JUST OUT.

LE SOLITAIRE, by M. le Vicomte d'Arlincourt.

Third edition.

LEONIDE, by Victor Ducange; five volumes

12mo, printed on fine paper. 12 francs.

INDUCTIONS MORALES, by Keratry.

"They are lucky, that they are!" exclaimed Lucien.

The placard, a new and original idea of the celebrated Ladvocat, was

just beginning to blossom out upon the walls. In no long space Paris

was to wear motley, thanks to the exertions of his imitators, and the

Treasury was to discover a new source of revenue.

Anxiety sent the blood surging to Lucien's heart, as he who had been

so great at Angouleme, so insignificant of late in Paris, slipped past

the other houses, summoned up all his courage, and at last entered the

shop thronged with assistants, customers, and booksellers--"And

authors too, perhaps!" thought Lucien.

"I want to speak with M. Vidal or M. Porchon," he said, addressing a

shopman. He had read the names on the sign-board--VIDAL & PORCHON (it

ran), _French and foreign booksellers' agents_.

"Both gentlemen are engaged," said the man.

"I will wait."

Left to himself, the poet scrutinized the packages, and amused himself

for a couple of hours by scanning the titles of books, looking into

them, and reading a page or two here and there. At last, as he stood

leaning against a window, he heard voices, and suspecting that the

green curtains hid either Vidal or Porchon, he listened to the

conversation.

"Will you take five hundred copies of me? If you will, I will let you

have them at five francs, and give fourteen to the dozen."

"What does that bring them in at?"

"Sixteen sous less."

"Four francs four sous?" said Vidal or Porchon, whichever it was.

"Yes," said the vendor.

"Credit your account?" inquired the purchaser.

"Old humbug! you would settle with me in eighteen months' time, with

bills at a twelvemonth."

"No. Settled at once," returned Vidal or Porchon.

"Bills at nine months?" asked the publisher or author, who evidently

was selling his book.

"No, my dear fellow, twelve months," returned one of the firm of

booksellers' agents.

There was a pause.

"You are simply cutting my throat!" said the visitor.

"But in a year's time shall we have placed a hundred copies of

_Leonide_?" said the other voice. "If books went off as fast as the

publishers would like, we should be millionaires, my good sir; but

they don't, they go as the public pleases. There is some one now

bringing out an edition of Scott's novels at eighteen sous per volume,

three livres twelve sous per copy, and you want me to give you more

for your stale remainders? No. If you mean me to push this novel of

yours, you must make it worth my while.--Vidal!"

A stout man, with a pen behind his ear, came down from his desk.

"How many copies of Ducange did you place last journey?" asked Porchon

of his partner.

"Two hundred of _Le Petit Vieillard de Calais_, but to sell them I was

obliged to cry down two books which pay in less commission, and

uncommonly fine 'nightingales' they are now.

(A "nightingale," as Lucien afterwards learned, is a bookseller's name

for books that linger on hand, perched out of sight in the loneliest

nooks in the shop.)

"And besides," added Vidal, "Picard is bringing out some novels, as

you know. We have been promised twenty per cent on the published price

to make the thing a success."

"Very well, at twelve months," the publisher answered in a piteous

voice, thunderstruck by Vidal's confidential remark.

"Is it an offer?" Porchon inquired curtly.

"Yes." The stranger went out. After he had gone, Lucien heard Porchon

say to Vidal:

"We have three hundred copies on order now. We will keep him waiting

for his settlement, sell the _Leonides_ for five francs net, settlement

in six months, and----"

"And that will be fifteen hundred francs into our pockets," said

Vidal.

"Oh, I saw quite well that he was in a fix. He is giving Ducange four

thousand francs for two thousand copies."

Lucien cut Vidal short by appearing in the entrance of the den.

"I have the honor of wishing you a good day, gentlemen," he said,

addressing both partners. The booksellers nodded slightly.

"I have a French historical romance after the style of Scott. It is

called _The Archer of Charles IX._; I propose to offer it to you----"

Porchon glanced at Lucien with lustreless eyes, and laid his pen down

on the desk. Vidal stared rudely at the author.

"We are not publishing booksellers, sir; we are booksellers' agents,"

he said. "When we bring out a book ourselves, we only deal in

well-known names; and we only take serious literature besides--history

and epitomes."

"But my book is very serious. It is an attempt to set the struggle

between Catholics and Calvinists in its true light; the Catholics were

supporters of absolute monarchy, and the Protestants for a republic."

"M. Vidal!" shouted an assistant. Vidal fled.

"I don't say, sir, that your book is not a masterpiece," replied

Porchon, with scanty civility, "but we only deal in books that are

ready printed. Go and see somebody that buys manuscripts. There is old

Doguereau in the Rue du Coq, near the Louvre, he is in the romance

line. If you had only spoken sooner, you might have seen Pollet, a

competitor of Doguereau and of the publisher in the Wooden Galleries."

"I have a volume of poetry----"

"M. Porchon!" somebody shouted.

"_Poetry_!" Porchon exclaimed angrily. "For what do you take me?" he

added, laughing in Lucien's face. And he dived into the regions of the

back shop.

Lucien went back across the Pont Neuf absorbed in reflection. From all

that he understood of this mercantile dialect, it appeared that books,

like cotton nightcaps, were to be regarded as articles of merchandise

to be sold dear and bought cheap.

"I have made a mistake," said Lucien to himself; but, all the same,

this rough-and-ready practical aspect of literature made an impression

upon him.

In the Rue du Coq he stopped in front of a modest-looking shop, which

he had passed before. He saw the inscription DOGUEREAU, BOOKSELLER,

painted above it in yellow letters on a green ground, and remembered

that he had seen the name at the foot of the title-page of several

novels at Blosse's reading-room. In he went, not without the inward

trepidation which a man of any imagination feels at the prospect of a

battle. Inside the shop he discovered an odd-looking old man, one of

the queer characters of the trade in the days of the Empire.

Doguereau wore a black coat with vast square skirts, when fashion

required swallow-tail coats. His waistcoat was of some cheap material,

a checked pattern of many colors; a steel chain, with a copper key

attached to it, hung from his fob and dangled down over a roomy pair

of black nether garments. The booksellers' watch must have been the

size of an onion. Iron-gray ribbed stockings, and shoes with silver

buckles completed is costume. The old man's head was bare, and

ornamented with a fringe of grizzled locks, quite poetically scanty.

"Old Doguereau," as Porchon styled him, was dressed half like a

professor of belles-lettres as to his trousers and shoes, half like a

tradesman with respect to the variegated waistcoat, the stockings, and

the watch; and the same odd mixture appeared in the man himself. He

united the magisterial, dogmatic air, and the hollow countenance of

the professor of rhetoric with the sharp eyes, suspicious mouth, and

vague uneasiness of the bookseller.

"M. Doguereau?" asked Lucien.

"That is my name, sir."

"You are very young," remarked the bookseller.

"My age, sir, has nothing to do with the matter."

"True," and the old bookseller took up the manuscript. "Ah, begad! _The

Archer of Charles IX._, a good title. Let us see now, young man, just

tell me your subject in a word or two."

"It is a historical work, sir, in the style of Scott. The character of

the struggle between the Protestants and Catholics is depicted as a

struggle between two opposed systems of government, in which the

throne is seriously endangered. I have taken the Catholic side."

"Eh! but you have ideas, young man. Very well, I will read your book,

I promise you. I would rather have had something more in Mrs.

Radcliffe's style; but if you are industrious, if you have some notion

of style, conceptions, ideas, and the art of telling a story, I don't

ask better than to be of use to you. What do we want but good

manuscripts?"

"When can I come back?"

"I am going into the country this evening; I shall be back again the

day after to-morrow. I shall have read your manuscript by that time;

and if it suits me, we might come to terms that very day."

Seeing his acquaintance so easy, Lucien was inspired with the unlucky

idea of bringing the _Marguerites_ upon the scene.

"I have a volume of poetry as well, sir----" he began.

"Oh! you are a poet! Then I don't want your romance," and the old man

handed back the manuscript. "The rhyming fellows come to grief when

they try their hands at prose. In prose you can't use words that mean

nothing; you absolutely must say something."

"But Sir Walter Scott, sir, wrote poetry as well as----"

"That is true," said Doguereau, relenting. He guessed that the young

fellow before him was poor, and kept the manuscript. "Where do you

live? I will come and see you."

Lucien, all unsuspicious of the idea at the back of the old man's

head, gave his address; he did not see that he had to do with a

bookseller of the old school, a survival of the eighteenth century,

when booksellers tried to keep Voltaires and Montesquieus starving in

garrets under lock and key.

"The Latin Quarter. I am coming back that very way," said Doguereau,

when he had read the address.

"Good man!" thought Lucien, as he took his leave. "So I have met with

a friend to young authors, a man of taste who knows something. That is

the kind of man for me! It is just as I said to David--talent soon

makes its way in Paris."

Lucien went home again happy and light of heart; he dreamed of glory.

He gave not another thought to the ominous words which fell on his ear

as he stood by the counter in Vidal and Porchon's shop; he beheld

himself the richer by twelve hundred francs at least. Twelve hundred

francs! It meant a year in Paris, a whole year of preparation for the

work that he meant to do. What plans he built on that hope! What sweet

dreams, what visions of a life established on a basis of work!

Mentally he found new quarters, and settled himself in them; it would

not have taken much to set him making a purchase or two. He could only

stave off impatience by constant reading at Blosse's.

Two days later old Doguereau come to the lodgings of his budding Sir

Walter Scott. He was struck with the pains which Lucien had taken with

the style of this his first work, delighted with the strong contrasts

of character sanctioned by the epoch, and surprised at the spirited

imagination which a young writer always displays in the scheming of a

first plot--he had not been spoiled, thought old Daddy Doguereau. He

had made up his mind to give a thousand francs for _The Archer of

Charles IX._; he would buy the copyright out and out, and bind Lucien

by an engagement for several books, but when he came to look at the

house, the old fox thought better of it.

"A young fellow that lives here has none but simple tastes," said he

to himself; "he is fond of study, fond of work; I need not give more

than eight hundred francs."

"Fourth floor," answered the landlady, when he asked for M. Lucien de

Rubempre. The old bookseller, peering up, saw nothing but the sky

above the fourth floor.

"This young fellow," thought he, "is a good-looking lad; one might go

so far as to say that he is very handsome. If he were to make too much

money, he would only fall into dissipated ways, and then he would not

work. In the interests of us both, I shall only offer six hundred

francs, in coin though, not paper."

He climbed the stairs and gave three raps at the door. Lucien came to

open it. The room was forlorn in its bareness. A bowl of milk and a

penny roll stood on the table. The destitution of genius made an

impression on Daddy Doguereau.

"Let him preserve these simple habits of life, this frugality, these

modest requirements," thought he.--Aloud he said: "It is a pleasure to

me to see you. Thus, sir, lived Jean-Jacques, whom you resemble in

more ways than one. Amid such surroundings the fire of genius shines

brightly; good work is done in such rooms as these. This is how men of

letters should work, instead of living riotously in cafes and

restaurants, wasting their time and talent and our money."

He sat down.

"Your romance is not bad, young man. I was a professor of rhetoric

once; I know French history, there are some capital things in it. You

have a future before you, in fact."

"Oh! sir."

"No; I tell you so. We may do business together. I will buy your

romance."

Lucien's heart swelled and throbbed with gladness. He was about to

enter the world of literature; he should see himself in print at last.

"I will give you four hundred francs," continued Doguereau in honeyed

accents, and he looked at Lucien with an air which seemed to betoken

an effort of generosity.

"The volume?" queried Lucien.

"For the romance," said Doguereau, heedless of Lucien's surprise. "In

ready money," he added; "and you shall undertake to write two books

for me every year for six years. If the first book is out of print in

six months, I will give you six hundred francs for the others. So, if

you write two books each year, you will be making a hundred francs a

month; you will have a sure income, you will be well off. There are

some authors whom I only pay three hundred francs for a romance; I

give two hundred for translations of English books. Such prices would

have been exorbitant in the old days."

"Sir, we cannot possibly come to an understanding. Give me back my

manuscript, I beg," said Lucien, in a cold chill.

"Here it is," said the old bookseller. "You know nothing of business,

sir. Before an author's first book can appear, a publisher is bound to

sink sixteen hundred francs on the paper and the printing of it. It is

easier to write a romance than to find all that money. I have a

hundred romances in manuscript, and I have not a hundred and sixty

thousand francs in my cash box, alas! I have not made so much in all

these twenty years that I have been a bookseller. So you don't make a

fortune by printing romances, you see. Vidal and Porchon only take

them of us on conditions that grow harder and harder day by day. You

have only your time to lose, while I am obliged to disburse two

thousand francs. If we fail, _habent sua fata libelli_, I lose two

thousand francs; while, as for you, you simply hurl an ode at the

thick-headed public. When you have thought over this that I have the

honor of telling you, you will come back to me.--_You will come back to

me_!" he asserted authoritatively, by way of reply to a scornful

gesture made involuntarily by Lucien. "So far from finding a publisher

obliging enough to risk two thousand francs for an unknown writer, you

will not find a publisher's clerk that will trouble himself to look

through your screed. Now that I have read it I can point out a good

many slips in grammar. You have put _observer_ for _faire observer_ and

_malgre que_. _Malgre_ is a preposition, and requires an object."

Lucien appeared to be humiliated.

"When I see you again, you will have lost a hundred francs," he added.

"I shall only give a hundred crowns."

With that he rose and took his leave. On the threshold he said, "If

you had not something in you, and a future before you; if I did not

take an interest in studious youth, I should not have made you such a

handsome offer. A hundred francs per month! Think of it! After all, a

romance in a drawer is not eating its head off like a horse in a

stable, nor will it find you in victuals either, and that's a fact."

Lucien snatched up his manuscript and dashed it on the floor.

"I would rather burn it, sir!" he exclaimed.

"You have a poet's head," returned his senior.

Lucien devoured his bread and supped his bowl of milk, then he went

downstairs. His room was not large enough for him; he was turning

round and round in it like a lion in a cage at the Jardin des Plantes.

At the Bibliotheque Saint-Genevieve, whither Lucien was going, he had

come to know a stranger by sight; a young man of five-and-twenty or

thereabouts, working with the sustained industry which nothing can

disturb nor distract, the sign by which your genuine literary worker

is known. Evidently the young man had been reading there for some

time, for the librarian and attendants all knew him and paid him

special attention; the librarian would even allow him to take away

books, with which Lucien saw him return in the morning. In the

stranger student he recognized a brother in penury and hope.

Pale-faced and slight and thin, with a fine forehead hidden by masses

of black, tolerably unkempt hair, there was something about him that

attracted indifferent eyes: it was a vague resemblance which he bore

to portraits of the young Bonaparte, engraved from Robert Lefebvre's

picture. That engraving is a poem of melancholy intensity, of

suppressed ambition, of power working below the surface. Study the

face carefully, and you will discover genius in it and discretion, and

all the subtlety and greatness of the man. The portrait has speaking

eyes like a woman's; they look out, greedy of space, craving

difficulties to vanquish. Even if the name of Bonaparte were not

written beneath it, you would gaze long at that face.

Lucien's young student, the incarnation of this picture, usually wore

footed trousers, shoes with thick soles to them, an overcoat of coarse

cloth, a black cravat, a waistcoat of some gray-and-white material

buttoned to the chin, and a cheap hat. Contempt for superfluity in

dress was visible in his whole person. Lucien also discovered that the

mysterious stranger with that unmistakable stamp which genius sets

upon the forehead of its slaves was one of Flicoteaux's most regular

customers; he ate to live, careless of the fare which appeared to be

familiar to him, and drank water. Wherever Lucien saw him, at the

library or at Flicoteaux's, there was a dignity in his manner,

springing doubtless from the consciousness of a purpose that filled

his life, a dignity which made him unapproachable. He had the

expression of a thinker, meditation dwelt on the fine nobly carved

brow. You could tell from the dark bright eyes, so clear-sighted and

quick to observe, that their owner was wont to probe to the bottom of

things. He gesticulated very little, his demeanor was grave. Lucien

felt an involuntary respect for him.

Many times already the pair had looked at each other at the

Bibliotheque or at Flicoteaux's; many times they had been on the point

of speaking, but neither of them had ventured so far as yet. The

silent young man went off to the further end of the library, on the

side at right angles to the Place de la Sorbonne, and Lucien had no

opportunity of making his acquaintance, although he felt drawn to a

worker whom he knew by indescribable tokens for a character of no

common order. Both, as they came to know afterwards, were

unsophisticated and shy, given to fears which cause a pleasurable

emotion to solitary creatures. Perhaps they never would have been

brought into communication if they had not come across each other that

day of Lucien's disaster; for as Lucien turned into the Rue des Gres,

he saw the student coming away from the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve.

"The library is closed; I don't know why, monsieur," said he.

Tears were standing in Lucien's eyes; he expressed his thanks by one

of those gestures that speak more eloquently than words, and unlock

hearts at once when two men meet in youth. They went together along

the Rue des Gres towards the Rue de la Harpe.

"As that is so, I shall go to the Luxembourg for a walk," said Lucien.

"When you have come out, it is not easy to settle down to work again."

"No; one's ideas will not flow in the proper current," remarked the

stranger. "Something seems to have annoyed you, monsieur?"

"I have just had a queer adventure," said Lucien, and he told the

history of his visit to the Quai, and gave an account of his

subsequent dealings with the old bookseller. He gave his name and said

a word or two of his position. In one month or thereabouts he had

spent sixty francs on his board, thirty for lodging, twenty more

francs in going to the theatre, and ten at Blosse's reading room--one

hundred and twenty francs in all, and now he had just a hundred and

twenty francs in hand.

"Your story is mine, monsieur, and the story of ten or twelve hundred

young fellows besides who come from the country to Paris every year.

There are others even worse off than we are. Do you see that theatre?"

he continued, indicating the turrets of the Odeon. "There came one day

to lodge in one of the houses in the square a man of talent who had

fallen into the lowest depths of poverty. He was married, in addition

to the misfortunes which we share with him, to a wife whom he loved;

and the poorer or the richer, as you will, by two children. He was

burdened with debt, but he put his faith in his pen. He took a comedy

in five acts to the Odeon; the comedy was accepted, the management

arranged to bring it out, the actors learned their parts, the stage

manager urged on the rehearsals. Five several bits of luck, five

dramas to be performed in real life, and far harder tasks than the

writing of a five-act play. The poor author lodged in a garret; you

can see the place from here. He drained his last resources to live

until the first representation; his wife pawned her clothes, they all

lived on dry bread. On the day of the final rehearsal, the household

owed fifty francs in the Quarter to the baker, the milkwoman, and the

porter. The author had only the strictly necessary clothes--a coat, a

shirt, trousers, a waistcoat, and a pair of boots. He felt sure of his

success; he kissed his wife. The end of their troubles was at hand.

'At last! There is nothing against us now,' cried he.--'Yes, there is

fire,' said his wife; 'look, the Odeon is on fire!'--The Odeon was on

fire, monsieur. So do not you complain. You have clothes, you have

neither wife nor child, you have a hundred and twenty francs for

emergencies in your pocket, and you owe no one a penny.--Well, the

piece went through a hundred and fifty representations at the Theatre

Louvois. The King allowed the author a pension. 'Genius is patience,'

as Buffon said. And patience after all is a man's nearest approach to

Nature's processes of creation. What is Art, monsieur, but Nature

concentrated?"

By this time the young men were striding along the walks of the

Luxembourg, and in no long time Lucien learned the name of the

stranger who was doing his best to administer comfort. That name has

since grown famous. Daniel d'Arthez is one of the most illustrious of

living men of letters; one of the rare few who show us an example of

"a noble gift with a noble nature combined," to quote a poet's fine

thought.

"There is no cheap route to greatness," Daniel went on in his kind

voice. "The works of Genius are watered with tears. The gift that is

in you, like an existence in the physical world, passes through

childhood and its maladies. Nature sweeps away sickly or deformed

creatures, and Society rejects an imperfectly developed talent. Any

man who means to rise above the rest must make ready for a struggle

and be undaunted by difficulties. A great writer is a martyr who does

not die; that is all.--There is the stamp of genius on your forehead,"

d'Arthez continued, enveloping Lucien by a glance; "but unless you

have within you the will of genius, unless you are gifted with angelic

patience, unless, no matter how far the freaks of Fate have set you

from your destined goal, you can find the way to your Infinite as the

turtles in the Indies find their way to the ocean, you had better give

up at once."

"Then do you yourself expect these ordeals?" asked Lucien.

"Trials of every kind, slander and treachery, and effrontery and

cunning, the rivals who act unfairly, and the keen competition of the

literary market," his companion said resignedly. "What is a first

loss, if only your work was good?"

"Will you look at mine and give me your opinion?" asked Lucien.

"So be it," said d'Arthez. "I am living in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.

Desplein, one of the most illustrious men of genius in our time, the

greatest surgeon that the world has known, once endured the martyrdom

of early struggles with the first difficulties of a glorious career in

the same house. I think of that every night, and the thought gives me

the stock of courage that I need every morning. I am living in the

very room where, like Rousseau, he had no Theresa. Come in an hour's

time. I shall be in."

The poets grasped each other's hands with a rush of melancholy and

tender feeling inexpressible in words, and went their separate ways;

Lucien to fetch his manuscript, Daniel d'Arthez to pawn his watch and

buy a couple of faggots. The weather was cold, and his new-found

friend should find a fire in his room.

Lucien was punctual. He noticed at once that the house was of an even

poorer class than the Hotel de Cluny. A staircase gradually became

visible at the further end of a dark passage; he mounted to the fifth

floor, and found d'Arthez's room.

A bookcase of dark-stained wood, with rows of labeled cardboard cases

on the shelves, stood between the two crazy windows. A gaunt, painted

wooden bedstead, of the kind seen in school dormitories, a

night-table, picked up cheaply somewhere, and a couple of horsehair

armchairs, filled the further end of the room. The wall-paper, a

Highland plaid pattern, was glazed over with the grime of years.

Between the window and the grate stood a long table littered with

papers, and opposite the fireplace there was a cheap mahogany chest of

drawers. A second-hand carpet covered the floor--a necessary luxury,

for it saved firing. A common office armchair, cushioned with leather,

crimson once, but now hoary with wear, was drawn up to the table. Add

half-a-dozen rickety chairs, and you have a complete list of the

furniture. Lucien noticed an old-fashioned candle-sconce for a

card-table, with an adjustable screen attached, and wondered to see

four wax candles in the sockets. D'Arthez explained that he could not

endure the smell of tallow, a little trait denoting great delicacy of

sense perception, and the exquisite sensibility which accompanies it.

The reading lasted for seven hours. Daniel listened conscientiously,

forbearing to interrupt by word or comment--one of the rarest proofs

of good taste in a listener.

"Well?" queried Lucien, laying the manuscript on the chimney-piece.

"You have made a good start on the right way," d'Arthez answered

judicially, "but you must go over your work again. You must strike out

a different style for yourself if you do not mean to ape Sir Walter

Scott, for you have taken him for your model. You begin, for instance,

as he begins, with long conversations to introduce your characters,

and only when they have said their say does description and action

follow.

"This opposition, necessary in all work of a dramatic kind, comes

last. Just put the terms of the problem the other way round. Give

descriptions, to which our language lends itself so admirably, instead

of diffuse dialogue, magnificent in Scott's work, but colorless in

your own. Lead naturally up to your dialogue. Plunge straight into the

action. Treat your subject from different points of view, sometimes in

a side-light, sometimes retrospectively; vary your methods, in fact,

to diversify your work. You may be original while adapting the Scots

novelist's form of dramatic dialogue to French history. There is no

passion in Scott's novels; he ignores passion, or perhaps it was

interdicted by the hypocritical manners of his country. Woman for him

is duty incarnate. His heroines, with possibly one or two exceptions,

are all alike; he has drawn them all from the same model, as painters

say. They are, every one of them, descended from Clarissa Harlowe. And

returning continually, as he did, to the same idea of woman, how could

he do otherwise than produce a single type, varied only by degrees of

vividness in the coloring? Woman brings confusion into Society through

passion. Passion gives infinite possibilities. Therefore depict

passion; you have one great resource open to you, foregone by the

great genius for the sake of providing family reading for prudish

England. In France you have the charming sinner, the brightly-colored

life of Catholicism, contrasted with sombre Calvinistic figures on a

background of the times when passions ran higher than at any other

period of our history.

"Every epoch which has left authentic records since the time of

Charles the Great calls for at least one romance. Some require four or

five; the periods of Louis XIV., of Henry IV., of Francis I., for

instance. You would give us in this way a picturesque history of

France, with the costumes and furniture, the houses and their

interiors, and domestic life, giving us the spirit of the time instead

of a laborious narration of ascertained facts. Then there is further

scope for originality. You can remove some of the popular delusions

which disfigure the memories of most of our kings. Be bold enough in

this first work of yours to rehabilitate the great magnificent figure

of Catherine, whom you have sacrificed to the prejudices which still

cloud her name. And finally, paint Charles IX. for us as he really

was, and not as Protestant writers have made him. Ten years of

persistent work, and fame and fortune will be yours."

By this time it was nine o'clock; Lucien followed the example set in

secret by his future friend by asking him to dine at Eldon's, and

spent twelve francs at that restaurant. During the dinner Daniel

admitted Lucien into the secret of his hopes and studies. Daniel

d'Arthez would not allow that any writer could attain to a pre-eminent

rank without a profound knowledge of metaphysics. He was engaged in

ransacking the spoils of ancient and modern philosophy, and in the

assimilation of it all; he would be like Moliere, a profound

philosopher first, and a writer of comedies afterwards. He was

studying the world of books and the living world about him--thought

and fact. His friends were learned naturalists, young doctors of

medicine, political writers and artists, a number of earnest students

full of promise.

D'Arthez earned a living by conscientious and ill-paid work; he wrote

articles for encyclopaedias, dictionaries of biography and natural

science, doing just enough to enable him to live while he followed his

own bent, and neither more nor less. He had a piece of imaginative

work on hand, undertaken solely for the sake of studying the resources

of language, an important psychological study in the form of a novel,

unfinished as yet, for d'Arthez took it up or laid it down as the

humor took him, and kept it for days of great distress. D'Arthez's

revelations of himself were made very simply, but to Lucien he seemed

like an intellectual giant; and by eleven o'clock, when they left the

restaurant, he began to feel a sudden, warm friendship for this

nature, unconscious of its loftiness, this unostentatious worth.

Lucien took d'Arthez's advice unquestioningly, and followed it out to

the letter. The most magnificent palaces of fancy had been suddenly

flung open to him by a nobly-gifted mind, matured already by thought

and critical examinations undertaken for their own sake, not for

publication, but for the solitary thinker's own satisfaction. The

burning coal had been laid on the lips of the poet of Angouleme, a

word uttered by a hard student in Paris had fallen upon ground

prepared to receive it in the provincial. Lucien set about recasting

his work.

In his gladness at finding in the wilderness of Paris a nature

abounding in generous and sympathetic feeling, the distinguished

provincial did, as all young creatures hungering for affection are

wont to do; he fastened, like a chronic disease, upon this one friend

that he had found. He called for D'Arthez on his way to the

Bibliotheque, walked with him on fine days in the Luxembourg Gardens,

and went with his friend every evening as far as the door of his

lodging-house after sitting next to him at Flicoteaux's. He pressed

close to his friend's side as a soldier might keep by a comrade on the

frozen Russian plains.

During those early days of his acquaintance, he noticed, not without

chagrin, that his presence imposed a certain restraint on the circle

of Daniel's intimates. The talk of those superior beings of whom

d'Arthez spoke to him with such concentrated enthusiasm kept within

the bounds of a reserve but little in keeping with the evident warmth

of their friendships. At these times Lucien discreetly took his leave,

a feeling of curiosity mingling with the sense of something like pain

at the ostracism to which he was subjected by these strangers, who all

addressed each other by their Christian names. Each one of them, like

d'Arthez, bore the stamp of genius upon his forehead.

After some private opposition, overcome by d'Arthez without Lucien's

knowledge, the newcomer was at length judged worthy to make one of the

_cenacle_ of lofty thinkers. Henceforward he was to be one of a little

group of young men who met almost every evening in d'Arthez's room,

united by the keenest sympathies and by the earnestness of their

intellectual life. They all foresaw a great writer in d'Arthez; they

looked upon him as their chief since the loss of one of their number,

a mystical genius, one of the most extraordinary intellects of the

age. This former leader had gone back to his province for reasons on

which it serves no purpose to enter, but Lucien often heard them speak

of this absent friend as "Louis." Several of the group were destined

to fall by the way; but others, like d'Arthez, have since won all the

fame that was their due. A few details as to the circle will readily

explain Lucien's strong feeling of interest and curiosity.

One among those who still survive was Horace Bianchon, then a

house-student at the Hotel-Dieu; later, a shining light at the Ecole

de Paris, and now so well known that it is needless to give any

description of his appearance, genius, or character.

Next came Leon Giraud, that profound philosopher and bold theorist,

turning all systems inside out, criticising, expressing, and

formulating, dragging them all to the feet of his idol--Humanity;

great even in his errors, for his honesty ennobled his mistakes. An

intrepid toiler, a conscientious scholar, he became the acknowledged

head of a school of moralists and politicians. Time alone can

pronounce upon the merits of his theories; but if his convictions have

drawn him into paths in which none of his old comrades tread, none the

less he is still their faithful friend.

Art was represented by Joseph Bridau, one of the best painters among

the younger men. But for a too impressionable nature, which made havoc

of Joseph's heart, he might have continued the traditions of the great

Italian masters, though, for that matter, the last word has not yet

been said concerning him. He combines Roman outline with Venetian

color; but love is fatal to his work, love not merely transfixes his

heart, but sends his arrow through the brain, deranges the course of

his life, and sets the victim describing the strangest zigzags. If the

mistress of the moment is too kind or too cruel, Joseph will send into

the Exhibition sketches where the drawing is clogged with color, or

pictures finished under the stress of some imaginary woe, in which he

gave his whole attention to the drawing, and left the color to take

care of itself. He is a constant disappointment to his friends and the

public; yet Hoffmann would have worshiped him for his daring

experiments in the realms of art. When Bridau is wholly himself he is

admirable, and as praise is sweet to him, his disgust is great when

one praises the failures in which he alone discovers all that is

lacking in the eyes of the public. He is whimsical to the last degree.

His friends have seen him destroy a finished picture because, in his

eyes, it looked too smooth. "It is overdone," he would say; "it is

niggling work."

With his eccentric, yet lofty nature, with a nervous organization and

all that it entails of torment and delight, the craving for perfection

becomes morbid. Intellectually he is akin to Sterne, though he is not

a literary worker. There is an indescribable piquancy about his

epigrams and sallies of thought. He is eloquent, he knows how to love,

but the uncertainty that appears in his execution is a part of the

very nature of the man. The brotherhood loved him for the very

qualities which the philistine would style defects.

Last among the living comes Fulgence Ridal. No writer of our times

possesses more of the exuberant spirit of pure comedy than this poet,

careless of fame, who will fling his more commonplace productions to

theatrical managers, and keep the most charming scenes in the seraglio

of his brain for himself and his friends. Of the public he asks just

sufficient to secure his independence, and then declines to do

anything more. Indolent and prolific as Rossini, compelled, like great

poet-comedians, like Moliere and Rabelais, to see both sides of

everything, and all that is to be said both for and against, he is a

sceptic, ready to laugh at all things. Fulgence Ridal is a great

practical philosopher. His worldly wisdom, his genius for observation,

his contempt for fame ("fuss," as he calls it) have not seared a kind

heart. He is as energetic on behalf of another as he is careless where

his own interests are concerned; and if he bestirs himself, it is for

a friend. Living up to his Rabelaisian mask, he is no enemy to good

cheer, though he never goes out of his way to find it; he is

melancholy and gay. His friends dubbed him the "Dog of the Regiment."

You could have no better portrait of the man than his nickname.

Three more of the band, at least as remarkable as the friends who have

just been sketched in outline, were destined to fall by the way. Of

these, Meyraux was the first. Meyraux died after stirring up the

famous controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a great

question which divided the whole scientific world into two opposite

camps, with these two men of equal genius as leaders. This befell some

months before the death of the champion of rigorous analytical science

as opposed to the pantheism of one who is still living to bear an

honored name in Germany. Meyraux was the friend of that "Louis" of

whom death was so soon to rob the intellectual world.

With these two, both marked by death, and unknown to-day in spite of

their wide knowledge and their genius, stands a third, Michel

Chrestien, the great Republican thinker, who dreamed of European

Federation, and had no small share in bringing about the

Saint-Simonian movement of 1830. A politician of the calibre of

Saint-Just and Danton, but simple, meek as a maid, and brimful of

illusions and loving-kindness; the owner of a singing voice which

would have sent Mozart, or Weber, or Rossini into ecstasies, for his

singing of certain songs of Beranger's could intoxicate the heart in

you with poetry, or hope, or love--Michel Chrestien, poor as Lucien,

poor as Daniel d'Arthez, as all the rest of his friends, gained a

living with the haphazard indifference of a Diogenes. He indexed

lengthy works, he drew up prospectuses for booksellers, and kept his

doctrines to himself, as the grave keeps the secrets of the dead. Yet

the gay bohemian of intellectual life, the great statesman who might

have changed the face of the world, fell as a private soldier in the

cloister of Saint-Merri; some shopkeeper's bullet struck down one of

the noblest creatures that ever trod French soil, and Michel Chrestien

died for other doctrines than his own. His Federation scheme was more

dangerous to the aristocracy of Europe than the Republican propaganda;

it was more feasible and less extravagant than the hideous doctrines

of indefinite liberty proclaimed by the young madcaps who assume the

character of heirs of the Convention. All who knew the noble plebeian

wept for him; there is not one of them but remembers, and often

remembers, a great obscure politician.

Esteem and friendship kept the peace between the extremes of hostile

opinion and conviction represented in the brotherhood. Daniel d'Arthez

came of a good family in Picardy. His belief in the Monarchy was quite

as strong as Michel Chrestien's faith in European Federation. Fulgence

Ridal scoffed at Leon Giraud's philosophical doctrines, while Giraud

himself prophesied for d'Arthez's benefit the approaching end of

Christianity and the extinction of the institution of the family.

Michel Chrestien, a believer in the religion of Christ, the divine

lawgiver, who taught the equality of men, would defend the immortality

of the soul from Bianchon's scalpel, for Horace Bianchon was before

all things an analyst.

There was plenty of discussion, but no bickering. Vanity was not

engaged, for the speakers were also the audience. They would talk over

their work among themselves and take counsel of each other with the

delightful openness of youth. If the matter in hand was serious, the

opponent would leave his own position to enter into his friend's point

of view; and being an impartial judge in a matter outside his own

sphere, would prove the better helper; envy, the hideous treasure of

disappointment, abortive talent, failure, and mortified vanity, was

quite unknown among them. All of them, moreover, were going their

separate ways. For these reasons, Lucien and others admitted to their

society felt at their ease in it. Wherever you find real talent, you

will find frank good fellowship and sincerity, and no sort of

pretension, the wit that caresses the intellect and never is aimed at

self-love.

When the first nervousness, caused by respect, wore off, it was

unspeakably pleasant to make one of this elect company of youth.

Familiarity did not exclude in each a consciousness of his own value,

nor a profound esteem for his neighbor; and finally, as every member

of the circle felt that he could afford to receive or to give, no one

made a difficulty of accepting. Talk was unflagging, full of charm,

and ranging over the most varied topics; words light as arrows sped to

the mark. There was a strange contrast between the dire material

poverty in which the young men lived and the splendor of their

intellectual wealth. They looked upon the practical problems of

existence simply as matter for friendly jokes. The cold weather

happened to set in early that year. Five of d'Arthez's friends

appeared one day, each concealing firewood under his cloak; the same

idea had occurred to the five, as it sometimes happens that all the

guests at a picnic are inspired with the notion of bringing a pie as

their contribution.

All of them were gifted with the moral beauty which reacts upon the

physical form, and, no less than work and vigils, overlays a youthful

face with a shade of divine gold; purity of life and the fire of

thought had brought refinement and regularity into features somewhat

pinched and rugged. The poet's amplitude of brow was a striking

characteristic common to them all; the bright, sparkling eyes told of

cleanliness of life. The hardships of penury, when they were felt at

all, were born so gaily and embraced with such enthusiasm, that they

had left no trace to mar the serenity peculiar to the faces of the

young who have no grave errors laid to their charge as yet, who have

not stooped to any of the base compromises wrung from impatience of

poverty by the strong desire to succeed. The temptation to use any

means to this end is the greater since that men of letters are lenient

with bad faith and extend an easy indulgence to treachery.

There is an element in friendship which doubles its charm and renders

it indissoluble--a sense of certainty which is lacking in love. These

young men were sure of themselves and of each other; the enemy of one

was the enemy of all; the most urgent personal considerations would

have been shattered if they had clashed with the sacred solidarity of

their fellowship. All alike incapable of disloyalty, they could oppose

a formidable No to any accusation brought against the absent and

defend them with perfect confidence. With a like nobility of nature

and strength of feeling, it was possible to think and speak freely on

all matters of intellectual or scientific interest; hence the honesty

of their friendships, the gaiety of their talk, and with this

intellectual freedom of the community there was no fear of being

misunderstood; they stood upon no ceremony with each other; they

shared their troubles and joys, and gave thought and sympathy from

full hearts. The charming delicacy of feeling which makes the tale of

_Deux Amis_ a treasury for great souls, was the rule of their daily

life. It may be imagined, therefore, that their standard of

requirements was not an easy one; they were too conscious of their

worth, too well aware of their happiness, to care to trouble their

life with the admixture of a new and unknown element.

This federation of interests and affection lasted for twenty years

without a collision or disappointment. Death alone could thin the

numbers of the noble Pleiades, taking first Louis Lambert, later

Meyraux and Michel Chrestien.

When Michel Chrestien fell in 1832 his friends went, in spite of the

perils of the step, to find his body at Saint-Merri; and Horace

Bianchon, Daniel d'Arthez, Leon Giraud, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence

Ridal performed the last duties to the dead, between two political

fires. By night they buried their beloved in the cemetery of

Pere-Lachaise; Horace Bianchon, undaunted by the difficulties, cleared

them away one after another--it was he indeed who besought the

authorities for permission to bury the fallen insurgent and confessed

to his old friendship with the dead Federalist. The little group of

friends present at the funeral with those five great men will never

forget that touching scene.

As you walk in the trim cemetery you will see a grave purchased in

perpetuity, a grass-covered mound with a dark wooden cross above it,

and the name in large red letters--MICHEL CHRESTIEN. There is no other

monument like it. The friends thought to pay a tribute to the sternly

simple nature of the man by the simplicity of the record of his death.

So, in that chilly garret, the fairest dreams of friendship were

realized. These men were brothers leading lives of intellectual

effort, loyally helping each other, making no reservations, not even

of their worst thoughts; men of vast acquirements, natures tried in

the crucible of poverty. Once admitted as an equal among such elect

souls, Lucien represented beauty and poetry. They admired the sonnets

which he read to them; they would ask him for a sonnet as he would ask

Michel Chrestien for a song. And, in the desert of Paris, Lucien found

an oasis in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.

At the beginning of October, Lucien had spent the last of his money on

a little firewood; he was half-way through the task of recasting his

work, the most strenuous of all toil, and he was penniless. As for

Daniel d'Arthez, burning blocks of spent tan, and facing poverty like

a hero, not a word of complaint came from him; he was as sober as any

elderly spinster, and methodical as a miser. This courage called out

Lucien's courage; he had only newly come into the circle, and shrank

with invincible repugnance from speaking of his straits. One morning

he went out, manuscript in hand, and reached the Rue du Coq; he would

sell _The Archer of Charles IX._ to Doguereau; but Doguereau was out.

Lucien little knew how indulgent great natures can be to the

weaknesses of others. Every one of the friends had thought of the

peculiar troubles besetting the poetic temperament, of the prostration

which follows upon the struggle, when the soul has been overwrought by

the contemplation of that nature which it is the task of art to

reproduce. And strong as they were to endure their own ills, they felt

keenly for Lucien's distress; they guessed that his stock of money was

failing; and after all the pleasant evenings spent in friendly talk

and deep meditations, after the poetry, the confidences, the bold

flights over the fields of thought or into the far future of the

nations, yet another trait was to prove how little Lucien had

understood these new friends of his.

"Lucien, dear fellow," said Daniel, "you did not dine at Flicoteaux's

yesterday, and we know why."

Lucien could not keep back the overflowing tears.

"You showed a want of confidence in us," said Michel Chrestien; "we

shall chalk that up over the chimney, and when we have scored ten we

will----"

"We have all of us found a bit of extra work," said Bianchon; "for my

own part, I have been looking after a rich patient for Desplein;

d'Arthez has written an article for the _Revue Encyclopedique_;

Chrestien thought of going out to sing in the Champs Elysees of an

evening with a pocket-handkerchief and four candles, but he found a

pamphlet to write instead for a man who has a mind to go into

politics, and gave his employer six hundred francs worth of

Machiavelli; Leon Giraud borrowed fifty francs of his publisher,

Joseph sold one or two sketches; and Fulgence's piece was given on

Sunday, and there was a full house."

"Here are two hundred francs," said Daniel, "and let us say no more

about it."

"Why, if he is not going to hug us all as if we had done something

extraordinary!" cried Chrestien.

Lucien, meanwhile, had written to the home circle. His letter was a

masterpiece of sensibility and goodwill, as well as a sharp cry wrung

from him by distress. The answers which he received the next day will

give some idea of the delight that Lucien took in this living

encyclopedia of angelic spirits, each of whom bore the stamp of the

art or science which he followed:--

_David Sechard to Lucien._

"MY DEAR LUCIEN,--Enclosed herewith is a bill at ninety days,

payable to your order, for two hundred francs. You can draw on M.

Metivier, paper merchant, our Paris correspondent in the Rue

Serpente. My good Lucien, we have absolutely nothing. Eve has

undertaken the charge of the printing-house, and works at her task

with such devotion, patience, and industry, that I bless heaven

for giving me such an angel for a wife. She herself says that it

is impossible to send you the least help. But I think, my friend

now that you are started in so promising a way, with such great

and noble hearts for your companions, that you can hardly fail to

reach the greatness to which you were born, aided as you are by

intelligence almost divine in Daniel d'Arthez and Michel Chrestien

and Leon Giraud, and counseled by Meyraux and Bianchon and Ridal,

whom we have come to know through your dear letter. So I have

drawn this bill without Eve's knowledge, and I will contrive

somehow to meet it when the time comes. Keep on your way, Lucien;

it is rough, but it will be glorious. I can bear anything but the

thought of you sinking into the sloughs of Paris, of which I saw

so much. Have sufficient strength of mind to do as you are doing,

and keep out of scrapes and bad company, wild young fellows and

men of letters of a certain stamp, whom I learned to take at their

just valuation when I lived in Paris. Be a worthy compeer of the

divine spirits whom we have learned to love through you. Your life

will soon meet with its reward. Farewell, dearest brother; you

have sent transports of joy to my heart. I did not expect such

courage of you.

"DAVID."

_Eve Sechard to Lucien._

"DEAR,--your letter made all of us cry. As for the noble hearts to

whom your good angel surely led you, tell them that a mother and a

poor young wife will pray for them night and morning; and if the

most fervent prayers can reach the Throne of God, surely they will

bring blessings upon you all. Their names are engraved upon my

heart. Ah! some day I shall see your friends; I will go to Paris,

if I have to walk the whole way, to thank them for their

friendship for you, for to me the thought has been like balm to

smarting wounds. We are working like day laborers here, dear. This

husband of mine, the unknown great man whom I love more and more

every day, as I discover moment by moment the wealth of his

nature, leaves the printing-house more and more to me. Why, I

guess. Our poverty, yours, and ours, and our mother's, is

heartbreaking to him. Our adored David is a Prometheus gnawed by a

vulture, a haggard, sharp-beaked regret. As for himself, noble

fellow, he scarcely thinks of himself; he is hoping to make a

fortune for _us_. He spends his whole time in experiments in

paper-making; he begged me to take his place and look after the

business, and gives me as much help as his preoccupation allows.

Alas! I shall be a mother soon. That should have been a crowning

joy; but as things are, it saddens me. Poor mother! she has grown

young again; she has found strength to go back to her tiring

nursing. We should be happy if it were not for these money cares.

Old Father Sechard will not give his son a farthing. David went

over to see if he could borrow a little for you, for we were in

despair over your letter. 'I know Lucien,' David said; 'he will

lose his head and do something rash.'--I gave him a good scolding.

'My brother disappoint us in any way!' I told him, 'Lucien knows

that I should die of sorrow.'--Mother and I have pawned a few

things; David does not know about it, mother will redeem them as

soon as she has made a little money. In this way we have managed

to put together a hundred francs, which I am sending you by the

coach. If I did not answer your last letter, do not remember it

against me, dear; we were working all night just then. I have been

working like a man. Oh, I had no idea that I was so strong!

"Mme. de Bargeton is a heartless woman; she has no soul; even if

she cared for you no longer, she owed it to herself to use her

influence for you and to help you when she had torn you from us to

plunge you into that dreadful sea of Paris. Only by the special

blessing of Heaven could you have met with true friends there

among those crowds of men and innumerable interests. She is not

worth a regret. I used to wish that there might be some devoted

woman always with you, a second myself; but now I know that your

friends will take my place, and I am happy. Spread your wings, my

dear great genius, you will be our pride as well as our beloved.

"EVE."

"My darling," the mother wrote, "I can only add my blessing to all

that your sister says, and assure you that you are more in my

thoughts and in my prayers (alas!) than those whom I see daily;

for some hearts, the absent are always in the right, and so it is

with the heart of your mother."

So two days after the loan was offered so graciously, Lucien repaid

it. Perhaps life had never seemed so bright to him as at that moment;

but the touch of self-love in his joy did not escape the delicate

sensibility and searching eyes of his friends.

"Any one might think that you were afraid to owe us anything,"

exclaimed Fulgence.

"Oh! the pleasure that he takes in returning the money is a very

serious symptom to my mind," said Michel Chrestien. "It confirms some

observations of my own. There is a spice of vanity in Lucien."

"He is a poet," said d'Arthez.

"But do you grudge me such a very natural feeling?" asked Lucien.

"We should bear in mind that he did not hide it," said Leon Giraud;

"he is still open with us; but I am afraid that he may come to feel

shy of us."

"And why?" Lucien asked.

"We can read your thoughts," answered Joseph Bridau.

"There is a diabolical spirit in you that will seek to justify courses

which are utterly contrary to our principles. Instead of being a

sophist in theory, you will be a sophist in practice."

"Ah! I am afraid of that," said d'Arthez. "You will carry on admirable

debates in your own mind, Lucien, and take up a lofty position in

theory, and end by blameworthy actions. You will never be at one with

yourself."

"What ground have you for these charges?"

"Thy vanity, dear poet, is so great that it intrudes itself even into

thy friendships!" cried Fulgence. "All vanity of that sort is a

symptom of shocking egoism, and egoism poisons friendship."

"Oh! dear," said Lucien, "you cannot know how much I love you all."

"If you loved us as we love you, would you have been in such a hurry

to return the money which we had such pleasure in lending? or have

made so much of it?"

"We don't lend here; we give," said Joseph Bridau roughly.

"Don't think us unkind, dear boy," said Michel Chrestien; "we are

looking forward. We are afraid lest some day you may prefer a petty

revenge to the joys of pure friendship. Read Goethe's _Tasso_, the great

master's greatest work, and you will see how the poet-hero loved

gorgeous stuffs and banquets and triumph and applause. Very well, be

Tasso without his folly. Perhaps the world and its pleasures tempt

you? Stay with us. Carry all the cravings of vanity into the world of

imagination. Transpose folly. Keep virtue for daily wear, and let

imagination run riot, instead of doing, as d'Arthez says, thinking

high thoughts and living beneath them."

Lucien hung his head. His friends were right.

"I confess that you are stronger than I," he said, with a charming

glance at them. "My back and shoulders are not made to bear the burden

of Paris life; I cannot struggle bravely. We are born with different

temperaments and faculties, and you know better than I that faults and

virtues have their reverse side. I am tired already, I confess."

"We will stand by you," said d'Arthez; "it is just in these ways that

a faithful friendship is of use."

"The help that I have just received is precarious, and every one of us

is just as poor as another; want will soon overtake me again.

Chrestien, at the service of the first that hires him, can do nothing

with the publishers; Bianchon is quite out of it; d'Arthez's

booksellers only deal in scientific and technical books--they have no

connection with publishers of new literature; and as for Horace and

Fulgence Ridal and Bridau, their work lies miles away from the

booksellers. There is no help for it; I must make up my mind one way

or another."

"Stick by us, and make up your mind to it," said Bianchon. "Bear up

bravely, and trust in hard work."

"But what is hardship for you is death for me," Lucien put in quickly.

"Before the cock crows thrice," smiled Leon Giraud, "this man will

betray the cause of work for an idle life and the vices of Paris."

"Where has work brought you?" asked Lucien, laughing.

"When you start out from Paris for Italy, you don't find Rome

half-way," said Joseph Bridau. "You want your pease to grow ready

buttered for you."

The conversation ended in a joke, and they changed the subject.

Lucien's friends, with their perspicacity and delicacy of heart, tried

to efface the memory of the little quarrel; but Lucien knew

thenceforward that it was no easy matter to deceive them. He soon fell

into despair, which he was careful to hide from such stern mentors as

he imagined them to be; and the Southern temper that runs so easily

through the whole gamut of mental dispositions, set him making the

most contradictory resolutions.

Again and again he talked of making the plunge into journalism; and

time after time did his friends reply with a "Mind you do nothing of

the sort!"

"It would be the tomb of the beautiful, gracious Lucien whom we love

and know," said d'Arthez.

"You would not hold out for long between the two extremes of toil and

pleasure which make up a journalist's life, and resistance is the very

foundation of virtue. You would be so delighted to exercise your power

of life and death over the offspring of the brain, that you would be

an out-and-out journalist in two months' time. To be a journalist

--that is to turn Herod in the republic of letters. The man who will

say anything will end by sticking at nothing. That was Napoleon's

maxim, and it explains itself."

"But you would be with me, would you not?" asked Lucien.

"Not by that time," said Fulgence. "If you were a journalist, you

would no more think of us than the Opera girl in all her glory, with

her adorers and her silk-lined carriage, thinks of the village at home

and her cows and her sabots. You could never resist the temptation to

pen a witticism, though it should bring tears to a friend's eyes. I

come across journalists in theatre lobbies; it makes me shudder to see

them. Journalism is an inferno, a bottomless pit of iniquity and

treachery and lies; no one can traverse it undefiled, unless, like

Dante, he is protected by Virgil's sacred laurel."

But the more the set of friends opposed the idea of journalism, the

more Lucien's desire to know its perils grew and tempted him. He began

to debate within his own mind; was it not ridiculous to allow want to

find him a second time defenceless? He bethought him of the failure of

his attempts to dispose of his first novel, and felt but little

tempted to begin a second. How, besides, was he to live while he was

writing another romance? One month of privation had exhausted his

stock of patience. Why should he not do nobly that which journalists

did ignobly and without principle? His friends insulted him with their

doubts; he would convince them of his strength of mind. Some day,

perhaps, he would be of use to them; he would be the herald of their

fame!

"And what sort of a friendship is it which recoils from complicity?"

demanded he one evening of Michel Chrestien; Lucien and Leon Giraud

were walking home with their friend.

"We shrink from nothing," Michel Chrestien made reply. "If you were so

unlucky as to kill your mistress, I would help you to hide your crime,

and could still respect you; but if you were to turn spy, I should

shun you with abhorrence, for a spy is systematically shameless and

base. There you have journalism summed up in a sentence. Friendship

can pardon error and the hasty impulse of passion; it is bound to be

inexorable when a man deliberately traffics in his own soul, and

intellect, and opinions."

"Why cannot I turn journalist to sell my volume of poetry and the

novel, and then give up at once?"

"Machiavelli might do so, but not Lucien de Rubempre," said Leon

Giraud.

"Very well," exclaimed Lucien; "I will show you that I can do as much

as Machiavelli."

"Oh!" cried Michel, grasping Leon's hand, "you have done it, Leon.

--Lucien," he continued, "you have three hundred francs in hand; you

can live comfortably for three months; very well, then, work hard and

write another romance. D'Arthez and Fulgence will help you with the

plot; you will improve, you will be a novelist. And I, meanwhile, will

enter one of those _lupanars_ of thought; for three months I will be a

journalist. I will sell your books to some bookseller or other by

attacking his publications; I will write the articles myself; I will

get others for you. We will organize a success; you shall be a great

man, and still remain our Lucien."

"You must despise me very much, if you think that I should perish

while you escape," said the poet.

"O Lord, forgive him; it is a child!" cried Michel Chrestien.

When Lucien's intellect had been stimulated by the evenings spent in

d'Arthez's garret, he had made some study of the jokes and articles in

the smaller newspapers. He was at least the equal, he felt, of the

wittiest contributors; in private he tried some mental gymnastics of

the kind, and went out one morning with the triumphant idea of finding

some colonel of such light skirmishers of the press and enlisting in

their ranks. He dressed in his best and crossed the bridges, thinking

as he went that authors, journalists, and men of letters, his future

comrades, in short, would show him rather more kindness and

disinterestedness than the two species of booksellers who had so

dashed his hopes. He should meet with fellow-feeling, and something of

the kindly and grateful affection which he found in the _cenacle_ of the

Rue des Quatre-Vents. Tormented by emotion, consequent upon the

presentiments to which men of imagination cling so fondly, half

believing, half battling with their belief in them, he arrived in the

Rue Saint-Fiacre off the Boulevard Montmartre. Before a house,

occupied by the offices of a small newspaper, he stopped, and at the

sight of it his heart began to throb as heavily as the pulses of a

youth upon the threshold of some evil haunt.

Nevertheless, upstairs he went, and found the offices in the low

_entresol_ between the ground floor and the first story. The first room

was divided down the middle by a partition, the lower half of solid

wood, the upper lattice work to the ceiling. In this apartment Lucien

discovered a one-armed pensioner supporting several reams of paper on

his head with his remaining hand, while between his teeth he held the

passbook which the Inland Revenue Department requires every newspaper

to produce with each issue. This ill-favored individual, owner of a

yellow countenance covered with red excrescences, to which he owed his

nickname of "Coloquinte," indicated a personage behind the lattice as

the Cerberus of the paper. This was an elderly officer with a medal on

his chest and a silk skull-cap on his head; his nose was almost hidden

by a pair of grizzled moustaches, and his person was hidden as

completely in an ample blue overcoat as the body of the turtle in its

carapace.

"From what date do you wish your subscription to commence, sir?"

inquired the Emperor's officer.

"I did not come about a subscription," returned Lucien. Looking about

him, he saw a placard fastened on a door, corresponding to the one by

which he had entered, and read the words--EDITOR'S OFFICE, and below,

in smaller letters, _No admittance except on business_.

"A complaint, I expect?" replied the veteran. "Ah! yes; we have been

hard on Mariette. What would you have? I don't know the why and

wherefore of it yet.--But if you want satisfaction, I am ready for

you," he added, glancing at a collection of small arms and foils

stacked in a corner, the armory of the modern warrior.

"That was still further from my intention, sir. I have come to speak

to the editor."

"Nobody is ever here before four o'clock."

"Look you here, Giroudeau, old chap," remarked a voice, "I make it

eleven columns; eleven columns at five francs apiece is fifty-five

francs, and I have only been paid forty; so you owe me another fifteen

francs, as I have been telling you."

These words proceeded from a little weasel-face, pallid and

semi-transparent as the half-boiled white of an egg; two slits of eyes

looked out of it, mild blue in tint, but appallingly malignant in

expression; and the owner, an insignificant young man, was completely

hidden by the veteran's opaque person. It was a blood-curdling voice,

a sound between the mewing of a cat and the wheezy chokings of a

hyena.

"Yes, yes, my little militiaman," retorted he of the medal, "but you

are counting the headings and white lines. I have Finot's instructions

to add up the totals of the lines, and to divide them by the proper

number for each column; and after I performed that concentrating

operation on your copy, there were three columns less."

"He doesn't pay for the blanks, the Jew! He reckons them in though

when he sends up the total of his work to his partner, and he gets

paid for them too. I will go and see Etienne Lousteau, Vernou----"

"I cannot go beyond my orders, my boy," said the veteran. "What! do

you cry out against your foster-mother for a matter of fifteen francs?

you that turn out an article as easily as I smoke a cigar. Fifteen

francs! why, you will give a bowl of punch to your friends, or win an

extra game of billiards, and there's an end of it!"

"Finot's savings will cost him very dear," said the contributor as he

took his departure.

"Now, would not anybody think that he was Rousseau and Voltaire rolled

in one?" the cashier remarked to himself as he glanced at Lucien.

"I will come in again at four, sir," said Lucien.

While the argument proceeded, Lucien had been looking about him. He

saw upon the walls the portraits of Benjamin Constant, General Foy,

and the seventeen illustrious orators of the Left, interspersed with

caricatures at the expense of the Government; but he looked more

particularly at the door of the sanctuary where, no doubt, the paper

was elaborated, the witty paper that amused him daily, and enjoyed the

privilege of ridiculing kings and the most portentous events, of

calling anything and everything in question with a jest. Then he

sauntered along the boulevards. It was an entirely novel amusement;

and so agreeable did he find it, that, looking at the turret clocks,

he saw the hour hands were pointing to four, and only then remembered

that he had not breakfasted.

He went at once in the direction of the Rue Saint-Fiacre, climbed the

stair, and opened the door.

The veteran officer was absent; but the old pensioner, sitting on a

pile of stamped papers, was munching a crust and acting as sentinel

resignedly. Coloquinte was as much accustomed to his work in the

office as to the fatigue duty of former days, understanding as much or

as little about it as the why and wherefore of forced marches made by

the Emperor's orders. Lucien was inspired with the bold idea of

deceiving that formidable functionary. He settled his hat on his head,

and walked into the editor's office as if he were quite at home.

Looking eagerly about him, he beheld a round table covered with a

green cloth, and half-a-dozen cherry-wood chairs, newly reseated with

straw. The colored brick floor had not been waxed, but it was clean;

so clean that the public, evidently, seldom entered the room. There

was a mirror above the chimney-piece, and on the ledge below, amid a

sprinkling of visiting-cards, stood a shopkeeper's clock, smothered

with dust, and a couple of candlesticks with tallow dips thrust into

their sockets. A few antique newspapers lay on the table beside an

inkstand containing some black lacquer-like substance, and a

collection of quill pens twisted into stars. Sundry dirty scraps of

paper, covered with almost undecipherable hieroglyphs, proved to be

manuscript articles torn across the top by the compositor to check off

the sheets as they were set up. He admired a few rather clever

caricatures, sketched on bits of brown paper by somebody who evidently

had tried to kill time by killing something else to keep his hand in.

Other works of art were pinned in the cheap sea-green wall-paper.

These consisted of nine pen-and-ink illustrations for _Le Solitaire_.

The work had attained to such an unheard-of European popularity, that

journalists evidently were tired of it.--"The Solitary makes his first

appearance in the provinces; sensation among the women.--The Solitary

perused at a chateau.--Effect of the Solitary on domestic animals.

--The Solitary explained to savage tribes, with the most brilliant

results.--The Solitary translated into Chinese and presented by the

author to the Emperor at Pekin.--The Mont Sauvage, Rape of Elodie."

--(Lucien though this caricature very shocking, but he could not help

laughing at it.)--"The Solitary under a canopy conducted in triumphal

procession by the newspapers.--The Solitary breaks the press to

splinters, and wounds the printers.--Read backwards, the superior

beauties of the Solitary produce a sensation at the Academie."--On a

newspaper-wrapper Lucien noticed a sketch of a contributor holding out

his hat, and beneath it the words, "Finot! my hundred francs," and a

name, since grown more notorious than famous.

Between the window and the chimney-piece stood a writing-table, a

mahogany armchair, and a waste-paper basket on a strip of hearth-rug;

the dust lay thick on all these objects. There were short curtains in

the windows. About a score of new books lay on the writing-table,

deposited there apparently during the day, together with prints,

music, snuff-boxes of the "Charter" pattern, a copy of the ninth

edition of _Le Solitaire_ (the great joke of the moment), and some ten

unopened letters.

Lucien had taken stock of this strange furniture, and made reflections

of the most exhaustive kind upon it, when, the clock striking five, he

returned to question the pensioner. Coloquinte had finished his crust,

and was waiting with the patience of a commissionaire, for the man of

medals, who perhaps was taking an airing on the boulevard.

At this conjuncture the rustle of a dress sounded on the stair, and

the light unmistakable footstep of a woman on the threshold. The

newcomer was passably pretty. She addressed herself to Lucien.

"Sir," she said, "I know why you cry up Mlle. Virginie's hats so much;

and I have come to put down my name for a year's subscription in the

first place; but tell me your conditions----"

"I am not connected with the paper, madame."

"Oh!"

"A subscription dating from October?" inquired the pensioner.

"What does the lady want to know?" asked the veteran, reappearing on

the scene.

The fair milliner and the retired military man were soon deep in

converse; and when Lucien, beginning to lose patience, came back to

the first room, he heard the conclusion of the matter.

"Why, I shall be delighted, quite delighted, sir. Mlle. Florentine can

come to my shop and choose anything she likes. Ribbons are in my

department. So it is all quite settled. You will say no more about

Virginie, a botcher that cannot design a new shape, while I have ideas

of my own, I have."

Lucien heard a sound as of coins dropping into a cashbox, and the

veteran began to make up his books for the day.

"I have been waiting here for an hour, sir," Lucien began, looking not

a little annoyed.

"And 'they' have not come yet!" exclaimed Napoleon's veteran, civilly

feigning concern. "I am not surprised at that. It is some time since I

have seen 'them' here. It is the middle of the month, you see. Those

fine fellows only turn up on pay days--the 29th or the 30th."

"And M. Finot?" asked Lucien, having caught the editor's name.

"He is in the Rue Feydeau, that's where he lives. Coloquinte, old

chap, just take him everything that has come in to-day when you go

with the paper to the printers."

"Where is the newspaper put together?" Lucien said to himself.

"The newspaper?" repeated the officer, as he received the rest of the

stamp money from Coloquinte, "the newspaper?--broum! broum!--(Mind you

are round at the printers' by six o'clock to-morrow, old chap, to send

off the porters.)--The newspaper, sir, is written in the street, at

the writers' houses, in the printing-office between eleven and twelve

o'clock at night. In the Emperor's time, sir, these shops for spoiled

paper were not known. Oh! he would have cleared them out with four men

and a corporal; they would not have come over _him_ with their talk. But

that is enough of prattling. If my nephew finds it worth his while,

and so long as they write for the son of the Other (broum! broum!)

----after all, there is no harm in that. Ah! by the way, subscribers

don't seem to me to be advancing in serried columns; I shall leave my

post."

"You seem to know all about the newspaper, sir," Lucien began.

"From a business point of view, broum! broum!" coughed the soldier,

clearing his throat. "From three to five francs per column, according

to ability.--Fifty lines to a column, forty letters to a line; no

blanks; there you are! As for the staff, they are queer fish, little

youngsters whom I wouldn't take on for the commissariat; and because

they make fly tracks on sheets of white paper, they look down,

forsooth, on an old Captain of Dragoons of the Guard, that retired

with a major's rank after entering every European capital with

Napoleon."

The soldier of Napoleon brushed his coat, and made as if he would go

out, but Lucien, swept to the door, had courage enough to make a

stand.

"I came to be a contributor of the paper," he said. "I am full of

respect, I vow and declare, for a captain of the Imperial Guard, those

men of bronze----"

"Well said, my little civilian, there are several kinds of

contributors; which kind do you wish to be?" replied the trooper,

bearing down on Lucien, and descending the stairs. At the foot of the

flight he stopped, but it was only to light a cigar at the porter's

box.

"If any subscribers come, you see them and take note of them, Mother

Chollet.--Simply subscribers, never know anything but subscribers," he

added, seeing that Lucien followed him. "Finot is my nephew; he is the

only one of my family that has done anything to relieve me in my

position. So when anybody comes to pick a quarrel with Finot, he finds

old Giroudeau, Captain of the Dragoons of the Guard, that set out as a

private in a cavalry regiment in the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, and

was fencing-master for five years to the First Hussars, army of Italy!

One, two, and the man that had any complaints to make would be turned

off into the dark," he added, making a lunge. "Now writers, my boy,

are in different corps; there is the writer who writes and draws his

pay; there is the writer who writes and gets nothing (a volunteer we

call him); and, lastly, there is the writer who writes nothing, and he

is by no means the stupidest, for he makes no mistakes; he gives

himself out for a literary man, he is on the paper, he treats us to

dinners, he loafs about the theatres, he keeps an actress, he is very

well off. What do you mean to be?"

"The man that does good work and gets good pay."

"You are like the recruits. They all want to be marshals of France.

Take old Giroudeau's word for it, and turn right about, in

double-quick time, and go and pick up nails in the gutter like that

good fellow yonder; you can tell by the look of him that he has been

in the army.--Isn't it a shame that an old soldier who has walked into

the jaws of death hundreds of times should be picking up old iron in

the streets of Paris? Ah! God A'mighty! 'twas a shabby trick to desert

the Emperor.--Well, my boy, the individual you saw this morning has

made his forty francs a month. Are you going to do better? And,

according to Finot, he is the cleverest man on the staff."

"When you enlisted in the Sambre-et-Meuse, did they talk about

danger?"

"Rather."

"Very well?"

"Very well. Go and see my nephew Finot, a good fellow, as good a

fellow as you will find, if you can find him, that is, for he is like

a fish, always on the move. In his way of business, there is no

writing, you see, it is setting others to write. That sort like

gallivanting about with actresses better than scribbling on sheets of

paper, it seems. Oh! they are queer customers, they are. Hope I may

have the honor of seeing you again."

With that the cashier raised his formidable loaded cane, one of the

defenders of Germainicus, and walked off, leaving Lucien in the

street, as much bewildered by this picture of the newspaper world as

he had formerly been by the practical aspects of literature at Messrs.

Vidal and Porchon's establishment.

Ten several times did Lucien repair to the Rue Feydeau in search of

Andoche Finot, and ten times he failed to find that gentleman. He went

first thing in the morning; Finot had not come in. At noon, Finot had

gone out; he was breakfasting at such and such a cafe. At the cafe, in

answer to inquiries of the waitress, made after surmounting

unspeakable repugnance, Lucien heard that Finot had just left the

place. Lucien, at length tired out, began to regard Finot as a

mythical and fabulous character; it appeared simpler to waylay Etienne

Lousteau at Flicoteaux's. That youthful journalist would, doubtless,

explain the mysteries that enveloped the paper for which he wrote.

Since the day, a hundred times blessed, when Lucien made the

acquaintance of Daniel d'Arthez, he had taken another seat at

Flicoteaux's. The two friends dined side by side, talking in lowered

voices of the higher literature, of suggested subjects, and ways of

presenting, opening up, and developing them. At the present time

Daniel d'Arthez was correcting the manuscript of _The Archer of Charles

IX._ He reconstructed whole chapters, and wrote the fine passages found

therein, as well as the magnificent preface, which is, perhaps, the

best thing in the book, and throws so much light on the work of the

young school of literature. One day it so happened that Daniel had

been waiting for Lucien, who now sat with his friend's hand in his

own, when he saw Etienne Lousteau turn the door-handle. Lucien

instantly dropped Daniel's hand, and told the waiter that he would

dine at his old place by the counter. D'Arthez gave Lucien a glance of

divine kindness, in which reproach was wrapped in forgiveness. The

glance cut the poet to the quick; he took Daniel's hand and grasped it

anew.

"It is an important question of business for me; I will tell you about

it afterwards," said he.

Lucien was in his old place by the time that Lousteau reached the

table; as the first comer, he greeted his acquaintance; they soon

struck up a conversation, which grew so lively that Lucien went off in

search of the manuscript of the _Marguerites_, while Lousteau finished

his dinner. He had obtained leave to lay his sonnets before the

journalist, and mistook the civility of the latter for willingness to

find him a publisher, or a place on the paper. When Lucien came

hurrying back again, he saw d'Arthez resting an elbow on the table in

a corner of the restaurant, and knew that his friend was watching him

with melancholy eyes, but he would not see d'Arthez just then; he felt

the sharp pangs of poverty, the goadings of ambition, and followed

Lousteau.

In the late afternoon the journalist and the neophyte went to the

Luxembourg, and sat down under the trees in that part of the gardens

which lies between the broad Avenue de l'Observatoire and the Rue de

l'Ouest. The Rue de l'Ouest at that time was a long morass, bounded by

planks and market-gardens; the houses were all at the end nearest the

Rue de Vaugirard; and the walk through the gardens was so little

frequented, that at the hour when Paris dines, two lovers might fall

out and exchange the earnest of reconciliation without fear of

intruders. The only possible spoil-sport was the pensioner on duty at

the little iron gate on the Rue de l'Ouest, if that gray-headed

veteran should take it into his head to lengthen his monotonous beat.

There, on a bench beneath the lime-trees, Etienne Lousteau sat and

listened to sample-sonnets from the _Marguerites_.

Etienne Lousteau, after a two-years' apprenticeship, was on the staff

of a newspaper; he had his foot in the stirrup; he reckoned some of

the celebrities of the day among his friends; altogether, he was an

imposing personage in Lucien's eyes. Wherefore, while Lucien untied

the string about the _Marguerites_, he judged it necessary to make some

sort of preface.

"The sonnet, monsieur," said he, "is one of the most difficult forms

of poetry. It has fallen almost entirely into disuse. No Frenchman can

hope to rival Petrarch; for the language in which the Italian wrote,

being so infinitely more pliant than French, lends itself to play of

thought which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression)

rejects. So it seemed to me that a volume of sonnets would be

something quite new. Victor Hugo has appropriated the old, Canalis

writes lighter verse, Beranger has monopolized songs, Casimir

Delavigne has taken tragedy, and Lamartine the poetry of meditation."

"Are you a 'Classic' or a 'Romantic'?" inquired Lousteau.

Lucien's astonishment betrayed such complete ignorance of the state of

affairs in the republic of letters, that Lousteau thought it necessary

to enlighten him.

"You have come up in the middle of a pitched battle, my dear fellow;

you must make your decision at once. Literature is divided, in the

first place, into several zones, but our great men are ranged in two

hostile camps. The Royalists are 'Romantics,' the Liberals are

'Classics.' The divergence of taste in matters literary and divergence

of political opinion coincide; and the result is a war with weapons of

every sort, double-edged witticisms, subtle calumnies and nicknames _a

outrance_, between the rising and the waning glory, and ink is shed in

torrents. The odd part of it is that the Royalist-Romantics are all

for liberty in literature, and for repealing laws and conventions;

while the Liberal-Classics are for maintaining the unities, the

Alexandrine, and the classical theme. So opinions in politics on

either side are directly at variance with literary taste. If you are

eclectic, you will have no one for you. Which side do you take?"

"Which is the winning side?"

"The Liberal newspapers have far more subscribers than the Royalist

and Ministerial journals; still, though Canalis is for Church and

King, and patronized by the Court and the clergy, he reaches other

readers.--Pshaw! sonnets date back to an epoch before Boileau's time,"

said Etienne, seeing Lucien's dismay at the prospect of choosing

between two banners. "Be a Romantic. The Romantics are young men, and

the Classics are pedants; the Romantics will gain the day."

The word "pedant" was the latest epithet taken up by Romantic

journalism to heap confusion on the Classical faction.

Lucien began to read, choosing first of all the title-sonnets.