Lost Illusions: A Distinguished Provincial at Paris — Chapter 18
“Why, I should advise you, my boy, to come with me to see Félicien Vernou,” said Lousteau, when they sat at table, and Lucien had mentioned Coralie’s projected supper; “ask him to be of the party, and keep well with him, if you can keep well with such a rascal.
Félicien Vernou does a _feuilleton_ for a political paper; he might perhaps introduce you, and you could blossom out into leaders in it at your ease.
It is a Liberal paper, like ours; you will be a Liberal, that is the popular party; and besides, if you mean to go over to the Ministerialists, you would do better for yourself if they had reason to be afraid of you.
Then there is Hector Merlin and his Mme.
du Val-Noble; you meet great people at their house—dukes and dandies and millionaires; didn’t they ask you and Coralie to dine with them?
” “Yes,” replied Lucien; “you are going too, and so is Florine.
” Lucien and Étienne were now on familiar terms after Friday’s debauch and the dinner at the _Rocher de Cancale_.
“Very well, Merlin is on the paper; we shall come across him pretty often; he is the chap to follow close on Finot’s heels.
You would do well to pay him attention; ask him and Mme.
du Val-Noble to supper.
He may be useful to you before long; for rancorous people are always in néed of others, and he may do you a good turn if he can reckon on your pen.
” “Your beginning has made enough sensation to smooth your way,” said Florine; “take advantage of it at once, or you will soon be forgotten.
” “The bargain, the great business, is concluded,” Lousteau continued.
“That Finot, without a spark of talent in him, is to be editor of Dauriat’s weekly paper, with a salary of six hundred francs per month, and owner of a sixth share, for which he has not paid one penny.
And I, my dear fellow, am now editor of our little paper.
Everything went off as I expected; Florine managed superbly, she could give points to Tallyrand himself.
” “We have a hold on men through their pleasures,” said Florine, “while a diplomatist only works on their self-love.
A diplomatist sees a man made up for the occasion; we know him in his moments of folly, so our power is greater.
” “And when the thing was settled, Matifat made the first and last joke of his whole druggist’s career,” put in Lousteau.
“He said, ‘This affair is quite in my line; I am supplying drugs to the public.
’” “I suspect that Florine put him up to it,” cried Lucien.
“And by these means, my little dear, your foot is in the stirrup,” continued Lousteau.
“You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth,” remarked Florine.
“What lots of young fellows wait for years, wait till they are sick of waiting, for a chance to get an article into a paper!
You will do like Émile Blondet.
In six months’ time you will be giving yourself high and mighty airs,” she added, with a mocking smile, in the language of her class.
“Haven’t I been in Paris for three years?
” said Lousteau, “and only yesterday Finot began to pay me a fixed monthly salary of three hundred francs, and a hundred francs per sheet for his paper.
” “Well; you are saying nothing!
” exclaimed Florine, with her eyes turned on Lucien.
“We shall see,” said Lucien.
“My dear boy, if you had been my brother, I could not have done more for you,” retorted Lousteau, somewhat nettled, “but I won’t answer for Finot.
Scores of sharp fellows will besiege Finot for the next two days with offers to work for low pay.
I have promised for you, but you can draw back if you like.
—You little know how lucky you are,” he added after a pause.
“All those in our set combine to attack an enemy in various papers, and lend each other a helping hand all round.
” “Let us go in the first place to Félicien Vernou,” said Lucien.
He was eager to conclude an alliance with such formidable birds of prey.
Lousteau sent for a cab, and the pair of friends drove to Vernou’s house on the second floor up an alley in the Rue Mandar.
To Lucien’s great astonishment, the harsh, fastidious, and severe critic’s surroundings were vulgar to the last degree.
A marbled paper, cheap and shabby, with a meaningless pattern repeated at regular intervals, covered the walls, and a series of aqua tints in gilt frames decorated the apartment, where Vernou sat at table with a woman so plain that she could only be the legitimate mistress of the house, and two very small children perched on high chairs with a bar in front to prevent the infants from tumbling out.
Félicien Vernou, in a cotton dressing-gown contrived out of the remains of one of his wife’s dresses, was not over well pleased by this invasion.
“Have you breakfasted, Lousteau?
” he asked, placing a chair for Lucien.
“We have just left Florine; we have been breakfasting with her.
” Lucien could not take his eyes off Mme.
Vernou.
She looked like a stout, homely cook, with a tolerably fair complexion, but commonplace to the last degree.
The lady wore a bandana tied over her night-cap, the strings of the latter article of dress being tied so tightly under the chin that her puffy cheeks stood out on either side.
A shapeless, beltless garment, fastened by a single button at the throat, enveloped her from head to foot in such a fashion that a comparison to a milestone at once suggested itself.
Her health left no room for hope; her cheeks were almost purple; her fingers looked like sausages.
In a moment it dawned upon Lucien how it was that Vernou was always so ill at ease in society; here was the living explanation of his misanthropy.
Sick of his marriage, unable to bring himself to abandon his wife and family, he had yet sufficient of the artistic temper to suffer continually from their presence; Vernou was an actor by nature bound never to pardon the success of another, condemned to chronic discontent because he was never content with himself.
Lucien began to understand the sour look which seemed to add to the bleak expression of envy on Vernou’s face; the acerbity of the epigrams with which his conversation was sown, the journalist’s pungent phrases, keen and elaborately wrought as a stiletto, were at once explained.
“Let us go into my study,” Vernou said, rising from the table; “you have come on business, no doubt.
” “Yes and no,” replied Étienne Lousteau.
“It is a supper, old chap.
” “I have brought a message from Coralie,” said Lucien (Mme.
Vernou looked up at once at the name), “to ask you to supper to-night at her house to meet the same company as before at Florine’s, and a few more besides—Hector Merlin and Mme.
du Val-Noble and some others.
There will be play afterwards.
” “But we are engaged to Mme.
Mahoudeau this evening, dear,” put in the wife.
“What does that matter?
” returned Vernou.
“She will take offence if we don’t go; and you are very glad of her when you have a bill to discount.
” “This wife of mine, my dear boy, can never be made to understand that a supper engagement for twelve o’clock does not prevent you from going to an evening party that comes to an end at eleven.
She is always with me while I work,” he added.
“You have so much imagination!
” said Lucien, and thereby made a mortal enemy of Vernou.
“Well,” continued Lousteau, “you are coming; but that is not all.
M.
de Rubempré is about to be one of us, so you must push him in your paper.
Give him out for a chap that will make a name for himself in literature, so that he can put in at least a couple of articles every month.
” “Yes, if he means to be one of us, and will attack our enemies, as we will attack his, I will say a word for him at the Opera to-night,” replied Vernou.
“Very well—good-bye till to-morrow, my boy,” said Lousteau, shaking hands with every sign of cordiality.
“When is your book coming out?
” “That depends on Dauriat; it is ready,” said Vernou _pater-familias_.
“Are you satisfied?
” “Yes and no——” “We will get up a success,” said Lousteau, and he rose with a bow to his colleague’s wife.
The abrupt departure was necessary indeed; for the two infants, engaged in a noisy quarrel, were fighting with their spoons, and flinging the pap in each other’s faces.
“That, my boy, is a woman who all unconsciously will work great havoc in contemporary literature,” said Étienne, when they came away.
“Poor Vernou cannot forgive us for his wife.
He ought to be relieved of her in the interests of the public; and a deluge of blood-thirsty reviews and stinging sarcasms against successful men of every sort would be averted.
What is to become of a man with such a wife and that pair of abominable brats?
Have you seen Rigaudin in Picard’s _La Maison en Loterie_?
You have?
Well, like Rigaudin, Vernou will not fight himself, but he will set others fighting; he would give an eye to put out both eyes in the head of the best friend he has.
You will see him using the bodies of the slain for a stepping-stone, rejoicing over every one’s misfortunes, attacking princes, dukes, marquises, and nobles, because he himself is a commoner; reviling the work of unmarried men because he forsooth has a wife; and everlastingly preaching morality, the joys of domestic life, and the duties of the citizen.
In short, this very moral critic will spare no one, not even infants of tender age.
He lives in the Rue Mandar with a wife who might be the _Mamamouchi_ of the _Bourgeois gentilhomme_ and a couple of little Vernous as ugly as sin.
He tries to snéer at the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where he will never set foot, and makes his duchesses talk like his wife.
That is the sort of man to raise a howl at the Jesuits, insult the Court, and credit the Court party with the design of restoring feudal rights and the right of primogeniture—just the one to preach a crusade for Equality, he that thinks himself the equal of no one.
If he were a bachelor, he would go into society; if he were in a fair way to be a Royalist poet with a pension and the Cross of the Legion of Honor, he would be an optimist, and journalism offers starting-points by the hundred.
Journalism is the giant catapult set in motion by pigmy hatreds.
Have you any wish to marry after this?
Vernou has none of the milk of human kindness in him, it is all turned to gall;
and he is emphatically the Journalist, a tiger with two hands that tears everything to pieces, as if his pen had the hydrophobia.
” “It is a case of gunophobia,” said Lucien.
“Has he ability?
” “He is witty, he is a writer of articles.
He incubates articles; he does that all his life and nothing else.
The most dogged industry would fail to graft a book on his prose.
Félicien is incapable of conceiving a work on a large scale, of broad effects, of fitting characters harmoniously in a plot which develops till it reaches a climax.
He has ideas, but he has no knowledge of facts; his heroes are utopian creatures, philosophical or Liberal notions masquerading.
He is at pains to write an original style, but his inflated periods would collapse at a pin-prick from a critic; and therefore he goes in terror of reviews, like every one else who can only keep his head above water with the bladders of newspaper puffs.
” “What an article you are making out of him!
” “That particular kind, my boy, must be spoken, and never written.
” “You are turning editor,” said Lucien.
“Where shall I put you down?
” “At Coralie’s. ” “Ah!
we are infatuated,” said Lousteau.
“What a mistake!
Do as I do with Florine, let Coralie be your housekeeper, and take your fling.
” “You would send a saint to perdition,” laughed Lucien.
“Well, there is no damning a devil,” retorted Lousteau.
The flippant tone, the brilliant talk of this new friend, his views of life, his paradoxes, the axioms of Parisian Machiavelism,—all these things impressed Lucien unawares.
Theoretically the poet knew that such thoughts were perilous; but he believed them practically useful.
Arrived in the Boulevard du Temple, the friends agreed to meet at the office between four and five o’clock.
Hector Merlin would doubtless be there.
Lousteau was right.
The infatuation of desire was upon Lucien;
for the courtesan who loves knows how to grapple her lover to her by every weakness in his nature, fashioning herself with incredible flexibility to his every wish, encouraging the soft, effeminate habits which strengthen her hold.
Lucien was thirsting already for enjoyment;
he was in love with the easy, luxurious, and expensive life which the actress led.
He found Coralie and Camusot intoxicated with joy.
The Gymnase offered Coralie an engagement after Easter on terms for which she had never dared to hope.
“And this great success is owing to you,” said Camusot.
“Yes, surely.
_The Alcalde_ would have fallen flat but for him,” cried Coralie; “if there had been no article, I should have been in for another six years of the Boulevard theatres.
” She danced up to Lucien and flung her arms round him, putting an indescribable silken softness and sweetness into her enthusiasm.
Love had come to Coralie.
And Camusot?
his eyes fell.
Looking down after the wont of mankind in moments of sharp pain, he saw the seam of Lucien’s boots, a deep yellow thread used by the best bootmakers of that time, in strong contrast with the glistening leather.
The color of that seam had tinged his thoughts during a previous conversation with himself, as he sought to explain the presence of a mysterious pair of hessians in Coralie’s fender.
He remembered now that he had seen the name of “Gay, Rue de la Michodière,” printed in black letters on the soft white kid lining.
“You have a handsome pair of boots, sir,” he said.
“Like everything else about him,” said Coralie.
“I should be very glad of your bootmaker’s address.
” “Oh, how like the Rue des Bourdonnais to ask for a tradesman’s address,” cried Coralie.
“Do _you_ intend to patronize a young man’s bootmaker?
A
nice young man you would make!
Do keep to your own top-boots; they are the kind for a steady-going man with a wife and family and a mistress.
” “Indeed, if you would take off one of your boots, sir, I should be very much obliged,” persisted Camusot.
“I could not get it on again without a button-hook,” said Lucien, flushing up.
“Bérénice will fetch you one; we can do with some here,” jeered Camusot.
“Papa Camusot!
” said Coralie, looking at him with cruel scorn, “have the courage of your pitiful baseness.
Come, speak out!
You think that this gentleman’s boots are very like mine, do you not?
—I forbid you to take off your boots,” she added, turning to Lucien.
—“Yes, M. Camusot.
Yes, you saw some boots lying about in the fender here the other day, and that is the identical pair, and this gentleman was hiding in my dressing-room at the time, waiting for them; and he had passed the night here.
That was what you were thinking, _hein_?
Think so; I would rather you did.
It is the simple truth.
I am deceiving you.
And if I am?
I do it to please myself.
” She sat down.
There was no anger in her face, no embarrassment; she looked from Camusot to Lucien.
The two men avoided each other’s eyes.
“I will believe nothing that you do not wish me to believe,” said Camusot.
“Don’t play with me, Coralie; I was wrong——” “I am either a shameless baggage that has taken a sudden fancy; or a poor, unhappy girl who feels what love really is for the first time, the love that all women long for.
And whichever way it is, you must leave me or take me as I am,” she said, with a queenly gesture that crushed Camusot.
“Is it really true?
” he asked, seeing from their faces that this was no jest, yet begging to be deceived.
“I love mademoiselle,” Lucien faltered out.
At that word, Coralie sprang to her poet and held him tightly to her;
then, with her arms still about him, she turned to the silk-mercer, as if to bid him see the beautiful picture made by two young lovers.
“Poor Musot, take all that you gave to me back again; I do not want to keep anything of yours; for I love this boy here madly, not for his intellect, but for his beauty.
I would rather starve with him than have millions with you.
” Camusot sank into a low chair, hid his face in his hands, and said not a word.
“Would you like us to go away?
” she asked.
There was a note of ferocity in her voice which no words can describe.
Cold chills ran down Lucien’s spine; he beheld himself burdened with a woman, an actress, and a household.
“Stay here, Coralie; keep it all,” the old tradesman said at last, in a faint, unsteady voice that came from his heart; “I don’t want anything back.
There is the worth of sixty thousand francs here in the furniture;
but I could not bear to think of my Coralie in want.
And yet, it will not be long before you come to want.
However great this gentleman’s talent may be, he can’t afford to keep you.
We old fellows must expect this sort of thing.
Coralie, let me come and see you sometimes; I may be of use to you.
And—I confess it; I cannot live without you.
” The poor man’s gentleness, stripped as he was of his happiness just as happiness had reached its height, touched Lucien deeply.
Coralie was quite unsoftened by it.
“Come as often as you wish, poor Musot,” she said; “I shall like you all the better when I don’t pretend to love you.
” Camusot seemed to be resigned to his fate so long as he was not driven out of the earthly paradise, in which his life could not have been all joy; he trusted to the chances of life in Paris and to the temptations that would beset Lucien’s path; he would wait a while, and all that had been his should be his again.
Sooner or later, thought the wily tradesman, this handsome young fellow would be unfaithful; he would keep a watch on him; and the better to do this and use his opportunity with Coralie, he would be their friend.
The persistent passion that could consent to such humiliation terrified Lucien.
Camusot’s proposal of a dinner at Véry’s in the Palais Royal was accepted.
“What joy!
” cried Coralie, as soon as Camusot had departed.
“You will not go back now to your garret in the Latin Quarter; you will live here.
We shall always be together.
You can take a room in the Rue Charlot for the sake of appearances, and _vogue le galère_!
” She began to dance her Spanish dance, with an excited eagerness that revealed the strength of the passion in her heart.
“If I work hard I may make five hundred francs a month,” Lucien said.
“And I shall make as much again at the theatre, without counting extras.
Camusot will pay for my dresses as before.
He is fond of me!
We can live like Croesus on fifteen hundred francs a month.
” “And the horses?
and the coachman?
and the footman?
” inquired Bérénice.
“I will get into debt,” said Coralie.
And she began to dance with Lucien.
“I must close with Finot after this,” Lucien exclaimed.
“There!
” said Coralie, “I will dress and take you to your office.
I will wait outside in the boulevard for you with the carriage.
” Lucien sat down on the sofa and made some very sober reflections as he watched Coralie at her toilet.
It would have been wiser to leave Coralie free than to start all at once with such an establishment; but Coralie was there before his eyes, and Coralie was so lovely, so graceful, so bewitching, that the more picturesque aspects of bohemia were in evidence; and he flung down the gauntlet to fortune.
Bérénice was ordered to superintend Lucien’s removal and installation;
and Coralie, triumphant, radiant, and happy, carried off her love, her poet, and must néeds go all over Paris on the way to the Rue Saint-Fiacre.
Lucien sprang lightly up the staircase, and entered the office with an air of being quite at home.
Coloquinte was there with the stamped paper still on his head; and old Giroudeau told him again, hypocritically enough, that no one had yet come in.
“But the editor and contributors _must_ meet somewhere or other to arrange about the journal,” said Lucien.
“Very likely; but I have nothing to do with the writing of the paper,” said the Emperor’s captain, resuming his occupation of checking off wrappers with his eternal broum!
broum!
Was it lucky or unlucky?
Finot chanced to come in at that very moment to announce his sham abdication and to bid Giroudeau watch over his interests.
“No shilly-shally with this gentleman; he is on the staff,” Finot added for his uncle’s benefit, as he grasped Lucien by the hand.
“Oh!
is he on the paper?
” exclaimed Giroudeau, much surprised at this friendliness.
“Well, sir, you came on without much difficulty.
” “I want to make things snug for you here, lest Étienne should bamboozle you,” continued Finot, looking knowingly at Lucien.
“This gentleman will be paid three francs per column all round, including theatres.
” “You have never taken any one on such terms before,” said Giroudeau, opening his eyes.
“And he will take the four Boulevard theatres.
See that nobody sneaks his boxes, and that he gets his share of tickets.
—I should advise you, nevertheless, to have them sent to your address,” he added, turning to Lucien.
—“And he agrees to write besides ten miscellaneous articles of two columns each, for fifty francs per month, for one year.
Does that suit you?
” “Yes,” said Lucien.
Circumstances had forced his hand.
“Draw up the agreement, uncle, and we will sign it when we come downstairs.
” “Who is the gentleman?
” inquired Giroudeau, rising and taking off his black silk skull-cap.
“M. Lucien de Rubempré, who wrote the article on _The Alcalde_.
” “Young man, you have a gold mine _there_,” said the old soldier, tapping Lucien on the forehead.
“I am not literary myself, but I read that article of yours, and I liked it.
That is the kind of thing!
There’s gaiety for you!
‘That will bring us new subscribers,’ says I to myself.
And so it did.
We sold fifty more numbers.
” “Is my agreement with Lousteau made out in duplicate and ready to sign?
” asked Finot, speaking aside.
“Yes.
” “Then ante-date this gentleman’s agreement by one day, so that Lousteau will be bound by the previous contract.
” Finot took his new contributor’s arm with a friendliness that charmed Lucien, and drew him out on the landing to say:— “Your position is made for you.
I will introduce you to _my_ staff myself, and to-night Lousteau will go round with you to the theatres.
You can make a hundred and fifty francs per month on this little paper of ours with Lousteau as its editor, so try to keep well with him.
The rogue bears a grudge against me as it is, for tying his hands so far as you are concerned; but you have ability, and I don’t choose that you shall be subjected to the whims of the editor.
You might let me have a couple of sheets every month for my review, and I will pay you two hundred francs.
This is between ourselves, don’t mention it to anybody else; I should be laid open to the spite of every one whose vanity is mortified by your good fortune.
Write four articles, fill your two sheets, sign two with your own name, and two with a pseudonym, so that you may not seem to be taking the bread out of anybody else’s mouth.
You owe your position to Blondet and Vignon; they think that you have a future before you.
So keep out of scrapes, and, above all things, be on your guard against your friends.
As for me, we shall always get on well together, you and I. Help me, and I will help you.
You have forty francs’ worth of boxes and tickets to sell, and sixty francs’ worth of books to convert into cash.
With that and your work on the paper, you will be making four hundred and fifty francs every month.
If you use your wits, you will find ways of making another two hundred francs at least among the publishers; they will pay you for reviews and prospectuses.
But you are mine, are you not?
I can count upon you.
” Lucien squeezed Finot’s hand in transports of joy which no words can express.
