THE PANORAMA-DRAMATIQUE.

First performance of the _Alcalde in a Fix_, an imbroglio in three

acts.—First appearance of Mademoiselle Florine.—Mademoiselle

Coralie.—Vignol.

People are coming and going, walking and talking, everybody is

looking for something, nobody finds anything. General hubbub. The

Alcalde has lost his daughter and found his cap, but the cap does

not fit; it must belong to some thief. Where is the thief? People

walk and talk, and come and go more than ever. Finally the Alcalde

finds a man without his daughter, and his daughter without the

man, which is satisfactory for the magistrate, but not for the

audience. Quiet being restored, the Alcalde tries to examine the

man. Behold a venerable Alcalde, sitting in an Alcalde’s great

armchair, arranging the sleeves of his Alcalde’s gown. Only in

Spain do Alcaldes cling to their enormous sleeves and wear plaited

lawn ruffles about the magisterial throat, a good half of an

Alcalde’s business on the stage in Paris. This particular Alcalde,

wheezing and waddling about like an asthmatic old man, is Vignol,

on whom Potier’s mantle has fallen; a young actor who personates

old age so admirably that the oldest men in the audience cannot

help laughing. With that quavering voice of his, that bald

forehead, and those spindle shanks trembling under the weight of a

senile frame, he may look forward to a long career of decrepitude.

There is something alarming about the young actor’s old age; he is

so very old; you feel nervous lest senility should be infectious.

And what an admirable Alcalde he makes! What a delightful, uneasy

smile! what pompous stupidity! what wooden dignity! what judicial

hesitation! How well the man knows that black may be white, or

white black! How eminently well he is fitted to be Minister to a

constitutional monarch! The stranger answers every one of his

inquiries by a question; Vignol retorts in such a fashion, that

the person under examination elicits all the truth from the

Alcalde. This piece of pure comedy, with a breath of Molière

throughout, puts the house in good humor. The people on the stage

all seemed to understand what they were about, but I am quite

unable to clear up the mystery, or to say wherein it lay; for the

Alcalde’s daughter was there, personified by a living, breathing

Andalusian, a Spaniard with a Spaniard’s eyes, a Spaniard’s

complexion, a Spaniard’s gait and figure, a Spaniard from top to

toe, with her poniard in her garter, love in her heart, and a

cross on the ribbon about her neck. When the act was over, and

somebody asked me how the piece was going, I answered, “She wears

scarlet stockings with green clocks to them; she has a little

foot, no larger than _that_, in her patent leather shoes, and the

prettiest pair of ankles in Andalusia!” Oh! that Alcalde’s

daughter brings your heart into your mouth; she tantalizes you so

horribly, that you long to spring upon the stage and offer her

your thatched hovel and your heart, or thirty thousand livres per

annum and your pen. The Andalusian is the loveliest actress in

Paris. Coralie, for she must be called by her real name, can be a

countess or a _grisette_, and in which part she would be more

charming one cannot tell. She can be anything that she chooses;

she is born to achieve all possibilities; can more be said of a

boulevard actress?

With the second act, a Parisian Spaniard appeared upon the scene,

with her features cut like a cameo and her dangerous eyes. “Where

does she come from?” I asked in my turn, and was told that she

came from the greenroom, and that she was Mademoiselle Florine;

but, upon my word, I could not believe a syllable of it, such

spirit was there in her gestures, such frenzy in her love. She is

the rival of the Alcalde’s daughter, and married to a grandee cut

out to wear an Almaviva’s cloak, with stuff sufficient in it for a

hundred boulevard noblemen. Mlle. Florine wore neither scarlet

stockings with green clocks, nor patent leather shoes, but she

appeared in a mantilla, a veil which she put to admirable uses,

like the great lady that she is! She showed to admiration that the

tigress can be a cat. I began to understand, from the sparkling

talk between the two, that some drama of jealousy was going on;

and just as everything was put right, the Alcalde’s stupidity

embroiled everybody again. Torchbearers, rich men, footmen,

Figaros, grandees, alcaldes, dames, and damsels—the whole company

on the stage began to eddy about, and come and go, and look for

one another. The plot thickened, again I left it to thicken; for

Florine the jealous and the happy Coralie had entangled me once

more in the folds of mantilla and basquina, and their little feet

were twinkling in my eyes.

I managed, however, to reach the third act without any mishap. The

commissary of police was not compelled to interfere, and I did

nothing to scandalize the house, wherefore I begin to believe in

the influence of that “public and religious morality,” about which

the Chamber of Deputies is so anxious, that any one might think

there was no morality left in France. I even contrived to gather

that a man was in love with two women who failed to return his

affection, or else that two women were in love with a man who

loved neither of them; the man did not love the Alcalde, or the

Alcalde had no love for the man, who was nevertheless a gallant

gentleman, and in love with somebody, with himself, perhaps, or

with heaven, if the worst came to the worst, for he becomes a

monk. And if you want to know any more, you can go to the

Panorama-Dramatique. You are hereby given fair warning—you must

go once to accustom yourself to those irresistible scarlet

stockings with the green clocks, to little feet full of promises,

to eyes with a ray of sunlight shining through them, to the subtle

charm of a Parisienne disguised as an Andalusian girl, and of an

Andalusian masquerading as a Parisienne. You must go a second time

to enjoy the play, to shed tears over the love-distracted grandee,

and die of laughing at the old Alcalde. The play is twice a

success. The author, who writes it, it is said, in collaboration

with one of the great poets of the day, was called before the

curtain, and appeared with a love-distraught damsel on each arm,

and fairly brought down the excited house. The two dancers seemed

to have more wit in their legs than the author himself; but when

once the fair rivals left the stage, the dialogue seemed witty at

once, a triumphant proof of the excellence of the piece. The

applause and calls for the author caused the architect some

anxiety; but M. de Cursy, the author, being accustomed to volcanic

eruptions of the reeling Vesuvius beneath the chandelier, felt no

tremor. As for the actresses, they danced the famous bolero of

Seville, which once found favor in the sight of a council of

reverend fathers, and escaped ecclesiastical censure in spite of

its wanton dangerous grace. The bolero in itself would be enough

to attract old age while there is any lingering heat of youth in

the veins, and out of charity I warn these persons to keep the

lenses of their opera-glasses well polished.

While Lucien was writing a column which was to set a new fashion in

journalism and reveal a fresh and original gift, Lousteau indited an

article of the kind described as _moeurs_—a sketch of contemporary

manners, entitled _The Elderly Beau_.

“The buck of the Empire,” he wrote, “is invariably long, slender, and

well preserved. He wears a corset and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

His name was originally Potelet, or something very like it; but to stand

well with the Court, he conferred a _du_ upon himself, and _du_ Potelet

he is until another revolution. A baron of the Empire, a man of two

ends, as his name (_Potelet_, a post) implies, he is paying his court to

the Faubourg Saint-Germain, after a youth gloriously and usefully spent

as the agreeable trainbearer of a sister of the man whom decency forbids

me to mention by name. Du Potelet has forgotten that he was once

in waiting upon Her Imperial Highness; but he still sings the songs

composed for the benefactress who took such a tender interest in his

career,” and so forth and so forth. It was a tissue of personalities,

silly enough for the most part, such as they used to write in those

days. Other papers, and notably the _Figaro_, have brought the art to

a curious perfection since. Lousteau compared the Baron to a heron,

and introduced Mme. de Bargeton, to whom he was paying his court, as

a cuttlefish bone, a burlesque absurdity which amused readers who knew

neither of the personages. A tale of the loves of the Heron, who tried

in vain to swallow the Cuttlefish bone, which broke into three pieces

when he dropped it, was irresistibly ludicrous. Everybody remembers the

sensation which the pleasantry made in the Faubourg Saint-Germain;

it was the first of a series of similar articles, and was one of the

thousand and one causes which provoked the rigorous press legislation of

Charles X.

An hour later, Blondet, Lousteau, and Lucien came back to the

drawing-room, where the other guests were chatting. The Duke was there

and the Minister, the four women, the three merchants, the manager, and

Finot. A printer’s devil, with a paper cap on his head, was waiting even

then for copy.

“The men are just going off, if I have nothing to take them,” he said.

“Stay a bit, here are ten francs, and tell them to wait,” said Finot.

“If I give them the money, sir, they would take to tippleography, and

good-night to the newspaper.”

“That boy’s common-sense is appalling to me,” remarked Finot; and the

Minister was in the middle of a prediction of a brilliant future for the

urchin, when the three came in. Blondet read aloud an extremely clever

article against the Romantics; Lousteau’s paragraph drew laughter, and

by the Duc de Rhétoré’s advice an indirect eulogium of Mme. d’Espard was

slipped in, lest the whole Faubourg Saint-Germain should take offence.

“What have _you_ written?” asked Finot, turning to Lucien.

And Lucien read, quaking for fear, but the room rang with applause when

he finished; the actresses embraced the neophyte; and the two merchants,

following suit, half choked the breath out of him. There were tears in

du Bruel’s eyes as he grasped his critic’s hand, and the manager invited

him to dinner.

“There are no children nowadays,” said Blondet. “Since M. de

Chateaubriand called Victor Hugo a ‘sublime child,’ I can only tell

you quite simply that you have spirit and taste, and write like a

gentleman.”

“He is on the newspaper,” said Finot, as he thanked Étienne, and gave

him a shrewd glance.

“What jokes have you made?” inquired Lousteau, turning to Blondet and du

Bruel.

“Here are du Bruel’s,” said Nathan.

*** “Now, that M. le Vicomte d’A—— is attracting so much

attention, they will perhaps let _me_ alone,” M. le Vicomte

Demosthenes was heard to say yesterday.

*** An Ultra, condemning M. Pasquier’s speech, said his programme

was only a continuation of Decaze’s policy. “Yes,” said a lady,

“but he stands on a Monarchical basis, he has just the kind of leg

for a Court suit.”

“With such a beginning, I don’t ask more of you,” said Finot; “it will

be all right.—Run round with this,” he added, turning to the boy; “the

paper is not exactly a genuine article, but it is our best number yet,”

and he turned to the group of writers. Already Lucien’s colleagues were

privately taking his measure.

“That fellow has brains,” said Blondet.

“His article is well written,” said Claude Vignon.

“Supper!” cried Matifat.

The Duke gave his arm to Florine, Coralie went across to Lucien, and

Tullia went in to supper between Émile Blondet and the German Minister.

“I cannot understand why you are making an onslaught on Mme. de Bargeton

and the Baron du Châtelet; they say that he is prefect-designate of the

Charente, and will be Master of Requests some day.”

“Mme. de Bargeton showed Lucien the door as if he had been an imposter,”

said Lousteau.

“Such a fine young fellow!” exclaimed the Minister.

Supper, served with new plate, Sèvres porcelain, and white damask, was

redolent of opulence. The dishes were from Chevet, the wines from a

celebrated merchant on the Quai Saint-Bernard, a personal friend

of Matifat’s. For the first time Lucien beheld the luxury of Paris

displayed; he went from surprise to surprise, but he kept his

astonishment to himself, like a man who had spirit and taste and wrote

like a gentleman, as Blondet had said.

As they crossed the drawing-room, Coralie bent to Florine, “Make

Camusot so drunk that he will be compelled to stop here all night,” she

whispered.

“So you have hooked your journalist, have you?” returned Florine, using

the idiom of women of her class.

“No, dear; I love him,” said Coralie, with an adorable little shrug of

the shoulders.

Those words rang in Lucien’s ears, borne to them by the fifth deadly

sin. Coralie was perfectly dressed. Every woman possesses some personal

charm in perfection, and Coralie’s toilette brought her characteristic

beauty into prominence. Her dress, moreover, like Florine’s, was of some

exquisite stuff, unknown as yet to the public, a _mousseline de soie_,

with which Camusot had been supplied a few days before the rest of the

world; for, as owner of the _Golden Cocoon_, he was a kind of Providence

in Paris to the Lyons silkweavers.

Love and toilet are like color and perfume for a woman, and Coralie

in her happiness looked lovelier than ever. A looked-for delight which

cannot elude the grasp possesses an immense charm for youth; perhaps in

their eyes the secret of the attraction of a house of pleasure lies

in the certainty of gratification; perhaps many a long fidelity is

attributable to the same cause. Love for love’s sake, first love indeed,

had blent with one of the strange violent fancies which sometimes

possess these poor creatures; and love and admiration of Lucien’s great

beauty taught Coralie to express the thoughts in her heart.

“I should love you if you were ill and ugly,” she whispered as they sat

down.

What a saying for a poet! Camusot utterly vanished, Lucien had forgotten

his existence, he saw Coralie, and had eyes for nothing else. How should

he draw back—this creature, all sensation, all enjoyment of life,

tired of the monotony of existence in a country town, weary of poverty,

harassed by enforced continence, impatient of the claustral life of the

Rue de Cluny, of toiling without reward? The fascination of the under

world of Paris was upon him; how should he rise and leave this brilliant

gathering? Lucien stood with one foot in Coralie’s chamber and the other

in the quicksands of Journalism. After so much vain search, and climbing

of so many stairs, after standing about and waiting in the Rue de

Sentier, he had found Journalism a jolly boon companion, joyous over the

wine. His wrongs had just been avenged. There were two for whom he had

vainly striven to fill the cup of humiliation and pain which he had been

made to drink to the dregs, and now to-morrow they should receive a stab

in their very hearts. “Here is a real friend!” he thought, as he looked

at Lousteau. It never crossed his mind that Lousteau already regarded

him as a dangerous rival. He had made a blunder; he had done his very

best when a colorless article would have served him admirably well.

Blondet’s remark to Finot that it would be better to come to terms with

a man of that calibre, had counteracted Lousteau’s gnawing jealousy. He

reflected that it would be prudent to keep on good terms with Lucien,

and, at the same time, to arrange with Finot to exploit this formidable

newcomer—he must be kept in poverty. The decision was made in a moment,

and the bargain made in a few whispered words.

“He has talent.”

“He will want the more.”

“Ah?”

“Good!”

“A supper among French journalists always fills me with dread,” said

the German diplomatist, with serene urbanity; he looked as he spoke at

Blondet, whom he had met at the Comtesse de Montcornet’s. “It is laid

upon you, gentlemen, to fulfil a prophecy of Blücher’s.”

“What prophecy?” asked Nathan.

“When Blücher and Sacken arrived on the heights of Montmartre in 1814

(pardon me, gentlemen, for recalling a day unfortunate for France),

Sacken (a rough brute), remarked, ‘Now we will set Paris alight!’—‘Take

very good care that you don’t,’ said Blücher. ‘France will die of

_that_, nothing else can kill her,’ and he waved his hand over the

glowing, seething city, that lay like a huge canker in the valley of

the Seine.—There are no journalists in our country, thank Heaven!”

continued the Minister after a pause. “I have not yet recovered from

the fright that the little fellow gave me, a boy of ten, in a paper cap,

with the sense of an old diplomatist. And to-night I feel as if I were

supping with lions and panthers, who graciously sheathe their claws in

my honor.”

“It is clear,” said Blondet, “that we are at liberty to inform Europe

that a serpent dropped from your Excellency’s lips this evening,

and that the venomous creature failed to inoculate Mlle. Tullia, the

prettiest dancer in Paris; and to follow up the story with a commentary

on Eve, and the Scriptures, and the first and last transgression. But

have no fear, you are our guest.”

“It would be funny,” said Finot.

“We would begin with a scientific treatise on all the serpents found

in the human heart and human body, and so proceed to the _corps

diplomatique_,” said Lousteau.

“And we could exhibit one in spirits, in a bottle of brandied cherries,”

said Vernou.

“Till you yourself would end by believing in the story,” added Vignon,

looking at the diplomatist.

“Gentlemen,” cried the Duc de Rhétoré, “let sleeping claws lie.”

“The influence and power of the press is only dawning,” said Finot.

“Journalism is in its infancy; it will grow. In ten years’ time,

everything will be brought into publicity. The light of thought will be

turned on all subjects, and——”

“The blight of thought will be over it all,” corrected Blondet.

“Here is an apothegm,” cried Claude Vignon.

“Thought will make kings,” said Lousteau.

“And undo monarchs,” said the German.

“And therefore,” said Blondet, “if the press did not exist, it would be

necessary to invent it forthwith. But here we have it, and live by it.”

“You will die of it,” returned the German diplomatist. “Can you not see

that if you enlighten the masses, and raise them in the political scale,

you make it all the harder for the individual to rise above their

level? Can you not see that if you sow the seeds of reasoning among the

working-classes, you will reap revolt, and be the first to fall victims?

What do they smash in Paris when a riot begins?”

“The street-lamps!” said Nathan; “but we are too modest to fear for

ourselves, we only run the risk of cracks.”

“As a nation, you have too much mental activity to allow any government

to run its course without interference. But for that, you would make

the conquest of Europe a second time, and win with the pen all that you

failed to keep with the sword.”

“Journalism is an evil,” said Claude Vignon. “The evil may have its

uses, but the present Government is resolved to put it down. There will

be a battle over it. Who will give way? That is the question.”

“The Government will give way,” said Blondet. “I keep telling people

that with all my might! Intellectual power is _the_ great power in

France; and the press has more wit than all men of intellect put

together, and the hypocrisy of Tartufe besides.”

“Blondet! Blondet! you are going too far!” called Finot. “Subscribers

are present.”

“You are the proprietor of one of those poison shops; you have reason to

be afraid; but I can laugh at the whole business, even if I live by it.”

“Blondet is right,” said Claude Vignon. “Journalism, so far from being

in the hands of a priesthood, came to be first a party weapon, and then

a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or scruple, like

other commercial speculations. Every newspaper, as Blondet says, is a

shop to which people come for opinions of the right shade. If there were

a paper for hunchbacks, it would set forth plainly, morning and evening,

in its columns, the beauty, the utility, and necessity of deformity. A

newspaper is not supposed to enlighten its readers, but to supply them

with congenial opinions. Give any newspaper time enough, and it will

be base, hypocritical, shameless, and treacherous; the periodical press

will be the death of ideas, systems, and individuals; nay, it will

flourish upon their decay. It will take the credit of all creations

of the brain; the harm that it does is done anonymously. We, for

instance—I, Claude Vignon; you, Blondet; you, Lousteau; and you,

Finot—we are all Platos, Aristides, and Catos, Plutarch’s men, in

short; we are all immaculate; we may wash our hands of all iniquity.

Napoleon’s sublime aphorism, suggested by his study of the Convention,

‘No one individual is responsible for a crime committed collectively,’

sums up the whole significance of a phenomenon, moral or immoral,

whichever you please. However shamefully a newspaper may behave, the

disgrace attaches to no one person.”

“The authorities will resort to repressive legislation,” interposed du

Bruel. “A law is going to be passed, in fact.”

“Pooh!” retorted Nathan. “What is the law in France against the spirit

in which it is received, the most subtle of all solvents?”

“Ideas and opinions can only be counteracted by opinions and ideas,”

Vignon continued. “By sheer terror and despotism, and by no other means,

can you extinguish the genius of the French nation; for the language

lends itself admirably to allusion and ambiguity. Epigram breaks out the

more for repressive legislation; it is like steam in an engine without

a safety-valve.—The King, for example, does right; if a newspaper is

against him, the Minister gets all the credit of the measure, and _vice

versa_. A newspaper invents a scandalous libel—it has been misinformed.

If the victim complains, the paper gets off with an apology for

taking so great a freedom. If the case is taken into court, the editor

complains that nobody asked him to rectify the mistake; but ask for

redress, and he will laugh in your face and treat his offence as a

mere trifle. The paper scoffs if the victim gains the day; and if

heavy damages are awarded, the plaintiff is held up as an unpatriotic

obscurantist and a menace to the liberties of the country. In the course

of an article purporting to explain that Monsieur So-and-so is as honest

a man as you will find in the kingdom, you are informed that he is not

better than a common thief. The sins of the press? Pooh! mere trifles;

the curtailers of its liberties are monsters; and give him time enough,

the constant reader is persuaded to believe anything you please.

Everything which does not suit the newspaper will be unpatriotic, and

the press will be infallible. One religion will be played off against

another, and the Charter against the King. The press will hold up the

magistracy to scorn for meting out rigorous justice to the press, and

applaud its action when it serves the cause of party hatred. The most

sensational fictions will be invented to increase the circulation;

Journalism will descend to mountebanks’ tricks worthy of Bobêche;

Journalism would serve up its father with the Attic salt of its own wit

sooner than fail to interest or amuse the public; Journalism will outdo

the actor who put his son’s ashes into the urn to draw real tears from

his eyes, or the mistress who sacrifices everything to her lover.”

“Journalism is, in fact, the People in folio form,” interrupted Blondet.

“The people with hypocrisy added and generosity lacking,” said Vignon.

“All real ability will be driven out from the ranks of Journalism,

as Aristides was driven into exile by the Athenians. We shall see

newspapers started in the first instance by men of honor, falling sooner

or later into the hands of men of abilities even lower than the

average, but endowed with the resistance of flexibility of india-rubber,

qualities denied to noble genius; nay, perhaps the future newspaper

proprietor will be the tradesman with capital sufficient to buy venal

pens. We see such things already indeed, but in ten years’ time every

little youngster that has left school will take himself for a great man,

slash his predecessors from the lofty height of a newspaper column, drag

them down by the feet, and take their place.

“Napoleon did wisely when he muzzled the press. I would wager that the

Opposition papers would batter down a government of their own setting

up, just as they are battering the present government, if any demand

was refused. The more they have, the more they will want in the way

of concessions. The _parvenu_ journalist will be succeeded by the

starveling hack. There is no salve for this sore. It is a kind of

corruption which grows more and more obtrusive and malignant; the wider

it spreads, the more patiently it will be endured, until the day

comes when newspapers shall so increase and multiply in the earth that

confusion will be the result—a second Babel. We, all of us, such as

we are, have reason to know that crowned kings are less ungrateful than

kings of our profession; that the most sordid man of business is not so

mercenary nor so keen in speculation; that our brains are consumed to

furnish their daily supply of poisonous trash. And yet we, all of us,

shall continue to write, like men who work in quicksilver mines, knowing

that they are doomed to die of their trade.

“Look there,” he continued, “at that young man sitting beside

Coralie—what is his name? Lucien! He has a beautiful face; he is a

poet; and what is more, he is witty—so much the better for him. Well,

he will cross the threshold of one of those dens where a man’s intellect

is prostituted; he will put all his best and finest thought into his

work; he will blunt his intellect and sully his soul; he will be guilty

of anonymous meannesses which take the place of stratagem, pillage, and

ratting to the enemy in the warfare of _condottieri_. And when, like

hundreds more, he has squandered his genius in the service of others who

find the capital and do no work, those dealers in poisons will leave him

to starve if he is thirsty, and to die of thirst if he is starving.”

“Thanks,” said Finot.

“But, dear me,” continued Claude Vignon, “_I_ knew all this, yet here am

I in the galleys, and the arrival of another convict gives me pleasure.

We are cleverer, Blondet and I, than Messieurs This and That, who

speculate in our abilities, yet nevertheless we are always exploited by

them. We have a heart somewhere beneath the intellect; we have NOT

the grim qualities of the man who makes others work for him. We are

indolent, we like to look on at the game, we are meditative, and we are

fastidious; they will sweat our brains and blame us for improvidence.”

“I thought you would be more amusing than this!” said Florine.

“Florine is right,” said Blondet; “let us leave the cure of public evils

to those quacks the statesmen. As Charlet says, ‘Quarrel with my own

bread and butter? _Never_!’”

“Do you know what Vignon puts me in mind of?” said Lousteau. “Of one of

those fat women in the Rue du Pélican telling a schoolboy, ‘My boy, you

are too young to come here.’”

A burst of laughter followed the sally, but it pleased Coralie. The

merchants meanwhile ate and drank and listened.

“What a nation this is! You see so much good in it and so much evil,”

said the Minister, addressing the Duc de Rhétoré.—“You are prodigals

who cannot ruin yourselves, gentlemen.”

And so, by the blessing of chance, Lucien, standing on the brink of

the precipice over which he was destined to fall, heard warnings on all

sides. D’Arthez had set him on the right road, had shown him the noble

method of work, and aroused in him the spirit before which all obstacles

disappear. Lousteau himself (partly from selfish motives) had tried to

warn him away by describing Journalism and Literature in their practical

aspects. Lucien had refused to believe that there could be so much

hidden corruption; but now he had heard the journalists themselves

crying woe for their hurt, he had seen them at their work, had watched

them tearing their foster-mother’s heart to read auguries of the future.

That evening he had seen things as they are. He beheld the very heart’s

core of corruption of that Paris which Blücher so aptly described; and

so far from shuddering at the sight, he was intoxicated with enjoyment

of the intellectually stimulating society in which he found himself.

These extraordinary men, clad in armor damascened by their vices, these

intellects environed by cold and brilliant analysis, seemed so

far greater in his eyes than the grave and earnest members of the

brotherhood. And besides all this, he was reveling in his first taste of

luxury; he had fallen under the spell. His capricious instincts awoke;

for the first time in his life he drank exquisite wines, this was

his first experience of cookery carried to the pitch of a fine art.

A minister, a duke, and an opera-dancer had joined the party of

journalists, and wondered at their sinister power. Lucien felt a

horrible craving to reign over these kings, and he thought that he had

power to win his kingdom. Finally, there was this Coralie, made happy by

a few words of his. By the bright light of the wax-candles, through

the steam of the dishes and the fumes of wine, she looked sublimely

beautiful to his eyes, so fair had she grown with love. She was the

loveliest, the most beautiful actress in Paris. The brotherhood, the

heaven of noble thoughts, faded away before a temptation that appealed

to every fibre of his nature. How could it have been otherwise? Lucien’s

author’s vanity had just been gratified by the praises of those who

know; by the appreciation of his future rivals; the success of his

articles and his conquest of Coralie might have turned an older head

than his.

During the discussion, moreover, every one at table had made a

remarkably good supper, and such wines are not met with every day.

Lousteau, sitting beside Camusot, furtively poured cherry-brandy several

times into his neighbor’s wineglass, and challenged him to drink. And

Camusot drank, all unsuspicious, for he thought himself, in his own way,

a match for a journalist. The jokes became more personal when dessert

appeared and the wine began to circulate. The German Minister, a

keen-witted man of the world, made a sign to the Duke and Tullia, and

the three disappeared with the first symptoms of vociferous nonsense

which precede the grotesque scenes of an orgy in its final stage.

Coralie and Lucien had been behaving like children all the evening; as

soon as the wine was uppermost in Camusot’s head, they made good their

escape down the staircase and sprang into a cab. Camusot subsided under

the table; Matifat, looking round for him, thought that he had gone home

with Coralie, left his guests to smoke, laugh, and argue, and followed

Florine to her room. Daylight surprised the party, or more accurately,

the first dawn of light discovered one man still able to speak, and

Blondet, that intrepid champion, was proposing to the assembled sleepers

a health to Aurora the rosy-fingered.

Lucien was unaccustomed to orgies of this kind. His head was very

tolerably clear as he came down the staircase, but the fresh air was

too much for him; he was horribly drunk. When they reached the handsome

house in the Rue de Vendôme, where the actress lived, Coralie and her

waiting-woman were obliged to assist the poet to climb to the first

floor. Lucien was ignominiously sick, and very nearly fainted on the

staircase.

“Quick, Bérénice, some tea! Make some tea,” cried Coralie.

“It is nothing; it is the air,” Lucien got out, “and I have never taken

so much before in my life.”

“Poor boy! He is as innocent as a lamb,” said Bérénice, a stalwart

Norman peasant woman as ugly as Coralie was pretty. Lucien, half

unconscious, was laid at last in bed. Coralie, with Bérénice’s

assistance, undressed the poet with all a mother’s tender care.

“It is nothing,” he murmured again and again. “It is the air. Thank you,

mamma.”

“How charmingly he says ‘mamma,’” cried Coralie, putting a kiss on his

hair.

“What happiness to love such an angel, mademoiselle! Where did you pick

him up? I did not think a man could be as beautiful as you are,” said

Bérénice, when Lucien lay in bed. He was very drowsy; he knew nothing

and saw nothing; Coralie made him swallow several cups of tea, and left

him to sleep.

“Did the porter see us? Was there anyone else about?” she asked.

“No; I was sitting up for you.”

“Does Victoire know anything?”

“Rather not!” returned Bérénice.

Ten hours later Lucien awoke to meet Coralie’s eyes. She had watched by

him as he slept; he knew it, poet that he was. It was almost noon, but

she still wore the delicate dress, abominably stained, which she meant

to lay up as a relic. Lucien understood all the self-sacrifice and

delicacy of love, fain of its reward. He looked into Coralie’s eyes. In

a moment she had flung off her clothing and slipped like a serpent to

Lucien’s side.

At five o’clock in the afternoon Lucien was still sleeping, cradled in

this voluptuous paradise. He had caught glimpses of Coralie’s chamber,

an exquisite creation of luxury, a world of rose-color and white. He

had admired Florine’s apartments, but this surpassed them in its dainty

refinement.

Coralie had already risen; for if she was to play her part as the

Andalusian, she must be at the theatre by seven o’clock. Yet she had

returned to gaze at the unconscious poet, lulled to sleep in bliss; she

could not drink too deeply of this love that rose to rapture, drawing

close the bond between the heart and the senses, to steep both in

ecstasy. For in that apotheosis of human passion, which of those that

were twain on earth that they might know bliss to the full creates

one soul to rise to love in heaven, lay Coralie’s justification. Who,

moreover, would not have found excuse in Lucien’s more than human

beauty? To the actress knéeling by the bedside, happy in love within

her, it seemed that she had received love’s consecration. Bérénice broke

in upon Coralie’s rapture.

“Here comes Camusot!” cried the maid. “And he knows that you are here.”

Lucien sprang up at once. Innate generosity suggested that he was doing

Coralie an injury. Bérénice drew aside a curtain, and he fled into a

dainty dressing-room, whither Coralie and the maid brought his clothes

with magical speed.

Camusot appeared, and only then did Coralie’s eyes alight on Lucien’s

boots, warming in the fender. Bérénice had privately varnished them, and

put them before the fire to dry; and both mistress and maid alike forgot

that tell-tale witness. Bérénice left the room with a scared glance at

Coralie. Coralie flung herself into the depths of a settee, and bade

Camusot seat himself in the _gondole_, a round-backed chair that stood

opposite. But Coralie’s adorer, honest soul, dared not look his mistress

in the face; he could not take his eyes off the pair of boots.

“Ought I to make a scene and leave Coralie?” he pondered. “Is it worth

while to make a fuss about a trifle? There is a pair of boots wherever

you go. These would be more in place in a shop window or taking a walk

on the boulevard on somebody’s feet; here, however, without a pair of

feet in them, they tell a pretty plain tale. I am fifty years old, and

that is the truth; I ought to be as blind as Cupid himself.”

There was no excuse for this mean-spirited monologue. The boots were

not the high-lows at present in vogue, which an unobservant man may be

allowed to disregard up to a certain point. They were the unmistakable,

uncompromising hessians then prescribed by fashion, a pair of extremely

elegant betasseled boots, which shone in glistening contrast against

tight-fitting trousers invariably of some light color, and reflected

their surroundings like a mirror. The boots stared the honest

silk-mercer out of countenance, and, it must be added, they pained his

heart.

“What is it?” asked Coralie.

“Nothing.”

“Ring the bell,” said Coralie, smiling to herself at Camusot’s want of

spirit.—“Bérénice,” she said, when the Norman handmaid appeared, “just

bring me a button-hook, for I must put on these confounded boots again.

Don’t forget to bring them to my dressing-room to-night.”

“What?... _your_ boots?”... faltered out Camusot, breathing more freely.

“And whose should they be?” she demanded haughtily. “Were you beginning

to believe?—great stupid! Oh! and he would believe it too,” she went

on, addressing Bérénice.—“I have a man’s part in What’s-his-name’s

piece, and I have never worn a man’s clothes in my life before. The

bootmaker for the theatre brought me these things to try if I could walk

in them, until a pair can be made to measure. He put them on, but they

hurt me so much that I have taken them off, and after all I must wear

them.”

“Don’t put them on again if they are uncomfortable,” said Camusot. (The

boots had made him feel so very uncomfortable himself.)

“Mademoiselle would do better to have a pair made of very thin

morocco, sir, instead of torturing herself as she did just now; but the

management is so stingy. She was crying, sir; if I was a man and loved a

woman, I wouldn’t let her shed a tear, I know. You ought to order a pair

for her——”

“Yes, yes,” said Camusot. “Are you just getting up, Coralie?”

“Just this moment; I only came in at six o’clock after looking for you

everywhere. I was obliged to keep the cab for seven hours. So much for

your care of me; you forget me for a wine-bottle. I ought to take care

of myself now when I am to play every night so long as the _Alcalde_

draws. I don’t want to fall off after that young man’s notice of me.”

“That is a handsome boy,” said Camusot.

“Do you think so? I don’t admire men of that sort; they are too much

like women; and they do not understand how to love like you stupid old

business men. You are so bored with your own society.”

“Is monsieur dining with madame?” inquired Bérénice.

“No, my mouth is clammy.”

“You were nicely screwed yesterday. Ah! Papa Camusot, I don’t like men

who drink, I tell you at once——”

“You will give that young man a present, I suppose?” interrupted

Camusot.

“Oh! yes. I would rather do that than pay as Florine does. There, go

away with you, good-for-nothing that one loves; or give me a carriage to

save time in future.”

“You shall go in your own carriage to-morrow to your manager’s dinner at

the _Rocher de Cancale_. The new piece will not be given next Sunday.”

“Come, I am just going to dine,” said Coralie, hurrying Camusot out of

the room.

An hour later Bérénice came to release Lucien. Bérénice, Coralie’s

companion since her childhood, had a keen and subtle brain in her

unwieldy frame.

“Stay here,” she said. “Coralie is coming back alone; she even talked of

getting rid of Camusot if he is in your way; but you are too much of an

angel to ruin her, her heart’s darling as you are. She wants to clear

out of this, she says; to leave this paradise and go and live in your

garret. Oh! there are those that are jealous and envious of you, and

they have told her that you haven’t a brass farthing, and live in the

Latin Quarter; and I should go, too, you see, to do the house-work.—But

I have just been comforting her, poor child! I have been telling her

that you were too clever to do anything so silly. I was right, wasn’t

I, sir? Oh! you will see that you are her darling, her love, the god to

whom she gives her soul; yonder old fool has nothing but the body.—If

you only knew how nice she is when I hear her say her part over! My

Coralie, my little pet, she is! She deserved that God in heaven should

send her one of His angels. She was sick of the life.—She was so

unhappy with her mother that used to beat her, and sold her. Yes, sir,

sold her own child! If I had a daughter, I would wait on her hand and

foot as I wait on Coralie; she is like my own child to me.—These are

the first good times she has seen since I have been with her; the first

time that she has been really applauded. You have written something,

it seems, and they have got up a famous _claque_ for the second

performance. Braulard has been going through the play with her while you

were asleep.”

“Who? Braulard?” asked Lucien; it seemed to him that he had heard the

name before.

“He is the head of the _claqueurs_, and she was arranging with him the

places where she wished him to look after her. Florine might try to

play her some shabby trick, and take all for herself, for all she calls

herself her friend. There is such a talk about your article on the

Boulevards.—Isn’t it a bed fit for a prince,” she said, smoothing the

lace bed-spread.

She lighted the wax-candles, and to Lucien’s bewildered fancy, the house

seemed to be some palace in the _Cabinet des Fées_. Camusot had chosen

the richest stuffs from the _Golden Cocoon_ for the hangings and

window-curtains. A carpet fit for a king’s palace was spread upon the

floor. The carving of the rosewood furniture caught and imprisoned the

light that rippled over its surface. Priceless trifles gleamed from the

white marble chimney-piece. The rug beside the bed was of swan’s skins

bordered with sable. A pair of little, black velvet slippers lined with

purple silk told of happiness awaiting the poet of _The Marguerites_. A

dainty lamp hung from the ceiling draped with silk. The room was full

of flowering plants, delicate white heaths and scentless camellias,

in stands marvelously wrought. Everything called up associations of

innocence. How was it possible in these rooms to see the life that

Coralie led in its true colors? Bérénice noticed Lucien’s bewildered

expression.

“Isn’t it nice?” she said coaxingly. “You would be more comfortable

here, wouldn’t you, than in a garret?—You won’t let her do anything

rash?” she continued, setting a costly stand before him, covered with

dishes abstracted from her mistress’ dinner-table, lest the cook should

suspect that her mistress had a lover in the house.

Lucien made a good dinner. Bérénice waiting on him, the dishes were

of wrought silver, the painted porcelain plates had cost a louis d’or

apiece. The luxury was producing exactly the same effect upon him that

the sight of a girl walking the pavement, with her bare flaunting throat

and neat ankles, produces upon a schoolboy.

“How lucky Camusot is!” cried he.

“Lucky?” repeated Bérénice. “He would willingly give all that he is

worth to be in your place; he would be glad to barter his gray hair for

your golden head.”

She gave Lucien the richest wine that Bordeaux keeps for the wealthiest

English purchaser, and persuaded Lucien to go to bed to take a

preliminary nap; and Lucien, in truth, was quite willing to sleep on the

couch that he had been admiring. Bérénice had read his wish, and felt

glad for her mistress.

At half-past ten that night Lucien awoke to look into eyes brimming over

with love. There stood Coralie in most luxurious night attire. Lucien

had been sleeping; Lucien was intoxicated with love, and not with wine.

Bérénice left the room with the inquiry, “What time to-morrow morning?”

“At eleven o’clock. We will have breakfast in bed. I am not at home to

anybody before two o’clock.”

At two o’clock in the afternoon Coralie and her lover were sitting

together. The poet to all appearance had come to pay a call. Lucien had

been bathed and combed and dressed. Coralie had sent to Colliau’s for a

dozen fine shirts, a dozen cravats and a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs

for him, as well as twelve pairs of gloves in a cedar-wood box. When

a carriage stopped at the door, they both rushed to the window, and

watched Camusot alight from a handsome coupé.

“I would not have believed that one could so hate a man and luxury——”

“I am too poor to allow you to ruin yourself for me,” he replied. And

thus Lucien passed under the Caudine Forks.

“Poor pet,” said Coralie, holding him tightly to her, “do you love me

so much?—I persuaded this gentleman to call on me this morning,”

she continued, indicating Lucien to Camusot, who entered the room. “I

thought that we might take a drive in the Champs Élysées to try the

carriage.”

“Go without me,” said Camusot in a melancholy voice; “I shall not dine

with you. It is my wife’s birthday, I had forgotten that.”

“Poor Musot, how badly bored you will be!” she said, putting her arms

about his neck.

She was wild with joy at the thought that she and Lucien would handsel

this gift together; she would drive with him in the new carriage; and

in her happiness, she seemed to love Camusot, she lavished caresses upon

him.

“If only I could give you a carriage every day!” said the poor fellow.

“Now, sir, it is two o’clock,” she said, turning to Lucien, who stood in

distress and confusion, but she comforted him with an adorable gesture.

Down the stairs she went, several steps at a time, drawing Lucien after

her; the elderly merchant following in their wake like a seal on land,

and quite unable to catch them up.

Lucien enjoyed the most intoxicating of pleasures; happiness had

increased Coralie’s loveliness to the highest possible degree; she

appeared before all eyes an exquisite vision in her dainty toilette. All

Paris in the Champs Élysées beheld the lovers.

In an avenue of the Bois de Boulogne they met a calèche; Mme. d’Espard

and Mme. de Bargeton looked in surprise at Lucien, and met a scornful

glance from the poet. He saw glimpses of a great future before him, and

was about to make his power felt. He could fling them back in a glance

some of the revengeful thoughts which had gnawed his heart ever since

they planted them there. That moment was one of the sweetest in his

life, and perhaps decided his fate. Once again the Furies seized on

Lucien at the bidding of Pride. He would reappear in the world of

Paris; he would take a signal revenge; all the social pettiness hitherto

trodden under foot by the worker, the member of the brotherhood, sprang

up again afresh in his soul.

Now he understood all that Lousteau’s attack had meant. Lousteau had

served his passions; while the brotherhood, that collective mentor, had

seemed to mortify them in the interests of tiresome virtues and work

which began to look useless and hopeless in Lucien’s eyes. Work! What is

it but death to an eager pleasure-loving nature? And how easy it is

for the man of letters to slide into a _far niente_ existence of

self-indulgence, into the luxurious ways of actresses and women of easy

virtues! Lucien felt an overmastering desire to continue the reckless

life of the last two days.

The dinner at the _Rocher de Cancale_ was exquisite. All Florine’s

supper guests were there except the Minister, the Duke, and the dancer;

Camusot, too, was absent; but these gaps were filled by two famous

actors and Hector Merlin and his mistress. This charming woman, who

chose to be known as Mme. du Val-Noble, was the handsomest and most

fashionable of the class of women now euphemistically styled _lorettes_.

Lucien had spent the forty-eight hours since the success of his article

in paradise. He was fêted and envied; he gained self-possession; his

talk sparkled; he was the brilliant Lucien de Rubempré who shone for a

few months in the world of letters and art. Finot, with his infallible

instinct for discovering ability, scenting it afar as an ogre might

scent human flesh, cajoled Lucien, and did his best to secure a recruit

for the squadron under his command. And Coralie watched the manoeuvres

of this purveyor of brains, saw that Lucien was nibbling at the bait,

and tried to put him on his guard.

“Don’t make any engagement, dear boy; wait. They want to exploit you; we

will talk of it to-night.”

“Pshaw!” said Lucien. “I am sure I am quite as sharp and shrewd as they

can be.”

Finot and Hector Merlin evidently had not fallen out over that affair

of the white lines and spaces in the columns, for it was Finot who

introduced Lucien to the journalist. Coralie and Mme. du Val-Noble were

overwhelmingly amiable and polite to each other, and Mme. du Val-Noble

asked Lucien and Coralie to dine with her.

Hector Merlin, short and thin, with lips always tightly compressed, was

the most dangerous journalist present. Unbounded ambition and jealousy

smouldered within him; he took pleasure in the pain of others, and

fomented strife to turn it to his own account. His abilities were but

slender, and he had little force of character; but the natural instinct

which draws the upstart towards money and power served him as well

as fixity of purpose. Lucien and Merlin at once took a dislike to one

another, for reasons not far to seek. Merlin, unfortunately, proclaimed

aloud the thoughts that Lucien kept to himself. By the time the dessert

was put on the table, the most touching friendship appeared to prevail

among the men, each one of whom in his heart thought himself a cleverer

fellow than the rest; and Lucien as the newcomer was made much of by

them all. They chatted frankly and unrestrainedly. Hector Merlin, alone,

did not join in the laughter. Lucien asked the reason of his reserve.

“You are just entering the world of letters, I can see,” he said.

“You are a journalist with all your illusions left. You believe in

friendship. Here we are friends or foes, as it happens; we strike down a

friend with the weapon which by rights should only be turned against an

enemy. You will find out, before very long, that fine sentiments will do

nothing for you. If you are naturally kindly, learn to be ill-natured,

to be consistently spiteful. If you have never heard this golden rule

before, I give it you now in confidence, and it is no small secret. If

you have a mind to be loved, never leave your mistress until you

have made her shed a tear or two; and if you mean to make your way

in literature, let other people continually feel your teeth; make

no exception even of your friends; wound their susceptibilities, and

everybody will fawn upon you.”

Hector Merlin watched Lucien as he spoke, saw that his words went to the

neophyte’s heart like a stab, and Hector Merlin was glad. Play followed,

Lucien lost all his money, and Coralie brought him away; and he forgot

for a while, in the delights of love, the fierce excitement of the

gambler, which was to gain so strong a hold upon him.

When he left Coralie in the morning and returned to the Latin Quarter,

he took out his purse and found the money he had lost. At first he

felt miserable over the discovery, and thought of going back at once to

return a gift which humiliated him; but—he had already come as far as

the Rue de la Harpe; he would not return now that he had almost reached

the Hôtel de Cluny. He pondered over Coralie’s forethought as he went,

till he saw in it a proof of the maternal love which is blended with

passion in women of her stamp. For Coralie and her like, passion

includes every human affection. Lucien went from thought to thought, and

argued himself into accepting the gift. “I love her,” he said; “we shall

live together as husband and wife; I will never forsake her!”

What mortal, short of a Diogenes, could fail to understand Lucien’s

feelings as he climbed the dirty, fetid staircase to his lodging, turned

the key that grated in the lock, and entered and looked round at the

unswept brick floor, at the cheerless grate, at the ugly poverty and

bareness of the room.

A package of manuscript was lying on the table. It was his novel; a note

from Daniel d’Arthez lay beside it:—

“Our friends are almost satisfied with your work, dear poet,”

d’Arthez wrote. “You will be able to present it with more

confidence now, they say, to friends and enemies. We saw your

charming article on the Panorama-Dramatique; you are sure to

excite as much jealousy in the profession as regret among your

friends here. DANIEL.”

“Regrets! What does he mean?” exclaimed Lucien. The polite tone of

the note astonished him. Was he to be henceforth a stranger to the

brotherhood? He had learned to set a higher value on the good opinion

and the friendship of the circle in the Rue des Quatre-Vents since he

had tasted of the delicious fruits offered to him by the Eve of the

theatrical underworld. For some moments he stood in deep thought; he saw

his present in the garret, and foresaw his future in Coralie’s rooms.

Honorable resolution struggled with temptation and swayed him now this

way, now that. He sat down and began to look through his manuscript, to

see in what condition his friends had returned it to him. What was

his amazement, as he read chapter after chapter, to find his poverty

transmuted into riches by the cunning of the pen, and the devotion of

the unknown great men, his friends of the brotherhood. Dialogue, closely

packed, nervous, pregnant, terse, and full of the spirit of the age,

replaced his conversations, which seemed poor and pointless prattle in

comparison. His characters, a little uncertain in the drawing, now

stood out in vigorous contrast of color and relief; physiological

observations, due no doubt to Horace Bianchon, supplied links of

interpretations between human character and the curious phenomena of

human life—subtle touches which made his men and women live. His

wordy passages of description were condensed and vivid. The misshapen,

ill-clad child of his brain had returned to him as a lovely maiden,

with white robes and rosy-hued girdle and scarf—an entrancing creation.

Night fell and took him by surprise, reading through rising tears,

stricken to earth by such greatness of soul, feeling the worth of such

a lesson, admiring the alterations, which taught him more of literature

and art than all his four years’ apprenticeship of study and reading and

comparison. A master’s correction of a line made upon the study always

teaches more than all the theories and criticisms in the world.

“What friends are these! What hearts! How fortunate I am!” he cried,

grasping his manuscript tightly.

With the quick impulsiveness of a poetic and mobile temperament, he

rushed off to Daniel’s lodging. As he climbed the stairs, and thought of

these friends, who refused to leave the path of honor, he felt conscious

that he was less worthy of them than before. A voice spoke within him,

telling him that if d’Arthez had loved Coralie, he would have had her

break with Camusot. And, besides this, he knew that the brotherhood held

journalism in utter abhorrence, and that he himself was already, to some

small extent, a journalist. All of them, except Meyraux, who had just

gone out, were in d’Arthez’s room when he entered it, and saw that all

their faces were full of sorrow and despair.

“What is it?” he cried.

“We have just heard news of a dreadful catastrophe; the greatest thinker

of the age, our most loved friend, who was like a light among us for two

years——”

“Louis Lambert!”

“Has fallen a victim to catalepsy. There is no hope for him,” said

Bianchon.

“He will die, his soul wandering in the skies, his body unconscious on

earth,” said Michel Chrestien solemnly.

“He will die as he lived,” said d’Arthez.

“Love fell like a firebrand in the vast empire of his brain and burned

him away,” said Léon Giraud.

“Yes,” said Joseph Bridau, “he has reached a height that we cannot so

much as see.”

“_We_ are to be pitied, not Louis,” said Fulgence Ridal.

“Perhaps he will recover,” exclaimed Lucien.

“From what Meyraux has been telling us, recovery seems impossible,”

answered Bianchon. “Medicine has no power over the change that is

working in his brain.”

“Yet there are physical means,” said d’Arthez.

“Yes,” said Bianchon; “we might produce imbecility instead of

catalepsy.”

“Is there no way of offering another head to the spirit of evil? I would

give mine to save him!” cried Michel Chrestien.

“And what would become of European federation?” asked d’Arthez.

“Ah! true,” replied Michel Chrestien. “Our duty to Humanity comes first;

to one man afterwards.”

“I came here with a heart full of gratitude to you all,” said Lucien.

“You have changed my alloy into golden coin.”

“Gratitude! For what do you take us?” asked Bianchon.

“We had the pleasure,” added Fulgence.

“Well, so you are a journalist, are you?” asked Léon Giraud. “The fame

of your first appearance has reached even the Latin Quarter.”

“I am not a journalist yet,” returned Lucien.

“Aha! So much the better,” said Michel Chrestien.

“I told you so!” said d’Arthez. “Lucien knows the value of a clean

conscience. When you can say to yourself as you lay your head on the

pillow at night, ‘I have not sat in judgment on another man’s work; I

have given pain to no one; I have not used the edge of my wit to deal

a stab to some harmless soul; I have sacrificed no one’s success to a

jest; I have not even troubled the happiness of imbecility; I have not

added to the burdens of genius; I have scorned the easy triumphs of

epigram; in short, I have not acted against my convictions,’ is not this

a viaticum that gives one daily strength?”

“But one can say all this, surely, and yet work on a newspaper,” said

Lucien. “If I had absolutely no other way of earning a living, I should

certainly come to this.”

“Oh! oh! oh!” cried Fulgence, his voice rising a note each time; “we are

capitulating, are we?”

“He will turn journalist,” Léon Giraud said gravely. “Oh, Lucien, if you

would only stay and work with us! We are about to bring out a periodical

in which justice and truth shall never be violated; we will spread

doctrines that, perhaps, will be of real service to mankind——”

“You will not have a single subscriber,” Lucien broke in with

Machiavellian wisdom.

“There will be five hundred of them,” asserted Michel Chrestien, “but

they will be worth five hundred thousand.”

“You will néed a lot of capital,” continued Lucien.

“No, only devotion,” said d’Arthez.

“Anybody might take him for a perfumer’s assistant,” burst out Michel

Chrestien, looking at Lucien’s head, and sniffing comically. “You were

seen driving about in a very smart turnout with a pair of thoroughbreds,

and a mistress for a prince, Coralie herself.”

“Well, and is there any harm in it?”

“You would not say that if you thought that there was no harm in it,”

said Bianchon.

“I could have wished Lucien a Beatrice,” said d’Arthez, “a noble woman,

who would have been a help to him in life——”

“But, Daniel,” asked Lucien, “love is love wherever you find it, is it

not?”

“Ah!” said the republican member, “on that one point I am an aristocrat.

I could not bring myself to love a woman who must rub shoulders with all

sorts of people in the green-room; whom an actor kisses on stage; she

must lower herself before the public, smile on every one, lift her

skirts as she dances, and dress like a man, that all the world may

see what none should see save I alone. Or if I loved such a woman, she

should leave the stage, and my love should cleanse her from the stain of

it.”

“And if she would not leave the stage?”

“I should die of mortification, jealousy, and all sorts of pain. You

cannot pluck love out of your heart as you draw a tooth.”

Lucien’s face grew dark and thoughtful.

“When they find out that I am tolerating Camusot, how they will despise

me,” he thought.

“Look here,” said the fierce republican, with humorous fierceness, “you

can be a great writer, but a little play-actor you shall never be,” and

he took up his hat and went out.

“He is hard, is Michel Chrestien,” commented Lucien.

“Hard and salutary, like the dentist’s pincers,” said Bianchon. “Michel

foresees your future; perhaps in the street, at this moment, he is

thinking of you with tears in his eyes.”

D’Arthez was kind, and talked comfortingly, and tried to cheer

Lucien. The poet spent an hour with his friends, then he went, but

his conscience treated him hardly, crying to him, “You will be a

journalist—a journalist!” as the witch cried to Macbeth that he should

be king hereafter!

Out in the street, he looked up at d’Arthez’s windows, and saw a faint

light shining in them, and his heart sank. A dim foreboding told him

that he had bidden his friends good-bye for the last time.

As he turned out of the Place de la Sorbonne into the Rue de Cluny, he

saw a carriage at the door of his lodging. Coralie had driven all the

way from the Boulevard du Temple for the sake of a moment with her lover

and a “good-night.” Lucien found her sobbing in his garret. She would be

as wretchedly poor as her poet, she wept, as she arranged his shirts and

gloves and handkerchiefs in the crazy chest of drawers. Her distress

was so real and so great, that Lucien, but even now chidden for his

connection with an actress, saw Coralie as a saint ready to assume the

hair-shirt of poverty. The adorable girl’s excuse for her visit was

an announcement that the firm of Camusot, Coralie, and Lucien meant to

invite Matifat, Florine, and Lousteau (the second trio) to supper; had

Lucien any invitations to issue to people who might be useful to him?

Lucien said that he would take counsel of Lousteau.

A few moments were spent together, and Coralie hurried away. She spared

Lucien the knowledge that Camusot was waiting for her below.

Next morning, at eight o’clock, Lucien went to Étienne Lousteau’s room,

found it empty, and hurried away to Florine. Lousteau and Florine,

settled into possession of their new quarters like a married couple,

received their friend in the pretty bedroom, and all three breakfasted

sumptuously together.

“Why, I should advise you, my boy, to come with me to see Félicien

Vernou,” said Lousteau, when they sat at table, and Lucien had mentioned

Coralie’s projected supper; “ask him to be of the party, and keep well

with him, if you can keep well with such a rascal. Félicien Vernou does

a _feuilleton_ for a political paper; he might perhaps introduce you,

and you could blossom out into leaders in it at your ease. It is a

Liberal paper, like ours; you will be a Liberal, that is the popular

party; and besides, if you mean to go over to the Ministerialists, you

would do better for yourself if they had reason to be afraid of you.

Then there is Hector Merlin and his Mme. du Val-Noble; you meet great

people at their house—dukes and dandies and millionaires; didn’t they

ask you and Coralie to dine with them?”

“Yes,” replied Lucien; “you are going too, and so is Florine.” Lucien

and Étienne were now on familiar terms after Friday’s debauch and the

dinner at the _Rocher de Cancale_.

“Very well, Merlin is on the paper; we shall come across him pretty

often; he is the chap to follow close on Finot’s heels. You would do

well to pay him attention; ask him and Mme. du Val-Noble to supper. He

may be useful to you before long; for rancorous people are always in

néed of others, and he may do you a good turn if he can reckon on your

pen.”

“Your beginning has made enough sensation to smooth your way,” said

Florine; “take advantage of it at once, or you will soon be forgotten.”

“The bargain, the great business, is concluded,” Lousteau continued.

“That Finot, without a spark of talent in him, is to be editor of

Dauriat’s weekly paper, with a salary of six hundred francs per month,

and owner of a sixth share, for which he has not paid one penny. And I,

my dear fellow, am now editor of our little paper. Everything went

off as I expected; Florine managed superbly, she could give points to

Tallyrand himself.”

“We have a hold on men through their pleasures,” said Florine, “while a

diplomatist only works on their self-love. A diplomatist sees a man made

up for the occasion; we know him in his moments of folly, so our power

is greater.”

“And when the thing was settled, Matifat made the first and last joke of

his whole druggist’s career,” put in Lousteau. “He said, ‘This affair is

quite in my line; I am supplying drugs to the public.’”

“I suspect that Florine put him up to it,” cried Lucien.

“And by these means, my little dear, your foot is in the stirrup,”

continued Lousteau.

“You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth,” remarked Florine.

“What lots of young fellows wait for years, wait till they are sick of

waiting, for a chance to get an article into a paper! You will do like

Émile Blondet. In six months’ time you will be giving yourself high and

mighty airs,” she added, with a mocking smile, in the language of her

class.

“Haven’t I been in Paris for three years?” said Lousteau, “and only

yesterday Finot began to pay me a fixed monthly salary of three hundred

francs, and a hundred francs per sheet for his paper.”

“Well; you are saying nothing!” exclaimed Florine, with her eyes turned

on Lucien.

“We shall see,” said Lucien.

“My dear boy, if you had been my brother, I could not have done more

for you,” retorted Lousteau, somewhat nettled, “but I won’t answer for

Finot. Scores of sharp fellows will besiege Finot for the next two days

with offers to work for low pay. I have promised for you, but you can

draw back if you like.—You little know how lucky you are,” he added

after a pause. “All those in our set combine to attack an enemy in

various papers, and lend each other a helping hand all round.”

“Let us go in the first place to Félicien Vernou,” said Lucien. He was

eager to conclude an alliance with such formidable birds of prey.

Lousteau sent for a cab, and the pair of friends drove to Vernou’s house

on the second floor up an alley in the Rue Mandar. To Lucien’s great

astonishment, the harsh, fastidious, and severe critic’s surroundings

were vulgar to the last degree. A marbled paper, cheap and shabby, with

a meaningless pattern repeated at regular intervals, covered the walls,

and a series of aqua tints in gilt frames decorated the apartment, where

Vernou sat at table with a woman so plain that she could only be the

legitimate mistress of the house, and two very small children perched

on high chairs with a bar in front to prevent the infants from tumbling

out. Félicien Vernou, in a cotton dressing-gown contrived out of the

remains of one of his wife’s dresses, was not over well pleased by this

invasion.

“Have you breakfasted, Lousteau?” he asked, placing a chair for Lucien.

“We have just left Florine; we have been breakfasting with her.”

Lucien could not take his eyes off Mme. Vernou. She looked like a stout,

homely cook, with a tolerably fair complexion, but commonplace to

the last degree. The lady wore a bandana tied over her night-cap, the

strings of the latter article of dress being tied so tightly under

the chin that her puffy cheeks stood out on either side. A shapeless,

beltless garment, fastened by a single button at the throat, enveloped

her from head to foot in such a fashion that a comparison to a milestone

at once suggested itself. Her health left no room for hope; her cheeks

were almost purple; her fingers looked like sausages. In a moment it

dawned upon Lucien how it was that Vernou was always so ill at ease in

society; here was the living explanation of his misanthropy. Sick of his

marriage, unable to bring himself to abandon his wife and family, he had

yet sufficient of the artistic temper to suffer continually from their

presence; Vernou was an actor by nature bound never to pardon the

success of another, condemned to chronic discontent because he was never

content with himself. Lucien began to understand the sour look which

seemed to add to the bleak expression of envy on Vernou’s face; the

acerbity of the epigrams with which his conversation was sown, the

journalist’s pungent phrases, keen and elaborately wrought as a

stiletto, were at once explained.

“Let us go into my study,” Vernou said, rising from the table; “you have

come on business, no doubt.”

“Yes and no,” replied Étienne Lousteau. “It is a supper, old chap.”

“I have brought a message from Coralie,” said Lucien (Mme. Vernou looked

up at once at the name), “to ask you to supper to-night at her house

to meet the same company as before at Florine’s, and a few more

besides—Hector Merlin and Mme. du Val-Noble and some others. There will

be play afterwards.”

“But we are engaged to Mme. Mahoudeau this evening, dear,” put in the

wife.

“What does that matter?” returned Vernou.

“She will take offence if we don’t go; and you are very glad of her when

you have a bill to discount.”

“This wife of mine, my dear boy, can never be made to understand that a

supper engagement for twelve o’clock does not prevent you from going to

an evening party that comes to an end at eleven. She is always with me

while I work,” he added.

“You have so much imagination!” said Lucien, and thereby made a mortal

enemy of Vernou.

“Well,” continued Lousteau, “you are coming; but that is not all. M. de

Rubempré is about to be one of us, so you must push him in your paper.

Give him out for a chap that will make a name for himself in literature,

so that he can put in at least a couple of articles every month.”

“Yes, if he means to be one of us, and will attack our enemies, as

we will attack his, I will say a word for him at the Opera to-night,”

replied Vernou.

“Very well—good-bye till to-morrow, my boy,” said Lousteau, shaking

hands with every sign of cordiality. “When is your book coming out?”

“That depends on Dauriat; it is ready,” said Vernou _pater-familias_.

“Are you satisfied?”

“Yes and no——”

“We will get up a success,” said Lousteau, and he rose with a bow to his

colleague’s wife.

The abrupt departure was necessary indeed; for the two infants, engaged

in a noisy quarrel, were fighting with their spoons, and flinging the

pap in each other’s faces.

“That, my boy, is a woman who all unconsciously will work great havoc

in contemporary literature,” said Étienne, when they came away. “Poor

Vernou cannot forgive us for his wife. He ought to be relieved of her in

the interests of the public; and a deluge of blood-thirsty reviews and

stinging sarcasms against successful men of every sort would be averted.

What is to become of a man with such a wife and that pair of abominable

brats? Have you seen Rigaudin in Picard’s _La Maison en Loterie_? You

have? Well, like Rigaudin, Vernou will not fight himself, but he will

set others fighting; he would give an eye to put out both eyes in the

head of the best friend he has. You will see him using the bodies of

the slain for a stepping-stone, rejoicing over every one’s misfortunes,

attacking princes, dukes, marquises, and nobles, because he himself is

a commoner; reviling the work of unmarried men because he forsooth has

a wife; and everlastingly preaching morality, the joys of domestic life,

and the duties of the citizen. In short, this very moral critic will

spare no one, not even infants of tender age. He lives in the Rue Mandar

with a wife who might be the _Mamamouchi_ of the _Bourgeois gentilhomme_

and a couple of little Vernous as ugly as sin. He tries to snéer at

the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where he will never set foot, and makes his

duchesses talk like his wife. That is the sort of man to raise a howl

at the Jesuits, insult the Court, and credit the Court party with the

design of restoring feudal rights and the right of primogeniture—just

the one to preach a crusade for Equality, he that thinks himself the

equal of no one. If he were a bachelor, he would go into society; if he

were in a fair way to be a Royalist poet with a pension and the Cross

of the Legion of Honor, he would be an optimist, and journalism offers

starting-points by the hundred. Journalism is the giant catapult set in

motion by pigmy hatreds. Have you any wish to marry after this? Vernou

has none of the milk of human kindness in him, it is all turned to gall;

and he is emphatically the Journalist, a tiger with two hands that tears

everything to pieces, as if his pen had the hydrophobia.”

“It is a case of gunophobia,” said Lucien. “Has he ability?”

“He is witty, he is a writer of articles. He incubates articles; he does

that all his life and nothing else. The most dogged industry would fail

to graft a book on his prose. Félicien is incapable of conceiving a work

on a large scale, of broad effects, of fitting characters harmoniously

in a plot which develops till it reaches a climax. He has ideas, but

he has no knowledge of facts; his heroes are utopian creatures,

philosophical or Liberal notions masquerading. He is at pains to

write an original style, but his inflated periods would collapse at a

pin-prick from a critic; and therefore he goes in terror of reviews,

like every one else who can only keep his head above water with the

bladders of newspaper puffs.”

“What an article you are making out of him!”

“That particular kind, my boy, must be spoken, and never written.”

“You are turning editor,” said Lucien.

“Where shall I put you down?”

“At Coralie’s.”

“Ah! we are infatuated,” said Lousteau. “What a mistake! Do as I do with

Florine, let Coralie be your housekeeper, and take your fling.”

“You would send a saint to perdition,” laughed Lucien.

“Well, there is no damning a devil,” retorted Lousteau.

The flippant tone, the brilliant talk of this new friend, his views of

life, his paradoxes, the axioms of Parisian Machiavelism,—all these

things impressed Lucien unawares. Theoretically the poet knew that such

thoughts were perilous; but he believed them practically useful.

Arrived in the Boulevard du Temple, the friends agreed to meet at the

office between four and five o’clock. Hector Merlin would doubtless be

there. Lousteau was right. The infatuation of desire was upon Lucien;

for the courtesan who loves knows how to grapple her lover to her

by every weakness in his nature, fashioning herself with incredible

flexibility to his every wish, encouraging the soft, effeminate habits

which strengthen her hold. Lucien was thirsting already for enjoyment;

he was in love with the easy, luxurious, and expensive life which the

actress led.

He found Coralie and Camusot intoxicated with joy. The Gymnase offered

Coralie an engagement after Easter on terms for which she had never

dared to hope.

“And this great success is owing to you,” said Camusot.

“Yes, surely. _The Alcalde_ would have fallen flat but for him,” cried

Coralie; “if there had been no article, I should have been in for

another six years of the Boulevard theatres.”

She danced up to Lucien and flung her arms round him, putting an

indescribable silken softness and sweetness into her enthusiasm. Love

had come to Coralie. And Camusot? his eyes fell. Looking down after the

wont of mankind in moments of sharp pain, he saw the seam of Lucien’s

boots, a deep yellow thread used by the best bootmakers of that time, in

strong contrast with the glistening leather. The color of that seam had

tinged his thoughts during a previous conversation with himself, as

he sought to explain the presence of a mysterious pair of hessians in

Coralie’s fender. He remembered now that he had seen the name of “Gay,

Rue de la Michodière,” printed in black letters on the soft white kid

lining.

“You have a handsome pair of boots, sir,” he said.

“Like everything else about him,” said Coralie.

“I should be very glad of your bootmaker’s address.”

“Oh, how like the Rue des Bourdonnais to ask for a tradesman’s address,”

cried Coralie. “Do _you_ intend to patronize a young man’s bootmaker? A

nice young man you would make! Do keep to your own top-boots; they are

the kind for a steady-going man with a wife and family and a mistress.”

“Indeed, if you would take off one of your boots, sir, I should be very

much obliged,” persisted Camusot.

“I could not get it on again without a button-hook,” said Lucien,

flushing up.

“Bérénice will fetch you one; we can do with some here,” jeered Camusot.

“Papa Camusot!” said Coralie, looking at him with cruel scorn, “have the

courage of your pitiful baseness. Come, speak out! You think that this

gentleman’s boots are very like mine, do you not?—I forbid you to take

off your boots,” she added, turning to Lucien.—“Yes, M. Camusot. Yes,

you saw some boots lying about in the fender here the other day,

and that is the identical pair, and this gentleman was hiding in my

dressing-room at the time, waiting for them; and he had passed the night

here. That was what you were thinking, _hein_? Think so; I would rather

you did. It is the simple truth. I am deceiving you. And if I am? I do

it to please myself.”

She sat down. There was no anger in her face, no embarrassment; she

looked from Camusot to Lucien. The two men avoided each other’s eyes.

“I will believe nothing that you do not wish me to believe,” said

Camusot. “Don’t play with me, Coralie; I was wrong——”

“I am either a shameless baggage that has taken a sudden fancy; or a

poor, unhappy girl who feels what love really is for the first time, the

love that all women long for. And whichever way it is, you must leave

me or take me as I am,” she said, with a queenly gesture that crushed

Camusot.

“Is it really true?” he asked, seeing from their faces that this was no

jest, yet begging to be deceived.

“I love mademoiselle,” Lucien faltered out.

At that word, Coralie sprang to her poet and held him tightly to her;

then, with her arms still about him, she turned to the silk-mercer, as

if to bid him see the beautiful picture made by two young lovers.

“Poor Musot, take all that you gave to me back again; I do not want

to keep anything of yours; for I love this boy here madly, not for his

intellect, but for his beauty. I would rather starve with him than have

millions with you.”

Camusot sank into a low chair, hid his face in his hands, and said not a

word.

“Would you like us to go away?” she asked. There was a note of ferocity

in her voice which no words can describe.

Cold chills ran down Lucien’s spine; he beheld himself burdened with a

woman, an actress, and a household.

“Stay here, Coralie; keep it all,” the old tradesman said at last, in a

faint, unsteady voice that came from his heart; “I don’t want anything

back. There is the worth of sixty thousand francs here in the furniture;

but I could not bear to think of my Coralie in want. And yet, it will

not be long before you come to want. However great this gentleman’s

talent may be, he can’t afford to keep you. We old fellows must expect

this sort of thing. Coralie, let me come and see you sometimes; I may be

of use to you. And—I confess it; I cannot live without you.”

The poor man’s gentleness, stripped as he was of his happiness just as

happiness had reached its height, touched Lucien deeply. Coralie was

quite unsoftened by it.

“Come as often as you wish, poor Musot,” she said; “I shall like you all

the better when I don’t pretend to love you.”

Camusot seemed to be resigned to his fate so long as he was not driven

out of the earthly paradise, in which his life could not have been all

joy; he trusted to the chances of life in Paris and to the temptations

that would beset Lucien’s path; he would wait a while, and all that

had been his should be his again. Sooner or later, thought the wily

tradesman, this handsome young fellow would be unfaithful; he would keep

a watch on him; and the better to do this and use his opportunity with

Coralie, he would be their friend. The persistent passion that could

consent to such humiliation terrified Lucien. Camusot’s proposal of a

dinner at Véry’s in the Palais Royal was accepted.

“What joy!” cried Coralie, as soon as Camusot had departed. “You will

not go back now to your garret in the Latin Quarter; you will live here.

We shall always be together. You can take a room in the Rue Charlot for

the sake of appearances, and _vogue le galère_!”

She began to dance her Spanish dance, with an excited eagerness that

revealed the strength of the passion in her heart.

“If I work hard I may make five hundred francs a month,” Lucien said.

“And I shall make as much again at the theatre, without counting extras.

Camusot will pay for my dresses as before. He is fond of me! We can live

like Croesus on fifteen hundred francs a month.”

“And the horses? and the coachman? and the footman?” inquired Bérénice.

“I will get into debt,” said Coralie. And she began to dance with

Lucien.

“I must close with Finot after this,” Lucien exclaimed.

“There!” said Coralie, “I will dress and take you to your office. I will

wait outside in the boulevard for you with the carriage.”

Lucien sat down on the sofa and made some very sober reflections as he

watched Coralie at her toilet. It would have been wiser to leave Coralie

free than to start all at once with such an establishment; but Coralie

was there before his eyes, and Coralie was so lovely, so graceful,

so bewitching, that the more picturesque aspects of bohemia were in

evidence; and he flung down the gauntlet to fortune.

Bérénice was ordered to superintend Lucien’s removal and installation;

and Coralie, triumphant, radiant, and happy, carried off her love,

her poet, and must néeds go all over Paris on the way to the Rue

Saint-Fiacre. Lucien sprang lightly up the staircase, and entered the

office with an air of being quite at home. Coloquinte was there with

the stamped paper still on his head; and old Giroudeau told him again,

hypocritically enough, that no one had yet come in.

“But the editor and contributors _must_ meet somewhere or other to

arrange about the journal,” said Lucien.

“Very likely; but I have nothing to do with the writing of the paper,”

said the Emperor’s captain, resuming his occupation of checking off

wrappers with his eternal broum! broum!

Was it lucky or unlucky? Finot chanced to come in at that very moment

to announce his sham abdication and to bid Giroudeau watch over his

interests.

“No shilly-shally with this gentleman; he is on the staff,” Finot added

for his uncle’s benefit, as he grasped Lucien by the hand.

“Oh! is he on the paper?” exclaimed Giroudeau, much surprised at this

friendliness. “Well, sir, you came on without much difficulty.”

“I want to make things snug for you here, lest Étienne should bamboozle

you,” continued Finot, looking knowingly at Lucien. “This gentleman will

be paid three francs per column all round, including theatres.”

“You have never taken any one on such terms before,” said Giroudeau,

opening his eyes.

“And he will take the four Boulevard theatres. See that nobody sneaks

his boxes, and that he gets his share of tickets.—I should advise you,

nevertheless, to have them sent to your address,” he added, turning to

Lucien.—“And he agrees to write besides ten miscellaneous articles of

two columns each, for fifty francs per month, for one year. Does that

suit you?”

“Yes,” said Lucien. Circumstances had forced his hand.

“Draw up the agreement, uncle, and we will sign it when we come

downstairs.”

“Who is the gentleman?” inquired Giroudeau, rising and taking off his

black silk skull-cap.

“M. Lucien de Rubempré, who wrote the article on _The Alcalde_.”

“Young man, you have a gold mine _there_,” said the old soldier, tapping

Lucien on the forehead. “I am not literary myself, but I read that

article of yours, and I liked it. That is the kind of thing! There’s

gaiety for you! ‘That will bring us new subscribers,’ says I to myself.

And so it did. We sold fifty more numbers.”

“Is my agreement with Lousteau made out in duplicate and ready to sign?”

asked Finot, speaking aside.

“Yes.”

“Then ante-date this gentleman’s agreement by one day, so that Lousteau

will be bound by the previous contract.”

Finot took his new contributor’s arm with a friendliness that charmed

Lucien, and drew him out on the landing to say:—

“Your position is made for you. I will introduce you to _my_ staff

myself, and to-night Lousteau will go round with you to the theatres.

You can make a hundred and fifty francs per month on this little paper

of ours with Lousteau as its editor, so try to keep well with him. The

rogue bears a grudge against me as it is, for tying his hands so far

as you are concerned; but you have ability, and I don’t choose that you

shall be subjected to the whims of the editor. You might let me have

a couple of sheets every month for my review, and I will pay you two

hundred francs. This is between ourselves, don’t mention it to anybody

else; I should be laid open to the spite of every one whose vanity

is mortified by your good fortune. Write four articles, fill your two

sheets, sign two with your own name, and two with a pseudonym, so that

you may not seem to be taking the bread out of anybody else’s mouth.

You owe your position to Blondet and Vignon; they think that you have a

future before you. So keep out of scrapes, and, above all things, be on

your guard against your friends. As for me, we shall always get on

well together, you and I. Help me, and I will help you. You have forty

francs’ worth of boxes and tickets to sell, and sixty francs’ worth of

books to convert into cash. With that and your work on the paper, you

will be making four hundred and fifty francs every month. If you use

your wits, you will find ways of making another two hundred francs

at least among the publishers; they will pay you for reviews and

prospectuses. But you are mine, are you not? I can count upon you.”

Lucien squeezed Finot’s hand in transports of joy which no words can

express.

“Don’t let any one see that anything has passed between us,” said Finot

in his ear, and he flung open a door of a room in the roof at the end of

a long passage on the fifth floor.

A table covered with a green cloth was drawn up to a blazing fire,

and seated in various chairs and lounges Lucien discovered Lousteau,

Félicien Vernou, Hector Merlin, and two others unknown to him, all

laughing or smoking. A real inkstand, full of ink this time, stood on

the table among a great litter of papers; while a collection of pens,

the worse for wear, but still serviceable for journalists, told the new

contributor very plainly that the mighty enterprise was carried on in

this apartment.

“Gentlemen,” said Finot, “the object of this gathering is the

installation of our friend Lousteau in my place as editor of the

newspaper which I am compelled to relinquish. But although my opinions

will necessarily undergo a transformation when I accept the editorship

of a review of which the politics are known to you, my _convictions_

remain the same, and we shall be friends as before. I am quite at

your service, and you likewise will be ready to do anything for me.

Circumstances change; principles are fixed. Principles are the pivot on

which the hands of the political barometer turn.”

There was an instant shout of laughter.

“Who put that into your mouth?” asked Lousteau.

“Blondet!” said Finot.

“Windy, showery, stormy, settled fair,” said Merlin; “we will all row in

the same boat.”

“In short,” continued Finot, “not to muddle our wits with metaphors,

any one who has an article or two for me will always find Finot.—This

gentleman,” turning to Lucien, “will be one of you.—I have arranged

with him, Lousteau.”

Every one congratulated Finot on his advance and new prospects.

“So there you are, mounted on our shoulders,” said a contributor whom

Lucien did not know. “You will be the Janus of Journal——”

“So long as he isn’t the Janot,” put in Vernou.

“Are you going to allow us to make attacks on our _bêtes noires_?”

“Any one you like.”

“Ah, yes!” said Lousteau; “but the paper must keep on its lines. M.

Châtelet is very wroth; we shall not let him off for a week yet.”

“What has happened?” asked Lucien.

“He came here to ask for an explanation,” said Vernou. “The Imperial

buck found old Giroudeau at home; and old Giroudeau told him, with

all the coolness in the world, that Philippe Bridau wrote the article.

Philippe asked the Baron to mention the time and the weapons, and there

it ended. We are engaged at this moment in offering excuses to the Baron

in to-morrow’s issue. Every phrase is a stab for him.”

“Keep your teeth in him and he will come round to me,” said Finot; “and

it will look as if I were obliging him by appeasing you. He can say a

word to the Ministry, and we can get something or other out of him—an

assistant schoolmaster’s place, or a tobacconist’s license. It is a

lucky thing for us that we flicked him on the raw. Does anybody here

care to take a serious article on Nathan for my new paper?”

“Give it to Lucien,” said Lousteau. “Hector and Vernou will write

articles in their papers at the same time.”

“Good-day, gentlemen; we shall meet each other face to face at

Barbin’s,” said Finot, laughing.

Lucien received some congratulations on his admission to the mighty army

of journalists, and Lousteau explained that they could be sure of

him. “Lucien wants you all to sup in a body at the house of the fair

Coralie.”

“Coralie is going on at the Gymnase,” said Lucien.

“Very well, gentlemen; it is understood that we push Coralie, eh? Put

a few lines about her new engagement in your papers, and say something

about her talent. Credit the management of the Gymnase with tact and

discernment; will it do to say intelligence?”

“Yes, say intelligence,” said Merlin; “Frédéric has something of

Scribe’s.”

“Oh! Well, then, the manager of the Gymnase is the most perspicacious

and far-sighted of men of business,” said Vernou.

“Look here! don’t write your articles on Nathan until we have come to an

understanding; you shall hear why,” said Étienne Lousteau. “We ought

to do something for our new comrade. Lucien here has two books to bring

out—a volume of sonnets and a novel. The power of the paragraph should

make him a great poet due in three months; and we will make use of his

sonnets (_Marguerites_ is the title) to run down odes, ballads, and

reveries, and all the Romantic poetry.”

“It would be a droll thing if the sonnets were no good after all,” said

Vernou.—“What do you yourself think of your sonnets, Lucien?”

“Yes, what do you think of them?” asked one of the two whom Lucien did

not know.

“They are all right, gentlemen; I give you my word,” said Lousteau.

“Very well, that will do for me,” said Vernou; “I will heave your book

at the poets of the sacristy; I am tired of them.”

“If Dauriat declines to take the _Marguerites_ this evening, we will

attack him by pitching into Nathan.”

“But what will Nathan say?” cried Lucien.

His five colleagues burst out laughing.

“Oh! he will be delighted,” said Vernou. “You will see how we manage

these things.”

“So he is one of us?” said one of the two journalists.

“Yes, yes, Frédéric; no tricks.—We are all working for you, Lucien, you

see; you must stand by us when your turn comes. We are all friends

of Nathan’s, and we are attacking him. Now, let us divide Alexander’s

empire.—Frédéric, will you take the Français and the Odéon?”

“If these gentlemen are willing,” returned the person addressed as

Frédéric. The others nodded assent, but Lucien saw a gleam of jealousy

here and there.

“I am keeping the Opera, the Italiens, and the Opera-Comique,” put in

Vernou.

“And how about me? Am I to have no theatres at all?” asked the second

stranger.

“Oh well, Hector can let you have the Variétés, and Lucien can spare you

the Porte Saint-Martin.—Let him have the Porte Saint-Martin, Lucien,

he is wild about Fanny Beaupré; and you can take the Cirque-Olympique in

exchange. I shall have Bobino and the Funambules and Madame Saqui. Now,

what have we for to-morrow?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Gentlemen, be brilliant for my first number. The Baron du Châtelet

and his cuttlefish bone will not last for a week, and the writer of _Le

Solitaire_ is worn out.”

“And ‘Sosthenes-Demosthenes’ is stale too,” said Vernou; “everybody has

taken it up.”

“The fact is, we want a new set of ninepins,” said Frédéric.

“Suppose that we take the virtuous representatives of the Right?”

suggested Lousteau. “We might say that M. de Bonald has sweaty feet.”

“Let us begin a series of sketches of Ministerialist orators,” suggested

Hector Merlin.

“You do that, youngster; you know them; they are your own party,” said

Lousteau; “you could indulge any little private grudges of your own.

Pitch into Beugnot and Syrieys de Mayrinhac and the rest. You might have

the sketches ready in advance, and we shall have something to fall back

upon.”

“How if we invented one or two cases of refusal of burial with

aggravating circumstances?” asked Hector.

“Do not follow in the tracks of the big Constitutional papers; they have

pigeon-holes full of ecclesiastical _canards_,” retorted Vernou.

“_Canards_?” repeated Lucien.

“That is our word for a scrap of fiction told for true, put in to

enliven the column of morning news when it is flat. We owe the discovery

to Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of the lightning conductor and the

republic. That journalist completely deceived the Encyclopaedists by

his transatlantic _canards_. Raynal gives two of them for facts in his

_Histoire philosophique des Indes_.”

“I did not know that,” said Vernou. “What were the stories?”

“One was a tale about an Englishman and a negress who helped him to

escape; he sold the woman for a slave after getting her with child

himself to enhance her value. The other was the eloquent defence of a

young woman brought before the authorities for bearing a child out of

wedlock. Franklin owned to the fraud in Necker’s house when he came to

Paris, much to the confusion of French philosophism. Behold how the New

World twice set a bad example to the Old!”

“In journalism,” said Lousteau, “everything that is probable is true.

That is an axiom.”

“Criminal procedure is based on the same rule,” said Vernou.

“Very well, we meet here at nine o’clock,” and with that they rose, and

the sitting broke up with the most affecting demonstrations of intimacy

and good-will.

“What have you done to Finot, Lucien, that he should make a special

arrangement with you? You are the only one that he has bound to

himself,” said Étienne Lousteau, as they came downstairs.

“I? Nothing. It was his own proposal,” said Lucien.

“As a matter of fact, if you should make your own terms with him, I

should be delighted; we should, both of us, be the better for it.”

On the ground floor they found Finot. He stepped across to Lousteau and

asked him into the so-called private office. Giroudeau immediately put a

couple of stamped agreements before Lucien.

“Sign your agreement,” he said, “and the new editor will think the whole

thing was arranged yesterday.”

Lucien, reading the document, overheard fragments of a tolerably warm

dispute within as to the line of conduct and profits of the paper.

Étienne Lousteau wanted his share of the blackmail levied by Giroudeau;

and, in all probability, the matter was compromised, for the pair came

out perfectly good friends.

“We will meet at Dauriat’s, Lucien, in the Wooden Galleries at eight

o’clock,” said Étienne Lousteau.

A young man appeared, meanwhile, in search of employment, wearing the

same nervous shy look with which Lucien himself had come to the office

so short a while ago; and in his secret soul Lucien felt amused as

he watched Giroudeau playing off the same tactics with which the old

campaigner had previously foiled him. Self-interest opened his eyes to

the necessity of the manoeuvres which raised well-nigh insurmountable

barriers between beginners and the upper room where the elect were

gathered together.

“Contributors don’t get very much as it is,” he said, addressing

Giroudeau.

“If there were more of you, there would be so much less,” retorted the

captain. “So there!”

The old campaigner swung his loaded cane, and went down coughing as

usual. Out in the street he was amazed to see a handsome carriage

waiting on the boulevard for Lucien.

“_You_ are the army nowadays,” he said, “and we are the civilians.”

“Upon my word,” said Lucien, as he drove away with Coralie, “these young

writers seem to me to be the best fellows alive. Here am I a journalist,

sure of making six hundred francs a month if I work like a horse. But I

shall find a publisher for my two books, and I will write others; for my

friends will insure a success. And so, Coralie, ‘_vogue le galère_!’ as

you say.”

“You will make your way, dear boy; but you must not be as good-natured

as you are good-looking; it would be the ruin of you. Be ill-natured,

that is the proper thing.”

Coralie and Lucien drove in the Bois de Boulogne, and again they met the

Marquise d’Espard, Mme. de Bargeton and the Baron du Châtelet. Mme.

de Bargeton gave Lucien a languishing glance which might be taken as

a greeting. Camusot had ordered the best possible dinner; and Coralie,

feeling that she was rid of her adorer, was more charming to the poor

silk-mercer than she had ever been in the fourteen months during

which their connection lasted; he had never seen her so kindly, so

enchantingly lovely.

“Come,” he thought, “let us keep near her anyhow!”

In consequence, Camusot made secret overtures. He promised Coralie an

income of six thousand livres; he would transfer the stock in the funds

into her name (his wife knew nothing about the investment) if only she

would consent to be his mistress still. He would shut his eyes to her

lover.

“And betray such an angel?... Why, just look at him, you old fossil, and

look at yourself!” and her eyes turned to her poet. Camusot had pressed

Lucien to drink till the poet’s head was rather cloudy.

There was no help for it; Camusot made up his mind to wait till sheer

want should give him this woman a second time.

“Then I can only be your friend,” he said, as he kissed her on the

forehead.

Lucien went from Coralie and Camusot to the Wooden Galleries. What a

change had been wrought in his mind by his initiation into Journalism!

He mixed fearlessly now with the crowd which surged to and fro in the

buildings; he even swaggered a little because he had a mistress; and

he walked into Dauriat’s shop in an offhand manner because he was a

journalist.

He found himself among distinguished men; gave a hand to Blondet

and Nathan and Finot, and to all the coterie with whom he had been

fraternizing for a week. He was a personage, he thought, and he

flattered himself that he surpassed his comrades. That little flick

of the wine did him admirable service; he was witty, he showed that he

could “howl with the wolves.”

And yet, the tacit approval, the praises spoken and unspoken on which

he had counted, were not forthcoming. He noticed the first stirrings of

jealousy among a group, less curious, perhaps, than anxious to know

the place which this newcomer might take, and the exact portion of the

sum-total of profits which he would probably secure and swallow. Lucien

only saw smiles on two faces—Finot, who regarded him as a mine to be

exploited, and Lousteau, who considered that he had proprietary rights

in the poet, looked glad to see him. Lousteau had begun already to

assume the airs of an editor; he tapped sharply on the window-panes of

Dauriat’s private office.

“One moment, my friend,” cried a voice within as the publisher’s face

appeared above the green curtains.

The moment lasted an hour, and finally Lucien and Étienne were admitted

into the sanctum.

“Well, have you thought over our friend’s proposal?” asked Étienne

Lousteau, now an editor.

“To be sure,” said Dauriat, lolling like a sultan in his chair. “I have

read the volume. And I submitted it to a man of taste, a good judge; for

I don’t pretend to understand these things myself. I myself, my

friend, buy reputations ready-made, as the Englishman bought his love

affairs.—You are as great as a poet as you are handsome as a man, my

boy,” pronounced Dauriat. “Upon my word and honor (I don’t tell you that

as a publisher, mind), your sonnets are magnificent; no sign of effort

about them, as is natural when a man writes with inspiration and verve.

You know your craft, in fact, one of the good points of the new school.

Your volume of _Marguerites_ is a fine book, but there is no business in

it, and it is not worth my while to meddle with anything but a very big

affair. In conscience, I won’t take your sonnets. It would be impossible

to push them; there is not enough in the thing to pay the expenses of

a big success. You will not keep to poetry besides; this book of yours

will be your first and last attempt of the kind. You are young; you

bring me the everlasting volume of early verse which every man of

letters writes when he leaves school, he thinks a lot of it at the time,

and laughs at it later on. Lousteau, your friend, has a poem put away

somewhere among his old socks, I’ll warrant. Haven’t you a poem that you

thought a good deal of once, Lousteau?” inquired Dauriat, with a knowing

glance at the other.

“How should I be writing prose otherwise, eh?” asked Lousteau.

“There, you see! He has never said a word to me about it, for our friend

understands business and the trade,” continued Dauriat. “For me the

question is not whether you are a great poet, I know that,” he added,

stroking down Lucien’s pride; “you have a great deal, a very great deal

of merit; if I were only just starting in business, I should make the

mistake of publishing your book. But in the first place, my sleeping

partners and those at the back of me are cutting off my supplies; I

dropped twenty thousand francs over poetry last year, and that is enough

for them; they will not hear of any more just now, and they are my

masters. Nevertheless, that is not the question. I admit that you may be

a great poet, but will you be a prolific writer? Will you hatch sonnets

regularly? Will you run into ten volumes? Is there business in it? Of

course not. You will be a delightful prose writer; you have too much

sense to spoil your style with tagging rhymes together. You have a

chance to make thirty thousand francs per annum by writing for the

papers, and you will not exchange that chance for three thousand

francs made with difficulty by your hemistiches and strophes and

tomfoolery——”

“You know that he is on the paper, Dauriat?” put in Lousteau.

“Yes,” Dauriat answered. “Yes, I saw his article, and in his own

interests I decline the _Marguerites_. Yes, sir, in six months’ time I

shall have paid you more money for the articles that I shall ask you to

write than for your poetry that will not sell.”

“And fame?” said Lucien.

Dauriat and Lousteau laughed.

“Oh dear!” said Lousteau, “there be illusions left.”

“Fame means ten years of sticking to work, and a hundred thousand francs

lost or made in the publishing trade. If you find anybody mad enough to

print your poetry for you, you will feel some respect for me in

another twelvemonth, when you have had time to see the outcome of the

transaction.”

“Have you the manuscript here?” Lucien asked coldly.

“Here it is, my friend,” said Dauriat. The publisher’s manner towards

Lucien had sweetened singularly.

Lucien took up the roll without looking at the string, so sure he felt

that Dauriat had read his _Marguerites_. He went out with Lousteau,

seemingly neither disconcerted nor dissatisfied. Dauriat went with them

into the shop, talking of his newspaper and Lousteau’s daily, while

Lucien played with the manuscript of the _Marguerites_.

“Do you suppose that Dauriat has read your sonnets or sent them to any

one else?” Étienne Lousteau snatched an opportunity to whisper.

“Yes,” said Lucien.

“Look at the string.” Lucien looked down at the blot of ink, and saw

that the mark on the string still coincided; he turned white with rage.

“Which of the sonnets was it that you particularly liked?” he asked,

turning to the publisher.

“They are all of them remarkable, my friend; but the sonnet on the

_Marguerite_ is delightful, the closing thought is fine, and exquisitely

expressed. I felt sure from that sonnet that your prose work would

command a success, and I spoke to Finot about you at once. Write

articles for us, and we will pay you well for them. Fame is a very fine

thing, you see, but don’t forget the practical and solid, and take every

chance that turns up. When you have made money, you can write poetry.”

The poet dashed out of the shop to avoid an explosion. He was furious.

Lousteau followed.

“Well, my boy, pray keep cool. Take men as they are—for means to an

end. Do you wish for revenge?”

“At any price,” muttered the poet.

“Here is a copy of Nathan’s book. Dauriat has just given it to me. The

second edition is coming out to-morrow; read the book again, and knock

off an article demolishing it. Félicien Vernou cannot endure Nathan, for

he thinks that Nathan’s success will injure his own forthcoming book. It

is a craze with these little minds to fancy that there is not room for

two successes under the sun; so he will see that your article finds a

place in the big paper for which he writes.”

“But what is there to be said against the book; it is good work!” cried

Lucien.

“Oh, I say! you must learn your trade,” said Lousteau, laughing. “Given

that the book was a masterpiece, under the stroke of your pen it must

turn to dull trash, dangerous and unwholesome stuff.”

“But how?”

“You turn all the good points into bad ones.”

“I am incapable of such a juggler’s feat.”

“My dear boy, a journalist is a juggler; a man must make up his mind to

the drawbacks of the calling. Look here! I am not a bad fellow; this

is the way _I_ should set to work myself. Attention! You might begin by

praising the book, and amuse yourself a while by saying what you really

think. ‘Good,’ says the reader, ‘this critic is not jealous; he will be

impartial, no doubt,’ and from that point your public will think that

your criticism is a piece of conscientious work. Then, when you have

won your reader’s confidence, you will regret that you must blame the

tendency and influence of such work upon French literature. ‘Does

not France,’ you will say, ‘sway the whole intellectual world? French

writers have kept Europe in the path of analysis and philosophical

criticism from age to age by their powerful style and the original turn

given by them to ideas.’ Here, for the benefit of the philistine, insert

a panegyric on Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Buffon.

Hold forth upon the inexorable French language; show how it spreads a

varnish, as it were, over thought. Let fall a few aphorisms, such

as—‘A great writer in France is invariably a great man; he writes in

a language which compels him to think; it is otherwise in other

countries’—and so on, and so on. Then, to prove your case, draw a

comparison between Rabener, the German satirical moralist, and La

Bruyère. Nothing gives a critic such an air as an apparent familiarity

with foreign literature. Kant is Cousin’s pedestal.

“Once on that ground you bring out a word which sums up the French men

of genius of the eighteenth century for the benefit of simpletons—you

call that literature the ‘literature of ideas.’ Armed with this

expression, you fling all the mighty dead at the heads of the

illustrious living. You explain that in the present day a new form of

literature has sprung up; that dialogue (the easiest form of writing)

is overdone, and description dispenses with any néed for thinking on

the part of the author or reader. You bring up the fiction of Voltaire,

Diderot, Sterne, and Le Sage, so trenchant, so compact of the stuff of

life; and turn from them to the modern novel, composed of scenery and

word-pictures and metaphor and the dramatic situations, of which Scott

is full. Invention may be displayed in such work, but there is no room

for anything else. ‘The romance after the manner of Scott is a mere

passing fashion in literature,’ you will say, and fulminate against the

fatal way in which ideas are diluted and beaten thin; cry out against a

style within the reach of any intellect, for any one can commence author

at small expense in a way of literature, which you can nickname the

‘literature of imagery.’

“Then you fall upon Nathan with your argument, and establish it beyound

cavil that he is a mere imitator with an appearance of genius. The

concise grand style of the eighteenth century is lacking; you show that

the author substitutes events for sentiments. Action and stir is not

life; he gives you pictures, but no ideas.

“Come out with such phrases, and people will take them up.—In spite of

the merits of the work, it seems to you to be a dangerous, nay, a fatal

precedent. It throws open the gates of the temple of Fame to the crowd;

and in the distance you descry a legion of petty authors hastening to

imitate this novel and easy style of writing.

“Here you launch out into resounding lamentations over the decadence

and decline of taste, and slip in eulogies of Messieurs Étienne Jouy,

Tissot, Gosse, Duval, Jay, Benjamin Constant, Aignan, Baour-Lormian,

Villemain, and the whole Liberal-Bonapartist chorus who patronize

Vernou’s paper. Next you draw a picture of that glorious phalanx of

writers repelling the invasion of the Romantics; these are the upholders

of ideas and style as against metaphor and balderdash; the modern

representatives of the school of Voltaire as opposed to the English and

German schools, even as the seventeen heroic deputies of the Left fought

the battle for the nation against the Ultras of the Right.

“And then, under cover of names respected by the immense majority of

Frenchmen (who will always be against the Government), you can crush

Nathan; for although his work is far above the average, it confirms

the bourgeois taste for literature without ideas. And after that, you

understand, it is no longer a question of Nathan and his book, but

of France and the glory of France. It is the duty of all honest

and courageous pens to make strenuous opposition to these foreign

importations. And with that you flatter your readers. Shrewd French

mother-wit is not easily caught napping. If publishers, by ways which

you do not choose to specify, have stolen a success, the reading public

very soon judges for itself, and corrects the mistakes made by some five

hundred fools, who always rush to the fore.

“Say that the publisher who sold a first edition of the book is

audacious indeed to issue a second, and express regret that so clever a

man does not know the taste of the country better. There is the gist of

it. Just a sprinkle of the salt of wit and a dash of vinegar to bring

out the flavor, and Dauriat will be done to a turn. But mind that you

end with seeming to pity Nathan for a mistake, and speak of him as of

a man from whom contemporary literature may look for great things if he

renounces these ways.”

Lucien was amazed at this talk from Lousteau. As the journalist spoke,

the scales fell from his eyes; he beheld new truths of which he had

never before caught so much as a glimpse.

“But all this that you are saying is quite true and just,” said he.