Lost Illusions

“We always mean to have a few numbers ready in advance, a grand idea that will never be realized,” continued Lousteau.  “It is ten o’clock, you see, and not a line has been written.  I shall ask Vernou and Nathan for a score of epigrams on deputies, or on ‘Chancellor Cruzoe,’ or on the Ministry, or on friends of ours if it needs must be.  A man in this pass would slaughter his parent, just as a privateer will load his guns with silver pieces taken out of the booty sooner than perish.  Write a brilliant article, and you will make brilliant progress in Finot’s estimation; for Finot has a lively sense of benefits to come, and that sort of gratitude is better than any kind of pledge, pawntickets always excepted, for they invariably represent something solid.”

“What kind of men can journalists be?  Are you to sit down at a table and be witty to order?”

“Just exactly as a lamp begins to burn when you apply a match—­so long as there is any oil in it.”

Lousteau’s hand was on the lock when du Bruel came in with the manager.

“Permit me, monsieur, to take a message to Coralie; allow me to tell her that you will go home with her after supper, or my play will be ruined.  The wretched girl does not know what she is doing or saying; she will cry when she ought to laugh and laugh when she ought to cry.  She has been hissed once already.  You can still save the piece, and, after all, pleasure is not a misfortune.”

“I am not accustomed to rivals, sir,” Lucien answered.

“Pray don’t tell her that!” cried the manager.  “Coralie is just the girl to fling Camusot overboard and ruin herself in good earnest.  The proprietor of the Golden Cocoon, worthy man, allows her two thousand francs a month, and pays for all her dresses and claqueurs.”

“As your promise pledges me to nothing, save your play,” said Lucien, with a sultan’s airs.

“But don’t look as if you meant to snub that charming creature,” pleaded du Bruel.

“Dear me! am I to write the notice of your play and smile on your heroine as well?” exclaimed the poet.

The author vanished with a signal to Coralie, who began to act forthwith in a marvelous way.  Vignol, who played the part of the alcalde, and revealed for the first time his genius as an actor of old men, came forward amid a storm of applause to make an announcement to the house.

“The piece which we have the honor of playing for you this evening, gentlemen, is the work of MM.  Raoul and de Cursy.”

“Why, Nathan is partly responsible,” said Lousteau.  “I don’t wonder that he looked in.”

“Coralie_!  Coralie_!” shouted the enraptured house.  “Florine, too!” roared a voice of thunder from the opposite box, and other voices took up the cry, “Florine and Coralie!”

The curtain rose, Vignol reappeared between the two actresses; Matifat and Camusot flung wreaths on the stage, and Coralie stooped for her flowers and held them out to Lucien.

For him those two hours spent in the theatre seemed to be a dream.  The spell that held him had begun to work when he went behind the scenes; and, in spite of its horrors, the atmosphere of the place, its sensuality and dissolute morals had affected the poet’s still untainted nature.  A sort of malaria that infects the soul seems to lurk among those dark, filthy passages filled with machinery, and lit with smoky, greasy lamps.  The solemnity and reality of life disappear, the most sacred things are matter for a jest, the most impossible things seem to be true.  Lucien felt as if he had taken some narcotic, and Coralie had completed the work.  He plunged into this joyous intoxication.

The lights in the great chandelier were extinguished; there was no one left in the house except the boxkeepers, busy taking away footstools and shutting doors, the noises echoing strangely through the empty theatre.  The footlights, blown out as one candle, sent up a fetid reek of smoke.  The curtain rose again, a lantern was lowered from the ceiling, and firemen and stage carpenters departed on their rounds.  The fairy scenes of the stage, the rows of fair faces in the boxes, the dazzling lights, the magical illusion of new scenery and costume had all disappeared, and dismal darkness, emptiness, and cold reigned in their stead.  It was hideous.  Lucien sat on in bewilderment.

“Well! are you coming, my boy?” Lousteau’s voice called from the stage.  “Jump down.”

Lucien sprang over.  He scarcely recognized Florine and Coralie in their ordinary quilted paletots and cloaks, with their faces hidden by hats and thick black veils.  Two butterflies returned to the chrysalis stage could not be more completely transformed.

“Will you honor me by giving me your arm?” Coralie asked tremulously.

“With pleasure,” said Lucien.  He could feel the beating of her heart throbbing against his like some snared bird as she nestled closely to his side, with something of the delight of a cat that rubs herself against her master with eager silken caresses.

“So we are supping together!” she said.

The party of four found two cabs waiting for them at the door in the Rue des Fosses-du-Temple.  Coralie drew Lucien to one of the two, in which Camusot and his father-in-law old Cardot were seated already.  She offered du Bruel a fifth place, and the manager drove off with Florine, Matifat, and Lousteau.

“These hackney cabs are abominable things,” said Coralie.

“Why don’t you have a carriage?” returned du Bruel.

“Why?” she asked pettishly.  “I do not like to tell you before M. Cardot’s face; for he trained his son-in-law, no doubt.  Would you believe it, little and old as he is, M. Cardot only gives Florine five hundred francs a month, just about enough to pay for her rent and her grub and her clothes.  The old Marquis de Rochegude offered me a brougham two months ago, and he has six hundred thousand francs a year, but I am an artist and not a common hussy.”

“You shall have a carriage the day after to-morrow, miss,” said Camusot benignly; “you never asked me for one.”

“As if one asked for such a thing as that?  What! you love a woman and let her paddle about in the mud at the risk of breaking her legs?  Nobody but a knight of the yardstick likes to see a draggled skirt hem.”

As she uttered the sharp words that cut Camusot to the quick, she groped for Lucien’s knee, and pressed it against her own, and clasped her fingers upon his hand.  She was silent.  All her power to feel seemed to be concentrated upon the ineffable joy of a moment which brings compensation for the whole wretched past of a life such as these poor creatures lead, and develops within their souls a poetry of which other women, happily ignorant of these violent revulsions, know nothing.

“You played like Mlle. Mars herself towards the end,” said du Bruel.

“Yes,” said Camusot, “something put her out at the beginning; but from the middle of the second act to the very end, she was enough to drive you wild with admiration.  Half of the success of your play was due to her.”

“And half of her success is due to me,” said du Bruel.

“This is all much ado about nothing,” said Coralie in an unfamiliar voice.  And, seizing an opportunity in the darkness, she carried Lucien’s hand to her lips and kissed it and drenched it with tears.  Lucien felt thrilled through and through by that touch, for in the humility of the courtesan’s love there is a magnificence which might set an example to angels.

“Are you writing the dramatic criticism, monsieur?” said du Bruel, addressing Lucien; “you can write a charming paragraph about our dear Coralie.”

“Oh! do us that little service!” pleaded Camusot, down on his knees, metaphorically speaking, before the critic.  “You will always find me ready to do you a good turn at any time.”

“Do leave him his independence,” Coralie exclaimed angrily; “he will write what he pleases.  Papa Camusot, buy carriages for me instead of praises.”

“You shall have them on very easy terms,” Lucien answered politely.  “I have never written for newspapers before, so I am not accustomed to their ways, my maiden pen is at your disposal——­”

“That is funny,” said du Bruel.

“Here we are in the Rue de Bondy,” said Cardot.  Coralie’s sally had quite crushed the little old man.

“If you are giving me the first fruits of your pen, the first love that has sprung up in my heart shall be yours,” whispered Coralie in the brief instant that they remained alone together in the cab; then she went up to Florine’s bedroom to change her dress for a toilette previously sent.

Lucien had no idea how lavishly a prosperous merchant will spend money upon an actress or a mistress when he means to enjoy a life of pleasure.  Matifat was not nearly so rich a man as his friend Camusot, and he had done his part rather shabbily, yet the sight of the dining-room took Lucien by surprise.  The walls were hung with green cloth with a border of gilded nails, the whole room was artistically decorated, lighted by handsome lamps, stands full of flowers stood in every direction.  The drawing-room was resplendent with the furniture in fashion in those days—­a Thomire chandelier, a carpet of Eastern design, and yellow silken hangings relieved by a brown border.  The candlesticks, fire-irons, and clock were all in good taste; for Matifat had left everything to Grindot, a rising architect, who was building a house for him, and the young man had taken great pains with the rooms when he knew that Florine was to occupy them.

Matifat, a tradesman to the backbone, went about carefully, afraid to touch the new furniture; he seemed to have the totals of the bills always before his eyes, and to look upon the splendors about him as so much jewelry imprudently withdrawn from the case.

“And I shall be obliged to do as much for Florentine!” old Cardot’s eyes seemed to say.

Lucien at once began to understand Lousteau’s indifference to the state of his garret.  Etienne was the real king of these festivals; Etienne enjoyed the use of all these fine things.  He was standing just now on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, as if he were the master of the house, chatting with the manager, who was congratulating du Bruel.

“Copy, copy!” called Finot, coming into the room.  “There is nothing in the box; the printers are setting up my article, and they will soon have finished.”

“We will manage,” said Etienne.  “There is a fire burning in Florine’s boudoir; there is a table there; and if M. Matifat will find us paper and ink, we will knock off the newspaper while Florine and Coralie are dressing.”

Cardot, Camusot, and Matifat disappeared in search of quills, penknives, and everything necessary.  Suddenly the door was flung open, and Tullia, one of the prettiest opera-dancers of the day, dashed into the room.

“They agree to take the hundred copies, dear boy!” she cried, addressing Finot; “they won’t cost the management anything, for the chorus and the orchestra and the corps de ballet are to take them whether they like it or not; but your paper is so clever that nobody will grumble.  And you are going to have your boxes.  Here is the subscription for the first quarter,” she continued, holding out a couple of banknotes; “so don’t cut me up!”

“It is all over with me!” groaned Finot; “I must suppress my abominable diatribe, and I haven’t another notion in my head.”

“What a happy inspiration, divine Lais!” exclaimed Blondet, who had followed the lady upstairs and brought Nathan, Vernou and Claude Vignon with him.  “Stop to supper, there is a dear, or I will crush thee, butterfly as thou art.  There will be no professional jealousies, as you are a dancer; and as to beauty, you have all of you too much sense to show jealousy in public.”

“Oh dear!” cried Finot, “Nathan, Blondet, du Bruel, help friends!  I want five columns.”

“I can make two of the play,” said Lucien.

“I have enough for one,” added Lousteau.

“Very well; Nathan, Vernou, and du Bruel will make the jokes at the end; and Blondet, good fellow, surely will vouchsafe a couple of short columns for the first sheet.  I will run round to the printer.  It is lucky that you brought your carriage, Tullia.”

“Yes, but the Duke is waiting below in it, and he has a German Minister with him.”

“Ask the Duke and the Minister to come up,” said Nathan.

“A German?  They are the ones to drink, and they listen too; he shall hear some astonishing things to send home to his Government,” cried Blondet.

“Is there any sufficiently serious personage to go down to speak to him?” asked Finot.  “Here, du Bruel, you are an official; bring up the Duc de Rhetore and the Minister, and give your arm to Tullia.  Dear me!  Tullia, how handsome you are to-night!”

“We shall be thirteen at table!” exclaimed Matifat, paling visibly.

“No, fourteen,” said a voice in the doorway, and Florentine appeared.  “I have come to look after ‘milord Cardot,’” she added, speaking with a burlesque English accent.

“And besides,” said Lousteau, “Claude Vignon came with Blondet.”

“I brought him here to drink,” returned Blondet, taking up an inkstand.  “Look here, all of you, you must use all your wit before those fifty-six bottles of wine drive it out.  And, of all things, stir up du Bruel; he is a vaudevillist, he is capable of making bad jokes if you get him to concert pitch.”

And Lucien wrote his first newspaper article at the round table in Florine’s boudoir, by the light of the pink candles lighted by Matifat; before such a remarkable audience he was eager to show what he could do.

THE PANORAMA-DRAMATIQUE.

  First performance of the Alcalde in a Fix, an imbroglio in three
  acts.—­First appearance of Mademoiselle Florine.—­Mademoiselle
  Coralie.—­Vignol.

People are coming and going, walking and talking, everybody is looking for something, nobody finds anything.  General hubbub.  The Alcalde has lost his daughter and found his cap, but the cap does not fit; it must belong to some thief.  Where is the thief?  People walk and talk, and come and go more than ever.  Finally the Alcalde finds a man without his daughter, and his daughter without the man, which is satisfactory for the magistrate, but not for the audience.  Quiet being resorted, the Alcalde tries to examine the man.  Behold a venerable Alcalde, sitting in an Alcalde’s great armchair, arranging the sleeves of his Alcalde’s gown.  Only in Spain do Alcaldes cling to their enormous sleeves and wear plaited lawn ruffles about the magisterial throat, a good half of an Alcalde’s business on the stage in Paris.  This particular Alcalde, wheezing and waddling about like an asthmatic old man, is Vignol, on whom Potier’s mantle has fallen; a young actor who personates old age so admirably that the oldest men in the audience cannot help laughing.  With that quavering voice of his, that bald forehead, and those spindle shanks trembling under the weight of a senile frame, he may look forward to a long career of decrepitude.  There is something alarming about the young actor’s old age; he is so very old; you feel nervous lest senility should be infectious.  And what an admirable Alcalde he makes!  What a delightful, uneasy smile! what pompous stupidity! what wooden dignity! what judicial hesitation!  How well the man knows that black may be white, or white black!  How eminently well he is fitted to be Minister to a constitutional monarch!  The stranger answers every one of his inquiries by a question; Vignol retorts in such a fashion, that the person under examination elicits all the truth from the Alcalde.  This piece of pure comedy, with a breath of Moliere throughout, puts the house in good humor.  The people on the stage all seemed to understand what they were about, but I am quite unable to clear up the mystery, or to say wherein it lay; for the Alcalde’s daughter was there, personified by a living, breathing Andalusian, a Spaniard with a Spaniard’s eyes, a Spaniard’s complexion, a Spaniard’s gait and figure, a Spaniard from top to toe, with her poniard in her garter, love in her heart, and a cross on the ribbon about her neck.  When the act was over, and somebody asked me how the piece was going, I answered, “She wears scarlet stockings with green clocks to them; she has a little foot, no larger than that, in her patent leather shoes, and the prettiest pair of ankles in Andalusia!” Oh! that Alcalde’s daughter brings your heart into your mouth; she tantalizes you so horribly, that you long to spring upon the stage and offer her your thatched hovel and your heart, or thirty thousand livres per annum and your pen.  The Andalusian is the loveliest actress in Paris.  Coralie, for she must be called by her real name, can be a countess or a grisette, and in which part she would be more charming one cannot tell.  She can be anything that she chooses; she is born to achieve all possibilities; can more be said of a boulevard actress?

With the second act, a Parisian Spaniard appeared upon the scene, with her features cut like a cameo and her dangerous eyes.  “Where does she come from?” I asked in my turn, and was told that she came from the greenroom, and that she was Mademoiselle Florine; but, upon my word, I could not believe a syllable of it, such spirit was there in her gestures, such frenzy in her love.  She is the rival of the Alcalde’s daughter, and married to a grandee cut out to wear an Almaviva’s cloak, with stuff sufficient in it for a hundred boulevard noblemen.  Mlle. Florine wore neither scarlet stockings with green clocks, nor patent leather shoes, but she appeared in a mantilla, a veil which she put to admirable uses, like the great lady that she is!  She showed to admiration that the tigress can be a cat.  I began to understand, from the sparkling talk between the two, that some drama of jealousy was going on; and just as everything was put right, the Alcalde’s stupidity embroiled everybody again.  Torchbearers, rich men, footmen, Figaros, grandees, alcaldes, dames, and damsels—­the whole company on the stage began to eddy about, and come and go, and look for one another.  The plot thickened, again I left it to thicken; for Florine the jealous and the happy Coralie had entangled me once more in the folds of mantilla and basquina, and their little feet were twinkling in my eyes.

I managed, however, to reach the third act without any mishap.  The commissary of police was not compelled to interfere, and I did nothing to scandalize the house, wherefore I begin to believe in the influence of that “public and religious morality,” about which the Chamber of Deputies is so anxious, that any one might think there was no morality left in France.  I even contrived to gather that a man was in love with two women who failed to return his affection, or else that two women were in love with a man who loved neither of them; the man did not love the Alcalde, or the Alcalde had no love for the man, who was nevertheless a gallant gentleman, and in love with somebody, with himself, perhaps, or with heaven, if the worst came to the worst, for he becomes a monk.  And if you want to know any more, you can go to the Panorama-Dramatique.  You are hereby given fair warning—­you must go once to accustom yourself to those irresistible scarlet stockings with the green clocks, to little feet full of promises, to eyes with a ray of sunlight shining through them, to the subtle charm of a Parisienne disguised as an Andalusian girl, and of an Andalusian masquerading as a Parisienne.  You must go a second time to enjoy the play, to shed tears over the love-distracted grandee, and die of laughing at the old Alcalde.  The play is twice a success.  The author, who writes it, it is said, in collaboration with one of the great poets of the day, was called before the curtain, and appeared with a love-distraught damsel on each arm, and fairly brought down the excited house.  The two dancers seemed to have more wit in their legs than the author himself; but when once the fair rivals left the stage, the dialogue seemed witty at once, a triumphant proof of the excellence of the piece.  The applause and calls for the author caused the architect some anxiety; but M. de Cursy, the author, being accustomed to volcanic eruptions of the reeling Vesuvius beneath the chandelier, felt no tremor.  As for the actresses, they danced the famous bolero of Seville, which once found favor in the sight of a council of reverend fathers, and escaped ecclesiastical censure in spite of its wanton dangerous grace.  The bolero in itself would be enough to attract old age while there is any lingering heat of youth in the veins, and out of charity I warn these persons to keep the lenses of their opera-glasses well polished.

While Lucien was writing a column which was to set a new fashion in journalism and reveal a fresh and original gift, Lousteau indited an article of the kind described as moeurs—­a sketch of contemporary manners, entitled The Elderly Beau.

“The buck of the Empire,” he wrote, “is invariably long, slender, and well preserved.  He wears a corset and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.  His name was originally Potelet, or something very like it; but to stand well with the Court, he conferred a du upon himself, and du Potelet he is until another revolution.  A baron of the Empire, a man of two ends, as his name (Potelet, a post) implies, he is paying his court to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, after a youth gloriously and usefully spent as the agreeable trainbearer of a sister of the man whom decency forbids me to mention by name.  Du Potelet has forgotten that he was once in waiting upon Her Imperial Highness; but he still sings the songs composed for the benefactress who took such a tender interest in his career,” and so forth and so forth.  It was a tissue of personalities, silly enough for the most part, such as they used to write in those days.  Other papers, and notably the Figaro, have brought the art to a curious perfection since.  Lousteau compared the Baron to a heron, and introduced Mme. de Bargeton, to whom he was paying his court, as a cuttlefish bone, a burlesque absurdity which amused readers who knew neither of the personages.  A tale of the loves of the Heron, who tried in vain to swallow the Cuttlefish bone, which broke into three pieces when he dropped it, was irresistibly ludicrous.  Everybody remembers the sensation which the pleasantry made in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it was the first of a series of similar articles, and was one of the thousand and one causes which provoked the rigorous press legislation of Charles X.

An hour later, Blondet, Lousteau, and Lucien came back to the drawing-room, where the other guests were chatting.  The Duke was there and the Minister, the four women, the three merchants, the manager, and Finot.  A printer’s devil, with a paper cap on his head, was waiting even then for copy.

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

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

“If I give them the money, sir, they would take to tippleography, and good-night to the newspaper.”

“That boy’s common-sense is appalling to me,” remarked Finot; and the Minister was in the middle of a prediction of a brilliant future for the urchin, when the three came in.  Blondet read aloud an extremely clever article against the Romantics; Lousteau’s paragraph drew laughter, and by the Duc de Rhetore’s advice an indirect eulogium of Mme. d’Espard was slipped in, lest the whole Faubourg Saint-Germain should take offence.

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

And Lucien read, quaking for fear, but the room rang with applause when he finished; the actresses embraced the neophyte; and the two merchants, following suit, half choked the breath out of him.  There were tears in du Bruel’s eyes as he grasped his critic’s hand, and the manager invited him to dinner.

“There are no children nowadays,” said Blondet.  “Since M. de Chateaubriand called Victor Hugo a ‘sublime child,’ I can only tell you quite simply that you have spirit and taste, and write like a gentleman.”

“He is on the newspaper,” said Finot, as he thanked Etienne, and gave him a shrewd glance.

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

“Here are du Bruel’s,” said Nathan.

  * “Now, that M. le Vicomte d’A——­ is attracting so much
  attention, they will perhaps let me alone,” M. le Vicomte
  Demosthenes was heard to say yesterday.

* An Ultra, condemning M. Pasquier’s speech, said his programme was only a continuation of Decaze’s policy.  “Yes,” said a lady, “but he stands on a Monarchical basis, he has just the kind of leg for a Court suit.”

“With such a beginning, I don’t ask more of you,” said Finot; “it will be all right.—­Run round with this,” he added, turning to the boy; “the paper is not exactly a genuine article, but it is our best number yet,” and he turned to the group of writers.  Already Lucien’s colleagues were privately taking his measure.

“That fellow has brains,” said Blondet.

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

“Supper!” cried Matifat.

The Duke gave his arm to Florine, Coralie went across to Lucien, and
Tullia went in to supper between Emile Blondet and the German
Minister.

“I cannot understand why you are making an onslaught on Mme. de Bargeton and the Baron du Chatelet; they say that he is prefect-designate of the Charente, and will be Master of Requests some day.”

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

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

Supper, served with new plate, Sevres porcelain, and white damask, was redolent of opulence.  The dishes were from Chevet, the wines from a celebrated merchant on the Quai Saint-Bernard, a personal friend of Matifat’s.  For the first time Lucien beheld the luxury of Paris displayed; he went from surprise to surprise, but he kept his astonishment to himself, like a man who had spirit and taste and wrote like a gentleman, as Blondet had said.

As they crossed the drawing-room, Coralie bent to Florine, “Make Camusot so drunk that he will be compelled to stop here all night,” she whispered.

“So you have hooked your journalist, have you?” returned Florine, using the idiom of women of her class.

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

Those words rang in Lucien’s ears, borne to them by the fifth deadly sin.  Coralie was perfectly dressed.  Every woman possesses some personal charm in perfection, and Coralie’s toilette brought her characteristic beauty into prominence.  Her dress, moreover, like Florine’s, was of some exquisite stuff, unknown as yet to the public, a mousseline de soie, with which Camusot had been supplied a few days before the rest of the world; for, as owner of the Golden Cocoon, he was a kind of Providence in Paris to the Lyons silkweavers.

Love and toilet are like color and perfume for a woman, and Coralie in her happiness looked lovelier than ever.  A looked-for delight which cannot elude the grasp possesses an immense charm for youth; perhaps in their eyes the secret of the attraction of a house of pleasure lies in the certainty of gratification; perhaps many a long fidelity is attributable to the same cause.  Love for love’s sake, first love indeed, had blent with one of the strange violent fancies which sometimes possess these poor creatures; and love and admiration of Lucien’s great beauty taught Coralie to express the thoughts in her heart.

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

What a saying for a poet!  Camusot utterly vanished, Lucien had forgotten his existence, he saw Coralie, and had eyes for nothing else.  How should he draw back—­this creature, all sensation, all enjoyment of life, tired of the monotony of existence in a country town, weary of poverty, harassed by enforced continence, impatient of the claustral life of the Rue de Cluny, of toiling without reward?  The fascination of the under world of Paris was upon him; how should he rise and leave this brilliant gathering?  Lucien stood with one foot in Coralie’s chamber and the other in the quicksands of Journalism.  After so much vain search, and climbing of so many stairs, after standing about and waiting in the Rue de Sentier, he had found Journalism a jolly boon companion, joyous over the wine.  His wrongs had just been avenged.  There were two for whom he had vainly striven to fill the cup of humiliation and pain which he had been made to drink to the dregs, and now to-morrow they should receive a stab in their very hearts.  “Here is a real friend!” he thought, as he looked at Lousteau.  It never crossed his mind that Lousteau already regarded him as a dangerous rival.  He had made a blunder; he had done his very best when a colorless article would have served him admirably well.  Blondet’s remark to Finot that it would be better to come to terms with a man of that calibre, had counteracted Lousteau’s gnawing jealousy.  He reflected that it would be prudent to keep on good terms with Lucien, and, at the same time, to arrange with Finot to exploit this formidable newcomer—­he must be kept in poverty.  The decision was made in a moment, and the bargain made in a few whispered words.

“He has talent.”

“He will want the more.”

“Ah?”

“Good!”

“A supper among French journalists always fills me with dread,” said the German diplomatist, with serene urbanity; he looked as he spoke at Blondet, whom he had met at the Comtesse de Montcornet’s.  “It is laid upon you, gentlemen, to fulfil a prophecy of Blucher’s.”

“What prophecy?” asked Nathan.

“When Blucher and Sacken arrived on the heights of Montmartre in 1814 (pardon me, gentlemen, for recalling a day unfortunate for France), Sacken (a rough brute), remarked, ‘Now we will set Paris alight!’ —­’Take very good care that you don’t,’ said Blucher.  ’France will die of that, nothing else can kill her,’ and he waved his hand over the glowing, seething city, that lay like a huge canker in the valley of the Seine.—­There are no journalists in our country, thank Heaven!” continued the Minister after a pause.  “I have not yet recovered from the fright that the little fellow gave me, a boy of ten, in a paper cap, with the sense of an old diplomatist.  And to-night I feel as if I were supping with lions and panthers, who graciously sheathe their claws in my honor.”

“It is clear,” said Blondet, “that we are at liberty to inform Europe that a serpent dropped from your Excellency’s lips this evening, and that the venomous creature failed to inoculate Mlle. Tullia, the prettiest dancer in Paris; and to follow up the story with a commentary on Eve, and the Scriptures, and the first and last transgression.  But have no fear, you are our guest.”

“It would be funny,” said Finot.

“We would begin with a scientific treatise on all the serpents found in the human heart and human body, and so proceed to the corps diplomatique,” said Lousteau.

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

“Till you yourself would end by believing in the story,” added Vignon, looking at the diplomatist.

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

“The influence and power of the press is only dawning,” said Finot.  “Journalism is in its infancy; it will grow.  In ten years’ time, everything will be brought into publicity.  The light of thought will be turned on all subjects, and——­”

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

“Here is an apothegm,” cried Claude Vignon.

“Thought will make kings,” said Lousteau.

“And undo monarchs,” said the German.

“And therefore,” said Blondet, “if the press did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it forthwith.  But here we have it, and live by it.”

“You will die of it,” returned the German diplomatist.  “Can you not see that if you enlighten the masses, and raise them in the political scale, you make it all the harder for the individual to rise above their level?  Can you not see that if you sow the seeds of reasoning among the working-classes, you will reap revolt, and be the first to fall victims?  What do they smash in Paris when a riot begins?”

“The street-lamps!” said Nathan; “but we are too modest to fear for ourselves, we only run the risk of cracks.”

“As a nation, you have too much mental activity to allow any government to run its course without interference.  But for that, you would make the conquest of Europe a second time, and win with the pen all that you failed to keep with the sword.”

“Journalism is an evil,” said Claude Vignon.  “The evil may have its uses, but the present Government is resolved to put it down.  There will be a battle over it.  Who will give way?  That is the question.”

“The Government will give way,” said Blondet.  “I keep telling people that with all my might!  Intellectual power is the great power in France; and the press has more wit than all men of intellect put together, and the hypocrisy of Tartufe besides.”

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

“You are the proprietor of one of those poison shops; you have reason to be afraid; but I can laugh at the whole business, even if I live by it.”

“Blondet is right,” said Claude Vignon.  “Journalism, so far from being in the hands of a priesthood, came to be first a party weapon, and then a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or scruple, like other commercial speculations.  Every newspaper, as Blondet says, is a shop to which people come for opinions of the right shade.  If there were a paper for hunchbacks, it would set forth plainly, morning and evening, in its columns, the beauty, the utility, and necessity of deformity.  A newspaper is not supposed to enlighten its readers, but to supply them with congenial opinions.  Give any newspaper time enough, and it will be base, hypocritical, shameless, and treacherous; the periodical press will be the death of ideas, systems, and individuals; nay, it will flourish upon their decay.  It will take the credit of all creations of the brain; the harm that it does is done anonymously.  We, for instance—­I, Claude Vignon; you, Blondet; you, Lousteau; and you, Finot—­we are all Platos, Aristides, and Catos, Plutarch’s men, in short; we are all immaculate; we may wash our hands of all iniquity.  Napoleon’s sublime aphorism, suggested by his study of the Convention, ’No one individual is responsible for a crime committed collectively,’ sums up the whole significance of a phenomenon, moral or immoral, whichever you please.  However shamefully a newspaper may behave, the disgrace attaches to no one person.”

“The authorities will resort to repressive legislation,” interposed du Bruel.  “A law is going to be passed, in fact.”

“Pooh!” retorted Nathan.  “What is the law in France against the spirit in which it is received, the most subtle of all solvents?”

“Ideas and opinions can only be counteracted by opinions and ideas,” Vignon continued.  “By sheer terror and despotism, and by no other means, can you extinguish the genius of the French nation; for the language lends itself admirably to allusion and ambiguity.  Epigram breaks out the more for repressive legislation; it is like steam in an engine without a safety-valve.—­The King, for example, does right; if a newspaper is against him, the Minister gets all the credit of the measure, and vice versa.  A newspaper invents a scandalous libel—­it has been misinformed.  If the victim complains, the paper gets off with an apology for taking so great a freedom.  If the case is taken into court, the editor complains that nobody asked him to rectify the mistake; but ask for redress, and he will laugh in your face and treat his offence as a mere trifle.  The paper scoffs if the victim gains the day; and if heavy damages are awarded, the plaintiff is held up as an unpatriotic obscurantist and a menace to the liberties of the country.  In the course of an article purporting to explain that Monsieur So-and-so is as honest a man as you will find in the kingdom, you are informed that he is not better than a common thief.  The sins of the press?  Pooh! mere trifles; the curtailers of its liberties are monsters; and give him time enough, the constant reader is persuaded to believe anything you please.  Everything which does not suit the newspaper will be unpatriotic, and the press will be infallible.  One religion will be played off against another, and the Charter against the King.  The press will hold up the magistracy to scorn for meting out rigorous justice to the press, and applaud its action when it serves the cause of party hatred.  The most sensational fictions will be invented to increase the circulation; Journalism will descend to mountebanks’ tricks worthy of Bobeche; Journalism would serve up its father with the Attic salt of its own wit sooner than fail to interest or amuse the public; Journalism will outdo the actor who put his son’s ashes into the urn to draw real tears from his eyes, or the mistress who sacrifices everything to her lover.”

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

“The people with hypocrisy added and generosity lacking,” said Vignon.  “All real ability will be driven out from the ranks of Journalism, as Aristides was driven into exile by the Athenians.  We shall see newspapers started in the first instance by men of honor, falling sooner or later into the hands of men of abilities even lower than the average, but endowed with the resistance of flexibility of india-rubber, qualities denied to noble genius; nay, perhaps the future newspaper proprietor will be the tradesman with capital sufficient to buy venal pens.  We see such things already indeed, but in ten years’ time every little youngster that has left school will take himself for a great man, slash his predecessors from the lofty height of a newspaper column, drag them down by the feet, and take their place.