JUST OUT.

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

Third edition.

LEONIDE, by Victor Ducange; five volumes

12mo, printed on fine paper. 12 francs.

INDUCTIONS MORALES, by Kératry.

“They are lucky, that they are!” exclaimed Lucien.

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

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

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

Treasury was to discover a new source of revenue.

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

great at Angoulême, so insignificant of late in Paris, slipped past the

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

thronged with assistants, customers, and booksellers—“And authors too,

perhaps!” thought Lucien.

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

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

ran), _French and foreign booksellers’ agents_.

“Both gentlemen are engaged,” said the man.

“I will wait.”

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

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

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

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

curtains hid either Vidal or Porchon, he listened to the conversation.

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

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

“What does that bring them in at?”

“Sixteen sous less.”

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

“Yes,” said the vendor.

“Credit your account?” inquired the purchaser.

“Old humbug! you would settle with me in eighteen months’ time, with

bills at a twelvemonth.”

“No. Settled at once,” returned Vidal or Porchon.

“Bills at nine months?” asked the publisher or author, who evidently was

selling his book.

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

booksellers’ agents.

There was a pause.

“You are simply cutting my throat!” said the visitor.

“But in a year’s time shall we have placed a hundred copies of

_Léonide_?” said the other voice. “If books went off as fast as the

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

don’t, they go as the public pleases. There is some one now bringing out

an edition of Scott’s novels at eighteen sous per volume, three livres

twelve sous per copy, and you want me to give you more for your stale

remainders? No. If you mean me to push this novel of yours, you must

make it worth my while.—Vidal!”

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

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

of his partner.

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

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

uncommonly fine ‘nightingales’ they are now.”

(A “nightingale,” as Lucien afterwards learned, is a bookseller’s name

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

nooks in the shop.)

“And besides,” added Vidal, “Picard is bringing out some novels, as you

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

make the thing a success.”

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

voice, thunderstruck by Vidal’s confidential remark.

“Is it an offer?” Porchon inquired curtly.

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

say to Vidal:

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

his settlement, sell the _Léonides_ for five francs net, settlement in

six months, and——”

“And that will be fifteen hundred francs into our pockets,” said Vidal.

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

thousand francs for two thousand copies.”

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

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

addressing both partners. The booksellers nodded slightly.

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

called _The Archer of Charles IX._; I propose to offer it to you——”

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

the desk. Vidal stared rudely at the author.

“We are not publishing booksellers, sir; we are booksellers’ agents,”

he said. “When we bring out a book ourselves, we only deal in well-known

names; and we only take serious literature besides—history and

epitomes.”

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

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

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

“M. Vidal!” shouted an assistant. Vidal fled.

“I don’t say, sir, that your book is not a masterpiece,” replied

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

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

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

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

of Doguereau and of the publisher in the Wooden Galleries.”

“I have a volume of poetry——”

“M. Porchon!” somebody shouted.

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

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

back shop.

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

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

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

be sold dear and bought cheap.

“I have made a mistake,” said Lucien to himself; but, all the same, this

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

him.

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

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

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

had seen the name at the foot of the title-page of several novels at

Blosse’s reading-room. In he went, not without the inward trepidation

which a man of any imagination feels at the prospect of a battle.

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

characters of the trade in the days of the Empire.

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

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

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

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

black nether garments. The booksellers’ watch must have been the size

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

completed his costume. The old man’s head was bare, and ornamented with

a fringe of grizzled locks, quite poetically scanty. “Old Doguereau,” as

Porchon styled him, was dressed half like a professor of belles-lettres

as to his trousers and shoes, half like a tradesman with respect to the

variegated waistcoat, the stockings, and the watch; and the same odd

mixture appeared in the man himself. He united the magisterial, dogmatic

air, and the hollow countenance of the professor of rhetoric with the

sharp eyes, suspicious mouth, and vague uneasiness of the bookseller.

“M. Doguereau?” asked Lucien.

“That is my name, sir.”

“I am the author of a romance,” began Lucien.

“You are very young,” remarked the bookseller.

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

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

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

tell me your subject in a word or two.”

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

of the struggle between the Protestants and Catholics is depicted as a

struggle between two opposed systems of government, in which the throne

is seriously endangered. I have taken the Catholic side.”

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

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

style; but if you are industrious, if you have some notion of style,

conceptions, ideas, and the art of telling a story, I don’t ask better

than to be of use to you. What do we want but good manuscripts?”

“When can I come back?”

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

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

it suits me, we might come to terms that very day.”

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

idea of bringing the _Marguerites_ upon the scene.

“I have a volume of poetry as well, sir——” he began.

“Oh! you are a poet! Then I don’t want your romance,” and the old man

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

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

nothing; you absolutely must say something.”

“But Sir Walter Scott, sir, wrote poetry as well as——”

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

fellow before him was poor, and kept the manuscript. “Where do you live?

I will come and see you.”

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

gave his address; he did not see that he had to do with a bookseller of

the old school, a survival of the eighteenth century, when booksellers

tried to keep Voltaires and Montesquieus starving in garrets under lock

and key.

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

when he had read the address.

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

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

kind of man for me! It is just as I said to David—talent soon makes its

way in Paris.”

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

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

he stood by the counter in Vidal and Porchon’s shop; he beheld himself

the richer by twelve hundred francs at least. Twelve hundred francs! It

meant a year in Paris, a whole year of preparation for the work that he

meant to do. What plans he built on that hope! What sweet dreams, what

visions of a life established on a basis of work! Mentally he found new

quarters, and settled himself in them; it would not have taken much to

set him making a purchase or two. He could only stave off impatience by

constant reading at Blosse’s.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

old fox thought better of it.

“A young fellow that lives here has none but simple tastes,” said he to

himself; “he is fond of study, fond of work; I néed not give more than

eight hundred francs.”

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

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

the fourth floor.

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

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

money, he would only fall into dissipated ways, and then he would

not work. In the interests of us both, I shall only offer six hundred

francs, in coin though, not paper.”

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

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

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

impression on Daddy Doguereau.

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

modest requirements,” thought he.—Aloud he said: “It is a pleasure to

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

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

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

of letters should work, instead of living riotously in cafés and

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

He sat down.

“Your romance is not bad, young man. I was a professor of rhetoric once;

I know French history, there are some capital things in it. You have a

future before you, in fact.”

“Oh! sir.”

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

romance.”

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

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

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

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

effort of generosity.

“The volume?” queried Lucien.

“For the romance,” said Doguereau, heedless of Lucien’s surprise. “In

ready money,” he added; “and you shall undertake to write two books for

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

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

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

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

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

hundred for translations of English books. Such prices would have been

exorbitant in the old days.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

years that I have been a bookseller. So you don’t make a fortune by

printing romances, you see. Vidal and Porchon only take them of us on

conditions that grow harder and harder day by day. You have only your

time to lose, while I am obliged to disburse two thousand francs. If we

fail, _habent sua fata libelli_, I lose two thousand francs; while, as

for you, you simply hurl an ode at the thick-headed public. When you

have thought over this that I have the honor of telling you, you

will come back to me.—_You will come back to me_!” he asserted

authoritatively, by way of reply to a scornful gesture made

involuntarily by Lucien. “So far from finding a publisher obliging

enough to risk two thousand francs for an unknown writer, you will not

find a publisher’s clerk that will trouble himself to look through your

screed. Now that I have read it I can point out a good many slips in

grammar. You have put _observer_ for _faire observer_ and _malgré que_.

_Malgré_ is a preposition, and requires an object.”

Lucien appeared to be humiliated.

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

“I shall only give a hundred crowns.”

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

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

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

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

a drawer is not eating its head off like a horse in a stable, nor will

it find you in victuals either, and that’s a fact.”

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

“I would rather burn it, sir!” he exclaimed.

“You have a poet’s head,” returned his senior.

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

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

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

At the Bibliothèque Saint-Geneviève, whither Lucien was going, he had

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

thereabouts, working with the sustained industry which nothing can

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

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

for the librarian and attendants all knew him and paid him special

attention; the librarian would even allow him to take away books, with

which Lucien saw him return in the morning. In the stranger student he

recognized a brother in penury and hope.

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

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

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

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

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

ambition, of power working below the surface. Study the face carefully,

and you will discover genius in it and discretion, and all the subtlety

and greatness of the man. The portrait has speaking eyes like a woman’s;

they look out, greedy of space, craving difficulties to vanquish. Even

if the name of Bonaparte were not written beneath it, you would gaze

long at that face.

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

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

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

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

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

mysterious stranger with that unmistakable stamp which genius sets

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

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

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

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

doubtless from the consciousness of a purpose that filled his life,

a dignity which made him unapproachable. He had the expression of a

thinker, meditation dwelt on the fine nobly carved brow. You could tell

from the dark bright eyes, so clear-sighted and quick to observe, that

their owner was wont to probe to the bottom of things. He gesticulated

very little, his demeanor was grave. Lucien felt an involuntary respect

for him.

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

or at Flicoteaux’s; many times they had been on the point of speaking,

but neither of them had ventured so far as yet. The silent young man

went off to the further end of the library, on the side at right angles

to the Place de la Sorbonne, and Lucien had no opportunity of making

his acquaintance, although he felt drawn to a worker whom he knew by

indescribable tokens for a character of no common order. Both, as they

came to know afterwards, were unsophisticated and shy, given to fears

which cause a pleasurable emotion to solitary creatures. Perhaps they

never would have been brought into communication if they had not come

across each other that day of Lucien’s disaster; for as Lucien

turned into the Rue des Grès, he saw the student coming away from the

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève.

“The library is closed; I don’t know why, monsieur,” said he.

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

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

at once when two men meet in youth. They went together along the Rue des

Grès towards the Rue de la Harpe.

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

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

“No; one’s ideas will not flow in the proper current,” remarked the

stranger. “Something seems to have annoyed you, monsieur?”

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

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

dealings with the old bookseller. He gave his name and said a word or

two of his position. In one month or thereabouts he had spent sixty

francs on his board, thirty for lodging, twenty more francs in going to

the theatre, and ten at Blosse’s reading room—one hundred and twenty

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

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

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

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

he continued, indicating the turrets of the Odéon. “There came one day

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

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

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

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

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

acts to the Odéon; the comedy was accepted, the management arranged to

bring it out, the actors learned their parts, the stage manager urged on

the rehearsals. Five several bits of luck, five dramas to be performed

in real life, and far harder tasks than the writing of a five-act play.

The poor author lodged in a garret; you can see the place from here. He

drained his last resources to live until the first representation; his

wife pawned her clothes, they all lived on dry bread. On the day of the

final rehearsal, the household owed fifty francs in the Quarter to the

baker, the milkwoman, and the porter. The author had only the strictly

necessary clothes—a coat, a shirt, trousers, a waistcoat, and a pair of

boots. He felt sure of his success; he kissed his wife. The end of their

troubles was at hand. ‘At last! There is nothing against us now,’

cried he.—‘Yes, there is fire,’ said his wife; ‘look, the Odéon is on

fire!’—The Odéon was on fire, monsieur. So do not you complain. You

have clothes, you have neither wife nor child, you have a hundred and

twenty francs for emergencies in your pocket, and you owe no one a

penny.—Well, the piece went through a hundred and fifty representations

at the Théâtre Louvois. The King allowed the author a pension. ‘Genius

is patience,’ as Buffon said. And patience after all is a man’s nearest

approach to Nature’s processes of creation. What is Art, monsieur, but

Nature concentrated?”

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

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

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

famous. Daniel d’Arthez is one of the most illustrious of living men

of letters; one of the rare few who show us an example of “a noble gift

with a noble nature combined,” to quote a poet’s fine thought.

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

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

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

and its maladies. Nature sweeps away sickly or deformed creatures, and

Society rejects an imperfectly developed talent. Any man who means to

rise above the rest must make ready for a struggle and be undaunted

by difficulties. A great writer is a martyr who does not die; that

is all.—There is the stamp of genius on your forehead,” d’Arthez

continued, enveloping Lucien by a glance; “but unless you have within

you the will of genius, unless you are gifted with angelic patience,

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

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

the Indies find their way to the ocean, you had better give up at once.”

“Then do you yourself expect these ordeals?” asked Lucien.

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

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

literary market,” his companion said resignedly. “What is a first loss,

if only your work was good?”

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

“So be it,” said d’Arthez. “I am living in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.

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

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

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

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

stock of courage that I néed every morning. I am living in the very room

where, like Rousseau, he often ate bread and cherries, but, unlike

Rousseau, he had no Theresa. Come in an hour’s time. I shall be in.”

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

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

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

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

should find a fire in his room.

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

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

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

floor, and found d’Arthez’s room.

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

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

wooden bedstead, of the kind seen in school dormitories, a night-table,

picked up cheaply somewhere, and a couple of horsehair armchairs, filled

the further end of the room. The wall-paper, a Highland plaid pattern,

was glazed over with the grime of years. Between the window and

the grate stood a long table littered with papers, and opposite the

fireplace there was a cheap mahogany chest of drawers. A second-hand

carpet covered the floor—a necessary luxury, for it saved firing. A

common office armchair, cushioned with leather, crimson once, but now

hoary with wear, was drawn up to the table. Add half-a-dozen rickety

chairs, and you have a complete list of the furniture. Lucien noticed an

old-fashioned candle-sconce for a card-table, with an adjustable screen

attached, and wondered to see four wax candles in the sockets. D’Arthez

explained that he could not endure the smell of tallow, a little

trait denoting great delicacy of sense perception, and the exquisite

sensibility which accompanies it.

The reading lasted for seven hours. Daniel listened conscientiously,

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

good taste in a listener.

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

“You have made a good start on the right way,” d’Arthez answered

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

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

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

begins, with long conversations to introduce your characters, and only

when they have said their say does description and action follow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

novelist’s form of dramatic dialogue to French history. There is

no passion in Scott’s novels; he ignores passion, or perhaps it was

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

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

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

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

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

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

vividness in the coloring? Woman brings confusion into Society through

passion. Passion gives infinite possibilities. Therefore depict passion;

you have one great resource open to you, foregone by the great genius

for the sake of providing family reading for prudish England. In France

you have the charming sinner, the brightly-colored life of Catholicism,

contrasted with sombre Calvinistic figures on a background of the times

when passions ran higher than at any other period of our history.

“Every epoch which has left authentic records since the time of Charles

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

periods of Louis XIV., of Henry IV., of Francis I., for instance. You

would give us in this way a picturesque history of France, with the

costumes and furniture, the houses and their interiors, and domestic

life, giving us the spirit of the time instead of a laborious narration

of ascertained facts. Then there is further scope for originality. You

can remove some of the popular delusions which disfigure the memories

of most of our kings. Be bold enough in this first work of yours to

rehabilitate the great magnificent figure of Catherine, whom you have

sacrificed to the prejudices which still cloud her name. And finally,

paint Charles IX. for us as he really was, and not as Protestant writers

have made him. Ten years of persistent work, and fame and fortune will

be yours.”

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

secret by his future friend by asking him to dine at Edon’s, and spent

twelve francs at that restaurant. During the dinner Daniel admitted

Lucien into the secret of his hopes and studies. Daniel d’Arthez would

not allow that any writer could attain to a pre-eminent rank without

a profound knowledge of metaphysics. He was engaged in ransacking the

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

it all; he would be like Molière, a profound philosopher first, and a

writer of comedies afterwards. He was studying the world of books and

the living world about him—thought and fact. His friends were learned

naturalists, young doctors of medicine, political writers and artists, a

number of earnest students full of promise.

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

articles for encyclopaedias, dictionaries of biography and natural

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

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

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

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

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

took him, and kept it for days of great distress. D’Arthez’s revelations

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

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

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

unconscious of its loftiness, this unostentatious worth.

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

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

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

and critical examinations undertaken for their own sake, not for

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

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

uttered by a hard student in Paris had fallen upon ground prepared to

receive it in the provincial. Lucien set about recasting his work.

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

in generous and sympathetic feeling, the distinguished provincial

did, as all young creatures hungering for affection are wont to do;

he fastened, like a chronic disease, upon this one friend that he had

found. He called for D’Arthez on his way to the Bibliothèque, walked

with him on fine days in the Luxembourg Gardens, and went with his

friend every evening as far as the door of his lodging-house after

sitting next to him at Flicoteaux’s. He pressed close to his friend’s

side as a soldier might keep by a comrade on the frozen Russian plains.

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

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

Daniel’s intimates. The talk of those superior beings of whom d’Arthez

spoke to him with such concentrated enthusiasm kept within the bounds

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

friendships. At these times Lucien discreetly took his leave, a feeling

of curiosity mingling with the sense of something like pain at the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

united by the keenest sympathies and by the earnestness of their

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

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

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

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

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

absent friend as “Louis.” Several of the group were destined to fall by

the way; but others, like d’Arthez, have since won all the fame that was

their due. A few details as to the circle will readily explain Lucien’s

strong feeling of interest and curiosity.

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

house-student at the Hôtel-Dieu; later, a shining light at the École de

Paris, and now so well known that it is néedless to give any description

of his appearance, genius, or character.

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

turning all systems inside out, criticising, expressing, and

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

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

toiler, a conscientious scholar, he became the acknowledged head of a

school of moralists and politicians. Time alone can pronounce upon the

merits of his theories; but if his convictions have drawn him into paths

in which none of his old comrades tread, none the less he is still their

faithful friend.

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

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

Joseph’s heart, he might have continued the tradition of the great

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

said concerning him. He combines Roman outline with Venetian color; but

love is fatal to his work, love not merely transfixes his heart, but

sends his arrow through the brain, deranges the course of his life, and

sets the victim describing the strangest zigzags. If the mistress of the

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

sketches where the drawing is clogged with color, or pictures finished

under the stress of some imaginary woe, in which he gave his whole

attention to the drawing, and left the color to take care of itself. He

is a constant disappointment to his friends and the public; yet Hoffmann

would have worshiped him for his daring experiments in the realms of

art. When Bridau is wholly himself he is admirable, and as praise is

sweet to him, his disgust is great when one praises the failures in

which he alone discovers all that is lacking in the eyes of the public.

He is whimsical to the last degree. His friends have seen him destroy

a finished picture because, in his eyes, it looked too smooth. “It is

overdone,” he would say; “it is niggling work.”

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

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

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

literary worker. There is an indescribable piquancy about his epigrams

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

uncertainty that appears in his execution is a part of the very nature

of the man. The brotherhood loved him for the very qualities which the

philistine would style defects.

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

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

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

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

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

sufficient to secure his independence, and then declines to do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

though he never goes out of his way to find it; he is melancholy and

gay. His friends dubbed him the “Dog of the Regiment.” You could have no

better portrait of the man than his nickname.

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

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

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

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

which divided the whole scientific world into two opposite camps, with

these two men of equal genius as leaders. This befell some months before

the death of the champion of rigorous analytical science as opposed

to the pantheism of one who is still living to bear an honored name in

Germany. Meyraux was the friend of that “Louis” of whom death was so

soon to rob the intellectual world.

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

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

the great Republican thinker, who dreamed of European Federation, and

had no small share in bringing about the Saint-Simonian movement of

1830. A politician of the calibre of Saint-Just and Danton, but simple,

meek as a maid, and brimful of illusions and loving-kindness; the owner

of a singing voice which would have sent Mozart, or Weber, or Rossini

into ecstasies, for his singing of certain songs of Béranger’s could

intoxicate the heart in you with poetry, or hope, or love—Michel

Chrestien, poor as Lucien, poor as Daniel d’Arthez, as all the rest

of his friends, gained a living with the haphazard indifference of

a Diogenes. He indexed lengthy works, he drew up prospectuses for

booksellers, and kept his doctrines to himself, as the grave keeps the

secrets of the dead. Yet the gay bohemian of intellectual life, the

great statesman who might have changed the face of the world, fell as a

private soldier in the cloister of Saint-Merri; some shopkeeper’s bullet

struck down one of the noblest creatures that ever trod French soil, and

Michel Chrestien died for other doctrines than his own. His Federation

scheme was more dangerous to the aristocracy of Europe than the

Republican propaganda; it was more feasible and less extravagant than

the hideous doctrines of indefinite liberty proclaimed by the young

madcaps who assume the character of heirs of the Convention. All who

knew the noble plebeian wept for him; there is not one of them but

remembers, and often remembers, a great obscure politician.

Esteem and friendship kept the peace between the extremes of hostile

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

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

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

Ridal scoffed at Léon Giraud’s philosophical doctrines, while Giraud

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

Christianity and the extinction of the institution of the family. Michel

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

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

from Bianchon’s scalpel, for Horace Bianchon was before all things an

analyst.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

self-love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

which the young men lived and the splendor of their intellectual wealth.

They looked upon the practical problems of existence simply as matter

for friendly jokes. The cold weather happened to set in early that year.

Five of d’Arthez’s friends appeared one day, each concealing firewood

under his cloak; the same idea had occurred to the five, as it sometimes

happens that all the guests at a picnic are inspired with the notion of

bringing a pie as their contribution.

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

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

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

had brought refinement and regularity into features somewhat pinched

and rugged. The poet’s amplitude of brow was a striking characteristic

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

life. The hardships of penury, when they were felt at all, were born so

gaily and embraced with such enthusiasm, that they had left no trace to

mar the serenity peculiar to the faces of the young who have no grave

errors laid to their charge as yet, who have not stooped to any of the

base compromises wrung from impatience of poverty by the strong desire

to succeed. The temptation to use any means to this end is the greater

since that men of letters are lenient with bad faith and extend an easy

indulgence to treachery.

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

indissoluble—a sense of certainty which is lacking in love. These young

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

enemy of all; the most urgent personal considerations would have been

shattered if they had clashed with the sacred solidarity of their

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

formidable No to any accusation brought against the absent and defend

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

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

matters of intellectual or scientific interest; hence the honesty of

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

freedom of the community there was no fear of being misunderstood; they

stood upon no ceremony with each other; they shared their troubles

and joys, and gave thought and sympathy from full hearts. The charming

delicacy of feeling which makes the tale of _Deux Amis_ a treasury

for great souls, was the rule of their daily life. It may be imagined,

therefore, that their standard of requirements was not an easy one; they

were too conscious of their worth, too well aware of their happiness,

to care to trouble their life with the admixture of a new and unknown

element.

This federation of interests and affection lasted for twenty years

without a collision or disappointment. Death alone could thin the

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

and Michel Chrestien.

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

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

Bianchon, Daniel d’Arthez, Léon Giraud, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence

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

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

Père-Lachaise; Horace Bianchon, undaunted by the difficulties,

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

authorities for permission to bury the fallen insurgent and confessed to

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

present at the funeral with those five great men will never forget that

touching scene.

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

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

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

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

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

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

realized. These men were brothers leading lives of intellectual effort,

loyally helping each other, making no reservations, not even of their

worst thoughts; men of vast acquirements, natures tried in the crucible

of poverty. Once admitted as an equal among such elect souls, Lucien

represented beauty and poetry. They admired the sonnets which he read to

them; they would ask him for a sonnet as he would ask Michel Chrestien

for a song. And, in the desert of Paris, Lucien found an oasis in the

Rue des Quatre-Vents.

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

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

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

d’Arthez, burning blocks of spent tan, and facing poverty like a hero,

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

spinster, and methodical as a miser. This courage called out Lucien’s

courage; he had only newly come into the circle, and shrank with

invincible repugnance from speaking of his straits. One morning he went

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

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

little knew how indulgent great natures can be to the weaknesses of

others. Every one of the friends had thought of the peculiar troubles

besetting the poetic temperament, of the prostration which follows upon

the struggle, when the soul has been overwrought by the contemplation of

that nature which it is the task of art to reproduce. And strong as they

were to endure their own ills, they felt keenly for Lucien’s distress;

they guessed that his stock of money was failing; and after all the

pleasant evenings spent in friendly talk and deep meditations, after the

poetry, the confidences, the bold flights over the fields of thought or

into the far future of the nations, yet another trait was to prove how

little Lucien had understood these new friends of his.

“Lucien, dear fellow,” said Daniel, “you did not dine at Flicoteaux’s

yesterday, and we know why.”

Lucien could not keep back the overflowing tears.

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

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

will——”

“We have all of us found a bit of extra work,” said Bianchon; “for

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

d’Arthez has written an article for the _Revue Encyclopédique_;

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

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

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

and gave his employer six hundred francs worth of Machiavelli; Léon

Giraud borrowed fifty francs of his publisher, Joseph sold one or two

sketches; and Fulgence’s piece was given on Sunday, and there was a full

house.”

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

about it.”

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

extraordinary!” cried Chrestien.

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

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

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

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

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

or science which he followed:—

_David Séchard to Lucien._

“MY DEAR LUCIEN,—Enclosed herewith is a bill at ninety days,

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

Métivier, paper merchant, our Paris correspondent in the Rue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

intelligence almost divine in Daniel d’Arthez and Michel Chrestien

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

courage of you.

“DAVID.”

_Eve Séchard to Lucien._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lose his head and do something rash.’—I gave him a good scolding.

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

that I should die of sorrow.’—Mother and I have pawned a few

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

blessing of Heaven could you have met with true friends there

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

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

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

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

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

“EVE.”

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

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

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

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

with the heart of your mother.”

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

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

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

sensibility and searching eyes of his friends.

“Any one might think that you were afraid to owe us anything,” exclaimed

Fulgence.

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

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

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

“He is a poet,” said d’Arthez.

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

“We should bear in mind that he did not hide it,” said Léon Giraud; “he

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

us.”

“And why?” Lucien asked.

“We can read your thoughts,” answered Joseph Bridau.

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

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

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

“Ah! I am afraid of that,” said d’Arthez. “You will carry on admirable

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

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

yourself.”

“What ground have you for these charges?”

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

thy friendships!” cried Fulgence. “All vanity of that sort is a symptom

of shocking egoism, and egoism poisons friendship.”

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

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

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

much of it?”

“We don’t lend here; we give,” said Joseph Bridau roughly.

“Don’t think us unkind, dear boy,” said Michel Chrestien; “we are

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

thoughts and living beneath them.”

Lucien hung his head. His friends were right.

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

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

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

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

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

“We will stand by you,” said d’Arthez; “it is just in these ways that a

faithful friendship is of use.”

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

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

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

publishers; Bianchon is quite out of it; d’Arthez’s booksellers only

deal in scientific and technical books—they have no connection with

publishers of new literature; and as for Horace and Fulgence Ridal and

Bridau, their work lies miles away from the booksellers. There is no

help for it; I must make up my mind one way or another.”

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

bravely, and trust in hard work.”

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

“Before the cock crows thrice,” smiled Léon Giraud, “this man will

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

“Where has work brought you?” asked Lucien, laughing.

“When you start out from Paris for Italy, you don’t find Rome half-way,”

said Joseph Bridau. “You want your pease to grow ready buttered for

you.”

They only grow like that for young dukes,” said Michael Chrestien. “But

the rest of us sow them and water them, and like the flavor of them all

the better.”

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

friends, with their perspicacity and delicacy of heart, tried to efface

the memory of the little quarrel; but Lucien knew thenceforward that it

was no easy matter to deceive them. He soon fell into despair, which he

was careful to hide from such stern mentors as he imagined them to be;

and the Southern temper that runs so easily through the whole gamut of

mental dispositions, set him making the most contradictory resolutions.

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

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

sort!”

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

know,” said d’Arthez.

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

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

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

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

out-and-out journalist in two months’ time. To be a journalist—that is

to turn Herod in the republic of letters. The man who will say anything

will end by sticking at nothing. That was Napoleon’s maxim, and it

explains itself.”

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

“Not by that time,” said Fulgence. “If you were a journalist, you would

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

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

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

a witticism, though it should bring tears to a friend’s eyes. I come

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

Journalism is an inferno, a bottomless pit of iniquity and treachery

and lies; no one can traverse it undefiled, unless, like Dante, he is

protected by Virgil’s sacred laurel.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

another romance? One month of privation had exhausted his stock of

patience. Why should he not do nobly that which journalists did ignobly

and without principle? His friends insulted him with their doubts; he

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

be of use to them; he would be the herald of their fame!

“And what sort of a friendship is it which recoils from complicity?”

demanded he one evening of Michel Chrestien; Lucien and Léon Giraud were

walking home with their friend.

“We shrink from nothing,” Michel Chrestien made reply. “If you were so

unlucky as to kill your mistress, I would help you to hide your crime,

and could still respect you; but if you were to turn spy, I should shun

you with abhorrence, for a spy is systematically shameless and base.

There you have journalism summed up in a sentence. Friendship can pardon

error and the hasty impulse of passion; it is bound to be inexorable

when a man deliberately traffics in his own soul, and intellect, and

opinions.”

“Why cannot I turn journalist to sell my volume of poetry and the novel,

and then give up at once?”

“Machiavelli might do so, but not Lucien de Rubempré,” said Léon Giraud.

“Very well,” exclaimed Lucien; “I will show you that I can do as much as

Machiavelli.”

“Oh!” cried Michel, grasping Léon’s hand, “you have done it,

Léon.—Lucien,” he continued, “you have three hundred francs in hand;

you can live comfortably for three months; very well, then, work hard

and write another romance. D’Arthez and Fulgence will help you with the

plot; you will improve, you will be a novelist. And I, meanwhile, will

enter one of those _lupanars_ of thought; for three months I will be

a journalist. I will sell your books to some bookseller or other by

attacking his publications; I will write the articles myself; I will get

others for you. We will organize a success; you shall be a great man,

and still remain our Lucien.”

“You must despise me very much, if you think that I should perish while

you escape,” said the poet.

“O Lord, forgive him; it is a child!” cried Michel Chrestien.

When Lucien’s intellect had been stimulated by the evenings spent in

d’Arthez’s garret, he had made some study of the jokes and articles

in the smaller newspapers. He was at least the equal, he felt, of the

wittiest contributors; in private he tried some mental gymnastics of the

kind, and went out one morning with the triumphant idea of finding some

colonel of such light skirmishers of the press and enlisting in their

ranks. He dressed in his best and crossed the bridges, thinking as he

went that authors, journalists, and men of letters, his future comrades,

in short, would show him rather more kindness and disinterestedness than

the two species of booksellers who had so dashed his hopes. He should

meet with fellow-feeling, and something of the kindly and grateful

affection which he found in the _cenacle_ of the Rue des Quatre-Vents.

Tormented by emotion, consequent upon the presentiments to which men of

imagination cling so fondly, half believing, half battling with their

belief in them, he arrived in the Rue Saint-Fiacre off the Boulevard

Montmartre. Before a house, occupied by the offices of a small

newspaper, he stopped, and at the sight of it his heart began to throb

as heavily as the pulses of a youth upon the threshold of some evil

haunt.

Nevertheless, upstairs he went, and found the offices in the low

_entresol_ between the ground floor and the first story. The first room

was divided down the middle by a partition, the lower half of solid

wood, the upper lattice work to the ceiling. In this apartment Lucien

discovered a one-armed pensioner supporting several reams of paper on

his head with his remaining hand, while between his teeth he held the

passbook which the Inland Revenue Department requires every newspaper to

produce with each issue. This ill-favored individual, owner of a yellow

countenance covered with red excrescences, to which he owed his nickname

of “Coloquinte,” indicated a personage behind the lattice as the

Cerberus of the paper. This was an elderly officer with a medal on his

chest and a silk skull-cap on his head; his nose was almost hidden by a

pair of grizzled moustaches, and his person was hidden as completely in

an ample blue overcoat as the body of the turtle in its carapace.

“From what date do you wish your subscription to commence, sir?”

inquired the Emperor’s officer.

“I did not come about a subscription,” returned Lucien. Looking about

him, he saw a placard fastened on a door, corresponding to the one by

which he had entered, and read the words—EDITOR’S OFFICE, and below, in

smaller letters, _No admittance except on business_.

“A complaint, I expect?” replied the veteran. “Ah! yes; we have

been hard on Mariette. What would you have? I don’t know the why and

wherefore of it yet.—But if you want satisfaction, I am ready for you,”

he added, glancing at a collection of small arms and foils stacked in a

corner, the armory of the modern warrior.

“That was still further from my intention, sir. I have come to speak to

the editor.”

“Nobody is ever here before four o’clock.”

“Look you here, Giroudeau, old chap,” remarked a voice, “I make it

eleven columns; eleven columns at five francs apiece is fifty-five

francs, and I have only been paid forty; so you owe me another fifteen

francs, as I have been telling you.”

These words proceeded from a little weasel-face, pallid and

semi-transparent as the half-boiled white of an egg; two slits of

eyes looked out of it, mild blue in tint, but appallingly malignant in

expression; and the owner, an insignificant young man, was completely

hidden by the veteran’s opaque person. It was a blood-curdling voice, a

sound between the mewing of a cat and the wheezy chokings of a hyena.

“Yes, yes, my little militiaman,” retorted he of the medal, “but you are

counting the headings and white lines. I have Finot’s instructions to

add up the totals of the lines, and to divide them by the proper number

for each column; and after I performed that concentrating operation on

your copy, there were three columns less.”

“He doesn’t pay for the blanks, the Jew! He reckons them in though when

he sends up the total of his work to his partner, and he gets paid for

them too. I will go and see Étienne Lousteau, Vernou——”

“I cannot go beyond my orders, my boy,” said the veteran. “What! do you

cry out against your foster-mother for a matter of fifteen francs? you

that turn out an article as easily as I smoke a cigar. Fifteen francs!

why, you will give a bowl of punch to your friends, or win an extra game

of billiards, and there’s an end of it!”

“Finot’s savings will cost him very dear,” said the contributor as he

took his departure.

“Now, would not anybody think that he was Rousseau and Voltaire rolled

in one?” the cashier remarked to himself as he glanced at Lucien.

“I will come in again at four, sir,” said Lucien.

While the argument proceeded, Lucien had been looking about him. He saw

upon the walls the portraits of Benjamin Constant, General Foy, and the

seventeen illustrious orators of the Left, interspersed with caricatures

at the expense of the Government; but he looked more particularly at

the door of the sanctuary where, no doubt, the paper was elaborated,

the witty paper that amused him daily, and enjoyed the privilege of

ridiculing kings and the most portentous events, of calling anything

and everything in question with a jest. Then he sauntered along the

boulevards. It was an entirely novel amusement; and so agreeable did he

find it, that, looking at the turret clocks, he saw the hour hands were

pointing to four, and only then remembered that he had not breakfasted.

He went at once in the direction of the Rue Saint-Fiacre, climbed the

stair, and opened the door.

The veteran officer was absent; but the old pensioner, sitting on a

pile of stamped papers, was munching a crust and acting as sentinel

resignedly. Coloquinte was as much accustomed to his work in the office

as to the fatigue duty of former days, understanding as much or as

little about it as the why and wherefore of forced marches made by the

Emperor’s orders. Lucien was inspired with the bold idea of deceiving

that formidable functionary. He settled his hat on his head, and walked

into the editor’s office as if he were quite at home.

Looking eagerly about him, he beheld a round table covered with a green

cloth, and half-a-dozen cherry-wood chairs, newly reseated with straw.

The colored brick floor had not been waxed, but it was clean; so clean

that the public, evidently, seldom entered the room. There was a mirror

above the chimney-piece, and on the ledge below, amid a sprinkling of

visiting-cards, stood a shopkeeper’s clock, smothered with dust, and a

couple of candlesticks with tallow dips thrust into their sockets. A few

antique newspapers lay on the table beside an inkstand containing some

black lacquer-like substance, and a collection of quill pens twisted

into stars. Sundry dirty scraps of paper, covered with almost

undecipherable hieroglyphs, proved to be manuscript articles torn across

the top by the compositor to check off the sheets as they were set up.

He admired a few rather clever caricatures, sketched on bits of brown

paper by somebody who evidently had tried to kill time by killing

something else to keep his hand in.

Other works of art were pinned in the cheap sea-green wall-paper. These

consisted of nine pen-and-ink illustrations for _Le Solitaire_. The work

had attained to such an unheard-of European popularity, that journalists

evidently were tired of it.—“The Solitary makes his first appearance

in the provinces; sensation among the women.—The Solitary perused at

a château.—Effect of the Solitary on domestic animals.—The Solitary

explained to savage tribes, with the most brilliant results.—The

Solitary translated into Chinese and presented by the author to the

Emperor at Pekin.—The Mont Sauvage, Rape of Élodie.”—(Lucien though

this caricature very shocking, but he could not help laughing at

it.)—“The Solitary under a canopy conducted in triumphal procession by

the newspapers.—The Solitary breaks the press to splinters, and wounds

the printers.—Read backwards, the superior beauties of the Solitary

produce a sensation at the Académie.”—On a newspaper-wrapper Lucien

noticed a sketch of a contributor holding out his hat, and beneath it

the words, “Finot! my hundred francs,” and a name, since grown more

notorious than famous.

Between the window and the chimney-piece stood a writing-table, a

mahogany armchair, and a waste-paper basket on a strip of hearth-rug;

the dust lay thick on all these objects. There were short curtains

in the windows. About a score of new books lay on the writing-table,

deposited there apparently during the day, together with prints, music,

snuff-boxes of the “Charter” pattern, a copy of the ninth edition of

_Le Solitaire_ (the great joke of the moment), and some ten unopened

letters.

Lucien had taken stock of this strange furniture, and made reflections

of the most exhaustive kind upon it, when, the clock striking five, he

returned to question the pensioner. Coloquinte had finished his crust,

and was waiting with the patience of a commissionaire, for the man of

medals, who perhaps was taking an airing on the boulevard.

At this conjuncture the rustle of a dress sounded on the stair, and the

light unmistakable footstep of a woman on the threshold. The newcomer

was passably pretty. She addressed herself to Lucien.

“Sir,” she said, “I know why you cry up Mlle. Virginie’s hats so much;

and I have come to put down my name for a year’s subscription in the

first place; but tell me your conditions——”

“I am not connected with the paper, madame.”

“Oh!”

“A subscription dating from October?” inquired the pensioner.

“What does the lady want to know?” asked the veteran, reappearing on the

scene.

The fair milliner and the retired military man were soon deep in

converse; and when Lucien, beginning to lose patience, came back to the

first room, he heard the conclusion of the matter.

“Why, I shall be delighted, quite delighted, sir. Mlle. Florentine

can come to my shop and choose anything she likes. Ribbons are in my

department. So it is all quite settled. You will say no more about

Virginie, a botcher that cannot design a new shape, while I have ideas

of my own, I have.”

Lucien heard a sound as of coins dropping into a cashbox, and the

veteran began to make up his books for the day.

“I have been waiting here for an hour, sir,” Lucien began, looking not a

little annoyed.

“And ‘they’ have not come yet!” exclaimed Napoleon’s veteran, civilly

feigning concern. “I am not surprised at that. It is some time since

I have seen ‘them’ here. It is the middle of the month, you see. Those

fine fellows only turn up on pay days—the 29th or the 30th.”

“And M. Finot?” asked Lucien, having caught the editor’s name.

“He is in the Rue Feydeau, that’s where he lives. Coloquinte, old chap,

just take him everything that has come in to-day when you go with the

paper to the printers.”

“Where is the newspaper put together?” Lucien said to himself.

“The newspaper?” repeated the officer, as he received the rest of the

stamp money from Coloquinte, “the newspaper?—broum! broum!—(Mind you

are round at the printers’ by six o’clock to-morrow, old chap, to send

off the porters.)—The newspaper, sir, is written in the street, at

the writers’ houses, in the printing-office between eleven and twelve

o’clock at night. In the Emperor’s time, sir, these shops for spoiled

paper were not known. Oh! he would have cleared them out with four men

and a corporal; they would not have come over _him_ with their talk. But

that is enough of prattling. If my nephew finds it worth his while, and

so long as they write for the son of the Other (broum! broum!)——after

all, there is no harm in that. Ah! by the way, subscribers don’t seem to

me to be advancing in serried columns; I shall leave my post.”

“You seem to know all about the newspaper, sir,” Lucien began.

“From a business point of view, broum! broum!” coughed the soldier,

clearing his throat. “From three to five francs per column, according to

ability.—Fifty lines to a column, forty letters to a line; no blanks;

there you are! As for the staff, they are queer fish, little youngsters

whom I wouldn’t take on for the commissariat; and because they make fly

tracks on sheets of white paper, they look down, forsooth, on an old

Captain of Dragoons of the Guard, that retired with a major’s rank after

entering every European capital with Napoleon.”

The soldier of Napoleon brushed his coat, and made as if he would go

out, but Lucien, swept to the door, had courage enough to make a stand.

“I came to be a contributor of the paper,” he said. “I am full of

respect, I vow and declare, for a captain of the Imperial Guard, those

men of bronze——”

“Well said, my little civilian, there are several kinds of contributors;

which kind do you wish to be?” replied the trooper, bearing down on

Lucien, and descending the stairs. At the foot of the flight he stopped,

but it was only to light a cigar at the porter’s box.

“If any subscribers come, you see them and take note of them, Mother

Chollet.—Simply subscribers, never know anything but subscribers,” he

added, seeing that Lucien followed him. “Finot is my nephew; he is

the only one of my family that has done anything to relieve me in my

position. So when anybody comes to pick a quarrel with Finot, he finds

old Giroudeau, Captain of the Dragoons of the Guard, that set out as a

private in a cavalry regiment in the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, and

was fencing-master for five years to the First Hussars, army of Italy!

One, two, and the man that had any complaints to make would be turned

off into the dark,” he added, making a lunge. “Now writers, my boy, are

in different corps; there is the writer who writes and draws his pay;

there is the writer who writes and gets nothing (a volunteer we call

him); and, lastly, there is the writer who writes nothing, and he is by

no means the stupidest, for he makes no mistakes; he gives himself out

for a literary man, he is on the paper, he treats us to dinners, he

loafs about the theatres, he keeps an actress, he is very well off. What

do you mean to be?”

“The man that does good work and gets good pay.”

“You are like the recruits. They all want to be marshals of France. Take

old Giroudeau’s word for it, and turn right about, in double-quick time,

and go and pick up nails in the gutter like that good fellow yonder; you

can tell by the look of him that he has been in the army.—Isn’t it a

shame that an old soldier who has walked into the jaws of death hundreds

of times should be picking up old iron in the streets of Paris? Ah! God

A’mighty! ‘twas a shabby trick to desert the Emperor.—Well, my boy, the

individual you saw this morning has made his forty francs a month. Are

you going to do better? And, according to Finot, he is the cleverest man

on the staff.”

“When you enlisted in the Sambre-et-Meuse, did they talk about danger?”

“Rather.”

“Very well?”

“Very well. Go and see my nephew Finot, a good fellow, as good a fellow

as you will find, if you can find him, that is, for he is like a fish,

always on the move. In his way of business, there is no writing, you

see, it is setting others to write. That sort like gallivanting about

with actresses better than scribbling on sheets of paper, it seems. Oh!

they are queer customers, they are. Hope I may have the honor of seeing

you again.”

With that the cashier raised his formidable loaded cane, one of the

defenders of Germanicus, and walked off, leaving Lucien in the street,

as much bewildered by this picture of the newspaper world as he had

formerly been by the practical aspects of literature at Messrs. Vidal

and Porchon’s establishment.

Ten several times did Lucien repair to the Rue Feydeau in search of

Andoche Finot, and ten times he failed to find that gentleman. He went

the first thing in the morning; Finot had not come in. At noon, Finot

had gone out; he was breakfasting at such and such a café. At the café,

in answer to inquiries of the waitress, made after surmounting

unspeakable repugnance, Lucien heard that Finot had just left the

place. Lucien, at length tired out, began to regard Finot as a mythical

and fabulous character; it appeared simpler to waylay Étienne Lousteau

at Flicoteaux’s. That youthful journalist would, doubtless, explain the

mysteries that enveloped the paper for which he wrote.

Since the day, a hundred times blessed, when Lucien made the

acquaintance of Daniel d’Arthez, he had taken another seat at

Flicoteaux’s. The two friends dined side by side, talking in lowered

voices of the higher literature, of suggested subjects, and ways of

presenting, opening up, and developing them. At the present time Daniel

d’Arthez was correcting the manuscript of _The Archer of Charles IX._ He

reconstructed whole chapters, and wrote the fine passages found therein,

as well as the magnificent preface, which is, perhaps, the best thing

in the book, and throws so much light on the work of the young school

of literature. One day it so happened that Daniel had been waiting

for Lucien, who now sat with his friend’s hand in his own, when he saw

Étienne Lousteau turn the door-handle. Lucien instantly dropped Daniel’s

hand, and told the waiter that he would dine at his old place by the

counter. D’Arthez gave Lucien a glance of divine kindness, in which

reproach was wrapped in forgiveness. The glance cut the poet to the

quick; he took Daniel’s hand and grasped it anew.

“It is an important question of business for me; I will tell you about

it afterwards,” said he.

Lucien was in his old place by the time that Lousteau reached the table;

as the first comer, he greeted his acquaintance; they soon struck up a

conversation, which grew so lively that Lucien went off in search of the

manuscript of the _Marguerites_, while Lousteau finished his dinner. He

had obtained leave to lay his sonnets before the journalist, and mistook

the civility of the latter for willingness to find him a publisher, or

a place on the paper. When Lucien came hurrying back again, he saw

d’Arthez resting an elbow on the table in a corner of the restaurant,

and knew that his friend was watching him with melancholy eyes, but he

would not see d’Arthez just then; he felt the sharp pangs of poverty,

the goadings of ambition, and followed Lousteau.

In the late afternoon the journalist and the neophyte went to the

Luxembourg, and sat down under the trees in that part of the gardens

which lies between the broad Avenue de l’Observatoire and the Rue de

l’Ouest. The Rue de l’Ouest at that time was a long morass, bounded by

planks and market-gardens; the houses were all at the end nearest

the Rue de Vaugirard; and the walk through the gardens was so little

frequented, that at the hour when Paris dines, two lovers might fall out

and exchange the earnest of reconciliation without fear of intruders.

The only possible spoil-sport was the pensioner on duty at the little

iron gate on the Rue de l’Ouest, if that gray-headed veteran should

take it into his head to lengthen his monotonous beat. There, on a

bench beneath the lime-trees, Étienne Lousteau sat and listened to

sample-sonnets from the _Marguerites_.

Étienne Lousteau, after a two-years’ apprenticeship, was on the staff

of a newspaper; he had his foot in the stirrup; he reckoned some of the

celebrities of the day among his friends; altogether, he was an imposing

personage in Lucien’s eyes. Wherefore, while Lucien untied the string

about the _Marguerites_, he judged it necessary to make some sort of

preface.

“The sonnet, monsieur,” said he, “is one of the most difficult forms of

poetry. It has fallen almost entirely into disuse. No Frenchman can hope

to rival Petrarch; for the language in which the Italian wrote, being

so infinitely more pliant than French, lends itself to play of thought

which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression) rejects. So

it seemed to me that a volume of sonnets would be something quite new.

Victor Hugo has appropriated the old, Canalis writes lighter verse,

Béranger has monopolized songs, Casimir Delavigne has taken tragedy, and

Lamartine the poetry of meditation.”

“Are you a ‘Classic’ or a ‘Romantic’?” inquired Lousteau.

Lucien’s astonishment betrayed such complete ignorance of the state of

affairs in the republic of letters, that Lousteau thought it necessary

to enlighten him.

“You have come up in the middle of a pitched battle, my dear fellow;

you must make your decision at once. Literature is divided, in the first

place, into several zones, but our great men are ranged in two hostile

camps. The Royalists are ‘Romantics,’ the Liberals are ‘Classics.’ The

divergence of taste in matters literary and divergence of political

opinion coincide; and the result is a war with weapons of every sort,

double-edged witticisms, subtle calumnies and nicknames _à outrance_,

between the rising and the waning glory, and ink is shed in torrents.

The odd part of it is that the Royalist-Romantics are all for liberty

in literature, and for repealing laws and conventions; while the

Liberal-Classics are for maintaining the unities, the Alexandrine, and

the classical theme. So opinions in politics on either side are directly

at variance with literary taste. If you are eclectic, you will have no

one for you. Which side do you take?”

“Which is the winning side?”

“The Liberal newspapers have far more subscribers than the Royalist and

Ministerial journals; still, though Canalis is for Church and King,

and patronized by the Court and the clergy, he reaches other

readers.—Pshaw! sonnets date back to an epoch before Boileau’s time,”

said Étienne, seeing Lucien’s dismay at the prospect of choosing between

two banners. “Be a Romantic. The Romantics are young men, and the

Classics are pedants; the Romantics will gain the day.”

The word “pedant” was the latest epithet taken up by Romantic journalism

to heap confusion on the Classical faction.

Lucien began to read, choosing first of all the title-sonnets.