PART II

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

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

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

an interest in recollections of a state of things which will seem

incredible to a younger generation.

The great dreary, spacious Galerie d’Orléans, that flowerless hothouse,

as yet was not; the space upon which it now stands was covered with

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

weather, and dimly illuminated on the side of the court and the garden

by borrowed lights styled windows by courtesy, but more like the

filthiest arrangements for obscuring daylight to be found in little

wineshops in the suburbs.

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

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

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

and derived a dubious daylight through the invariably dirty windows of

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

high, and as much as a thousand crowns was paid for a space scarce six

feet by eight. The outer rows gave respectively upon the garden and the

court, and were covered on that side by a slight trellis-work painted

green, to protect the crazy plastered walls from continual friction with

the passers-by. In a few square feet of earth at the back of the shops,

strange freaks of vegetable life unknown to science grew amid the

products of various no less flourishing industries. You beheld a

rosebush capped with printed paper in such a sort that the flowers

of rhetoric were perfumed by the cankered blossoms of that ill-kept,

ill-smelling garden. Handbills and ribbon streamers of every hue

flaunted gaily among the leaves; natural flowers competed unsuccessfully

for an existence with odds and ends of millinery. You discovered a knot

of ribbon adorning a green tuft; the dahlia admired afar proved on a

nearer view to be a satin rosette.

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

a grotesque combination of walls of plaster patchwork which had once

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

the most unaccountable freaks of Parisian squalor; the green trellises

were prodigiously the dingier for constant contact with a Parisian

public. So, upon either side, the fetid, disreputable approaches might

have been there for the express purpose of warning away fastidious

people; but fastidious folk no more recoiled before these horrors than

the prince in the fairy stories turns tail at sight of the dragon or

of the other obstacles put between him and the princess by the wicked

fairy.

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

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

begun before the Revolution, and left unfinished for lack of funds; but

in place of the handsome modern arcade leading to the Théâtre-Français,

you passed along a narrow, disproportionately lofty passage, so

ill-roofed that the rain came through on wet days. All the roofs of the

hovels indeed were in very bad repair, and covered here and again with

a double thickness of tarpaulin. A famous silk mercer once brought an

action against the Orléans family for damages done in the course of

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

considerable sum. It was in this last-named passage, called “The Glass

Gallery” to distinguish it from the Wooden Galleries, that Chevet laid

the foundations of his fortunes.

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

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

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

by the shopman’s besom, and only after some practice could you walk at

your ease. The treacherous mud-heaps, the window-panes incrusted with

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

placards, the grimy unfinished walls, the general air of a compromise

between a gypsy camp, the booths of a country fair, and the temporary

structures that we in Paris build round about public monuments that

remain unbuilt; the grotesque aspect of the mart as a whole was in

keeping with the seething traffic of various kinds carried on within

it; for here in this shameless, unblushing haunt, amid wild mirth and a

babel of talk, an immense amount of business was transacted between the

Revolution of 1789 and the Revolution of 1830.

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

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

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

made appointments to meet in the Galleries before or after ’Change;

on showery days the Palais Royal was often crowded with weather-bound

capitalists and men of business. The structure which had grown up, no

one knew how, about this point was strangely resonant, laughter was

multiplied; if two men quarreled, the whole place rang from one end to

the other with the dispute. In the daytime milliners and booksellers

enjoyed a monopoly of the place; towards nightfall it was filled with

women of the town. Here dwelt poetry, politics, and prose, new books and

classics, the glories of ancient and modern literature side by side with

political intrigue and the tricks of the bookseller’s trade. Here

all the very latest and newest literature were sold to a public which

resolutely decline to buy elsewhere. Sometimes several thousand copies

of such and such a pamphlet by Paul-Louis Courier would be sold in a

single evening; and people crowded thither to buy _Les aventures de la

fille d’un Roi_—that first shot fired by the Orleanists at The Charter

promulgated by Louis XVIII.

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

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

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

until the day when the whole strange colony perished under the hammer of

Fontaine the architect, every shop was open back and front like a booth

in a country fair, so that from within you could look out upon either

side through gaps among the goods displayed or through the glass doors.

As it was obviously impossible to kindle a fire, the tradesmen were fain

to use charcoal chafing-dishes, and formed a sort of brigade for the

prevention of fires among themselves; and, indeed, a little carelessness

might have set the whole quarter blazing in fifteen minutes, for the

plank-built republic, dried by the heat of the sun, and haunted by too

inflammable human material, was bedizened with muslin and paper and

gauze, and ventilated at times by a thorough draught.

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

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

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

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

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

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

but vivacious, waylaid the feminine foot passenger with cunning

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

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

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

bonnet, madame?—Do let me sell you something!”—varying a rich and

picturesque vocabulary with inflections of the voice, with glances, and

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

mutual understanding.

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

“Glass Gallery” that the oddest trades were carried on. Here were

ventriloquists and charlatans of every sort, and sights of every

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

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

francs by traveling from fair to fair began here by hanging out a

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

red letters: “Here Man may see what God can never see. Admittance, two

sous.” The showman at the door never admitted one person alone, nor more

than two at a time. Once inside, you confronted a great looking-glass;

and a voice, which might have terrified Hoffmann of Berlin, suddenly

spoke as if some spring had been touched, “You see here, gentlemen,

something that God can never see through all eternity, that is to say,

your like. God has not His like.” And out you went, too shamefaced to

confess to your stupidity.

Voices issued from every narrow doorway, crying up the merits

of Cosmoramas, views of Constantinople, marionettes, automatic

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

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

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

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

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

the sun when the shops were lighted at night.

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

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

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

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

youth, hungering after literature, took the opportunity of turning

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

booksellers’ shops; the men in charge charitably allowed a poor student

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

of some two hundred pages, such as _Smarra_ or _Pierre Schlemihl_, or

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

There was something very French in this alms given to the young, hungry,

starved intellect. Circulating libraries were not as yet; if you wished

to read a book, you were obliged to buy it, for which reason novels

of the early part of the century were sold in numbers which now seem

well-nigh fabulous to us.

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

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

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

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

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

paid for the right of exposing women dressed like princesses under

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to the slowness; it facilitated examination. The women dressed in a way

that is never seen nowadays. The bodices cut extremely low both back and

front; the fantastical head-dresses, designed to attract notice; here

a cap from the Pays de Caux, and there a Spanish mantilla; the hair

crimped and curled like a poodle’s, or smoothed down in bandeaux over

the forehead; the close-fitting white stockings and limbs, revealed it

would not be easy to say how, but always at the right moment—all this

poetry of vice has fled. The license of question and reply, the public

cynicism in keeping with the haunt, is now unknown even at masquerades

or the famous public balls. It was an appalling, gay scene. The dazzling

white flesh of the women’s necks and shoulders stood out in magnificent

contrast against the men’s almost invariably sombre costumes. The murmur

of voices, the hum of the crowd, could be heard even in the middle of

the garden as a sort of droning bass, interspersed with _fioriture_ of

shrill laughter or clamor of some rare dispute. You saw gentlemen

and celebrities cheek by jowl with gallows-birds. There was something

indescribably piquant about the anomalous assemblage; the most

insensible of men felt its charm, so much so, that, until the very last

moment, Paris came hither to walk up and down on the wooden planks laid

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

when the squalid wooden erections were finally taken down, great and

unanimous regret was felt.

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

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

immediately opposite another bookseller, now forgotten, Dauriat, a bold

and youthful pionéer, who opened up the paths in which his rival was

to shine. Dauriat’s shop stood in the row which gave upon the garden;

Ladvocat’s, on the opposite side, looked out upon the court. Dauriat’s

establishment was divided into two parts; his shop was simply a great

trade warehouse, and the second room was his private office.

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

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

him.

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

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

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

stream in a state of stupefaction and excitement difficult to describe.

Importuned by glances and white-rounded contours, dazzled by the

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

manuscript tightly lest somebody should steal it—innocent that he was!

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

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

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

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

friend.

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

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

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

assistants as to present or future business.

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

paper,” he said; “he is talking with Félicien Vernou, who has abilities,

but the little wretch is as dangerous as a hidden disease.”

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

with Vernou. “I have disposed of the box.”

“Sold it to Braulard?”

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

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

has taken two hundred copies, and Victor Ducange is refusing to give him

his next. Dauriat wants to set up another man in the same line, he says.

You must rate Paul de Kock above Ducange.”

“But I have a piece on with Ducange at the Gaité,” said Lousteau.

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

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

thanks.”

“Couldn’t you get Dauriat’s cashier to discount this bit of a bill for

a hundred francs?” asked Étienne Lousteau. “We are celebrating Florine’s

house-warming with a supper to-night, you know.”

“Ah! yes, you are treating us all,” said Finot, with an apparent effort

of memory. “Here, Gabusson,” he added, handing Barbet’s bill to the

cashier, “let me have ninety francs for this individual.—Fill in your

name, old man.”

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

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

“That is not all, my friend,” Étienne continued; “I don’t thank you,

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

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

listen to us.”

“What is on foot?” asked Finot.

“A volume of poetry,” said Lucien.

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

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

would have hidden his manuscript in the loneliest spot in his dwelling,”

remarked Vernou, looking at Lucien as he spoke.

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

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

was Émile Blondet, who had made his first appearance in the _Journal des

Débats_, with articles revealing capacities of the very highest order.

“Come and have supper with us at midnight, at Florine’s,” said Lousteau.

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

“Oh, Florine and Matifat the druggist,” said Lousteau, “and du Bruel,

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

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

and Finot, and——”

“Does your druggist do things properly?”

“He will not give us doctored wine,” said Lucien.

“You are very witty, monsieur,” Blondet returned gravely. “Is he coming,

Lousteau?”

“Yes.”

“Then we shall have some fun.”

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

window above Dauriat’s desk.

“Is your business likely to keep you long, Dauriat?”

“I am at your service, my friend.”

“That’s right,” said Lousteau, addressing his protégé. “That young

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

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

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

pasha of vignettes and type. Otherwise we might have waited till eleven

o’clock, and our turn would not have come. The crowd of people waiting

to speak with Dauriat is growing bigger every moment.”

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

knot at the back of the shop.

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

good-evening.

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

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

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

is too blindly Romantic.”

“Is he going to pay well?”

“Only too much—as usual,” said the cashier.

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

magnificent novel which had sold very rapidly and met with the greatest

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

appearance of this odd and extraordinary looking being, so unmistakably

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

“That is Nathan,” Lousteau said in his ear.

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

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

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

did not remove his hat, neither did Finot.

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

chance——”

(“He is so nervous that he is committing a pleonasm,” said Félicien in

an aside to Lousteau.)

“——to give expression to my gratitude for the splendid review which

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

success of my book is owing to you.”

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

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

and I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

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

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

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

will not refuse me, will you?” added Nathan, shaking Étienne by the

hand.—“Ah, you are on the way to a great future, monsieur,” he added,

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

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

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

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

tremendously well.”

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

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

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

word.”

“And brought him in fifteen hundred francs,” said Lousteau for Lucien’s

benefit.

“But you write political articles, don’t you?” asked Nathan.

“Yes; now and again.”

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

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

attitude before this critic, whose name and importance were both unknown

to him, stupefied Lucien.

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

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

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

review of it.”

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

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

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

went out saying, “I will come back again.” Two or three politicians were

chatting over the convocation of the Chambers and public business with

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

was in treaty was licensed to treat of matters political, and the number

of newspapers suffered to exist was growing smaller and smaller, till a

paper was a piece of property as much in demand as a theatre. One of the

largest shareholders in the _Constitutionnel_ was standing in the midst

of the knot of political celebrities. Lousteau performed the part of

cicerone to admiration; with every sentence he uttered Dauriat rose

higher in Lucien’s opinion. Politics and literature seemed to converge

in Dauriat’s shop. He had seen a great poet prostituting his muse to

journalism, humiliating Art, as woman was humiliated and prostituted in

those shameless galleries without, and the provincial took a terrible

lesson to heart. Money! That was the key to every enigma. Lucien

realized the fact that he was unknown and alone, and that the fragile

clue of an uncertain friendship was his sole guide to success and

fortune. He blamed the kind and loyal little circle for painting the

world for him in false colors, for preventing him from plunging into the

arena, pen in hand. “I should be a Blondet at this moment!” he exclaimed

within himself.

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

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

eagle; then Lousteau had been a great man in Lucien’s eyes, and now he

had shrunk to scarce visible proportions. The really important man for

him at this moment was the fashionable bookseller, by whom all these men

lived; and the poet, manuscript in hand, felt a nervous tremor that

was almost like fear. He noticed a group of busts mounted on wooden

pedestals, painted to resemble marble; Byron stood there, and Goethe and

M. de Canalis. Dauriat was hoping to publish a volume by the last-named

poet, who might see, on his entrance into the shop, the estimation in

which he was held by the trade. Unconsciously Lucien’s own self-esteem

began to shrink, and his courage ebbed. He began to see how large a part

this Dauriat would play in his destinies, and waited impatiently for him

to appear.

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

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

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

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

market, a paper with two thousand subscribers!”

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

mark,” said Blondet.

“Twelve thousand, on my sacred word of honor—I said two thousand

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

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

my boy,” he added.

“Are you going to take any partners?” inquired Finot.

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

francs?”

“It’s a bargain, if you will take Émile Blondet here on the staff, and

Claude Vignon, Scribe, Théodore Leclercq, Félicien Vernou, Jay, Jouy,

Lousteau, and——”

“And why not Lucien de Rubempré?” the provincial poet put in boldly.

“——and Nathan,” concluded Finot.

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

at the author of the _Marguerites_.—“To whom have I the honor of

speaking?” he added, with an insolent glance.

“One moment, Dauriat,” said Lousteau. “I have brought this gentleman to

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

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

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

redoubtable Blondet “my boy,” and extended a hand royally to Nathan with

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

when the formidable sultan looked indifferent and ill pleased.

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

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

eleven hundred manuscripts submitted to me at this moment; ask Gabusson.

I shall soon be obliged to start a department to keep account of the

stock of manuscripts, and a special office for reading them, and a

committee to vote on their merits, with numbered counters for those who

attend, and a permanent secretary to draw up the minutes for me. It will

be a kind of local branch of the Académie, and the Académicians will be

better paid in the Wooden Galleries than at the Institut.”

“‘Tis an idea,” said Blondet.

“A bad idea,” returned Dauriat. “It is not my business to take stock of

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

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

nor corporals, nor domestic servants, nor officials, nor bailiffs.

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

yourself, and you will find gold in torrents. I have made three

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

ingratitude! Here is Nathan talking of six thousand francs for the

second edition of his book, which cost me three thousand francs in

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

francs for Blondet’s two articles, besides a dinner, which cost me five

hundred——”

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

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

in his opinion since he had heard the amount given by Dauriat for the

articles in the _Débats_.

“That is not my affair,” said Dauriat, looking daggers at this handsome

young fellow, who was smiling pleasantly at him. “I do not publish books

for amusement, nor risk two thousand francs for the sake of seeing my

money back again. I speculate in literature, and publish forty volumes

of ten thousand copies each, just as Panckouke does and the Baudoins.

With my influence and the articles which I secure, I can push a business

of a hundred thousand crowns, instead of a single volume involving a

couple of thousand francs. It is just as much trouble to bring out a new

name and to induce the public to take up an author and his book, as to

make a success with the _Théâtres étrangers_, _Victoires et Conquêtes_,

or _Mémoires sur la Revolution_, books that bring in a fortune. I am not

here as a stepping-stone to future fame, but to make money, and to find

it for men with distinguished names. The manuscripts for which I give a

hundred thousand francs pay me better than work by an unknown author

who asks six hundred. If I am not exactly a Maecenas, I deserve the

gratitude of literature; I have doubled the prices of manuscripts. I am

giving you this explanation because you are a friend of Lousteau’s

my boy,” added Dauriat, clapping Lucien on the shoulder with odious

familiarity. “If I were to talk to all the authors who have a mind that

I should be their publisher, I should have to shut up shop; I should

pass my time very agreeably no doubt, but the conversations would cost

too much. I am not rich enough yet to listen to all the monologues of

self-conceit. Nobody does, except in classical tragedies on the stage.”

The terrible Dauriat’s gorgeous raiment seemed in the provincial poet’s

eyes to add force to the man’s remorseless logic.

“What is it about?” he continued, addressing Lucien’s protector.

“It is a volume of magnificent poetry.”

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

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

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

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

from among the piles of books at the sound of their employer’s wrathful

voice. “If anybody comes here with manuscripts,” he continued, looking

at the finger-nails of a well-kept hand, “ask him whether it is poetry

or prose; and if he says poetry, show him the door at once. Verses mean

reverses in the booktrade.”

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

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

Lucien’s manuscript in his hand. “You have no idea, gentlemen, of the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that nobody can understand, and descriptive poetry after the pattern of

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

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

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

twelvemonth. You ask Gabusson! There may be immortal poets somewhere in

the world; I know of some that are blooming and rosy, and have no beards

on their chins as yet,” he continued, looking at Lucien; “but in

the trade, young man, there are only four poets—Béranger, Casimir

Delavigne, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo; as for Canalis—he is a poet made

by sheer force of writing him up.”

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

spirit before all these influential persons, who were laughing with

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

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

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

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

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

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

eternal enmity to that bookseller. But he smiled amiably.

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

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

a vice to match, and literature breeds the publisher.”

“And the journalist,” said Lousteau.

Dauriat burst out laughing.

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

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

Lousteau.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say,” answered Lousteau, seeing the knowing smile that went

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

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

marked the full extent of the concession. “If these sonnets of yours are

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

you, my boy.”

“If he has brains to equal his good looks, you will run no great risks,”

remarked one of the greatest public speakers of the day, a deputy who

was chatting with the editor of the _Minerve_, and a writer for the

_Constitutionnel_.

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

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

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

bargain with him.”

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

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

provincial great man.

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

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

conditions. Let us step into your office.”

“Come in, my boy,” answered Dauriat, allowing Finot to pass before him.

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

engaged, he likewise was about to disappear when Lucien impatiently

stopped him.

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

“Oh, come back in three or four days, my little poet, and we will see.”

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

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

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

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

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

had played the part of a Potemkin to Mme. de Staël for twenty years, and

now was at war with the Bourbons, as he had been at war with Napoleon.

He was destined to win his cause and to die stricken to earth by his

victory.

“What a shop!” exclaimed Lucien, as he took his place in the cab beside

Lousteau.

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

sous,” Étienne Lousteau called to the cabman.—“Dauriat is a rascal who

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

every year. He is a kind of Minister of Literature,” Lousteau continued.

His self-conceit had been pleasantly tickled, and he was showing off

before Lucien. “Dauriat is just as grasping as Barbet, but it is on a

wholesale scale. Dauriat can be civil, and he is generous, but he has a

great opinion of himself; as for his wit, it consists in a faculty

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

frequent. You meet all the best men at Dauriat’s. A young fellow learns

more there in an hour than by poring over books for half-a-score of

years. People talk about articles and concoct subjects; you make the

acquaintance of great or influential people who may be useful to you.

You must know people if you mean to get on nowadays.—It is all luck,

you see. And as for sitting by yourself in a corner alone with your

intellect, it is the most dangerous thing of all.”

“But what insolence!” said Lucien.

“Pshaw! we all of us laugh at Dauriat,” said Étienne. “If you are in

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

Débats_, Émile Blondet sets him spinning like a top. Oh, if you take

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

telling you, eh?”

“Yes, you were right,” said Lucien. “My experience in that shop was even

more painful than I expected, after your programme.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ratio with the time required for his work to be appreciated. And no

publisher wants to wait. To-day’s book must be sold by to-morrow. Acting

on this system, publishers and booksellers do not care to take real

literature, books that call for the high praise that comes slowly.”

“D’Arthez was right,” exclaimed Lucien.

“Do you know d’Arthez?” asked Lousteau. “I know of no more dangerous

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

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

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

heated by this superstition, the candidate for posthumous honors makes

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

possible and profitable; he lets the time go by. I am for Mahomet’s

system—if the mountain does not come to me, I am for going to the

mountain.”

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

between the resignation preached by the brotherhood and Lousteau’s

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

Temple.

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

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

successive managements collapsed without making a single hit; and yet

Vignol, who has since fallen heir to some of Potier’s popularity, made

his _debut_ there; and Florine, five years later a celebrated actress,

made her first appearance in the theatre opposite the Rue Charlot.

Play-houses, like men, have their vicissitudes. The Panorama-Dramatique

suffered from competition. The machinations of its rivals, the Ambigu,

the Gaité, the Porte Saint-Martin, and the Vaudeville, together with a

plethora of restrictions and a scarcity of good plays, combined to bring

about the downfall of the house. No dramatic author cared to quarrel

with a prosperous theatre for the sake of the Panorama-Dramatique, whose

existence was, to say the least, problematical. The management at this

moment, however, was counting on the success of a new melodramatic

comedy by M. du Bruel, a young author who, after working in

collaboration with divers celebrities, had now produced a piece

professedly entirely his own. It had been specially composed for

the leading lady, a young actress who began her stage career as a

supernumerary at the Gaité, and had been promoted to small parts for the

last twelvemonth. But though Mlle. Florine’s acting had attracted some

attention, she obtained no engagement, and the Panorama accordingly had

carried her off. Coralie, another actress, was to make her _debut_ at

the same time.

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

with me,” said Étienne Lousteau, and the box-office clerks bowed before

him as one man.

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

“There is nothing left now but the stage box.”

A certain amount of time was wasted in controversies with the

box-keepers in the lobbies, when Étienne said, “Let us go behind

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

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

the evening.”

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

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

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

into the black darkness of the passage between the house and the wings.

A short flight of damp steps surmounted, one of the strangest of all

spectacles opened out before the provincial poet’s eyes. The height of

the roof, the slenderness of the props, the ladders hung with Argand

lamps, the atrocious ugliness of scenery beheld at close quarters, the

thick paint on the actors’ faces, and their outlandish costumes, made

of such coarse materials, the stage carpenters in greasy jackets, the

firemen, the stage manager strutting about with his hat on his head,

the supernumeraries sitting among the hanging back-scenes, the ropes

and pulleys, the heterogeneous collection of absurdities, shabby, dirty,

hideous, and gaudy, was something so altogether different from the stage

seen over the footlights, that Lucien’s astonishment knew no bounds.

The curtain was just about to fall on a good old-fashioned melodrama

entitled _Bertram_, a play adapted from a tragedy by Maturin which

Charles Nodier, together with Byron and Sir Walter Scott, held in the

highest esteem, though the play was a failure on the stage in Paris.

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

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

a palace, or carry off a cottage, if you are not careful,” said

Étienne.—“Is Florine in her dressing-room, my pet?” he added,

addressing an actress who stood waiting for her cue.

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

nicer since Florine has come here.”

“Come, don’t spoil your entry, little one. Quick with you, look sharp,

and say, ‘Stop, wretched man!’ nicely, for there are two thousand francs

of takings.”

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

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

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

“So this is the stage,” he said to Lousteau.

“It is like the bookseller’s shop in the Wooden Galleries, or a literary

paper,” said Étienne Lousteau; “it is a kitchen, neither more nor less.”

Nathan appeared at this moment.

“What brings you here?” inquired Lousteau.

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

better turns up.”

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

will do as much for you.”

“Very much at your service,” returned Nathan.

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

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

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

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

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

meet again at supper.”

“You have a good name, monsieur,” said Nathan.

“Lucien, M. Raoul Nathan,” continued Étienne.

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

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

to a journalist.”

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

flitted over his face.

“I say! I say! here are Ultras and Liberals actually shaking hands!”

cried Vernou, spying the trio.

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

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

Félicien Vernou turned to Lousteau.

“Finot is looking for you, Étienne; he came with me, and—here he is!”

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

Finot.

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

sweetest smile imaginable.

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

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

“Who carries off women in these days” said Florville (she who had cried,

“Stop, wretched man!”). “We stayed at Saint-Mandé for ten days, and

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

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

princes,” Florville continued, laughing; “the forfeit money was so much

clear gain.”

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

peasant’s costume, “where did you steal these diamond ear-drops? Have

you hooked an Indian prince?”

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

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

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

they just lucky?”

“Florville, you will make a bad entry,” said Lousteau; “the blacking has

gone to your head!”

“If you want a success,” said Nathan, “instead of screaming, ‘He is

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

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

_Tancreda_.—There, go along!” and he pushed her towards the stage.

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

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

“Went down on her knées and showed her bosom; that is her great

resource,” said the blacking-maker’s widow.

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

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

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

the pair climbed several flights of stairs and reached a little room on

a third floor, Nathan and Félicien Vernou following them.

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

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

of my destiny,” she said, “my future is in their hands; but they will be

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

nothing——”

“Forgotten! You are going to have Blondet of the _Débats_,” said

Étienne, “the genuine Blondet, the very Blondet—Blondet himself, in

short.”

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

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

the corner, looked serious at this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Florine had cost him sixty thousand francs. Nothing seemed more

extraordinary to Lucien than the sight of an honest and worthy merchant

standing like a statue of the god Terminus in the actress’ narrow

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

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

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

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

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

of a countess in an imbroglio.

“That girl will be the handsomest actress in Paris in five years’ time,”

said Nathan, turning to Félicien Vernou.

“By the by, darlings, you will take care of me to-morrow, won’t you?”

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

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

Matifat has sent in wines—oh! wines worthy of Louis XVIII., and engaged

the Prussian ambassador’s cook.”

“We expect something enormous from the look of the gentleman,” remarked

Nathan.

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

Paris,” added Florine.

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

man’s good looks.

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

confronting Lucien. “Which of you has imported the Apollo Belvedere from

Florence? He is as charming as one of Girodet’s figures.”

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

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

to Etiquette_ out of a man’s head——”

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

“Poor as Job,” said Lucien.

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

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

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

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

stockbroker.

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

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

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

you,’ just as we agreed.”

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

Matifat.

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

“What does it matter to you,” said Florine, “so long as I don’t say such

things to you, great stupid?—Oh! his stupidity is the pleasure of my

life,” she continued, glancing at the journalist. “Upon my word, I would

pay him so much for every blunder, if it would not be the ruin of me.”

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

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

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

A bell rang outside in the passage.

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

try to understand it.”

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

Florine’s shoulder, and Lucien heard her say, “Not to-night. Impossible.

That stupid old animal told his wife that he was going out into the

country.”

“Isn’t she charming?” said Étienne, as they came away.

“But—but that Matifat, my dear fellow——”

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

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

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

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

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

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

worthy little old soul, his father-in-law. All three of these city men

were polishing their opera-glasses, and anxiously scanning the house;

certain symptoms in the pit appeared to disturb them. The usual

heterogeneous first-night elements filled the boxes—journalists and

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

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

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

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

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

Treasury.

Lucien had gone from surprise to surprise since the dinner at

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

want; in Lousteau’s room he had seen it at its cynical worst; in the

Wooden Galleries he had met Literature abject and Literature insolent.

The sharp contrasts of heights and depths; of compromise with

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

pleasure; of mental elevation and bondage—all this made his head swim,

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

Finot was talking with the manager. “Do you think du Bruel’s piece will

pay?” he asked.

“Du Bruel has tried to do something in Beaumarchais’ style. Boulevard

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

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

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

wear very short skirts, and dance a Spanish dance, and possibly they

may carry off the piece with the public. The whole affair is a gambling

speculation. A few clever notices in the papers, and I may make a

hundred thousand crowns, if the play takes.”

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

“Three of the theatres have got up a plot,” continued the manager; “they

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

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

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

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

acquaintances able and ready to act as chuckers out. The fellows, having

been paid twice, will go quietly, and a scene of that sort always makes

a good impression on the house.”

“Two hundred tickets! What invaluable men!” exclaimed Finot.

“Yes. With two more actresses as handsomely kept as Florine and Coralie,

I should make something out of the business.”

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

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

trade, and in the publishing trade as in the newspaper-office—it was

everywhere the same; there was not a word of art or of glory. The steady

beat of the great pendulum, Money, seemed to fall like hammer-strokes

on his heart and brain. And yet while the orchestra played the

overture, while the pit was full of noisy tumult of applause and hisses,

unconsciously he drew a comparison between this scene and others

that came up in his mind. Visions arose before him of David and the

printing-office, of the poetry that he came to know in that atmosphere

of pure peace, when together they beheld the wonders of Art, the high

successes of genius, and visions of glory borne on stainless wings. He

thought of the evenings spent with d’Arthez and his friends, and tears

glittered in his eyes.

“What is the matter with you?” asked Étienne Lousteau.

“I see poetry fallen into the mire.”

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

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

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

ourselves to the booksellers?”

“My boy, do you see that dull-brained fellow?” said Étienne, lowering

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

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

a keen man of business. Didn’t you see how he made forty per cent out

of me at Dauriat’s, and talked as if he were doing me a favor?—Well, he

gets letters from not a few unknown men of genius who go down on their

knées to him for a hundred francs.”

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

editor’s office and the words, “Finot, my hundred francs!” Lucien’s

inmost soul shrank from the man in disgust.

“I would sooner die,” he said.

“Sooner live,” retorted Étienne.

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

orders. Finot turned to Étienne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

paper, and to keep my hold upon it; but nobody néed know that, and your

name will appear as editor. You will be paid at the rate of five francs

per column; you néed not pay contributors more than three francs, and

you keep the difference. That means another four hundred and fifty

francs per month. But, at the same time, I reserve the right to use

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

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

my schemes. Perhaps I may be a Ministerialist, perhaps Ultra, I do not

know yet; but I mean to keep up my connections with the Liberal party

(below the surface). I can speak out with you; you are a good fellow. I

might, perhaps, give you the Chambers to do for another paper on which I

work; I am afraid I can scarcely keep on with it now. So let Florine do

this bit of jockeying; tell her to put the screw on her druggist. If

I can’t find the money within forty-eight hours, I must cry off my

bargain. Dauriat sold another third to his printer and paper-dealer

for thirty thousand francs; so he has his own third _gratis_, and ten

thousand francs to the good, for he only gave fifty thousand for the

whole affair. And in another year’s time the magazine will be worth two

hundred thousand francs, if the Court buys it up; if the Court has the

good sense to suppress newspapers, as they say.”

“You are lucky,” said Lousteau.

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

of me. I had my fill of misery in those days, you see, and there was no

help for it. My father is a hatter; he still keeps a shop in the Rue du

Coq. Nothing but millions of money or a social cataclysm can open out

the way to my goal; and of the two alternatives, I don’t know now that

the revolution is not the easier. If I bore your friend’s name, I should

have a chance to get on. Hush, here comes the manager. Good-bye,” and

Finot rose to his feet, “I am going to the Opera. I shall very likely

have a duel on my hands to-morrow, for I have put my initials to a

terrific attack on a couple of dancers under the protection of two

Generals. I am giving it them hot and strong at the Opera.”

“Aha?” said the manager.

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

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

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

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

hundred readers and a thousand paying subscribers; and I know a way

of getting another two hundred subscribers, so we shall have twelve

hundred with the New Year.”

“You will end by ruining us,” said the manager.

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

notices put into the _Constitutionnel_.”

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

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

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

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

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

am grateful. Félicien Vernou offered twenty thousand francs for a

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

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

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

“He is a gallows-bird that will get on in the world,” said Étienne,

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

shut the door of the box.

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

respect of all who know him; he may perhaps have friends some day——”

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

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

Florine, who gave them side glances from the stage.

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

wiles of these beloved beings,” said Lousteau.

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

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

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

surroundings.”

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

in the mud,” returned Lousteau.

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

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

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

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

corner, monsieur,” he continued. “If Coralie is smitten with you, I will

go and tell her that you have left the house.”

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

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

like Mlle. Mars.”

The manager went, and Lucien turned to Étienne. “What! do you mean

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

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

the whole of it? And ask without the slightest scruple?——”

Lousteau interrupted Lucien before he had time to finish his

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

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

his fancy for an actress.”

“How about your conscience?”

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

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

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

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

must néeds amuse yourself by finding fault with the means? What! you

appear to me to possess intelligence; you seem to be in a fair way

to reach that freedom from prejudice which is a first necessity to

intellectual adventurers in the world we live in; and are you wallowing

in scruples worthy of a nun who accuses herself of eating an egg with

concupiscence?... If Florine succeeds, I shall be editor of a newspaper

with a fixed salary of two hundred and fifty francs per month; I shall

take the important plays and leave the vaudevilles to Vernou, and you

can take my place and do the Boulevard theatres, and so get a foot in

the stirrup. You will make three francs per column and write a column

a day—thirty columns a month means ninety francs; you will have some

sixty francs worth of books to sell to Barbet; and lastly, you can

demand ten tickets a month of each of your theatres—that is, forty

tickets in all—and sell them for forty francs to a Barbet who deals

in them (I will introduce you to the man), so you will have two hundred

francs coming in every month. Then if you make yourself useful to Finot,

you might get a hundred francs for an article in this new weekly review

of his, in which case you would show uncommon talent, for all the

articles are signed, and you cannot put in slip-shod work as you can

on a small paper. In that case you would be making a hundred crowns

a month. Now, my dear boy, there are men of ability, like that poor

d’Arthez, who dines at Flicoteaux’s every day, who may wait for ten

years before they will make a hundred crowns; and you will be making

four thousand francs a year by your pen, to say nothing of the books you

will write for the trade, if you do work of that kind.

“Now, a sub-prefect’s salary only amounts to a thousand crowns, and

there he stops in his arrondissement, wearing away time like the rung of

a chair. I say nothing of the pleasure of going to the theatre without

paying for your seat, for that is a delight which quickly palls; but you

can go behind the scenes in four theatres. Be hard and sarcastic for a

month or two, and you will be simply overwhelmed with invitations from

actresses, and their adorers will pay court to you; you will only dine

at Flicoteaux’s when you happen to have less than thirty sous in your

pocket and no dinner engagement. At the Luxembourg, at five o’clock, you

did not know which way to turn; now, you are on the eve of entering a

privileged class, you will be one of the hundred persons who tell France

what to think. In three days’ time, if all goes well, you can, if you

choose, make a man’s life a curse to him by putting thirty jokes at his

expense in print at the rate of three a day; you can, if you choose,

draw a revenue of pleasure from the actresses at your theatres; you can

wreck a good play and send all Paris running after a bad one. If Dauriat

declines to pay you for your _Marguerites_, you can make him come to

you, and meekly and humbly implore you to take two thousand francs for

them. If you have the ability, and knock off two or three articles that

threaten to spoil some of Dauriat’s speculations, or to ruin a book on

which he counts, you will see him come climbing up your stairs like a

clematis, and always at the door of your dwelling. As for your novel,

the booksellers who would show you more or less politely to the door

at this moment will be standing outside your attic in a string, and

the value of the manuscript, which old Doguereau valued at four hundred

francs will rise to four thousand. These are the advantages of the

journalist’s profession. So let us do our best to keep all newcomers

out of it. It néeds an immense amount of brains to make your way, and a

still greater amount of luck. And here are you quibbling over your good

fortune! If we had not met to-day, you see, at Flicoteaux’s, you might

have danced attendance on the booksellers for another three years,

or starved like d’Arthez in a garret. By the time that d’Arthez is as

learned as Bayle and as great a writer of prose as Rousseau, we

shall have made our fortunes, you and I, and we shall hold his in our

hands—wealth and fame to give or to hold. Finot will be a deputy and

proprietor of a great newspaper, and we shall be whatever we meant to

be—peers of France, or prisoner for debt in Sainte-Pélagie.”

“So Finot will sell his paper to the highest bidder among the Ministers,

just as he sells favorable notices to Mme. Bastienne and runs down

Mlle. Virginie, saying that Mme. Bastienne’s bonnets are superior to the

millinery which they praised at first!” said Lucien, recollecting that

scene in the office.

“My dear fellow, you are a simpleton,” Lousteau remarked drily. “Three

years ago Finot was walking on the uppers of his boots, dining for

eighteen sous at Tabar’s, and knocking off a tradesman’s prospectus

(when he could get it) for ten francs. His clothes hung together by some

miracle as mysterious as the Immaculate Conception. _Now_, Finot has

a paper of his own, worth about a hundred thousand francs. What with

subscribers who pay and take no copies, genuine subscriptions, and

indirect taxes levied by his uncle, he is making twenty thousand francs

a year. He dines most sumptuously every day; he has set up a cabriolet

within the last month; and now, at last, behold him the editor of a

weekly review with a sixth share, for which he will not pay a penny, a

salary of five hundred francs per month, and another thousand francs for

supplying matter which costs him nothing, and for which the firm pays.

You yourself, to begin with, if Finot consents to pay you fifty francs

per sheet, will be only too glad to let him have two or three articles

for nothing. When you are in his position, you can judge Finot; a man

can only be tried by his peers. And for you, is there not an immense

future opening out before you, if you will blindly minister to his

enmity, attack at Finot’s bidding, and praise when he gives the word?

Suppose that you yourself wish to be revenged upon somebody, you

can break a foe or friend on the wheel. You have only to say to me,

‘Lousteau, let us put an end to So-and-so,’ and we will kill him by a

phrase put in the paper morning by morning; and afterwards you can slay

the slain with a solemn article in Finot’s weekly. Indeed, if it is a

matter of capital importance to you, Finot would allow you to bludgeon

your man in a big paper with ten or twelve thousand subscribers, _if_

you make yourself indispensable to Finot.”

“Then are you sure that Florine can bring her druggist to make the

bargain?” asked Lucien, dazzled by these prospects.

“Quite sure. Now comes the interval, I will go and tell her everything

at once in a word or two; it will be settled to-night. If Florine once

has her lesson by heart, she will have all my wit and her own besides.”

“And there sits that honest tradesman, gaping with open-mouthed

admiration at Florine, little suspecting that you are about to get

thirty thousand francs out of him!——”

“More twaddle! Anybody might think that the man was going to be robbed!”

cried Lousteau. “Why, my dear boy, if the minister buys the newspaper,

the druggist may make twenty thousand francs in six months on an

investment of thirty thousand. Matifat is not looking at the newspaper,

but at Florine’s prospects. As soon as it is known that Matifat and

Camusot—(for they will go shares)—that Matifat and Camusot are

proprietors of a review, the newspapers will be full of friendly notices

of Florine and Coralie. Florine’s name will be made; she will perhaps

obtain an engagement in another theatre with a salary of twelve thousand

francs. In fact, Matifat will save a thousand francs every month in

dinners and presents to journalists. You know nothing of men, nor of the

way things are managed.”

“Poor man!” said Lucien, “he is looking forward to an evening’s

pleasure.”

“And he will be sawn in two with arguments until Florine sees Finot’s

receipt for a sixth share of the paper. And to-morrow I shall be editor

of Finot’s paper, and making a thousand francs a month. The end of my

troubles is in sight!” cried Florine’s lover.

Lousteau went out, and Lucien sat like one bewildered, lost in the

infinite of thought, soaring above this everyday world. In the Wooden

Galleries he had seen the wires by which the trade in books is moved; he

has seen something of the kitchen where great reputations are made;

he had been behind the scenes; he had seen the seamy side of life, the

consciences of men involved in the machinery of Paris, the mechanism of

it all. As he watched Florine on the stage he almost envied Lousteau his

good fortune; already, for a few moments he had forgotten Matifat in the

background. He was not left alone for long, perhaps for not more than

five minutes, but those minutes seemed an eternity.

Thoughts rose within him that set his soul on fire, as the spectacle

on the stage had heated his senses. He looked at the women with their

wanton eyes, all the brighter for the red paint on their cheeks, at

the gleaming bare necks, the luxuriant forms outlined by the lascivious

folds of the basquina, the very short skirts, that displayed as much

as possible of limbs encased in scarlet stockings with green clocks to

them—a disquieting vision for the pit.

A double process of corruption was working within him in parallel lines,

like two channels that will spread sooner or later in flood time and

make one. That corruption was eating into Lucien’s soul, as he leaned

back in his corner, staring vacantly at the curtain, one arm resting on

the crimson velvet cushion, and his hand drooping over the edge. He felt

the fascination of the life that was offered to him, of the gleams of

light among its clouds; and this so much the more keenly because it

shone out like a blaze of fireworks against the blank darkness of his

own obscure, monotonous days of toil.

Suddenly his listless eyes became aware of a burning glance that reached

him through a rent in the curtain, and roused him from his lethargy.

Those were Coralie’s eyes that glowed upon him. He lowered his head and

looked across at Camusot, who just then entered the opposite box.

That amateur was a worthy silk-mercer of the Rue des Bourdonnais, stout

and substantial, a judge in the commercial court, a father of four

children, and the husband of a second wife. At the age of fifty-six,

with a cap of gray hair on his head, he had the smug appearance of a man

who has his eighty thousand francs of income; and having been forced to

put up with a good deal that he did not like in the way of business, has

fully made up his mind to enjoy the rest of his life, and not to quit

this earth until he has had his share of cakes and ale. A brow the color

of fresh butter and florid cheeks like a monk’s jowl seemed scarcely big

enough to contain his exuberant jubilation. Camusot had left his wife at

home, and they were applauding Coralie to the skies. All the rich man’s

citizen vanity was summed up and gratified in Coralie; in Coralie’s

lodging he gave himself the airs of a great lord of a bygone day; now,

at this moment, he felt that half of her success was his; the knowledge

that he had paid for it confirmed him in this idea. Camusot’s conduct

was sanctioned by the presence of his father-in-law, a little old fogy

with powdered hair and leering eyes, highly respected nevertheless.

Again Lucien felt disgust rising within him. He thought of the year when

he loved Mme. de Bargeton with an exalted and disinterested love; and

at that thought love, as a poet understands it, spread its white wings

about him; countless memories drew a circle of distant blue horizon

about the great man of Angoulême, and again he fell to dreaming.

Up went the curtain, and there stood Coralie and Florine upon the stage.

“He is thinking about as much of you as of the Grand Turk, my dear

girl,” Florine said in an aside while Coralie was finishing her speech.

Lucien could not help laughing. He looked at Coralie. She was one of the

most charming and captivating actresses in Paris, rivaling Mme. Perrin

and Mlle. Fleuriet, and destined likewise to share their fate. Coralie

was a woman of a type that exerts at will a power of fascination over

men. With an oval face of deep ivory tint, a mouth red as a pomegranate,

and a chin subtly delicate in its contour as the edge of a porcelain

cup, Coralie was a Jewess of the sublime type. The jet black eyes behind

their curving lashes seemed to scorch her eyelids; you could guess how

soft they might grow, or how sparks of the heat of the desert might

flash from them in response to a summons from within. The circles of

olive shadow about them were bounded by thick arching lines of eyebrow.

Magnificent mental power, well-nigh amounting to genius, seemed to dwell

in the swarthy forehead beneath the double curve of ebony hair that lay

upon it like a crown, and gleamed in the light like a varnished surface;

but like many another actress, Coralie had little wit in spite of her

aptness at greenroom repartee, and scarcely any education in spite

of her boudoir experience. Her brain was prompted by her senses, her

kindness was the impulsive warm-heartedness of girls of her class. But

who could trouble over Coralie’s psychology when his eyes were dazzled

by those smooth, round arms of hers, the spindle-shaped fingers, the

fair white shoulders, and breast celebrated in the Song of Songs,

the flexible curving lines of throat, the graciously moulded outlines

beneath the scarlet silk stockings? And this beauty, worthy of an

Eastern poet, was brought into relief by the conventional Spanish

costume of the stage. Coralie was the delight of the pit; all eyes

dwelt on the outlines moulded by the clinging folds of her bodice, and

lingered over the Andalusian contour of the hips from which her skirt

hung, fluttering wantonly with every movement. To Lucien, watching this

creature, who played for him alone, caring no more for Camusot than a

street-boy in the gallery cares for an apple-paring, there came a moment

when he set desire above love, and enjoyment above desire, and the demon

of Lust stirred strange thoughts in him.

“I know nothing of the love that wallows in luxury and wine and sensual

pleasure,” he said within himself. “I have lived more with ideas than

with realities. You must pass through all experience if you mean to

render all experience. This will be my first great supper, my first

orgy in a new and strange world; why should I not know, for once, the

delights which the great lords of the eighteenth century sought so

eagerly of wantons of the Opera? Must one not first learn of courtesans

and actresses the delights, the perfections, the transports, the

resources, the subtleties of love, if only to translate them afterwards

into the regions of a higher love than this? And what is all this, after

all, but the poetry of the senses? Two months ago these women seemed to

me to be goddesses guarded by dragons that no one dared approach; I was

envying Lousteau just now, but here is another handsomer than Florine;

why should I not profit by her fancy, when the greatest nobles buy a

night with such women with their richest treasures? When ambassadors

set foot in these depths, they fling aside all thought of yesterday

or to-morrow. I should be a fool to be more squeamish than princes,

especially as I love no one as yet.”

Lucien had quite forgotten Camusot. To Lousteau he had expressed the

utmost disgust for this most hateful of all partitions, and now he

himself had sunk to the same level, and, carried away by the casuistry

of his vehement desire, had given the reins to his fancy.

“Coralie is raving about you,” said Lousteau as he came in. “Your

countenance, worthy of the greatest Greek sculptors, has worked

unutterable havoc behind the scenes. You are in luck my dear boy.

Coralie is eighteen years old, and in a few days’ time she may be making

sixty thousand francs a year by her beauty. She is an honest girl still.

Since her mother sold her three years ago for sixty thousand francs, she

has tried to find happiness, and found nothing but annoyance. She

took to the stage in a desperate mood; she has a horror of her first

purchaser, de Marsay; and when she came out of the galleys, for the king

of dandies soon dropped her, she picked up old Camusot. She does not

care much about him, but he is like a father to her, and she endures

him and his love. Several times already she has refused the handsomest

proposals; she is faithful to Camusot, who lets her live in peace. So

you are her first love. The first sight of you went to her heart like a

pistol-shot, Florine has gone to her dressing-room to bring the girl to

reason. She is crying over your cruelty; she has forgotten her part, the

play will go to pieces, and good-day to the engagement at the Gymnase

which Camusot had planned for her.”

“Pooh!... Poor thing!” said Lucien. Every instinct of vanity was tickled

by the words; he felt his heart swell high with self-conceit. “More

adventures have befallen me in this one evening, my dear fellow, than in

all the first eighteen years of my life.” And Lucien related the history

of his love affairs with Mme. de Bargeton, and of the cordial hatred he

bore the Baron du Châtelet.

“Stay though! the newspaper wants a _bête noire_; we will take him up.

The Baron is a buck of the Empire and a Ministerialist; he is the man

for us; I have seen him many a time at the Opera. I can see your great

lady as I sit here; she is often in the Marquise d’Espard’s box. The

Baron is paying court to your lady love, a cuttlefish bone that she is.

Wait! Finot has just sent a special messenger round to say that they are

short of copy at the office. Young Hector Merlin has left them in the

lurch because they did not pay for white lines. Finot, in despair, is

knocking off an article against the Opera. Well now, my dear fellow, you

can do this play; listen to it and think it over, and I will go to the

manager’s office and think out three columns about your man and your

disdainful fair one. They will be in no pleasant predicament to-morrow.”

“So this is how a newspaper is written?” said Lucien.

“It is always like this,” answered Lousteau. “These ten months that

I have been a journalist, they have always run short of copy at eight

o’clock in the evening.”

Manuscript sent to the printer is spoken of as “copy,” doubtless because

the writers are supposed to send in a fair copy of their work; or

possibly the word is ironically derived from the Latin word _copia_, for

copy is invariably scarce.

“We always mean to have a few numbers ready in advance, a grand idea

that will never be realized,” continued Lousteau. “It is ten o’clock,

you see, and not a line has been written. I shall ask Vernou and Nathan

for a score of epigrams on deputies, or on ‘Chancellor Cruzoé,’ or on

the Ministry, or on friends of ours if it néeds must be. A man in this

pass would slaughter his parent, just as a privateer will load his guns

with silver pieces taken out of the booty sooner than perish. Write

a brilliant article, and you will make brilliant progress in Finot’s

estimation; for Finot has a lively sense of benefits to come, and that

sort of gratitude is better than any kind of pledge, pawntickets always

excepted, for they invariably represent something solid.”

“What kind of men can journalists be? Are you to sit down at a table and

be witty to order?”

“Just exactly as a lamp begins to burn when you apply a match—so long

as there is any oil in it.”

Lousteau’s hand was on the lock when du Bruel came in with the manager.

“Permit me, monsieur, to take a message to Coralie; allow me to tell her

that you will go home with her after supper, or my play will be ruined.

The wretched girl does not know what she is doing or saying; she will

cry when she ought to laugh and laugh when she ought to cry. She has

been hissed once already. You can still save the piece, and, after all,

pleasure is not a misfortune.”

“I am not accustomed to rivals, sir,” Lucien answered.

“Pray don’t tell her that!” cried the manager. “Coralie is just the

girl to fling Camusot overboard and ruin herself in good earnest. The

proprietor of the _Golden Cocoon_, worthy man, allows her two thousand

francs a month, and pays for all her dresses and _claqueurs_.”

“As your promise pledges me to nothing, save your play,” said Lucien,

with a sultan’s airs.

“But don’t look as if you meant to snub that charming creature,” pleaded

du Bruel.

“Dear me! am I to write the notice of your play and smile on your

heroine as well?” exclaimed the poet.

The author vanished with a signal to Coralie, who began to act forthwith

in a marvelous way. Vignol, who played the part of the alcalde, and

revealed for the first time his genius as an actor of old men, came

forward amid a storm of applause to make an announcement to the house.

“The piece which we have the honor of playing for you this evening,

gentlemen, is the work of MM. Raoul and de Cursy.”

“Why, Nathan is partly responsible,” said Lousteau. “I don’t wonder that

he looked in.”

“Coralie_! Coralie_!” shouted the enraptured house. “Florine, too!”

roared a voice of thunder from the opposite box, and other voices took

up the cry, “Florine and Coralie!”

The curtain rose, Vignol reappeared between the two actresses; Matifat

and Camusot flung wreaths on the stage, and Coralie stooped for her

flowers and held them out to Lucien.

For him those two hours spent in the theatre seemed to be a dream. The

spell that held him had begun to work when he went behind the scenes;

and, in spite of its horrors, the atmosphere of the place, its

sensuality and dissolute morals had affected the poet’s still untainted

nature. A sort of malaria that infects the soul seems to lurk among

those dark, filthy passages filled with machinery, and lit with smoky,

greasy lamps. The solemnity and reality of life disappear, the most

sacred things are matter for a jest, the most impossible things seem to

be true. Lucien felt as if he had taken some narcotic, and Coralie had

completed the work. He plunged into this joyous intoxication.

The lights in the great chandelier were extinguished; there was no one

left in the house except the boxkeepers, busy taking away footstools and

shutting doors, the noises echoing strangely through the empty theatre.

The footlights, blown out as one candle, sent up a fetid reek of smoke.

The curtain rose again, a lantern was lowered from the ceiling, and

firemen and stage carpenters departed on their rounds. The fairy scenes

of the stage, the rows of fair faces in the boxes, the dazzling lights,

the magical illusion of new scenery and costume had all disappeared,

and dismal darkness, emptiness, and cold reigned in their stead. It was

hideous. Lucien sat on in bewilderment.

“Well! are you coming, my boy?” Lousteau’s voice called from the stage.

“Jump down.”

Lucien sprang over. He scarcely recognized Florine and Coralie in their

ordinary quilted paletots and cloaks, with their faces hidden by hats

and thick black veils. Two butterflies returned to the chrysalis stage

could not be more completely transformed.

“Will you honor me by giving me your arm?” Coralie asked tremulously.

“With pleasure,” said Lucien. He could feel the beating of her heart

throbbing against his like some snared bird as she nestled closely

to his side, with something of the delight of a cat that rubs herself

against her master with eager silken caresses.

“So we are supping together!” she said.

The party of four found two cabs waiting for them at the door in the Rue

des Fossés-du-Temple. Coralie drew Lucien to one of the two, in which

Camusot and his father-in-law old Cardot were seated already. She

offered du Bruel a fifth place, and the manager drove off with Florine,

Matifat, and Lousteau.

“These hackney cabs are abominable things,” said Coralie.

“Why don’t you have a carriage?” returned du Bruel.

“_Why_?” she asked pettishly. “I do not like to tell you before M.

Cardot’s face; for he trained his son-in-law, no doubt. Would you

believe it, little and old as he is, M. Cardot only gives Florine five

hundred francs a month, just about enough to pay for her rent and her

grub and her clothes. The old Marquis de Rochegude offered me a brougham

two months ago, and he has six hundred thousand francs a year, but I am

an artist and not a common hussy.”

“You shall have a carriage the day after to-morrow, miss,” said Camusot

benignly; “you never asked me for one.”

“As if one _asked_ for such a thing as that? What! you love a woman and

let her paddle about in the mud at the risk of breaking her legs? Nobody

but a knight of the yardstick likes to see a draggled skirt hem.”

As she uttered the sharp words that cut Camusot to the quick, she groped

for Lucien’s knée, and pressed it against her own, and clasped her

fingers upon his hand. She was silent. All her power to feel seemed

to be concentrated upon the ineffable joy of a moment which brings

compensation for the whole wretched past of a life such as these poor

creatures lead, and develops within their souls a poetry of which other

women, happily ignorant of these violent revulsions, know nothing.

“You played like Mlle. Mars herself towards the end,” said du Bruel.

“Yes,” said Camusot, “something put her out at the beginning; but from

the middle of the second act to the very end, she was enough to drive

you wild with admiration. Half of the success of your play was due to

her.”

“And half of her success is due to me,” said du Bruel.

“This is all much ado about nothing,” said Coralie in an unfamiliar

voice. And, seizing an opportunity in the darkness, she carried Lucien’s

hand to her lips and kissed it and drenched it with tears. Lucien felt

thrilled through and through by that touch, for in the humility of the

courtesan’s love there is a magnificence which might set an example to

angels.

“Are you writing the dramatic criticism, monsieur?” said du Bruel,

addressing Lucien; “you can write a charming paragraph about our dear

Coralie.”

“Oh! do us that little service!” pleaded Camusot, down on his knées,

metaphorically speaking, before the critic. “You will always find me

ready to do you a good turn at any time.”

“Do leave him his independence,” Coralie exclaimed angrily; “he will

write what he pleases. Papa Camusot, buy carriages for me instead of

praises.”

“You shall have them on very easy terms,” Lucien answered politely.

“I have never written for newspapers before, so I am not accustomed to

their ways, my maiden pen is at your disposal——”

“That is funny,” said du Bruel.

“Here we are in the Rue de Bondy,” said Cardot. Coralie’s sally had

quite crushed the little old man.

“If you are giving me the first fruits of your pen, the first love that

has sprung up in my heart shall be yours,” whispered Coralie in the

brief instant that they remained alone together in the cab; then

she went up to Florine’s bedroom to change her dress for a toilette

previously sent.

Lucien had no idea how lavishly a prosperous merchant will spend money

upon an actress or a mistress when he means to enjoy a life of pleasure.

Matifat was not nearly so rich a man as his friend Camusot, and he had

done his part rather shabbily, yet the sight of the dining-room took

Lucien by surprise. The walls were hung with green cloth with a border

of gilded nails, the whole room was artistically decorated, lighted by

handsome lamps, stands full of flowers stood in every direction. The

drawing-room was resplendent with the furniture in fashion in those

days—a Thomire chandelier, a carpet of Eastern design, and yellow

silken hangings relieved by a brown border. The candlesticks,

fire-irons, and clock were all in good taste; for Matifat had left

everything to Grindot, a rising architect, who was building a house for

him, and the young man had taken great pains with the rooms when he knew

that Florine was to occupy them.

Matifat, a tradesman to the backbone, went about carefully, afraid

to touch the new furniture; he seemed to have the totals of the bills

always before his eyes, and to look upon the splendors about him as so

much jewelry imprudently withdrawn from the case.

“And I shall be obliged to do as much for Florentine!” old Cardot’s eyes

seemed to say.

Lucien at once began to understand Lousteau’s indifference to the state

of his garret. Étienne was the real king of these festivals; Étienne

enjoyed the use of all these fine things. He was standing just now on

the hearthrug with his back to the fire, as if he were the master of the

house, chatting with the manager, who was congratulating du Bruel.

“Copy, copy!” called Finot, coming into the room. “There is nothing in

the box; the printers are setting up my article, and they will soon have

finished.”

“We will manage,” said Étienne. “There is a fire burning in Florine’s

boudoir; there is a table there; and if M. Matifat will find us paper

and ink, we will knock off the newspaper while Florine and Coralie are

dressing.”

Cardot, Camusot, and Matifat disappeared in search of quills, penknives,

and everything necessary. Suddenly the door was flung open, and Tullia,

one of the prettiest opera-dancers of the day, dashed into the room.

“They agree to take the hundred copies, dear boy!” she cried, addressing

Finot; “they won’t cost the management anything, for the chorus and the

orchestra and the _corps de ballet_ are to take them whether they like

it or not; but your paper is so clever that nobody will grumble. And

you are going to have your boxes. Here is the subscription for the first

quarter,” she continued, holding out a couple of banknotes; “so don’t

cut me up!”

“It is all over with me!” groaned Finot; “I must suppress my abominable

diatribe, and I haven’t another notion in my head.”

“What a happy inspiration, divine Laïs!” exclaimed Blondet, who had

followed the lady upstairs and brought Nathan, Vernou and Claude Vignon

with him. “Stop to supper, there is a dear, or I will crush thee,

butterfly as thou art. There will be no professional jealousies, as you

are a dancer; and as to beauty, you have all of you too much sense to

show jealousy in public.”

“Oh dear!” cried Finot, “Nathan, Blondet, du Bruel, help friends! I want

five columns.”

“I can make two of the play,” said Lucien.

“I have enough for one,” added Lousteau.

“Very well; Nathan, Vernou, and du Bruel will make the jokes at the

end; and Blondet, good fellow, surely will vouchsafe a couple of short

columns for the first sheet. I will run round to the printer. It is

lucky that you brought your carriage, Tullia.”

“Yes, but the Duke is waiting below in it, and he has a German Minister

with him.”

“Ask the Duke and the Minister to come up,” said Nathan.

“A German? They are the ones to drink, and they listen too; he shall

hear some astonishing things to send home to his Government,” cried

Blondet.

“Is there any sufficiently serious personage to go down to speak to

him?” asked Finot. “Here, du Bruel, you are an official; bring up the

Duc de Rhétoré and the Minister, and give your arm to Tullia. Dear me!

Tullia, how handsome you are to-night!”

“We shall be thirteen at table!” exclaimed Matifat, paling visibly.

“No, fourteen,” said a voice in the doorway, and Florentine appeared.

“I have come to look after ‘milord Cardot,’” she added, speaking with a

burlesque English accent.

“And besides,” said Lousteau, “Claude Vignon came with Blondet.”

“I brought him here to drink,” returned Blondet, taking up an inkstand.

“Look here, all of you, you must use all your wit before those fifty-six

bottles of wine drive it out. And, of all things, stir up du Bruel; he

is a vaudevillist, he is capable of making bad jokes if you get him to

concert pitch.”

And Lucien wrote his first newspaper article at the round table in

Florine’s boudoir, by the light of the pink candles lighted by Matifat;

before such a remarkable audience he was eager to show what he could do.