Lost Illusions

A vision of d’Arthez and his friends flashed upon Lucien’s sight, and made appeal to him for a moment; but Lousteau’s appalling lamentation carried him away.

“They are very few and far between in that great fermenting vat; rare as love in love-making, rare as fortunes honestly made in business, rare as the journalist whose hands are clean.  The experience of the first man who told me all that I am telling you was thrown away upon me, and mine no doubt will be wasted upon you.  It is always the same old story year after year; the same eager rush to Paris from the provinces; the same, not to say a growing, number of beardless, ambitious boys, who advance, head erect, and the heart that Princess Tourandocte of the Mille et un Jours—­each one of them fain to be her Prince Calaf.  But never a one of them reads the riddle.  One by one they drop, some into the trench where failures lie, some into the mire of journalism, some again into the quagmires of the book-trade.

“They pick up a living, these beggars, what with biographical notices, penny-a-lining, and scraps of news for the papers.  They become booksellers’ hacks for the clear-headed dealers in printed paper, who would sooner take the rubbish that goes off in a fortnight than a masterpiece which requires time to sell.  The life is crushed out of the grubs before they reach the butterfly stage.  They live by shame and dishonor.  They are ready to write down a rising genius or to praise him to the skies at a word from the pasha of the Constitutionnel, the Quotidienne, or the Debats, at a sign from a publisher, at the request of a jealous comrade, or (as not seldom happens) simply for a dinner.  Some surmount the obstacles, and these forget the misery of their early days.  I, who am telling you this, have been putting the best that is in me into newspaper articles for six months past for a blackguard who gives them out as his own and has secured a feuilleton in another paper on the strength of them.  He has not taken me on as his collaborator, he has not give me so much as a five-franc piece, but I hold out a hand to grasp his when we meet; I cannot help myself.”

“And why?” Lucien, asked, indignantly.

“I may want to put a dozen lines into his feuilleton some day,” Lousteau answered coolly.  “In short, my dear fellow, in literature you will not make money by hard work, that is not the secret of success; the point is to exploit the work of somebody else.  A newspaper proprietor is a contractor, we are the bricklayers.  The more mediocre the man, the better his chance of getting on among mediocrities; he can play the toad-eater, put up with any treatment, and flatter all the little base passions of the sultans of literature.  There is Hector Merlin, who came from Limoges a short time ago; he is writing political articles already for a Right Centre daily, and he is at work on our little paper as well.  I have seen an editor drop his hat and Merlin pick it up.  The fellow was careful never to give offence, and slipped into the thick of the fight between rival ambitions.  I am sorry for you.  It is as if I saw in you the self that I used to be, and sure am I that in one or two years’ time you will be what I am now.—­You will think that there is some lurking jealousy or personal motive in this bitter counsel, but it is prompted by the despair of a damned soul that can never leave hell.—­No one ventures to utter such things as these.  You hear the groans of anguish from a man wounded to the heart, crying like a second Job from the ashes, ’Behold my sores!’”

“But whether I fight upon this field or elsewhere, fight I must,” said Lucien.

“Then, be sure of this,” returned Lousteau, “if you have anything in you, the war will know no truce, the best chance of success lies in an empty head.  The austerity of your conscience, clear as yet, will relax when you see that a man holds your future in his two hands, when a word from such a man means life to you, and he will not say that word.  For, believe me, the most brutal bookseller in the trade is not so insolent, so hard-hearted to a newcomer as the celebrity of the day.  The bookseller sees a possible loss of money, while the writer of books dreads a possible rival; the first shows you the door, the second crushes the life out of you.  To do really good work, my boy, means that you will draw out the energy, sap, and tenderness of your nature at every dip of the pen in the ink, to set it forth for the world in passion and sentiment and phrases.  Yes; instead of acting, you will write; you will sing songs instead of fighting; you will love and hate and live in your books; and then, after all, when you shall have reserved your riches for your style, your gold and purple for your characters, and you yourself are walking the streets of Paris in rags, rejoicing in that, rivaling the State Register, you have authorized the existence of beings styled Adolphe, Corinne or Clarissa, Rene or Manon; when you shall have spoiled your life and your digestion to give life to that creation, then you shall see it slandered, betrayed, sold, swept away into the back waters of oblivion by journalists, and buried out of sight by your best friends.  How can you afford to wait until the day when your creation shall rise again, raised from the dead—­how? when? and by whom?  Take a magnificent book, the pianto of unbelief; Obermann is a solitary wanderer in the desert places of booksellers’ warehouses, he has been a ‘nightingale,’ ironically so called, from the very beginning:  when will his Easter come?  Who knows?  Try, to begin with, to find somebody bold enough to print the Marguerites; not to pay for them, but simply to print them; and you will see some queer things.”

The fierce tirade, delivered in every tone of the passionate feeling which it expressed, fell upon Lucien’s spirit like an avalanche, and left a sense of glacial cold.  For one moment he stood silent; then, as he felt the terrible stimulating charm of difficulty beginning to work upon him, his courage blazed up.  He grasped Lousteau’s hand.

“I will triumph!” he cried aloud.

“Good!” said the other, “one more Christian given over to the wild beasts in the arena.—­There is a first-night performance at the Panorama-Dramatique, my dear fellow; it doesn’t begin till eight, so you can change your coat, come properly dressed in fact, and call for me.  I am living on the fourth floor above the Cafe Servel, Rue de la Harpe.  We will go to Dauriat’s first of all.  You still mean to go on, do you not?  Very well, I will introduce you to one of the kings of the trade to-night, and to one or two journalists.  We will sup with my mistress and several friends after the play, for you cannot count that dinner as a meal.  Finot will be there, editor and proprietor of my paper.  As Minette says in the Vaudeville (do you remember?), ’Time is a great lean creature.’  Well, for the like of us, Chance is a great lean creature, and must be tempted.”

“I shall remember this day as long as I live,” said Lucien.

“Bring your manuscript with you, and be careful of your dress, not on Florine’s account, but for the booksellers’ benefit.”

The comrade’s good-nature, following upon the poet’s passionate outcry, as he described the war of letters, moved Lucien quite as deeply as d’Arthez’s grave and earnest words on a former occasion.  The prospect of entering at once upon the strife with men warmed him.  In his youth and inexperience he had no suspicion how real were the moral evils denounced by the journalist.  Nor did he know that he was standing at the parting of two distinct ways, between two systems, represented by the brotherhood upon one hand, and journalism upon the other.  The first way was long, honorable, and sure; the second beset with hidden dangers, a perilous path, among muddy channels where conscience is inevitably bespattered.  The bent of Lucien’s character determined for the shorter way, and the apparently pleasanter way, and to snatch at the quickest and promptest means.  At this moment he saw no difference between d’Arthez’s noble friendship and Lousteau’s easy comaraderie; his inconstant mind discerned a new weapon in journalism; he felt that he could wield it, so he wished to take it.

He was dazzled by the offers of this new friend, who had struck a hand in his in an easy way, which charmed Lucien.  How should he know that while every man in the army of the press needs friends, every leader needs men.  Lousteau, seeing that Lucien was resolute, enlisted him as a recruit, and hoped to attach him to himself.  The relative positions of the two were similar—­one hoped to become a corporal, the other to enter the ranks.

Lucien went back gaily to his lodgings.  He was as careful over his toilet as on that former unlucky occasion when he occupied the Marquise d’Espard’s box; but he had learned by this time how to wear his clothes with a better grace.  They looked as though they belonged to him.  He wore his best tightly-fitting, light-colored trousers, and a dress-coat.  His boots, a very elegant pair adorned with tassels, had cost him forty francs.  His thick, fine, golden hair was scented and crimped into bright, rippling curls.  Self-confidence and belief in his future lighted up his forehead.  He paid careful attention to his almost feminine hands, the filbert nails were a spotless pink, and the white contours of his chin were dazzling by contrast with a black satin stock.  Never did a more beautiful youth come down from the hills of the Latin Quarter.

Glorious as a Greek god, Lucien took a cab, and reached the Cafe Servel at a quarter to seven.  There the portress gave him some tolerably complicated directions for the ascent of four pairs of stairs.  Provided with these instructions, he discovered, not without difficulty, an open door at the end of a long, dark passage, and in another moment made the acquaintance of the traditional room of the Latin Quarter.

A young man’s poverty follows him wherever he goes—­into the Rue de la Harpe as into the Rue de Cluny, into d’Arthez’s room, into Chrestien’s lodging; yet everywhere no less the poverty has its own peculiar characteristics, due to the idiosyncrasies of the sufferer.  Poverty in this case wore a sinister look.

A shabby, cheap carpet lay in wrinkles at the foot of a curtainless walnut-wood bedstead; dingy curtains, begrimed with cigar smoke and fumes from a smoky chimney, hung in the windows; a Carcel lamp, Florine’s gift, on the chimney-piece, had so far escaped the pawnbroker.  Add a forlorn-looking chest of drawers, and a table littered with papers and disheveled quill pens, and the list of furniture was almost complete.  All the books had evidently arrived in the course of the last twenty-four hours; and there was not a single object of any value in the room.  In one corner you beheld a collection of crushed and flattened cigars, coiled pocket-handkerchiefs, shirts which had been turned to do double duty, and cravats that had reached a third edition; while a sordid array of old boots stood gaping in another angle of the room among aged socks worn into lace.

The room, in short, was a journalist’s bivouac, filled with odds and ends of no value, and the most curiously bare apartment imaginable.  A scarlet tinder-box glowed among a pile of books on the nightstand.  A brace of pistols, a box of cigars, and a stray razor lay upon the mantel-shelf; a pair of foils, crossed under a wire mask, hung against a panel.  Three chairs and a couple of armchairs, scarcely fit for the shabbiest lodging-house in the street, completed the inventory.

The dirty, cheerless room told a tale of a restless life and a want of self-respect; some one came hither to sleep and work at high pressure, staying no longer than he could help, longing, while he remained, to be out and away.  What a difference between this cynical disorder and d’Arthez’s neat and self-respecting poverty!  A warning came with the thought of d’Arthez; but Lucien would not heed it, for Etienne made a joking remark to cover the nakedness of a reckless life.

“This is my kennel; I appear in state in the Rue de Bondy, in the new apartments which our druggist has taken for Florine; we hold the house-warming this evening.”

Etienne Lousteau wore black trousers and beautifully-varnished boots; his coat was buttoned up to his chin; he probably meant to change his linen at Florine’s house, for his shirt collar was hidden by a velvet stock.  He was trying to renovate his hat by an application of the brush.

“Let us go,” said Lucien.

“Not yet.  I am waiting for a bookseller to bring me some money; I have not a farthing; there will be play, perhaps, and in any case I must have gloves.”

As he spoke, the two new friends heard a man’s step in the passage outside.

“There he is,” said Lousteau.  “Now you will see, my dear fellow, the shape that Providence takes when he manifests himself to poets.  You are going to behold Dauriat, the fashionable bookseller of the Quai des Augustins, the pawnbroker, the marine store dealer of the trade, the Norman ex-greengrocer.—­Come along, old Tartar!” shouted Lousteau.

“Here am I,” said a voice like a cracked bell.

“Brought the money with you?”

“Money?  There is no money now in the trade,” retorted the other, a young man who eyed Lucien curiously.

“Imprimis, you owe me fifty francs,” Lousteau continued.

“There are two copies of Travels in Egypt here, a marvel, so they say, swarming with woodcuts, sure to sell.  Finot has been paid for two reviews that I am to write for him. Item two works, just out, by Victor Ducange, a novelist highly thought of in the Marais. Item a couple of copies of a second work by Paul de Kock, a beginner in the same style. Item two copies of Yseult of Dole, a charming provincial work.  Total, one hundred francs, my little Barbet.”

Barbet made a close survey of edges and binding.

“Oh! they are in perfect condition,” cried Lousteau.  “The Travels are uncut, so is the Paul de Kock, so is the Ducange, so is that other thing on the chimney-piece, Considerations on Symbolism.  I will throw that in; myths weary me to that degree that I will let you have the thing to spare myself the sight of the swarms of mites coming out of it.”

“But,” asked Lucien, “how are you going to write your reviews?”

Barbet, in profound astonishment, stared at Lucien; then he looked at Etienne and chuckled.

“One can see that the gentleman has not the misfortune to be a literary man,” said he.

“No, Barbet—­no.  He is a poet, a great poet; he is going to cut out Canalis, and Beranger, and Delavigne.  He will go a long way if he does not throw himself into the river, and even so he will get as far as the drag-nets at Saint-Cloud.”

“If I had any advice to give the gentleman,” remarked Barbet, “it would be to give up poetry and take to prose.  Poetry is not wanted on the Quais just now.”

Barbet’s shabby overcoat was fastened by a single button; his collar was greasy; he kept his hat on his head as he spoke; he wore low shoes, an open waistcoat gave glimpses of a homely shirt of coarse linen.  Good-nature was not wanting in the round countenance, with its two slits of covetous eyes; but there was likewise the vague uneasiness habitual to those who have money to spend and hear constant applications for it.  Yet, to all appearance, he was plain-dealing and easy-natured, his business shrewdness was so well wadded round with fat.  He had been an assistant until he took a wretched little shop on the Quai des Augustins two years since, and issued thence on his rounds among journalists, authors, and printers, buying up free copies cheaply, making in such ways some ten or twenty francs daily.  Now, he had money saved; he knew instinctively where every man was pressed; he had a keen eye for business.  If an author was in difficulties, he would discount a bill given by a publisher at fifteen or twenty per cent; then the next day he would go to the publisher, haggle over the price of some work in demand, and pay him with his own bills instead of cash.  Barbet was something of a scholar; he had had just enough education to make him careful to steer clear of modern poetry and modern romances.  He had a liking for small speculations, for books of a popular kind which might be bought outright for a thousand francs and exploited at pleasure, such as the Child’s History of France, Book-keeping in Twenty Lessons, and Botany for Young Ladies.  Two or three times already he had allowed a good book to slip through his fingers; the authors had come and gone a score of times while he hesitated, and could not make up his mind to buy the manuscript.  When reproached for his pusillanimity, he was wont to produce the account of a notorious trial taken from the newspapers; it cost him nothing, and had brought him in two or three thousand francs.

Barbet was the type of bookseller that goes in fear and trembling; lives on bread and walnuts; rarely puts his name to a bill; filches little profits on invoices; makes deductions, and hawks his books about himself; heaven only knows where they go, but he sells them somehow, and gets paid for them.  Barbet was the terror of printers, who could not tell what to make of him; he paid cash and took off the discount; he nibbled at their invoices whenever he thought they were pressed for money; and when he had fleeced a man once, he never went back to him—­he feared to be caught in his turn.

“Well,” said Lousteau, “shall we go on with our business?”

“Eh! my boy,” returned Barbet in a familiar tone; “I have six thousand volumes of stock on hand at my place, and paper is not gold, as the old bookseller said.  Trade is dull.”

“If you went into his shop, my dear Lucien,” said Etienne, turning to his friend, “you would see an oak counter from some bankrupt wine merchant’s sale, and a tallow dip, never snuffed for fear it should burn too quickly, making darkness visible.  By that anomalous light you descry rows of empty shelves with some difficulty.  An urchin in a blue blouse mounts guard over the emptiness, and blows his fingers, and shuffles his feet, and slaps his chest, like a cabman on the box.  Just look about you! there are no more books there than I have here.  Nobody could guess what kind of shop he keeps.”

“Here is a bill at three months for a hundred francs,” said Barbet, and he could not help smiling as he drew it out of his pocket; “I will take your old books off your hands.  I can’t pay cash any longer, you see; sales are too slow.  I thought that you would be wanting me; I had not a penny, and I made a bill simply to oblige you, for I am not fond of giving my signature.”

“So you want my thanks and esteem into the bargain, do you?”

“Bills are not met with sentiment,” responded Barbet; “but I will accept your esteem, all the same.”

“But I want gloves, and the perfumers will be base enough to decline your paper,” said Lousteau.  “Stop, there is a superb engraving in the top drawer of the chest there, worth eighty francs, proof before letters and after letterpress, for I have written a pretty droll article upon it.  There was something to lay hold of in Hippocrates refusing the Presents of Artaxerxes.  A fine engraving, eh?  Just the thing to suit all the doctors, who are refusing the extravagant gifts of Parisian satraps.  You will find two or three dozen novels underneath it.  Come, now, take the lot and give me forty francs.”

“Forty francs!” exclaimed the bookseller, emitting a cry like the squall of a frightened fowl.  “Twenty at the very most!  And then I may never see the money again,” he added.

“Where are your twenty francs?” asked Lousteau.

“My word, I don’t know that I have them,” said Barbet, fumbling in his pockets.  “Here they are.  You are plundering me; you have an ascendency over me——­”

“Come, let us be off,” said Lousteau, and taking up Lucien’s manuscript, he drew a line upon it in ink under the string.

“Have you anything else?” asked Barbet.

“Nothing, you young Shylock.  I am going to put you in the way of a bit of very good business,” Etienne continued (“in which you shall lose a thousand crowns, to teach you to rob me in this fashion”), he added for Lucien’s ear.

“But how about your reviews?” said Lucien, as they rolled away to the Palais Royal.

“Pooh! you do not know how reviews are knocked off.  As for the Travels in Egypt, I looked into the book here and there (without cutting the pages), and I found eleven slips in grammar.  I shall say that the writer may have mastered the dicky-bird language on the flints that they call ‘obelisks’ out there in Egypt, but he cannot write in his own, as I will prove to him in a column and a half.  I shall say that instead of giving us the natural history and archaeology, he ought to have interested himself in the future of Egypt, in the progress of civilization, and the best method of strengthening the bond between Egypt and France.  France has won and lost Egypt, but she may yet attach the country to her interests by gaining a moral ascendency over it.  Then some patriotic penny-a-lining, interlarded with diatribes on Marseilles, the Levant and our trade.”

“But suppose that he had taken that view, what would you do?”

“Oh well, I should say that instead of boring us with politics, he should have written about art, and described the picturesque aspects of the country and the local color.  Then the critic bewails himself.  Politics are intruded everywhere; we are weary of politics—­politics on all sides.  I should regret those charming books of travel that dwelt upon the difficulties of navigation, the fascination of steering between two rocks, the delights of crossing the line, and all the things that those who never will travel ought to know.  Mingle this approval with scoffing at the travelers who hail the appearance of a bird or a flying-fish as a great event, who dilate upon fishing, and make transcripts from the log.  Where, you ask, is that perfectly unintelligible scientific information, fascinating, like all that is profound, mysterious, and incomprehensible.  The reader laughs, that is all that he wants.  As for novels, Florine is the greatest novel reader alive; she gives me a synopsis, and I take her opinion and put a review together.  When a novelist bores her with ‘author’s stuff,’ as she calls it, I treat the work respectfully, and ask the publisher for another copy, which he sends forthwith, delighted to have a favorable review.”

“Goodness! and what of criticism, the critic’s sacred office?” cried Lucien, remembering the ideas instilled into him by the brotherhood.

“My dear fellow,” said Lousteau, “criticism is a kind of brush which must not be used upon flimsy stuff, or it carries it all away with it.  That is enough of the craft, now listen!  Do you see that mark?” he continued, pointing to the manuscript of the Marguerites.  “I have put ink on the string and paper.  If Dauriat reads your manuscript, he certainly could not tie the string and leave it just as it was before.  So your book is sealed, so to speak.  This is not useless to you for the experiment that you propose to make.  And another thing:  please to observe that you are not arriving quite alone and without a sponsor in the place, like the youngsters who make the round of half-a-score of publishers before they find one that will offer them a chair.”

Lucien’s experience confirmed the truth of this particular.  Lousteau paid the cabman, giving him three francs—­a piece of prodigality following upon such impecuniosity astonishing Lucien more than a little.  Then the two friends entered the Wooden Galleries, where fashionable literature, as it is called, used to reign in state.