and he will believe in all the rest. A publisher asks to see your
manuscript, and gives you to understand that he is going to read it. Why
disturb his harmless vanity? They never read a manuscript; they would
not publish so many if they did. Well, Hector and I allowed it to leak
out that you might consider an offer of five thousand francs for three
thousand copies, in two editions. Let me have your _Archer_; the day
after to-morrow we are to breakfast with the publishers, and we will get
the upper hand of them.”
“Who are they?” asked Lucien.
“Two partners named Fendant and Cavalier; they are two good fellows,
pretty straightforward in business. One of them used to be with Vidal
and Porchon, the other is the cleverest hand on the Quai des Augustins.
They only started in business last year, and have lost a little on
translations of English novels; so now my gentlemen have a mind to
exploit the native product. There is a rumor current that those dealers
in spoiled white paper are trading on other people’s capital; but I
don’t think it matters very much to you who finds the money, so long as
you are paid.”
Two days later, the pair went to a breakfast in the Rue Serpente, in
Lucien’s old quarter of Paris. Lousteau still kept his room in the
Rue de la Harpe; and it was in the same state as before, but this
time Lucien felt no surprise; he had been initiated into the life of
journalism; he knew all its ups and downs. Since that evening of his
introduction to the Wooden Galleries, he had been paid for many an
article, and gambled away the money along with the desire to write.
He had filled columns, not once but many times, in the ingenious ways
described by Lousteau on that memorable evening as they went to the
Palais Royal. He was dependent upon Barbet and Braulard; he trafficked
in books and theatre-tickets; he shrank no longer from any attack, from
writing any panegyric; and at this moment he was in some sort rejoicing
to make all he could out of Lousteau before turning his back on the
Liberals. His intimate knowledge of the party would stand him in good
stead in future. And Lousteau, on his side, was privately receiving five
hundred francs of purchase-money, under the name of commission, from
Fendant and Cavalier for introducing the future Sir Walter Scott to two
enterprising tradesmen in search of a French Author of “Waverley.”
The firm of Fendant and Cavalier had started in business without any
capital whatsoever. A great many publishing houses were established at
that time in the same way, and are likely to be established so long as
papermakers and printers will give credit for the time required to play
some seven or eight of the games of chance called “new publications.” At
that time, as at present, the author’s copyright was paid for in bills
at six, nine, and twelve months—a method of payment determined by the
custom of the trade, for booksellers settle accounts between themselves
by bills at even longer dates. Papermakers and printers are paid in the
same way, so that in practice the publisher-bookseller has a dozen or a
score of works on sale for a twelvemonth before he pays for them. Even
if only two or three of these hit the public taste, the profitable
speculations pay for the bad, and the publisher pays his way by
grafting, as it were, one book upon another. But if all of them turn out
badly; or if, for his misfortune, the publisher-bookseller happens to
bring out some really good literature which stays on hand until the
right public discovers and appreciates it; or if it costs too much to
discount the paper that he receives, then, resignedly, he files his
schedule, and becomes a bankrupt with an untroubled mind. He was
prepared all along for something of the kind. So, all the chances being
in favor of the publishers, they staked other people’s money, not their
own, upon the gaming-table of business speculation.
This was the case with Fendant and Cavalier. Cavalier brought his
experience, Fendant his industry; the capital was a joint-stock affair,
and very accurately described by that word, for it consisted in a few
thousand francs scraped together with difficulty by the mistresses of
the pair. Out of this fund they allowed each other a fairly handsome
salary, and scrupulously spent it all in dinners to journalists and
authors, or at the theatre, where their business was transacted, as they
said. This questionably honest couple were both supposed to be clever
men of business, but Fendant was more slippery than Cavalier. Cavalier,
true to his name, traveled about, Fendant looked after business in
Paris. A partnership between two publishers is always more or less of a
duel, and so it was with Fendant and Cavalier.
They had brought out plenty of romances already, such as the _Tour
du Nord_, _Le Marchand de Benares_, _La Fontaine du Sépulcre_, and
_Tékéli_, translations of the works of Galt, an English novelist who
never attained much popularity in France. The success of translations of
Scott had called the attention of the trade to English novels. The
race of publishers, all agog for a second Norman conquest, were seeking
industriously for a second Scott, just as at a rather later day every
one must néeds look for asphalt in stony soil, or bitumen in marshes,
and speculate in projected railways. The stupidity of the Paris
commercial world is conspicuous in these attempts to do the same thing
twice, for success lies in contraries; and in Paris, of all places in
the world, success spoils success. So beneath the title of _Strelitz,
or Russia a Hundred Years Ago_, Fendant and Cavalier rashly added in big
letters the words, “In the style of Scott.”
Fendant and Cavalier were in great néed of a success. A single good book
might float their sunken bales, they thought; and there was the alluring
prospect besides of articles in the newspapers, the great way of
promoting sales in those days. A book is very seldom bought and sold
for its just value, and purchases are determined by considerations quite
other than the merits of the work. So Fendant and Cavalier thought of
Lucien as a journalist, and of his book as a salable article, which
would help them to tide over their monthly settlement.
The partners occupied the ground floor of one of the great old-fashioned
houses in the Rue Serpente; their private office had been contrived at
the further end of a suite of large drawing-rooms, now converted into
warehouses for books. Lucien and Étienne found the publishers in their
office, the agreement drawn up, and the bills ready. Lucien wondered at
such prompt action.
Fendant was short and thin, and by no means reassuring of aspect. With
his low, narrow forehead, sunken nose, and hard mouth, he looked like
a Kalmuck Tartar; a pair of small, wide-awake black eyes, the crabbed
irregular outline of his countenance, a voice like a cracked bell—the
man’s whole appearance, in fact, combined to give the impression that
this was a consummate rascal. A honeyed tongue compensated for these
disadvantages, and he gained his ends by talk. Cavalier, a stout,
thick-set young fellow, looked more like the driver of a mail coach than
a publisher; he had hair of a sandy color, a fiery red countenance, and
the heavy build and untiring tongue of a commercial traveler.
“There is no néed to discuss this affair,” said Fendant, addressing
Lucien and Lousteau. “I have read the work, it is very literary, and so
exactly the kind of thing we want, that I have sent it off as it is to
the printer. The agreement is drawn on the lines laid down, and besides,
we always make the same stipulations in all cases. The bills fall due
in six, nine, and twelve months respectively; you will meet with no
difficulty in discounting them, and we will refund you the discount. We
have reserved the right of giving a new title to the book. We don’t
care for _The Archer of Charles IX._; it doesn’t tickle the reader’s
curiosity sufficiently; there were several kings of that name, you
see, and there were so many archers in the Middle Ages. If you had only
called it the _Soldier of Napoleon_, now! But _The Archer of Charles
IX._!—why, Cavalier would have to give a course of history lessons
before he could place a copy anywhere in the provinces.”
“If you but knew the class of people that we have to do with!” exclaimed
Cavalier.
“_Saint Bartholomew_ would suit better,” continued Fendant.
“_Catherine de’ Medici, or France under Charles IX._, would sound more
like one of Scott’s novels,” added Cavalier.
“We will settle it when the work is printed,” said Fendant.
“Do as you please, so long as I approve your title,” said Lucien.
The agreement was read over, signed in duplicate, and each of the
contracting parties took their copy. Lucien put the bills in his pocket
with unequaled satisfaction, and the four repaired to Fendant’s abode,
where they breakfasted on beefsteaks and oysters, kidneys in champagne,
and Brie cheese; but if the fare was something of the homeliest, the
wines were exquisite; Cavalier had an acquaintance a traveler in the
wine trade. Just as they sat down to table the printer appeared, to
Lucien’s surprise, with the first two proof-sheets.
“We want to get on with it,” Fendant said; “we are counting on your
book; we want a success confoundedly badly.”
The breakfast, begun at noon, lasted till five o’clock.
“Where shall we get cash for these things?” asked Lucien as they came
away, somewhat heated and flushed with the wine.
“We might try Barbet,” suggested Étienne, and they turned down to the
Quai des Augustins.
“Coralie is astonished to the highest degree over Florine’s loss.
Florine only told her about it yesterday; she seemed to lay the blame of
it on you, and was so vexed, that she was ready to throw you over.”
“That’s true,” said Lousteau. Wine had got the better of prudence, and
he unbosomed himself to Lucien, ending up with: “My friend—for you are
my friend, Lucien; you lent me a thousand francs, and you have only
once asked me for the money—shun play! If I had never touched a card, I
should be a happy man. I owe money all round. At this moment I have
the bailiffs at my heels; indeed, when I go to the Palais Royal, I have
dangerous capes to double.”
In the language of the fast set, doubling a cape meant dodging a
creditor, or keeping out of his way. Lucien had not heard the expression
before, but he was familiar with the practice by this time.
“Are your debts so heavy?”
“A mere trifle,” said Lousteau. “A thousand crowns would pull me
through. I have resolved to turn steady and give up play, and I have
done a little ‘chantage’ to pay my debts.”
“What is ‘chantage’?” asked Lucien.
“It is an English invention recently imported. A ‘chanteur’ is a man
who can manage to put a paragraph in the papers—never an editor nor a
responsible man, for they are not supposed to know anything about it,
and there is always a Giroudeau or a Philippe Bridau to be found. A
bravo of this stamp finds up somebody who has his own reasons for not
wanting to be talked about. Plenty of people have a few peccadilloes, or
some more or less original sin, upon their consciences; there are plenty
of fortunes made in ways that would not bear looking into; sometimes
a man has kept the letter of the law, and sometimes he has not; and
in either case, there is a tidbit of tattle for the inquirer, as, for
instance, that tale of Fouché’s police surrounding the spies of the
Prefect of Police, who, not being in the secret of the fabrication of
forged English banknotes, were just about to pounce on the clandestine
printers employed by the Minister, or there is the story of Prince
Galathionne’s diamonds, the Maubreuil affair, or the Pombreton will
case. The ‘chanteur’ gets possession of some compromising letter,
asks for an interview; and if the man that made the money does not buy
silence, the ‘chanteur’ draws a picture of the press ready to take the
matter up and unravel his private affairs. The rich man is frightened,
he comes down with the money, and the trick succeeds.
“You are committed to some risky venture, which might easily be written
down in a series of articles; a ‘chanteur’ waits upon you, and offers to
withdraw the articles—for a consideration. ‘Chanteurs’ are sent to
men in office, who will bargain that their acts and not their private
characters are to be attacked, or they are heedless of their
characters, and anxious only to shield the woman they love. One of your
acquaintance, that charming Master of Requests des Lupeaulx, is a kind
of agent for affairs of this sort. The rascal has made a position for
himself in the most marvelous way in the very centre of power; he is the
middle-man of the press and the ambassador of the Ministers; he works
upon a man’s self-love; he bribes newspapers to pass over a loan in
silence, or to make no comment on a contract which was never put up for
public tender, and the jackals of Liberal bankers get a share out of it.
That was a bit of ‘chantage’ that you did with Dauriat; he gave you a
thousand crowns to let Nathan alone. In the eighteenth century, when
journalism was still in its infancy, this kind of blackmail was levied
by pamphleteers in the pay of favorites and great lords. The original
inventor was Pietro Aretino, a great Italian. Kings went in fear of him,
as stage-players go in fear of a newspaper to-day.”
“What did you do to the Matifat to make the thousand crowns?”
“I attacked Florine in half a dozen papers. Florine complained to
Matifat. Matifat went to Braulard to find out what the attacks meant.
I did my ‘chantage’ for Finot’s benefit, and Finot put Braulard on the
wrong scent; Braulard told the man of drugs that _you_ were demolishing
Florine in Coralie’s interest. Then Giroudeau went round to Matifat and
told him (in confidence) that the whole business could be accommodated
if he (Matifat) would consent to sell his sixth share in Finot’s review
for ten thousand francs. Finot was to give me a thousand crowns if
the dodge succeeded. Well, Matifat was only too glad to get back
ten thousand francs out of the thirty thousand invested in a risky
speculation, as he thought, for Florine had been telling him for several
days past that Finot’s review was doing badly; and, instead of paying a
dividend, something was said of calling up more capital. So Matifat
was just about to close with the offer, when the manager of the
Panorama-Dramatique comes to him with some accommodation bills that he
wanted to negotiate before filing his schedule. To induce Matifat to
take them of him, he let out a word of Finot’s trick. Matifat, being a
shrewd man of business, took the hint, held tight to his sixth, and is
laughing in his sleeve at us. Finot and I are howling with despair. We
have been so misguided as to attack a man who has no affection for
his mistress, a heartless, soulless wretch. Unluckily, too, for us,
Matifat’s business is not amenable to the jurisdiction of the press, and
he cannot be made to smart for it through his interests. A druggist is
not like a hatter or a milliner, or a theatre or a work of art; he is
above criticism; you can’t run down his opium and dyewoods, nor cocoa
beans, paint, and pepper. Florine is at her wits’ end; the Panorama
closes to-morrow, and what will become of her she does not know.”
“Coralie’s engagement at the Gymnase begins in a few days,” said Lucien;
“she might do something for Florine.”
“Not she!” said Lousteau. “Coralie is not clever, but she is not quite
simple enough to help herself to a rival. We are in a mess with a
vengeance. And Finot is in such a hurry to buy back his sixth——”
“Why?”
“It is a capital bit of business, my dear fellow. There is a chance of
selling the paper for three hundred thousand francs; Finot would have
one-third, and his partners besides are going to pay him a commission,
which he will share with des Lupeaulx. So I propose to do another turn
of ‘chantage.’”
“‘Chantage’ seems to mean your money or your life?”
“It is better than that,” said Lousteau; “it is your money or your
character. A short time ago the proprietor of a minor newspaper was
refused credit. The day before yesterday it was announced in his columns
that a gold repeater set with diamonds belonging to a certain notability
had found its way in a curious fashion into the hands of a private
soldier in the Guards; the story promised to the readers might have come
from the _Arabian Nights_. The notability lost no time in asking that
editor to dine with him; the editor was distinctly a gainer by the
transaction, and contemporary history has lost an anecdote. Whenever the
press makes vehement onslaughts upon some one in power, you may be sure
that there is some refusal to do a service behind it. Blackmailing with
regard to private life is the terror of the richest Englishman, and a
great source of wealth to the press in England, which is infinitely more
corrupt than ours. We are children in comparison! In England they
will pay five or six thousand francs for a compromising letter to sell
again.”
“Then how can you lay hold of Matifat?” asked Lucien.
“My dear boy, that low tradesman wrote the queerest letters to Florine;
the spelling, style, and matter of them is ludicrous to the last degree.
We can strike him in the very midst of his Lares and Penates, where he
feels himself safest, without so much as mentioning his name; and he
cannot complain, for he lives in fear and terror of his wife. Imagine
his wrath when he sees the first number of a little serial entitled the
_Amours of a Druggist_, and is given fair warning that his love-letters
have fallen into the hands of certain journalists. He talks about the
‘little god Cupid,’ he tells Florine that she enables him to cross the
desert of life (which looks as if he took her for a camel), and
spells ‘never’ with two v’s. There is enough in that immensely funny
correspondence to bring an influx of subscribers for a fortnight. He
will shake in his shoes lest an anonymous letter should supply his wife
with the key to the riddle. The question is whether Florine will consent
to appear to persecute Matifat. She has some principles, which is to
say, some hopes, still left. Perhaps she means to keep the letters and
make something for herself out of them. She is cunning, as befits
my pupil. But as soon as she finds out that a bailiff is no laughing
matter, or Finot gives her a suitable present or hopes of an engagement,
she will give me the letters, and I will sell them to Finot. Finot will
put the correspondence in his uncle’s hands, and Giroudeau will bring
Matifat to terms.”
These confidences sobered Lucien. His first thought was that he had some
extremely dangerous friends; his second, that it would be impolitic to
break with them; for if Mme. d’Espard, Mme. de Bargeton, and Châtelet
should fail to keep their word with him, he might néed their terrible
power yet. By this time Étienne and Lucien had reached Barbet’s
miserable bookshop on the Quai. Étienne addressed Barbet:
“We have five thousand francs’ worth of bills at six, nine, and twelve
months, given by Fendant and Cavalier. Are you willing to discount them
for us?”
“I will give you three thousand francs for them,” said Barbet with
imperturbable coolness.
“Three thousand francs!” echoed Lucien.
“Nobody else will give you as much,” rejoined the bookseller. “The firm
will go bankrupt before three months are out; but I happen to know that
they have some good books that are hanging on hand; they cannot afford
to wait, so I shall buy their stock for cash and pay them with their own
bills, and get the books at a reduction of two thousand francs. That’s
how it is.”
“Do you mind losing a couple of thousand francs, Lucien?” asked
Lousteau.
“Yes!” Lucien answered vehemently. He was dismayed by this first rebuff.
“You are making a mistake,” said Étienne.
“You won’t find any one that will take their paper,” said Barbet. “Your
book is their last stake, sir. The printer will not trust them; they are
obliged to leave the copies in pawn with him. If they make a hit now, it
will only stave off bankruptcy for another six months, sooner or later
they will have to go. They are cleverer at tippling than at bookselling.
In my own case, their bills mean business; and that being so, I can
afford to give more than a professional discounter who simply looks at
the signatures. It is a bill-discounter’s business to know whether
the three names on a bill are each good for thirty per cent in case of
bankruptcy. And here at the outset you only offer two signatures, and
neither of them worth ten per cent.”
The two journalists exchanged glances in surprise. Here was a little
scrub of a bookseller putting the essence of the art and mystery of
bill-discounting in these few words.
“That will do, Barbet,” said Lousteau. “Can you tell us of a bill-broker
that will look at us?”
“There is Daddy Chaboisseau, on the Quai Saint-Michel, you know. He
tided Fendant over his last monthly settlement. If you won’t listen to
my offer, you might go and see what he says to you; but you would only
come back to me, and then I shall offer you two thousand francs instead
of three.”
Étienne and Lucien betook themselves to the Quai Saint-Michel, and
found Chaboisseau in a little house with a passage entry. Chaboisseau,
a bill-discounter, whose dealings were principally with the book trade,
lived in a second-floor lodging furnished in the most eccentric manner.
A brevet-rank banker and millionaire to boot, he had a taste for the
classical style. The cornice was in the classical style; the bedstead,
in the purest classical taste, dated from the time of the Empire, when
such things were in fashion; the purple hangings fell over the wall
like the classic draperies in the background of one of David’s pictures.
Chairs and tables, lamps and sconces, and every least detail had
evidently been sought with patient care in furniture warehouses. There
was the elegance of antiquity about the classic revival as well as its
fragile and somewhat arid grace. The man himself, like his manner of
life, was in grotesque contrast with the airy mythological look of his
rooms; and it may be remarked that the most eccentric characters are
found among men who give their whole energies to money-making.
Men of this stamp are, in a certain sense, intellectual libertines.
Everything is within their reach, consequently their fancy is jaded,
and they will make immense efforts to shake off their indifference. The
student of human nature can always discover some hobby, some accessible
weakness and sensitive spot in their heart. Chaboisseau might have
entrenched himself in antiquity as in an impregnable camp.
“The man will be an antique to match, no doubt,” said Étienne, smiling.
Chaboisseau, a little old person with powdered hair, wore a greenish
coat and snuff-brown waistcoat; he was tricked out besides in black
small-clothes, ribbed stockings, and shoes that creaked as he came
forward to take the bills. After a short scrutiny, he returned them to
Lucien with a serious countenance.
“MM Fendant and Cavalier are delightful young fellows; they have plenty
of intelligence; but, I have no money,” he said blandly.
“My friend here would be willing to meet you in the matter of
discount——” Étienne began.
“I would not take the bills on any consideration,” returned the little
broker. The words slid down upon Lousteau’s suggestion like the blade of
the guillotine on a man’s neck.
The two friends withdrew; but as Chaboisseau went prudently out with
them across the ante-chamber, Lucien noticed a pile of second-hand
books. Chaboisseau had been in the trade, and this was a recent
purchase. Shining conspicuous among them, he noticed a copy of a work
by the architect Ducereau, which gives exceedingly accurate plans of
various royal palaces and châteaux in France.
“Could you let me have that book?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Chaboisseau, transformed into a bookseller.
“How much?”
“Fifty francs.”
“It is dear, but I want it. And I can only pay you with one of the bills
which you refuse to take.”
“You have a bill there for five hundred francs at six months; I will
take that one of you,” said Chaboisseau.
Apparently at the last statement of accounts, there had been a balance
of five hundred francs in favor of Fendant and Cavalier.
They went back to the classical department. Chaboisseau made out a
little memorandum, interest so much and commission so much, total
deduction thirty francs, then he subtracted fifty francs for Ducerceau’s
book; finally, from a cash-box full of coin, he took four hundred and
twenty francs.
“Look here, though, M. Chaboisseau, the bills are either all of them
good, or all bad alike; why don’t you take the rest?”
“This is not discounting; I am paying myself for a sale,” said the old
man.
Étienne and Lucien were still laughing at Chaboisseau, without
understanding him, when they reached Dauriat’s shop, and Étienne asked
Gabusson to give them the name of a bill-broker. Gabusson thus appealed
to gave them a letter of introduction to a broker in the Boulevard
Poissonnière, telling them at the same time that this was the “oddest
and queerest party” (to use his own expression) that he, Gabusson,
had come across. The friends took a cab by the hour, and went to the
address.
“If Samanon won’t take your bills,” Gabusson had said, “nobody else will
look at them.”
A second-hand bookseller on the ground floor, a second-hand
clothes-dealer on the first story, and a seller of indecent prints on
the second, Samanon carried on a fourth business—he was a
money-lender into the bargain. No character in Hoffmann’s romances, no
sinister-brooding miser of Scott’s, can compare with this freak of human
and Parisian nature (always admitting that Samanon was human). In spite
of himself, Lucien shuddered at the sight of the dried-up little old
creature, whose bones seemed to be cutting a leather skin, spotted with
all sorts of little green and yellow patches, like a portrait by Titian
or Veronese when you look at it closely. One of Samanon’s eyes was fixed
and glassy, the other lively and bright; he seemed to keep that dead eye
for the bill-discounting part of his profession, and the other for the
trade in the pornographic curiosities upstairs. A few stray white hairs
escaping from under a small, sleek, rusty black wig, stood erect above a
sallow forehead with a suggestion of menace about it; a hollow trench in
either cheek defined the outline of the jaws; while a set of projecting
teeth, still white, seemed to stretch the skin of the lips with the
effect of an equine yawn. The contrast between the ill-assorted eyes
and grinning mouth gave Samanon a passably ferocious air; and the very
bristles on the man’s chin looked stiff and sharp as pins.
Nor was there the slightest sign about him of any desire to redeem a
sinister appearance by attention to the toilet; his threadbare jacket
was all but dropping to pieces; a cravat, which had once been black, was
frayed by contact with a stubble chin, and left on exhibition a throat
as wrinkled as a turkey-gobbler’s.
This was the individual whom Étienne and Lucien discovered in his filthy
counting-house, busily affixing tickets to the backs of a parcel
of books from a recent sale. In a glance, the friends exchanged the
innumerable questions raised by the existence of such a creature; then
they presented Gabusson’s introduction and Fendant and Cavalier’s bills.
Samanon was still reading the note when a third comer entered, the
wearer of a short jacket, which seemed in the dimly-lighted shop to be
cut out of a piece of zinc roofing, so solid was it by reason of alloy
with all kinds of foreign matter. Oddly attired as he was, the man was
an artist of no small intellectual power, and ten years later he was
destined to assist in the inauguration of the great but ill-founded
Saint-Simonian system.
“I want my coat, my black trousers, and satin waistcoat,” said this
person, pressing a numbered ticket on Samanon’s attention. Samanon
touched the brass button of a bell-pull, and a woman came down from
some upper region, a Normande apparently, to judge by her rich, fresh
complexion.
“Let the gentleman have his clothes,” said Samanon, holding out a hand
to the newcomer. “It’s a pleasure to do business with you, sir; but
that youngster whom one of your friends introduced to me took me in most
abominably.”
“Took _him_ in!” chuckled the newcomer, pointing out Samanon to the two
journalists with an extremely comical gesture. The great man dropped
thirty sous into the money-lender’s yellow, wrinkled hand; like the
Neapolitan _lazzaroni_, he was taking his best clothes out of pawn for a
state occasion. The coins dropped jingling into the till.
“What queer business are you up to?” asked Lousteau of the artist, an
opium-eater who dwelt among visions of enchanted palaces till he either
could not or would not create.
“_He_ lends you a good deal more than an ordinary pawnbroker on anything
you pledge; and, besides, he is so awfully charitable, he allows you to
take your clothes out when you must have something to wear. I am going
to dine with the Kellers and my mistress to-night,” he continued; “and
to me it is easier to find thirty sous than two hundred francs, so I
keep my wardrobe here. It has brought the charitable usurer a hundred
francs in the last six months. Samanon has devoured my library already,
volume by volume” (_livre à livre_).
“And sou by sou,” Lousteau said with a laugh.
“I will let you have fifteen hundred francs,” said Samanon, looking up.
Lucien started, as if the bill-broker had thrust a red-hot skewer
through his heart. Samanon was subjecting the bills and their dates to a
close scrutiny.
“And even then,” he added, “I must see Fendant first. He ought to
deposit some books with me. You aren’t worth much” (turning to Lucien);
“you are living with Coralie, and your furniture has been attached.”
Lousteau, watching Lucien, saw him take up his bills, and dash out into
the street. “He is the devil himself!” exclaimed the poet. For several
seconds he stood outside gazing at the shop front. The whole place was
so pitiful, that a passer-by could not see it without smiling at the
sight, and wondering what kind of business a man could do among those
mean, dirty shelves of ticketed books.
A very few moments later, the great man, in incognito, came out, very
well dressed, smiled at his friends, and turned to go with them in the
direction of the Passage des Panoramas, where he meant to complete his
toilet by the polishing of his boots.
“If you see Samanon in a bookseller’s shop, or calling on a
paper-merchant or a printer, you may know that it is all over with
that man,” said the artist. “Samanon is the undertaker come to take the
measurements for a coffin.”
“You won’t discount your bills now, Lucien,” said Étienne.
“If Samanon will not take them, nobody else will; he is the _ultima
ratio_,” said the stranger. “He is one of Gigonnet’s lambs, a spy for
Palma, Werbrust, Gobseck, and the rest of those crocodiles who swim in
the Paris money-market. Every man with a fortune to make, or unmake, is
sure to come across one of them sooner or later.”
“If you cannot discount your bills at fifty per cent,” remarked
Lousteau, “you must exchange them for hard cash.”
“How?”
“Give them to Coralie; Camusot will cash them for her.—You are
disgusted,” added Lousteau, as Lucien cut him short with a start. “What
nonsense! How can you allow such a silly scruple to turn the scale, when
your future is in the balance?”
“I shall take this money to Coralie in any case,” began Lucien.
“Here is more folly!” cried Lousteau. “You will not keep your creditors
quiet with four hundred francs when you must have four thousand. Let
us keep a little and get drunk on it, if we lose the rest at _rouge et
noir_.”
“That is sound advice,” said the great man.
Those words, spoken not four paces from Frascati’s, were magnetic
in their effect. The friends dismissed their cab and went up to the
gaming-table.
At the outset they won three thousand francs, then they lost and fell
to five hundred; again they won three thousand seven hundred francs, and
again they lost all but a five-franc piece. After another turn of luck
they staked two thousand francs on an even number to double the stake at
a stroke; an even number had not turned up for five times in succession,
and this was the sixth time. They punted the whole sum, and an odd
number turned up once more.
After two hours of all-absorbing, frenzied excitement, the two dashed
down the staircase with the hundred francs kept back for the dinner.
Upon the steps, between the two pillars which support the little
sheet-iron veranda to which so many eyes have been upturned in longing
or despair, Lousteau stopped and looked into Lucien’s flushed, excited
face.
“Let us just try fifty francs,” he said.
And up the stairs again they went. An hour later they owned a thousand
crowns. Black had turned up for the fifth consecutive time; they trusted
that their previous luck would not repeat itself, and put the whole sum
on the red—black turned up for the sixth time. They had lost. It was
now six o’clock.
“Let us just try twenty-five francs,” said Lucien.
The new venture was soon made—and lost. The twenty-five francs went in
five stakes. Then Lucien, in a frenzy, flung down his last twenty-five
francs on the number of his age, and won. No words can describe how his
hands trembled as he raked in the coins which the bank paid him one by
one. He handed ten louis to Lousteau.
“Fly!” he cried; “take it to Véry’s.”
Lousteau took the hint and went to order dinner. Lucien, left alone,
laid his thirty louis on the red and won. Emboldened by the inner voice
which a gambler always hears, he staked the whole again on the red, and
again he won. He felt as if there were a furnace within him. Without
heeding the voice, he laid a hundred and twenty louis on the black
and lost. Then to the torturing excitement of suspense succeeded the
delicious feeling of relief known to the gambler who has nothing left
to lose, and must perforce leave the palace of fire in which his dreams
melt and vanish.
He found Lousteau at Véry’s, and flung himself upon the cookery (to make
use of Lafontaine’s expression), and drowned his cares in wine. By nine
o’clock his ideas were so confused that he could not imagine why the
portress in the Rue de Vendôme persisted in sending him to the Rue de la
Lune.
“Mlle. Coralie has gone,” said the woman. “She has taken lodgings
elsewhere. She left her address with me on this scrap of paper.”
Lucien was too far gone to be surprised at anything. He went back to the
cab which had brought him, and was driven to the Rue de la Lune, making
puns to himself on the name of the street as he went.
The news of the failure of the Panorama-Dramatique had come like a
thunder-clap. Coralie, taking alarm, made haste to sell her furniture
(with the consent of her creditors) to little old Cardot, who installed
Florentine in the rooms at once. The tradition of the house remained
unbroken. Coralie paid her creditors and satisfied the landlord,
proceeding with her “washing-day,” as she called it, while Bérénice
bought the absolutely indispensable necessaries to furnish a
fourth-floor lodging in the Rue de la Lune, a few doors from the
Gymnase. Here Coralie was waiting for Lucien’s return. She had brought
her love unsullied out of the shipwreck and twelve hundred francs.
Lucien, more than half intoxicated, poured out his woes to Coralie and
Bérénice.
“You did quite right, my angel,” said Coralie, with her arms about his
neck. “Bérénice can easily negotiate your bills with Braulard.”
The next morning Lucien awoke to an enchanted world of happiness made
about him by Coralie. She was more loving and tender in those days than
she had ever been; perhaps she thought that the wealth of love in her
heart should make him amends for the poverty of their lodging. She
looked bewitchingly charming, with the loose hair straying from under
the crushed white silk handkerchief about her head; there was soft
laughter in her eyes; her words were as bright as the first rays of
sunrise that shone in through the windows, pouring a flood of gold upon
such charming poverty.
Not that the room was squalid. The walls were covered with a sea-green
paper, bordered with red; there was one mirror over the chimney-piece,
and a second above the chest of drawers. The bare boards were covered
with a cheap carpet, which Bérénice had bought in spite of Coralie’s
orders, and paid for out of her own little store. A wardrobe, with a
glass door and a chest, held the lovers’ clothing, the mahogany chairs
were covered with blue cotton stuff, and Bérénice had managed to save a
clock and a couple of china vases from the catastrophe, as well as four
spoons and forks and half-a-dozen little spoons. The bedroom was entered
from the dining-room, which might have belonged to a clerk with an
income of twelve hundred francs. The kitchen was next the landing, and
Bérénice slept above in an attic. The rent was not more than a hundred
crowns.
The dismal house boasted a sham carriage entrance, the porter’s box
being contrived behind one of the useless leaves of the gate, and
lighted by a peephole through which that personage watched the comings
and goings of seventeen families, for this hive was a “good-paying
property,” in auctionéer’s phrase.
Lucien, looking round the room, discovered a desk, an easy-chair, paper,
pens, and ink. The sight of Bérénice in high spirits (she was building
hopes on Coralie’s _debut_ at the Gymnase), and of Coralie herself
conning her part with a knot of blue ribbon tied about it, drove all
cares and anxieties from the sobered poet’s mind.
“So long as nobody in society hears of this sudden comedown, we shall
pull through,” he said. “After all, we have four thousand five hundred
francs before us. I will turn my new position in Royalist journalism to
account. To-morrow we shall start the _Réveil_; I am an old hand now,
and I will make something out.”
And Coralie, seeing nothing but love in the words, kissed the lips that
uttered them. By this time Bérénice had set the table near the fire
and served a modest breakfast of scrambled eggs, a couple of cutlets,
coffee, and cream. Just then there came a knock at the door, and
Lucien, to his astonishment, beheld three of his loyal friends of
old days—d’Arthez, Léon Giraud, and Michel Chrestien. He was deeply
touched, and asked them to share the breakfast.
“No; we have come on more serious business than condolence,” said
d’Arthez; “we know the whole story, we have just come from the Rue de
Vendôme. You know my opinions, Lucien. Under any other circumstances I
should be glad to hear that you had adopted my political convictions;
but situated as you are with regard to the Liberal Press, it is
impossible for you to go over to the Ultras. Your life will be sullied,
your character blighted for ever. We have come to entreat you in the
name of our friendship, weakened though it may be, not to soil yourself
in this way. You have been prominent in attacking the Romantics, the
Right, and the Government; you cannot now declare for the Government,
the Right, and the Romantics.”
“My reasons for the change are based on lofty grounds; the end will
justify the means,” said Lucien.
“Perhaps you do not fully comprehend our position on the side of the
Government,” said Léon Giraud. “The Government, the Court, the Bourbons,
the Absolutist Party, or to sum up in the general expression, the whole
system opposed to the constitutional system, may be divided upon the
question of the best means of extinguishing the Revolution, but is
unanimous as to the advisability of extinguishing the newspapers. The
_Réveil_, the _Foudre_, and the _Drapeau Blanc_ have all been founded
for the express purpose of replying to the slander, gibes, and railing
of the Liberal press. I cannot approve them, for it is precisely this
failure to recognize the grandeur of our priesthood that has led us to
bring out a serious and self-respecting paper; which perhaps,” he added
parenthetically, “may exercise a worthy influence before very long, and
win respect, and carry weight; but this Royalist artillery is destined
for a first attempt at reprisals, the Liberals are to be paid back in
their own coin—shaft for shaft, wound for wound.
“What can come of it Lucien? The majority of newspaper readers incline
for the Left; and in the press, as in warfare, the victory is with the
big battalions. You will be blackguards, liars, enemies of the people;
the other side will be defenders of their country, martyrs, men to be
held in honor, though they may be even more hypocritical and slippery
than their opponents. In these ways the pernicious influence of the
press will be increased, while the most odious form of journalism will
receive sanction. Insult and personalities will become a recognized
privilege of the press; newspapers have taken this tone in the
subscribers’ interests; and when both sides have recourse to the same
weapons, the standard is set and the general tone of journalism
taken for granted. When the evil is developed to its fullest extent,
restrictive laws will be followed by prohibitions; there will be a
return of the censorship of the press imposed after the assassination of
the Duc de Berri, and repealed since the opening of the Chambers. And do
you know what the nation will conclude from the debate? The people will
believe the insinuations of the Liberal press; they will think that
the Bourbons mean to attack the rights of property acquired by the
Revolution, and some fine day they will rise and shake off the Bourbons.
You are not only soiling your life, Lucien, you are going over to the
losing side. You are too young, too lately a journalist, too little
initiated into the secret springs of motive and the tricks of the craft,
you have aroused too much jealousy, not to fall a victim to the general
hue and cry that will be raised against you in the Liberal newspapers.
You will be drawn into the fray by party spirit now still at fever-heat;
though the fever, which spent itself in violence in 1815 and 1816, now
appears in debates in the Chamber and polemics in the papers.”
“I am not quite a featherhead, my friends,” said Lucien, “though you may
choose to see a poet in me. Whatever may happen, I shall gain one solid
advantage which no Liberal victory can give me. By the time your victory
is won, I shall have gained my end.”
“We will cut off—your hair,” said Michel Chrestien, with a laugh.
“I shall have my children by that time,” said Lucien; “and if you cut
off my head, it will not matter.”
The three could make nothing of Lucien. Intercourse with the great world
had developed in him the pride of caste, the vanities of the aristocrat.
The poet thought, and not without reason, that there was a fortune
in his good looks and intellect, accompanied by the name and title of
Rubempré. Mme. d’Espard and Mme. de Bargeton held him fast by this
clue, as a child holds a cockchafer by a string. Lucien’s flight was
circumscribed. The words, “He is one of us, he is sound,” accidentally
overheard but three days ago in Mlle. de Touches’ salon, had turned
his head. The Duc de Lenoncourt, the Duc de Navarreins, the Duc de
Grandlieu, Rastignac, Blondet, the lovely Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, the
Comte d’Escrignon, and des Lupeaulx, all the most influential people at
Court in fact, had congratulated him on his conversion, and completed
his intoxication.
“Then there is no more to be said,” d’Arthez rejoined. “You, of all
men, will find it hard to keep clean hands and self-respect. I know you,
Lucien; you will feel it acutely when you are despised by the very men
to whom you offer yourself.”
The three took leave, and not one of them gave him a friendly handshake.
Lucien was thoughtful and sad for a few minutes.
“Oh! never mind those ninnies,” cried Coralie, springing upon his
knée and putting her beautiful arms about his neck. “They take life
seriously, and life is a joke. Besides, you are going to be Count Lucien
de Rubempré. I will wheedle the _Chancellerie_ if there is no other way.
I know how to come round that rake of a des Lupeaulx, who will sign your
patent. Did I not tell you, Lucien, that at the last you should have
Coralie’s dead body for a stepping stone?”
Next day Lucien allowed his name to appear in the list of contributors
to the _Réveil_. His name was announced in the prospectus with a
flourish of trumpets, and the Ministry took care that a hundred thousand
copies should be scattered abroad far and wide. There was a dinner at
Robert’s, two doors away from Frascati’s, to celebrate the inauguration,
and the whole band of Royalist writers for the press were present.
Martainville was there, and Auger and Destains, and a host of others,
still living, who “did Monarchy and religion,” to use the familiar
expression coined for them. Nathan had also enlisted under the banner,
for he was thinking of starting a theatre, and not unreasonably held
that it was better to have the licensing authorities for him than
against him.
“We will pay the Liberals out,” cried Merlin.
“Gentlemen,” said Nathan, “if we are for war, let us have war in
earnest; we must not carry it on with pop-guns. Let us fall upon all
Classicals and Liberals without distinction of age or sex, and put them
all to the sword with ridicule. There must be no quarter.”
“We must act honorably; there must be no bribing with copies of books
or presents; no taking money of publishers. We must inaugurate a
Restoration of Journalism.”
“Good!” said Martainville. “_Justum et tenacem propositi virum_! Let us
be implacable and virulent. I will give out La Fayette for the prince of
harlequins that he is!”
“And I will undertake the heroes of the _Constitutionnel_,” added
Lucien; “Sergeant Mercier, M. Jouy’s Complete Works, and ‘the
illustrious orators of the Left.’”
A war of extermination was unanimously resolved upon, and by one o’clock
in the morning all shades of opinion were merged and drowned, together
with every glimmer of sense, in a flaming bowl of punch.
“We have had a fine Monarchical and Religious jollification,” remarked
an illustrious reveler in the doorway as he went.
That comment appeared in the next day’s issue of the _Miroir_ through
the good offices of a publisher among the guests, and became historic.
Lucien was supposed to be the traitor who blabbed. His defection gave
the signal for a terrific hubbub in the Liberal camp; Lucien was the
butt of the Opposition newspapers, and ridiculed unmercifully. The whole
history of his sonnets was given to the public. Dauriat was said to
prefer a first loss of a thousand crowns to the risk of publishing the
verses; Lucien was called “the Poet sans Sonnets;” and one morning, in
that very paper in which he had so brilliant a beginning, he read the
following lines, significant enough for him, but barely intelligible to
other readers:
*** “If M. Dauriat persistently withholds the Sonnets of the
future Petrarch from publication, we will act like generous foes.
We will open our own columns to his poems, which must be piquant
indeed, to judge by the following specimen obligingly communicated
by a friend of the author.”
And close upon that ominous preface followed a sonnet entitled “The
Thistle” (_le Chardon)_:
A chance-come seedling, springing up one day
Among the flowers in a garden fair,
Made boast that splendid colors bright and rare
Its claims to lofty lineage should display.
So for a while they suffered it to stay;
But with such insolence it flourished there,
That, out of patience with its braggart’s air,
They bade it prove its claims without delay.
It bloomed forthwith; but ne’er was blundering clown
Upon the boards more promptly hooted down;
The sister flowers began to jeer and laugh.
The owner flung it out. At close of day
A solitary jackass came to bray—
A common Thistle’s fitting epitaph.
Lucien read the words through scalding tears.
Vernou touched elsewhere on Lucien’s gambling propensities, and spoke
of the forthcoming _Archer of Charles IX._ as “anti-national” in its
tendency, the writer siding with Catholic cut-throats against their
Calvinist victims.
Another week found the quarrel embittered. Lucien had counted upon his
friend Étienne; Étienne owed him a thousand francs, and there had been
besides a private understanding between them; but Étienne Lousteau
during the interval became his sworn foe, and this was the manner of it.
For the past three months Nathan had been smitten with Florine’s charms,
and much at a loss how to rid himself of Lousteau his rival, who was in
fact dependent upon the actress. And now came Nathan’s opportunity,
when Florine was frantic with distress over the failure of the
Panorama-Dramatique, which left her without an engagement. He went as
Lucien’s colleague to beg Coralie to ask for a part for Florine in a
play of his which was about to be produced at the Gymnase. Then Nathan
went to Florine and made capital with her out of the service done by the
promise of a conditional engagement. Ambition turned Florine’s head; she
did not hesitate. She had had time to gauge Lousteau pretty thoroughly.
Lousteau’s courses were weakening his will, and here was Nathan with
his ambitions in politics and literature, and energies strong as his
cravings. Florine proposed to reappear on the stage with renewed eclat,
so she handed over Matifat’s correspondence to Nathan. Nathan drove
a bargain for them with Matifat, and took the sixth share of Finot’s
review in exchange for the compromising billets. After this, Florine
was installed in sumptuously furnished apartments in the Rue Hauteville,
where she took Nathan for her protector in the face of the theatrical
and journalistic world.
Lousteau was terribly overcome. He wept (towards the close of a dinner
given by his friends to console him in his affliction). In the course of
that banquet it was decided that Nathan had not acted unfairly; several
writers present—Finot and Vernou, for instance,—knew of Florine’s
fervid admiration for dramatic literature; but they all agreed that
Lucien had behaved very ill when he arranged that business at the
Gymnase; he had indeed broken the most sacred laws of friendship.
Party-spirit and zeal to serve his new friends had led the Royalist poet
on to sin beyond forgiveness.
“Nathan was carried away by passion,” pronounced Bixiou, “while this
‘distinguished provincial,’ as Blondet calls him, is simply scheming for
his own selfish ends.”
And so it came to pass that deep plots were laid by all parties alike to
rid themselves of this little upstart intruder of a poet who wanted to
eat everybody up. Vernou bore Lucien a personal grudge, and undertook
to keep a tight hand on him; and Finot declared that Lucien had betrayed
the secret of the combination against Matifat, and thereby swindled
him (Finot) out of fifty thousand francs. Nathan, acting on Florine’s
advice, gained Finot’s support by selling him the sixth share for
fifteen thousand francs, and Lousteau consequently lost his commission.
His thousand crowns had vanished away; he could not forgive Lucien for
this treacherous blow (as he supposed it) dealt to his interests. The
wounds of vanity refuse to heal if oxide of silver gets into them.
No words, no amount of description, can depict the wrath of an author in
a paroxysm of mortified vanity, nor the energy which he discovers when
stung by the poisoned darts of sarcasm; but, on the other hand, the man
that is roused to fighting-fury by a personal attack usually subsides
very promptly. The more phlegmatic race, who take these things quietly,
lay their account with the oblivion which speedily overtakes the
spiteful article. These are the truly courageous men of letters; and if
the weaklings seem at first to be the strong men, they cannot hold out
for any length of time.
During that first fortnight, while the fury was upon him, Lucien poured
a perfect hailstorm of articles into the Royalist papers, in which he
shared the responsibilities of criticism with Hector Merlin. He was
always in the breach, pounding away with all his might in the _Réveil_,
backed up by Martainville, the only one among his associates who stood
by him without an afterthought. Martainville was not in the secret of
certain understandings made and ratified amid after-dinner jokes, or
at Dauriat’s in the Wooden Galleries, or behind the scenes at the
Vaudeville, when journalists of either side met on neutral ground.
When Lucien went to the greenroom of the Vaudeville, he met with no
welcome; the men of his own party held out a hand to shake, the
others cut him; and all the while Hector Merlin and Théodore Gaillard
fraternized unblushingly with Finot, Lousteau, and Vernou, and the rest
of the journalists who were known for “good fellows.”
The greenroom of the Vaudeville in those days was a hotbed of gossip, as
well as a neutral ground where men of every shade of opinion could
meet; so much so that the President of a court of law, after reproving a
learned brother in a certain council chamber for “sweeping the greenroom
with his gown,” met the subject of his strictures, gown to gown, in the
greenroom of the Vaudeville. Lousteau, in time, shook hands again with
Nathan; Finot came thither almost every evening; and Lucien, whenever he
could spare the time, went to the Vaudeville to watch the enemies, who
showed no sign of relenting towards the unfortunate boy.
In the time of the Restoration party hatred was far more bitter than in
our day. Intensity of feeling is diminished in our high-pressure age.
The critic cuts a book to pieces and shakes hands with the author
afterwards, and the victim must keep on good terms with his slaughterer,
or run the gantlet of innumerable jokes at his expense. If he refuses,
he is unsociable, eaten up with self-love, he is sulky and rancorous,
he bears malice, he is a bad bed-fellow. To-day let an author receive a
treacherous stab in the back, let him avoid the snares set for him with
base hypocrisy, and endure the most unhandsome treatment, he must still
exchange greetings with his assassin, who, for that matter, claims
the esteem and friendship of his victim. Everything can be excused and
justified in an age which has transformed vice into virtue and virtue
into vice. Good-fellowship has come to be the most sacred of our
liberties; the representatives of the most opposite opinions courteously
blunt the edge of their words, and fence with buttoned foils. But in
those almost forgotten days the same theatre could scarcely hold certain
Royalist and Liberal journalists; the most malignant provocation was
offered, glances were like pistol-shots, the least spark produced an
explosion of quarrel. Who has not heard his neighbor’s half-smothered
oath on the entrance of some man in the forefront of the battle on
the opposing side? There were but two parties—Royalists and Liberals,
Classics and Romantics. You found the same hatred masquerading in either
form, and no longer wondered at the scaffolds of the Convention.
Lucien had been a Liberal and a hot Voltairean; now he was a rabid
Royalist and a Romantic. Martainville, the only one among his colleagues
who really liked him and stood by him loyally, was more hated by the
Liberals than any man on the Royalist side, and this fact drew down
all the hate of the Liberals on Lucien’s head. Martainville’s staunch
friendship injured Lucien. Political parties show scanty gratitude to
outpost sentinels, and leave leaders of forlorn hopes to their fate;
‘tis a rule of warfare which holds equally good in matters political, to
keep with the main body of the army if you mean to succeed. The spite of
the small Liberal papers fastened at once on the opportunity of coupling
the two names, and flung them into each other’s arms. Their friendship,
real or imaginary, brought down upon them both a series of articles
written by pens dipped in gall. Félicien Vernou was furious with
jealousy of Lucien’s social success; and believed, like all his old
associates, in the poet’s approaching elevation.
The fiction of Lucien’s treason was embellished with every kind of
aggravating circumstance; he was called Judas the Less, Martainville
being Judas the Great, for Martainville was supposed (rightly or
wrongly) to have given up the Bridge of Pecq to the foreign invaders.
Lucien said jestingly to des Lupeaulx that he himself, surely, had given
up the Asses’ Bridge.
Lucien’s luxurious life, hollow though it was, and founded on
expectations, had estranged his friends. They could not forgive him for
the carriage which he had put down—for them he was still rolling about
in it—nor yet for the splendors of the Rue de Vendôme which he had
left. All of them felt instinctively that nothing was beyond the reach
of this young and handsome poet, with intellect enough and to spare;
they themselves had trained him in corruption; and, therefore, they left
no stone unturned to ruin him.
Some few days before Coralie’s first appearance at the Gymnase, Lucien
and Hector Merlin went arm-in-arm to the Vaudeville. Merlin was scolding
his friend for giving a helping hand to Nathan in Florine’s affair.
“You then and there made two mortal enemies of Lousteau and Nathan,” he
said. “I gave you good advice, and you took no notice of it. You gave
praise, you did them a good turn—you will be well punished for your
kindness. Florine and Coralie will never live in peace on the same
stage; both will wish to be first. You can only defend Coralie in our
papers; and Nathan not only has a pull as a dramatic author, he can
control the dramatic criticism in the Liberal newspapers. He has been a
journalist a little longer than you!”
The words responded to Lucien’s inward misgivings. Neither Nathan nor
Gaillard was treating him with the frankness which he had a right to
expect, but so new a convert could hardly complain. Gaillard utterly
confounded Lucien by saying roundly that newcomers must give proofs of
their sincerity for some time before their party could trust them. There
was more jealousy than he had imagined in the inner circles of Royalist
and Ministerial journalism. The jealousy of curs fighting for a bone is
apt to appear in the human species when there is a loaf to divide; there
is the same growling and showing of teeth, the same characteristics come
out.
In every possible way these writers of articles tried to injure each
other with those in power; they brought reciprocal accusations of
lukewarm zeal; they invented the most treacherous ways of getting rid
of a rival. There had been none of this internecine warfare among the
Liberals; they were too far from power, too hopelessly out of favor;
and Lucien, amid the inextricable tangle of ambitions, had neither the
courage to draw sword and cut the knot, or the patience to unravel it.
He could not be the Beaumarchais, the Aretino, the Fréron of his epoch;
he was not made of such stuff; he thought of nothing but his one
desire, the patent of nobility; for he saw clearly that for him such
a restoration meant a wealthy marriage, and, the title once secured,
chance and his good looks would do the rest. This was all his plan; and
Étienne Lousteau, who had confided so much to him, knew his secret, knew
how to deal a deathblow to the poet of Angoulême. That very night, as
Lucien and Merlin went to the Vaudeville, Étienne had laid a terrible
trap, into which an inexperienced boy could not but fall.
“Here is our handsome Lucien,” said Finot, drawing des Lupeaulx in the
direction of the poet, and shaking hands with feline amiability. “I
cannot think of another example of such rapid success,” continued Finot,
looking from des Lupeaulx to Lucien. “There are two sorts of success in
Paris: there is a fortune in solid cash, which any one can amass, and
there is the intangible fortune of connections, position, or a footing
in certain circles inaccessible for certain persons, however rich they
may be. Now my friend here——”
“Our friend,” interposed des Lupeaulx, smiling blandly.
“Our friend,” repeated Finot, patting Lucien’s hand, “has made a
brilliant success from this point of view. Truth to tell, Lucien has
more in him, more gift, more wit than the rest of us that envy him, and
he is enchantingly handsome besides; his old friends cannot forgive him
for his success—they call it luck.”
“Luck of that sort never comes to fools or incapables,” said des
Lupeaulx. “Can you call Bonaparte’s fortune luck, eh? There were a score
of applicants for the command of the army in Italy, just as there are a
hundred young men at this moment who would like to have an entrance
to Mlle. des Touches’ house; people are coupling her name with yours
already in society, my dear boy,” said des Lupeaulx, clapping Lucien
on the shoulder. “Ah! you are in high favor. Mme. d’Espard, Mme. de
Bargeton, and Mme. de Montcornet are wild about you. You are going to
Mme. Firmiani’s party to-night, are you not, and to the Duchesse de
Grandlieu’s rout to-morrow?”
“Yes,” said Lucien.
“Allow me to introduce a young banker to you, a M. du Tillet; you ought
to be acquainted, he has contrived to make a great fortune in a short
time.”
Lucien and du Tillet bowed, and entered into conversation, and the
banker asked Lucien to dinner. Finot and des Lupeaulx, a well-matched
pair, knew each other well enough to keep upon good terms; they turned
away to continue their chat on one of the sofas in the greenroom, and
left Lucien with du Tillet, Merlin, and Nathan.
“By the way, my friend,” said Finot, “tell me how things stand. Is there
really somebody behind Lucien? For he is the _bête noire_ of my staff;
and before allowing them to plot against him, I thought I should like
to know whether, in your opinion, it would be better to baffle them and
keep well with him.”
The Master of Requests and Finot looked at each other very closely for a
moment or two.
“My dear fellow,” said des Lupeaulx, “how can you imagine that the
Marquise d’Espard, or Châtelet, or Mme. de Bargeton—who has procured
the Baron’s nomination to the prefecture and the title of Count, so as
to return in triumph to Angoulême—how can you suppose that any of them
will forgive Lucien for his attacks on them? They dropped him down in
the Royalist ranks to crush him out of existence. At this moment they
are looking round for any excuse for not fulfilling the promises they
made to that boy. Help them to some; you will do the greatest possible
service to the two women, and some day or other they will remember it.
I am in their secrets; I was surprised to find how much they hated the
little fellow. This Lucien might have rid himself of his bitterest enemy
(Mme. de Bargeton) by desisting from his attacks on terms which a woman
loves to grant—do you take me? He is young and handsome, he should have
drowned her hate in torrents of love, he would be Comte de Rubempré by
this time; the Cuttlefish-bone would have obtained some sinecure for
him, some post in the Royal Household. Lucien would have made a very
pretty reader to Louis XVIII.; he might have been librarian somewhere or
other, Master of Requests for a joke, Master of Revels, what you please.
The young fool has missed his chance. Perhaps that is his unpardonable
sin. Instead of imposing his conditions, he has accepted them. When
Lucien was caught with the bait of the patent of nobility, the Baron
Châtelet made a great step. Coralie has been the ruin of that boy. If he
had not had the actress for his mistress, he would have turned again to
the Cuttlefish-bone; and he would have had her too.”
“Then we can knock him over?”
“How?” des Lupeaulx asked carelessly. He saw a way of gaining credit
with the Marquise d’Espard for this service.
“He is under contract to write for Lousteau’s paper, and we can the
better hold him to his agreement because he has not a sou. If we tickle
up the Keeper of the Seals with a facetious article, and prove that
Lucien wrote it, he will consider that Lucien is unworthy of the King’s
favor. We have a plot on hand besides. Coralie will be ruined, and our
distinguished provincial will lose his head when his mistress is hissed
off the stage and left without an engagement. When once the patent is
suspended, we will laugh at the victim’s aristocratic pretensions, and
allude to his mother the nurse and his father the apothecary. Lucien’s
courage is only skindeep, he will collapse; we will send him back to
his provinces. Nathan made Florine sell me Matifat’s sixth share of the
review, I was able to buy; Dauriat and I are the only proprietors now;
we might come to an understanding, you and I, and the review might
be taken over for the benefit of the Court. I stipulated for the
restitution of my sixth before I undertook to protect Nathan and
Florine; they let me have it, and I must help them; but I wished to know
first how Lucien stood——”
“You deserve your name,” said des Lupeaulx. “I like a man of your
sort——”
“Very well. Then can you arrange a definite engagement for Florine?”
asked Finot.
“Yes, but rid us of Lucien, for Rastignac and de Marsay never wish to
hear of him again.”
“Sleep in peace,” returned Finot. “Nathan and Merlin will always have
articles ready for Gaillard, who will promise to take them; Lucien will
never get a line into the paper. We will cut off his supplies. There
is only Martainville’s paper left him in which to defend himself and
Coralie; what can a single paper do against so many?”
“I will let you know the weak points of the Ministry; but get Lucien to
write that article and hand over the manuscript,” said des Lupeaulx, who
refrained carefully from informing Finot that Lucien’s promised patent
was nothing but a joke.
When des Lupeaulx had gone, Finot went to Lucien, and taking the
good-natured tone which deceives so many victims, he explained that he
could not possibly afford to lose his contributor, and at the same time
he shrank from taking proceedings which might ruin him with his friends
of the other side. Finot himself liked a man who was strong enough to
change his opinions. They were pretty sure to come across one another,
he and Lucien, and might be mutually helpful in a thousand little ways.
Lucien, besides, néeded a sure man in the Liberal party to attack the
Ultras and men in office who might refuse to help him.
“Suppose that they play you false, what will you do?” Finot ended.
“Suppose that some Minister fancies that he has you fast by the halter
of your apostasy, and turns the cold shoulder on you? You will be glad
to set on a few dogs to snap at his legs, will you not? Very well.
But you have made a deadly enemy of Lousteau; he is thirsting for your
blood. You and Félicien are not on speaking terms. I only remain to you.
It is a rule of the craft to keep a good understanding with every man
of real ability. In the world which you are about to enter you can do me
services in return for mine with the press. But business first. Let
me have purely literary articles; they will not compromise you, and we
shall have executed our agreement.”
Lucien saw nothing but good-fellowship and a shrewd eye to business in
Finot’s offer; Finot and des Lupeaulx had flattered him, and he was in a
good humor. He actually thanked Finot!
Ambitious men, like all those who can only make their way by the help of
others and of circumstances, are bound to lay their plans very carefully
and to adhere very closely to the course of conduct on which they
determine; it is a cruel moment in the lives of such aspirants when some
unknown power brings the fabric of their fortunes to some severe test
and everything gives way at once; threads are snapped or entangled,
and misfortune appears on every side. Let a man lose his head in the
confusion, it is all over with him; but if he can resist this first
revolt of circumstances, if he can stand erect until the tempest passes
over, or make a supreme effort and reach the serene sphere about the
storm—then he is really strong. To every man, unless he is born rich,
there comes sooner or later “his fatal week,” as it must be called. For
Napoleon, for instance, that week was the Retreat from Moscow. It had
begun now for Lucien.
Social and literary success had come to him too easily; he had had such
luck that he was bound to know reverses and to see men and circumstances
turn against him.
The first blow was the heaviest and the most keenly felt, for it touched
Lucien where he thought himself invulnerable—in his heart and his
love. Coralie might not be clever, but hers was a noble nature, and she
possessed the great actress’ faculty of suddenly standing aloof from
self. This strange phenomenon is subject, until it degenerates into a
habit with long practice, to the caprices of character, and not seldom
to an admirable delicacy of feeling in actresses who are still young.
Coralie, to all appearance bold and wanton, as her part required, was
in reality girlish and timid, and love had wrought in her a revulsion of
her woman’s heart against the comedian’s mask. Art, the supreme art of
feigning passion and feeling, had not yet triumphed over nature in her;
she shrank before a great audience from the utterance that belongs
to Love alone; and Coralie suffered besides from another true woman’s
weakness—she néeded success, born stage queen though she was. She could
not confront an audience with which she was out of sympathy; she was
nervous when she appeared on the stage, a cold reception paralyzed her.
Each new part gave her the terrible sensations of a first appearance.
Applause produced a sort of intoxication which gave her encouragement
without flattering her vanity; at a murmur of dissatisfaction or before
a silent house, she flagged; but a great audience following attentively,
admiringly, willing to be pleased, electrified Coralie. She felt at once
in communication with the nobler qualities of all those listeners; she
felt that she possessed the power of stirring their souls and carrying
them with her. But if this action and reaction of the audience upon the
actress reveals the nervous organization of genius, it shows no
less clearly the poor child’s sensitiveness and delicacy. Lucien had
discovered the treasures of her nature; had learned in the past months
that this woman who loved him was still so much of a girl. And Coralie
was unskilled in the wiles of an actress—she could not fight her own
battles nor protect herself against the machinations of jealousy behind
the scenes. Florine was jealous of her, and Florine was as dangerous
and depraved as Coralie was simple and generous. Roles must come to
find Coralie; she was too proud to implore authors or to submit
to dishonoring conditions; she would not give herself to the first
journalist who persecuted her with his advances and threatened her with
his pen. Genius is rare enough in the extraordinary art of the
stage; but genius is only one condition of success among many, and is
positively hurtful unless it is accompanied by a genius for intrigue in
which Coralie was utterly lacking.
Lucien knew how much his friend would suffer on her first appearance at
the Gymnase, and was anxious at all costs to obtain a success for her;
but all the money remaining from the sale of the furniture and all
Lucien’s earnings had been sunk in costumes, in the furniture of a
dressing-room, and the expenses of a first appearance.
A few days later, Lucien made up his mind to a humiliating step for
love’s sake. He took Fendant and Cavalier’s bills, and went to the
_Golden Cocoon_ in the Rue des Bourdonnais. He would ask Camusot to
discount them. The poet had not fallen so low that he could make this
attempt quite coolly. There had been many a sharp struggle first, and
the way to that decision had been paved with many dreadful thoughts.
Nevertheless, he arrived at last in the dark, cheerless little private
office that looked out upon a yard, and found Camusot seated gravely
there; this was not Coralie’s infatuated adorer, not the easy-natured,
indolent, incredulous libertine whom he had known hitherto as Camusot,
but a heavy father of a family, a merchant grown old in shrewd
expedients of business and respectable virtues, wearing a magistrate’s
mask of judicial prudery; this Camusot was the cool, business-like head
of the firm surrounded by clerks, green cardboard boxes, pigeonholes,
invoices, and samples, and fortified by the presence of a wife and
a plainly-dressed daughter. Lucien trembled from head to foot as he
approached; for the worthy merchant, like the money-lenders, turned
cool, indifferent eyes upon him.
“Here are two or three bills, monsieur,” he said, standing beside the
merchant, who did not rise from his desk. “If you will take them of me,
you will oblige me extremely.”
“You have taken something of _me_, monsieur,” said Camusot; “I do not
forget it.”
On this, Lucien explained Coralie’s predicament. He spoke in a low
voice, bending to murmur his explanation, so that Camusot could hear
the heavy throbbing of the humiliated poet’s heart. It was no part of
Camusot’s plans that Coralie should suffer a check. He listened, smiling
to himself over the signatures on the bills (for, as a judge at the
Tribunal of Commerce, he knew how the booksellers stood), but in the end
he gave Lucien four thousand five hundred francs for them, stipulating
that he should add the formula “For value received in silks.”
Lucien went straight to Braulard, and made arrangements for a good
reception. Braulard promised to come to the dress-rehearsal, to
determine on the points where his “Romans” should work their fleshy
clappers to bring down the house in applause. Lucien gave the rest of
the money to Coralie (he did not tell her how he had come by it), and
allayed her anxieties and the fears of Bérénice, who was sorely troubled
over their daily expenses.
Martainville came several times to hear Coralie rehearse, and he knew
more of the stage than most men of his time; several Royalist writers
had promised favorable articles; Lucien had not a suspicion of the
impending disaster.
A fatal event occurred on the evening before Coralie’s _debut_.
D’Arthez’s book had appeared; and the editor of Merlin’s paper,
considering Lucien to be the best qualified man on the staff, gave him
the book to review. He owed his unlucky reputation to those articles on
Nathan’s work. There were several men in the office at the time, for all
the staff had been summoned; Martainville was explaining that the
party warfare with the Liberals must be waged on certain lines. Nathan,
Merlin, all the contributors, in fact, were talking of Léon Giraud’s
paper, and remarking that its influence was the more pernicious because
the language was guarded, cool, moderate. People were beginning to speak
of the circle in the Rue des Quatre-Vents as a second Convention. It had
been decided that the Royalist papers were to wage a systematic war of
extermination against these dangerous opponents, who, indeed, at a later
day, were destined to sow the doctrines that drove the Bourbons into
exile; but that was only after the most brilliant of Royalist writers
had joined them for the sake of a mean revenge.
D’Arthez’s absolutist opinions were not known; it was taken for granted
that he shared the views of his clique, he fell under the same anathema,
and he was to be the first victim. His book was to be honored with “a
slashing article,” to use the consecrated formula. Lucien refused to
write the article. Great was the commotion among the leading Royalist
writers thus met in conclave. Lucien was told plainly that a renegade
could not do as he pleased; if it did not suit his views to take the
side of the Monarchy and Religion, he could go back to the other camp.
Merlin and Martainville took him aside and begged him, as his friends,
to remember that he would simply hand Coralie over to the tender mercies
of the Liberal papers, for she would find no champions on the Royalist
and Ministerial side. Her acting was certain to provoke a hot battle,
and the kind of discussion which every actress longs to arouse.
“You don’t understand it in the least,” said Martainville; “if she plays
for three months amid a cross-fire of criticism, she will make thirty
thousand francs when she goes on tour in the provinces at the end of the
season; and here are you about to sacrifice Coralie and your own future,
and to quarrel with your own bread and butter, all for a scruple that
will always stand in your way, and ought to be got rid of at once.”
Lucien was forced to choose between d’Arthez and Coralie. His mistress
would be ruined unless he dealt his friend a death-blow in the _Réveil_
and the great newspaper. Poor poet! He went home with death in his soul;
and by the fireside he sat and read that finest production of modern
literature. Tears fell fast over it as the pages turned. For a long
while he hesitated, but at last he took up the pen and wrote a sarcastic
article of the kind that he understood so well, taking the book as
children might take some bright bird to strip it of its plumage and
torture it. His sardonic jests were sure to tell. Again he turned to the
book, and as he read it over a second time, his better self awoke. In
the dead of night he hurried across Paris, and stood outside d’Arthez’s
house. He looked up at the windows and saw the faint pure gleam of light
in the panes, as he had so often seen it, with a feeling of admiration
for the noble steadfastness of that truly great nature. For some moments
he stood irresolute on the curbstone; he had not courage to go further;
but his good angel urged him on. He tapped at the door and opened, and
found d’Arthez sitting reading in a fireless room.
“What has happened?” asked d’Arthez, for news of some dreadful kind was
visible in Lucien’s ghastly face.
“Your book is sublime, d’Arthez,” said Lucien, with tears in his eyes,
“and they have ordered me to write an attack upon it.”
“Poor boy! the bread that they give you is hard indeed!” said d’Arthez
“I only ask for one favor, keep my visit a secret and leave me to my
hell, to the occupations of the damned. Perhaps it is impossible to
attain to success until the heart is seared and callous in every most
sensitive spot.”
“The same as ever!” cried d’Arthez.
“Do you think me a base poltroon? No, d’Arthez; no, I am a boy half
crazed with love,” and he told his story.
“Let us look at the article,” said d’Arthez, touched by all that Lucien
said of Coralie.
Lucien held out the manuscript; d’Arthez read, and could not help
smiling.
“Oh, what a fatal waste of intellect!” he began. But at the sight of
Lucien overcome with grief in the opposite armchair, he checked himself.
“Will you leave it with me to correct? I will let you have it again
to-morrow,” he went on. “Flippancy depreciates a work; serious and
conscientious criticism is sometimes praise in itself. I know a way to
make your article more honorable both for yourself and for me. Besides,
I know my faults well enough.”
“When you climb a hot, shadowless hillside, you sometimes find fruit to
quench your torturing thirst; and I have found it here and now,” said
Lucien, as he sprang sobbing to d’Arthez’s arms and kissed his friend
on the forehead. “It seems to me that I am leaving my conscience in your
keeping; some day I will come to you and ask for it again.”
“I look upon a periodical repentance as great hypocrisy,” d’Arthez
said solemnly; “repentance becomes a sort of indemnity for wrongdoing.
Repentance is virginity of the soul, which we must keep for God; a man
who repents twice is a horrible sycophant. I am afraid that you regard
repentance as absolution.”
Lucien went slowly back to the Rue de la Lune, stricken dumb by those
words.
Next morning d’Arthez sent back his article, recast throughout, and
Lucien sent it in to the review; but from that day melancholy preyed
upon him, and he could not always disguise his mood. That evening, when
the theatre was full, he experienced for the first time the paroxysm of
nervous terror caused by a _debut_; terror aggravated in his case by all
the strength of his love. Vanity of every kind was involved. He looked
over the rows of faces as a criminal eyes the judges and the jury on
whom his life depends. A murmur would have set him quivering; any slight
incident upon the stage, Coralie’s exits and entrances, the slightest
modulation of the tones of her voice, would perturb him beyond all
reason.
The play in which Coralie made her first appearance at the Gymnase was
a piece of the kind which sometimes falls flat at first, and afterwards
has immense success. It fell flat that night. Coralie was not applauded
when she came on, and the chilly reception reacted upon her. The only
applause came from Camusot’s box, and various persons posted in the
balcony and galleries silenced Camusot with repeated cries of “Hush!”
The galleries even silenced the _claqueurs_ when they led off with
exaggerated salvos. Martainville applauded bravely; Nathan, Merlin, and
the treacherous Florine followed his example; but it was clear that the
piece was a failure. A crowd gathered in Coralie’s dressing-room and
consoled her, till she had no courage left. She went home in despair,
less for her own sake than for Lucien’s.
“Braulard has betrayed us,” Lucien said.
Coralie was heartstricken. The next day found her in a high fever,
utterly unfit to play, face to face with the thought that she had been
cut short in her career. Lucien hid the papers from her, and looked
them over in the dining-room. The reviewers one and all attributed the
failure of the piece to Coralie; she had overestimated her strength;
she might be the delight of a boulevard audience, but she was out of her
element at the Gymnase; she had been inspired by a laudable ambition,
but she had not taken her powers into account; she had chosen a part
to which she was quite unequal. Lucien read on through a pile of
penny-a-lining, put together on the same system as his attack upon
Nathan. Milo of Crotona, when he found his hands fast in the oak which
he himself had cleft, was not more furious than Lucien. He grew haggard
with rage. His friends gave Coralie the most treacherous advice, in
the language of kindly counsel and friendly interest. She should
play (according to these authorities) all kind of roles, which the
treacherous writers of these unblushing _feuilletons_ knew to be utterly
unsuited to her genius. And these were the Royalist papers, led off by
Nathan. As for the Liberal press, all the weapons which Lucien had used
were now turned against him.
Coralie heard a sob, followed by another and another. She sprang out of
bed to find Lucien, and saw the papers. Nothing would satisfy her but
she must read them all; and when she had read them, she went back to
bed, and lay there in silence.
Florine was in the plot; she had foreseen the outcome; she had studied
Coralie’s part, and was ready to take her place. The management,
unwilling to give up the piece, was ready to take Florine in Coralie’s
stead. When the manager came, he found poor Coralie sobbing and
exhausted on her bed; but when he began to say, in Lucien’s presence,
that Florine knew the part, and that the play must be given that
evening, Coralie sprang up at once.
“I will play!” she cried, and sank fainting on the floor.
So Florine took the part, and made her reputation in it; for the piece
succeeded, the newspapers all sang her praises, and from that time
forth Florine was the great actress whom we all know. Florine’s success
exasperated Lucien to the highest degree.
“A wretched girl, whom you helped to earn her bread! If the Gymnase
prefers to do so, let the management pay you to cancel your engagement.
I shall be the Comte de Rubempré; I will make my fortune, and you shall
be my wife.”
“What nonsense!” said Coralie, looking at him with wan eyes.
“Nonsense!” repeated he. “Very well, wait a few days, and you shall live
in a fine house, you shall have a carriage, and I will write a part for
you!”
He took two thousand francs and hurried to Frascati’s. For seven hours
the unhappy victim of the Furies watched his varying luck, and outwardly
seemed cool and self-contained. He experienced both extremes of fortune
during that day and part of the night that followed; at one time he
possessed as much as thirty thousand francs, and he came out at last
without a sou. In the Rue de la Lune he found Finot waiting for him with
a request for one of his short articles. Lucien so far forgot himself,
that he complained.
“Oh, it is not all rosy,” returned Finot. “You made your
right-about-face in such a way that you were bound to lose the support
of the Liberal press, and the Liberals are far stronger in print than
all the Ministerialist and Royalist papers put together. A man should
never leave one camp for another until he has made a comfortable berth
for himself, by way of consolation for the losses that he must expect;
and in any case, a prudent politician will see his friends first, and
give them his reasons for going over, and take their opinions. You can
still act together; they sympathize with you, and you agree to give
mutual help. Nathan and Merlin did that before they went over. Hawks
don’t pike out hawks’ eyes. You were as innocent as a lamb; you will
be forced to show your teeth to your new party to make anything out of
them. You have been necessarily sacrificed to Nathan. I cannot conceal
from you that your article on d’Arthez has roused a terrific hubbub.
Marat is a saint compared with you. You will be attacked, and your book
will be a failure. How far have things gone with your romance?”
“These are the last proof sheets.”
“All the anonymous articles against that young d’Arthez in the
Ministerialist and Ultra papers are set down to you. The _Réveil_ is
poking fun at the set in the Rue des Quatre-Vents, and the hits are the
more telling because they are funny. There is a whole serious political
coterie at the back of Léon Giraud’s paper; they will come into power
too, sooner or later.”
“I have not written a line in the _Réveil_ this week past.”
“Very well. Keep my short articles in mind. Write fifty of them straight
off, and I will pay you for them in a lump; but they must be of the same
color as the paper.” And Finot, with seeming carelessness, gave Lucien
an edifying anecdote of the Keeper of the Seals, a piece of current
gossip, he said, for the subject of one of the papers.
Eager to retrieve his losses at play, Lucien shook off his dejection,
summoned up his energy and youthful force, and wrote thirty articles of
two columns each. These finished, he went to Dauriat’s, partly because
he felt sure of meeting Finot there, and he wished to give the articles
to Finot in person; partly because he wished for an explanation of the
non-appearance of the _Marguerites_. He found the bookseller’s shop full
of his enemies. All the talk immediately ceased as he entered. Put
under the ban of journalism, his courage rose, and once more he said
to himself, as he had said in the alley at the Luxembourg, “I will
triumph.”
Dauriat was neither amiable or inclined to patronize; he was sarcastic
in tone, and determined not to bate an inch of his rights. The
_Marguerites_ should appear when it suited his purpose; he should wait
until Lucien was in a position to secure the success of the book; it was
his, he had bought it outright. When Lucien asserted that Dauriat was
bound to publish the _Marguerites_ by the very nature of the contract,
and the relative positions of the parties to the agreement, Dauriat
flatly contradicted him, said that no publisher could be compelled by
law to publish at a loss, and that he himself was the best judge of the
expediency of producing the book. There was, besides, a remedy open to
Lucien, as any court of law would admit—the poet was quite welcome
to take his verses to a Royalist publisher upon the repayment of the
thousand crowns.
Lucien went away. Dauriat’s moderate tone had exasperated him even
more than his previous arrogance at their first interview. So the
_Marguerites_ would not appear until Lucien had found a host of
formidable supporters, or grown formidable himself! He walked home
slowly, so oppressed and out of heart that he felt ready for suicide.
Coralie lay in bed, looking white and ill.
“She must have a part, or she will die,” said Bérénice, as Lucien
dressed for a great evening party at Mlle. des Touches’ house in the Rue
du Mont Blanc. Des Lupeaulx and Vignon and Blondet were to be there, as
well as Mme. d’Espard and Mme. de Bargeton.
The party was given in honor of Conti, the great composer, owner
likewise of one of the most famous voices off the stage, Cinti, Pasta,
Garcia, Levasseur, and two or three celebrated amateurs in society not
excepted. Lucien saw the Marquise, her cousin, and Mme. de Montcornet
sitting together, and made one of the party. The unhappy young fellow to
all appearances was light-hearted, happy, and content; he jested, he
was the Lucien de Rubempré of his days of splendor, he would not seem to
néed help from any one. He dwelt on his services to the Royalist party,
and cited the hue and cry raised after him by the Liberal press as a
proof of his zeal.
“And you will be well rewarded, my friend,” said Mme. de Bargeton, with
a gracious smile. “Go to the _Chancellerie_ the day after to-morrow with
‘the Heron’ and des Lupeaulx, and you will find your patent signed
by His Majesty. The Keeper of the Seals will take it to-morrow to the
Tuileries, but there is to be a meeting of the Council, and he will not
come back till late. Still, if I hear the result to-morrow evening, I
will let you know. Where are you living?”
“I will come to you,” said Lucien, ashamed to confess that he was living
in the Rue de la Lune.
“The Duc de Lenoncourt and the Duc de Navarreins have made mention of
you to the King,” added the Marquise; “they praised your absolute and
entire devotion, and said that some distinction ought to avenge your
treatment in the Liberal press. The name and title of Rubempré, to which
you have a claim through your mother, would become illustrious through
you, they said. The King gave his lordship instructions that evening to
prepare a patent authorizing the Sieur Lucien Chardon to bear the arms
and title of the Comtes de Rubempré, as grandson of the last Count by
the mother’s side. ‘Let us favor the songsters’ (_chardonnerets_) ‘of
Pindus,’ said his Majesty, after reading your sonnet on the Lily, which
my cousin luckily remembered to give the Duke.—‘Especially when the
King can work miracles, and change the song-bird into an eagle,’ M. de
Navarreins replied.”
Lucien’s expansion of feeling would have softened the heart of any woman
less deeply wounded than Louise d’Espard de Nègrepelisse; but her thirst
for vengeance was only increased by Lucien’s graciousness. Des Lupeaulx
was right; Lucien was wanting in tact. It never crossed his mind that
this history of the patent was one of the mystifications at which
Mme. d’Espard was an adept. Emboldened with success and the flattering
distinction shown to him by Mlle. des Touches, he stayed till two
o’clock in the morning for a word in private with his hostess. Lucien
had learned in Royalist newspaper offices that Mlle. des Touches was the
author of a play in which _La petite Fay_, the marvel of the moment, was
about to appear. As the rooms emptied, he drew Mlle. des Touches to a
sofa in the boudoir, and told the story of Coralie’s misfortune and his
own so touchingly, that Mlle. des Touches promised to give the heroine’s
part to his friend.
That promise put new life into Coralie. But the next day, as they
breakfasted together, Lucien opened Lousteau’s newspaper, and found that
unlucky anecdote of the Keeper of the Seals and his wife. The story
was full of the blackest malice lurking in the most caustic wit. Louis
XVIII. was brought into the story in a masterly fashion, and held up
to ridicule in such a way that prosecution was impossible. Here is the
substance of a fiction for which the Liberal party attempted to win
credence, though they only succeeded in adding one more to the tale of
their ingenious calumnies.
The King’s passion for pink-scented notes and a correspondence full of
madrigals and sparkling wit was declared to be the last phase of the
tender passion; love had reached the Doctrinaire stage; or had passed,
in other words, from the concrete to the abstract. The illustrious
lady, so cruelly ridiculed under the name of Octavie by Béranger, had
conceived (so it was said) the gravest fears. The correspondence was
languishing. The more Octavie displayed her wit, the cooler grew the
royal lover. At last Octavie discovered the cause of her decline; her
power was threatened by the novelty and piquancy of a correspondence
between the august scribe and the wife of his Keeper of the Seals. That
excellent woman was believed to be incapable of writing a note; she was
simply and solely godmother to the efforts of audacious ambition. Who
could be hidden behind her petticoats? Octavie decided, after making
observations of her own, that the King was corresponding with his
Minister.
She laid her plans. With the help of a faithful friend, she arranged
that a stormy debate should detain the Minister at the Chamber; then she
contrived to secure a _tête-à-tête_, and to convince outraged Majesty of
the fraud. Louis XVIII. flew into a royal and truly Bourbon passion, but
the tempest broke on Octavie’s head. He would not believe her. Octavie
offered immediate proof, begging the King to write a note which must be
answered at once. The unlucky wife of the Keeper of the Seals sent to
the Chamber for her husband; but precautions had been taken, and at that
moment the Minister was on his legs addressing the Chamber. The lady
racked her brains and replied to the note with such intellect as she
could improvise.
“Your Chancellor will supply the rest,” cried Octavie, laughing at the
King’s chagrin.
There was not a word of truth in the story; but it struck home to three
persons—the Keeper of the Seals, his wife, and the King. It was said
that des Lupeaulx had invented the tale, but Finot always kept his
counsel. The article was caustic and clever, the Liberal papers and
the Orleanists were delighted with it, and Lucien himself laughed, and
thought of it merely as a very amusing _canard_.
He called next day for des Lupeaulx and the Baron du Châtelet. The Baron
had just been to thank his lordship. The Sieur Châtelet, newly appointed
Councillor Extraordinary, was now Comte du Châtelet, with a promise of
the prefecture of the Charente so soon as the present prefect should
have completed the term of office necessary to receive the maximum
retiring pension. The Comte _du_ Châtelet (for the _du_ had been
inserted in the patent) drove with Lucien to the _Chancellerie_, and
treated his companion as an equal. But for Lucien’s articles, he said,
his patent would not have been granted so soon; Liberal persecution had
been a stepping-stone to advancement. Des Lupeaulx was waiting for
them in the Secretary-General’s office. That functionary started with
surprise when Lucien appeared and looked at des Lupeaulx.
“What!” he exclaimed, to Lucien’s utter bewilderment. “Do you dare to
come here, sir? Your patent was made out, but his lordship has torn it
up. Here it is!” (the Secretary-General caught up the first torn sheet
that came to hand). “The Minister wished to discover the author of
yesterday’s atrocious article, and here is the manuscript,” added the
speaker, holding out the sheets of Lucien’s article. “You call yourself
a Royalist, sir, and you are on the staff of that detestable paper which
turns the Minister’s hair gray, harasses the Centre, and is dragging the
country headlong to ruin? You breakfast on the _Corsair_, the _Miroir_,
the _Constitutionnel_, and the _Courier_; you dine on the _Quotidienne_
and the _Réveil_, and then sup with Martainville, the worst enemy of the
Government! Martainville urges the Government on to Absolutist measures;
he is more likely to bring on another Revolution than if he had gone
over to the extreme Left. You are a very clever journalist, but you will
never make a politician. The Minister denounced you to the King, and
the King was so angry that he scolded M. le Duc de Navarreins, his
First Gentleman of the Bedchamber. Your enemies will be all the more
formidable because they have hitherto been your friends. Conduct that
one expects from an enemy is atrocious in a friend.”
“Why, really, my dear fellow, are you a child?” said des Lupeaulx.
“You have compromised me. Mme. d’Espard, Mme. de Bargeton, and Mme. de
Montcornet, who were responsible for you, must be furious. The Duke is
sure to have handed on his annoyance to the Marquise, and the Marquise
will have scolded her cousin. Keep away from them and wait.”
“Here comes his lordship—go!” said the Secretary-General.
Lucien went out into the Place Vendôme; he was stunned by this bludgeon
blow. He walked home along the Boulevards trying to think over his
position. He saw himself a plaything in the hands of envy, treachery,
and greed. What was he in this world of contending ambitions? A child
sacrificing everything to the pursuit of pleasure and the gratification
of vanity; a poet whose thoughts never went beyond the moment, a moth
flitting from one bright gleaming object to another. He had no definite
aim; he was the slave of circumstance—meaning well, doing ill.
Conscience tortured him remorselessly. And to crown it all, he was
penniless and exhausted with work and emotion. His articles could not
compare with Merlin’s or Nathan’s work.
He walked at random, absorbed in these thoughts. As he passed some
of the reading-rooms which were already lending books as well as
newspapers, a placard caught his eyes. It was an advertisement of a book
with a grotesque title, but beneath the announcement he saw his name in
brilliant letters—“By Lucien Chardon de Rubempré.” So his book had come
out, and he had heard nothing of it! All the newspapers were silent. He
stood motionless before the placard, his arms hanging at his sides. He
did not notice a little knot of acquaintances—Rastignac and de Marsay
and some other fashionable young men; nor did he see that Michel
Chrestien and Léon Giraud were coming towards him.
“Are you M. Chardon?” It was Michel who spoke, and there was that in the
sound of his voice that set Lucien’s heartstrings vibrating.
“Do you not know me?” he asked, turning very pale.
Michel spat in his face.
“Take that as your wages for your article against d’Arthez. If everybody
would do as I do on his own or his friend’s behalf, the press would be
as it ought to be—a self-respecting and respected priesthood.”
Lucien staggered back and caught hold of Rastignac.
“Gentlemen,” he said, addressing Rastignac and de Marsay, “you will not
refuse to act as my seconds. But first, I wish to make matters even and
apology impossible.”
He struck Michel a sudden, unexpected blow in the face. The rest rushed
in between the Republican and Royalist, to prevent a street brawl.
Rastignac dragged Lucien off to the Rue Taitbout, only a few steps away
from the Boulevard de Gand, where this scene took place. It was the hour
of dinner, or a crowd would have assembled at once. De Marsay came to
find Lucien, and the pair insisted that he should dine with them at the
Café Anglais, where they drank and made merry.
“Are you a good swordsman?” inquired de Marsay.
“I have never had a foil in my hands.”
“A good shot?”
“Never fired a pistol in my life.”
“Then you have luck on your side. You are a formidable antagonist to
stand up to; you may kill your man,” said de Marsay.
Fortunately, Lucien found Coralie in bed and asleep.
She had played without rehearsal in a one-act play, and taken her
revenge. She had met with genuine applause. Her enemies had not been
prepared for this step on her part, and her success had determined the
manager to give her the heroine’s part in Camille Maupin’s play. He had
discovered the cause of her apparent failure, and was indignant
with Florine and Nathan. Coralie should have the protection of the
management.
At five o’clock that morning, Rastignac came for Lucien.
“The name of your street my dear fellow, is particularly appropriate for
your lodgings; you are up in the sky,” he said, by way of greeting.
“Let us be first upon the ground on the road to Clignancourt; it is good
form, and we ought to set them an example.”
“Here is the programme,” said de Marsay, as the cab rattled through the
Faubourg Saint-Denis: “You stand up at twenty-five paces, coming nearer,
till you are only fifteen apart. You have, each of you, five paces to
take and three shots to fire—no more. Whatever happens, that must be
the end of it. We load for your antagonist, and his seconds load for
you. The weapons were chosen by the four seconds at a gunmaker’s. We
helped you to a chance, I will promise you; horse pistols are to be the
weapons.”
For Lucien, life had become a bad dream. He did not care whether he
lived or died. The courage of suicide helped him in some sort to carry
things off with a dash of bravado before the spectators. He stood in
his place; he would not take a step, a piece of recklessness which
the others took for deliberate calculation. They thought the poet an
uncommonly cool hand. Michel Chrestien came as far as his limit; both
fired twice and at the same time, for either party was considered to be
equally insulted. Michel’s first bullet grazed Lucien’s chin; Lucien’s
passed ten feet above Chrestien’s head. The second shot hit Lucien’s
coat collar, but the buckram lining fortunately saved its wearer. The
third bullet struck him in the chest, and he dropped.
“Is he dead?” asked Michel Chrestien.
“No,” said the surgeon, “he will pull through.”
“So much the worse,” answered Michel.
“Yes; so much the worse,” said Lucien, as his tears fell fast.
By noon the unhappy boy lay in bed in his own room. With untold pains
they had managed to remove him, but it had taken five hours to bring him
to the Rue de la Lune. His condition was not dangerous, but precautions
were necessary lest fever should set in and bring about troublesome
complications. Coralie choked down her grief and anguish. She sat up
with him at night through the anxious weeks of his illness, studying
her parts by his bedside. Lucien was in danger for two long months; and
often at the theatre Coralie acted her frivolous role with one thought
in her heart, “Perhaps he is dying at this moment.”
Lucien owed his life to the skill and devotion of a friend whom he had
grievously hurt. Bianchon had come to tend him after hearing the story
of the attack from d’Arthez, who told it in confidence, and excused the
unhappy poet. Bianchon suspected that d’Arthez was generously trying to
screen the renegade; but on questioning Lucien during a lucid interval
in the dangerous nervous fever, he learned that his patient was only
responsible for the one serious article in Hector Merlin’s paper.
Before the first month was out, the firm of Fendant and Cavalier filed
their schedule. Bianchon told Coralie that Lucien must on no account
hear the news. The famous _Archer of Charles IX._, brought out with an
absurd title, had been a complete failure. Fendant, being anxious to
realize a little ready money before going into bankruptcy, had sold
the whole edition (without Cavalier’s knowledge) to dealers in printed
paper. These, in their turn, had disposed of it at a cheap rate to
hawkers, and Lucien’s book at that moment was adorning the bookstalls
along the Quays. The booksellers on the Quai des Augustins, who had
previously taken a quantity of copies, now discovered that after this
sudden reduction of the price they were like to lose heavily on their
purchases; the four duodecimo volumes, for which they had paid four
francs fifty centimes, were being given away for fifty sous. Great
was the outcry in the trade; but the newspapers preserved a profound
silence. Barbet had not foreseen this “clearance;” he had a belief
in Lucien’s abilities; for once he had broken his rule and taken two
hundred copies. The prospect of a loss drove him frantic; the things
he said of Lucien were fearful to hear. Then Barbet took a heroic
resolution. He stocked his copies in a corner of his shop, with the
obstinacy of greed, and left his competitors to sell their wares at a
loss. Two years afterwards, when d’Arthez’s fine preface, the merits of
the book, and one or two articles by Léon Giraud had raised the value of
the book, Barbet sold his copies, one by one, at ten francs each.
Lucien knew nothing of all this, but Bérénice and Coralie could not
refuse to allow Hector Merlin to see his dying comrade, and Hector
Merlin made him drink, drop by drop, the whole of the bitter draught
brewed by the failure of Fendant and Cavalier, made bankrupts by his
first ill-fated book. Martainville, the one friend who stood by Lucien
through thick and thin, had written a magnificent article on his
work; but so great was the general exasperation against the editor
of _L’Aristarque_, _L’Oriflamme_, and _Le Drapeau Blanc_, that his
championship only injured Lucien. In vain did the athlete return the
Liberal insults tenfold, not a newspaper took up the challenge in spite
of all his attacks.
Coralie, Bérénice, and Bianchon might shut the door on Lucien’s
so-called friends, who raised a great outcry, but it was impossible to
keep out creditors and writs. After the failure of Fendant and Cavalier,
their bills were taken into bankruptcy according to that provision of
the Code of Commerce most inimical to the claims of third parties, who
in this way lose the benefit of delay.
Lucien discovered that Camusot was proceeding against him with great
energy. When Coralie heard the name, and for the first time learned the
dreadful and humiliating step which her poet had taken for her sake,
the angelic creature loved him ten times more than before, and would not
approach Camusot. The bailiff bringing the warrant of arrest shrank
back from the idea of dragging his prisoner out of bed, and went back to
Camusot before applying to the President of the Tribunal of Commerce for
an order to remove the debtor to a private hospital. Camusot hurried at
once to the Rue de la Lune, and Coralie went down to him.
When she came up again she held the warrants, in which Lucien was
described as a tradesman, in her hand. How had she obtained those papers
from Camusot? What promise had she given? Coralie kept a sad, gloomy
silence, but when she returned she looked as if all the life had gone
out of her. She played in Camille Maupin’s play, and contributed not a
little to the success of that illustrious literary hermaphrodite; but
the creation of this character was the last flicker of a bright, dying
lamp. On the twentieth night, when Lucien had so far recovered that he
had regained his appetite and could walk abroad, and talked of getting
to work again, Coralie broke down; a secret trouble was weighing upon
her. Bérénice always believed that she had promised to go back to
Camusot to save Lucien.
Another mortification followed. Coralie was obliged to see her part
given to Florine. Nathan had threatened the Gymnase with war if the
management refused to give the vacant place to Coralie’s rival. Coralie
had persisted till she could play no longer, knowing that Florine was
waiting to step into her place. She had overtasked her strength. The
Gymnase had advanced sums during Lucien’s illness, she had no money to
draw; Lucien, eager to work though he was, was not yet strong enough to
write, and he helped besides to nurse Coralie and to relieve Bérénice.
From poverty they had come to utter distress; but in Bianchon they
found a skilful and devoted doctor, who obtained credit for them of the
druggist. The landlord of the house and the tradespeople knew by this
time how matters stood. The furniture was attached. The tailor and
dressmaker no longer stood in awe of the journalist, and proceeded to
extremes; and at last no one, with the exception of the pork-butcher and
the druggist, gave the two unlucky children credit. For a week or more
all three of them—Lucien, Bérénice, and the invalid—were obliged to
live on the various ingenious preparations sold by the pork-butcher; the
inflammatory diet was little suited to the sick girl, and Coralie grew
worse. Sheer want compelled Lucien to ask Lousteau for a return of the
loan of a thousand francs lost at play by the friend who had deserted
him in his hour of néed. Perhaps, amid all his troubles, this step cost
him most cruel suffering.
Lousteau was not to be found in the Rue de la Harpe. Hunted down like a
hare, he was lodging now with this friend, now with that. Lucien found
him at last at Flicoteaux’s; he was sitting at the very table at which
Lucien had found him that evening when, for his misfortune, he forsook
d’Arthez for journalism. Lousteau offered him dinner, and Lucien
accepted the offer.
As they came out of Flicoteaux’s with Claude Vignon (who happened to
be dining there that day) and the great man in obscurity, who kept his
wardrobe at Samanon’s, the four among them could not produce enough
specie to pay for a cup of coffee at the Café Voltaire. They lounged
about the Luxembourg in the hope of meeting with a publisher; and, as
it fell out, they met with one of the most famous printers of the day.
Lousteau borrowed forty francs of him, and divided the money into four
equal parts.
Misery had brought down Lucien’s pride and extinguished sentiment; he
shed tears as he told the story of his troubles, but each one of his
comrades had a tale as cruel as his own; and when the three versions
had been given, it seemed to the poet that he was the least unfortunate
among the four. All of them craved a respite from remembrance and
thoughts which made trouble doubly hard to bear.
Lousteau hurried to the Palais Royal to gamble with his remaining nine
francs. The great man unknown to fame, though he had a divine mistress,
must néeds hie him to a low haunt of vice to wallow in perilous
pleasure. Vignon betook himself to the _Rocher de Cancale_ to drown
memory and thought in a couple of bottles of Bordeaux; Lucien parted
company with him on the threshold, declining to share that supper. When
he shook hands with the one journalist who had not been hostile to him,
it was with a cruel pang in his heart.
“What shall I do?” he asked aloud.
“One must do as one can,” the great critic said. “Your book is good, but
it excited jealousy, and your struggle will be hard and long. Genius is
a cruel disease. Every writer carries a canker in his heart, a devouring
monster, like the tapeworm in the stomach, which destroys all feeling as
it arises in him. Which is the stronger? The man or the disease? One
has néed be a great man, truly, to keep the balance between genius and
character. The talent grows, the heart withers. Unless a man is a giant,
unless he has the thews of a Hercules, he must be content either to lose
his gift or to live without a heart. You are slender and fragile, you
will give way,” he added, as he turned into the restaurant.
Lucien returned home, thinking over that terrible verdict. He beheld
the life of literature by the light of the profound truths uttered by
Vignon.
“Money! money!” a voice cried in his ears.
Then he drew three bills of a thousand francs each, due respectively
in one, two, and three months, imitating the handwriting of his
brother-in-law, David Séchard, with admirable skill. He endorsed the
bills, and took them next morning to Métivier, the paper-dealer in the
Rue Serpente, who made no difficulty about taking them. Lucien wrote
a few lines to give his brother-in-law notice of this assault upon his
cash-box, promising, as usual in such cases, to be ready to meet the
bills as they fell due.
When all debts, his own and Coralie’s, were paid, he put the three
hundred francs which remained into Bérénice’s hands, bidding her to
refuse him money if he asked her for it. He was afraid of a return of
the gambler’s frenzy. Lucien worked away gloomily in a sort of cold,
speechless fury, putting forth all his powers into witty articles,
written by the light of the lamp at Coralie’s bedside. Whenever he
looked up in search of ideas, his eyes fell on that beloved face, white
as porcelain, fair with the beauty that belongs to the dying, and he
saw a smile on her pale lips, and her eyes, grown bright with a more
consuming pain than physical suffering, always turned on his face.
Lucien sent in his work, but he could not leave the house to worry
editors, and his articles did not appear. When he at last made up his
mind to go to the office, he met with a cool reception from Théodore
Gaillard, who had advanced him money, and turned his literary diamonds
to good account afterwards.
“Take care, my dear fellow, you are falling off,” he said. “You must not
let yourself down, your work wants inspiration!”
“That little Lucien has written himself out with his romance and his
first articles,” cried Félicien Vernou, Merlin, and the whole chorus of
his enemies, whenever his name came up at Dauriat’s or the Vaudeville.
“The work he is sending us is pitiable.”
“To have written oneself out” (in the slang of journalism), is a verdict
very hard to live down. It passed everywhere from mouth to mouth,
ruining Lucien, all unsuspicious as he was. And, indeed, his burdens
were too heavy for his strength. In the midst of a heavy strain of work,
he was sued for the bills which he had drawn in David Séchard’s name. He
had recourse to Camusot’s experience, and Coralie’s sometime adorer was
generous enough to assist the man she loved. The intolerable situation
lasted for two whole months; the days being diversified by stamped
papers handed over to Desroches, a friend of Bixiou, Blondet, and des
Lupeaulx.
Early in August, Bianchon told them that Coralie’s condition was
hopeless—she had only a few days to live. Those days were spent in
tears by Bérénice and Lucien; they could not hide their grief from the
dying girl, and she was broken-hearted for Lucien’s sake.
Some strange change was working in Coralie. She would have Lucien bring
a priest; she must be reconciled to the Church and die in peace. Coralie
died as a Christian; her repentance was sincere. Her agony and death
took all energy and heart out of Lucien. He sank into a low chair at the
foot of the bed, and never took his eyes off her till Death brought
the end of her suffering. It was five o’clock in the morning. Some
singing-bird lighting upon a flower-pot on the window-sill, twittered a
few notes. Bérénice, knéeling by the bedside, was covering a hand fast
growing cold with kisses and tears. On the chimney-piece there lay
eleven sous.
Lucien went out. Despair made him beg for money to lay Coralie in
her grave. He had wild thoughts of flinging himself at the Marquise
d’Espard’s feet, of entreating the Comte du Châtelet, Mme. de Bargeton,
Mlle. des Touches, nay, that terrible dandy of a de Marsay. All his
pride had gone with his strength. He would have enlisted as a common
soldier at that moment for money. He walked on with a slouching,
feverish gait known to all the unhappy, reached Camille Maupin’s house,
entered, careless of his disordered dress, and sent in a message. He
entreated Mlle. des Touches to see him for a moment.
“Mademoiselle only went to bed at three o’clock this morning,” said the
servant, “and no one would dare to disturb her until she rings.”
“When does she ring?”
“Never before ten o’clock.”
Then Lucien wrote one of those harrowing appeals in which the
well-dressed beggar flings all pride and self-respect to the winds. One
evening, not so very long ago, when Lousteau had told him of the abject
begging letters which Finot received, Lucien had thought it impossible
that any creature would sink so low; and now, carried away by his pen,
he had gone further, it may be, than other unlucky wretches upon the
same road. He did not suspect, in his fever and imbecility, that he
had just written a masterpiece of pathos. On his way home along the
Boulevards, he met Barbet.
“Barbet!” he begged, holding out his hand. “Five hundred francs!”
“No. Two hundred,” returned the other.
“Ah! then you have a heart.”
“Yes; but I am a man of business as well. I have lost a lot of money
through you,” he concluded, after giving the history of the failure of
Fendant and Cavalier, “will you put me in the way of making some?”
Lucien quivered.
“You are a poet. You ought to understand all kinds of poetry,” continued
the little publisher. “I want a few rollicking songs at this moment to
put along with some more by different authors, or they will be down upon
me over the copyright. I want to have a good collection to sell on the
streets at ten sous. If you care to let me have ten good drinking-songs
by to-morrow morning, or something spicy,—you know the sort of thing,
eh!—I will pay you two hundred francs.”
When Lucien returned home, he found Coralie stretched out straight and
stiff on a pallet-bed; Bérénice, with many tears, had wrapped her in a
coarse linen sheet, and put lighted candles at the four corners of the
bed. Coralie’s face had taken that strange, delicate beauty of death
which so vividly impresses the living with the idea of absolute calm;
she looked like some white girl in a decline; it seemed as if those
pale, crimson lips must open and murmur the name which had blended with
the name of God in the last words that she uttered before she died.
Lucien told Bérénice to order a funeral which should not cost more than
two hundred francs, including the service at the shabby little church of
the Bonne-Nouvelle. As soon as she had gone out, he sat down to a table,
and beside the dead body of his love he composed ten rollicking songs
to fit popular airs. The effort cost him untold anguish, but at last the
brain began to work at the bidding of Necessity, as if suffering were
not; and already Lucien had learned to put Claude Vignon’s terrible
maxims in practice, and to raise a barrier between heart and brain. What
a night the poor boy spent over those drinking songs, writing by the
light of the tall wax candles while the priest recited the prayers for
the dead!
Morning broke before the last song was finished. Lucien tried it over
to a street-song of the day, to the consternation of Bérénice and the
priest, who thought that he was mad:—
Lads, ‘tis tedious waste of time
To mingle song and reason;
Folly calls for laughing rhyme,
Sense is out of season.
Let Apollo be forgot
When Bacchus fills the drinking-cup;
Any catch is good, I wot,
If good fellows take it up.
Let philosophers protest,
Let us laugh,
And quaff,
And a fig for the rest!
As Hippocrates has said,
Every jolly fellow,
When a century has sped,
Still is fit and mellow.
No more following of a lass
With the palsy in your legs?—
While your hand can hold a glass,
You can drain it to the dregs,
With an undiminished zest.
Let us laugh,
And quaff,
And a fig for the rest!
Whence we come we know full well.
Whiter are we going?
Ne’er a one of us can tell,
‘Tis a thing past knowing.
Faith! what does it signify,
Take the good that Heaven sends;
It is certain that we die,
Certain that we live, my friends.
Life is nothing but a jest.
Let us laugh,
And quaff,
And a fig for the rest!
He was shouting the reckless refrain when d’Arthez and Bianchon arrived,
to find him in a paroxysm of despair and exhaustion, utterly unable to
make a fair copy of his verses. A torrent of tears followed; and when,
amid his sobs, he had told his story, he saw the tears standing in his
friends’ eyes.
“This wipes out many sins,” said d’Arthez.
“Happy are they who suffer for their sins in this world,” the priest
said solemnly.
At the sight of the fair, dead face smiling at Eternity, while Coralie’s
lover wrote tavern-catches to buy a grave for her, and Barbet paid for
the coffin—of the four candles lighted about the dead body of her who
had thrilled a great audience as she stood behind the footlights in her
Spanish basquina and scarlet green-clocked stockings; while beyond in
the doorway, stood the priest who had reconciled the dying actress with
God, now about to return to the church to say a mass for the soul of her
who had “loved much,”—all the grandeur and the sordid aspects of the
scene, all that sorrow crushed under by Necessity, froze the blood of
the great writer and the great doctor. They sat down; neither of them
could utter a word.
Just at that moment a servant in livery announced Mlle. des Touches.
That beautiful and noble woman understood everything at once.
She stepped quickly across the room to Lucien, and slipped two
thousand-franc notes into his hand as she grasped it.
“It is too late,” he said, looking up at her with dull, hopeless eyes.
The three stayed with Lucien, trying to soothe his despair with
comforting words; but every spring seemed to be broken. At noon all the
brotherhood, with the exception of Michel Chrestien (who, however, had
learned the truth as to Lucien’s treachery), was assembled in the poor
little church of the Bonne-Nouvelle; Mlle. de Touches was present,
and Bérénice and Coralie’s dresser from the theatre, with a couple of
supernumeraries and the disconsolate Camusot. All the men accompanied
the actress to her last resting-place in Père Lachaise. Camusot,
shedding hot tears, had solemnly promised Lucien to buy the grave in
perpetuity, and to put a headstone above it with the words: