the rest in the setting by which he had chosen

to bring his personal characteristics into prominence. Each one made

the most of his personal advantages. Young men in Paris understand the

art of presenting themselves quite as well as women. Lucien had

inherited from his mother the invaluable physical distinction of race,

but the metal was still in the ore, and not set free by the

craftsman's hand.

His hair was badly cut. Instead of holding himself upright with an

elastic corset, he felt that he was cooped up inside a hideous

shirt-collar; he hung his dejected head without resistance on the part

of a limp cravat. What woman could guess that a handsome foot was

hidden by the clumsy boots which he had brought from Angouleme? What

young man could envy him his graceful figure, disguised by the

shapeless blue sack which hitherto he had mistakenly believed to be a

coat? What bewitching studs he saw on those dazzling white shirt

fronts, his own looked dingy by comparison; and how marvelously all

these elegant persons were gloved, his own gloves were only fit for a

policeman! Yonder was a youth toying with a cane exquisitely mounted;

there, another with dainty gold studs in his wristbands. Yet another

was twisting a charming riding-whip while he talked with a woman;

there were specks of mud on the ample folds of his white trousers, he

wore clanking spurs and a tight-fitting jacket, evidently he was about

to mount one of the two horses held by a hop-o'-my-thumb of a tiger. A

young man who went past drew a watch no thicker than a five-franc

piece from his pocket, and looked at it with the air of a person who

is either too early or too late for an appointment.

Lucien, seeing these petty trifles, hitherto unimagined, became aware

of a whole world of indispensable superfluities, and shuddered to

think of the enormous capital needed by a professional pretty fellow!

The more he admired these gay and careless beings, the more conscious

he grew of his own outlandishness; he knew that he looked like a man

who has no idea of the direction of the streets, who stands close to

the Palais Royal and cannot find it, and asks his way to the Louvre of

a passer-by, who tells him, "Here you are." Lucien saw a great gulf

fixed between him and this new world, and asked himself how he might

cross over, for he meant to be one of these delicate, slim youths of

Paris, these young patricians who bowed before women divinely dressed

and divinely fair. For one kiss from one of these, Lucien was ready to

be cut in pieces like Count Philip of Konigsmark. Louise's face rose

up somewhere in the shadowy background of memory--compared with these

queens, she looked like an old woman. He saw women whose names will

appear in the history of the nineteenth century, women no less famous

than the queens of past times for their wit, their beauty, or their

lovers; one who passed was the heroine Mlle. des Touches, so well

known as Camille Maupin, the great woman of letters, great by her

intellect, great no less by her beauty. He overheard the name

pronounced by those who went by.

"Ah!" he thought to himself, "she is Poetry."

What was Mme. de Bargeton in comparison with this angel in all the

glory of youth, and hope, and promise of the future, with that sweet

smile of hers, and the great dark eyes with all heaven in them, and

the glowing light of the sun? She was laughing and chatting with Mme.

Firmiani, one of the most charming women in Paris. A voice indeed

cried, "Intellect is the lever by which to move the world," but

another voice cried no less loudly that money was the fulcrum.

He would not stay any longer on the scene of his collapse and defeat,

and went towards the Palais Royal. He did not know the topography of

his quarter yet, and was obliged to ask his way. Then he went to

Very's and ordered dinner by way of an initiation into the pleasures

of Paris, and a solace for his discouragement. A bottle of Bordeaux,

oysters from Ostend, a dish of fish, a partridge, a dish of macaroni

and dessert,--this was the _ne plus ultra_ of his desire. He enjoyed

this little debauch, studying the while how to give the Marquise

d'Espard proof of his wit, and redeem the shabbiness of his grotesque

accoutrements by the display of intellectual riches. The total of the

bill drew him down from these dreams, and left him the poorer by fifty

of the francs which were to have gone such a long way in Paris. He

could have lived in Angouleme for a month on the price of that dinner.

Wherefore he closed the door of the palace with awe, thinking as he

did so that he should never set foot in it again.

"Eve was right," he said to himself, as he went back under the stone

arcading for some more money. "There is a difference between Paris

prices and prices in L'Houmeau."

He gazed in at the tailors' windows on the way, and thought of the

costumes in the Garden of the Tuileries.

"No," he exclaimed, "I will _not_ appear before Mme. d'Espard dressed

out as I am."

He fled to his inn, fleet as a stag, rushed up to his room, took out a

hundred crowns, and went down again to the Palais Royal, where his

future elegance lay scattered over half a score of shops. The first

tailor whose door he entered tried as many coats upon him as he would

consent to put on, and persuaded his customer that all were in the

very latest fashion. Lucien came out the owner of a green coat, a pair

of white trousers, and a "fancy waistcoat," for which outfit he gave

two hundred francs. Ere long he found a very elegant pair of

ready-made shoes that fitted his foot; and, finally, when he had made

all necessary purchases, he ordered the tradespeople to send them to his

address, and inquired for a hairdresser. At seven o'clock that evening

he called a cab and drove away to the Opera, curled like a Saint John

of a Procession Day, elegantly waistcoated and gloved, but feeling a

little awkward in this kind of sheath in which he found himself for

the first time.

In obedience to Mme. de Bargeton's instructions, he asked for the box

reserved for the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber. The man at the box

office looked at him, and beholding Lucien in all the grandeur assumed

for the occasion, in which he looked like a best man at a wedding,

asked Lucien for his order.

"I have no order."

"Then you cannot go in," said the man at the box office drily.

"But I belong to Mme. d'Espard's party."

"It is not our business to know that," said the man, who could not

help exchanging a barely perceptible smile with his colleague.

A carriage stopped under the peristyle as he spoke. A chasseur, in a

livery which Lucien did not recognize, let down the step, and two

women in evening dress came out of the brougham. Lucien had no mind to

lay himself open to an insolent order to get out of the way from the

official. He stepped aside to let the two ladies pass.

"Why, that lady is the Marquise d'Espard, whom you say you know, sir,"

said the man ironically.

Lucien was so much the more confounded because Mme. de Bargeton did

not seem to recognize him in his new plumage; but when he stepped up

to her, she smiled at him and said:

"This has fallen out wonderfully--come!"

The functionaries at the box office grew serious again as Lucien

followed Mme. de Bargeton. On their way up the great staircase the

lady introduced M. de Rubempre to her cousin. The box belonging to the

First Gentleman of the Bedchamber is situated in one of the angles at

the back of the house, so that its occupants see and are seen all over

the theatre. Lucien took his seat on a chair behind Mme. de Bargeton,

thankful to be in the shadow.

"M. de Rubempre," said the Marquise with flattering graciousness,

"this is your first visit to the Opera, is it not? You must have a

view of the house; take this seat, sit in front of the box; we give

you permission."

Lucien obeyed as the first act came to an end.

"You have made good use of your time," Louise said in his ear, in her

first surprise at the change in his appearance.

Louise was still the same. The near presence of the Marquise d'Espard,

a Parisian Mme. de Bargeton, was so damaging to her; the brilliancy of

the Parisienne brought out all the defects in her country cousin so

clearly by contrast; that Lucien, looking out over the fashionable

audience in the superb building, and then at the great lady, was twice

enlightened, and saw poor Anais de Negrepelisse as she really was, as

Parisians saw her--a tall, lean, withered woman, with a pimpled face

and faded complexion; angular, stiff, affected in her manner; pompous

and provincial in her speech; and, and above all these things, dowdily

dressed. As a matter of fact, the creases in an old dress from Paris

still bear witness to good taste, you can tell what the gown was meant

for; but an old dress made in the country is inexplicable, it is a

thing to provoke laughter. There was neither charm nor freshness about

the dress or its wearer; the velvet, like the complexion had seen

wear. Lucien felt ashamed to have fallen in love with this cuttle-fish

bone, and vowed that he would profit by Louise's next fit of virtue to

leave her for good. Having an excellent view of the house, he could

see the opera-glasses pointed at the aristocratic box par excellence.

The best-dressed women must certainly be scrutinizing Mme. de

Bargeton, for they smiled and talked among themselves.

If Mme. d'Espard knew the object of their sarcasms from those feminine

smiles and gestures, she was perfectly insensible to them. In the

first place, anybody must see that her companion was a poor relation

from the country, an affliction with which any Parisian family may be

visited. And, in the second, when her cousin had spoken to her of her

dress with manifest misgivings, she had reassured Anais, seeing that,

when once properly dressed, her relative would very easily acquire the

tone of Parisian society. If Mme. de Bargeton needed polish, on the

other hand she possessed the native haughtiness of good birth, and

that indescribable something which may be called "pedigree." So, on

Monday her turn would come. And, moreover, the Marquise knew that as

soon as people learned that the stranger was her cousin, they would

suspend their banter and look twice before they condemned her.

Lucien did not foresee the change in Louise's appearance shortly to be

worked by a scarf about her throat, a pretty dress, an elegant

coiffure, and Mme. d'Espard's advice. As they came up the staircase

even now, the Marquise told her cousin not to hold her handkerchief

unfolded in her hand. Good or bad taste turns upon hundreds of such

almost imperceptible shades, which a quick-witted woman discerns at

once, while others will never grasp them. Mme. de Bargeton,

plentifully apt, was more than clever enough to discover her

shortcomings. Mme. d'Espard, sure that her pupil would do her credit,

did not decline to form her. In short, the compact between the two

women had been confirmed by self-interest on either side.

Mme. de Bargeton, enthralled, dazzled, and fascinated by her cousin's

manner, wit, and acquaintances, had suddenly declared herself a votary

of the idol of the day. She had discerned the signs of the occult

power exerted by the ambitious great lady, and told herself that she

could gain her end as the satellite of this star, so she had been

outspoken in her admiration. The Marquise was not insensible to the

artlessly admitted conquest. She took an interest in her cousin,

seeing that she was weak and poor; she was, besides, not indisposed to

take a pupil with whom to found a school, and asked nothing better

than to have a sort of lady-in-waiting in Mme. de Bargeton, a

dependent who would sing her praises, a treasure even more scarce

among Parisian women than a staunch and loyal critic among the

literary tribe. The flutter of curiosity in the house was too marked

to be ignored, however, and Mme. d'Espard politely endeavored to turn

her cousin's mind from the truth.

"If any one comes to our box," she said, "perhaps we may discover the

cause to which we owe the honor of the interest that these ladies are

taking----"

"I have a strong suspicion that it is my old velvet gown and

Angoumoisin air which Parisian ladies find amusing," Mme. de Bargeton

answered, laughing.

"No, it is not you; it is something that I cannot explain," she added,

turning to the poet, and, as she looked at him for the first time, it

seemed to strike her that he was singularly dressed.

"There is M. du Chatelet," exclaimed Lucien at that moment, and he

pointed a finger towards Mme. de Serizy's box, which the renovated

beau had just entered.

Mme. de Bargeton bit her lips with chagrin as she saw that gesture,

and saw besides the Marquise's ill-suppressed smile of contemptuous

astonishment. "Where does the young man come from?" her look said, and

Louise felt humbled through her love, one of the sharpest of all pangs

for a Frenchwoman, a mortification for which she cannot forgive her

lover.

In these circles where trifles are of such importance, a gesture or a

word at the outset is enough to ruin a newcomer. It is the principal

merit of fine manners and the highest breeding that they produce the

effect of a harmonious whole, in which every element is so blended

that nothing is startling or obtrusive. Even those who break the laws

of this science, either through ignorance or carried away by some

impulse, must comprehend that it is with social intercourse as with

music, a single discordant note is a complete negation of the art

itself, for the harmony exists only when all its conditions are

observed down to the least particular.

"Who is that gentleman?" asked Mme. d'Espard, looking towards

Chatelet. "And have you made Mme. de Serizy's acquaintance already?"

"Oh! is that the famous Mme. de Serizy who has had so many adventures

and yet goes everywhere?"

"An unheard-of-thing, my dear, explicable but unexplained. The most

formidable men are her friends, and why? Nobody dares to fathom the

mystery. Then is this person the lion of Angouleme?"

"Well, M. le Baron du Chatelet has been a good deal talked about,"

answered Mme. de Bargeton, moved by vanity to give her adorer the

title which she herself had called in question. "He was M. de

Montriveau's traveling companion."

"Ah!" said the Marquise d'Espard, "I never hear that name without

thinking of the Duchesse de Langeais, poor thing. She vanished like a

falling star.--That is M. de Rastignac with Mme. de Nucingen," she

continued, indicating another box; "she is the wife of a contractor, a

banker, a city man, a broker on a large scale; he forced his way into

society with his money, and they say that he is not very scrupulous as

to his methods of making it. He is at endless pains to establish his

credit as a staunch upholder of the Bourbons, and has tried already to

gain admittance into my set. When his wife took Mme. de Langeais' box,

she thought that she could take her charm, her wit, and her success as

well. It is the old fable of the jay in the peacock's feathers!"

"How do M. and Mme. de Rastignac manage to keep their son in Paris,

when, as we know, their income is under a thousand crowns?" asked

Lucien, in his astonishment at Rastignac's elegant and expensive

dress.

"It is easy to see that you come from Angouleme," said Mme. d'Espard,

ironically enough, as she continued to gaze through her opera-glass.

Her remark was lost upon Lucien; the all-absorbing spectacle of the

boxes prevented him from thinking of anything else. He guessed that he

himself was an object of no small curiosity. Louise, on the other

hand, was exceedingly mortified by the evident slight esteem in which

the Marquise held Lucien's beauty.

"He cannot be so handsome as I thought him," she said to herself; and

between "not so handsome" and "not so clever as I thought him" there

was but one step.

The curtain fell. Chatelet was now paying a visit to the Duchesse de

Carigliano in an adjourning box; Mme. de Bargeton acknowledged his bow

by a slight inclination of the head. Nothing escapes a woman of the

world; Chatelet's air of distinction was not lost upon Mme. d'Espard.

Just at that moment four personages, four Parisian celebrities, came

into the box, one after another.

The most striking feature of the first comer, M. de Marsay, famous for

the passions which he had inspired, was his girlish beauty; but its

softness and effeminacy were counteracted by the expression of his

eyes, unflinching, steady, untamed, and hard as a tiger's. He was

loved and he was feared. Lucien was no less handsome; but Lucien's

expression was so gentle, his blue eyes so limpid, that he scarcely

seemed to possess the strength and the power which attract women so

strongly. Nothing, moreover, so far had brought out the poet's merits;

while de Marsay, with his flow of spirits, his confidence in his power

to please, and appropriate style of dress, eclipsed every rival by his

presence. Judge, therefore, the kind of figure that Lucien, stiff,

starched, unbending in clothes as new and unfamiliar as his

surroundings, was likely to cut in de Marsay's vicinity. De Marsay

with his wit and charm of manner was privileged to be insolent. From

Mme. d'Espard's reception of this personage his importance was at once

evident to Mme. de Bargeton.

The second comer was a Vandenesse, the cause of the scandal in which

Lady Dudley was concerned. Felix de Vandenesse, amiable, intellectual,

and modest, had none of the characteristics on which de Marsay prided

himself, and owed his success to diametrically opposed qualities. He

had been warmly recommended to Mme. d'Espard by her cousin Mme. de

Mortsauf.

The third was General de Montriveau, the author of the Duchesse de

Langeais' ruin.

The fourth, M. de Canalis, one of the most famous poets of the day,

and as yet a newly risen celebrity, was prouder of his birth than of

his genius, and dangled in Mme. d'Espard's train by way of concealing

his love for the Duchesse de Chaulieu. In spite of his graces and the

affectation that spoiled them, it was easy to discern the vast,

lurking ambitions that plunged him at a later day into the storms of

political life. A face that might be called insignificantly pretty and

caressing manners thinly disguised the man's deeply-rooted egoism and

habit of continually calculating the chances of a career which at that

time looked problematical enough; though his choice of Mme. de

Chaulieu (a woman past forty) made interest for him at Court, and

brought him the applause of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the gibes

of the Liberal party, who dubbed him "the poet of the sacristy."

Mme. de Bargeton, with these remarkable figures before her, no longer

wondered at the slight esteem in which the Marquise held Lucien's good

looks. And when conversation began, when intellects so keen, so

subtle, were revealed in two-edged words with more meaning and depth

in them than Anais de Bargeton heard in a month of talk at Angouleme;

and, most of all, when Canalis uttered a sonorous phrase, summing up a

materialistic epoch, and gilding it with poetry--then Anais felt all

the truth of Chatelet's dictum of the previous evening. Lucien was

nothing to her now. Every one cruelly ignored the unlucky stranger; he

was so much like a foreigner listening to an unknown language, that

the Marquise d'Espard took pity upon him. She turned to Canalis.

"Permit me to introduce M. de Rubempre," she said. "You rank too high

in the world of letters not to welcome a _debutant_. M. de Rubempre is

from Angouleme, and will need your influence, no doubt, with the

powers that bring genius to light. So far, he has no enemies to help

him to success by their attacks upon him. Is there enough originality

in the idea of obtaining for him by friendship all that hatred has

done for you to tempt you to make the experiment?"

The four newcomers all looked at Lucien while the Marquise was

speaking. De Marsay, only a couple of paces away, put up an eyeglass

and looked from Lucien to Mme. de Bargeton, and then again at Lucien,

coupling them with some mocking thought, cruelly mortifying to both.

He scrutinized them as if they had been a pair of strange animals, and

then he smiled. The smile was like a stab to the distinguished

provincial. Felix de Vandenesse assumed a charitable air. Montriveau

looked Lucien through and through.

"Madame," M. de Canalis answered with a bow, "I will obey you, in

spite of the selfish instinct which prompts us to show a rival no

favor; but you have accustomed us to miracles."

"Very well, do me the pleasure of dining with me on Monday with M. de

Rubempre, and you can talk of matters literary at your ease. I will

try to enlist some of the tyrants of the world of letters and the

great people who protect them, the author of _Ourika_, and one or two

young poets with sound views."

"Mme. la Marquise," said de Marsay, "if you give your support to this

gentleman for his intellect, I will support him for his good looks. I

will give him advice which will put him in a fair way to be the

luckiest dandy in Paris. After that, he may be a poet--if he has a

mind."

Mme. de Bargeton thanked her cousin by a grateful glance.

"I did not know that you were jealous of intellect," Montriveau said,

turning to de Marsay; "good fortune is the death of a poet."

"Is that why your lordship is thinking of marriage?" inquired the

dandy, addressing Canalis, and watching Mme. d'Espard to see if the

words went home.

Canalis shrugged his shoulders, and Mme. d'Espard, Mme. de Chaulieu's

niece, began to laugh. Lucien in his new clothes felt as if he were an

Egyptian statue in its narrow sheath; he was ashamed that he had

nothing to say for himself all this while. At length he turned to the

Marquise.

"After all your kindness, madame, I am pledged to make no failures,"

he said in those soft tones of his.

Chatelet came in as he spoke; he had seen Montriveau, and by hook or

crook snatched at the chance of a good introduction to the Marquise

d'Espard through one of the kings of Paris. He bowed to Mme. de

Bargeton, and begged Mme. d'Espard to pardon him for the liberty he

took in invading her box; he had been separated so long from his

traveling companion! Montriveau and Chatelet met for the first time

since they parted in the desert.

"To part in the desert, and meet again in the opera-house!" said

Lucien.

"Quite a theatrical meeting!" said Canalis.

Montriveau introduced the Baron du Chatelet to the Marquise, and the

Marquise received Her Royal Highness' ex-secretary the more graciously

because she had seen that he had been very well received in three

boxes already. Mme. de Serizy knew none but unexceptionable people,

and moreover he was Montriveau's traveling companion. So potent was

this last credential, that Mme. de Bargeton saw from the manner of the

group that they accepted Chatelet as one of themselves without demur.

Chatelet's sultan's airs in Angouleme were suddenly explained.

At length the Baron saw Lucien, and favored him with a cool,

disparaging little nod, indicative to men of the world of the

recipient's inferior station. A sardonic expression accompanied the

greeting, "How does _he_ come here?" he seemed to say. This was not lost

on those who saw it; for de Marsay leaned towards Montriveau, and said

in tones audible to Chatelet:

"Do ask him who the queer-looking young fellow is that looks like a

dummy at a tailor's shop-door."

Chatelet spoke a few words in his traveling companion's ear, and while

apparently renewing his acquaintance, no doubt cut his rival to

pieces.

If Lucien was surprised at the apt wit and the subtlety with which

these gentlemen formulated their replies, he felt bewildered with

epigram and repartee, and, most of all, by their offhand way of

talking and their ease of manner. The material luxury of Paris had

alarmed him that morning; at night he saw the same lavish expenditure

of intellect. By what mysterious means, he asked himself, did these

people make such piquant reflections on the spur of the moment, those

repartees which he could only have made after much pondering? And not

only were they at ease in their speech, they were at ease in their

dress, nothing looked new, nothing looked old, nothing about them was

conspicuous, everything attracted the eyes. The fine gentleman of

to-day was the same yesterday, and would be the same to-morrow. Lucien

guessed that he himself looked as if he were dressed for the first

time in his life.

"My dear fellow," said de Marsay, addressing Felix de Vandenesse,

"that young Rastignac is soaring away like a paper-kite. Look at him

in the Marquise de Listomere's box; he is making progress, he is

putting up his eyeglass at us! He knows this gentleman, no doubt,"

added the dandy, speaking to Lucien, and looking elsewhere.

"He can scarcely fail to have heard the name of a great man of whom we

are proud," said Mme. de Bargeton. "Quite lately his sister was

present when M. de Rubempre read us some very fine poetry."

Felix de Vandenesse and de Marsay took leave of the Marquise d'Espard,

and went off to Mme. de Listomere, Vandenesse's sister. The second act

began, and the three were left to themselves again. The curious women

learned how Mme. de Bargeton came to be there from some of the party,

while the others announced the arrival of a poet, and made fun of his

costume. Canalis went back to the Duchesse de Chaulieu, and no more

was seen of him.

Lucien was glad when the rising of the curtain produced a diversion.

All Mme. de Bargeton's misgivings with regard to Lucien were increased

by the marked attention which the Marquise d'Espard had shown to

Chatelet; her manner towards the Baron was very different from the

patronizing affability with which she treated Lucien. Mme. de

Listomere's box was full during the second act, and, to all

appearance, the talk turned upon Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien. Young

Rastignac evidently was entertaining the party; he had raised the

laughter that needs fresh fuel every day in Paris, the laughter that

seizes upon a topic and exhausts it, and leaves it stale and

threadbare in a moment. Mme. d'Espard grew uneasy. She knew that an

ill-natured speech is not long in coming to the ears of those whom it

will wound, and waited till the end of the act.

After a revulsion of feeling such as had taken place in Mme. de

Bargeton and Lucien, strange things come to pass in a brief space of

time, and any revolution within us is controlled by laws that work

with great swiftness. Chatelet's sage and politic words as to Lucien,

spoken on the way home from the Vaudeville, were fresh in Louise's

memory. Every phrase was a prophecy, it seemed as if Lucien had set

himself to fulfil the predictions one by one. When Lucien and Mme. de

Bargeton had parted with their illusions concerning each other, the

luckless youth, with a destiny not unlike Rousseau's, went so far in

his predecessor's footsteps that he was captivated by the great lady

and smitten with Mme. d'Espard at first sight. Young men and men who

remember their young emotions can see that this was only what might

have been looked for. Mme. d'Espard with her dainty ways, her delicate

enunciation, and the refined tones of her voice; the fragile woman so

envied, of such high place and high degree, appeared before the poet

as Mme. de Bargeton had appeared to him in Angouleme. His fickle

nature prompted him to desire influence in that lofty sphere at once,

and the surest way to secure such influence was to possess the woman

who exerted it, and then everything would be his. He had succeeded at

Angouleme, why should he not succeed in Paris?

Involuntarily, and despite the novel counter fascination of the stage,

his eyes turned to the Celimene in her splendor; he glanced furtively

at her every moment; the longer he looked, the more he desired to look

at her. Mme. de Bargeton caught the gleam in Lucien's eyes, and saw

that he found the Marquise more interesting than the opera. If Lucien

had forsaken her for the fifty daughters of Danaus, she could have

borne his desertion with equanimity; but another glance--bolder, more

ardent and unmistakable than any before--revealed the state of

Lucien's feelings. She grew jealous, but not so much for the future as

for the past.

"He never gave me such a look," she thought. "Dear me! Chatelet was

right!"

Then she saw that she had made a mistake; and when a woman once begins

to repent of her weaknesses, she sponges out the whole past. Every one

of Lucien's glances roused her indignation, but to all outward

appearance she was calm. De Marsay came back in the interval, bringing

M. de Listomere with him; and that serious person and the young

coxcomb soon informed the Marquise that the wedding guest in his

holiday suit, whom she had the bad luck to have in her box, had as

much right to the appellation of Rubempre as a Jew to a baptismal

name. Lucien's father was an apothecary named Chardon. M. de

Rastignac, who knew all about Angouleme, had set several boxes

laughing already at the mummy whom the Marquise styled her cousin, and

at the Marquise's forethought in having an apothecary at hand to

sustain an artificial life with drugs. In short, de Marsay brought a

selection from the thousand-and-one jokes made by Parisians on the

spur of the moment, and no sooner uttered than forgotten. Chatelet was

at the back of it all, and the real author of this Punic faith.

Mme. d'Espard turned to Mme. de Bargeton, put up her fan, and said,

"My dear, tell me if your protege's name is really M. de Rubempre?"

"He has assumed his mother's name," said Anais, uneasily.

"But who was his father?"

"His father's name was Chardon."

"And what was this Chardon?"

"A druggist."

"My dear friend, I felt quite sure that all Paris could not be

laughing at any one whom I took up. I do not care to stay here when

wags come in in high glee because there is an apothecary's son in my

box. If you will follow my advice, we will leave it, and at once."

Mme. d'Espard's expression was insolent enough; Lucien was at a loss

to account for her change of countenance. He thought that his

waistcoat was in bad taste, which was true; and that his coat looked

like a caricature of the fashion, which was likewise true. He

discerned, in bitterness of soul, that he must put himself in the

hands of an expert tailor, and vowed that he would go the very next

morning to the most celebrated artist in Paris. On Monday he would

hold his own with the men in the Marquise's house.

Yet, lost in thought though he was, he saw the third act to an end,

and, with his eyes fixed on the gorgeous scene upon the stage, dreamed

out his dream of Mme. d'Espard. He was in despair over her sudden

coldness; it gave a strange check to the ardent reasoning through

which he advanced upon this new love, undismayed by the immense

difficulties in the way, difficulties which he saw and resolved to

conquer. He roused himself from these deep musings to look once more

at his new idol, turned his head, and saw that he was alone; he had

heard a faint rustling sound, the door closed--Madame d'Espard had

taken her cousin with her. Lucien was surprised to the last degree by

the sudden desertion; he did not think long about it, however, simply

because it was inexplicable.

When the carriage was rolling along the Rue de Richelieu on the way to

the Faubourg Saint-Honore, the Marquise spoke to her cousin in a tone

of suppressed irritation.

"My dear child, what are you thinking about? Pray wait till an

apothecary's son has made a name for himself before you trouble

yourself about him. The Duchesse de Chaulieu does not acknowledge

Canalis even now, and he is famous and a man of good family. This

young fellow is neither your son nor your lover, I suppose?" added the

haughty dame, with a keen, inquisitive glance at her cousin.

"How fortunate for me that I kept the little scapegrace at a

distance!" thought Madame de Bargeton.

"Very well," continued the Marquise, taking the expression in her

cousin's eyes for an answer, "drop him, I beg of you. Taking an

illustrious name in that way!--Why, it is a piece of impudence that

will meet with its desserts in society. It is his mother's name, I

dare say; but just remember, dear, that the King alone can confer, by

a special ordinance, the title of de Rubempre on the son of a daughter

of the house. If she made a _mesalliance_, the favor would be enormous,

only to be granted to vast wealth, or conspicuous services, or very

powerful influence. The young man looks like a shopman in his Sunday

suit; evidently he is neither wealthy nor noble; he has a fine head,

but he seems to me to be very silly; he has no idea what to do, and

has nothing to say for himself; in fact, he has no breeding. How came

you to take him up?"

Mme. de Bargeton renounced Lucien as Lucien himself had renounced her;

a ghastly fear lest her cousin should learn the manner of her journey

shot through her mind.

"Dear cousin, I am in despair that I have compromised you."

"People do not compromise me," Mme. d'Espard said, smiling; "I am only

thinking of you."

"But you have asked him to dine with you on Monday."

"I shall be ill," the Marquise said quickly; "you can tell him so, and

I shall leave orders that he is not to be admitted under either name."

During the interval Lucien noticed that every one was walking up and

down the lobby. He would do the same. In the first place, not one of

Mme. d'Espard's visitors recognized him nor paid any attention to him,

their conduct seemed nothing less than extraordinary to the provincial

poet; and, secondly, Chatelet, on whom he tried to hang, watched him

out of the corner of his eye and fought shy of him. Lucien walked to

and fro, watching the eddying crowd of men, till he felt convinced

that his costume was absurd, and he went back to his box, ensconced

himself in a corner, and stayed there till the end. At times he

thought of nothing but the magnificent spectacle of the ballet in the

great Inferno scene in the fifth act; sometimes the sight of the house

absorbed him, sometimes his own thoughts; he had seen society in

Paris, and the sight had stirred him to the depths.

"So this is my kingdom," he said to himself; "this is the world that I

must conquer."

As he walked home through the streets he thought over all that had

been said by Mme. d'Espard's courtiers; memory reproducing with

strange faithfulness their demeanor, their gestures, their manner of

coming and going.

Next day, towards noon, Lucien betook himself to Staub, the great

tailor of that day. Partly by dint of entreaties, and partly by virtue

of cash, Lucien succeeded in obtaining a promise that his clothes

should be ready in time for the great day. Staub went so far as to

give his word that a perfectly elegant coat, a waistcoat, and a pair

of trousers should be forthcoming. Lucien then ordered linen and

pocket-handkerchiefs, a little outfit, in short, of a linen-draper,

and a celebrated bootmaker measured him for shoes and boots. He bought

a neat walking cane at Verdier's; he went to Mme. Irlande for gloves

and shirt studs; in short, he did his best to reach the climax of

dandyism. When he had satisfied all his fancies, he went to the Rue

Neuve-de-Luxembourg, and found that Louise had gone out.

"She was dining with Mme. la Marquise d'Espard," her maid said, "and

would not be back till late."

Lucien dined for two francs at a restaurant in the Palais Royal, and

went to bed early. The next day was Sunday. He went to Louise's

lodging at eleven o'clock. Louise had not yet risen. At two o'clock he

returned once more.

"Madame cannot see anybody yet," reported Albertine, "but she gave me

a line for you."

"Cannot see anybody yet?" repeated Lucien. "But I am not anybody----"

"I do not know," Albertine answered very impertinently; and Lucien,

less surprised by Albertine's answer than by a note from Mme. de

Bargeton, took the billet, and read the following discouraging

lines:--

"Mme. d'Espard is not well; she will not be able to see you on Monday.

I am not feeling very well myself, but I am about to dress and go to

keep her company. I am in despair over this little disappointment; but

your talents reassure me, you will make your way without

charlatanism."

"And no signature!" Lucien said to himself. He found himself in the

Tuileries before he knew whither he was walking.

With the gift of second-sight which accompanies genius, he began to

suspect that the chilly note was but a warning of the catastrophe to

come. Lost in thought, he walked on and on, gazing at the monuments in

the Place Louis Quinze.

It was a sunny day; a stream of fine carriages went past him on the

way to the Champs Elysees. Following the direction of the crowd of

strollers, he saw the three or four thousand carriages that turn the

Champs Elysees into an improvised Longchamp on Sunday afternoons in

summer. The splendid horses, the toilettes, and liveries bewildered

him; he went further and further, until he reached the Arc de

Triomphe, then unfinished. What were his feelings when, as he

returned, he saw Mme. de Bargeton and Mme. d'Espard coming towards him

in a wonderfully appointed caleche, with a chasseur behind it in

waving plumes and that gold-embroidered green uniform which he knew

only too well. There was a block somewhere in the row, and the

carriages waited. Lucien beheld Louise transformed beyond recognition.

All the colors of her toilette had been carefully subordinated to her

complexion; her dress was delicious, her hair gracefully and

becomingly arranged, her hat, in exquisite taste, was remarkable even

beside Mme. d'Espard, that leader of fashion.

There is something in the art of wearing a hat that escapes

definition. Tilted too far to the back of the head, it imparts a bold

expression to the face; bring it too far forward, it gives you a

sinister look; tipped to one side, it has a jaunty air; a well-dressed

woman wears her hat exactly as she means to wear it, and exactly at

the right angle. Mme. de Bargeton had solved this curious problem at

sight. A dainty girdle outlined her slender waist. She had adopted her

cousin's gestures and tricks of manner; and now, as she sat by Mme.

d'Espard's side, she played with a tiny scent bottle that dangled by a

slender gold chain from one of her fingers, displayed a little

well-gloved hand without seeming to do so. She had modeled herself on

Mme. d'Espard without mimicking her; the Marquise had found a cousin

worthy of her, and seemed to be proud of her pupil.

The men and women on the footways all gazed at the splendid carriage,

with the bearings of the d'Espards and Blamont-Chauvrys upon the

panels. Lucien was amazed at the number of greetings received by the

cousins; he did not know that the "all Paris," which consists in some

score of salons, was well aware already of the relationship between

the ladies. A little group of young men on horseback accompanied the

carriage in the Bois; Lucien could recognize de Marsay and Rastignac

among them, and could see from their gestures that the pair of

coxcombs were complimenting Mme. de Bargeton upon her transformation.

Mme. d'Espard was radiant with health and grace. So her indisposition

was simply a pretext for ridding herself of him, for there had been no

mention of another day!

The wrathful poet went towards the caleche; he walked slowly, waited

till he came in full sight of the two ladies, and made them a bow.

Mme. de Bargeton would not see him; but the Marquise put up her

eyeglass, and deliberately cut him. He had been disowned by the

sovereign lords of Angouleme, but to be disowned by society in Paris

was another thing; the booby-squires by doing their utmost to mortify

Lucien admitted his power and acknowledged him as a man; for Mme.

d'Espard he had positively no existence. This was a sentence, it was a

refusal of justice. Poor poet! a deadly cold seized on him when he saw

de Marsay eying him through his glass; and when the Parisian lion let

that optical instrument fall, it dropped in so singular a fashion that

Lucien thought of the knife-blade of the guillotine.

The caleche went by. Rage and a craving for vengeance took possession

of his slighted soul. If Mme. de Bargeton had been in his power, he

could have cut her throat at that moment; he was a Fouquier-Tinville

gloating over the pleasure of sending Mme. d'Espard to the scaffold.

If only he could have put de Marsay to the torture with refinements of

savage cruelty! Canalis went by on horseback, bowing to the prettiest

women, his dress elegant, as became the most dainty of poets.

"Great heavens!" exclaimed Lucien. "Money, money at all costs! money

is the one power before which the world bends the knee." ("No!" cried

conscience, "not money, but glory; and glory means work! Work! that

was what David said.") "Great heavens! what am I doing here? But I

will triumph. I will drive along this avenue in a caleche with a

chasseur behind me! I will possess a Marquise d'Espard." And flinging

out the wrathful words, he went to Hurbain's to dine for two francs.

Next morning, at nine o'clock, he went to the Rue Neuve-de-Luxembourg

to upbraid Louise for her barbarity. But Mme. de Bargeton was not at

home to him, and not only so, but the porter would not allow him to go

up to her rooms; so he stayed outside in the street, watching the

house till noon. At twelve o'clock Chatelet came out, looked at Lucien

out of the corner of his eye, and avoided him.

Stung to the quick, Lucien hurried after his rival; and Chatelet,

finding himself closely pursued, turned and bowed, evidently intending

to shake him off by this courtesy.

"Spare me just a moment for pity's sake, sir," said Lucien; "I want

just a word or two with you. You have shown me friendship, I now ask

the most trifling service of that friendship. You have just come from

Mme. de Bargeton; how have I fallen into disgrace with her and Mme.

d'Espard?--please explain."

"M. Chardon, do you know why the ladies left you at the Opera that

evening?" asked Chatelet, with treacherous good-nature.

"No," said the poor poet.

"Well, it was M. de Rastignac who spoke against you from the

beginning. They asked him about you, and the young dandy simply said

that your name was Chardon, and not de Rubempre; that your mother was

a monthly nurse; that your father, when he was alive, was an

apothecary in L'Houmeau, a suburb of Angouleme; and that your sister,

a charming girl, gets up shirts to admiration, and is just about to be

married to a local printer named Sechard. Such is the world! You no

sooner show yourself than it pulls you to pieces.

"M. de Marsay came to Mme. d'Espard to laugh at you with her; so the

two ladies, thinking that your presence put them in a false position,

went out at once. Do not attempt to go to either house. If Mme. de

Bargeton continued to receive your visits, her cousin would have

nothing to do with her. You have genius; try to avenge yourself. The

world looks down upon you; look down in your turn upon the world. Take

refuge in some garret, write your masterpieces, seize on power of any

kind, and you will see the world at your feet. Then you can give back

the bruises which you have received, and in the very place where they

were given. Mme. de Bargeton will be the more distant now because she

has been friendly. That is the way with women. But the question now

for you is not how to win back Anais' friendship, but how to avoid

making an enemy of her. I will tell you of a way. She has written

letters to you; send all her letters back to her, she will be sensible

that you are acting like a gentleman; and at a later time, if you

should need her, she will not be hostile. For my own part, I have so

high an opinion of your future, that I have taken your part

everywhere; and if I can do anything here for you, you will always

find me ready to be of use."

The elderly beau seemed to have grown young again in the atmosphere of

Paris. He bowed with frigid politeness; but Lucien, woe-begone,

haggard, and undone, forgot to return the salutation. He went back to

his inn, and there found the great Staub himself, come in person, not

so much to try his customer's clothes as to make inquiries of the

landlady with regard to that customer's financial status. The report

had been satisfactory. Lucien had traveled post; Mme. de Bargeton

brought him back from Vaudeville last Thursday in her carriage. Staub

addressed Lucien as "Monsieur le Comte," and called his customer's

attention to the artistic skill with which he had brought a charming

figure into relief.

"A young man in such a costume has only to walk in the Tuileries," he

said, "and he will marry an English heiress within a fortnight."

Lucien brightened a little under the influences of the German tailor's

joke, the perfect fit of his new clothes, the fine cloth, and the

sight of a graceful figure which met his eyes in the looking-glass.

Vaguely he told himself that Paris was the capital of chance, and for

the moment he believed in chance. Had he not a volume of poems and a

magnificent romance entitled _The Archer of Charles IX._ in manuscript?

He had hope for the future. Staub promised the overcoat and the rest

of the clothes the next day.

The next day the bootmaker, linen-draper, and tailor all returned

armed each with his bill, which Lucien, still under the charm of

provincial habits, paid forthwith, not knowing how otherwise to rid

himself of them. After he had paid, there remained but three hundred

and sixty francs out of the two thousand which he had brought with him

from Angouleme, and he had been but one week in Paris! Nevertheless,

he dressed and went to take a stroll in the Terrassee des Feuillants.

He had his day of triumph. He looked so handsome and so graceful, he

was so well dressed, that women looked at him; two or three were so

much struck with his beauty, that they turned their heads to look

again. Lucien studied the gait and carriage of the young men on the

Terrasse, and took a lesson in fine manners while he meditated on his

three hundred and sixty francs.

That evening, alone in his chamber, an idea occurred to him which

threw a light on the problem of his existence at the Gaillard-Bois,

where he lived on the plainest fare, thinking to economize in this

way. He asked for his account, as if he meant to leave, and discovered

that he was indebted to his landlord to the extent of a hundred

francs. The next morning was spent in running around the Latin

Quarter, recommended for its cheapness by David. For a long while he

looked about till, finally, in the Rue de Cluny, close to the

Sorbonne, he discovered a place where he could have a furnished room

for such a price as he could afford to pay. He settled with his

hostess of the Gaillard-Bois, and took up his quarters in the Rue de

Cluny that same day. His removal only cost him the cab fare.

When he had taken possession of his poor room, he made a packet of

Mme. de Bargeton's letters, laid them on the table, and sat down to

write to her; but before he wrote he fell to thinking over that fatal

week. He did not tell himself that he had been the first to be

faithless; that for a sudden fancy he had been ready to leave his

Louise without knowing what would become of her in Paris. He saw none

of his own shortcomings, but he saw his present position, and blamed

Mme. de Bargeton for it. She was to have lighted his way; instead she

had ruined him. He grew indignant, he grew proud, he worked himself

into a paroxysm of rage, and set himself to compose the following

epistle:--

"What would you think, madame, of a woman who should take a fancy

to some poor and timid child full of the noble superstitions which

the grown man calls 'illusions;' and using all the charms of

woman's coquetry, all her most delicate ingenuity, should feign a

mother's love to lead that child astray? Her fondest promises, the

card-castles which raised his wonder, cost her nothing; she leads

him on, tightens her hold upon him, sometimes coaxing, sometimes

scolding him for his want of confidence, till the child leaves his

home and follows her blindly to the shores of a vast sea. Smiling,

she lures him into a frail skiff, and sends him forth alone and

helpless to face the storm. Standing safe on the rock, she laughs

and wishes him luck. You are that woman; I am that child.

"The child has a keepsake in his hands, something which might

betray the wrongs done by your beneficence, your kindness in

deserting him. You might have to blush if you saw him struggling

for life, and chanced to recollect that once you clasped him to

your breast. When you read these words the keepsake will be in

your own safe keeping; you are free to forget everything.

"Once you pointed out fair hopes to me in the skies, I awake to

find reality in the squalid poverty of Paris. While you pass, and

others bow before you, on your brilliant path in the great world,

I, I whom you deserted on the threshold, shall be shivering in the

wretched garret to which you consigned me. Yet some pang may

perhaps trouble your mind amid festivals and pleasures; you may

think sometimes of the child whom you thrust into the depths. If

so, madame, think of him without remorse. Out of the depths of his

misery the child offers you the one thing left to him--his

forgiveness in a last look. Yes, madame, thanks to you, I have

nothing left. Nothing! was not the world created from nothing?

Genius should follow the Divine example; I begin with God-like

forgiveness, but as yet I know not whether I possess the God-like

power. You need only tremble lest I should go astray; for you

would be answerable for my sins. Alas! I pity you, for you will

have no part in the future towards which I go, with work as my

guide."

After penning this rhetorical effusion, full of the sombre dignity

which an artist of one-and-twenty is rather apt to overdo, Lucien's

thoughts went back to them at home. He saw the pretty rooms which

David had furnished for him, at the cost of part of his little store,

and a vision rose before him of quiet, simple pleasures in the past.

Shadowy figures came about him; he saw his mother and Eve and David,

and heard their sobs over his leave-taking, and at that he began to

cry himself, for he felt very lonely in Paris, and friendless and

forlorn.