Lost Illusions

“To-morrow,” he cried, “I will hurl a couple of columns at their heads.  Then, we shall see.  Don’t be frightened, Coralie, it is not love but revenge; revenge!  And I will have it to the full!”

“What a man it is!” said Blondet.  “If you but knew, Lucien, how rare such explosions are in this jaded Paris, you might appreciate yourself.  You will be a precious scamp” (the actual expression was a trifle stronger); “you are in a fair way to be a power in the land.”

“He will get on,” said Coralie.

“Well, he has come a good way already in six weeks.”

“And if he should climb so high that he can reach a sceptre by treading over a corpse, he shall have Coralie’s body for a stepping-stone,” said the girl.

“You are a pair of lovers of the Golden Age,” said Blondet.—­“I congratulate you on your big article,” he added, turning to Lucien.  “There were a lot of new things in it.  You are past master!”

Lousteau called with Hector Merlin and Vernou.  Lucien was immensely flattered by this attention.  Felicien Vernou brought a hundred francs for Lucien’s article; it was felt that such a contributor must be well paid to attach him to the paper.

Coralie, looking round at the chapter of journalists, ordered in a breakfast from the Cadran bleu, the nearest restaurant, and asked her visitors to adjourn to her handsomely furnished dining-room when Berenice announced that the meal was ready.  In the middle of the repast, when the champagne had gone to all heads, the motive of the visit came out.

“You do not mean to make an enemy of Nathan, do you?” asked Lousteau.  “Nathan is a journalist, and he has friends; he might play you an ugly trick with your first book.  You have your Archer of Charles IX. to sell, have you not?  We went round to Nathan this morning; he is in a terrible way.  But you will set about another article, and puff praise in his face.”

“What!  After my article against his book, would you have me say——­” began Lucien.

The whole party cut him short with a shout of laughter.

“Did you ask him to supper here the day after to-morrow?” asked Blondet.

“You article was not signed,” added Lousteau.  “Felicien, not being quite such a new hand as you are, was careful to put an initial C at the bottom.  You can do that now with all your articles in his paper, which is pure unadulterated Left.  We are all of us in the Opposition.  Felicien was tactful enough not to compromise your future opinions.  Hector’s shop is Right Centre; you might sign your work on it with an L. If you cut a man up, you do it anonymously; if you praise him, it is just as well to put your name to your article.”

“It is not the signatures that trouble me,” returned Lucien, “but I cannot see anything to be said in favor of the book.”

“Then did you really think as you wrote?” asked Hector.

“Yes.”

“Oh!  I thought you were cleverer than that, youngster,” said Blondet.  “No.  Upon my word, as I looked at that forehead of yours, I credited you with the omnipotence of the great mind—­the power of seeing both sides of everything.  In literature, my boy, every idea is reversible, and no man can take upon himself to decide which is the right or wrong side.  Everything is bi-lateral in the domain of thought.  Ideas are binary.  Janus is a fable signifying criticism and the symbol of Genius.  The Almighty alone is triform.  What raises Moliere and Corneille above the rest of us but the faculty of saying one thing with an Alceste or an Octave, and another with a Philinte or a Cinna?  Rousseau wrote a letter against dueling in the Nouvelle Heloise, and another in favor of it.  Which of the two represented his own opinion? will you venture to take it upon yourself to decide?  Which of us could give judgement for Clarissa or Lovelace, Hector or Achilles?  Who was Homer’s hero?  What did Richardson himself think?  It is the function of criticism to look at a man’s work in all its aspects.  We draw up our case, in short.”

“Do you really stick to your written opinions?” asked Vernou, with a satirical expression.  “Why, we are retailers of phrases; that is how we make a livelihood.  When you try to do a good piece of work—­to write a book, in short—­you can put your thoughts, yourself into it, and cling to it, and fight for it; but as for newspaper articles, read to-day and forgotten to-morrow, they are worth nothing in my eyes but the money that is paid for them.  If you attach any importance to such drivel, you might as well make the sign of the Cross and invoke heaven when you sit down to write a tradesman’s circular.”

Every one apparently was astonished at Lucien’s scruples.  The last rags of the boyish conscience were torn away, and he was invested with the toga virilis of journalism.

“Do you know what Nathan said by way of comforting himself after your criticism?” asked Lousteau.

“How should I know?”

“Nathan exclaimed, ‘Paragraphs pass away; but a great work lives!’ He will be here to supper in two days, and he will be sure to fall flat at your feet, and kiss your claws, and swear that you are a great man.”

“That would be a funny thing,” was Lucien’s comment.

“Funny” repeated Blondet.  “He can’t help himself.”

“I am quite willing, my friends,” said Lucien, on whom the wine had begun to take effect.  “But what am I to say?”

“Oh well, refute yourself in three good columns in Merlin’s paper.  We have been enjoying the sight of Nathan’s wrath; we have just been telling him that he owes us no little gratitude for getting up a hot controversy that will sell his second edition in a week.  In his eyes at this present moment you are a spy, a scoundrel, a caitiff wretch; the day after to-morrow you will be a genius, an uncommonly clever fellow, one of Plutarch’s men.  Nathan will hug you and call you his best friend.  Dauriat has been to see you; you have your three thousand francs; you have worked the trick!  Now you want Nathan’s respect and esteem.  Nobody ought to be let in except the publisher.  We must not immolate any one but an enemy.  We should not talk like this if it were a question of some outsider, some inconvenient person who had made a name for himself without us and was not wanted; but Nathan is one of us.  Blondet got some one to attack him in the Mercure for the pleasure of replying in the Debats.  For which reason the first edition went off at once.”

“My friends, upon my word and honor, I cannot write two words in praise of that book——­”

“You will have another hundred francs,” interrupted Merlin.  “Nathan will have brought you in ten louis d’or, to say nothing of an article that you might put in Finot’s paper; you would get a hundred francs for writing that, and another hundred francs from Dauriat—­total, twenty louis.”

“But what am I to say?”

“Here is your way out of the difficulty,” said Blondet, after some thought.  “Say that the envy that fastens on all good work, like wasps on ripe fruit, has attempted to set its fangs in this production.  The captious critic, trying his best to find fault, has been obliged to invent theories for that purpose, and has drawn a distinction between two kinds of literature—­’the literature of ideas and the literature of imagery,’ as he calls them.  On the heads of that, youngster, say that to give expression to ideas through imagery is the highest form of art.  Try to show that all poetry is summed up in that, and lament that there is so little poetry in French; quote foreign criticisms on the unimaginative precision of our style, and then extol M. de Canalis and Nathan for the services they have done France by infusing a less prosaic spirit into the language.  Knock your previous argument to pieces by calling attention to the fact that we have made progress since the eighteenth century. (Discover the ‘progress,’ a beautiful word to mystify the bourgeois public.) Say that the new methods in literature concentrate all styles, comedy and tragedy, description, character-drawing and dialogues, in a series of pictures set in the brilliant frame of a plot which holds the reader’s interest.  The Novel, which demands sentiment, style, and imagery, is the greatest creation of modern days; it is the successor of stage comedy grown obsolete with its restrictions.  Facts and ideas are all within the province of fiction.  The intellect of an incisive moralist, like La Bruyere, the power of treating character as Moliere could treat it, the grand machinery of a Shakespeare, together with the portrayal of the most subtle shades of passion (the one treasury left untouched by our predecessors)—­for all this the modern novel affords free scope.  How far superior is all this to the cut-and-dried logic-chopping, the cold analysis to the eighteenth century!—­’The Novel,’ say sententiously, ‘is the Epic grown amusing.’  Instance Corinne, bring Mme. de Stael up to support your argument.  The eighteenth century called all things in question; it is the task of the nineteenth to conclude and speak the last word; and the last word of the nineteenth century has been for realities—­realities which live however and move.  Passion, in short, an element unknown in Voltaire’s philosophy, has been brought into play.  Here a diatribe against Voltaire, and as for Rousseau, his characters are polemics and systems masquerading.  Julie and Claire are entelechies—­informing spirit awaiting flesh and bones.

“You might slip off on a side issue at this, and say that we owe a new and original literature to the Peace and the Restoration of the Bourbons, for you are writing for a Right Centre paper.

“Scoff at Founders of Systems.  And cry with a glow of fine enthusiasm, ’Here are errors and misleading statements in abundance in our contemporary’s work, and to what end?  To depreciate a fine work, to deceive the public, and to arrive at this conclusion—­“A book that sells, does not sell.”’ Proh pudor! (Mind you put Proh pudor! ’tis a harmless expletive that stimulates the reader’s interest.) Foresee the approaching decadence of criticism, in fact.  Moral—­’There is but one kind of literature, the literature which aims to please.  Nathan has started upon a new way; he understands his epoch and fulfils the requirements of his age—­the demand for drama, the natural demand of a century in which the political stage has become a permanent puppet show.  Have we not seen four dramas in a score of years—­the Revolution, the Directory, the Empire, and the Restoration?’ With that, wallow in dithyramb and eulogy, and the second edition shall vanish like smoke.  This is the way to do it.  Next Saturday put a review in our magazine, and sign it ‘de Rubempre,’ out in full.

“In that final article say that ’fine work always brings about abundant controversy.  This week such and such a paper contained such and such an article on Nathan’s book, and such another paper made a vigorous reply.’  Then you criticise the critics ‘C’ and ‘L’; pay me a passing compliment on the first article in the Debats, and end by averring that Nathan’s work is the great book of the epoch; which is all as if you said nothing at all; they say the same of everything that comes out.

“And so,” continued Blondet, “you will have made four hundred francs in a week, to say nothing of the pleasure of now and again saying what you really think.  A discerning public will maintain that either C or L or Rubempre is in the right of it, or mayhap all the three.  Mythology, beyond doubt one of the grandest inventions of the human brain, places Truth at the bottom of a well; and what are we to do without buckets?  You will have supplied the public with three for one.  There you are, my boy, Go ahead!”

Lucien’s head was swimming with bewilderment.  Blondet kissed him on both cheeks.

“I am going to my shop,” said he.  And every man likewise departed to his shop.  For these “hommes forts,” a newspaper office was nothing but a shop.

They were to meet again in the evening at the Wooden Galleries, and Lucien would sign his treaty of peace with Dauriat.  Florine and Lousteau, Lucien and Coralie, Blondet and Finot, were to dine at the Palais-Royal; du Bruel was giving the manager of the Panorama-Dramatique a dinner.

“They are right,” exclaimed Lucien, when he was alone with Coralie.  “Men are made to be tools in the hands of stronger spirits.  Four hundred francs for three articles!  Doguereau would scarcely give me as much for a book which cost me two years of work.”

“Write criticism,” said Coralie, “have a good time!  Look at me, I am an Andalusian girl to-night, to-morrow I may be a gypsy, and a man the night after.  Do as I do, give them grimaces for their money, and let us live happily.”

Lucien, smitten with love of Paradox, set himself to mount and ride that unruly hybrid product of Pegasus and Balaam’s ass; started out at a gallop over the fields of thought while he took a turn in the Bois, and discovered new possibilities in Blondet’s outline.

He dined as happy people dine, and signed away all his rights in the Marguerites.  It never occurred to him that any trouble might arise from that transaction in the future.  He took a turn of work at the office, wrote off a couple of columns, and came back to the Rue de Vendome.  Next morning he found the germs of yesterday’s ideas had sprung up and developed in his brain, as ideas develop while the intellect is yet unjaded and the sap is rising; and thoroughly did he enjoy the projection of this new article.  He threw himself into it with enthusiasm.  At the summons of the spirit of contradiction, new charms met beneath his pen.  He was witty and satirical, he rose to yet new views of sentiment, of ideas and imagery in literature.  With subtle ingenuity, he went back to his own first impressions of Nathan’s work, when he read it in the newsroom of the Cour du Commerce; and the ruthless, bloodthirsty critic, the lively mocker, became a poet in the final phrases which rose and fell with majestic rhythm like the swaying censer before the altar.

“One hundred francs, Coralie!” cried he, holding up eight sheets of paper covered with writing while she dressed.

The mood was upon him; he went on to indite, stroke by stroke, the promised terrible article on Chatelet and Mme. de Bargeton.  That morning he experienced one of the keenest personal pleasures of journalism; he knew what it was to forge the epigram, to whet and polish the cold blade to be sheathed in a victim’s heart, to make of the hilt a cunning piece of workmanship for the reader to admire.  For the public admires the handle, the delicate work of the brain, while the cruelty is not apparent; how should the public know that the steel of the epigram, tempered in the fire of revenge, has been plunged deftly, to rankle in the very quick of a victim’s vanity, and is reeking from wounds innumerable which it has inflicted?  It is a hideous joy, that grim, solitary pleasure, relished without witnesses; it is like a duel with an absent enemy, slain at a distance by a quill; a journalist might really possess the magical power of talismans in Eastern tales.  Epigram is distilled rancor, the quintessence of a hate derived from all the worst passions of man, even as love concentrates all that is best in human nature.  The man does not exist who cannot be witty to avenge himself; and, by the same rule, there is not one to whom love does not bring delight.  Cheap and easy as this kind of wit may be in France, it is always relished.  Lucien’s article was destined to raise the previous reputation of the paper for venomous spite and evil-speaking.  His article probed two hearts to the depths; it dealt a grievous wound to Mme. de Bargeton, his Laura of old days, as well as to his rival, the Baron du Chatelet.

“Well, let us go for a drive in the Bois,” said Coralie, “the horses are fidgeting.  There is no need to kill yourself.”

“We will take the article on Nathan to Hector.  Journalism is really very much like Achilles’ lance, it salves the wounds that it makes,” said Lucien, correcting a phrase here and there.

The lovers started forth in splendor to show themselves to the Paris which had but lately given Lucien the cold shoulder, and now was beginning to talk about him.  To have Paris talking of you! and this after you have learned how large the great city is, how hard it is to be anybody there—­it was this thought that turned Lucien’s head with exultation.

“Let us go by way of your tailor’s, dear boy, and tell him to be quick with your clothes, or try them on if they are ready.  If you are going to your fine ladies’ houses, you shall eclipse that monster of a de Marsay and young Rastignac and any Ajuda-Pinto or Maxime de Trailles or Vandenesse of them all.  Remember that your mistress is Coralie!  But you will not play me any tricks, eh?”

Two days afterwards, on the eve of the supper-party at Coralie’s house, there was a new play at the Ambigu, and it fell to Lucien to write the dramatic criticism.  Lucien and Coralie walked together after dinner from the Rue de Vendome to the Panorama-Dramatique, going along the Cafe Turc side of the Boulevard du Temple, a lounge much frequented at that time.  People wondered at his luck, and praised Coralie’s beauty.  Chance remarks reached his ears; some said that Coralie was the finest woman in Paris, others that Lucien was a match for her.  The romantic youth felt that he was in his atmosphere.  This was the life for him.  The brotherhood was so far away that it was almost out of sight.  Only two months ago, how he had looked up to those lofty great natures; now he asked himself if they were not just a trifle ridiculous with their notions and their Puritanism.  Coralie’s careless words had lodged in Lucien’s mind, and begun already to bear fruit.  He took Coralie to her dressing-room, and strolled about like a sultan behind the scenes; the actresses gave him burning glances and flattering speeches.

“I must go to the Ambigu and attend to business,” said he.

At the Ambigu the house was full; there was not a seat left for him.  Indignant complaints behind the scenes brought no redress; the box-office keeper, who did not know him as yet, said that they had sent orders for two boxes to his paper, and sent him about his business.

“I shall speak of the play as I find it,” said Lucien, nettled at this.

“What a dunce you are!” said the leading lady, addressing the box-office keeper, “that is Coralie’s adorer.”

The box-office keeper turned round immediately at this.  “I will speak to the manager at once, sir,” he said.

In all these small details Lucien saw the immense power wielded by the press.  His vanity was gratified.  The manager appeared to say that the Duc de Rhetore and Tullia the opera-dancer were in the stage-box, and they had consented to allow Lucien to join them.

“You have driven two people to distraction,” remarked the young Duke, mentioning the names of the Baron du Chatelet and Mme. de Bargeton.

“Distraction?  What will it be to-morrow?” said Lucien.  “So far, my friends have been mere skirmishers, but I have given them red-hot shot to-night.  To-morrow you will know why we are making game of ‘Potelet.’  The article is called ‘Potelet from 1811 to 1821.’  Chatelet will be a byword, a name for the type of courtiers who deny their benefactor and rally to the Bourbons.  When I have done with him, I am going to Mme. de Montcornet’s.”

Lucien’s talk was sparkling.  He was eager that this great personage should see how gross a mistake Mesdames d’Espard and de Bargeton had made when they slighted Lucien de Rubempre.  But he showed the tip of his ear when he asserted his right to bear the name of Rubempre, the Duc de Rhetore having purposely addressed him as Chardon.

“You should go over to the Royalists,” said the Duke.  “You have proved yourself a man of ability; now show your good sense.  The one way of obtaining a patent of nobility and the right to bear the title of your mother’s family, is by asking for it in return for services to be rendered to the Court.  The Liberals will never make a count of you.  The Restoration will get the better of the press, you see, in the long run, and the press is the only formidable power.  They have borne with it too long as it is; the press is sure to be muzzled.  Take advantage of the last moments of liberty to make yourself formidable, and you will have everything—­intellect, nobility, and good looks; nothing will be out of your reach.  So if you are a Liberal, let it be simply for the moment, so that you can make a better bargain for your Royalism.”

With that the Duke entreated Lucien to accept an invitation to dinner, which the German Minister (of Florine’s supper-party) was about to send.  Lucien fell under the charm of the noble peer’s arguments; the salons from which he had been exiled for ever, as he thought, but a few months ago, would shortly open their doors for him!  He was delighted.  He marveled at the power of the press; Intellect and the Press, these then were the real powers in society.  Another thought shaped itself in his mind—­Was Etienne Lousteau sorry that he had opened the gate of the temple to a newcomer?  Even now he (Lucien) felt on his own account that it was strongly advisable to put difficulties in the way of eager and ambitious recruits from the provinces.  If a poet should come to him as he had flung himself into Etienne’s arms, he dared not think of the reception that he would give him.

The youthful Duke meanwhile saw that Lucien was deep in thought, and made a pretty good guess at the matter of his meditations.  He himself had opened out wide horizons of public life before an ambitious poet, with a vacillating will, it is true, but not without aspirations; and the journalists had already shown the neophyte, from a pinnacle of the temple, all the kingdoms of the world of letters and its riches.

Lucien himself had no suspicion of a little plot that was being woven, nor did he imagine that M. de Rhetore had a hand in it.  M. de Rhetore had spoken of Lucien’s cleverness, and Mme. d’Espard’s set had taken alarm.  Mme. de Bargeton had commissioned the Duke to sound Lucien, and with that object in view, the noble youth had come to the Ambigu-Comique.

Do not believe in stories of elaborate treachery.  Neither the great world nor the world of journalists laid any deep schemes; definite plans are not made by either; their Machiavelism lives from hand to mouth, so to speak, and consists, for the most part, in being always on the spot, always on the alert to turn everything to account, always on the watch for the moment when a man’s ruling passion shall deliver him into the hands of his enemies.  The young Duke had seen through Lucien at Florine’s supper-party; he had just touched his vain susceptibilities; and now he was trying his first efforts in diplomacy upon the living subject.

Lucien hurried to the Rue Saint-Fiacre after the play to write his article.  It was a piece of savage and bitter criticism, written in pure wantonness; he was amusing himself by trying his power.  The melodrama, as a matter of fact, was a better piece than the Alcalde; but Lucien wished to see whether he could damn a good play and send everybody to see a bad one, as his associates had said.

He unfolded the sheet at breakfast next morning, telling Coralie as he did so that he had cut up the Ambigu-Comique; and not a little astonished was he to find below his paper on Mme. de Bargeton and Chatelet a notice of the Ambigu, so mellowed and softened in the course of the night, that although the witty analysis was still preserved, the judgment was favorable.  The article was more likely to fill the house than to empty it.  No words can describe his wrath.  He determined to have a word or two with Lousteau.  He had already begun to think himself an indespensable man, and he vowed that he would not submit to be tyrannized over and treated like a fool.  To establish his power beyond cavil, he wrote the article for Dauriat’s review, summing up and weighing all the various opinions concerning Nathan’s book; and while he was in the humor, he hit off another of his short sketches for Lousteau’s newspaper.  Inexperienced journalists, in the first effervescence of youth, make a labor of love of ephemeral work, and lavish their best thought unthriftily thereon.

The manager of the Panorama-Dramatique gave a first performance of a vaudeville that night, so that Florine and Coralie might be free for the evening.  There were to be cards before supper.  Lousteau came for the short notice of the vaudeville; it had been written beforehand after the general rehearsal, for Etienne wished to have the paper off his mind.  Lucien read over one of the charming sketches of Parisian whimsicalities which made the fortune of the paper, and Lousteau kissed him on both eyelids, and called him the providence of journalism.

“Then why do you amuse yourself by turning my article inside out?” asked Lucien.  He had written his brilliant sketch simply and solely to give emphasis to his grievance.

“I?” exclaimed Lousteau.

“Well, who else can have altered my article?”

“You do not know all the ins and outs yet, dear fellow.  The Ambigu pays for thirty copies, and only takes nine for the manager and box office-keeper and their mistresses, and for the three lessees of the theatre.  Every one of the Boulevard theatres pays eight hundred francs in this way to the paper; and there is quite as much again in boxes and orders for Finot, to say nothing of the contributions of the company.  And if the minor theatres do this, you may imagine what the big ones do!  Now you understand?  We are bound to show a good deal of indulgence.”

“I understand this, that I am not at liberty to write as I think——­”

“Eh! what does that matter, so long as you turn an honest penny?” cried Lousteau.  “Besides, my boy, what grudge had you against the theatre?  You must have had some reason for it, or you would not have cut up the play as you did.  If you slash for the sake of slashing, the paper will get into trouble, and when there is good reason for hitting hard it will not tell.  Did the manager leave you out in the cold?”

“He had not kept a place for me.”

“Good,” said Lousteau.  “I shall let him see your article, and tell him that I softened it down; you will find it serves you better than if it had appeared in print.  Go and ask him for tickets to-morrow, and he will sign forty blank orders every month.  I know a man who can get rid of them for you; I will introduce you to him, and he will buy them all up at half-price.  There is a trade done in theatre tickets, just as Barbet trades in reviewers’ copies.  This is another Barbet, the leader of the claque.  He lives near by; come and see him, there is time enough.”

“But, my dear fellow, it is a scandalous thing that Finot should levy blackmail in matters intellectual.  Sooner or later——­”

“Really!” cried Lousteau, “where do you come from?  For what do you take Finot?  Beneath his pretence of good-nature, his ignorance and stupidity, and those Turcaret’s airs of his, there is all the cunning of his father the hatter.  Did you notice an old soldier of the Empire in the den at the office?  That is Finot’s uncle.  The uncle is not only one of the right sort, he has the luck to be taken for a fool; and he takes all that kind of business upon his shoulders.  An ambitious man in Paris is well off indeed if he has a willing scapegoat at hand.  In public life, as in journalism, there are hosts of emergencies in which the chiefs cannot afford to appear.  If Finot should enter on a political career, his uncle would be his secretary, and receive all the contributions levied in his department on big affairs.  Anybody would take Giroudeau for a fool at first sight, but he has just enough shrewdness to be an inscrutable old file.  He is on picket duty; he sees that we are not pestered with hubbub, beginners wanting a job, or advertisements.  No other paper has his equal, I think.”

“He plays his part well,” said Lucien; “I saw him at work.”

Etienne and Lucien reached a handsome house in the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple.

“Is M. Braulard in?” Etienne asked of the porter.

“Monsieur?” said Lucien.  “Then, is the leader of the claque ’Monsieur’?”

“My dear boy, Braulard has twenty thousand francs of income.  All the dramatic authors of the Boulevards are in his clutches, and have a standing account with him as if he were a banker.  Orders and complimentary tickets are sold here.  Braulard knows where to get rid of such merchandise.  Now for a turn at statistics, a useful science enough in its way.  At the rate of fifty complimentary tickets every evening for each theatre, you have two hundred and fifty tickets daily.  Suppose, taking one with another, that they are worth a couple of francs apiece, Braulard pays a hundred and twenty-five francs daily for them, and takes his chance of making cent per cent.  In this way authors’ tickets alone bring him in about four thousand francs every month, or forty-eight thousand francs per annum.  Allow twenty thousand francs for loss, for he cannot always place all his tickets——­”

“Why not?”

“Oh! the people who pay at the door go in with the holders of complimentary tickets for unreserved seats, and the theatre reserves the right of admitting those who pay.  There are fine warm evenings to be reckoned with besides, and poor plays.  Braulard makes, perhaps, thirty thousand francs every year in this way, and he has his claqueurs besides, another industry.  Florine and Coralie pay tribute to him; if they did not, there would be no applause when they come on or go off.”

Lousteau gave this explanation in a low voice as they went up the stair.

“Paris is a queer place,” said Lucien; it seemed to him that he saw self-interest squatting in every corner.

A smart maid-servant opened the door.  At the sight of Etienne Lousteau, the dealer in orders and tickets rose from a sturdy chair before a large cylinder desk, and Lucien beheld the leader of the claque, Braulard himself, dressed in a gray molleton jacket, footed trousers, and red slippers; for all the world like a doctor or a solicitor.  He was a typical self-made man, Lucien thought—­a vulgar-looking face with a pair of exceedingly cunning gray eyes, hands made for hired applause, a complexion over which hard living had passed like rain over a roof, grizzled hair, and a somewhat husky voice.

“You have come from Mlle. Florine, no doubt, sir, and this gentleman for Mlle. Coralie,” said Braulard; “I know you very well by sight.  Don’t trouble yourself, sir,” he continued, addressing Lucien; “I am buying the Gymnase connection, I will look after your lady, and I will give her notice of any tricks they may try to play on her.”

“That is not an offer to be refused, my dear Braulard, but we have come about the press orders for the Boulevard theatres—­I as editor, and this gentleman as dramatic critic.”

“Oh!—­ah, yes!  Finot has sold his paper.  I heard about it.  He is getting on, is Finot.  I have asked him to dine with me at the end of the week; if you will do me the honor and pleasure of coming, you may bring your ladies, and there will be a grand jollification.  Adele Dupuis is coming, and Ducange, and Frederic du Petit-Mere, and Mlle. Millot, my mistress.  We shall have good fun and better liquor.”

“Ducange must be in difficulties.  He has lost his lawsuit.”

“I have lent him ten thousand francs; if Calas succeeds, it will repay the loan, so I have been organizing a success.  Ducange is a clever man; he has brains——­”

Lucien fancied that he must be dreaming when he heard a claqueur appraising a writer’s value.

“Coralie has improved,” continued Braulard, with the air of a competent critic.  “If she is a good girl, I will take her part, for they have got up a cabal against her at the Gymnase.  This is how I mean to do it.  I will have a few well-dressed men in the balconies to smile and make a little murmur, and the applause will follow.  That is a dodge which makes a position for an actress.  I have a liking for Coralie, and you ought to be satisfied, for she has feeling.  Aha!  I can hiss any one on the stage if I like.”

“But let us settle this business about the tickets,” put in Lousteau.

“Very well, I will come to this gentleman’s lodging for them at the beginning of the month.  He is a friend of yours, and I will treat him as I do you.  You have five theatres; you will get thirty tickets—­that will be something like seventy-five francs a month.  Perhaps you will be wanting an advance?” added Braulard, lifting a cash-box full of coin out of his desk.

“No, no,” said Lousteau; “we will keep that shift against a rainy day.”

“I will work with Coralie, sir, and we will come to an understanding,” said Braulard, addressing Lucien, who was looking about him, not without profound astonishment.  There was a bookcase in Braulard’s study, there were framed engravings and good furniture; and as they passed through the drawing room, he noticed that the fittings were neither too luxurious nor yet mean.  The dining-room seemed to be the best ordered room, he remarked on this jokingly.

“But Braulard is an epicure,” said Lousteau; “his dinners are famous in dramatic literature, and they are what you might expect from his cash-box.”

“I have good wine,” Braulard replied modestly.—­“Ah! here are my lamplighters,” he added, as a sound of hoarse voices and strange footsteps came up from the staircase.

Lucien on his way down saw a march past of claqueurs and retailers of tickets.  It was an ill smelling squad, attired in caps, seedy trousers, and threadbare overcoats; a flock of gallows-birds with bluish and greenish tints in their faces, neglected beards, and a strange mixture of savagery and subservience in their eyes.  A horrible population lives and swarms upon the Paris boulevards; selling watch guards and brass jewelry in the streets by day, applauding under the chandeliers of the theatre at night, and ready to lend themselves to any dirty business in the great city.

“Behold the Romans!” laughed Lousteau; “behold fame incarnate for actresses and dramatic authors.  It is no prettier than our own when you come to look at it close.”

“It is difficult to keep illusions on any subject in Paris,” answered Lucien as they turned in at his door.  “There is a tax upon everything —­everything has its price, and anything can be made to order—­even success.”

Thirty guests were assembled that evening in Coralie’s rooms, her dining room would not hold more.  Lucien had asked Dauriat and the manager of the Panorama-Dramatique, Matifat and Florine, Camusot, Lousteau, Finot, Nathan, Hector Merlin and Mme. du Val-Noble, Felicien Vernou, Blondet, Vignon, Philippe Bridau, Mariette, Giroudeau, Cardot and Florentine, and Bixiou.  He had also asked all his friends of the Rue des Quatre-Vents.  Tullia the dancer, who was not unkind, said gossip, to du Bruel, had come without her duke.  The proprietors of the newspapers, for whom most of the journalists wrote, were also of the party.

At eight o’clock, when the lights of the candles in the chandeliers shone over the furniture, the hangings, and the flowers, the rooms wore the festal air that gives to Parisian luxury the appearance of a dream; and Lucien felt indefinable stirrings of hope and gratified vanity and pleasure at the thought that he was the master of the house.  But how and by whom the magic wand had been waved he no longer sought to remember.  Florine and Coralie, dressed with the fanciful extravagance and magnificent artistic effect of the stage, smiled on the poet like two fairies at the gates of the Palace of Dreams.  And Lucien was almost in a dream.

His life had been changed so suddenly during the last few months; he had gone so swiftly from the depths of penury to the last extreme of luxury, that at moments he felt as uncomfortable as a dreaming man who knows that he is asleep.  And yet, he looked round at the fair reality about him with a confidence to which envious minds might have given the name of fatuity.

Lucien himself had changed.  He had grown paler during these days of continual enjoyment; languor had lent a humid look to his eyes; in short, to use Mme. d’Espard’s expression, he looked like a man who is loved.  He was the handsomer for it.  Consciousness of his powers and his strength was visible in his face, enlightened as it was by love and experience.  Looking out over the world of letters and of men, it seemed to him that he might go to and fro as lord of it all.  Sober reflection never entered his romantic head unless it was driven in by the pressure of adversity, and just now the present held not a care for him.  The breath of praise swelled the sails of his skiff; all the instruments of success lay there to his hand; he had an establishment, a mistress whom all Paris envied him, a carriage, and untold wealth in his inkstand.  Heart and soul and brain were alike transformed within him; why should he care to be over nice about the means, when the great results were visibly there before his eyes.

As such a style of living will seem, and with good reason, to be anything but secure to economists who have any experience of Paris, it will not be superfluous to give a glance to the foundation, uncertain as it was, upon which the prosperity of the pair was based.

Camusot had given Coralie’s tradesmen instructions to grant her credit for three months at least, and this had been done without her knowledge.  During those three months, therefore, horses and servants, like everything else, waited as if by enchantment at the bidding of two children, eager for enjoyment, and enjoying to their hearts’ content.

Coralie had taken Lucien’s hand and given him a glimpse of the transformation scene in the dining-room, of the splendidly appointed table, of chandeliers, each fitted with forty wax-lights, of the royally luxurious dessert, and a menu of Chevet’s.  Lucien kissed her on the forehead and held her closely to his heart.

“I shall succeed, child,” he said, “and then I will repay you for such love and devotion.”

“Pshaw!” said Coralie.  “Are you satisfied?”

“I should be very hard to please if I were not.”

“Very well, then, that smile of yours pays for everything,” she said, and with a serpentine movement she raised her head and laid her lips against his.

When they went back to the others, Florine, Lousteau, Matifat, and Camusot were setting out the card-tables.  Lucien’s friends began to arrive, for already these folk began to call themselves “Lucien’s friends”; and they sat over the cards from nine o’clock till midnight.  Lucien was unacquainted with a single game, but Lousteau lost a thousand francs, and Lucien could not refuse to lend him the money when he asked for it.

Michel, Fulgence, and Joseph appeared about ten o’clock; and Lucien, chatting with them in a corner, saw that they looked sober and serious enough, not to say ill at ease.  D’Arthez could not come, he was finishing his book; Leon Giraud was busy with the first number of his review; so the brotherhood had sent three artists among their number, thinking that they would feel less out of their element in an uproarious supper party than the rest.

“Well, my dear fellows,” said Lucien, assuming a slightly patronizing tone, “the ‘comical fellow’ may become a great public character yet, you see.”

“I wish I may be mistaken; I don’t ask better,” said Michel.

“Are you living with Coralie until you can do better?” asked Fulgence.

“Yes,” said Lucien, trying to look unconscious.  “Coralie had an elderly adorer, a merchant, and she showed him the door, poor fellow.  I am better off than your brother Philippe,” he added, addressing Joseph Bridau; “he does not know how to manage Mariette.”

“You are a man like another now; in short, you will make your way,” said Fulgence.

“A man that will always be the same for you, under all circumstances,” returned Lucien.