PART II

The Wooden Galleries of the Palais Royal used to be one of the most

famous sights of Paris. Some description of the squalid bazar will not

be out of place; for there are few men of forty who will not take an

interest in recollections of a state of things which will seem

incredible to a younger generation.

The great dreary, spacious Galerie d'Orleans, that flowerless

hothouse, as yet was not; the space upon which it now stands was

covered with booths; or, to be more precise, with small, wooden dens,

pervious to the weather, and dimly illuminated on the side of the

court and the garden by borrowed lights styled windows by courtesy,

but more like the filthiest arrangements for obscuring daylight to be

found in little wineshops in the suburbs.

The Galleries, parallel passages about twelve feet in height, were

formed by a triple row of shops. The centre row, giving back and front

upon the Galleries, was filled with the fetid atmosphere of the place,

and derived a dubious daylight through the invariably dirty windows of

the roof; but so thronged were these hives, that rents were

excessively high, and as much as a thousand crowns was paid for a

space scarce six feet by eight. The outer rows gave respectively upon

the garden and the court, and were covered on that side by a slight

trellis-work painted green, to protect the crazy plastered walls from

continual friction with the passers-by. In a few square feet of earth

at the back of the shops, strange freaks of vegetable life unknown to

science grew amid the products of various no less flourishing

industries. You beheld a rosebush capped with printed paper in such a

sort that the flowers of rhetoric were perfumed by the cankered

blossoms of that ill-kept, ill-smelling garden. Handbills and ribbon

streamers of every hue flaunted gaily among the leaves; natural

flowers competed unsuccessfully for an existence with odds and ends of

millinery. You discovered a knot of ribbon adorning a green tuft; the

dahlia admired afar proved on a nearer view to be a satin rosette.

The Palais seen from the court or from the garden was a fantastic

sight, a grotesque combination of walls of plaster patchwork which had

once been whitewashed, of blistered paint, heterogeneous placards, and

all the most unaccountable freaks of Parisian squalor; the green

trellises were prodigiously the dingier for constant contact with a

Parisian public. So, upon either side, the fetid, disreputable

approaches might have been there for the express purpose of warning

away fastidious people; but fastidious folk no more recoiled before

these horrors than the prince in the fairy stories turns tail at sight

of the dragon or of the other obstacles put between him and the

princess by the wicked fairy.

There was a passage through the centre of the Galleries then as now;

and, as at the present day, you entered them through the two

peristyles begun before the Revolution, and left unfinished for lack

of funds; but in place of the handsome modern arcade leading to the

Theatre-Francais, you passed along a narrow, disproportionately lofty

passage, so ill-roofed that the rain came through on wet days. All the

roofs of the hovels indeed were in very bad repair, and covered here

and again with a double thickness of tarpaulin. A famous silk mercer

once brought an action against the Orleans family for damages done in

the course of a night to his stock of shawls and stuffs, and gained

the day and a considerable sum. It was in this last-named passage,

called "The Glass Gallery" to distinguish it from the Wooden

Galleries, that Chevet laid the foundations of his fortunes.

Here, in the Palais, you trod the natural soil of Paris, augmented by

importations brought in upon the boots of foot passengers; here, at

all seasons, you stumbled among hills and hollows of dried mud swept

daily by the shopman's besom, and only after some practice could you

walk at your ease. The treacherous mud-heaps, the window-panes

incrusted with deposits of dust and rain, the mean-looking hovels

covered with ragged placards, the grimy unfinished walls, the general

air of a compromise between a gypsy camp, the booths of a country

fair, and the temporary structures that we in Paris build round about

public monuments that remain unbuilt; the grotesque aspect of the mart

as a whole was in keeping with the seething traffic of various kinds

carried on within it; for here in this shameless, unblushing haunt,

amid wild mirth and a babel of talk, an immense amount of business was

transacted between the Revolution of 1789 and the Revolution of 1830.

For twenty years the Bourse stood just opposite, on the ground floor

of the Palais. Public opinion was manufactured, and reputations made

and ruined here, just as political and financial jobs were arranged.

People made appointments to meet in the Galleries before or after

'Change; on showery days the Palais Royal was often crowded with

weather-bound capitalists and men of business. The structure which had

grown up, no one knew how, about this point was strangely resonant,

laughter was multiplied; if two men quarreled, the whole place rang

from one end to the other with the dispute. In the daytime milliners

and booksellers enjoyed a monopoly of the place; towards nightfall it

was filled with women of the town. Here dwelt poetry, politics, and

prose, new books and classics, the glories of ancient and modern

literature side by side with political intrigue and the tricks of the

bookseller's trade. Here all the very latest and newest literature

were sold to a public which resolutely decline to buy elsewhere.

Sometimes several thousand copies of such and such a pamphlet by

Paul-Louis Courier would be sold in a single evening; and people

crowded thither to buy _Les aventures de la fille d'un Roi_--that

first shot fired by the Orleanists at The Charter promulgated by

Louis XVIII.

When Lucien made his first appearance in the Wooden Galleries, some

few of the shops boasted proper fronts and handsome windows, but these

in every case looked upon the court or the garden. As for the centre

row, until the day when the whole strange colony perished under the

hammer of Fontaine the architect, every shop was open back and front

like a booth in a country fair, so that from within you could look out

upon either side through gaps among the goods displayed or through the

glass doors. As it was obviously impossible to kindle a fire, the

tradesmen were fain to use charcoal chafing-dishes, and formed a sort

of brigade for the prevention of fires among themselves; and, indeed,

a little carelessness might have set the whole quarter blazing in

fifteen minutes, for the plank-built republic, dried by the heat of

the sun, and haunted by too inflammable human material, was bedizened

with muslin and paper and gauze, and ventilated at times by a thorough

draught.

The milliners' windows were full of impossible hats and bonnets,

displayed apparently for advertisement rather than for sale, each on a

separate iron spit with a knob at the top. The galleries were decked

out in all the colors of the rainbow. On what heads would those dusty

bonnets end their careers?--for a score of years the problem had

puzzled frequenters of the Palais. Saleswomen, usually plain-featured,

but vivacious, waylaid the feminine foot passenger with cunning

importunities, after the fashion of market-women, and using much the

same language; a shop-girl, who made free use of her eyes and tongue,

sat outside on a stool and harangued the public with "Buy a pretty

bonnet, madame?--Do let me sell you something!"--varying a rich and

picturesque vocabulary with inflections of the voice, with glances,

and remarks upon the passers-by. Booksellers and milliners lived on

terms of mutual understanding.

But it was in the passage known by the pompous title of the "Glass

Gallery" that the oddest trades were carried on. Here were

ventriloquists and charlatans of every sort, and sights of every

description, from the kind where there is nothing to see to panoramas

of the globe. One man who has since made seven or eight hundred

thousand francs by traveling from fair to fair began here by hanging

out a signboard, a revolving sun in a blackboard, and the inscription

in red letters: "Here Man may see what God can never see. Admittance,

two sous." The showman at the door never admitted one person alone,

nor more than two at a time. Once inside, you confronted a great

looking-glass; and a voice, which might have terrified Hoffmann of

Berlin, suddenly spoke as if some spring had been touched, "You see

here, gentlemen, something that God can never see through all

eternity, that is to say, your like. God has not His like." And out

you went, too shamefaced to confess to your stupidity.

Voices issued from every narrow doorway, crying up the merits of

Cosmoramas, views of Constantinople, marionettes, automatic

chess-players, and performing dogs who would pick you out the prettiest

woman in the company. The ventriloquist Fritz-James flourished here in

the Cafe Borel before he went to fight and fall at Montmartre with the

young lads from the Ecole polytechnique. Here, too, there were fruit

and flower shops, and a famous tailor whose gold-laced uniforms shone

like the sun when the shops were lighted at night.

Of a morning the galleries were empty, dark, and deserted; the

shopkeepers chatted among themselves. Towards two o'clock in the

afternoon the Palais began to fill; at three, men came in from the

Bourse, and Paris, generally speaking, crowded the place. Impecunious

youth, hungering after literature, took the opportunity of turning

over the pages of the books exposed for sale on the stalls outside the

booksellers' shops; the men in charge charitably allowed a poor

student to pursue his course of free studies; and in this way a

duodecimo volume of some two hundred pages, such as _Smarra_ or _Pierre

Schlemihl_, or _Jean Sbogar_ or _Jocko_, might be devoured in a couple of

afternoons. There was something very French in this alms given to the

young, hungry, starved intellect. Circulating libraries were not as

yet; if you wished to read a book, you were obliged to buy it, for

which reason novels of the early part of the century were sold in

numbers which now seem well-nigh fabulous to us.

But the poetry of this terrible mart appeared in all its splendor at

the close of the day. Women of the town, flocking in and out from the

neighboring streets, were allowed to make a promenade of the Wooden

Galleries. Thither came prostitutes from every quarter of Paris to "do

the Palais." The Stone Galleries belonged to privileged houses, which

paid for the right of exposing women dressed like princesses under

such and such an arch, or in the corresponding space of garden; but

the Wooden Galleries were the common ground of women of the streets.

This was _the_ Palais, a word which used to signify the temple of

prostitution. A woman might come and go, taking away her prey

whithersoever seemed good to her. So great was the crowd attracted

thither at night by the women, that it was impossible to move except

at a slow pace, as in a procession or at a masked ball. Nobody

objected to the slowness; it facilitated examination. The women

dressed in a way that is never seen nowadays. The bodices cut

extremely low both back and front; the fantastical head-dresses,

designed to attract notice; here a cap from the Pays de Caux, and

there a Spanish mantilla; the hair crimped and curled like a poodle's,

or smoothed down in bandeaux over the forehead; the close-fitting

white stockings and limbs, revealed it would not be easy to say how,

but always at the right moment--all this poetry of vice has fled. The

license of question and reply, the public cynicism in keeping with the

haunt, is now unknown even at masquerades or the famous public balls.

It was an appalling, gay scene. The dazzling white flesh of the

women's necks and shoulders stood out in magnificent contrast against

the men's almost invariably sombre costumes. The murmur of voices, the

hum of the crowd, could be heard even in the middle of the garden as a

sort of droning bass, interspersed with _fioriture_ of shrill laughter

or clamor of some rare dispute. You saw gentlemen and celebrities

cheek by jowl with gallows-birds. There was something indescribably

piquant about the anomalous assemblage; the most insensible of men

felt its charm, so much so, that, until the very last moment, Paris

came hither to walk up and down on the wooden planks laid over the

cellars where men were at work on the new buildings; and when the

squalid wooden erections were finally taken down, great and unanimous

regret was felt.

Ladvocat the bookseller had opened a shop but a few days since in the

angle formed by the central passage which crossed the galleries; and

immediately opposite another bookseller, now forgotten, Dauriat, a

bold and youthful pioneer, who opened up the paths in which his rival

was to shine. Dauriat's shop stood in the row which gave upon the

garden; Ladvocat's, on the opposite side, looked out upon the court.

Dauriat's establishment was divided into two parts; his shop was

simply a great trade warehouse, and the second room was his private

office.

Lucien, on this first visit to the Wooden Galleries, was bewildered by

a sight which no novice can resist. He soon lost the guide who

befriended him.

"If you were as good-looking as yonder young fellow, I would give you

your money's worth," a woman said, pointing out Lucien to an old man.

Lucien slunk through the crowd like a blind man's dog, following the

stream in a state of stupefaction and excitement difficult to

describe. Importuned by glances and white-rounded contours, dazzled by

the audacious display of bared throat and bosom, he gripped his roll

of manuscript tightly lest somebody should steal it--innocent that he

was!

"Well, what is it, sir!" he exclaimed, thinking, when some one caught

him by the arm, that his poetry had proved too great a temptation to

some author's honesty, and turning, he recognized Lousteau.

"I felt sure that you would find your way here at last," said his

friend.

The poet was standing in the doorway of a shop crowded with persons

waiting for an audience with the sultan of the publishing trade.

Printers, paper-dealers, and designers were catechizing Dauriat's

assistants as to present or future business.

Lousteau drew Lucien into the shop. "There! that is Finot who edits my

paper," he said; "he is talking with Felicien Vernou, who has

abilities, but the little wretch is as dangerous as a hidden disease."

"Well, old boy, there is a first night for you," said Finot, coming up

with Vernou. "I have disposed of the box."

"Sold it to Braulard?"

"Well, and if I did, what then? You will get a seat. What do you want

with Dauriat? Oh, it is agreed that we are to push Paul de Kock,

Dauriat has taken two hundred copies, and Victor Ducange is refusing

to give him his next. Dauriat wants to set up another man in the same

line, he says. You must rate Paul de Kock above Ducange."

"But I have a piece on with Ducange at the Gaite," said Lousteau.

"Very well, tell him that I wrote the article. It can be supposed that

I wrote a slashing review, and you toned it down; and he will owe you

thanks."

"Couldn't you get Dauriat's cashier to discount this bit of a bill for

a hundred francs?" asked Etienne Lousteau. "We are celebrating

Florine's house-warming with a supper to-night, you know."

"Ah! yes, you are treating us all," said Finot, with an apparent

effort of memory. "Here, Gabusson," he added, handing Barbet's bill to

the cashier, "let me have ninety francs for this individual.--Fill in

your name, old man."

Lousteau signed his name while the cashier counted out the money; and

Lucien, all eyes and ears, lost not a syllable of the conversation.

"That is not all, my friend," Etienne continued; "I don't thank you,

we have sworn an eternal friendship. I have taken it upon myself to

introduce this gentleman to Dauriat, and you must incline his ear to

listen to us."

"What is on foot?" asked Finot.

"A volume of poetry," said Lucien.

"Oh!" said Finot, with a shrug of the shoulders.

"Your acquaintance cannot have had much to do with publishers, or he

would have hidden his manuscript in the loneliest spot in his

dwelling," remarked Vernou, looking at Lucien as he spoke.

Just at that moment a good-looking young man came into the shop, gave

a hand to Finot and Lousteau, and nodded slightly to Vernou. The

newcomer was Emile Blondet, who had made his first appearance in the

_Journal des Debats_, with articles revealing capacities of the very

highest order.

"Come and have supper with us at midnight, at Florine's," said

Lousteau.

"Very good," said the newcomer. "But who is going to be there?"

"Oh, Florine and Matifat the druggist," said Lousteau, "and du Bruel,

the author who gave Florine the part in which she is to make her first

appearance, a little old fogy named Cardot, and his son-in-law

Camusot, and Finot, and----"

"Does your druggist do things properly?"

"He will not give us doctored wine," said Lucien.

"You are very witty, monsieur," Blondet returned gravely. "Is he

coming, Lousteau?"

"Yes."

"Then we shall have some fun."

Lucien had flushed red to the tips of his ears. Blondet tapped on the

window above Dauriat's desk.

"Is your business likely to keep you long, Dauriat?"

"I am at your service, my friend."

"That's right," said Lousteau, addressing his protege. "That young

fellow is hardly any older than you are, and he is on the _Debats_! He

is one of the princes of criticism. They are afraid of him, Dauriat

will fawn upon him, and then we can put in a word about our business

with the pasha of vignettes and type. Otherwise we might have waited

till eleven o'clock, and our turn would not have come. The crowd of

people waiting to speak with Dauriat is growing bigger every moment."

Lucien and Lousteau followed Blondet, Finot, and Vernou, and stood in

a knot at the back of the shop.

"What is he doing?" asked Blondet of the head-clerk, who rose to bid

him good-evening.

"He is buying a weekly newspaper. He wants to put new life into it,

and set up a rival to the _Minerve_ and the _Conservateur_; Eymery has

rather too much of his own way in the _Minerve_, and the _Conservateur_ is

too blindly Romantic."

"Is he going to pay well?"

"Only too much--as usual," said the cashier.

Just as he spoke another young man entered; this was the writer of a

magnificent novel which had sold very rapidly and met with the

greatest possible success. Dauriat was bringing out a second edition.

The appearance of this odd and extraordinary looking being, so

unmistakably an artist, made a deep impression on Lucien's mind.

"That is Nathan," Lousteau said in his ear.

Nathan, then in the prime of his youth, came up to the group of

journalists, hat in hand; and in spite of his look of fierce pride he

was almost humble to Blondet, whom as yet he only knew by sight.

Blondet did not remove his hat, neither did Finot.

"Monsieur, I am delighted to avail myself of an opportunity yielded by

chance----"

("He is so nervous that he is committing a pleonasm," said Felicien in

an aside to Lousteau.)

"----to give expression to my gratitude for the splendid review which

you were so good as to give me in the _Journal des Debats_. Half the

success of my book is owing to you."

"No, my dear fellow, no," said Blondet, with an air of patronage

scarcely masked by good-nature. "You have talent, the deuce you have,

and I'm delighted to make your acquaintance."

"Now that your review has appeared, I shall not seem to be courting

power; we can feel at ease. Will you do me the honor and the pleasure

of dining with me to-morrow? Finot is coming.--Lousteau, old man, you

will not refuse me, will you?" added Nathan, shaking Etienne by the

hand.--"Ah, you are on the way to a great future, monsieur," he added,

turning again to Blondet; "you will carry on the line of Dussaults,

Fievees, and Geoffrois! Hoffmann was talking about you to a friend of

mine, Claude Vignon, his pupil; he said that he could die in peace,

the _Journal des Debats_ would live forever. They ought to pay you

tremendously well."

"A hundred francs a column," said Blondet. "Poor pay when one is

obliged to read the books, and read a hundred before you find one

worth interesting yourself in, like yours. Your work gave me pleasure,

upon my word."

"And brought him in fifteen hundred francs," said Lousteau for

Lucien's benefit.

"But you write political articles, don't you?" asked Nathan.

"Yes; now and again."

Lucien felt like an embryo among these men; he had admired Nathan's

book, he had reverenced the author as an immortal; Nathan's abject

attitude before this critic, whose name and importance were both

unknown to him, stupefied Lucien.

"How if I should come to behave as he does?" he thought. "Is a man

obliged to part with his self-respect?--Pray put on your hat again,

Nathan; you have written a great book, and the critic has only written

a review of it."

These thoughts set the blood tingling in his veins. Scarce a minute

passed but some young author, poverty-stricken and shy, came in, asked

to speak with Dauriat, looked round the crowded shop despairingly, and

went out saying, "I will come back again." Two or three politicians

were chatting over the convocation of the Chambers and public business

with a group of well-known public men. The weekly newspaper for which

Dauriat was in treaty was licensed to treat of matters political, and

the number of newspapers suffered to exist was growing smaller and

smaller, till a paper was a piece of property as much in demand as a

theatre. One of the largest shareholders in the _Constitutionnel_ was

standing in the midst of the knot of political celebrities. Lousteau

performed the part of cicerone to admiration; with every sentence he

uttered Dauriat rose higher in Lucien's opinion. Politics and

literature seemed to converge in Dauriat's shop. He had seen a great

poet prostituting his muse to journalism, humiliating Art, as woman

was humiliated and prostituted in those shameless galleries without,

and the provincial took a terrible lesson to heart. Money! That was

the key to every enigma. Lucien realized the fact that he was unknown

and alone, and that the fragile clue of an uncertain friendship was

his sole guide to success and fortune. He blamed the kind and loyal

little circle for painting the world for him in false colors, for

preventing him from plunging into the arena, pen in hand. "I should be

a Blondet at this moment!" he exclaimed within himself.

Only a little while ago they had sat looking out over Paris from the

Gardens of the Luxembourg, and Lousteau had uttered the cry of a

wounded eagle; then Lousteau had been a great man in Lucien's eyes,

and now he had shrunk to scarce visible proportions. The really

important man for him at this moment was the fashionable bookseller,

by whom all these men lived; and the poet, manuscript in hand, felt a

nervous tremor that was almost like fear. He noticed a group of busts

mounted on wooden pedestals, painted to resemble marble; Byron stood

there, and Goethe and M. de Canalis. Dauriat was hoping to publish a

volume by the last-named poet, who might see, on his entrance into the

shop, the estimation in which he was held by the trade. Unconsciously

Lucien's own self-esteem began to shrink, and his courage ebbed. He

began to see how large a part this Dauriat would play in his

destinies, and waited impatiently for him to appear.

"Well, children," said a voice, and a short, stout man appeared, with

a puffy face that suggested a Roman pro-consul's visage, mellowed by

an air of good-nature which deceived superficial observers. "Well,

children, here am I, the proprietor of the only weekly paper in the

market, a paper with two thousand subscribers!"

"Old joker! The registered number is seven hundred, and that is over

the mark," said Blondet.

"Twelve thousand, on my sacred word of honor--I said two thousand for

the benefit of the printers and paper-dealers yonder," he added,

lowering his voice, then raising it again. "I thought you had more

tact, my boy," he added.

"Are you going to take any partners?" inquired Finot.

"That depends," said Dauriat. "Will you take a third at forty thousand

francs?"

"It's a bargain, if you will take Emile Blondet here on the staff, and

Claude Vignon, Scribe, Theodore Leclercq, Felicien Vernou, Jay, Jouy,

Lousteau, and----"

"And why not Lucien de Rubempre?" the provincial poet put in boldly.

"----and Nathan," concluded Finot.

"Why not the people out there in the street?" asked Dauriat, scowling

at the author of the _Marguerites_.--"To whom have I the honor of

speaking?" he added, with an insolent glance.

"One moment, Dauriat," said Lousteau. "I have brought this gentleman

to you. Listen to me, while Finot is thinking over your proposals."

Lucien watched this Dauriat, who addressed Finot with the familiar tu,

which even Finot did not permit himself to use in reply; who called

the redoubtable Blondet "my boy," and extended a hand royally to

Nathan with a friendly nod. The provincial poet felt his shirt wet

with perspiration when the formidable sultan looked indifferent and

ill pleased.

"Another piece of business, my boy!" exclaimed Dauriat. "Why, I have

eleven hundred manuscripts on hand, as you know! Yes, gentlemen, I

have eleven hundred manuscripts submitted to me at this moment; ask

Gabusson. I shall soon be obliged to start a department to keep

account of the stock of manuscripts, and a special office for reading

them, and a committee to vote on their merits, with numbered counters

for those who attend, and a permanent secretary to draw up the minutes

for me. It will be a kind of local branch of the Academie, and the

Academicians will be better paid in the Wooden Galleries than at the

Institut."

"'Tis an idea," said Blondet.

"A bad idea," returned Dauriat. "It is not my business to take stock

of the lucubrations of those among you who take to literature because

they cannot be capitalists, and there is no opening for them as

bootmakers, nor corporals, nor domestic servants, nor officials, nor

bailiffs. Nobody comes here until he has made a name for himself! Make

a name for yourself, and you will find gold in torrents. I have made

three great men in the last two years; and lo and behold three

examples of ingratitude! Here is Nathan talking of six thousand francs

for the second edition of his book, which cost me three thousand

francs in reviews, and has not brought in a thousand yet. I paid a

thousand francs for Blondet's two articles, besides a dinner, which

cost me five hundred----"

"But if all booksellers talked as you do, sir, how could a man publish

his first book at all?" asked Lucien. Blondet had gone down

tremendously in his opinion since he had heard the amount given by

Dauriat for the articles in the _Debats_.

"That is not my affair," said Dauriat, looking daggers at this

handsome young fellow, who was smiling pleasantly at him. "I do not

publish books for amusement, nor risk two thousand francs for the sake

of seeing my money back again. I speculate in literature, and publish

forty volumes of ten thousand copies each, just as Panckouke does and

the Baudoins. With my influence and the articles which I secure, I can

push a business of a hundred thousand crowns, instead of a single

volume involving a couple of thousand francs. It is just as much

trouble to bring out a new name and to induce the public to take up an

author and his book, as to make a success with the _Theatres etrangers_,

_Victoires et Conquetes_, or _Memoires sur la Revolution_, books that

bring in a fortune. I am not here as a stepping-stone to future fame,

but to make money, and to find it for men with distinguished names.

The manuscripts for which I give a hundred thousand francs pay me

better than work by an unknown author who asks six hundred. If I am

not exactly a Maecenas, I deserve the gratitude of literature; I have

doubled the prices of manuscripts. I am giving you this explanation

because you are a friend of Lousteau's my boy," added Dauriat,

clapping Lucien on the shoulder with odious familiarity. "If I were to

talk to all the authors who have a mind that I should be their

publisher, I should have to shut up shop; I should pass my time very

agreeably no doubt, but the conversations would cost too much. I am

not rich enough yet to listen to all the monologues of self-conceit.

Nobody does, except in classical tragedies on the stage."

The terrible Dauriat's gorgeous raiment seemed in the provincial

poet's eyes to add force to the man's remorseless logic.

"What is it about?" he continued, addressing Lucien's protector.

"It is a volume of magnificent poetry."

At that word, Dauriat turned to Gabusson with a gesture worthy of

Talma.

"Gabusson, my friend," he said, "from this day forward, when anybody

begins to talk of works in manuscript here--Do you hear that, all of

you?" he broke in upon himself; and three assistants at once emerged

from among the piles of books at the sound of their employer's

wrathful voice. "If anybody comes here with manuscripts," he

continued, looking at the finger-nails of a well-kept hand, "ask him

whether it is poetry or prose; and if he says poetry, show him the

door at once. Verses mean reverses in the booktrade."

"Bravo! well put, Dauriat," cried the chorus of journalists.

"It is true!" cried the bookseller, striding about his shop with

Lucien's manuscript in his hand. "You have no idea, gentlemen, of the

amount of harm that Byron, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Casimir Delavigne,

Canalis, and Beranger have done by their success. The fame of them has

brought down an invasion of barbarians upon us. I know _this_: there

are a thousand volumes of manuscript poetry going the round of the

publishers at this moment, things that nobody can make head nor tail

of, stories in verse that begin in the middle, like _The Corsair_ and

_Lara_. They set up to be original, forsooth, and indulge in stanzas

that nobody can understand, and descriptive poetry after the pattern

of the younger men who discovered Delille, and imagine that they are

doing something new. Poets have been swarming like cockchafers for two

years past. I have lost twenty thousand francs through poetry in the

last twelvemonth. You ask Gabusson! There may be immortal poets

somewhere in the world; I know of some that are blooming and rosy, and

have no beards on their chins as yet," he continued, looking at

Lucien; "but in the trade, young man, there are only four poets

--Beranger, Casimir Delavigne, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo; as for

Canalis--he is a poet made by sheer force of writing him up."

Lucien felt that he lacked the courage to hold up his head and show

his spirit before all these influential persons, who were laughing

with all their might. He knew very well that he should look hopelessly

ridiculous, and yet he felt consumed by a fierce desire to catch the

bookseller by the throat, to ruffle the insolent composure of his

cravat, to break the gold chain that glittered on the man's chest,

trample his watch under his feet, and tear him in pieces. Mortified

vanity opened the door to thoughts of vengeance, and inwardly he swore

eternal enmity to that bookseller. But he smiled amiably.

"Poetry is like the sun," said Blondet, "giving life alike to primeval

forests and to ants and gnats and mosquitoes. There is no virtue but

has a vice to match, and literature breeds the publisher."

"And the journalist," said Lousteau.

Dauriat burst out laughing.

"What is this after all?" he asked, holding up the manuscript.

"A volume of sonnets that will put Petrarch to the blush," said

Lousteau.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say," answered Lousteau, seeing the knowing smile that

went round the group. Lucien could not take offence but he chafed

inwardly.

"Very well, I will read them," said Dauriat, with a regal gesture that

marked the full extent of the concession. "If these sonnets of yours

are up to the level of the nineteenth century, I will make a great

poet of you, my boy."

"If he has brains to equal his good looks, you will run no great

risks," remarked one of the greatest public speakers of the day, a

deputy who was chatting with the editor of the _Minerve_, and a writer

for the _Constitutionnel_.

"Fame means twelve thousand francs in reviews, and a thousand more for

dinners, General," said Dauriat. "If M. Benjamin de Constant means to

write a paper on this young poet, it will not be long before I make a

bargain with him."

At the title of General, and the distinguished name of Benjamin

Constant, the bookseller's shop took the proportions of Olympus for

the provincial great man.

"Lousteau, I want a word with you," said Finot; "but I shall see you

again later, at the theatre.--Dauriat, I will take your offer, but on

conditions. Let us step into your office."

"Come in, my boy," answered Dauriat, allowing Finot to pass before

him. Then, intimating to some ten persons still waiting for him that

he was engaged, he likewise was about to disappear when Lucien

impatiently stopped him.

"You are keeping my manuscript. When shall I have an answer?"

"Oh, come back in three or four days, my little poet, and we will

see."

Lousteau hurried Lucien away; he had not time to take leave of Vernou

and Blondet and Raoul Nathan, nor to salute General Foy nor Benjamin

Constant, whose book on the Hundred Days was just about to appear.

Lucien scarcely caught a glimpse of fair hair, a refined oval-shaped

face, keen eyes, and the pleasant-looking mouth belonging to the man

who had played the part of a Potemkin to Mme. de Stael for twenty

years, and now was at war with the Bourbons, as he had been at war

with Napoleon. He was destined to win his cause and to die stricken to

earth by his victory.

"What a shop!" exclaimed Lucien, as he took his place in the cab

beside Lousteau.

"To the Panorama-Dramatique; look sharp, and you shall have thirty

sous," Etienne Lousteau called to the cabman.--"Dauriat is a rascal

who sells books to the amount of fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand

francs every year. He is a kind of Minister of Literature," Lousteau

continued. His self-conceit had been pleasantly tickled, and he was

showing off before Lucien. "Dauriat is just as grasping as Barbet, but

it is on a wholesale scale. Dauriat can be civil, and he is generous,

but he has a great opinion of himself; as for his wit, it consists in

a faculty for picking up all that he hears, and his shop is a capital

place to frequent. You meet all the best men at Dauriat's. A young

fellow learns more there in an hour than by poring over books for

half-a-score of years. People talk about articles and concoct

subjects; you make the acquaintance of great or influential people who

may be useful to you. You must know people if you mean to get on

nowadays.--It is all luck, you see. And as for sitting by yourself in

a corner alone with your intellect, it is the most dangerous thing of

all."

"But what insolence!" said Lucien.

"Pshaw! we all of us laugh at Dauriat," said Etienne. "If you are in

need of him, he tramples upon you; if he has need of the _Journal des

Debats_, Emile Blondet sets him spinning like a top. Oh, if you take

to literature, you will see a good many queer things. Well, what was

I telling you, eh?"

"Yes, you were right," said Lucien. "My experience in that shop was

even more painful than I expected, after your programme."

"Why do you choose to suffer? You find your subject, you wear out your

wits over it with toiling at night, you throw your very life into it:

and after all your journeyings in the fields of thought, the monument

reared with your life-blood is simply a good or a bad speculation for

a publisher. Your work will sell or it will not sell; and therein, for

them, lies the whole question. A book means so much capital to risk,

and the better the book, the less likely it is to sell. A man of

talent rises above the level of ordinary heads; his success varies in

direct ratio with the time required for his work to be appreciated.

And no publisher wants to wait. To-day's book must be sold by

to-morrow. Acting on this system, publishers and booksellers do not

care to take real literature, books that call for the high praise that

comes slowly."

"D'Arthez was right," exclaimed Lucien.

"Do you know d'Arthez?" asked Lousteau. "I know of no more dangerous

company than solitary spirits like that fellow yonder, who fancy that

they can draw the world after them. All of us begin by thinking that

we are capable of great things; and when once a youthful imagination

is heated by this superstition, the candidate for posthumous honors

makes no attempt to move the world while such moving of the world is

both possible and profitable; he lets the time go by. I am for

Mahomet's system--if the mountain does not come to me, I am for going

to the mountain."

The common-sense so trenchantly put in this sally left Lucien halting

between the resignation preached by the brotherhood and Lousteau's

militant doctrine. He said not a word till they reached the Boulevard

du Temple.

The Panorama-Dramatique no longer exists. A dwelling-house stands on

the site of the once charming theatre in the Boulevard du Temple,

where two successive managements collapsed without making a single

hit; and yet Vignol, who has since fallen heir to some of Potier's

popularity, made his _debut_ there; and Florine, five years later a

celebrated actress, made her first appearance in the theatre opposite

the Rue Charlot. Play-houses, like men, have their vicissitudes. The

Panorama-Dramatique suffered from competition. The machinations of its

rivals, the Ambigu, the Gaite, the Porte Saint-Martin, and the

Vaudeville, together with a plethora of restrictions and a scarcity of

good plays, combined to bring about the downfall of the house. No

dramatic author cared to quarrel with a prosperous theatre for the

sake of the Panorama-Dramatique, whose existence was, to say the

least, problematical. The management at this moment, however, was

counting on the success of a new melodramatic comedy by M. du Bruel, a

young author who, after working in collaboration with divers

celebrities, had now produced a piece professedly entirely his own. It

had been specially composed for the leading lady, a young actress who

began her stage career as a supernumerary at the Gaite, and had been

promoted to small parts for the last twelvemonth. But though Mlle.

Florine's acting had attracted some attention, she obtained no

engagement, and the Panorama accordingly had carried her off. Coralie,

another actress, was to make her _debut_ at the same time.

Lucien was amazed at the power wielded by the press. "This gentleman

is with me," said Etienne Lousteau, and the box-office clerks bowed

before him as one man.

"You will find it no easy matter to get seats," said the head-clerk.

"There is nothing left now but the stage box."

A certain amount of time was wasted in controversies with the

box-keepers in the lobbies, when Etienne said, "Let us go behind

the scenes; we will speak to the manager, he will take us into the

stage-box; and besides, I will introduce you to Florine, the heroine

of the evening."

At a sign from Etienne Lousteau, the doorkeeper of the orchestra took

out a little key and unlocked a door in the thickness of the wall.

Lucien, following his friend, went suddenly out of the lighted

corridor into the black darkness of the passage between the house and

the wings. A short flight of damp steps surmounted, one of the

strangest of all spectacles opened out before the provincial poet's

eyes. The height of the roof, the slenderness of the props, the

ladders hung with Argand lamps, the atrocious ugliness of scenery

beheld at close quarters, the thick paint on the actors' faces, and

their outlandish costumes, made of such coarse materials, the stage

carpenters in greasy jackets, the firemen, the stage manager strutting

about with his hat on his head, the supernumeraries sitting among the

hanging back-scenes, the ropes and pulleys, the heterogeneous

collection of absurdities, shabby, dirty, hideous, and gaudy, was

something so altogether different from the stage seen over the

footlights, that Lucien's astonishment knew no bounds. The curtain was

just about to fall on a good old-fashioned melodrama entitled _Bertram_,

a play adapted from a tragedy by Maturin which Charles Nodier,

together with Byron and Sir Walter Scott, held in the highest esteem,

though the play was a failure on the stage in Paris.

"Keep a tight hold of my arm, unless you have a mind to fall through a

trap-door, or bring down a forest on your head; you will pull down a

palace, or carry off a cottage, if you are not careful," said Etienne.

--"Is Florine in her dressing-room, my pet?" he added, addressing an

actress who stood waiting for her cue.

"Yes, love. Thank you for the things you said about me. You are so

much nicer since Florine has come here."

"Come, don't spoil your entry, little one. Quick with you, look sharp,

and say, 'Stop, wretched man!' nicely, for there are two thousand

francs of takings."

Lucien was struck with amazement when the girl's whole face suddenly

changed, and she shrieked, "Stop, wretched man!" a cry that froze the

blood in your veins. She was no longer the same creature.

"So this is the stage," he said to Lousteau.

"It is like the bookseller's shop in the Wooden Galleries, or a

literary paper," said Etienne Lousteau; "it is a kitchen, neither more

nor less."

Nathan appeared at this moment.

"What brings you here?" inquired Lousteau.

"Why, I am doing the minor theatres for the _Gazette_ until something

better turns up."

"Oh! come to supper with us this evening; speak well of Florine, and I

will do as much for you."

"Very much at your service," returned Nathan.

"You know; she is living in the Rue du Bondy now."

"Lousteau, dear boy, who is the handsome young man that you have

brought with you?" asked the actress, now returned to the wings.

"A great poet, dear, that will have a famous name one of these days.

--M. Nathan, I must introduce M. Lucien de Rubempre to you, as you are

to meet again at supper."

"You have a good name, monsieur," said Nathan.

"Lucien, M. Raoul Nathan," continued Etienne.

"I read your book two days ago; and, upon my word, I cannot understand

how you, who have written such a book, and such poetry, can be so

humble to a journalist."

"Wait till your first book comes out," said Nathan, and a shrewd smile

flitted over his face.

"I say! I say! here are Ultras and Liberals actually shaking hands!"

cried Vernou, spying the trio.

"In the morning I hold the views of my paper," said Nathan, "in the

evening I think as I please; all journalists see double at night."

Felicien Vernou turned to Lousteau.

"Finot is looking for you, Etienne; he came with me, and--here he is!"

"Ah, by the by, there is not a place in the house, is there?" asked

Finot.

"You will always find a place in our hearts," said the actress, with

the sweetest smile imaginable.

"I say, my little Florville, are you cured already of your fancy? They

told me that a Russian prince had carried you off."

"Who carries off women in these days" said Florville (she who had

cried, "Stop, wretched man!"). "We stayed at Saint-Mande for ten days,

and my prince got off with paying the forfeit money to the management.

The manager will go down on his knees to pray for some more Russian

princes," Florville continued, laughing; "the forfeit money was so

much clear gain."

"And as for you, child," said Finot, turning to a pretty girl in a

peasant's costume, "where did you steal these diamond ear-drops? Have

you hooked an Indian prince?"

"No, a blacking manufacturer, an Englishman, who has gone off already.

It is not everybody who can find millionaire shopkeepers, tired of

domestic life, whenever they like, as Florine does and Coralie. Aren't

they just lucky?"

"Florville, you will make a bad entry," said Lousteau; "the blacking

has gone to your head!"

"If you want a success," said Nathan, "instead of screaming, 'He is

saved!' like a Fury, walk on quite quietly, go to the staircase, and

say, 'He is saved,' in a chest voice, like Pasta's '_O patria_,' in

_Tancreda_.--There, go along!" and he pushed her towards the stage.

"It is too late," said Vernou, "the effect has hung fire."

"What did she do? the house is applauding like mad," asked Lousteau.

"Went down on her knees and showed her bosom; that is her great

resource," said the blacking-maker's widow.

"The manager is giving up the stage box to us; you will find me there

when you come," said Finot, as Lousteau walked off with Lucien.

At the back of the stage, through a labyrinth of scenery and

corridors, the pair climbed several flights of stairs and reached a

little room on a third floor, Nathan and Felicien Vernou following

them.

"Good-day or good-night, gentlemen," said Florine. Then, turning to a

short, stout man standing in a corner, "These gentlemen are the rulers

of my destiny," she said, my future is in their hands; but they will

be under our table to-morrow morning, I hope, if M. Lousteau has

forgotten nothing----"

"Forgotten! You are going to have Blondet of the _Debats_," said

Etienne, "the genuine Blondet, the very Blondet--Blondet himself, in

short."

"Oh! Lousteau, you dear boy! stop, I must give you a kiss," and she

flung her arms about the journalist's neck. Matifat, the stout person

in the corner, looked serious at this.

Florine was thin; her beauty, like a bud, gave promise of the flower

to come; the girl of sixteen could only delight the eyes of artists

who prefer the sketch to the picture. All the quick subtlety of her

character was visible in the features of the charming actress, who at

that time might have sat for Goethe's Mignon. Matifat, a wealthy

druggist of the Rue des Lombards, had imagined that a little Boulevard

actress would have no very expensive tastes, but in eleven months

Florine had cost him sixty thousand francs. Nothing seemed more

extraordinary to Lucien than the sight of an honest and worthy

merchant standing like a statue of the god Terminus in the actress'

narrow dressing-room, a tiny place some ten feet square, hung with a

pretty wall-paper, and adorned with a full-length mirror, a sofa, and

two chairs. There was a fireplace in the dressing-closet, a carpet on

the floor, and cupboards all round the room. A dresser was putting the

finishing touches to a Spanish costume; for Florine was to take the

part of a countess in an imbroglio.

"That girl will be the handsomest actress in Paris in five years'

time," said Nathan, turning to Felicien Vernou.

"By the by, darlings, you will take care of me to-morrow, won't you?"

said Florine, turning to the three journalists. "I have engaged cabs

for to-night, for I am going to send you home as tipsy as Shrove

Tuesday. Matifat has sent in wines--oh! wines worthy of Louis XVIII.,

and engaged the Prussian ambassador's cook."

"We expect something enormous from the look of the gentleman,"

remarked Nathan.

"And he is quite aware that he is treating the most dangerous men in

Paris," added Florine.

Matifat was looking uneasily at Lucien; he felt jealous of the young

man's good looks.

"But here is some one that I do not know," Florine continued,

confronting Lucien. "Which of you has imported the Apollo Belvedere

from Florence? He is as charming as one of Girodet's figures."

"He is a poet, mademoiselle, from the provinces. I forgot to present

him to you; you are so beautiful to-night that you put the _Complete

Guide to Etiquette_ out of a man's head----"

"Is he so rich that he can afford to write poetry?" asked Florine.

"Poor as Job," said Lucien.

"It is a great temptation for some of us," said the actress.

Just then the author of the play suddenly entered, and Lucien beheld

M. du Bruel, a short, attenuated young man in an overcoat, a composite

human blend of the jack-in-office, the owner of house-property, and

the stockbroker.

"Florine, child," said this personage, "are you sure of your part, eh?

No slips of memory, you know. And mind that scene in the second act,

make the irony tell, bring out that subtle touch; say, 'I do not love

you,' just as we agreed."

"Why do you take parts in which you have to say such things?" asked

Matifat.

The druggist's remark was received with a general shout of laughter.

"What does it matter to you," said Florine, "so long as I don't say

such things to you, great stupid?--Oh! his stupidity is the pleasure

of my life," she continued, glancing at the journalist. "Upon my word,

I would pay him so much for every blunder, if it would not be the ruin

of me."

"Yes, but you will look at me when you say it, as you do when you are

rehearsing, and it gives me a turn," remonstrated the druggist.

"Very well, then, I will look at my friend Lousteau here."

A bell rang outside in the passage.

"Go out, all of you!" cried Florine; "let me read my part over again

and try to understand it."

Lucien and Lousteau were the last to go. Lousteau set a kiss on

Florine's shoulder, and Lucien heard her say, "Not to-night.

Impossible. That stupid old animal told his wife that he was going out

into the country."

"Isn't she charming?" said Etienne, as they came away.

"But--but that Matifat, my dear fellow----"

"Oh! you know nothing of Parisian life, my boy. Some things cannot be

helped. Suppose that you fell in love with a married woman, it comes

to the same thing. It all depends on the way that you look at it."

Etienne and Lucien entered the stage-box, and found the manager there

with Finot. Matifat was in the ground-floor box exactly opposite with

a friend of his, a silk-mercer named Camusot (Coralie's protector),

and a worthy little old soul, his father-in-law. All three of these

city men were polishing their opera-glasses, and anxiously scanning

the house; certain symptoms in the pit appeared to disturb them. The

usual heterogeneous first-night elements filled the boxes--journalists

and their mistresses, _lorettes_ and their lovers, a sprinkling of the

determined playgoers who never miss a first night if they can help it,

and a very few people of fashion who care for this sort of sensation.

The first box was occupied by the head of a department, to whom du

Bruel, maker of vaudevilles, owed a snug little sinecure in the

Treasury.

Lucien had gone from surprise to surprise since the dinner at

Flicoteaux's. For two months Literature had meant a life of poverty

and want; in Lousteau's room he had seen it at its cynical worst; in

the Wooden Galleries he had met Literature abject and Literature

insolent. The sharp contrasts of heights and depths; of compromise

with conscience; of supreme power and want of principle; of treachery

and pleasure; of mental elevation and bondage--all this made his head

swim, he seemed to be watching some strange unheard-of drama.

Finot was talking with the manager. "Do you think du Bruel's piece

will pay?" he asked.

"Du Bruel has tried to do something in Beaumarchais' style. Boulevard

audiences don't care for that kind of thing; they like harrowing

sensations; wit is not much appreciated here. Everything depends on

Florine and Coralie to-night; they are bewitchingly pretty and

graceful, wear very short skirts, and dance a Spanish dance, and

possibly they may carry off the piece with the public. The whole

affair is a gambling speculation. A few clever notices in the papers,

and I may make a hundred thousand crowns, if the play takes."

"Oh! come, it will only be a moderate success, I can see," said Finot.

"Three of the theatres have got up a plot," continued the manager;

"they will even hiss the piece, but I have made arrangements to defeat

their kind intentions. I have squared the men in their pay; they will

make a muddle of it. A couple of city men yonder have taken a hundred

tickets apiece to secure a triumph for Florine and Coralie, and given

them to acquaintances able and ready to act as chuckers out. The

fellows, having been paid twice, will go quietly, and a scene of that

sort always makes a good impression on the house."

"Two hundred tickets! What invaluable men!" exclaimed Finot.

"Yes. With two more actresses as handsomely kept as Florine and

Coralie, I should make something out of the business."

For the past two hours the word money had been sounding in Lucien's

ears as the solution of every difficulty. In the theatre as in the

publishing trade, and in the publishing trade as in the

newspaper-office--it was everywhere the same; there was not a word of

art or of glory. The steady beat of the great pendulum, Money, seemed

to fall like hammer-strokes on his heart and brain. And yet while the

orchestra played the overture, while the pit was full of noisy tumult

of applause and hisses, unconsciously he drew a comparison between

this scene and others that came up in his mind. Visions arose before

him of David and the printing-office, of the poetry that he came to

know in that atmosphere of pure peace, when together they beheld the

wonders of Art, the high successes of genius, and visions of glory

borne on stainless wings. He thought of the evenings spent with

d'Arthez and his friends, and tears glittered in his eyes.

"What is the matter with you?" asked Etienne Lousteau.

"I see poetry fallen into the mire."

"Ah! you have still some illusions left, my dear fellow."

"Is there nothing for it but to cringe and submit to thickheads like

Matifat and Camusot, as actresses bow down to journalists, and we

ourselves to the booksellers?"

"My boy, do you see that dull-brained fellow?" said Etienne, lowering

his voice, and glancing at Finot. "He has neither genius nor

cleverness, but he is covetous; he means to make a fortune at all

costs, and he is a keen man of business. Didn't you see how he made

forty per cent out of me at Dauriat's, and talked as if he were doing

me a favor?--Well, he gets letters from not a few unknown men of

genius who go down on their knees to him for a hundred francs."

The words recalled the pen-and-ink sketch that lay on the table in the

editor's office and the words, "Finot, my hundred francs!" Lucien's

inmost soul shrank from the man in disgust.

"I would sooner die," he said.

"Sooner live," retorted Etienne.

The curtain rose, and the stage-manager went off to the wings to give

orders. Finot turned to Etienne.

"My dear fellow, Dauriat has passed his word; I am proprietor of

one-third of his weekly paper. I have agreed to give thirty thousand

francs in cash, on condition that I am to be editor and director. 'Tis

a splendid thing. Blondet told me that the Government intends to take

restrictive measures against the press; there will be no new papers

allowed; in six months' time it will cost a million francs to start a

new journal, so I struck a bargain though I have only ten thousand

francs in hand. Listen to me. If you can sell one-half of my share,

that is one-sixth of the paper, to Matifat for thirty thousand francs,

you shall be editor of my little paper with a salary of two hundred

and fifty francs per month. I want in any case to have the control of

my old paper, and to keep my hold upon it; but nobody need know that,

and your name will appear as editor. You will be paid at the rate of

five francs per column; you need not pay contributors more than three

francs, and you keep the difference. That means another four hundred

and fifty francs per month. But, at the same time, I reserve the right

to use the paper to attack or defend men or causes, as I please; and

you may indulge your own likes and dislikes so long as you do not

interfere with my schemes. Perhaps I may be a Ministerialist, perhaps

Ultra, I do not know yet; but I mean to keep up my connections with

the Liberal party (below the surface). I can speak out with you; you

are a good fellow. I might, perhaps, give you the Chambers to do for

another paper on which I work; I am afraid I can scarcely keep on with

it now. So let Florine do this bit of jockeying; tell her to put the

screw on her druggist. If I can't find the money within forty-eight

hours, I must cry off my bargain. Dauriat sold another third to his

printer and paper-dealer for thirty thousand francs; so he has his own

third _gratis_, and ten thousand francs to the good, for he only gave

fifty thousand for the whole affair. And in another year's time the

magazine will be worth two hundred thousand francs, if the Court buys

it up; if the Court has the good sense to suppress newspapers, as they

say."

"You are lucky," said Lousteau.

"If you had gone through all that I have endured, you would not say

that of me. I had my fill of misery in those days, you see, and there

was no help for it. My father is a hatter; he still keeps a shop in

the Rue du Coq. Nothing but millions of money or a social cataclysm

can open out the way to my goal; and of the two alternatives, I don't

know now that the revolution is not the easier. If I bore your

friend's name, I should have a chance to get on. Hush, here comes the

manager. Good-bye," and Finot rose to his feet, "I am going to the

Opera. I shall very likely have a duel on my hands to-morrow, for I

have put my initials to a terrific attack on a couple of dancers under

the protection of two Generals. I am giving it them hot and strong at

the Opera."

"Aha?" said the manager.

"Yes. They are stingy with me," returned Finot, "now cutting off a

box, and now declining to take fifty subscriptions. I have sent in my

_ultimatum_; I mean to have a hundred subscriptions out of them and a

box four times a month. If they take my terms, I shall have eight

hundred readers and a thousand paying subscribers, so we shall have

twelve hundred with the New Year."

"You will end by ruining us," said the manager.

"_You_ are not much hurt with your ten subscriptions. I had two good

notices put into the _Constitutionnel_."

"Oh! I am not complaining of you," cried the manager.

"Good-bye till to-morrow evening, Lousteau," said Finot. "You can give

me your answer at the Francais; there is a new piece on there; and as

I shall not be able to write the notice, you can take my box. I will

give you preference; you have worked yourself to death for me, and I

am grateful. Felicien Vernou offered twenty thousand francs for a

third share of my little paper, and to work without a salary for a

twelvemonth; but I want to be absolute master. Good-bye."

"He is not named Finot" (_finaud_, slyboots) "for nothing," said Lucien.

"He is a gallows-bird that will get on in the world," said Etienne,

careless whether the wily schemer overheard the remark or not, as he

shut the door of the box.

"_He_!" said the manager. "He will be a millionaire; he will enjoy the

respect of all who know him; he may perhaps have friends some day----"

"Good heavens! what a den!" said Lucien. "And are you going to drag

that excellent creature into such a business?" he continued, looking

at Florine, who gave them side glances from the stage.

"She will carry it through too. You do not know the devotion and the

wiles of these beloved beings," said Lousteau.

"They redeem their failings and expiate all their sins by boundless

love, when they love," said the manager. "A great love is all the

grander in an actress by reason of its violent contrast with her

surroundings."

"And he who finds it, finds a diamond worthy of the proudest crown

lying in the mud," returned Lousteau.

"But Coralie is not attending to her part," remarked the manager.

"Coralie is smitten with our friend here, all unsuspicious of his

conquest, and Coralie will make a fiasco; she is missing her cues,

this is the second time she had not heard the prompter. Pray, go into

the corner, monsieur," he continued. "If Coralie is smitten with you,

I will go and tell her that you have left the house."

"No! no!" cried Lousteau; "tell Coralie that this gentleman is coming

to supper, and that she can do as she likes with him, and she will

play like Mlle. Mars."

The manager went, and Lucien turned to Etienne. "What! do you mean to

say that you will ask that druggist, through Mlle. Florine, to pay

thirty thousand francs for one-half a share, when Finot gave no more

for the whole of it? And ask without the slightest scruple?----"

Lousteau interrupted Lucien before he had time to finish his

expostulation. "My dear boy, what country can you come from? The

druggist is not a man; he is a strong box delivered into our hands by

his fancy for an actress."

"How about your conscience?"

"Conscience, my dear fellow, is a stick which every one takes up to

beat his neighbor and not for application to his own back. Come, now!

who the devil are you angry with? In one day chance has worked a

miracle for you, a miracle for which I have been waiting these two

years, and you must needs amuse yourself by finding fault with the

means? What! you appear to me to possess intelligence; you seem to be

in a fair way to reach that freedom from prejudice which is a first

necessity to intellectual adventurers in the world we live in; and are

you wallowing in scruples worthy of a nun who accuses herself of

eating an egg with concupiscence? . . . If Florine succeeds, I shall

be editor of a newspaper with a fixed salary of two hundred and fifty

francs per month; I shall take the important plays and leave the

vaudevilles to Vernou, and you can take my place and do the Boulevard

theatres, and so get a foot in the stirrup. You will make three francs

per column and write a column a day--thirty columns a month means

ninety francs; you will have some sixty francs worth of books to sell

to Barbet; and lastly, you can demand ten tickets a month of each of

your theatres--that is, forty tickets in all--and sell them for forty

francs to a Barbet who deals in them (I will introduce you to the

man), so you will have two hundred francs coming in every month. Then

if you make yourself useful to Finot, you might get a hundred francs

for an article in this new weekly review of his, in which case you

would show uncommon talent, for all the articles are signed, and you

cannot put in slip-shod work as you can on a small paper. In that case

you would be making a hundred crowns a month. Now, my dear boy, there

are men of ability, like that poor d'Arthez, who dines at Flicoteaux's

every day, who may wait for ten years before they will make a hundred

crowns; and you will be making four thousand francs a year by your

pen, to say nothing of the books you will write for the trade, if you

do work of that kind.

"Now, a sub-prefect's salary only amounts to a thousand crowns, and

there he stops in his arrondissement, wearing away time like the rung

of a chair. I say nothing of the pleasure of going to the theatre

without paying for your seat, for that is a delight which quickly

palls; but you can go behind the scenes in four theatres. Be hard and

sarcastic for a month or two, and you will be simply overwhelmed with

invitations from actresses, and their adorers will pay court to you;

you will only dine at Flicoteaux's when you happen to have less than

thirty sous in your pocket and no dinner engagement. At the

Luxembourg, at five o'clock, you did not know which way to turn; now,

you are on the eve of entering a privileged class, you will be one of

the hundred persons who tell France what to think. In three days'

time, if all goes well, you can, if you choose, make a man's life a

curse to him by putting thirty jokes at his expense in print at the

rate of three a day; you can, if you choose, draw a revenue of

pleasure from the actresses at your theatres; you can wreck a good

play and send all Paris running after a bad one. If Dauriat declines

to pay you for your _Marguerites_, you can make him come to you, and

meekly and humbly implore you to take two thousand francs for them. If

you have the ability, and knock off two or three articles that

threaten to spoil some of Dauriat's speculations, or to ruin a book on

which he counts, you will see him come climbing up your stairs like a

clematis, and always at the door of your dwelling. As for your novel,

the booksellers who would show you more or less politely to the door

at this moment will be standing outside your attic in a string, and

the value of the manuscript, which old Doguereau valued at four

hundred francs will rise to four thousand. These are the advantages of

the journalist's profession. So let us do our best to keep all

newcomers out of it. It needs an immense amount of brains to make your

way, and a still greater amount of luck. And here are you quibbling

over your good fortune! If we had not met to-day, you see, at

Flicoteaux's, you might have danced attendance on the booksellers for

another three years, or starved like d'Arthez in a garret. By the time

that d'Arthez is as learned as Bayle and as great a writer of prose as

Rousseau, we shall have made our fortunes, you and I, and we shall

hold his in our hands--wealth and fame to give or to hold. Finot will

be a deputy and proprietor of a great newspaper, and we shall be

whatever we meant to be--peers of France, or prisoner for debt in

Sainte-Pelagie."

"So Finot will sell his paper to the highest bidder among the

Ministers, just as he sells favorable notices to Mme. Bastienne and

runs down Mlle. Virginie, saying that Mme. Bastienne's bonnets are

superior to the millinery which they praised at first!" said Lucien,

recollecting that scene in the office.

"My dear fellow, you are a simpleton," Lousteau remarked drily. "Three

years ago Finot was walking on the uppers of his boots, dining for

eighteen sous at Tabar's, and knocking off a tradesman's prospectus

(when he could get it) for ten francs. His clothes hung together by

some miracle as mysterious as the Immaculate Conception. _Now_, Finot

has a paper of his own, worth about a hundred thousand francs. What

with subscribers who pay and take no copies, genuine subscriptions,

and indirect taxes levied by his uncle, he is making twenty thousand

francs a year. He dines most sumptuously every day; he has set up a

cabriolet within the last month; and now, at last, behold him the

editor of a weekly review with a sixth share, for which he will not

pay a penny, a salary of five hundred francs per month, and another

thousand francs for supplying matter which costs him nothing, and for

which the firm pays. You yourself, to begin with, if Finot consents to

pay you fifty francs per sheet, will be only too glad to let him have

two or three articles for nothing. When you are in his position, you

can judge Finot; a man can only be tried by his peers. And for you, is

there not an immense future opening out before you, if you will

blindly minister to his enmity, attack at Finot's bidding, and praise

when he gives the word? Suppose that you yourself wish to be revenged

upon somebody, you can break a foe or friend on the wheel. You have

only to say to me, 'Lousteau, let us put an end to So-and-so,' and we

will kill him by a phrase put in the paper morning by morning; and

afterwards you can slay the slain with a solemn article in Finot's

weekly. Indeed, if it is a matter of capital importance to you, Finot

would allow you to bludgeon your man in a big paper with ten or twelve

thousand subscribers, _if_ you make yourself indispensable to Finot."

"Then are you sure that Florine can bring her druggist to make the

bargain?" asked Lucien, dazzled by these prospects.

"Quite sure. Now comes the interval, I will go and tell her everything

at once in a word or two; it will be settled to-night. If Florine once

has her lesson by heart, she will have all my wit and her own

besides."

"And there sits that honest tradesman, gaping with open-mouthed

admiration at Florine, little suspecting that you are about to get

thirty thousand francs out of him!----"

"More twaddle! Anybody might think that the man was going to be

robbed!" cried Lousteau. "Why, my dear boy, if the minister buys the

newspaper, the druggist may make twenty thousand francs in six months

on an investment of thirty thousand. Matifat is not looking at the

newspaper, but at Florine's prospects. As soon as it is known that

Matifat and Camusot--(for they will go shares)--that Matifat and

Camusot are proprietors of a review, the newspapers will be full of

friendly notices of Florine and Coralie. Florine's name will be made;

she will perhaps obtain an engagement in another theatre with a salary

of twelve thousand francs. In fact, Matifat will save a thousand

francs every month in dinners and presents to journalists. You know

nothing of men, nor of the way things are managed."

"Poor man!" said Lucien, "he is looking forward to an evening's

pleasure."

"And he will be sawn in two with arguments until Florine sees Finot's

receipt for a sixth share of the paper. And to-morrow I shall be

editor of Finot's paper, and making a thousand francs a month. The end

of my troubles is in sight!" cried Florine's lover.

Lousteau went out, and Lucien sat like one bewildered, lost in the

infinite of thought, soaring above this everyday world. In the Wooden

Galleries he had seen the wires by which the trade in books is moved;

he has seen something of the kitchen where great reputations are made;

he had been behind the scenes; he had seen the seamy side of life, the

consciences of men involved in the machinery of Paris, the mechanism

of it all. As he watched Florine on the stage he almost envied

Lousteau his good fortune; already, for a few moments he had forgotten

Matifat in the background. He was not left alone for long, perhaps for

not more than five minutes, but those minutes seemed an eternity.

Thoughts rose within him that set his soul on fire, as the spectacle

on the stage had heated his senses. He looked at the women with their

wanton eyes, all the brighter for the red paint on their cheeks, at

the gleaming bare necks, the luxuriant forms outlined by the

lascivious folds of the basquina, the very short skirts, that

displayed as much as possible of limbs encased in scarlet stockings

with green clocks to them--a disquieting vision for the pit.

A double process of corruption was working within him in parallel

lines, like two channels that will spread sooner or later in flood

time and make one. That corruption was eating into Lucien's soul, as

he leaned back in his corner, staring vacantly at the curtain, one arm

resting on the crimson velvet cushion, and his hand drooping over the

edge. He felt the fascination of the life that was offered to him, of

the gleams of light among its clouds; and this so much the more keenly

because it shone out like a blaze of fireworks against the blank

darkness of his own obscure, monotonous days of toil.

Suddenly his listless eyes became aware of a burning glance that

reached him through a rent in the curtain, and roused him from his

lethargy. Those were Coralie's eyes that glowed upon him. He lowered

his head and looked across at Camusot, who just then entered the

opposite box.

That amateur was a worthy silk-mercer of the Rue des Bourdonnais,

stout and substantial, a judge in the commercial court, a father of

four children, and the husband of a second wife. At the age of

fifty-six, with a cap of gray hair on his head, he had the smug

appearance of a man who has his eighty thousand francs of income; and

having been forced to put up with a good deal that he did not like in

the way of business, has fully made up his mind to enjoy the rest of

his life, and not to quit this earth until he has had his share of

cakes and ale. A brow the color of fresh butter and florid cheeks like

a monk's jowl seemed scarcely big enough to contain his exuberant

jubilation. Camusot had left his wife at home, and they were applauding

Coralie to the skies. All the rich man's citizen vanity was summed up

and gratified in Coralie; in Coralie's lodging he gave himself the airs

of a great lord of a bygone day; now, at this moment, he felt that half

of her success was his; the knowledge that he had paid for it

confirmed him in this idea. Camusot's conduct was sanctioned by the

presence of his father-in-law, a little old fogy with powdered hair

and leering eyes, highly respected nevertheless.

Again Lucien felt disgust rising within him. He thought of the year

when he loved Mme. de Bargeton with an exalted and disinterested love;

and at that thought love, as a poet understands it, spread its white

wings about him; countless memories drew a circle of distant blue

horizon about the great man of Angouleme, and again he fell to

dreaming.

Up went the curtain, and there stood Coralie and Florine upon the

stage.

"He is thinking about as much of you as of the Grand Turk, my dear

girl," Florine said in an aside while Coralie was finishing her

speech.

Lucien could not help laughing. He looked at Coralie. She was one of

the most charming and captivating actresses in Paris, rivaling Mme.

Perrin and Mlle. Fleuriet, and destined likewise to share their fate.

Coralie was a woman of a type that exerts at will a power of

fascination over men. With an oval face of deep ivory tint, a mouth

red as a pomegranate, and a chin subtly delicate in its contour as the

edge of a porcelain cup, Coralie was a Jewess of the sublime type. The

jet black eyes behind their curving lashes seemed to scorch her

eyelids; you could guess how soft they might grow, or how sparks of

the heat of the desert might flash from them in response to a summons

from within. The circles of olive shadow about them were bounded by

thick arching lines of eyebrow. Magnificent mental power, well-nigh

amounting to genius, seemed to dwell in the swarthy forehead beneath

the double curve of ebony hair that lay upon it like a crown, and

gleamed in the light like a varnished surface; but like many another

actress, Coralie had little wit in spite of her aptness at greenroom

repartee, and scarcely any education in spite of her boudoir

experience. Her brain was prompted by her senses, her kindness was the

impulsive warm-heartedness of girls of her class. But who could

trouble over Coralie's psychology when his eyes were dazzled by those

smooth, round arms of hers, the spindle-shaped fingers, the fair white

shoulders, and breast celebrated in the Song of Songs, the flexible

curving lines of throat, the graciously moulded outlines beneath the

scarlet silk stockings? And this beauty, worthy of an Eastern poet,

was brought into relief by the conventional Spanish costume of the

stage. Coralie was the delight of the pit; all eyes dwelt on the

outlines moulded by the clinging folds of her bodice, and lingered

over the Andalusian contour of the hips from which her skirt hung,

fluttering wantonly with every movement. To Lucien, watching this

creature, who played for him alone, caring no more for Camusot than a

street-boy in the gallery cares for an apple-paring, there came a

moment when he set desire above love, and enjoyment above desire, and

the demon of Lust stirred strange thoughts in him.

"I know nothing of the love that wallows in luxury and wine and

sensual pleasure," he said within himself. "I have lived more with

ideas than with realities. You must pass through all experience if you

mean to render all experience. This will be my first great supper, my

first orgy in a new and strange world; why should I not know, for

once, the delights which the great lords of the eighteenth century

sought so eagerly of wantons of the Opera? Must one not first learn of

courtesans and actresses the delights, the perfections, the

transports, the resources, the subtleties of love, if only to

translate them afterwards into the regions of a higher love than this?

And what is all this, after all, but the poetry of the senses? Two

months ago these women seemed to me to be goddesses guarded by dragons

that no one dared approach; I was envying Lousteau just now, but here

is another handsomer than Florine; why should I not profit by her

fancy, when the greatest nobles buy a night with such women with their

richest treasures? When ambassadors set foot in these depths, they

fling aside all thought of yesterday or to-morrow. I should be a fool

to be more squeamish than princes, especially as I love no one as

yet."

Lucien had quite forgotten Camusot. To Lousteau he had expressed the

utmost disgust for this most hateful of all partitions, and now he

himself had sunk to the same level, and, carried away by the casuistry

of his vehement desire, had given the reins to his fancy.

"Coralie is raving about you," said Lousteau as he came in. "Your

countenance, worthy of the greatest Greek sculptors, has worked

unutterable havoc behind the scenes. You are in luck my dear boy.

Coralie is eighteen years old, and in a few days' time she may be

making sixty thousand francs a year by her beauty. She is an honest

girl still. Since her mother sold her three years ago for sixty

thousand francs, she has tried to find happiness, and found nothing

but annoyance. She took to the stage in a desperate mood; she has a

horror of her first purchaser, de Marsay; and when she came out of the

galleys, for the king of dandies soon dropped her, she picked up old

Camusot. She does not care much about him, but he is like a father to

her, and she endures him and his love. Several times already she has

refused the handsomest proposals; she is faithful to Camusot, who lets

her live in peace. So you are her first love. The first sight of you

went to her heart like a pistol-shot, Florine has gone to her

dressing-room to bring the girl to reason. She is crying over your

cruelty; she has forgotten her part, the play will go to pieces, and

good-day to the engagement at the Gymnase which Camusot had planned

for her."

"Pooh! . . . Poor thing!" said Lucien. Every instinct of vanity was

tickled by the words; he felt his heart swell high with self-conceit.

"More adventures have befallen me in this one evening, my dear fellow,

than in all the first eighteen years of my life." And Lucien related

the history of his love affairs with Mme. de Bargeton, and of the

cordial hatred he bore the Baron du Chatelet.

"Stay though! the newspaper wants a _bete noire_; we will take him up.

The Baron is a buck of the Empire and a Ministerialist; he is the man

for us; I have seen him many a time at the Opera. I can see your great

lady as I sit here; she is often in the Marquise d'Espard's box. The

Baron is paying court to your lady love, a cuttlefish bone that she

is. Wait! Finot has just sent a special messenger round to say that

they are short of copy at the office. Young Hector Merlin has left

them in the lurch because they did not pay for white lines. Finot, in

despair, is knocking off an article against the Opera. Well now, my

dear fellow, you can do this play; listen to it and think it over, and

I will go to the manager's office and think out three columns about

your man and your disdainful fair one. They will be in no pleasant

predicament to-morrow."

"So this is how a newspaper is written?" said Lucien.

"It is always like this," answered Lousteau. "These ten months that I

have been a journalist, they have always run short of copy at eight

o'clock in the evening."

Manuscript sent to the printer is spoken of as "copy," doubtless

because the writers are supposed to send in a fair copy of their work;

or possibly the word is ironically derived from the Latin word _copia_,

for copy is invariably scarce.

"We always mean to have a few numbers ready in advance, a grand idea

that will never be realized," continued Lousteau. "It is ten o'clock,

you see, and not a line has been written. I shall ask Vernou and

Nathan for a score of epigrams on deputies, or on 'Chancellor Cruzoe,'

or on the Ministry, or on friends of ours if it needs must be. A man

in this pass would slaughter his parent, just as a privateer will load

his guns with silver pieces taken out of the booty sooner than perish.

Write a brilliant article, and you will make brilliant progress in

Finot's estimation; for Finot has a lively sense of benefits to come,

and that sort of gratitude is better than any kind of pledge,

pawntickets always excepted, for they invariably represent something

solid."

"What kind of men can journalists be? Are you to sit down at a table

and be witty to order?"

"Just exactly as a lamp begins to burn when you apply a match--so long

as there is any oil in it."

Lousteau's hand was on the lock when du Bruel came in with the

manager.

"Permit me, monsieur, to take a message to Coralie; allow me to tell

her that you will go home with her after supper, or my play will be

ruined. The wretched girl does not know what she is doing or saying;

she will cry when she ought to laugh and laugh when she ought to cry.

She has been hissed once already. You can still save the piece, and,

after all, pleasure is not a misfortune."

"I am not accustomed to rivals, sir," Lucien answered.

"Pray don't tell her that!" cried the manager. "Coralie is just the

girl to fling Camusot overboard and ruin herself in good earnest. The

proprietor of the _Golden Cocoon_, worthy man, allows her two thousand

francs a month, and pays for all her dresses and _claqueurs_."

"As your promise pledges me to nothing, save your play," said Lucien,

with a sultan's airs.

"But don't look as if you meant to snub that charming creature,"

pleaded du Bruel.

"Dear me! am I to write the notice of your play and smile on your

heroine as well?" exclaimed the poet.

The author vanished with a signal to Coralie, who began to act

forthwith in a marvelous way. Vignol, who played the part of the

alcalde, and revealed for the first time his genius as an actor of old

men, came forward amid a storm of applause to make an announcement to

the house.

"The piece which we have the honor of playing for you this evening,

gentlemen, is the work of MM. Raoul and de Cursy."

"Why, Nathan is partly responsible," said Lousteau. "I don't wonder

that he looked in."

"Coralie_! Coralie_!" shouted the enraptured house. "Florine, too!"

roared a voice of thunder from the opposite box, and other voices took

up the cry, "Florine and Coralie!"

The curtain rose, Vignol reappeared between the two actresses; Matifat

and Camusot flung wreaths on the stage, and Coralie stooped for her

flowers and held them out to Lucien.

For him those two hours spent in the theatre seemed to be a dream. The

spell that held him had begun to work when he went behind the scenes;

and, in spite of its horrors, the atmosphere of the place, its

sensuality and dissolute morals had affected the poet's still

untainted nature. A sort of malaria that infects the soul seems to

lurk among those dark, filthy passages filled with machinery, and lit

with smoky, greasy lamps. The solemnity and reality of life disappear,

the most sacred things are matter for a jest, the most impossible

things seem to be true. Lucien felt as if he had taken some narcotic,

and Coralie had completed the work. He plunged into this joyous

intoxication.

The lights in the great chandelier were extinguished; there was no one

left in the house except the boxkeepers, busy taking away footstools

and shutting doors, the noises echoing strangely through the empty

theatre. The footlights, blown out as one candle, sent up a fetid reek

of smoke. The curtain rose again, a lantern was lowered from the

ceiling, and firemen and stage carpenters departed on their rounds.

The fairy scenes of the stage, the rows of fair faces in the boxes,

the dazzling lights, the magical illusion of new scenery and costume

had all disappeared, and dismal darkness, emptiness, and cold reigned

in their stead. It was hideous. Lucien sat on in bewilderment.

"Well! are you coming, my boy?" Lousteau's voice called from the

stage. "Jump down."

Lucien sprang over. He scarcely recognized Florine and Coralie in

their ordinary quilted paletots and cloaks, with their faces hidden by

hats and thick black veils. Two butterflies returned to the chrysalis

stage could not be more completely transformed.

"Will you honor me by giving me your arm?" Coralie asked tremulously.

"With pleasure," said Lucien. He could feel the beating of her heart

throbbing against his like some snared bird as she nestled closely to

his side, with something of the delight of a cat that rubs herself

against her master with eager silken caresses.

"So we are supping together!" she said.

The party of four found two cabs waiting for them at the door in the

Rue des Fosses-du-Temple. Coralie drew Lucien to one of the two, in

which Camusot and his father-in-law old Cardot were seated already.

She offered du Bruel a fifth place, and the manager drove off with

Florine, Matifat, and Lousteau.

"These hackney cabs are abominable things," said Coralie.

"Why don't you have a carriage?" returned du Bruel.

"_Why_?" she asked pettishly. "I do not like to tell you before M.

Cardot's face; for he trained his son-in-law, no doubt. Would you

believe it, little and old as he is, M. Cardot only gives Florine five

hundred francs a month, just about enough to pay for her rent and her

grub and her clothes. The old Marquis de Rochegude offered me a

brougham two months ago, and he has six hundred thousand francs a

year, but I am an artist and not a common hussy."

"You shall have a carriage the day after to-morrow, miss," said

Camusot benignly; "you never asked me for one."

"As if one _asked_ for such a thing as that? What! you love a woman and

let her paddle about in the mud at the risk of breaking her legs?

Nobody but a knight of the yardstick likes to see a draggled skirt

hem."

As she uttered the sharp words that cut Camusot to the quick, she

groped for Lucien's knee, and pressed it against her own, and clasped

her fingers upon his hand. She was silent. All her power to feel

seemed to be concentrated upon the ineffable joy of a moment which

brings compensation for the whole wretched past of a life such as

these poor creatures lead, and develops within their souls a poetry of

which other women, happily ignorant of these violent revulsions, know

nothing.

"You played like Mlle. Mars herself towards the end," said du Bruel.

"Yes," said Camusot, "something put her out at the beginning; but from

the middle of the second act to the very end, she was enough to drive

you wild with admiration. Half of the success of your play was due to

her."

"And half of her success is due to me," said du Bruel.

"This is all much ado about nothing," said Coralie in an unfamiliar

voice. And, seizing an opportunity in the darkness, she carried

Lucien's hand to her lips and kissed it and drenched it with tears.

Lucien felt thrilled through and through by that touch, for in the

humility of the courtesan's love there is a magnificence which might

set an example to angels.

"Are you writing the dramatic criticism, monsieur?" said du Bruel,

addressing Lucien; "you can write a charming paragraph about our dear

Coralie."

"Oh! do us that little service!" pleaded Camusot, down on his knees,

metaphorically speaking, before the critic. "You will always find me

ready to do you a good turn at any time."

"Do leave him his independence," Coralie exclaimed angrily; "he will

write what he pleases. Papa Camusot, buy carriages for me instead of

praises."

"You shall have them on very easy terms," Lucien answered politely. "I

have never written for newspapers before, so I am not accustomed to

their ways, my maiden pen is at your disposal----"

"That is funny," said du Bruel.

"Here we are in the Rue de Bondy," said Cardot. Coralie's sally had

quite crushed the little old man.

"If you are giving me the first fruits of your pen, the first love

that has sprung up in my heart shall be yours," whispered Coralie in

the brief instant that they remained alone together in the cab; then

she went up to Florine's bedroom to change her dress for a toilette

previously sent.

Lucien had no idea how lavishly a prosperous merchant will spend money

upon an actress or a mistress when he means to enjoy a life of

pleasure. Matifat was not nearly so rich a man as his friend Camusot,

and he had done his part rather shabbily, yet the sight of the

dining-room took Lucien by surprise. The walls were hung with green

cloth with a border of gilded nails, the whole room was artistically

decorated, lighted by handsome lamps, stands full of flowers stood in

every direction. The drawing-room was resplendent with the furniture

in fashion in those days--a Thomire chandelier, a carpet of Eastern

design, and yellow silken hangings relieved by a brown border. The

candlesticks, fire-irons, and clock were all in good taste; for

Matifat had left everything to Grindot, a rising architect, who was

building a house for him, and the young man had taken great pains with

the rooms when he knew that Florine was to occupy them.

Matifat, a tradesman to the backbone, went about carefully, afraid to

touch the new furniture; he seemed to have the totals of the bills

always before his eyes, and to look upon the splendors about him as so

much jewelry imprudently withdrawn from the case.

"And I shall be obliged to do as much for Florentine!" old Cardot's

eyes seemed to say.

Lucien at once began to understand Lousteau's indifference to the

state of his garret. Etienne was the real king of these festivals;

Etienne enjoyed the use of all these fine things. He was standing just

now on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, as if he were the

master of the house, chatting with the manager, who was congratulating

du Bruel.

"Copy, copy!" called Finot, coming into the room. "There is nothing in

the box; the printers are setting up my article, and they will soon

have finished."

"We will manage," said Etienne. "There is a fire burning in Florine's

boudoir; there is a table there; and if M. Matifat will find us paper

and ink, we will knock off the newspaper while Florine and Coralie are

dressing."

Cardot, Camusot, and Matifat disappeared in search of quills,

penknives, and everything necessary. Suddenly the door was flung open,

and Tullia, one of the prettiest opera-dancers of the day, dashed into

the room.

"They agree to take the hundred copies, dear boy!" she cried,

addressing Finot; "they won't cost the management anything, for the

chorus and the orchestra and the _corps de ballet_ are to take them

whether they like it or not; but your paper is so clever that nobody

will grumble. And you are going to have your boxes. Here is the

subscription for the first quarter," she continued, holding out a

couple of banknotes; "so don't cut me up!"

"It is all over with me!" groaned Finot; "I must suppress my

abominable diatribe, and I haven't another notion in my head."

"What a happy inspiration, divine Lais!" exclaimed Blondet, who had

followed the lady upstairs and brought Nathan, Vernou and Claude

Vignon with him. "Stop to supper, there is a dear, or I will crush

thee, butterfly as thou art. There will be no professional jealousies,

as you are a dancer; and as to beauty, you have all of you too much

sense to show jealousy in public."

"Oh dear!" cried Finot, "Nathan, Blondet, du Bruel, help friends! I

want five columns."

"I can make two of the play," said Lucien.

"I have enough for one," added Lousteau.

"Very well; Nathan, Vernou, and du Bruel will make the jokes at the

end; and Blondet, good fellow, surely will vouchsafe a couple of short

columns for the first sheet. I will run round to the printer. It is

lucky that you brought your carriage, Tullia."

"Yes, but the Duke is waiting below in it, and he has a German

Minister with him."

"Ask the Duke and the Minister to come up," said Nathan.

"A German? They are the ones to drink, and they listen too; he shall

hear some astonishing things to send home to his Government," cried

Blondet.

"Is there any sufficiently serious personage to go down to speak to

him?" asked Finot. "Here, du Bruel, you are an official; bring up the

Duc de Rhetore and the Minister, and give your arm to Tullia. Dear me!

Tullia, how handsome you are to-night!"

"We shall be thirteen at table!" exclaimed Matifat, paling visibly.

"No, fourteen," said a voice in the doorway, and Florentine appeared.

"I have come to look after 'milord Cardot,'" she added, speaking with

a burlesque English accent.

"And besides," said Lousteau, "Claude Vignon came with Blondet."

"I brought him here to drink," returned Blondet, taking up an

inkstand. "Look here, all of you, you must use all your wit before

those fifty-six bottles of wine drive it out. And, of all things, stir

up du Bruel; he is a vaudevillist, he is capable of making bad jokes

if you get him to concert pitch."

And Lucien wrote his first newspaper article at the round table in

Florine's boudoir, by the light of the pink candles lighted by

Matifat; before such a remarkable audience he was eager to show what

he could do.