TO HER.

Out of the glowing heart of the torrent of glory and light,

At the foot of Jehovah’s throne where the angels stand afar,

Each on a seistron of gold repeating the prayers of the night,

Put up for each by his star.

Out from the cherubim choir a bright-haired Angel springs,

Veiling the glory of God that dwells on a dazzling brow,

Leaving the courts of heaven to sink upon silver wings

Down to our world below.

God looked in pity on earth, and the Angel, reading His thought,

Came down to lull the pain of the mighty spirit at strife,

Reverent bent o’er the maid, and for age left desolate brought

Flowers of the springtime of life.

Bringing a dream of hope to solace the mother’s fears,

Hearkening unto the voice of the tardy repentant cry,

Glad as angels are glad, to reckon Earth’s pitying tears,

Given with alms of a sigh.

One there is, and but one, bright messenger sent from the skies

Whom earth like a lover fain would hold from the heav’nward flight;

But the angel, weeping, turns and gazes with sad, sweet eyes

Up to the heaven of light.

Not by the radiant eyes, not by the kindling glow

Of virtue sent from God, did I know the secret sign,

Nor read the token sent on a white and dazzling brow

Of an origin divine.

Nay, it was Love grown blind and dazed with excess of light,

Striving and striving in vain to mingle Earth and Heaven,

Helpless and powerless against the invincible armor bright

By the dread archangel given.

Ah! be wary, take heed, lest aught should be seen or heard

Of the shining seraph band, as they take the heavenward way;

Too soon the Angel on Earth will learn the magical word

Sung at the close of the day.

Then you shall see afar, rifting the darkness of night,

A gleam as of dawn that spread across the starry floor,

And the seaman that watch for a sign shall mark the track of their flight,

A luminous pathway in Heaven and a beacon for evermore.

“Do you read the riddle?” said Amélie, giving M. du Châtelet a

coquettish glance.

“It is the sort of stuff that we all of us wrote more or less after we

left school,” said the Baron with a bored expression--he was acting his

part of arbiter of taste who has seen everything. “We used to deal in

Ossianic mists, Malvinas and Fingals and cloudy shapes, and warriors

who got out of their tombs with stars above their heads. Nowadays this

poetical frippery has been replaced by Jehovah, angels, seistrons, the

plumes of seraphim, and all the paraphernalia of paradise freshened

up with a few new words such as ‘immense, infinite, solitude,

intelligence’; you have lakes, and the words of the Almighty, a kind

of Christianized Pantheism, enriched with the most extraordinary and

unheard-of rhymes. We are in quite another latitude, in fact; we have

left the North for the East, but the darkness is just as thick as

before.”

“If the ode is obscure, the declaration is very clear, it seems to me,”

said Zéphirine.

“And the archangel’s armor is a tolerably thin gauze robe,” said

Francis.

Politeness demanded that the audience should profess to be enchanted

with the poem; and the women, furious because they had no poets in

their train to extol them as angels, rose, looked bored by the reading,

murmuring, “Very nice!” “Charming!” “Perfect!” with frigid coldness.

“If you love me, do not congratulate the poet or his angel,” Lolotte

laid her commands on her dear Adrien in imperious tones, and Adrien was

fain to obey.

“Empty words, after all,” Zéphirine remarked to Francis, “and love is a

poem that we live.”

“You have just expressed the very thing that I was thinking, Zizine, but

I should not have put it so neatly,” said Stanislas, scanning himself

from top to toe with loving attention.

“I would give, I don’t know how much, to see Naïs’ pride brought down

a bit,” said Amélie, addressing Châtelet. “Naïs sets up to be an

archangel, as if she were better than the rest of us, and mixes us

up with low people; his father was an apothecary, and his mother is

a nurse; his sister works in a laundry, and he himself is a printer’s

foreman.”

“If his father sold biscuits for worms” (_vers_), said Jacques, “he

ought to have made his son take them.”

“He is continuing in his father’s line of business, for the stuff that

he has just been reading to us is a drug in the market, it seems,” said

Stanislas, striking one of his most killing attitudes. “Drug for drug, I

would rather have something else.”

Every one apparently combined to humiliate Lucien by various

aristocrats’ sarcasms. Lili the religious thought it a charitable deed

to use any means of enlightening Naïs, and Naïs was on the brink of a

piece of folly. Francis the diplomatist undertook the direction of the

silly conspiracy; every one was interested in the progress of the drama;

it would be something to talk about to-morrow. The ex-consul, being far

from anxious to engage in a duel with a young poet who would fly into a

rage at the first hint of insult under his lady’s eyes, was wise enough

to see that the only way of dealing Lucien his deathblow was by the

spiritual arm which was safe from vengeance. He therefore followed

the example set by Châtelet the astute, and went to the Bishop. Him he

proceeded to mystify.

He told the Bishop that Lucien’s mother was a woman of uncommon powers

and great modesty, and that it was she who found the subjects for her

son’s verses. Nothing pleased Lucien so much, according to the guileful

Francis, as any recognition of her talents--he worshiped his mother.

Then, having inculcated these notions, he left the rest to time. His

lordship was sure to bring out the insulting allusion, for which he had

been so carefully prepared, in the course of conversation.

When Francis and the Bishop joined the little group where Lucien stood,

the circle who gave him the cup of hemlock to drain by little sips

watched him with redoubled interest. The poet, luckless young man, being

a total stranger, and unaware of the manners and customs of the house,

could only look at Mme. de Bargeton and give embarrassed answers to

embarrassing questions. He knew neither the names nor condition of the

people about him; the women’s silly speeches made him blush for them,

and he was at his wits’ end for a reply. He felt, moreover, how very far

removed he was from these divinities of Angoulême when he heard himself

addressed sometimes as M. Chardon, sometimes as M. de Rubempré, while

they addressed each other as Lolotte, Adrien, Astolphe, Lili and Fifine.

His confusion rose to a height when, taking Lili for a man’s surname,

he addressed the coarse M. de Senonches as M. Lili; that Nimrod broke in

upon him with a “_MONSIEUR LULU?_” and Mme. de Bargeton flushed red to

the eyes.

“A woman must be blind indeed to bring this little fellow among us!”

muttered Senonches.

Zéphirine turned to speak to the Marquise de Pimentel--“Do you not see

a strong likeness between M. Chardon and M. de Cante-Croix, madame?” she

asked in a low but quite audible voice.

“The likeness is ideal,” smiled Mme. de Pimentel.

“Glory has a power of attraction to which we can confess,” said Mme. de

Bargeton, addressing the Marquise. “Some women are as much attracted by

greatness as others by littleness,” she added, looking at Francis.

The was beyond Zéphirine’s comprehension; she thought her consul a very

great man; but the Marquise laughed, and her laughter ranged her on

Naïs’ side.

“You are very fortunate, monsieur,” said the Marquis de Pimentel,

addressing Lucien for the purpose of calling him M. de Rubempré, and not

M. Chardon, as before; “you should never find time heavy on your hands.”

“Do you work quickly?” asked Lolotte, much in the way that she would

have asked a joiner “if it took long to make a box.”

The bludgeon stroke stunned Lucien, but he raised his head at Mme. de

Bargeton’s reply--

“My dear, poetry does not grow in M. de Rubempré’s head like grass in

our courtyards.”

“Madame, we cannot feel too reverently towards the noble spirits in

whom God has set some ray of this light,” said the Bishop, addressing

Lolotte. “Yes, poetry is something holy. Poetry implies suffering. How

many silent nights those verses that you admire have cost! We should bow

in love and reverence before the poet; his life here is almost always

a life of sorrow; but God doubtless reserves a place in heaven for him

among His prophets. This young man is a poet,” he added laying a hand

on Lucien’s head; “do you not see the sign of Fate set on that high

forehead of his?”

Glad to be so generously championed, Lucien made his acknowledgments

in a grateful look, not knowing that the worthy prelate was to deal his

deathblow.

Mme. de Bargeton’s eyes traveled round the hostile circle. Her glances

went like arrows to the depths of her rivals’ hearts, and left them

twice as furious as before.

“Ah, monseigneur,” cried Lucien, hoping to break thick heads with his

golden sceptre, “but ordinary people have neither your intellect nor

your charity. No one heeds our sorrows, our toil is unrecognized. The

gold-digger working in the mine does not labor as we to wrest metaphors

from the heart of the most ungrateful of all languages. If this is

poetry--to give ideas such definite and clear expressions that all the

world can see and understand--the poet must continually range through

the entire scale of human intellects, so that he can satisfy the demands

of all; he must conceal hard thinking and emotion, two antagonistic

powers, beneath the most vivid color; he must know how to make one

word cover a whole world of thought; he must give the results of whole

systems of philosophy in a few picturesque lines; indeed, his songs are

like seeds that must break into blossom in other hearts wherever they

find the soil prepared by personal experience. How can you express

unless you first have felt? And is not passion suffering? Poetry is only

brought forth after painful wanderings in the vast regions of thought

and life. There are men and women in books, who seem more really alive

to us than men and women who have lived and died--Richardson’s Clarissa,

Chénier’s Camille, the Delia of Tibullus, Ariosto’s Angelica, Dante’s

Francesca, Molière’s Alceste, Beaumarchais’ Figaro, Scott’s Rebecca the

Jewess, the Don Quixote of Cervantes,--do we not owe these deathless

creations to immortal throes?”

“And what are you going to create for us?” asked Châtelet.

“If I were to announce such conceptions, I should give myself out for

a man of genius, should I not?” answered Lucien. “And besides, such

sublime creations demand a long experience of the world and a study of

human passion and interests which I could not possibly have made; but

I have made a beginning,” he added, with bitterness in his tone, as

he took a vengeful glance round the circle; “the time of gestation is

long----”

“Then it will be a case of difficult labor,” interrupted M. du Hautoy.

“Your excellent mother might assist you,” suggested the Bishop.

The epigram, innocently made by the good prelate, the long-looked-for

revenge, kindled a gleam of delight in all eyes. The smile of satisfied

caste that traveled from mouth to mouth was aggravated by M. de

Bargeton’s imbecility; he burst into a laugh, as usual, some moments

later.

“Monseigneur, you are talking a little above our heads; these ladies

do not understand your meaning,” said Mme. de Bargeton, and the words

paralyzed the laughter, and drew astonished eyes upon her. “A poet

who looks to the Bible for his inspiration has a mother indeed in the

Church.--M. de Rubempré, will you recite _Saint John in Patmos_ for us,

or _Belshazzar’s Feast_, so that his lordship may see that Rome is still

the _Magna Parens_ of Virgil?”

The women exchanged smiles at the Latin words.

The bravest and highest spirits know times of prostration at the outset

of life. Lucien had sunk to the depths at the blow, but he struck the

bottom with his feet, and rose to the surface again, vowing to subjugate

this little world. He rose like a bull, stung to fury by a shower of

darts, and prepared to obey Louise by declaiming _Saint John in Patmos_;

but by this time the card-tables had claimed their complement of

players, who returned to the accustomed groove to find amusement there

which poetry had not afforded them. They felt besides that the revenge

of so many outraged vanities would be incomplete unless it were followed

up by contemptuous indifference; so they showed their tacit disdain for

the native product by leaving Lucien and Mme. de Bargeton to themselves.

Every one appeared to be absorbed in his own affairs; one chattered

with the prefect about a new crossroad, another proposed to vary

the pleasures of the evening with a little music. The great world of

Angoulême, feeling that it was no judge of poetry, was very anxious,

in the first place, to hear the verdict of the Pimentels and the

Rastignacs, and formed a little group about them. The great influence

wielded in the department by these two families was always felt on every

important occasion; every one was jealous of them, every one paid court

to them, foreseeing that they might some day need that influence.

“What do you think of our poet and his poetry?” Jacques asked of the

Marquise. Jacques used to shoot over the lands belonging to the Pimentel

family.

“Why, it is not bad for provincial poetry,” she said, smiling; “and

besides, such a beautiful poet cannot do anything amiss.”

Every one thought the decision admirable; it traveled from lip to

lip, gaining malignance by the way. Then Châtelet was called upon to

accompany M. du Bartas on the piano while he mangled the great solo from

_Figaro_; and the way being opened to music, the audience, as in duty

bound, listened while Châtelet in turn sang one of Chateaubriand’s

ballads, a chivalrous ditty made in the time of the Empire. Duets

followed, of the kind usually left to boarding-school misses, and

rescued from the schoolroom by Mme. du Brossard, who meant to make a

brilliant display of her dear Camille’s talents for M. de Séverac’s

benefit.

Mme. du Bargeton, hurt by the contempt which every one showed her

poet, paid back scorn for scorn by going to her boudoir during these

performances. She was followed by the prelate. His Vicar-General had

just been explaining the profound irony of the epigram into which he

had been entrapped, and the Bishop wished to make amends. Mlle. de

Rastignac, fascinated by the poetry, also slipped into the boudoir

without her mother’s knowledge.

Louise drew Lucien to her mattress-cushioned sofa; and with no one

to see or hear, she murmured in his ear, “Dear angel, they did not

understand you; but, ‘Thy songs are sweet, I love to say them over.’”

And Lucien took comfort from the pretty speech, and forgot his woes for

a little.

“Glory is not to be had cheaply,” Mme. de Bargeton continued, taking his

hand and holding it tightly in her own. “Endure your woes, my friend,

you will be great one day; your pain is the price of your immortality.

If only I had a hard struggle before me! God preserve you from the

enervating life without battles, in which the eagle’s wings have no room

to spread themselves. I envy you; for if you suffer, at least you live.

You will put out your strength, you will feel the hope of victory; your

strife will be glorious. And when you shall come to your kingdom, and

reach the imperial sphere where great minds are enthroned, then remember

the poor creatures disinherited by fate, whose intellects pine in an

oppressive moral atmosphere, who die and have never lived, knowing all

the while what life might be; think of the piercing eyes that have seen

nothing, the delicate senses that have only known the scent of poison

flowers. Then tell in your song of plants that wither in the depths

of the forest, choked by twining growths and rank, greedy vegetation,

plants that have never been kissed by the sunlight, and die, never

having put forth a blossom. It would be a terribly gloomy poem, would it

not, a fanciful subject? What a sublime poem might be made of the story

of some daughter of the desert transported to some cold, western clime,

calling for her beloved sun, dying of a grief that none can understand,

overcome with cold and longing. It would be an allegory; many lives are

like that.”

“You would picture the spirit which remembers Heaven,” said the Bishop;

“some one surely must have written such a poem in the days of old; I

like to think that I see a fragment of it in the Song of Songs.”

“Take that as your subject,” said Laure de Rastignac, expressing her

artless belief in Lucien’s powers.

“The great sacred poem of France is still unwritten,” remarked the

Bishop. “Believe me, glory and success await the man of talent who shall

work for religion.”

“That task will be his,” said Mme. de Bargeton rhetorically. “Do you not

see the first beginnings of the vision of the poem, like the flame of

dawn, in his eyes?”

“Naïs is treating us very badly,” said Fifine; “what can she be doing?”

“Don’t you hear?” said Stanislas. “She is flourishing away, using big

words that you cannot make head or tail of.”

Amélie, Fifine, Adrien, and Francis appeared in the doorway with Mme. de

Rastignac, who came to look for her daughter.

“Naïs,” cried the two ladies, both delighted to break in upon the quiet

chat in the boudoir, “it would be very nice of you to come and play

something for us.”

“My dear child, M. de Rubempré is just about to recite his _Saint John

in Patmos_, a magnificent biblical poem.”

“Biblical!” echoed Fifine in amazement.

Amélie and Fifine went back to the drawing-room, taking the word back

with them as food for laughter. Lucien pleaded a defective memory and

excused himself. When he reappeared, nobody took the slightest notice

of him; every one was chatting or busy at the card-tables; the poet’s

aureole had been plucked away, the landowners had no use for him, the

more pretentious sort looked upon him as an enemy to their ignorance,

while the women were jealous of Mme. de Bargeton, the Beatrice of this

modern Dante, to use the Vicar-General’s phrase, and looked at him with

cold, scornful eyes.

“So this is society!” Lucien said to himself as he went down to

L’Houmeau by the steps of Beaulieu; for there are times when we choose

to take the longest way, that the physical exercise of walking may

promote the flow of ideas.

So far from being disheartened, the fury of repulsed ambition gave

Lucien new strength. Like all those whose instincts bring them to a

higher social sphere which they reach before they can hold their own in

it, Lucien vowed to make any sacrifice to the end that he might remain

on that higher social level. One by one he drew out the poisoned shafts

on his way home, talking aloud to himself, scoffing at the fools with

whom he had to do, inventing neat answers to their idiotic questions,

desperately vexed that the witty responses occurred to him so late in

the day. By the time that he reached the Bordeaux road, between the

river and the foot of the hill, he thought that he could see Eve and

David sitting on a baulk of timber by the river in the moonlight, and

went down the footpath towards them.

While Lucien was hastening to the torture in Mme. de Bargeton’s rooms,

his sister had changed her dress for a gown of pink cambric covered with

narrow stripes, a straw hat, and a little silk shawl. The simple costume

seemed like a rich toilette on Eve, for she was one of those women whose

great nature lends stateliness to the least personal detail; and David

felt prodigiously shy of her now that she had changed her working dress.

He had made up his mind that he would speak of himself; but now as he

gave his arm to this beautiful girl, and they walked through L’Houmeau

together, he could find nothing to say to her. Love delights in such

reverent awe as redeemed souls know on beholding the glory of God. So,

in silence, the two lovers went across the Bridge of Saint Anne, and

followed the left bank of the Charente. Eve felt embarrassed by the

pause, and stopped to look along the river; a joyous shaft of sunset

had turned the water between the bridge and the new powder mills into a

sheet of gold.

“What a beautiful evening it is!” she said, for the sake of saying

something; “the air is warm and fresh, and full of the scent of flowers,

and there is a wonderful sky.”

“Everything speaks to our heart,” said David, trying to proceed to love

by way of analogy. “Those who love find infinite delight in discovering

the poetry of their own inmost souls in every chance effect of the

landscape, in the thin, clear air, in the scent of the earth. Nature

speaks for them.”

“And loosens their tongues, too,” Eve said merrily. “You were very

silent as we came through L’Houmeau. Do you know, I felt quite

uncomfortable----”

“You looked so beautiful, that I could not say anything,” David answered

candidly.

“Then, just now I am not so beautiful?” inquired she.

“It is not that,” he said; “but I was so happy to have this walk alone

with you, that----” he stopped short in confusion, and looked at the

hillside and the road to Saintes.

“If the walk is any pleasure to you, I am delighted; for I owe you an

evening, I think, when you have given up yours for me. When you refused

to go to Mme. de Bargeton’s, you were quite as generous as Lucien when

he made the demand at the risk of vexing her.”

“No, not generous, only wise,” said David. “And now that we are quite

alone under the sky, with no listeners except the bushes and the reeds

by the edge of the Charente, let me tell you about my anxiety as to

Lucien’s present step, dear Eve. After all that I have just said, I hope

that you will look on my fears as a refinement of friendship. You and

your mother have done all that you could to put him above his social

position; but when you stimulated his ambition, did you not unthinkingly

condemn him to a hard struggle? How can he maintain himself in the

society to which his tastes incline him? I know Lucien; he likes to

reap, he does not like toil; it is his nature. Social claims will take

up the whole of his time, and for a man who has nothing but his brains,

time is capital. He likes to shine; society will stimulate his desires

until no money will satisfy them; instead of earning money, he will

spend it. You have accustomed him to believe in his great powers, in

fact, but the world at large declines to believe in any man’s superior

intellect until he has achieved some signal success. Now success in

literature is only won in solitude and by dogged work. What will Mme. de

Bargeton give your brother in return for so many days spent at her

feet? Lucien has too much spirit to accept help from her; and he cannot

afford, as we know, to cultivate her society, twice ruinous as it is

for him. Sooner or later that woman will throw over this dear brother of

ours, but not before she has spoiled him for hard work, and given him a

taste for luxury and a contempt for our humdrum life. She will develop

his love of enjoyment, his inclination for idleness, that debauches a

poetic soul. Yes, it makes me tremble to think that this great lady

may make a plaything of Lucien. If she cares for him sincerely, he will

forget everything else for her; or if she does not love him, she will

make him unhappy, for he is wild about her.”

“You have sent a chill of dread through my heart,” said Eve, stopping as

they reached the weir. “But so long as mother is strong enough for her

tiring life, so long as I live, we shall earn enough, perhaps, between

us to keep Lucien until success comes. My courage will never fail,” said

Eve, brightening. “There is no hardship in work when we work for one

we love; it is not drudgery. It makes me happy to think that I toil so

much, if indeed it is toil, for him. Oh, do not be in the least afraid,

we will earn money enough to send Lucien into the great world. There

lies his road to success.”

“And there lies his road to ruin,” returned David. “Dear Eve, listen

to me. A man needs an independent fortune, or the sublime cynicism of

poverty, for the slow execution of great work. Believe me, Lucien’s

horror of privation is so great, the savor of banquets, the incense of

success is so sweet in his nostrils, his self-love has grown so much in

Mme. de Bargeton’s boudoir, that he will do anything desperate sooner

than fall back, and you will never earn enough for his requirements.

“Then you are only a false friend to him!” Eve cried in despair, “or you

would not discourage us in this way.”

“Eve! Eve!” cried David, “if only I could be a brother to Lucien! You

alone can give me that title; he could accept anything from me then;

I should claim the right of devoting my life to him with the love that

hallows your self-sacrifice, but with some worldly wisdom too. Eve, my

darling, give Lucien a store from which he need not blush to draw! His

brother’s purse will be like his own, will it not? If you only knew

all my thoughts about Lucien’s position! If he means to go to Mme. de

Bargeton’s, he must not be my foreman any longer, poor fellow! He ought

not to live in L’Houmeau; you ought not to be a working girl; and your

mother must give up her employment as well. If you would consent to be

my wife, the difficulties will all be smoothed away. Lucien might live

on the second floor in the Place du Mûrier until I can build rooms for

him over the shed at the back of the yard (if my father will allow it,

that is.). And in that way we would arrange a free and independent life

for him. The wish to support Lucien will give me a better will to work

than I ever should have had for myself alone; but it rests with you to

give me the right to devote myself to him. Some day, perhaps, he will

go to Paris, the only place that can bring out all that is in him, and

where his talents will be appreciated and rewarded. Living in Paris is

expensive, and the earnings of all three of us will be needed for his

support. And besides, will not you and your mother need some one to lean

upon then? Dear Eve, marry me for love of Lucien; perhaps afterwards you

will love me when you see how I shall strive to help him and to make

you happy. We are, both of us, equally simple in our tastes; we have

few wants; Lucien’s welfare shall be the great object of our lives. His

heart shall be our treasure-house, we will lay up all our fortune, and

think and feel and hope in him.”

“Worldly considerations keep us apart,” said Eve, moved by this love

that tried to explain away its greatness. “You are rich and I am poor.

One must love indeed to overcome such a difficulty.”

“Then you do not care enough for me?” cried the stricken David.

“But perhaps your father would object----”

“Never mind,” said David; “if asking my father is all that is necessary,

you will be my wife. Eve, my dear Eve, how you have lightened life for

me in a moment; and my heart has been very heavy with thoughts that I

could not utter, I did not know how to speak of them. Only tell me that

you care for me a little, and I will take courage to tell you the rest.”

“Indeed,” she said, “you make me quite ashamed; but confidence for

confidence, I will tell you this, that I have never thought of any one

but you in my life. I looked upon you as one of those men to whom a

woman might be proud to belong, and I did not dare to hope so great a

thing for myself, a penniless working girl with no prospects.”

“That is enough, that is enough,” he answered, sitting down on the bar

by the weir, for they had gone to and fro like mad creatures over the

same length of pathway.

“What is the matter?” she asked, her voice expressing for the first time

a woman’s sweet anxiety for one who belongs to her.

“Nothing but good,” he answered. “It is the sight of a whole lifetime

of happiness that dazzles me, as it were; it is overwhelming. Why am I

happier than you?” he asked, with a touch of sadness. “For I know that I

am happier.”

Eve looked at David with mischievous, doubtful eyes that asked an

explanation.

“Dear Eve, I am taking more than I give. So I shall always love you more

than you love me, because I have more reason to love. You are an angel;

I am a man.”

“I am not so learned,” Eve said, smiling. “I love you----”

“As much as you love Lucien?” he broke in.

“Enough to be your wife, enough to devote myself to you, to try not to

add anything to your burdens, for we shall have some struggles; it will

not be quite easy at first.”

“Dear Eve, have you known that I loved you since the first day I saw

you?”

“Where is the woman who does not feel that she is loved?”

“Now let me get rid of your scruples as to my imaginary riches. I am

a poor man, dear. Yes, it pleased my father to ruin me; he made a

speculation of me, as a good many so-called benefactors do. If I make a

fortune, it will be entirely through you. That is not a lover’s speech,

but sober, serious earnest. I ought to tell you about my faults, for

they are exceedingly bad ones in a man who has his way to make. My

character and habits and favorite occupations all unfit me for business

and money-getting, and yet we can only make money by some kind of

industry; if I have some faculty for the discovery of gold-mines, I am

singularly ill-adapted for getting the gold out of them. But you who,

for your brother’s sake, went into the smallest details, with a talent

for thrift, and the patient watchfulness of the born man of business,

you will reap the harvest that I shall sow. The present state of things,

for I have been like one of the family for a long time, weighs so

heavily upon me, that I have spent days and nights in search of some way

of making a fortune. I know something of chemistry, and a knowledge of

commercial requirements has put me on the scent of a discovery that is

likely to pay. I can say nothing as yet about it; there will be a long

while to wait; perhaps for some years we may have a hard time of it; but

I shall find out how to make a commercial article at last. Others are

busy making the same researches, and if I am first in the field,

we shall have a large fortune. I have said nothing to Lucien, his

enthusiastic nature would spoil everything; he would convert my hopes

into realities, and begin to live like a lord, and perhaps get into

debt. So keep my secret for me. Your sweet and dear companionship will

be consolation in itself during the long time of experiment, and the

desire to gain wealth for you and Lucien will give me persistence and

tenacity----”

“I had guessed this too,” Eve said, interrupting him; “I knew that you

were one of those inventors, like my poor father, who must have a woman

to take care of them.”

“Then you love me! Ah! say so without fear to me, who saw a symbol of my

love for you in your name. Eve was the one woman in the world; if it was

true in the outward world for Adam, it is true again in the inner world

of my heart for me. My God! do you love me?”

“Yes,” said she, lengthening out the word as if to make it cover the

extent of feeling expressed by a single syllable.

“Well, let us sit here,” he said, and taking Eve’s hand, he went to a

great baulk of timber lying below the wheels of a paper-mill. “Let

me breathe the evening air, and hear the frogs croak, and watch the

moonlight quivering upon the river; let me take all this world about us

into my soul, for it seems to me that my happiness is written large over

it all; I am seeing it for the first time in all its splendor, lighted

up by love, grown fair through you. Eve, dearest, this is the first

moment of pure and unmixed joy that fate has given to me! I do not think

that Lucien can be as happy as I am.”

David felt Eve’s hand, damp and quivering in his own, and a tear fell

upon it.

“May I not know the secret?” she pleaded coaxingly.

“You have a right to know it, for your father was interested in the

matter, and to-day it is a pressing question, and for this reason. Since

the downfall of the Empire, calico has come more and more into use,

because it is so much cheaper than linen. At the present moment, paper

is made of a mixture of hemp and linen rags, but the raw material is

dear, and the expense naturally retards the great advance which the

French press is bound to make. Now you cannot increase the output of

linen rags, a given population gives a pretty constant result, and it

only increases with the birth-rate. To make any perceptible difference

in the population for this purpose, it would take a quarter of a century

and a great revolution in habits of life, trade, and agriculture. And if

the supply of linen rags is not enough to meet one-half nor one-third

of the demand, some cheaper material than linen rags must be found

for cheap paper. This deduction is based on facts that came under my

knowledge here. The Angoulême paper-makers, the last to use pure linen

rags, say that the proportion of cotton in the pulp has increased to a

frightful extent of late years.”

In answer to a question from Eve, who did not know what “pulp” meant,

David gave an account of paper-making, which will not be out of place in

a volume which owes its existence in book form to the paper industry no

less than to the printing-press; but the long digression, doubtless, had

best be condensed at first.

Paper, an invention not less marvelous than the other dependent

invention of printing, was known in ancient times in China. Thence by

the unrecognized channels of commerce the art reached Asia Minor, where

paper was made of cotton reduced to pulp and boiled. Parchment had

become so extremely dear that a cheap substitute was discovered in an

imitation of the cotton paper known in the East as _charta bombycina_.

The imitation, made from rags, was first made at Basel, in 1170, by a

colony of Greek refugees, according to some authorities; or at Padua,

in 1301, by an Italian named Pax, according to others. In these ways

the manufacture of paper was perfected slowly and in obscurity; but this

much is certain, that so early as the reign of Charles VI., paper pulp

for playing-cards was made in Paris.

When those immortals, Faust, Coster, and Gutenberg, invented the Book,

craftsmen as obscure as many a great artist of those times appropriated

paper to the uses of typography. In the fifteenth century, that naive

and vigorous age, names were given to the various formats as well as to

the different sizes of type, names that bear the impress of the naivete

of the times; and the various sheets came to be known by the different

watermarks on their centres; the grapes, the figure of our Saviour, the

crown, the shield, or the flower-pot, just as at a later day, the eagle

of Napoleon’s time gave the name to the “double-eagle” size. And in the

same way the types were called Cicero, Saint-Augustine, and Canon

type, because they were first used to print the treatises of Cicero and

theological and liturgical works. Italics are so called because they

were invented in Italy by Aldus of Venice.

Before the invention of machine-made paper, which can be woven in any

length, the largest sized sheets were the _grand jésus_ and the double

columbier (this last being scarcely used now except for atlases or

engravings), and the size of paper for printers’ use was determined

by the dimensions of the impression-stone. When David explained these

things to Eve, web-paper was almost undreamed of in France, although,

about 1799, Denis Robert d’Essonne had invented a machine for turning

out a ribbon of paper, and Didot-Saint-Léger had since tried to perfect

it. The vellum paper invented by Ambroise Didot only dates back as far

as 1780.

This bird’s eye view of the history of the invention shows incontestably

that great industrial and intellectual advances are made exceedingly

slowly, and little by little, even as Nature herself proceeds. Perhaps

articulate speech and the art of writing were gradually developed in the

same groping way as typography and paper-making.

“Rag-pickers collect all the rags and old linen of Europe,” the

printer concluded, “and buy any kind of tissue. The rags are sorted and

warehoused by the wholesale rag merchants, who supply the paper-mills.

To give you some idea of the extent of the trade, you must know,

mademoiselle, that in 1814 Cardon the banker, owner of the pulping

troughs of Bruges and Langlée (where Léorier de l’Isle endeavored

in 1776 to solve the very problem that occupied your father), Cardon

brought an action against one Proust for an error in weights of two

millions in a total of ten million pounds’ weight of rags, worth about

four million francs! The manufacturer washes the rags and reduces them

to a thin pulp, which is strained, exactly as a cook strains sauce

through a tamis, through an iron frame with a fine wire bottom where the

mark which give its name to the size of the paper is woven. The size of

this _mould_, as it is called, regulates the size of the sheet.

“When I was with the Messieurs Didot,” David continued, “they were very

much interested in this question, and they are still interested; for the

improvement which your father endeavored to make is a great commercial

requirement, and one of the crying needs of the time. And for this

reason: although linen lasts so much longer than cotton, that it is

in reality cheaper in the end, the poor would rather make the smaller

outlay in the first instance, and, by virtue of the law of _Vae victis!_

pay enormously more before they have done. The middle classes do the

same. So there is a scarcity of linen. In England, where four-fifths of

the population use cotton to the exclusion of linen, they make nothing

but cotton paper. The cotton paper is very soft and easily creased to

begin with, and it has a further defect: it is so soluble that if you

seep a book made of cotton paper in water for fifteen minutes, it turns

to a pulp, while an old book left in water for a couple of hours is not

spoilt. You could dry the old book, and the pages, though yellow and

faded, would still be legible, the work would not be destroyed.

“There is a time coming when legislation will equalize our fortunes, and

we shall all be poor together; we shall want our linen and our books to

be cheap, just as people are beginning to prefer small pictures because

they have not wall space enough for large ones. Well, the shirts and the

books will not last, that is all; it is the same on all sides, solidity

is drying out. So this problem is one of the first importance for

literature, science, and politics.

“One day, in my office, there was a hot discussion going on about the

material that the Chinese use for making paper. Their paper is far

better than ours, because the raw material is better; and a good deal

was said about this thin, light Chinese paper, for if it is light and

thin, the texture is close, there are no transparent spots in it. In

Paris there are learned men among the printers’ readers; Fourier and

Pierre Leroux are Lachevardière’s readers at this moment; and the Comte

de Saint-Simon, who happened to be correcting proofs for us, came in

in the middle of the discussion. He told us at once that, according to

Kempfer and du Halde, the _Broussonetia_ furnishes the substance of the

Chinese paper; it is a vegetable substance (like linen or cotton

for that matter). Another reader maintained that Chinese paper was

principally made of an animal substance, to wit, the silk that is

abundant there. They made a bet about it in my presence. The Messieurs

Didot are printers to the Institute, so naturally they referred the

question to that learned body. M. Marcel, who used to be superintendent

of the Royal Printing Establishment, was umpire, and he sent the two

readers to M. l’Abbé Grozier, Librarian at the Arsenal. By the Abbé’s

decision they both lost their wages. The paper was not made of silk nor

yet from the _Broussonetia_; the pulp proved to be the triturated

fibre of some kind of bamboo. The Abbé Grozier had a Chinese book, an

iconographical and technological work, with a great many pictures in it,

illustrating all the different processes of paper-making, and he showed

us a picture of the workshop with the bamboo stalks lying in a heap in

the corner; it was extremely well drawn.

“Lucien told me that your father, with the intuition of a man of talent,

had a glimmering of a notion of some way of replacing linen rags with an

exceedingly common vegetable product, not previously manufactured, but

taken direct from the soil, as the Chinese use vegetable fibre at first

hand. I have classified the guesses made by those who came before me,

and have begun to study the question. The bamboo is a kind of reed;

naturally I began to think of the reeds that grow here in France.

“Labor is very cheap in China, where a workman earns three halfpence a

day, and this cheapness of labor enables the Chinese to manipulate each

sheet of paper separately. They take it out of the mould, and press it

between heated tablets of white porcelain, that is the secret of the

surface and consistence, the lightness and satin smoothness of the

best paper in the world. Well, here in Europe the work must be done by

machinery; machinery must take the place of cheap Chinese labor. If

we could but succeed in making a cheap paper of as good a quality, the

weight and thickness of printed books would be reduced by more than

one-half. A set of Voltaire, printed on our woven paper and bound,

weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds; it would only weigh fifty if

we used Chinese paper. That surely would be a triumph, for the housing

of many books has come to be a difficulty; everything has grown smaller

of late; this is not an age of giants; men have shrunk, everything about

them shrinks, and house-room into the bargain. Great mansions and great

suites of rooms will be abolished sooner or later in Paris, for no one

will afford to live in the great houses built by our forefathers. What a

disgrace for our age if none of its books should last! Dutch paper--that

is, paper made from flax--will be quite unobtainable in ten years’ time.

Well, your brother told me of this idea of your father’s, this plan for

using vegetable fibre in paper-making, so you see that if I succeed, you

have a right to----”

Lucien came up at that moment and interrupted David’s generous

assertion.

“I do not know whether you have found the evening pleasant,” said he;

“it has been a cruel time for me.”

“Poor Lucien! what can have happened?” cried Eve, as she saw her

brother’s excited face.

The poet told the history of his agony, pouring out a flood of clamorous

thoughts into those friendly hearts, Eve and David listening in pained

silence to a torrent of woes that exhibited such greatness and such

pettiness.

“M. de Bargeton is an old dotard. The indigestion will carry him off

before long, no doubt,” Lucien said, as he made an end, “and then I will

look down on these proud people; I will marry Mme. de Bargeton. I read

to-night in her eyes a love as great as mine for her. Yes, she felt

all that I felt; she comforted me; she is as great and noble as she is

gracious and beautiful. She will never give me up.”

“It is time that life was made smooth for him, is it not?” murmured

David, and for answer Eve pressed his arm without speaking. David

guessed her thoughts, and began at once to tell Lucien about his own

plans.

If Lucien was full of his troubles, the lovers were quite as full of

themselves. So absorbed were they, so eager that Lucien should approve

their happiness, that neither Eve nor David so much as noticed his start

of surprise at the news. Mme. de Bargeton’s lover had been dreaming of

a great match for his sister; he would reach a high position first, and

then secure himself by an alliance with some family of influence, and

here was one more obstacle in his way to success! His hopes were dashed

to the ground. “If Mme. de Bargeton consents to be Mme. de Rubempré, she

would never care to have David Séchard for a brother-in-law!”

This stated clearly and precisely was the thought that tortured Lucien’s

inmost mind. “Louise is right!” he thought bitterly. “A man with a

career before him is never understood by his family.”

If the marriage had not been announced immediately after Lucien’s

fancy had put M. de Bargeton to death, he would have been radiant

with heartfelt delight at the news. If he had thought soberly over the

probable future of a beautiful and penniless girl like Eve Chardon,

he would have seen that this marriage was a piece of unhoped-for good

fortune. But he was living just now in a golden dream; he had soared

above all barriers on the wings of an _if_; he had seen a vision of

himself, rising above society; and it was painful to drop so suddenly

down to hard fact.

Eve and David both thought that their brother was overcome with the

sense of such generosity; to them, with their noble natures, the silent

consent was a sign of true friendship. David began to describe with

kindly and cordial eloquence the happy fortunes in store for them all.

Unchecked by protests put in by Eve, he furnished his first floor with

a lover’s lavishness, built a second floor with boyish good faith for

Lucien, and rooms above the shed for Mme. Chardon--he meant to be a

son to her. In short, he made the whole family so happy and his

brother-in-law so independent, that Lucien fell under the spell of

David’s voice and Eve’s caresses; and as they went through the shadows

beside the still Charente, a gleam in the warm, star-lit night, he

forgot the sharp crown of thorns that had been pressed upon his head.

“M. de Rubempré” discovered David’s real nature, in fact. His facile

character returned almost at once to the innocent, hard-working burgher

life that he knew; he saw it transfigured and free from care. The buzz

of the aristocratic world grew more and more remote; and when at length

they came upon the paved road of L’Houmeau, the ambitious poet grasped

his brother’s hand, and made a third in the joy of the happy lovers.

“If only your father makes no objection to the marriage,” he said.

“You know how much he troubles himself about me; the old man lives for

himself,” said David. “But I will go over to Marsac to-morrow and see

him, if it is only to ask leave to build.”

David went back to the house with the brother and sister, and asked Mme.

Chardon’s consent to his marriage with the eagerness of a man who would

fain have no delay. Eve’s mother took her daughter’s hand, and gladly

laid it in David’s; and the lover, grown bolder on this, kissed his fair

betrothed on the forehead, and she flushed red, and smiled at him.

“The betrothal of the poor,” the mother said, raising her eyes as if

to pray for heaven’s blessing upon them.--“You are brave, my boy,” she

added, looking at David, “but we have fallen on evil fortune, and I am

afraid lest our bad luck should be infectious.”

“We shall be rich and happy,” David said earnestly. “To begin with, you

must not go out nursing any more, and you must come and live with your

daughter and Lucien in Angoulême.”

The three began at once to tell the astonished mother all their charming

plans, and the family party gave themselves up to the pleasure of

chatting and weaving a romance, in which it is so pleasant to enjoy

future happiness, and to store the unsown harvest. They had to put David

out at the door; he could have wished the evening to last for ever,

and it was one o’clock in the morning when Lucien and his future

brother-in-law reached the Palet Gate. The unwonted movement made honest

Postel uneasy; he opened the window, and looking through the Venetian

shutters, he saw a light in Eve’s room.

“What can be happening at the Chardons’?” thought he, and seeing Lucien

come in, he called out to him--

“What is the matter, sonny? Do you want me to do anything?”

“No, sir,” returned the poet; “but as you are our friend, I can tell you

about it; my mother has just given her consent to my sister’s engagement

to David Séchard.”

For all answer, Postel shut the window with a bang, in despair that he

had not asked for Mlle. Chardon earlier.

David, however, did not go back into Angoulême; he took the road to

Marsac instead, and walked through the night the whole way to his

father’s house. He went along by the side of the croft just as the sun

rose, and caught sight of the old “bear’s” face under an almond-tree

that grew out of the hedge.

“Good day, father,” called David.

“Why, is it you, my boy? How come you to be out on the road at this time

of day? There is your way in,” he added, pointing to a little wicket

gate. “My vines have flowered and not a shoot has been frosted. There

will be twenty puncheons or more to the acre this year; but then look at

all the dung that has been put on the land!”

“Father, I have come on important business.”

“Very well; how are your presses doing? You must be making heaps of

money as big as yourself.”

“I shall some day, father, but I am not very well off just now.”

“They all tell me that I ought not to put on so much manure,” replied

his father. “The gentry, that is M. le Marquis, M. le Comte, and

Monsieur What-do-you-call-’em, say that I am letting down the quality of

the wine. What is the good of book-learning except to muddle your wits?

Just you listen: these gentlemen get seven, or sometimes eight puncheons

of wine to the acre, and they sell them for sixty francs apiece, that

means four hundred francs per acre at most in a good year. Now, I make

twenty puncheons, and get thirty francs apiece for them--that is six

hundred francs! And where are they, the fools? Quality, quality, what

is quality to me? They can keep their quality for themselves, these Lord

Marquises. Quality means hard cash for me, that is what it means, You

were saying?----”

“I am going to be married, father, and I have come to ask for----”

“Ask me for what? Nothing of the sort, my boy. Marry; I give you my

consent, but as for giving you anything else, I haven’t a penny to bless

myself with. Dressing the soil is the ruin of me. These two years I

have been paying money out of pocket for top-dressing, and taxes, and

expenses of all kinds; Government eats up everything, nearly all the

profit goes to the Government. The poor growers have made nothing these

last two seasons. This year things don’t look so bad; and, of course,

the beggarly puncheons have gone up to eleven francs already. We work to

put money into the coopers’ pockets. Why, are you going to marry before

the vintage?----”

“I only came to ask for your consent, father.”

“Oh! that is another thing. And who is the victim, if one may ask?”

“I am going to marry Mlle. Eve Chardon.”

“Who may she be? What kind of victual does she eat?”

“She is the daughter of the late M. Chardon, the druggist in L’Houmeau.”

“You are going to marry a girl out of L’Houmeau! _you_! a burgess

of Angoulême, and printer to His Majesty! This is what comes of

book-learning! Send a boy to school, forsooth! Oh! well, then she is

very rich, is she, my boy?” and the old vinegrower came up closer with

a cajoling manner; “if you are marrying a girl out of L’Houmeau, it must

be because she has lots of cash, eh? Good! you will pay me my rent now.

There are two years and one-quarter owing, you know, my boy; that is two

thousand seven hundred francs altogether; the money will come just in

the nick of time to pay the cooper. If it was anybody else, I should

have a right to ask for interest; for, after all, business is business,

but I will let you off the interest. Well, how much has she?”

“Just as much as my mother had.”

The old vinegrower very nearly said, “Then she has only ten thousand

francs!” but he recollected just in time that he had declined to give an

account of her fortune to her son, and exclaimed, “She has nothing!”

“My mother’s fortune was her beauty and intelligence,” said David.

“You just go into the market and see what you can get for it! Bless my

buttons! what bad luck parents have with their children. David, when I

married, I had a paper cap on my head for my whole fortune, and a pair

of arms; I was a poor pressman; but with the fine printing-house that

I gave you, with your industry, and your education, you might marry a

burgess’ daughter, a woman with thirty or forty thousand francs. Give up

your fancy, and I will find you a wife myself. There is some one about

three miles away, a miller’s widow, thirty-two years old, with a hundred

thousand francs in land. There is your chance! You can add her property

to Marsac, for they touch. Ah! what a fine property we should have, and

how I would look after it! They say she is going to marry her foreman

Courtois, but you are the better man of the two. I would look after the

mill, and she should live like a lady up in Angoulême.”

“I am engaged, father.”

“David, you know nothing of business; you will ruin yourself, I see.

Yes, if you marry this girl out of L’Houmeau, I shall square accounts

and summons you for the rent, for I see that no good will come of this.

Oh! my presses, my poor presses! it took some money to grease you and

keep you going. Nothing but a good year can comfort me after this.”

“It seems to me, father, that until now I have given you very little

trouble----”

“And paid mighty little rent,” put in his parent.

“I came to ask you something else besides. Will you build a second floor

to your house, and some rooms above the shed?”

“Deuce a bit of it; I have not the cash, and that you know right well.

Besides, it would be money thrown clean away, for what would it bring

in? Oh! you get up early of a morning to come and ask me to build you a

place that would ruin a king, do you? Your name may be David, but I have

not got Solomon’s treasury. Why, you are mad! or they changed my child

at nurse. There is one for you that will have grapes on it,” he said,

interrupting himself to point out a shoot. “Offspring of this sort don’t

disappoint their parents; you dung the vines, and they repay you for it.

I sent you to school; I spent any amount of money to make a scholar of

you; I sent you to the Didots to learn your business; and all this fancy

education ends in a daughter-in-law out of L’Houmeau without a penny to

her name. If you had not studied books, if I had kept you under my eye,

you would have done as I pleased, and you would be marrying a miller’s

widow this day with a hundred thousand francs in hand, to say nothing

of the mill. Oh! your cleverness leads you to imagine that I am going

to reward this fine sentiment by building palaces for you, does it?...

Really, anybody might think that the house that has been a house these

two hundred years was nothing but a pigsty, not fit for the girl out

of L’Houmeau to sleep in! What next! She is the Queen of France, I

suppose.”

“Very well, father, I will build the second floor myself; the son will

improve his father’s property. It is not the usual way, but it happens

so sometimes.”

“What, my lad! you can find money for building, can you, though you

can’t find money to pay the rent, eh! You sly dog, to come round your

father.”

The question thus raised was hard to lay, for the old man was only too

delighted to seize an opportunity of posing as a good father without

disbursing a penny; and all that David could obtain was his bare consent

to the marriage and free leave to do what he liked in the house--at his

own expense; the old “bear,” that pattern of a thrifty parent, kindly

consenting not to demand the rent and drain the savings to which David

imprudently owned. David went back again in low spirits. He saw that he

could not reckon on his father’s help in misfortune.

In Angoulême that day people talked of nothing but the Bishop’s epigram

and Mme. de Bargeton’s reply. Every least thing that happened that

evening was so much exaggerated and embellished and twisted out of all

knowledge, that the poet became the hero of the hour. While this storm

in a teacup raged on high, a few drops fell among the _bourgeoisie_;

young men looked enviously after Lucien as he passed on his way through

Beaulieu, and he overheard chance phrases that filled him with conceit.

“There is a lucky young fellow!” said an attorney’s clerk, named

Petit-Claud, a plain-featured youth who had been at school with Lucien,

and treated him with small, patronizing airs.

“Yes, he certainly is,” answered one of the young men who had been

present on the occasion of the reading; “he is a good-looking fellow, he

has some brains, and Mme. de Bargeton is quite wild about him.”

Lucien had waited impatiently until he could be sure of finding Louise

alone. He had to break the tidings of his sister’s marriage to the

arbitress of his destinies. Perhaps after yesterday’s soirée, Louise

would be kinder than usual, and her kindness might lead to a moment of

happiness. So he thought, and he was not mistaken; Mme. de Bargeton met

him with a vehemence of sentiment that seemed like a touching progress

of passion to the novice in love. She abandoned her hands, her beautiful

golden hair, to the burning kisses of the poet who had passed through

such an ordeal.

“If only you could have seen your face whilst you were reading,” cried

Louise, using the familiar _tu_, the caress of speech, since yesterday,

while her white hands wiped the pearls of sweat from the brows on which

she set a poet’s crown. “There were sparks of fire in those beautiful

eyes! From your lips, as I watched them, there fell the golden chains

that suspend the hearts of men upon the poet’s mouth. You shall read

Chénier through to me from beginning to end; he is the lover’s poet. You

shall not be unhappy any longer; I will not have it. Yes, dear angel,

I will make an oasis for you, there you shall live your poet’s life,

sometimes busy, sometimes languid; indolent, full of work, and musing

by turns; but never forget that you owe your laurels to me, let that

thought be my noble guerdon for the sufferings which I must endure. Poor

love! the world will not spare me any more than it has spared you; the

world is avenged on all happiness in which it has no share. Yes, I

shall always be a mark for envy--did you not see that last night? The

bloodthirsty insects are quick enough to drain every wound that

they pierce. But I was happy; I lived. It is so long since all my

heartstrings vibrated.”

The tears flowed fast, and for all answer Lucien took Louise’s hand and

gave it a lingering kiss. Every one about him soothed and caressed the

poet’s vanity; his mother and his sister and David and Louise now did

the same. Every one helped to raise the imaginary pedestal on which

he had set himself. His friends’s kindness and the fury of his enemies

combined to establish him more firmly in an unreal world. A young

imagination readily falls in with the flattering estimates of others, a

handsome young fellow so full of promise finds others eager to help him

on every side, and only after one or two sharp and bitter lessons does

he begin to see himself as an ordinary mortal.

“My beautiful Louise, do you mean in very truth to be my Beatrice, a

Beatrice who condescends to be loved?”

Louise raised the fine eyes, hitherto down-dropped.

“If you show yourself worthy--some day!” she said, with an angelic smile

which belied her words. “Are you not happy? To be the sole possessor

of a heart, to speak freely at all times, with the certainty of being

understood, is not this happiness?”

“Yes,” he answered, with a lover’s pout of vexation.

“Child!” she exclaimed, laughing at him. “Come, you have something to

tell me, have you not? You came in absorbed in thought, my Lucien.”

Lucien, in fear and trembling, confided to his beloved that David was

in love with his sister Eve, and that his sister Eve was in love with

David, and that the two were to be married shortly.

“Poor Lucien!” said Louise, “he was afraid he should be beaten and

scolded, as if it was he himself that was going to be married! Why,

where is the harm?” she continued, her fingers toying with Lucien’s

hair. “What is your family to me when you are an exception? Suppose that

my father were to marry his cook, would that trouble you much? Dear boy,

lovers are for each other their whole family. Have I a greater interest

than my Lucien in the world? Be great, find the way to win fame, that is

our affair!”

This selfish answer made Lucien the happiest of mortals. But in the

middle of the fantastic reasonings, with which Louise convinced him that

they two were alone in the world, in came M. de Bargeton. Lucien frowned

and seemed to be taken aback, but Louise made him a sign, and asked

him to stay to dinner and to read André de Chénier aloud to them until

people arrived for their evening game at cards.

“You will give her pleasure,” said M. de Bargeton, “and me also. Nothing

suits me better than listening to reading aloud after dinner.”

Cajoled by M. de Bargeton, cajoled by Louise, waited upon with the

respect which servants show to a favored guest of the house, Lucien

remained in the Hôtel de Bargeton, and began to think of the luxuries

which he enjoyed for the time being as the rightful accessories of

Lucien de Rubempré. He felt his position so strong through Louise’s love

and M. de Bargeton’s weakness, that as the rooms filled, he assumed a

lordly air, which that fair lady encouraged. He tasted the delights of

despotic sway which Naïs had acquired by right of conquest, and liked

to share with him; and, in short, that evening he tried to act up to

the part of the lion of the little town. A few of those who marked these

airs drew their own conclusions from them, and thought that, according

to the old expression, he had come to the last term with the lady.

Amélie, who had come with M. du Châtelet, was sure of the deplorable

fact, in a corner of the drawing-room, where the jealous and envious

gathered together.

“Do not think of calling Naïs to account for the vanity of a youngster,

who is as proud as he can be because he has got into society, where he

never expected to set foot,” said Châtelet. “Don’t you see that this

Chardon takes the civility of a woman of the world for an advance? He

does not know the difference between the silence of real passion and the

patronizing graciousness due to his good looks and youth and talent.

It would be too bad if women were blamed for all the desires which they

inspire. _He_ certainly is in love with her, but as for Naïs----”

“Oh! Naïs,” echoed the perfidious Amélie, “Naïs is well enough pleased.

A young man’s love has so many attractions--at her age. A woman grows

young again in his company; she is a girl, and acts a girl’s hesitation

and manners, and does not dream that she is ridiculous. Just look!

Think of a druggist’s son giving himself a conqueror’s airs with Mme. de

Bargeton.”

“Love knows nought of high or low degree,” hummed Adrien.

There was not a single house in Angoulême next day where the degree of

intimacy between M. Chardon (alias de Rubempré) and Mme. de Bargeton was

not discussed; and though the utmost extent of their guilt amounted to

two or three kisses, the world already chose to believe the worst of

both. Mme. de Bargeton paid the penalty of her sovereignty. Among the

various eccentricities of society, have you never noticed its erratic

judgments and the unaccountable differences in the standard it requires

of this or that man or woman? There are some persons who may do

anything; they may behave totally irrationally, anything becomes them,

and it is who shall be first to justify their conduct; then, on the

other hand, there are those on whom the world is unaccountably severe,

they must do everything well, they are not allowed to fail nor to make

mistakes, at their peril they do anything foolish; you might compare

these last to the much-admired statues which must come down at once from

their pedestal if the frost chips off a nose or a finger. They are not

permitted to be human; they are required to be for ever divine and for

ever impeccable. So one glance exchanged between Mme. de Bargeton and

Lucien outweighed twelve years of Zizine’s connection with Francis in

the social balance; and a squeeze of the hand drew down all the thunders

of the Charente upon the lovers.

David had brought a little secret hoard back with him from Paris, and it

was this sum that he set aside for the expenses of his marriage and for

the building of the second floor in his father’s house. His father’s

house it was; but, after all, was he not working for himself? It would

all be his again some day, and his father was sixty-eight years old.

So David build a timbered second story for Lucien, so as not to put too

great a strain on the old rifted house-walls. He took pleasure in making

the rooms where the fair Eve was to spend her life as brave as might be.

It was a time of blithe and unmixed happiness for the friends. Lucien

was tired of the shabbiness of provincial life, and weary of the sordid

frugality that looked on a five-franc piece as a fortune, but he bore

the hardships and the pinching thrift without grumbling. His moody looks

had been succeeded by an expression of radiant hope. He saw the star

shining above his head, he had dreams of a great time to come, and built

the fabric of his good fortune on M. de Bargeton’s tomb. M. de Bargeton,

troubled with indigestion from time to time, cherished the happy

delusion that indigestion after dinner was a complaint to be cured by a

hearty supper.

By the beginning of September, Lucien had ceased to be a printer’s

foreman; he was M. de Rubempré, housed sumptuously in comparison with

his late quarters in the tumbledown attic with the dormer-window,

where “young Chardon” had lived in L’Houmeau; he was not even a “man of

L’Houmeau”; he lived in the heights of Angoulême, and dined four times

a week with Mme. de Bargeton. A friendship had grown up between M. de

Rubempré and the Bishop, and he went to the palace. His occupations put

him upon a level with the highest rank; his name would be one day among

the great names of France; and, in truth, as he went to and fro in

his apartments, the pretty sitting-room, the charming bedroom, and the

tastefully furnished study, he might console himself for the thought

that he drew thirty francs every month out of his mother’s and sister’s

hard earnings; for he saw the day approaching when _An Archer of Charles

IX._, the historical romance on which he had been at work for two years,

and a volume of verse entitled _Marguerites_, should spread his fame

through the world of literature, and bring in money enough to repay them

all, his mother and sister and David. So, grown great in his own eyes,

and giving ear to the echoes of his name in the future, he could accept

present sacrifices with noble assurance; he smiled at his poverty, he

relished the sense of these last days of penury.

Eve and David had set Lucien’s happiness before their own. They had put

off their wedding, for it took some time to paper and paint their rooms,

and to buy the furniture, and Lucien’s affairs had been settled first.

No one who knew Lucien could wonder at their devotion. Lucien was so

engaging, he had such winning ways, his impatience and his desires were

so graciously expressed, that his cause was always won before he opened

his mouth to speak. This unlucky gift of fortune, if it is the salvation

of some, is the ruin of many more. Lucien and his like find a world

predisposed in favor of youth and good looks, and ready to protect those

who give it pleasure with the selfish good-nature that flings alms to a

beggar, if he appeals to the feelings and awakens emotion; and in this

favor many a grown child is content to bask instead of putting it to

a profitable use. With mistaken notions as to the significance and the

motive of social relations they imagine that they shall always meet

with deceptive smiles; and so at last the moment comes for them when the

world leaves them bald, stripped bare, without fortune or worth, like an

elderly coquette by the door of a salon, or a stray rag in the gutter.

Eve herself had wished for the delay. She meant to establish the

little household on the most economical footing, and to buy only strict

necessaries; but what could two lovers refuse to a brother who watched

his sister at her work, and said in tones that came from the heart,

“How I wish I could sew!” The sober, observant David had shared in the

devotion; and yet, since Lucien’s triumph, David had watched him with

misgivings; he was afraid that Lucien would change towards them, afraid

that he would look down upon their homely ways. Once or twice, to try

his brother, David had made him choose between home pleasures and the

great world, and saw that Lucien gave up the delights of vanity for

them, and exclaimed to himself, “They will not spoil him for us!” Now

and again the three friends and Mme. Chardon arranged picnic parties in

provincial fashion--a walk in the woods along the Charente, not far from

Angoulême, and dinner out on the grass, David’s apprentice bringing the

basket of provisions to some place appointed before-hand; and at night

they would come back, tired somewhat, but the whole excursion had not

cost three francs. On great occasion, when they dined at a _restaurât_,

as it is called, a sort of a country inn, a compromise between a

provincial wineshop and a Parisian _guinguette_, they would spend as

much as five francs, divided between David and the Chardons. David gave

his brother infinite credit for forsaking Mme. de Bargeton and grand

dinners for these days in the country, and the whole party made much of

the great man of Angoulême.

Matters had gone so far, that the new home was very nearly ready, and

David had gone over to Marsac to persuade his father to come to the

wedding, not without a hope that the old man might relent at the sight

of his daughter-in-law, and give something towards the heavy expenses

of the alterations, when there befell one of those events which entirely

change the face of things in a small town.

Lucien and Louise had a spy in Châtelet, a spy who watched, with the

persistence of a hate in which avarice and passion are blended, for

an opportunity of making a scandal. Sixte meant that Mme. de Bargeton

should compromise herself with Lucien in such a way that she should be

“lost,” as the saying goes; so he posed as Mme. de Bargeton’s humble

confidant, admired Lucien in the Rue du Minage, and pulled him to pieces

everywhere else. Naïs had gradually given him _les petites entrées, in

the language of the court, for the lady no longer mistrusted her elderly

admirer; but Châtelet had taken too much for granted--love was still in

the Platonic stage, to the great despair of Louise and Lucien.

There are, for that matter, love affairs which start with a good or a

bad beginning, as you prefer to take it. Two creatures launch into the

tactics of sentiment; they talk when they should be acting, and skirmish

in the open instead of settling down to a siege. And so they grow tired

of one another, expend their longings in empty space; and, having time

for reflection, come to their own conclusions about each other. Many a

passion that has taken the field in gorgeous array, with colors flying

and an ardor fit to turn the world upside down, has turned home again

without a victory, inglorious and crestfallen, cutting but a foolish

figure after these vain alarums and excursions. Such mishaps are

sometimes due to the diffidence of youth, sometimes to the demurs of an

inexperienced woman, for old players at this game seldom end in a fiasco

of this kind.

Provincial life, moreover, is singularly well calculated to keep desire

unsatisfied and maintain a lover’s arguments on the intellectual plane,

while, at the same time, the very obstacles placed in the way of the

sweet intercourse which binds lovers so closely each to each, hurry

ardent souls on towards extreme measures. A system of espionage of the

most minute and intricate kind underlies provincial life; every house is

transparent, the solace of close friendships which break no moral law is

scarcely allowed; and such outrageously scandalous constructions are put

upon the most innocent human intercourse, that many a woman’s character

is taken away without cause. One here and there, weighed down by her

unmerited punishment, will regret that she has never known to the full

the forbidden felicity for which she is suffering. The world, which

blames and criticises with a superficial knowledge of the patent facts

in which a long inward struggle ends, is in reality a prime agent in

bringing such scandals about; and those whose voices are loudest in

condemnation of the alleged misconduct of some slandered woman never

give a thought to the immediate provocation of the overt step. That

step many a woman only takes after she has been unjustly accused and

condemned, and Mme. de Bargeton was now on the verge of this anomalous

position.

The obstacles at the outset of a passion of this kind are alarming to

inexperience, and those in the way of the two lovers were very like

the bonds by which the population of Lilliput throttled Gulliver, a

multiplicity of nothings, which made all movement impossible, and baffle

the most vehement desires. Mme. de Bargeton, for instance, must always

be visible. If she had denied herself to visitors when Lucien was with

her, it would have been all over with her; she might as well have run

away with him at once. It is true that they sat in the boudoir, now

grown so familiar to Lucien that he felt as if he had a right to

be there; but the doors stood scrupulously open, and everything was

arranged with the utmost propriety. M. de Bargeton pervaded the house

like a cockchafer; it never entered his head that his wife could wish

to be alone with Lucien. If he had been the only person in the way,

Naïs could have got rid of him, sent him out of the house, or given him

something to do; but he was not the only one; visitors flocked in upon

her, and so much the more as curiosity increased, for your provincial

has a natural bent for teasing, and delights to thwart a growing

passion. The servants came and went about the house promiscuously and

without a summons; they had formed the habits with a mistress who

had nothing to conceal; any change now made in her household ways was

tantamount to a confession, and Angoulême still hung in doubt.

Mme. de Bargeton could not set foot outside her house but the whole

town knew whither she was going. To take a walk alone with Lucien out of

Angoulême would have been a decided measure, indeed; it would have been

less dangerous to shut herself up with him in the house. There would

have been comments the next day if Lucien had stayed on till midnight

after the rooms were emptied. Within as without her house, Mme. de

Bargeton lived in public.

These details describe life in the provinces; an intrigue is either

openly avoided or impossible anywhere.

Like all women carried away for the first time by passion, Louise

discovered the difficulties of her position one by one. They frightened

her, and her terror reacted upon the fond talk that fills the fairest

hours which lovers spend alone together. Mme. de Bargeton had no country

house whither she could take her beloved poet, after the manner of some

women who will forge ingenious pretexts for burying themselves in the

wilderness; but, weary of living in public, and pushed to extremities by

a tyranny which afforded no pleasures sweet enough to compensate for the

heaviness of the yoke, she even thought of Escarbas, and of going to see

her aged father--so much irritated was she by these paltry obstacles.

Châtelet did not believe in such innocence. He lay in wait, and watched

Lucien into the house, and followed a few minutes later, always taking

M. de Chandour, the most indiscreet person in the clique, along with

him; and, putting that gentleman first, hoped to find a surprise by such

perseverance in pursuit of the chance. His own part was a very difficult

one to play, and its success was the more doubtful because he was bound

to appear neutral if he was to prompt the other actors who were to play

in his drama. So, to give himself a countenance, he had attached himself

to the jealous Amélie, the better to lull suspicion in Lucien and in

Mme. de Bargeton, who was not without perspicacity. In order to spy upon

the pair, he had contrived of late to open up a stock controversy on

the point with M. de Chandour. Châtelet said that Mme. de Bargeton was

simply amusing herself with Lucien; she was too proud, too high-born, to

stoop to the apothecary’s son. The role of incredulity was in accordance

with the plan which he had laid down, for he wished to appear as Mme.

de Bargeton’s champion. Stanislas de Chandour held that Mme. de Bargeton

had not been cruel to her lover, and Amélie goaded them to argument,

for she longed to know the truth. Each stated his case, and (as not

unfrequently happens in small country towns) some intimate friends

of the house dropped in in the middle of the argument. Stanislas

and Châtelet vied with each other in backing up their opinions by

observations extremely pertinent. It was hardly to be expected that the

champions should not seek to enlist partisans. “What do you yourself

think?” they asked, each of his neighbor. These polemics kept Mme. de

Bargeton and Lucien well in sight.

At length one day Châtelet called attention to the fact that whenever he

went with M. de Chandour to Mme. de Bargeton’s and found Lucien there,

there was not a sign nor a trace of anything suspicious; the boudoir

door stood open, the servants came and went, there was nothing

mysterious to betray the sweet crime of love, and so forth and so

forth. Stanislas, who did not lack a certain spice of stupidity in his

composition, vowed that he would cross the room on tiptoe the next day,

and the perfidious Amélie held him to his bargain.

For Lucien that morrow was the day on which a young man tugs out some

of the hairs of his head, and inwardly vows that he will give up the

foolish business of sighing. He was accustomed to his situation. The

poet, who had seated himself so bashfully in the boudoir-sanctuary of

the queen of Angoulême, had been transformed into an urgent lover. Six

months had been enough to bring him on a level with Louise, and now

he would fain be her lord and master. He left home with a settled

determination to be extravagant in his behavior; he would say that it

was a matter of life or death to him; he would bring all the resources

of torrid eloquence into play; he would cry that he had lost his head,

that he could not think, could not write a line. The horror that some

women feel for premeditation does honor to their delicacy; they would

rather surrender upon the impulse of passion, than in fulfilment of a

contract. In general, prescribed happiness is not the kind that any of

us desire.

Mme. de Bargeton read fixed purpose in Lucien’s eyes and forehead, and

in the agitation in his face and manner, and proposed to herself to

baffle him, urged thereto partly by a spirit of contradiction, partly

also by an exalted conception of love. Being given to exaggeration, she

set an exaggerated value upon her person. She looked upon herself as a

sovereign lady, a Beatrice, a Laura. She enthroned herself, like some

dame of the Middle Ages, upon a dais, looking down upon the tourney of

literature, and meant that Lucien, as in duty bound, should win her

by his prowess in the field; he must eclipse “the sublime child,” and

Lamartine, and Sir Walter Scott, and Byron. The noble creature regarded

her love as a stimulating power; the desire which she had kindled

in Lucien should give him the energy to win glory for himself. This

feminine Quixotry is a sentiment which hallows love and turns it to

worthy uses; it exalts and reverences love. Mme. de Bargeton having made

up her mind to play the part of Dulcinea in Lucien’s life for seven

or eight years to come, desired, like many other provincials, to give

herself as the reward of prolonged service, a trial of constancy which

should give her time to judge her lover.

Lucien began the strife by a piece of vehement petulence, at which a

woman laughs so long as she is heart-free, and saddens only when she

loves; whereupon Louise took a lofty tone, and began one of her long

orations, interlarded with high-sounding words.

“Was that your promise to me, Lucien?” she said, as she made an end.

“Do not sow regrets in the present time, so sweet as it is, to poison

my after life. Do not spoil the future, and, I say it with pride, do not

spoil the present! Is not my whole heart yours? What more must you have?

Can it be that your love is influenced by the clamor of the senses, when

it is the noblest privilege of the beloved to silence them? For whom do

you take me? Am I not your Beatrice? If I am not something more than a

woman for you, I am less than a woman.”

“That is just what you might say to a man if you cared nothing at all

for him,” cried Lucien, frantic with passion.

“If you cannot feel all the sincere love underlying my ideas, you will

never be worthy of me.”

“You are throwing doubts on my love to dispense yourself from responding

to it,” cried Lucien, and he flung himself weeping at her feet.

The poor boy cried in earnest at the prospect of remaining so long

at the gate of paradise. The tears of the poet, who feels that he is

humbled through his strength, were mingled with childish crying for a

plaything.

“You have never loved me!” he cried.

“You do not believe what you say,” she answered, flattered by his

violence.

“Then give me proof that you are mine,” said the disheveled poet.

Just at that moment Stanislas came up unheard by either of the pair. He

beheld Lucien in tears, half reclining on the floor, with his head on

Louise’s knee. The attitude was suspicious enough to satisfy Stanislas;

he turned sharply round upon Châtelet, who stood at the door of the

salon. Mme. de Bargeton sprang up in a moment, but the spies beat a

precipate retreat like intruders, and she was not quick enough for them.

“Who came just now?” she asked the servants.

“M. de Chandour and M. du Châtelet,” said Gentil, her old footman.

Mme. de Bargeton went back, pale and trembling, to her boudoir.

“If they saw you just now, I am lost,” she told Lucien.

“So much the better!” exclaimed the poet, and she smiled to hear the

cry, so full of selfish love.

A story of this kind is aggravated in the provinces by the way in which

it is told. Everybody knew in a moment that Lucien had been detected at

Naïs feet. M. de Chandour, elated by the important part he played in the

affair, went first to tell the great news at the club, and thence from

house to house, Châtelet hastening to say that _he_ had seen nothing;

but by putting himself out of court, he egged Stanislas on to talk, he

drew him on to add fresh details; and Stanislas, thinking himself very

witty, added a little to the tale every time that he told it. Every

one flocked to Amélie’s house that evening, for by that time the

most exaggerated versions of the story were in circulation among the

Angoulême nobility, every narrator having followed Stanislas’ example.

Women and men were alike impatient to know the truth; and the women who

put their hands before their faces and shrieked the loudest were none

other than Mesdames Amélie, Zéphirine, Fifine, and Lolotte, all with

more or less heavy indictments of illicit love laid to their charge.

There were variations in every key upon the painful theme.

“Well, well,” said one of the ladies, “poor Naïs! have you heard about

it? I do not believe it myself; she has a whole blameless record behind

her; she is far too proud to be anything but a patroness to M. Chardon.

Still, if it is true, I pity her with all my heart.”

“She is all the more to be pitied because she is making herself

frightfully ridiculous; she is old enough to be M. Lulu’s mother, as

Jacques called him. The little poet it twenty-two at most; and Naïs,

between ourselves, is quite forty.”

“For my own part,” said M. du Châtelet, “I think that M. de Rubempré’s

position in itself proves Naïs’ innocence. A man does not go down on his

knees to ask for what he has had already.”

“That is as may be!” said Francis, with levity that brought Zéphirine’s

disapproving glance down on him.

“Do just tell us how it really was,” they besought Stanislas, and formed

a small, secret committee in a corner of the salon.

Stanislas, in the long length, had put together a little story full of

facetious suggestions, and accompanied it with pantomime, which made the

thing prodigiously worse.

“It is incredible!”

“At midday?”

“Naïs was the last person whom I should have suspected!”

“What will she do now?”

Then followed more comments, and suppositions without end. Châtelet took

Mme. de Bargeton’s part; but he defended her so ill, that he stirred the

fire of gossip instead of putting it out.

Lili, disconsolate over the fall of the fairest angel in the Angoumoisin

hierarchy, went, dissolved in tears, to carry the news to the palace.

When the delighted Châtelet was convinced that the whole town was agog,

he went off to Mme. de Bargeton’s, where, alas! there was but one game

of whist that night, and diplomatically asked Naïs for a little talk

in the boudoir. They sat down on the sofa, and Châtelet began in an

undertone--

“You know what Angoulême is talking about, of course?”

“No.”

“Very well, I am too much your friend to leave you in ignorance. I am

bound to put you in a position to silence slanders, invented, no doubt,

by Amélie, who has the overweening audacity to regard herself as

your rival. I came to call on you this morning with that monkey of a

Stanislas; he was a few paces ahead of me, and he came so far” (pointing

to the door of the boudoir); “he says that he _saw_ you and M. de

Rubempré in such a position that he could not enter; he turned round

upon me, quite bewildered as I was, and hurried me away before I had

time to think; we were out in Beaulieu before he told me why he had

beaten a retreat. If I had known, I would not have stirred out of the

house till I had cleared up the matter and exonerated you, but it would

have proved nothing to go back again then.

“Now, whether Stanislas’ eyes deceived him, or whether he is right, _he

must have made a mistake_. Dear Naïs, do not let that dolt trifle with

your life, your honor, your future; stop his mouth at once. You know my

position here. I have need of all these people, but still I am entirely

yours. Dispose of a life that belongs to you. You have rejected my

prayers, but my heart is always yours; I am ready to prove my love

for you at any time and in any way. Yes, I will watch over you like a

faithful servant, for no reward, but simply for the sake of the pleasure

that it is to me to do anything for you, even if you do not know of it.

This morning I have said everywhere that I was at the door of the salon,

and had seen nothing. If you are asked to give the name of the person

who told you about this gossip, pray make use of me. I should be very

proud to be your acknowledged champion; but, between ourselves, M. de

Bargeton is the proper person to ask Stanislas for an explanation....

Suppose that young Rubempré had behaved foolishly, a woman’s character

ought not to be at the mercy of the first hare-brained boy who flings

himself at her feet. That is what I have been saying.”

Naïs bowed in acknowledgment, and looked thoughtful. She was weary to

disgust of provincial life. Châtelet had scarcely begun before her mind

turned to Paris. Meanwhile Mme. de Bargeton’s adorer found the silence

somewhat awkward.

“Dispose of me, I repeat,” he added.

“Thank you,” answered the lady.

“What do you think of doing?”

“I shall see.”

A prolonged pause.

“Are you so fond of that young Rubempré?”

A proud smile stole over her lips, she folded her arms, and fixed her

gaze on the curtains. Châtelet went out; he could not read that high

heart.

Later in the evening, when Lucien had taken his leave, and likewise

the four old gentlemen who came for their whist, without troubling

themselves about ill-founded tittle-tattle, M. de Bargeton was preparing

to go to bed, and had opened his mouth to bid his wife good-night, when

she stopped him.

“Come here, dear, I have something to say to you,” she said, with a

certain solemnity.