Lost Illusions

Michel and Fulgence exchanged incredulous scornful smiles at this.  Lucien saw the absurdity of his remark.

“Coralie is wonderfully beautiful,” exclaimed Joseph Bridau.  “What a magnificent portrait she would make!”

“Beautiful and good,” said Lucien; “she is an angel, upon my word.  And you shall paint her portrait; she shall sit to you if you like for your Venetian lady brought by the old woman to the senator.”

“All women who love are angelic,” said Michel Chrestien.

Just at that moment Raoul Nathan flew upon Lucien, and grasped both his hands and shook them in a sudden access of violent friendship.

“Oh, my good friend, you are something more than a great man, you have a heart,” cried he, “a much rarer thing than genius in these days.  You are a devoted friend.  I am yours, in short, through thick and thin; I shall never forget all that you have done for me this week.”

Lucien’s joy had reached the highest point; to be thus caressed by a man of whom everyone was talking!  He looked at his three friends of the brotherhood with something like a superior air.  Nathan’s appearance upon the scene was the result of an overture from Merlin, who sent him a proof of the favorable review to appear in to-morrow’s issue.

“I only consented to write the attack on condition that I should be allowed to reply to it myself,” Lucien said in Nathan’s ear.  “I am one of you.”  This incident was opportune; it justified the remark which amused Fulgence.  Lucien was radiant.

“When d’Arthez’s book comes out,” he said, turning to the three, “I am in a position to be useful to him.  That thought in itself would induce me to remain a journalist.”

“Can you do as you like?” Michel asked quickly.

“So far as one can when one is indispensable,” said Lucien modestly.

It was almost midnight when they sat down to supper, and the fun grew fast and furious.  Talk was less restrained in Lucien’s house than at Matifat’s, for no one suspected that the representatives of the brotherhood and the newspaper writers held divergent opinions.  Young intellects, depraved by arguing for either side, now came into conflict with each other, and fearful axioms of the journalistic jurisprudence, then in its infancy, hurtled to and fro.  Claude Vignon, upholding the dignity of criticism, inveighed against the tendency of the smaller newspapers, saying that the writers of personalities lowered themselves in the end.  Lousteau, Merlin, and Finot took up the cudgels for the system known by the name of blague; puffery, gossip, and humbug, said they, was the test of talent, and set the hall-mark, as it were, upon it.  “Any man who can stand that test has real power,” said Lousteau.

“Besides,” cried Merlin, “when a great man receives ovations, there ought to be a chorus in insults to balance, as in a Roman triumph.”

“Oho!” put in Lucien; “then every one held up to ridicule in print will fancy that he has made a success.”

“Any one would think that the question interested you,” exclaimed Finot.

“And how about our sonnets,” said Michel Chrestien; “is that the way they will win us the fame of a second Petrarch?”

“Laura already counts for something in his fame,” said Dauriat, a pun [Laure (l’or)] received with acclamations.

“Faciamus experimentum in anima vili,” retorted Lucien with a smile.

“And woe unto him whom reviewers shall spare, flinging him crowns at his first appearance, for he shall be shelved like the saints in their shrines, and no man shall pay him the slightest attention,” said Vernou.

“People will say, ’Look elsewhere, simpleton; you have had your due already,’ as Champcenetz said to the Marquis de Genlis, who was looking too fondly at his wife,” added Blondet.

“Success is the ruin of a man in France,” said Finot.  “We are so jealous of one another that we try to forget, and to make others forget, the triumphs of yesterday.”

“Contradiction is the life of literature, in fact,” said Claude Vignon.

“In art as in nature, there are two principles everywhere at strife,” exclaimed Fulgence; “and victory for either means death.”

“So it is with politics,” added Michel Chrestien.

“We have a case in point,” said Lousteau.  “Dauriat will sell a couple of thousand copies of Nathan’s book in the coming week.  And why?  Because the book that was cleverly attacked will be ably defended.”

Merlin took up the proof of to-morrow’s paper.  “How can such an article fail to sell an edition?” he asked.

“Read the article,” said Dauriat.  “I am a publisher wherever I am, even at supper.”

Merlin read Lucien’s triumphant refutation aloud, and the whole party applauded.

“How could that article have been written unless the attack had preceded it?” asked Lousteau.

Dauriat drew the proof of the third article from his pocket and read it over, Finot listening closely; for it was to appear in the second number of his own review, and as editor he exaggerated his enthusiasm.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “so and not otherwise would Bossuet have written if he had lived in our day.”

“I am sure of it,” said Merlin.  “Bossuet would have been a journalist to-day.”

“To Bossuet the Second!” cried Claude Vignon, raising his glass with an ironical bow.

“To my Christopher Columbus!” returned Lucien, drinking a health to Dauriat.

“Bravo!” cried Nathan.

“Is it a nickname?” Merlin inquired, looking maliciously from Finot to Lucien.

“If you go on at this pace, you will be quite beyond us,” said Dauriat; “these gentlemen” (indicating Camusot and Matifat) “cannot follow you as it is.  A joke is like a bit of thread; if it is spun too fine, it breaks, as Bonaparte said.”

“Gentlemen,” said Lousteau, “we have been eye-witnesses of a strange, portentous, unheard-of, and truly surprising phenomenon.  Admire the rapidity with which our friend here has been transformed from a provincial into a journalist!”

“He is a born journalist,” said Dauriat.

“Children!” called Finot, rising to his feet, “all of us here present have encouraged and protected our amphitryon in his entrance upon a career in which he has already surpassed our hopes.  In two months he has shown us what he can do in a series of excellent articles known to us all.  I propose to baptize him in form as a journalist.”

“A crown of roses! to signalize a double conquest,” cried Bixiou, glancing at Coralie.

Coralie made a sign to Berenice.  That portly handmaid went to Coralie’s dressing-room and brought back a box of tumbled artificial flowers.  The more incapable members of the party were grotesquely tricked out in these blossoms, and a crown of roses was soon woven.  Finot, as high priest, sprinkled a few drops of champagne on Lucien’s golden curls, pronouncing with delicious gravity the words—­“In the name of the Government Stamp, the Caution-money, and the Fine, I baptize thee, Journalist.  May thy articles sit lightly on thee!”

“And may they be paid for, including white lines!” cried Merlin.

Just at that moment Lucien caught sight of three melancholy faces.  Michel Chrestien, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence Ridal took up their hats and went out amid a storm of invective.

“Queer customers!” said Merlin.

“Fulgence used to be a good fellow,” added Lousteau, “before they perverted his morals.”

“Who are ’they’?” asked Claude Vignon.

“Some very serious young men,” said Blondet, “who meet at a philosophico-religious symposium in the Rue des Quatre-Vents, and worry themselves about the meaning of human life——­”

“Oh! oh!”

“They are trying to find out whether it goes round in a circle, or makes some progress,” continued Blondet.  “They were very hard put to it between the straight line and the curve; the triangle, warranted by Scripture, seemed to them to be nonsense, when, lo! there arose among them some prophet or other who declared for the spiral.”

“Men might meet to invent more dangerous nonsense than that!” exclaimed Lucien, making a faint attempt to champion the brotherhood.

“You take theories of that sort for idle words,” said Felicien Vernou; “but a time comes when the arguments take the form of gunshot and the guillotine.”

“They have not come to that yet,” said Bixiou; “they have only come as far as the designs of Providence in the invention of champagne, the humanitarian significance of breeches, and the blind deity who keeps the world going.  They pick up fallen great men like Vico, Saint-Simon, and Fourier.  I am much afraid that they will turn poor Joseph Bridau’s head among them.”

“Bianchon, my old schoolfellow, gives me the cold shoulder now,” said Lousteau; “it is all their doing——­”

“Do they give lectures on orthopedy and intellectual gymnastics?” asked Merlin.

“Very likely,” answered Finot, “if Bianchon has any hand in their theories.”

“Pshaw!” said Lousteau; “he will be a great physician anyhow.”

“Isn’t d’Arthez their visible head?” asked Nathan, “a little youngster that is going to swallow all of us up.”

“He is a genius!” cried Lucien.

“Genius, is he!  Well, give me a glass of sherry!” said Claude Vignon, smiling.

Every one, thereupon, began to explain his character for the benefit of his neighbor; and when a clever man feels a pressing need of explaining himself, and of unlocking his heart, it is pretty clear that wine has got the upper hand.  An hour later, all the men in the company were the best friends in the world, addressing each other as great men and bold spirits, who held the future in their hands.  Lucien, in his quality of host, was sufficiently clearheaded to apprehend the meaning of the sophistries which impressed him and completed his demoralization.

“The Liberal party,” announced Finot, “is compelled to stir up discussion somehow.  There is no fault to find with the action of the Government, and you may imagine what a fix the Opposition is in.  Which of you now cares to write a pamphlet in favor of the system of primogeniture, and raise a cry against the secret designs of the Court?  The pamphlet will be paid for handsomely.”

“I will write it,” said Hector Merlin.  “It is my own point of view.”

“Your party will complain that you are compromising them,” said Finot.  “Felicien, you must undertake it; Dauriat will bring it out, and we will keep the secret.”

“How much shall I get?”

“Six hundred francs.  Sign it ‘Le Comte C, three stars.’”

“It’s a bargain,” said Felicien Vernou.

“So you are introducing the canard to the political world,” remarked Lousteau.

“It is simply the Chabot affair carried into the region of abstract ideas,” said Finot.  “Fasten intentions on the Government, and then let loose public opinion.”

“How a Government can leave the control of ideas to such a pack of scamps as we are, is matter for perpetual and profound astonishment to me,” said Claude Vignon.

“If the Ministry blunders so far as to come down into the arena, we can give them a drubbing.  If they are nettled by it, the thing will rankle in people’s minds, and the Government will lose its hold on the masses.  The newspaper risks nothing, and the authorities have everything to lose.”

“France will be a cipher until newspapers are abolished by law,” said Claude Vignon.  “You are making progress hourly,” he added, addressing Finot.  “You are a modern order of Jesuits, lacking the creed, the fixed idea, the discipline, and the union.”

They went back to the card-tables; and before long the light of the candles grew feeble in the dawn.

“Lucien, your friends from the Rue des Quatre-Vents looked as dismal as criminals going to be hanged,” said Coralie.

“They were the judges, not the criminals,” replied the poet.

“Judges are more amusing than that,” said Coralie.

For a month Lucien’s whole time was taken up with supper parties, dinner engagements, breakfasts, and evening parties; he was swept away by an irresistible current into a vortex of dissipation and easy work.  He no longer thought of the future.  The power of calculation amid the complications of life is the sign of a strong will which poets, weaklings, and men who live a purely intellectual life can never counterfeit.  Lucien was living from hand to mouth, spending his money as fast as he made it, like many another journalist; nor did he give so much as a thought to those periodically recurrent days of reckoning which chequer the life of the bohemian in Paris so sadly.

In dress and figure he was a rival for the great dandies of the day.  Coralie, like all zealots, loved to adorn her idol.  She ruined herself to give her beloved poet the accoutrements which had so stirred his envy in the Garden of the Tuileries.  Lucien had wonderful canes, and a charming eyeglass; he had diamond studs, and scarf-rings, and signet-rings, besides an assortment of waistcoats marvelous to behold, and in sufficient number to match every color in a variety of costumes.  His transition to the estate of dandy swiftly followed.  When he went to the German Minister’s dinner, all the young men regarded him with suppressed envy; yet de Marsay, Vandenesse, Ajuda-Pinto, Maxime de Trailles, Rastignac, Beaudenord, Manerville, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse gave place to none in the kingdom of fashion.  Men of fashion are as jealous among themselves as women, and in the same way.  Lucien was placed between Mme. de Montcornet and Mme. d’Espard, in whose honor the dinner was given; both ladies overwhelmed him with flatteries.

“Why did you turn your back on society when you would have been so well received?” asked the Marquise.  “Every one was prepared to make much of you.  And I have a quarrel with you too.  You owed me a call—­I am still waiting to receive it.  I saw you at the Opera the other day, and you would not deign to come to see me nor to take any notice of me.”

“Your cousin, madame, so unmistakably dismissed me—­”

“Oh! you do not know women,” the Marquise d’Espard broke in upon him.  “You have wounded the most angelic heart, the noblest nature that I know.  You do not know all that Louise was trying to do for you, nor how tactfully she laid her plans for you.—­Oh! and she would have succeeded,” the Marquise continued, replying to Lucien’s mute incredulity.  “Her husband is dead now; died, as he was bound to die, of an indigestion; could you doubt that she would be free sooner or later?  And can you suppose that she would like to be Madame Chardon?  It was worth while to take some trouble to gain the title of Comtesse de Rubempre.  Love, you see, is a great vanity, which requires the lesser vanities to be in harmony with itself—­especially in marriage.  I might love you to madness—­which is to say, sufficiently to marry you—­and yet I should find it very unpleasant to be called Madame Chardon.  You can see that.  And now that you understand the difficulties of Paris life, you will know how many roundabout ways you must take to reach your end; very well, then, you must admit that Louise was aspiring to an all but impossible piece of Court favor; she was quite unknown, she is not rich, and therefore she could not afford to neglect any means of success.

“You are clever,” the Marquise d’Espard continued; “but we women, when we love, are cleverer than the cleverest man.  My cousin tried to make that absurd Chatelet useful—­Oh!” she broke off, “I owe not a little amusement to you; your articles on Chatelet made me laugh heartily.”

Lucien knew not what to think of all this.  Of the treachery and bad faith of journalism he had had some experience; but in spite of his perspicacity, he scarcely expected to find bad faith or treachery in society.  There were some sharp lessons in store for him.

“But, madame,” he objected, for her words aroused a lively curiosity, “is not the Heron under your protection?”

“One is obliged to be civil to one’s worst enemies in society,” protested she; “one may be bored, but one must look as if the talk was amusing, and not seldom one seems to sacrifice friends the better to serve them.  Are you still a novice?  You mean to write, and yet you know nothing of current deceit?  My cousin apparently sacrificed you to the Heron, but how could she dispense with his influence for you?  Our friend stands well with the present ministry; and we have made him see that your attacks will do him service—­up to a certain point, for we want you to make it up again some of these days.  Chatelet has received compensations for his troubles; for, as des Lupeaulx said, ’While the newspapers are making Chatelet ridiculous, they will leave the Ministry in peace.’”

There was a pause; the Marquise left Lucien to his own reflections.

“M.  Blondet led me to hope that I should have the pleasure of seeing you in my house,” said the Comtesse de Montcornet.  “You will meet a few artists and men of letters, and some one else who has the keenest desire to become acquainted with you—­Mlle. des Touches, the owner of talents rare among our sex.  You will go to her house, no doubt.  Mlle. de Touches (or Camille Maupin, if you prefer it) is prodigiously rich, and presides over one of the most remarkable salons in Paris.  She has heard that you are as handsome as you are clever, and is dying to meet you.”

Lucien could only pour out incoherent thanks and glance enviously at Emile Blondet.  There was as great a difference between a great lady like Mme. de Montcornet and Coralie as between Coralie and a girl out of the streets.  The Countess was young and witty and beautiful, with the very white fairness of women of the north.  Her mother was the Princess Scherbellof, and the Minister before dinner had paid her the most respectful attention.

By this time the Marquise had made an end of trifling disdainfully with the wing of a chicken.

“My poor Louise felt so much affection for you,” she said.  “She took me into her confidence; I knew her dreams of a great career for you.  She would have borne a great deal, but what scorn you showed her when you sent back her letters!  Cruelty we can forgive; those who hurt us must have still some faith in us; but indifference!  Indifference is like polar snows, it extinguishes all life.  So, you must see that you have lost a precious affection through your own fault.  Why break with her?  Even if she had scorned you, you had your way to make, had you not?—­your name to win back?  Louise thought of all that.”

“Then why was she silent?”

“Eh! mon Dieu!” cried the Marquise, “it was I myself who advised her not to take you into her confidence.  Between ourselves, you know, you seemed so little used to the ways of the world, that I took alarm.  I was afraid that your inexperience and rash ardor might wreck our carefully-made schemes.  Can you recollect yourself as you were then?  You must admit that if you could see your double to-day, you would say the same yourself.  You are not like the same man.  That was our mistake.  But would one man in a thousand combine such intellectual gifts with such wonderful aptitude for taking the tone of society?  I did not think that you would be such an astonishing exception.  You were transformed so quickly, you acquired the manner of Paris so easily, that I did not recognize you in the Bois de Boulogne a month ago.”

Lucien heard the great lady with inexpressible pleasure; the flatteries were spoken with such a petulant, childlike, confiding air, and she seemed to take such a deep interest in him, that he thought of his first evening at the Panorama-Dramatique, and began to fancy that some such miracle was about to take place a second time.  Everything had smiled upon him since that happy evening; his youth, he thought, was the talisman that worked this change.  He would prove this great lady; she should not take him unawares.

“Then, what were these schemes which have turned to chimeras, madame?” asked he.

“Louise meant to obtain a royal patent permitting you to bear the name and title of Rubempre.  She wished to put Chardon out of sight.  Your opinions have put that out of the question now, but then it would not have been so hard to manage, and a title would mean a fortune for you.

“You will look on these things as trifles and visionary ideas,” she continued; “but we know something of life, and we know, too, all the solid advantages of a Count’s title when it is borne by a fashionable and extremely charming young man.  Announce ‘M.  Chardon’ and ’M. le Comte de Rubempre’ before heiresses or English girls with a million to their fortune, and note the difference of the effect.  The Count might be in debt, but he would find open hearts; his good looks, brought into relief by his title, would be like a diamond in a rich setting; M. Chardon would not be so much as noticed.  WE have not invented these notions; they are everywhere in the world, even among the burgeois.  You are turning your back on fortune at this minute.  Do you see that good-looking young man?  He is the Vicomte Felix de Vandenesse, one of the King’s private secretaries.  The King is fond enough of young men of talent, and Vandenesse came from the provinces with baggage nearly as light as yours.  You are a thousand times cleverer than he; but do you belong to a great family, have you a name?  You know des Lupeaulx; his name is very much like yours, for he was born a Chardin; well, he would not sell his little farm of Lupeaulx for a million, he will be Comte des Lupeaulx some day, and perhaps his grandson may be a duke.  —­You have made a false start; and if you continue in that way, it will be all over with you.  See how much wiser M. Emile Blondet has been!  He is engaged on a Government newspaper; he is well looked on by those in authority; he can afford to mix with Liberals, for he holds sound opinions; and soon or later he will succeed.  But then he understood how to choose his opinions and his protectors.

“Your charming neighbor” (Mme. d’Espard glanced at Mme. de Montcornet) “was a Troisville; there are two peers of France in the family and two deputies.  She made a wealthy marriage with her name; she sees a great deal of society at her house; she has influence, she will move the political world for young M. Blondet.  Where will a Coralie take you?  In a few years’ time you will be hopelessly in debt and weary of pleasure.  You have chosen badly in love, and you are arranging your life ill.  The woman whom you delight to wound was at the Opera the other night, and this was how she spoke of you.  She deplored the way in which you were throwing away your talent and the prime of youth; she was thinking of you, and not of herself, all the while.”

“Ah! if you were only telling me the truth, madame!” cried Lucien.

“What object should I have in telling lies?” returned the Marquise, with a glance of cold disdain which annihilated him.  He was so dashed by it, that the conversation dropped, for the Marquise was offended, and said no more.

Lucien was nettled by her silence, but he felt that it was due to his own clumsiness, and promised himself that he would repair his error.  He turned to Mme. de Montcornet and talked to her of Blondet, extolling that young writer for her benefit.  The Countess was gracious to him, and asked him (at a sign from Mme. d’Espard) to spend an evening at her house.  It was to be a small and quiet gathering to which only friends were invited—­Mme. de Bargeton would be there in spite of her mourning; Lucien would be pleased, she was sure, to meet Mme. de Bargeton.

“Mme. la Marquise says that all the wrong is on my side,” said Lucien; “so surely it rests with her cousin, does it not, to decide whether she will meet me?”

“Put an end to those ridiculous attacks, which only couple her name with the name of a man for whom she does not care at all, and you will soon sign a treaty of peace.  You thought that she had used you ill, I am told, but I myself have seen her in sadness because you had forsaken her.  Is it true that she left the provinces on your account?”

Lucien smiled; he did not venture to make any other reply.

“Oh! how could you doubt the woman who made such sacrifices for you?  Beautiful and intellectual as she is, she deserves besides to be loved for her own sake; and Mme. de Bargeton cared less for you than for your talents.  Believe me, women value intellect more than good looks,” added the Countess, stealing a glance at Emile Blondet.

In the Minister’s hotel Lucien could see the differences between the great world and that other world beyond the pale in which he had lately been living.  There was no sort of resemblance between the two kinds of splendor, no single point in common.  The loftiness and disposition of the rooms in one of the handsomest houses in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the ancient gilding, the breadth of decorative style, the subdued richness of the accessories, all this was strange and new to him; but Lucien had learned very quickly to take luxury for granted, and he showed no surprise.  His behavior was as far removed from assurance or fatuity on the one hand as from complacency and servility upon the other.  His manner was good; he found favor in the eyes of all who were not prepared to be hostile, like the younger men, who resented his sudden intrusion into the great world, and felt jealous of his good looks and his success.

When they rose from table, he offered his arm to Mme. d’Espard, and was not refused.  Rastignac, watching him, saw that the Marquise was gracious to Lucien, and came in the character of a fellow-countryman to remind the poet that they had met once before at Mme. du Val-Noble’s.  The young patrician seemed anxious to find an ally in the great man from his own province, asked Lucien to breakfast with him some morning, and offered to introduce him to some young men of fashion.  Lucien was nothing loath.

“The dear Blondet is coming,” said Rastignac.

The two were standing near the Marquis de Ronquerolles, the Duc de Rhetore, de Marsay, and General Montriveau.  The Minister came across to join the group.

“Well,” said he, addressing Lucien with a bluff German heartiness that concealed his dangerous subtlety; “well, so you have made your peace with Mme. d’Espard; she is delighted with you, and we all know,” he added, looking round the group, “how difficult it is to please her.”

“Yes, but she adores intellect,” said Rastignac, “and my illustrious fellow-countryman has wit enough to sell.”

“He will soon find out that he is not doing well for himself,” Blondet put in briskly.  “He will come over; he will soon be one of us.”

Those who stood about Lucien rang the changes on this theme; the older and responsible men laid down the law with one or two profound remarks; the younger ones made merry at the expense of the Liberals.

“He simply tossed up head or tails for Right or Left, I am sure,” remarked Blondet, “but now he will choose for himself.”

Lucien burst out laughing; he thought of his talk with Lousteau that evening in the Luxembourg Gardens.

“He has taken on a bear-leader,” continued Blondet, “one Etienne Lousteau, a newspaper hack who sees a five-franc piece in a column.  Lousteau’s politics consist in a belief that Napoleon will return, and (and this seems to me to be still more simple) in a confidence in the gratitude and patriotism of their worships the gentlemen of the Left.  As a Rubempre, Lucien’s sympathies should lean towards the aristocracy; as a journalist, he ought to be for authority, or he will never be either Rubempre or a secretary-general.”

The Minister now asked Lucien to take a hand at whist; but, to the great astonishment of those present, he declared that he did not know the game.

“Come early to me on the day of that breakfast affair,” Rastignac whispered, “and I will teach you to play.  You are a discredit to the royal city of Angouleme; and, to repeat M. de Talleyrand’s saying, you are laying up an unhappy old age for yourself.”

Des Lupeaulx was announced.  He remembered Lucien, whom he had met at Mme. du Val-Noble’s, and bowed with a semblance of friendliness which the poet could not doubt.  Des Lupeaulx was in favor, he was a Master of Requests, and did the Ministry secret services; he was, moreover, cunning and ambitious, slipping himself in everywhere; he was everybody’s friend, for he never knew whom he might need.  He saw plainly that this was a young journalist whose social success would probably equal his success in literature; saw, too, that the poet was ambitious, and overwhelmed him with protestations and expressions of friendship and interest, till Lucien felt as if they were old friends already, and took his promises and speeches for more than their worth.  Des Lupeaulx made a point of knowing a man thoroughly well if he wanted to get rid of him or feared him as a rival.  So, to all appearance, Lucien was well received.  He knew that much of his success was owing to the Duc de Rhetore, the Minister, Mme. d’Espard, and Mme. de Montcornet, and went to spend a few moments with the two ladies before taking leave, and talked his very best for them.

“What a coxcomb!” said des Lupeaulx, turning to the Marquise when he had gone.

“He will be rotten before he is ripe,” de Marsay added, smiling.  “You must have private reasons of your own, madame, for turning his head in this way.”

When Lucien stepped into the carriage in the courtyard, he found Coralie waiting for him.  She had come to fetch him.  The little attention touched him; he told her the history of his evening; and, to his no small astonishment, the new notions which even now were running in his head met with Coralie’s approval.  She strongly advised him to enlist under the ministerial banner.

“You have nothing to expect from the Liberals but hard knocks,” she said.  “They plot and conspire; they murdered the Duc de Berri.  Will they upset the Government?  Never!  You will never come to anything through them, while you will be Comte de Rubempre if you throw in your lot with the other side.  You might render services to the State, and be a peer of France, and marry an heiress.  Be an Ultra.  It is the proper thing besides,” she added, this being the last word with her on all subjects.  “I dined with the Val-Noble; she told me that Theodore Gaillard is really going to start his little Royalist Revue, so as to reply to your witticisms and the jokes in the Miroir.  To hear them talk, M. Villele’s party will be in office before the year is out.  Try to turn the change to account before they come to power; and say nothing to Etienne and your friends, for they are quite equal to playing you some ill turn.”

A week later, Lucien went to Mme. de Montcornet’s house, and saw the woman whom he had so loved, whom later he had stabbed to the heart with a jest.  He felt the most violent agitation at the sight of her, for Louise also had undergone a transformation.  She was the Louise that she would always have been but for her detention in the provinces —­she was a great lady.  There was a grace and refinement in her mourning dress which told that she was a happy widow; Lucien fancied that this coquetry was aimed in some degree at him, and he was right; but, like an ogre, he had tasted flesh, and all that evening he vacillated between Coralie’s warm, voluptuous beauty and the dried-up, haughty, cruel Louise.  He could not make up his mind to sacrifice the actress to the great lady; and Mme. de Bargeton—­all the old feeling reviving in her at the sight of Lucien, Lucien’s beauty, Lucien’s cleverness—­was waiting and expecting that sacrifice all evening; and after all her insinuating speeches and her fascinations, she had her trouble for her pains.  She left the room with a fixed determination to be revenged.

“Well, dear Lucien,” she had said, and in her kindness there was both generosity and Parisian grace; “well, dear Lucien, so you, that were to have been my pride, took me for your first victim; and I forgave you, my dear, for I felt that in such a revenge there was a trace of love still left.”

With that speech, and the queenly way in which it was uttered, Mme. de Bargeton recovered her position.  Lucien, convinced that he was a thousand times in the right, felt that he had been put in the wrong.  Not one word of the causes of the rupture! not one syllable of the terrible farewell letter!  A woman of the world has a wonderful genius for diminishing her faults by laughing at them; she can obliterate them all with a smile or a question of feigned surprise, and she knows this.  She remembers nothing, she can explain everything; she is amazed, asks questions, comments, amplifies, and quarrels with you, till in the end her sins disappear like stains on the application of a little soap and water; black as ink you knew them to be; and lo! in a moment, you behold immaculate white innocence, and lucky are you if you do not find that you yourself have sinned in some way beyond redemption.

In a moment old illusions regained their power over Lucien and Louise; they talked like friends, as before; but when the lady, with a hesitating sigh, put the question, “Are you happy?” Lucien was not ready with a prompt, decided answer; he was intoxicated with gratified vanity; Coralie, who (let us admit it) had made life easy for him, had turned his head.  A melancholy “No” would have made his fortune, but he must needs begin to explain his position with regard to Coralie.  He said that he was loved for his own sake; he said a good many foolish things that a man will say when he is smitten with a tender passion, and thought the while that he was doing a clever thing.

Mme. de Bargeton bit her lips.  There was no more to be said.  Mme. d’Espard brought Mme. de Montcornet to her cousin, and Lucien became the hero of the evening, so to speak.  He was flattered, petted, and made much of by the three women; he was entangled with art which no words can describe.  His social success in this fine and brilliant circle was at least as great as his triumphs in journalism.  Beautiful Mlle. des Touches, so well known as “Camille Maupin,” asked him to one of her Wednesday dinners; his beauty, now so justly famous, seemed to have made an impression upon her.  Lucien exerted himself to show that his wit equaled his good looks, and Mlle. des Touches expressed her admiration with a playful outspokenness and a pretty fervor of friendship which deceives those who do not know life in Paris to its depths, nor suspect how continual enjoyment whets the appetite for novelty.

“If she should like me as much as I like her, we might abridge the romance,” said Lucien, addressing de Marsay and Rastignac.

“You both of you write romances too well to care to live them,” returned Rastignac.  “Can men and women who write ever fall in love with each other?  A time is sure to come when they begin to make little cutting remarks.”

“It would not be a bad dream for you,” laughed de Marsay.  “The charming young lady is thirty years old, it is true, but she has an income of eighty thousand livres.  She is adorably capricious, and her style of beauty wears well.  Coralie is a silly little fool, my dear boy, well enough for a start, for a young spark must have a mistress; but unless you make some great conquest in the great world, an actress will do you harm in the long run.  Now, my boy, go and cut out Conti.  Here he is, just about to sing with Camille Maupin.  Poetry has taken precedence of music ever since time began.”

But when Lucien heard Mlle. des Touches’ voice blending with Conti’s, his hopes fled.

“Conti sings too well,” he told des Lupeaulx; and he went back to Mme. de Bargeton, who carried him off to Mme. d’Espard in another room.

“Well, will you not interest yourself in him?” asked Mme. de Bargeton.

The Marquise spoke with an air half kindly, half insolent.  “Let M. Chardon first put himself in such a position that he will not compromise those who take an interest in him,” she said.  “If he wishes to drop his patronymic and to bear his mother’s name, he should at any rate be on the right side, should he not?”

“In less than two months I will arrange everything,” said Lucien.

“Very well,” returned Mme. d’Espard.  “I will speak to my father and uncle; they are in waiting, they will speak to the Chancellor for you.”

The diplomatist and the two women had very soon discovered Lucien’s weak side.  The poet’s head was turned by the glory of the aristocracy; every man who entered the rooms bore a sounding name mounted in a glittering title, and he himself was plain Chardon.  Unspeakable mortification filled him at the sound of it.  Wherever he had been during the last few days, that pang had been constantly present with him.  He felt, moreover, a sensation quite as unpleasant when he went back to his desk after an evening spent in the great world, in which he made a tolerable figure, thanks to Coralie’s carriage and Coralie’s servants.

He learned to ride, in order to escort Mme. d’Espard, Mlle. des Touches, and the Comtesse de Montcornet when they drove in the Bois, a privilege which he had envied other young men so greatly when he first came to Paris.  Finot was delighted to give his right-hand man an order for the Opera, so Lucien wasted many an evening there, and thenceforward he was among the exquisites of the day.

The poet asked Rastignac and his new associates to a breakfast, and made the blunder of giving it in Coralie’s rooms in the Rue de Vendome; he was too young, too much of a poet, too self-confident, to discern certain shades and distinctions in conduct; and how should an actress, a good-hearted but uneducated girl, teach him life?  His guests were anything but charitably disposed towards him; it was clearly proven to their minds that Lucien the critic and the actress were in collusion for their mutual interests, and all of the young men were jealous of an arrangement which all of them stigmatized.  The most pitiless of those who laughed that evening at Lucien’s expense was Rastignac himself.  Rastignac had made and held his position by very similar means; but so careful had he been of appearances, that he could afford to treat scandal as slander.