‘Who’s Braulard?’ asked Lucien, under the impression that he had already heard this name mentioned.
‘The leader of the clappers. He’s been arranging with her about what spots to clap loudest at in her part. Florine makes out she’s her friend, but she’s quite capable of doing her a bad turn and stealing the show. The whole boulevard’s in a stir on account of your article. – There’s a bed for you, fit for a prince to make love in!’ she added as she spread a lace coverlet over it.
She lit the candles. In the light they gave, Lucien was dazzled and indeed fancied he was in a fairy palace. Camusot had picked out the richest stuffs the Golden Cocoon could provide for the wall hangings and the window draperies. The poet was treading on a carpet fit for royalty.
The light gleamed and shimmered in the carvings of the rosewood furniture. The white marble mantelpiece was resplendent with most costly trifles. The bedside rug was of swansdown edged with ermine. Black velvet slippers lined with crimson silk spoke of the pleasures awaiting the author of Les Marguerites. An exquisite lamp hung from the silk-draped ceiling. All around were wonderful jardinières filled with choice flowers, pretty white heather and scentless camellias. The whole room was a picture of innocence. How could one imagine an actress and the morals of the theatre in such a setting? Bérénice noticed Lucien’s amazement.
‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she asked in a wheedling tone of voice. ‘Won’t you be better off making love here rather than in an attic?… Don’t let her do anything silly,’ she continued, leading Lucien to a magnificent pedestal table spread with food abstracted from her mistress’s dinner so that the cook might not suspect the presence of a lover.
Lucien had an excellent dinner, presented by Bérénice in a service of chased silver with decorated plates worth twenty francs apiece. This luxury had the same effect on him as a girl of the streets with her bare flesh and dainty sheer stockings has on a boy in his teens.
‘How lucky this Camusot is!’ he cried.
‘Lucky?’ Bérénice retorted. ‘Why, he would give all he has to be in your place and swap his old grey thatch for the fair hair of a young man like you.’
After pouring out for him some of the most delicious wine that Bordeaux ever prepared for the wealthiest Englishman, she urged Lucien to go back to bed while waiting for Coralie and take a little nap; and in fact Lucien was only too ready to lie in this wonderful bed. Bérénice had read this desire in the poet’s eyes and was pleased for her mistress’s sake. At half-past ten he awoke under a gaze which was brimming over with love. Coralie was there, in her most voluptuous night attire. Lucien had slept, and was no longer drunk – only with love. Bérénice withdrew with the question: ‘What time tomorrow?’
‘Eleven. Bring our breakfast up to bed. I’ll see no one before two o’clock.’
At two the next afternoon, the actress and her lover were dressed and sitting face to face as if the poet had come to pay a visit to his protégée. Coralie had bathed Lucien, brushed and combed his hair and dressed him; she had sent out to Colliau’s to get him a dozen fine shirts, a dozen cravats and a dozen handkerchiefs; also a dozen pairs of gloves in a cedar box. When she heard the rumble of a carriage at the street-door, she rushed to the window with Lucien. They both saw Camusot getting out of a magnificent coupé.
‘I didn’t think,’ she said, ‘that one could hate a man so much… and luxury too…’
‘I’m too poor to allow you to ruin yourself,’ said Lucien, thus passing under the Caudine Forks.
‘My precious darling,’ she said, pressing against Lucien’s heart, ‘then you really do love me? – I asked Monsieur to come and see me this morning,’ she said, presenting Lucien, ‘thinking that we might go for a ride in the Champs-Elysées to try out the carriage.’
‘You must go without me,’ said Camusot sorrowfully. ‘And I can’t dine with you. I’d forgotten it’s my wife’s birthday.’
‘Poor Musot! How bored you’ll be!’ she said, giving the merchant a hug.
She was wildly happy at the thought that she and Lucien together would be the first to ride in this fine coupé, that she could go alone with him to the Bois de Boulogne; in her outburst of joy she seemed to be really fond of Camusot and heaped caresses on him.
‘I wish I could give you a carriage every day,’ said the poor man.
‘Let’s go, Monsieur, it’s two o’clock,’ said the actress to the shame-faced Lucien whom she consoled with an adorable gesture.
Coralie rushed downstairs dragging Lucien behind her; he heard the merchant lumbering along behind them like a seal, unable to catch up with them. The poet experienced the most intoxicating delights: Coralie, radiant with happiness, displayed to the ravished eyes of all who beheld her an attire which was the last word in taste and elegance. The Paris of the Champs-Elysées admired the pair of lovers. In one of the lanes of the Bois de Boulogne their coupé encountered the barouche of Mesdames d’ Espard and de Bargeton who gazed at Lucien with astonishment: he darted at them the contemptuous glance of a poet who foresees the fame in store for him and intends to exploit his power. The instant when a single glare directed at these two women enabled him to convey some of the vengeful thoughts which, thanks to them, were gnawing at his heart, was one of the sweetest moments in his life, and perhaps decided his destiny. Lucien became once more a prey to the fury born of pride: he wanted to reappear in society and take a spectacular revenge; all the petty social snobbery which as a hard-working man and the friend of the Cénacle he had trampled underfoot once more took possession of him. He now realized the full purport of the attack Lousteau had made on his behalf. Lousteau had pandered to his passions, whereas his mentors of the Cénacle seemed bent on repressing them in favour of dull virtue and toil, which Lucien was now beginning to find unprofitable. Hard work!… Does it not spell death to temperaments avid for enjoyment? Hence the readiness of writers to sink into a dolce far niente attitude, take to good cheer and the luxurious delights of the life lived by actresses and women of easy virtue. Lucien felt an irresistible longing to continue the frantic life of the last two days.
The dinner at the Rocher de Cancale was exquisite. Lucien found Florine’s guests there, except for the envoy, the Duke, the dancer and Camusot; these were replaced by two actors and Hector Merlin with his mistress, a delightful women who went by the name of Madame du Val-Noble, the most beautiful and elegant of those women who then constituted a special world in Paris, the women who today are decorously dubbed lorettes.1 Lucien, who for the last forty-eight hours had been living in Paradise, learnt of the success of his article. Seeing himself lionized and envied, the poet felt self-assured; he sparkled with wit and became the Lucien de Rubempré who for a few months was to be a shining light in the literary and artistic world. Finot, a man of uncontestable skill in divining talent, who could nose it out as an ogre scents raw flesh, cajoled Lucien in an attempt to recruit him for the squad of journalists under his command. Lucien nibbled at the bait of his flattery, but Coralie observed the tactics of this man who battened on other people’s intelligence and tried to put Lucien on his guard.
‘Don’t commit yourself, my love,’ she said to the poet. ‘Wait. They want to exploit you. We’ll talk about it this evening.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Lucien answered. ‘I feel I can be as spiteful and cunning as they are.’
Finot, who no doubt had not definitively fallen out with Hector Merlin over the blank spaces, introduced him and Lucien to one another. Coralie and Madame du Val-Noble fraternized and overwhelmed each other with caresses and attentions. Madame du Val-Noble invited Lucien and Coralie to dinner.
Hector Merlin, the most dangerous of all the journalists present at the dinner, was a spare little man with pinched lips, inordinate ambition and unbounded jealousy. He delighted in all the evil he saw done around him and took advantage of the hostilities which he himself fostered; he had much wit and little will-power, but in lieu of that he had the instinct which guides upstarts to the regions where money
and influence serve as beacon lights. Lucien and he took a dislike to each other, and it is not difficult to explain why. Merlin was tactless enough to talk out loud to Lucien while Lucien was quietly thinking. By the time dessert was served, the bonds of the most moving friendship appeared to unite all these men, though each of them thought himself a cut above the rest. As a newcomer Lucien was the object of their flattering attentions. They chatted freely. Hector Merlin alone remained serious. Lucien asked him the reason for this.
‘Well, I see that you are entering the world of literature and journalism with your illusions intact. You believe in friendship. We are all friends or enemies according to circumstances. We are the first to belabour one another with the weapons we ought only to use on other people. You’ll soon perceive that you’ll get nowhere with fine sentiments. Are you kind-hearted? Become ill-natured. Be cross-grained on principle. Perhaps no one has told you of this overriding law: I’m disclosing it to you, and it’s by no means an unimportant disclosure. If you want to be loved, never leave your mistress without making her weep a bit. To make your fortune in literature, always hurt everybody’s feelings, even those of your friends. Wound their self-esteem: everybody will fawn on you.’
Hector Merlin was happy to see by the neophyte’s air that his words had gone home like the thrust of a dagger. They played cards. Lucien lost all his money. Coralie took him away, and the delights of love made him forget the terrible emotions of the gaming table, to which, later, he was to fall a victim. The next day, as he left her rooms and walked back to the Latin quarter, he found that she had put in his purse the money he had lost. This attention saddened him at first, and he thought of returning to the actress to give back her humiliating present; but he had already reached the rue de La Harpe and went on his way to the Hôtel Cluny. As he walked along he thought over Coralie’s kind act and saw in it a proof of the maternal love which women of her sort mingle with their passions, for with them passion includes all kinds of sentiment. As one thought followed another, Lucien found in the end an excuse for accepting. He said to himself: ‘I love her, we’ll live together as husband and wife and I’ll never leave her!’
20. Last visit to the Cénacle
WHO, unless he were a Diogenes, would not understand Lucien’s feelings as he climbed the muddy, smelly stairs of his hotel, as the key grated in the door-lock and as he looked once more on the dirty tiles and pitiable mantelpiece of this horribly bare and squalid room? On the table he found the manuscript of his novel and a note from Daniel d’Arthez:
‘Our friends are almost satisfied with your work, dear poet. You can offer it with increased confidence, they say, to friends and enemies alike. We have read your charming article on the Panorama-Dramatique play: you must be arousing as much envy in the literary world as regret in us.’
‘Regret? What does he mean?’ cried Lucien, surprised at the tone of politeness prevailing in this note. Was he then a stranger to the Cénacle? After devouring the delicious fruit which the Eve of the greenroom had offered him he was even keener on keeping the esteem and friendship of the brethren of the rue des Quatre-Vents. For a few moments he remained plunged in meditation, comparing his present life in this room with the future awaiting him in Coralie’s flat. Oscillating between honourable and corrupting thoughts, he sat down and began to examine his work in the state in which his friends had returned it to him. How great was his astonishment! From chapter to chapter, the skilful and devoted pen of these great but as yet unknown men had changed dross into rich ore. A full, close, concise and vigorous dialogue had been substituted for the conversations which he now realized were idle chatter compared with a discourse breathing the very spirit of the times. His portraits, somewhat woolly in outline, had been brought into strong and colourful relief; all of them were linked up with the interesting phenomena of human life by means of physiological comments, due no doubt to Bianchon, expressed with subtlety and infusing life into them. His verbose descriptions had taken on substance and vividness. In place of the misshapen, ill-clad child of his imagination he found an entrancing white-robed maiden with rose-coloured girdle and scarf, a ravishing creation. When night came, it caught him with streaming eyes, overwhelmed at this greatness of heart, realizing the value of such a lesson, admiring these emendations which taught him more about literature and art than his four years of reading, comparison and study had done. The correction of a badly-sketched cartoon by masterly touches taken direct from life always reveals far more than theories and observations.
‘What friends! What hearts of gold! How fortunate I am!’ he exclaimed as he locked the manuscript up.
Carried away by an impulse natural to poetic and excitable natures, he rushed to Daniel’s room. However, as he mounted the staircase, he felt less worthy of these great-hearted men whom nothing was able to divert from the path of honour. A voice was telling him that, if Daniel had loved Coralie, he would have refused to share her with Camusot. He was also aware in what deep horror the Cénacle held journalists, and he knew that he was already on the way to being one. He found his friends, except Meyraux, who had just left, a prey to the despair written on their faces.
‘What’s the matter, my friends?’ asked Lucien.
‘We have just heard of a terrible catastrophe: the greatest intellect of our time, our dearest friend, who had been our guiding light for two years…’
‘Louis Lambert,’ said Lucien.
‘… is in a state of catalepsy which leaves no hope,’ said Bianchon.
‘He will die with no feeling in his body and his head in the clouds,’ Michel Chrestien added with solemnity.
‘He will die as he has lived,’ said d’Arthez.
‘Love, thrown like a burning torch into the vast realm of his intelligence, has set it on fire,’ said Léon Giraud.
‘Yes,’ said Joseph Bridau, ‘it has raised him to such a state of rapture that we have lost contact with him.’
‘We are the ones to be pitied,’ said Fulgence Ridal.
‘But perhaps he will get better,’ cried Lucien.
‘According to what Meyraux has told us, no cure is possible,’ Bianchon replied. ‘His brain is possessed by phenomena which are beyond medical control.’
‘But surely medicinal treatment is possible,’ said d’Arthez.
‘Yes,’ said Bianchon. ‘Now he’s only cataleptic: we can make an imbecile of him.’
‘Oh! Why can’t we offer the evil spirit another brain in exchange! I would willingly give mine!’ cried Michel Chrestien.
‘And what would become of the federation of Europe?’ asked d’Arthez.
‘Ah! That’s true,’ Michel Chrestien replied. ‘Before belonging to an individual, one belongs to Humanity.’
‘I came here,’ said Lucien, ‘with my heart full of gratitude towards all of you. You have changed my bullion into gold currency.’
‘Gratitude? Who do you take us for?’ asked Bianchon.
‘We were happy to do it,’ said Fulgence.
‘So then, you’re a journalist?’ said Léon Giraud. ‘The report of your début has even reached the Latin quarter.’
‘I’m not one yet,’ answered Lucien.
‘Ah! So much the better!’ cried Michel Chrestien.
‘I told you so,’ d’Arthez continued. ‘Lucien has the heart of one who knows the value of a pure conscience. Is it not a tonic and a viaticum to lay one’s head on one’s pillow at night still able to say: “I have not passed judgement on other people’s work; I have caused affliction to no one; my wit has not been plunged like a dagger into an innocent person’s heart; no one’s happiness has been sacrificed to my pleasantries; they have not even disturbed the self-complacency of fools or put an unjust strain on genius; I have disdained the facile triumphs of the epigram; in short I have not given the lie to my convictions.”’
‘But,’ said Lucien. ‘I believe one can be like that even when working on a newspaper. If I had positively no other means of subsistence I should certainly have to com
e to it.’
‘Oh! Oh! Oh!,’ said Fulgence, his tone of voice rising at each exclamation. ‘We are capitulating!’
‘He will become a journalist,’ said Léon Giraud gravely. ‘Ah! Lucien, if you were willing to become one with us – we are going to bring out a journal in which neither truth nor justice will ever be outraged, in which we shall disseminate doctrines useful to humanity – perhaps…’
‘You won’t have a single subscriber,’ Lucien interjected with Machiavellian malice.
‘They will have five hundred subscribers who will be worth five hundred thousand others,’ replied Michel Chrestien.
‘You’ll need a lot of capital,’ Lucien answered.
‘No,’ said d’Arthez, ‘only self-devotion.’
‘He smells like a scent-shop,’ cried Michel Chrestien, sniffing at Lucien’s hair with a comical gesture.
‘We saw you in a superlatively-gleaming carriage, drawn by horses worthy of a Beau Brummell, with a mistress worthy of a prince: Coralie.’
‘Well,’ said Lucien. ‘Is there anything wrong in that?’
‘You say it as if there were,’ Bianchon exclaimed.
‘I could have wished Lucien might have had a Beatrice,’ said d’Arthez. ‘A noble-hearted woman who would have been his inspiration through life.’
‘But Daniel,’ said the poet. ‘Is not love everywhere alike?’
‘Ah!’ said the republican. ‘In this matter I’m an aristocrat. I couldn’t love a woman whose cheek is kissed in public by an actor, a woman addressed as “darling” in the wings, who cheapens herself in front of the groundlings and smiles on them, who dances with lifted skirts and puts on male attire in order to display what I want to be the only man to see. Or, if I loved such a woman, she would give up the theatre, and my love would purify her.’
Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) Page 39
