Lost Illusions: A Distinguished Provincial at Paris — Chapter 23
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; Léon 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.
Michel and Fulgence exchanged incredulous scornful smiles at this.
Lucien saw the absurdity of his remark.
“Coralie is wonderfully beautiful,” exclaimed Joseph Bridau.
“What a magnificent portrait she would make!
” “Beautiful and good,” said Lucien; “she is an angel, upon my word.
And you shall paint her portrait; she shall sit to you if you like for your Venetian lady brought by the old woman to the senator.
” “All women who love are angelic,” said Michel Chrestien.
Just at that moment Raoul Nathan flew upon Lucien, and grasped both his hands and shook them in a sudden access of violent friendship.
“Oh, my good friend, you are something more than a great man, you have a heart,” cried he, “a much rarer thing than genius in these days.
You are a devoted friend.
I am yours, in short, through thick and thin; I shall never forget all that you have done for me this week.
” Lucien’s joy had reached the highest point; to be thus caressed by a man of whom everyone was talking!
He looked at his three friends of the brotherhood with something like a superior air.
Nathan’s appearance upon the scene was the result of an overture from Merlin, who sent him a proof of the favorable review to appear in to-morrow’s issue.
“I only consented to write the attack on condition that I should be allowed to reply to it myself,” Lucien said in Nathan’s ear.
“I am one of you.
” This incident was opportune; it justified the remark which amused Fulgence.
Lucien was radiant.
“When d’Arthez’s book comes out,” he said, turning to the three, “I am in a position to be useful to him.
That thought in itself would induce me to remain a journalist.
” “Can you do as you like?
” Michel asked quickly.
“So far as one can when one is indispensable,” said Lucien modestly.
It was almost midnight when they sat down to supper, and the fun grew fast and furious.
Talk was less restrained in Lucien’s house than at Matifat’s, for no one suspected that the representatives of the brotherhood and the newspaper writers held divergent opinions.
Young intellects, depraved by arguing for either side, now came into conflict with each other, and fearful axioms of the journalistic jurisprudence, then in its infancy, hurtled to and fro.
Claude Vignon, upholding the dignity of criticism, inveighed against the tendency of the smaller newspapers, saying that the writers of personalities lowered themselves in the end.
Lousteau, Merlin, and Finot took up the cudgels for the system known by the name of _blague_; puffery, gossip, and humbug, said they, was the test of talent, and set the hall-mark, as it were, upon it.
“Any man who can stand that test has real power,” said Lousteau.
“Besides,” cried Merlin, “when a great man receives ovations, there ought to be a chorus in insults to balance, as in a Roman triumph.
” “Oho!
” put in Lucien; “then every one held up to ridicule in print will fancy that he has made a success.
” “Any one would think that the question interested you,” exclaimed Finot.
“And how about our sonnets,” said Michel Chrestien; “is that the way they will win us the fame of a second Petrarch?
” “Laura already counts for something in his fame,” said Dauriat, a pun [Laure (l’or)] received with acclamations.
“_Faciamus experimentum in anima vili_,” retorted Lucien with a smile.
“And woe unto him whom reviewers shall spare, flinging him crowns at his first appearance, for he shall be shelved like the saints in their shrines, and no man shall pay him the slightest attention,” said Vernou.
“People will say, ‘Look elsewhere, simpleton; you have had your due already,’ as Champcenetz said to the Marquis de Genlis, who was looking too fondly at his wife,” added Blondet.
“Success is the ruin of a man in France,” said Finot.
“We are so jealous of one another that we try to forget, and to make others forget, the triumphs of yesterday.
” “Contradiction is the life of literature, in fact,” said Claude Vignon.
“In art as in nature, there are two principles everywhere at strife,” exclaimed Fulgence; “and victory for either means death.
” “So it is with politics,” added Michel Chrestien.
“We have a case in point,” said Lousteau.
“Dauriat will sell a couple of thousand copies of Nathan’s book in the coming week.
And why?
Because the book that was cleverly attacked will be ably defended.
” Merlin took up the proof of to-morrow’s paper.
“How can such an article fail to sell an edition?
” he asked.
“Read the article,” said Dauriat.
“I am a publisher wherever I am, even at supper.
” Merlin read Lucien’s triumphant refutation aloud, and the whole party applauded.
“How could that article have been written unless the attack had preceded it?
” asked Lousteau.
Dauriat drew the proof of the third article from his pocket and read it over, Finot listening closely; for it was to appear in the second number of his own review, and as editor he exaggerated his enthusiasm.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “so and not otherwise would Bossuet have written if he had lived in our day.
” “I am sure of it,” said Merlin.
“Bossuet would have been a journalist to-day.
” “To Bossuet the Second!
” cried Claude Vignon, raising his glass with an ironical bow.
“To my Christopher Columbus!
” returned Lucien, drinking a health to Dauriat.
“Bravo!
” cried Nathan.
“Is it a nickname?
” Merlin inquired, looking maliciously from Finot to Lucien.
“If you go on at this pace, you will be quite beyond us,” said Dauriat;
“these gentlemen” (indicating Camusot and Matifat) “cannot follow you as it is.
A joke is like a bit of thread; if it is spun too fine, it breaks, as Bonaparte said.
” “Gentlemen,” said Lousteau, “we have been eye-witnesses of a strange, portentous, unheard-of, and truly surprising phenomenon.
Admire the rapidity with which our friend here has been transformed from a provincial into a journalist!
” “He is a born journalist,” said Dauriat.
“Children!
” called Finot, rising to his feet, “all of us here present have encouraged and protected our amphitryon in his entrance upon a career in which he has already surpassed our hopes.
In two months he has shown us what he can do in a series of excellent articles known to us all.
I propose to baptize him in form as a journalist.
” “A crown of roses!
to signalize a double conquest,” cried Bixiou, glancing at Coralie.
Coralie made a sign to Bérénice.
That portly handmaid went to Coralie’s dressing-room and brought back a box of tumbled artificial flowers.
The more incapable members of the party were grotesquely tricked out in these blossoms, and a crown of roses was soon woven.
Finot, as high priest, sprinkled a few drops of champagne on Lucien’s golden curls, pronouncing with delicious gravity the words—“In the name of the Government Stamp, the Caution-money, and the Fine, I baptize thee, Journalist.
May thy articles sit lightly on thee!
” “And may they be paid for, including white lines!
” cried Merlin.
Just at that moment Lucien caught sight of three melancholy faces.
Michel Chrestien, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence Ridal took up their hats and went out amid a storm of invective.
“Queer customers!
” said Merlin.
“Fulgence used to be a good fellow,” added Lousteau, “before they perverted his morals.
” “Who are ‘they’?
” asked Claude Vignon.
“Some very serious young men,” said Blondet, “who meet at a philosophico-religious symposium in the Rue des Quatre-Vents, and worry themselves about the meaning of human life——” “Oh!
oh!
” “They are trying to find out whether it goes round in a circle, or makes some progress,” continued Blondet.
“They were very hard put to it between the straight line and the curve; the triangle, warranted by Scripture, seemed to them to be nonsense, when, lo!
there arose among them some prophet or other who declared for the spiral.
” “Men might meet to invent more dangerous nonsense than that!
” exclaimed Lucien, making a faint attempt to champion the brotherhood.
“You take theories of that sort for idle words,” said Félicien Vernou;
“but a time comes when the arguments take the form of gunshot and the guillotine.
” “They have not come to that yet,” said Bixiou; “they have only come as far as the designs of Providence in the invention of champagne, the humanitarian significance of breeches, and the blind deity who keeps the world going.
They pick up fallen great men like Vico, Saint-Simon, and Fourier.
I am much afraid that they will turn poor Joseph Bridau’s head among them.
” “Bianchon, my old schoolfellow, gives me the cold shoulder now,” said Lousteau; “it is all their doing——” “Do they give lectures on orthopedy and intellectual gymnastics?
” asked Merlin.
“Very likely,” answered Finot, “if Bianchon has any hand in their theories.
” “Pshaw!
” said Lousteau; “he will be a great physician anyhow.
” “Isn’t d’Arthez their visible head?
” asked Nathan, “a little youngster that is going to swallow all of us up.
” “He is a genius!
” cried Lucien.
“Genius, is he!
Well, give me a glass of sherry!
” said Claude Vignon, smiling.
Every one, thereupon, began to explain his character for the benefit of his neighbor; and when a clever man feels a pressing néed of explaining himself, and of unlocking his heart, it is pretty clear that wine has got the upper hand.
An hour later, all the men in the company were the best friends in the world, addressing each other as great men and bold spirits, who held the future in their hands.
Lucien, in his quality of host, was sufficiently clearheaded to apprehend the meaning of the sophistries which impressed him and completed his demoralization.
“The Liberal party,” announced Finot, “is compelled to stir up discussion somehow.
There is no fault to find with the action of the Government, and you may imagine what a fix the Opposition is in.
Which of you now cares to write a pamphlet in favor of the system of primogeniture, and raise a cry against the secret designs of the Court?
The pamphlet will be paid for handsomely.
” “I will write it,” said Hector Merlin.
“It is my own point of view.
” “Your party will complain that you are compromising them,” said Finot.
“Félicien, you must undertake it; Dauriat will bring it out, and we will keep the secret.
” “How much shall I get?
” “Six hundred francs.
Sign it ‘Le Comte C, three stars.
’” “It’s a bargain,” said Félicien Vernou.
“So you are introducing the _canard_ to the political world,” remarked Lousteau.
“It is simply the Chabot affair carried into the region of abstract ideas,” said Finot.
“Fasten intentions on the Government, and then let loose public opinion.
” “How a Government can leave the control of ideas to such a pack of scamps as we are, is matter for perpetual and profound astonishment to me,” said Claude Vignon.
“If the Ministry blunders so far as to come down into the arena, we can give them a drubbing.
If they are nettled by it, the thing will rankle in people’s minds, and the Government will lose its hold on the masses.
The newspaper risks nothing, and the authorities have everything to lose.
” “France will be a cipher until newspapers are abolished by law,” said Claude Vignon.
“You are making progress hourly,” he added, addressing Finot.
“You are a modern order of Jesuits, lacking the creed, the fixed idea, the discipline, and the union.
” They went back to the card-tables; and before long the light of the candles grew feeble in the dawn.
“Lucien, your friends from the Rue des Quatre-Vents looked as dismal as criminals going to be hanged,” said Coralie.
“They were the judges, not the criminals,” replied the poet.
