“MY DEAR EVE,—When a sister shares the life of a brother who
devotes himself to art, it is her sad privilege to take more
sorrow than joy into her life; and I am beginning to fear that I
shall be a great trouble to you. Have I not abused your goodness
already? have not all of you sacrificed yourselves to me? It is
the memory of the past, so full of family happiness, that helps me
to bear up in my present loneliness. Now that I have tasted the
first beginnings of poverty and the treachery of the world of
Paris, how my thoughts have flown to you, swift as an eagle back
to its eyrie, so that I might be with true affection again. Did
you see sparks in the candle? Did a coal pop out of the fire? Did
you hear singing in your ears? And did mother say, ‘Lucien is
thinking of us,’ and David answer, ‘He is fighting his way in the
world?’
“My Eve, I am writing this letter for your eyes only. I cannot
tell any one else all that has happened to me, good and bad,
blushing for both, as I write, for good here is as rare as evil
ought to be. You shall have a great piece of news in a very few
words. Mme. de Bargeton was ashamed of me, disowned me, would not
see me, and gave me up nine days after we came to Paris. She saw
me in the street and looked another way; when, simply to follow
her into the society to which she meant to introduce me, I had
spent seventeen hundred and sixty francs out of the two thousand I
brought from Angoulême, the money so hardly scraped together. ‘How
did you spend it?’ you will ask. Paris is a strange bottomless
gulf, my poor sister; you can dine here for less than a franc, yet
the simplest dinner at a fashionable restaurant costs fifty
francs; there are waistcoats and trousers to be had for four
francs and two francs each; but a fashionable tailor never charges
less than a hundred francs. You pay for everything; you pay a
halfpenny to cross the kennel in the street when it rains; you
cannot go the least little way in a cab for less than thirty-two
sous.
“I have been staying in one of the best parts of Paris, but now I
am living at the Hôtel de Cluny, in the Rue de Cluny, one of the
poorest and darkest slums, shut in between three churches and the
old buildings of the Sorbonne. I have a furnished room on the
fourth floor; it is very bare and very dirty, but, all the same, I
pay fifteen francs a month for it. For breakfast I spend a penny
on a roll and a halfpenny for milk, but I dine very decently for
twenty-two sous at a restaurant kept by a man named Flicoteaux in
the Place de la Sorbonne itself. My expenses every month will not
exceed sixty francs, everything included, until the winter begins
—at least I hope not. So my two hundred and forty francs ought to
last me for the first four months. Between now and then I shall
have sold _The Archer of Charles IX._ and the _Marguerites_ no doubt.
Do not be in the least uneasy on my account. If the present is
cold and bare and poverty-stricken, the blue distant future is
rich and splendid; most great men have known the vicissitudes
which depress but cannot overwhelm me.
“Plautus, the great comic Latin poet, was once a miller’s lad.
Machiavelli wrote _The Prince_ at night, and by day was a common
working-man like any one else; and more than all, the great
Cervantes, who lost an arm at the battle of Lepanto, and helped to
win that famous day, was called a ‘base-born, handless dotard’ by
the scribblers of his day; there was an interval of ten years
between the appearance of the first part and the second of his
sublime _Don Quixote_ for lack of a publisher. Things are not so bad
as that nowadays. Mortifications and want only fall to the lot of
unknown writers; as soon as a man’s name is known, he grows rich,
and I will be rich. And besides, I live within myself, I spend
half the day at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, learning all
that I want to learn; I should not go far unless I knew more than
I do. So at this moment I am almost happy. In a few days I have
fallen in with my life very gladly. I begin the work that I love
with daylight, my subsistence is secure, I think a great deal, and
I study. I do not see that I am open to attack at any point, now
that I have renounced a world where my vanity might suffer at any
moment. The great men of every age are obliged to lead lives
apart. What are they but birds in the forest? They sing, nature
falls under the spell of their song, and no one should see them.
That shall be my lot, always supposing that I can carry out my
ambitious plans.
“Mme. de Bargeton I do not regret. A woman who could behave as she
behaved does not deserve a thought. Nor am I sorry that I left
Angoulême. She did wisely when she flung me into the sea of Paris
to sink or swim. This is the place for men of letters and thinkers
and poets; here you cultivate glory, and I know how fair the
harvest is that we reap in these days. Nowhere else can a writer
find the living works of the great dead, the works of art which
quicken the imagination in the galleries and museums here; nowhere
else will you find great reference libraries always open in which
the intellect may find pasture. And lastly, here in Paris there is
a spirit which you breathe in the air; it infuses the least
details, every literary creation bears traces of its influence.
You learn more by talk in a café, or at a theatre, in one half
hour, than you would learn in ten years in the provinces. Here, in
truth, wherever you go, there is always something to see,
something to learn, some comparison to make. Extreme cheapness and
excessive dearness—there is Paris for you; there is honeycomb
here for every bee, every nature finds its own nourishment. So,
though life is hard for me just now, I repent of nothing. On the
contrary, a fair future spreads out before me, and my heart
rejoices though it is saddened for the moment. Good-bye my dear
sister. Do not expect letters from me regularly; it is one of the
peculiarities of Paris that one really does not know how the time
goes. Life is so alarmingly rapid. I kiss the mother and you and
David more tenderly than ever.
“LUCIEN.”
The name of Flicoteaux is engraved on many memories. Few indeed were the
students who lived in the Latin Quarter during the last twelve years of
the Restoration and did not frequent that temple sacred to hunger and
impecuniosity. There a dinner of three courses, with a quarter bottle
of wine or a bottle of beer, could be had for eighteen sous; or for
twenty-two sous the quarter bottle becomes a bottle. Flicoteaux, that
friend of youth, would beyond a doubt have amassed a colossal fortune
but for a line on his bill of fare, a line which rival establishments
are wont to print in capital letters, thus—BREAD AT DISCRETION, which,
being interpreted, should read “indiscretion.”
Flicoteaux has been nursing-father to many an illustrious name. Verily,
the heart of more than one great man ought to wax warm with innumerable
recollections of inexpressible enjoyment at the sight of the small,
square window panes that look upon the Place de la Sorbonne, and the Rue
Neuve-de-Richelieu. Flicoteaux II. and Flicoteaux III. respected the old
exterior, maintaining the dingy hue and general air of a respectable,
old-established house, showing thereby the depth of their contempt for
the charlatanism of the shop-front, the kind of advertisement which
feasts the eyes at the expense of the stomach, to which your modern
restaurant almost always has recourse. Here you beheld no piles of
straw-stuffed game never destined to make the acquaintance of the spit,
no fantastical fish to justify the mountebank’s remark, “I saw a fine
carp to-day; I expect to buy it this day week.” Instead of the prime
vegetables more fittingly described by the word primeval, artfully
displayed in the window for the delectation of the military man and his
fellow country-woman the nursemaid, honest Flicoteaux exhibited full
salad-bowls adorned with many a rivet, or pyramids of stewed prunes
to rejoice the sight of the customer, and assure him that the word
“dessert,” with which other handbills made too free, was in this case
no charter to hoodwink the public. Loaves of six pounds’ weight, cut in
four quarters, made good the promise of “bread at discretion.” Such was
the plenty of the establishment, that Molière would have celebrated it
if it had been in existence in his day, so comically appropriate is the
name.
Flicoteaux still subsists; so long as students are minded to live,
Flicoteaux will make a living. You feed there, neither more nor less;
and you feed as you work, with morose or cheerful industry, according to
the circumstances and the temperament.
At that time his well-known establishment consisted of two dining-halls,
at right angles to each other; long, narrow, low-ceiled rooms, looking
respectively on the Rue Neuve-de-Richelieu and the Place de la Sorbonne.
The furniture must have come originally from the refectory of some
abbey, for there was a monastic look about the lengthy tables, where the
serviettes of regular customers, each thrust through a numbered ring of
crystallized tin plate, were laid by their places. Flicoteaux I. only
changed the serviettes of a Sunday; but Flicoteaux II. changed them
twice a week, it is said, under pressure of competition which threatened
his dynasty.
Flicoteaux’s restaurant is no banqueting-hall, with its refinements
and luxuries; it is a workshop where suitable tools are provided, and
everybody gets up and goes as soon as he has finished. The coming and
going within are swift. There is no dawdling among the waiters; they are
all busy; every one of them is wanted.
The fare is not very varied. The potato is a permanent institution;
there might not be a single tuber left in Ireland, and prevailing dearth
elsewhere, but you would still find potatoes at Flicoteaux’s. Not once
in thirty years shall you miss its pale gold (the color beloved of
Titian), sprinkled with chopped verdure; the potato enjoys a privilege
that women might envy; such as you see it in 1814, so shall you find
it in 1840. Mutton cutlets and fillet of beef at Flicoteaux’s represent
black game and fillet of sturgeon at Véry’s; they are not on the regular
bill of fare, that is, and must be ordered beforehand. Beef of the
feminine gender there prevails; the young of the bovine species appears
in all kinds of ingenious disguises. When the whiting and mackerel
abound on our shores, they are likewise seen in large numbers at
Flicoteaux’s; his whole establishment, indeed, is directly affected by
the caprices of the season and the vicissitudes of French agriculture.
By eating your dinners at Flicoteaux’s you learn a host of things of
which the wealthy, the idle, and folk indifferent to the phases of
Nature have no suspicion, and the student penned up in the Latin Quarter
is kept accurately informed of the state of the weather and good or bad
seasons. He knows when it is a good year for peas or French beans, and
the kind of salad stuff that is plentiful; when the Great Market is
glutted with cabbages, he is at once aware of the fact, and the failure
of the beetroot crop is brought home to his mind. A slander, old in
circulation in Lucien’s time, connected the appearance of beef-steaks
with a mortality among horseflesh.
Few Parisian restaurants are so well worth seeing. Every one at
Flicoteaux’s is young; you see nothing but youth; and although earnest
faces and grave, gloomy, anxious faces are not lacking, you see hope and
confidence and poverty gaily endured. Dress, as a rule, is careless, and
regular comers in decent clothes are marked exceptions. Everybody knows
at once that something extraordinary is afoot: a mistress to visit, a
theatre party, or some excursion into higher spheres. Here, it is said,
friendships have been made among students who became famous men in after
days, as will be seen in the course of this narrative; but with the
exception of a few knots of young fellows from the same part of France
who make a group about the end of a table, the gravity of the diners is
hardly relaxed. Perhaps this gravity is due to the catholicity of the
wine, which checks good fellowship of any kind.
Flicoteaux’s frequenters may recollect certain sombre and mysterious
figures enveloped in the gloom of the chilliest penury; these beings
would dine there daily for a couple of years and then vanish, and the
most inquisitive regular comer could throw no light on the disappearance
of such goblins of Paris. Friendships struck up over Flicoteaux’s
dinners were sealed in neighboring cafés in the flames of heady punch,
or by the generous warmth of a small cup of black coffee glorified by a
dash of something hotter and stronger.
Lucien, like all neophytes, was modest and regular in his habits in
those early days at the Hôtel de Cluny. After the first unlucky venture
in fashionable life which absorbed his capital, he threw himself into
his work with the first earnest enthusiasm, which is frittered away so
soon over the difficulties or in the by-paths of every life in Paris.
The most luxurious and the very poorest lives are equally beset with
temptations which nothing but the fierce energy of genius or the morose
persistence of ambition can overcome.
Lucien used to drop in at Flicoteaux’s about half-past four, having
remarked the advantages of an early arrival; the bill-of-fare was more
varied, and there was still some chance of obtaining the dish of
your choice. Like all imaginative persons, he had taken a fancy to a
particular seat, and showed discrimination in his selection. On the very
first day he had noticed a table near the counter, and from the faces of
those who sat about it, and chance snatches of their talk, he recognized
brothers of the craft. A sort of instinct, moreover, pointed out the
table near the counter as a spot whence he could parlay with the owners
of the restaurant. In time an acquaintance would grow up, he thought,
and then in the day of distress he could no doubt obtain the necessary
credit. So he took his place at a small square table close to the desk,
intended probably for casual comers, for the two clean serviettes were
unadorned with rings. Lucien’s opposite neighbor was a thin, pallid
youth, to all appearance as poor as himself; his handsome face was
somewhat worn, already it told of hopes that had vanished, leaving lines
upon his forehead and barren furrows in his soul, where seeds had been
sown that had come to nothing. Lucien felt drawn to the stranger by
these tokens; his sympathies went out to him with irresistible fervor.
After a week’s exchange of small courtesies and remarks, the poet from
Angoulême found the first person with whom he could chat. The stranger’s
name was Étienne Lousteau. Two years ago he had left his native place,
a town in Berri, just as Lucien had come from Angoulême. His lively
gestures, bright eyes, and occasionally curt speech revealed a bitter
apprenticeship to literature. Étienne had come from Sancerre with his
tragedy in his pocket, drawn to Paris by the same motives that impelled
Lucien—hope of fame and power and money.
Sometimes Étienne Lousteau came for several days together; but in a
little while his visits became few and far between, and he would stay
away for five or six days in succession. Then he would come back, and
Lucien would hope to see his poet next day, only to find a stranger in
his place. When two young men meet daily, their talk harks back to their
last conversation; but these continual interruptions obliged Lucien to
break the ice afresh each time, and further checked an intimacy which
made little progress during the first few weeks. On inquiry of the
damsel at the counter, Lucien was told that his future friend was on
the staff of a small newspaper, and wrote reviews of books and dramatic
criticism of pieces played at the Ambigu-Comique, the Gaité, and the
Panorama-Dramatique. The young man became a personage all at once in
Lucien’s eyes. Now, he thought, he would lead the conversation on rather
more personal topics, and make some effort to gain a friend so likely
to be useful to a beginner. The journalist stayed away for a fortnight.
Lucien did not know that Étienne only dined at Flicoteaux’s when he
was hard up, and hence his gloomy air of disenchantment and the chilly
manner, which Lucien met with gracious smiles and amiable remarks. But,
after all, the project of a friendship called for mature deliberation.
This obscure journalist appeared to lead an expensive life in which
_petits verres_, cups of coffee, punch-bowls, sight-seeing, and suppers
played a part. In the early days of Lucien’s life in the Latin Quarter,
he behaved like a poor child bewildered by his first experience of Paris
life; so that when he had made a study of prices and weighed his
purse, he lacked courage to make advances to Étienne; he was afraid of
beginning a fresh series of blunders of which he was still repenting.
And he was still under the yoke of provincial creeds; his two guardian
angels, Eve and David, rose up before him at the least approach of an
evil thought, putting him in mind of all the hopes that were centered
on him, of the happiness that he owed to the old mother, of all the
promises of his genius.
He spent his mornings in studying history at the Bibliothèque
Sainte-Geneviève. His very first researches made him aware of frightful
errors in the memoirs of _The Archer of Charles IX._ When the library
closed, he went back to his damp, chilly room to correct his work,
cutting out whole chapters and piecing it together anew. And after
dining at Flicoteaux’s, he went down to the Passage du Commerce to
see the newspapers at Blosse’s reading-room, as well as new books and
magazines and poetry, so as to keep himself informed of the movements
of the day. And when, towards midnight, he returned to his wretched
lodgings, he had used neither fuel nor candle-light. His reading in
those days made such an enormous change in his ideas, that he revised
the volume of flower-sonnets, his beloved _Marguerites_, working them
over to such purpose, that scarce a hundred lines of the original verses
were allowed to stand.
So in the beginning Lucien led the honest, innocent life of the country
lad who never leaves the Latin Quarter; devoting himself wholly to
his work, with thoughts of the future always before him; who finds
Flicoteaux’s ordinary luxurious after the simple home-fare; and strolls
for recreation along the alleys of the Luxembourg, the blood surging
back to his heart as he gives timid side glances to the pretty women.
But this could not last. Lucien, with his poetic temperament and
boundless longings, could not withstand the temptations held out by the
play-bills.
The Théâtre-Français, the Vaudeville, the Variétés, the Opera-Comique
relieved him of some sixty francs, although he always went to the pit.
What student could deny himself the pleasure of seeing Talma in one of
his famous roles? Lucien was fascinated by the theatre, that first love
of all poetic temperaments; the actors and actresses were awe-inspiring
creatures; he did not so much as dream of the possibility of crossing
the footlights and meeting them on familiar terms. The men and women
who gave him so much pleasure were surely marvelous beings, whom the
newspapers treated with as much gravity as matters of national interest.
To be a dramatic author, to have a play produced on the stage! What a
dream was this to cherish! A dream which a few bold spirits like Casimir
Delavigne had actually realized. Thick swarming thoughts like these, and
moments of belief in himself, followed by despair, gave Lucien no rest,
and kept him in the narrow way of toil and frugality, in spite of the
smothered grumblings of more than one frenzied desire.
Carrying prudence to an extreme, he made it a rule never to enter the
precincts of the Palais Royal, that place of perdition where he had
spent fifty francs at Véry’s in a single day, and nearly five hundred
francs on his clothes; and when he yielded to temptation, and saw
Fleury, Talma, the two Baptistes, or Michot, he went no further than
the murky passage where theatre-goers used to stand in a string from
half-past five in the afternoon till the hour when the doors opened,
and belated comers were compelled to pay ten sous for a place near the
ticket-office. And after waiting for two hours, the cry of “All tickets
are sold!” rang not unfrequently in the ears of disappointed students.
When the play was over, Lucien went home with downcast eyes, through
streets lined with living attractions, and perhaps fell in with one of
those commonplace adventures which loom so large in a young and timorous
imagination.
One day Lucien counted over his remaining stock of money, and took alarm
at the melting of his funds; a cold perspiration broke out upon him when
he thought that the time had come when he must find a publisher, and
try also to find work for which a publisher would pay him. The young
journalist, with whom he had made a one-sided friendship, never came
now to Flicoteaux’s. Lucien was waiting for a chance—which failed to
present itself. In Paris there are no chances except for men with a very
wide circle of acquaintance; chances of success of every kind increase
with the number of your connections; and, therefore, in this sense also
the chances are in favor of the big battalions. Lucien had sufficient
provincial foresight still left, and had no mind to wait until only a
last few coins remained to him. He resolved to face the publishers.
So one tolerably chilly September morning Lucien went down the Rue de la
Harpe, with his two manuscripts under his arm. As he made his way to
the Quai des Augustins, and went along, looking into the booksellers’
windows on one side and into the Seine on the other, his good genius
might have counseled him to pitch himself into the water sooner than
plunge into literature. After heart-searching hesitations, after a
profound scrutiny of the various countenances, more or less encouraging,
soft-hearted, churlish, cheerful, or melancholy, to be seen through the
window panes, or in the doorways of the booksellers’ establishments,
he espied a house where the shopmen were busy packing books at a great
rate. Goods were being despatched. The walls were plastered with bills: