Lost Illusions

This was the individual whom Etienne 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 a 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 Etienne.

“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 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 Very’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 Very’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 Vendome 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 Berenice 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 Berenice.

“You did quite right, my angel,” said Coralie, with her arms about his neck.  “Berenice 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 Berenice 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 Berenice 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 Berenice 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 auctioneer’s phrase.

Lucien, looking round the room, discovered a desk, an easy-chair, paper, pens, and ink.  The sight of Berenice 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 Reveil; 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 Berenice 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, Leon 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 Vendome.  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 Leon 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 Reveil, 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 Rubempre.  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 knee 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 Rubempre.  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 Reveil.  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 Etienne; Etienne owed him a thousand francs, and there had been besides a private understanding between them; but Etienne 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 Reveil, 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 Theodore 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.  Felicien 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 Vendome 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 Freron 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 Etienne Lousteau, who had confided so much to him, knew his secret, knew how to deal a deathblow to the poet of Angouleme.  That very night, as Lucien and Merlin went to the Vaudeville, Etienne 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 bete 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 Chatelet, 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 Angouleme—­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 Rubempre 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 Chatelet 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, needed 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 Felicien 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!