Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  Lucien’s love for Naïs was that which any young man feels for the first woman who flatters him, for she predicted a great future and immense glory for him. Madame de Bargeton used all the skill at her command in order to establish her poet in her salon: not content to exalt him to the skies, she also put him forward as a young man whom she wished to settle in life; she diminished his stature in order to keep him for herself. She made him her reader, her secretary; but she grew fonder of him than she thought possible after the frightful tragedy which had befallen her. She had a very bad conscience about it, and reminded herself that it would be madness to fall in love with a young man of twenty, one so far beneath her in station. Any show of familiarity was capriciously cancelled out by moods of hauteur inspired by her scruples. She was by turns aloof and patronizing, tender and caressing. And so Lucien, at first intimidated by this woman’s high rank, experienced all the lively fear, hope and despair which, like so many hammer-strokes, dealing pain and pleasure alternately, beat down on first love and drive it so deep into the heart. For two months he looked upon her as a benefactress with a purely maternal interest in him. But confidential exchanges began. Madame de Bargeton called her poet ‘dear Lucien’, then simply ‘dear’. Thus emboldened, the poet addressed the great lady as ‘Naïs’. On hearing him call her by this name, she flew into one of those tempers which the young find so captivating; she scolded him for using the name by which everybody called her. The proud and blue-blooded Nègrepelisse offered her beautiful angel the only one of her names which no one had used, and consented to be ‘Louise’ for him alone. Lucien soared up to the third heaven of love. One evening Lucien came in while Louise was gazing at a portrait. She promptly slipped it into a drawer, and Lucien asked to see it. To calm the despair born of a first access of jealousy, Louise showed him the portrait of the young Cante-Croix and related, not without tears, the distressing story of her love, so chaste and so cruelly nipped in the bud. Was she making an essay of infidelity to her dead lover, or had she hit on the device of giving Lucien a rival in the shape of the portrait? Being too young to sift his lady’s motives, Lucien fell into desperation, naively, because this was her opening move in the campaign on which women embark when they want a man to demolish the defence-work of scruples they have more or less ingeniously constructed. Women’s discussions on duty, the proprieties and religion are as it were fortresses which they like to see taken by storm. The ingenuous Lucien did not need the spur of such coquetry: he would have joined battle in any case.

  ‘I will not die. I will live for you,’ Lucien was bold enough to say one evening; he wanted to be rid of Monsieur de Cante-Croix once and for all, and he gave Louise a look which plainly showed that his feelings for her had reached the passionate stage.

  Alarmed at the progress which nascent love was making in her heart and that of the poet, she asked him for the lines he had promised for the first page in her album, with a view to starting a quarrel with him for his slowness in writing them. Imagine her state of mind when she read the two following stanzas which, naturally enough, seemed more beautiful to her than the best ones that Canalis, the poet of the aristocracy, had ever written:

  The faery brush and fancies of my muse

  Will not alone for ever spread their hues

  On this receptive leaf.

  My love’s shy pencil surely will confide

  To it her secret ecstasies, nor hide

  Her still unspoken grief.

  One day with heavier fingers she will turn

  These yellowed pages and will seek to learn

  What time has done with pleasure.

  Then, Cupid, grant sweet memory of the ways

  We walked along in leisure,

  Blissful beneath blue skies and noontide rays!

  ‘Am I really the person for whom these lines were written?’ she asked.

  This suspicion, inspired by the coquettishness of a woman who was enjoying playing with fire, brought a tear to Lucien’s eyes. She pacified him with a kiss on the forehead – the first she had given him. Her mind was made up: Lucien was decidedly a great man for her to fashion; she would teach him Italian and German and perfect his manners; and this would be an excuse for having him always at hand, however much this might vex the bores who paid court to her. It would be her mission in life! She took up her piano-playing again in order to initiate her poet in the appreciation of music, and delighted him with her renderings of beautiful pieces from Beethoven; happy to see him half swooning with joy, she hypocritically asked him: ‘Can we not be content with such happiness?’ And the poor poet was fool enough to answer: ‘Yes.’

  Eventually matters reached this stage: the previous week Louise had had Lucien to dinner, with Monsieur de Bargeton as chaperon. In spite of this precaution, the news spread through the whole town, and it was regarded as so unheard-of that everyone wondered if it could be true. There was a terrible wagging of tongues. Some people felt that ‘society’ was about to be turned upside-down. Others exclaimed: ‘That’s what comes of Liberal doctrines!’ Du Châtelet, a prey to jealousy, then learned that Madame Charlotte the midwife was none other than Madame Chardon, the mother of this Chateaubriand of L’Houmeau, as he put it – and this phrase was accepted as a witticism. Madame de Chandour was the first to come running to Madame de Bargeton.

  ‘Do you know, dear Naïs,’ she said, ‘what everybody is saying in Angoulême? This little rhymster is the son of a Madame Charlotte who two months ago attended my sister-in-law’s confinement.’

  ‘My dear,’ replied Madame de Bargeton, as haughtily as any royal personage. ‘What is there surprising in that? Is she not a chemist’s widow – a sorry predicament for one of Rubempré stock? Suppose we ourselves were penniless… How should we make a living? How would you find food for your children?’

  Madame de Bargeton’s cool common sense silenced the lamentations of the nobility. Magnanimous souls are always inclined to discover virtue in misfortune. Moreover, one can derive supreme satisfaction from persevering in benevolence when it incurs censure: such blamelessness has all the piquancy of vice. At that evening’s reception, Madame de Bargeton’s salon was crowded with friends who had come to make remonstrance. She brought all her caustic wit into play, saying that if a man of noble birth could be neither Molière, nor Racine, nor Voltaire, nor Massillon, nor Beaumarchais, the tapestry-weavers, clock-makers and cutlers whose offspring became great men simply had to be accepted. She maintained that genius was always of gentle birth. She upbraided the gentry for their scant understanding of their true interests. In short she talked a lot of nonsense which might have enlightened less dim-witted people; but at least they paid tribute to her independence of mind. And so she blasted the storm away with her cannonade. When Lucien, at her summons, made his first entry into her faded, antiquated salon with its four tables set for whist, she gave him a gracious welcome and introduced him with queenly imperiousness. She called the Director of Taxes ‘Monsieur Châtelet’, thereby petrifying him by showing that she knew his assumption of the ‘particle’ to be illegal. From that evening onwards Lucien’s abrupt introduction into Madame de Bargeton’s social circle had to be accepted: but only as a poisonous substance which everyone undertook to eliminate by using the antidote of impertinence. Naïs had won her point, but her prestige suffered from it: there were certain dissidents who showed signs of emigrating. Taking advice from Monsieur Châtelet, Amélie (Madame de Chandour) decided to set up a rival altar by starting Wednesday soirées in her own house. But Madame de Bargeton held her salon every evening, and her visitors were so accustomed to the routine, so used to facing the same tapestries, playing their game of backgammon, seeing the same domestics and the same candelabra; so used to depositing their cloaks, their double-soled shoes and their hats in the same lobby, that they were as attached to the treads of the staircase as they were to the lady of the house. They all resigned themselves to putting up with ‘the goldfinch of the sacred grove’1 – another witti cism, perpetrated this
time by Alexandre de Brebian, president of the Agricultural Society. He it was who finally calmed seditious spirits with the following inspired remark:

  ‘Before the Revolution, the greatest noblemen admitted nobodies, people like this little poet from L’Houmeau, to their houses: Duclos, Grimm, Crébillon. But they did not admit tax-collectors, and after all, that is what Châtelet is.’

  Thus du Châtelet became a scapegoat for Chardon and was cold-shouldered by everybody. Sensitive to this attack, the Director of Taxes, once Madame de Bargeton had called him plain Châtelet, had sworn to himself that he would possess her: he therefore supported the whims of the lady of the house, stood by the young poet and simulated benevolence. This great diplomat of whose services the Emperor had so maladroitly deprived himself made up to Lucien and claimed to be his friend. In order to launch him in society, he gave a dinner, attended by the Prefect, the Receiver-General, the colonel of the regiment then in garrison, the Director of the Naval Academy, the President of Assizes, in short all the highest administrative officials. Our little poet was so ceremoniously entertained that anyone save a young man of twenty-two would have strongly suspected that the praise lavished on him was a deceit and a hoax. At dessert, Châtelet called on his rival to recite his Ode on the death of Sardanapalus, his current masterpiece. After hearing it, the principal of the college, a phlegmatic man, clapped his hands and said that Jean-Baptiste-Rousseau had done no better. Baron Sixte Châtelet thought that sooner or later the little poetaster’s reputation would burst like a balloon in this hot-house atmossphere of eulogy, or that, intoxicated with his anticipated glory, he would permit himself some impertinence which would thrust him back into his original obscurity. While he awaited the demise of this genius, he appeared to be laying his own pretensions as a burnt-offering at Madame de Bargeton’s feet; but, with all the artfulness of a rake, he had drawn up his plan, was observing every move of the amorous pair with close strategic attention and watching for an opportunity to exterminate Lucien. From that time onwards, there arose in Angoulême and its environs a vague rumour which proclaimed that the province had given birth to a great man. On the whole, Madame de Bargeton was praised for the care she lavished on this eaglet. Seeing that her conduct was approved, she took steps to secure wide-spread approbation. She trumpeted throughout the département a forthcoming soirée complete with ices, cakes and tea – an impressive innovation in a town where tea was still sold in chemists’ shops as a drug for the cure of indigestion. The flower of the aristocracy was invited to come and hear a great work which Lucien was to recite.

  Louise had kept her favourite in the dark about the difficulties she had overcome, but gave him a hint of the conspiracy which had been hatched against him in her circle; for she did not want him to remain in ignorance of the dangers which beset the career of a man of genius and the obstacles which exceptional courage alone is able to surmount. Drawing a lesson from her victory, she pointed out that fame can only be won at the price of continual torment, told him of the martyr’s stake which he had to face, and served this up with all the beautiful platitudes and pomposity of diction at her command; it was a counterfeit of the improvisations which mar Madame de Staël’s Corinna. Louise’s eloquence gave her such a sense of importance that her affection for the Benjamin who had inspired it grew stronger. She advised him boldly to repudiate his own father by assuming the noble name of Rubempré and to take no notice of any outcry provoked by this change of patronymic – moreover it would receive royal sanction. Louise claimed kinship with the Marquise d’Espard, a Blamont-Chauvry by birth, a lady who had much credit at Court, and she undertook to obtain this favour through her. This reference to the King, the Marquise d’Espard and the Court seemed like a firework display to Lucien, and convinced him of the need to submit to this baptism.

  ‘Dear boy,’ said Louise in a tenderly mocking voice, ‘the sooner this is done, the sooner it will receive official approval.’

  She peeled off one by one the successive layers of the Social State, and showed the poet how many rungs of the ladder he could step straight over by means of such a clever manoeuvre. In a twinkling, she induced Lucien to abjure his low-class ideas about the chimerical equality preached in 1793, reawakened in him the fever for social distinction which David’s cool reasoning had calmed, and proved to him that high society was the only stage on which he could play his part. The resentful Liberal became a monarchist in petto. He tasted the apple of aristocratic luxury and glory. He vowed that he would lay a garland, even if it were stained with blood, at his lady’s feet: he would win it at all cost, quibuscumque viis. In order to prove his courage, he told Louise of his present sufferings, which so far he had concealed from her at the bidding of that indefinable modesty which goes with first love and prevents a young man from displaying his more heroic qualities, so intent is he on being appreciated for himself alone. He depicted himself in the grip of poverty proudly endured, working in David’s printing-office and spending his nights in study. This youthful ardour reminded Madame de Bargeton of her colonel at twenty-six, and her glance softened. Seeing that his stately lady was weakening, Lucien took hold of her hand, which she did not withdraw, and kissed it with the frenzy of a poet, a young man, a lover. Louise even permitted the apothecary’s son to press his trembling lips on her brow.

  ‘Child! Child! If anyone saw us I should look very ridiculous!’ she said, awakening from her ecstatic torpor.

  In the course of that evening, Madame de Bargeton’s wit played great havoc with what she called Lucien’s prejudices. According to her, men of genius had neither brothers and sisters nor fathers and mothers; the great works they were destined to construct forced them to appear selfish and sacrifice everything to their greatness. If his family suffered at first from the exorbitant imposts levied upon it by a titanic brain, it would later reap a hundred-fold reward for the many sacrifices necessitated by obstacles with which frustrated superiority has to contend in the early stages; it would share the fruits of victory. Genius was accountable only to itself; it alone knew what ends were to be attained and it alone could justify the means. Therefore it had to put itself above the laws which it was its mission to reshape; moreover, he who intends to dominate the times he lives in is entitled to take all and risk all, for all that is belongs to him. She reminded him how Bernard de Palissy, Louis XI, Fox, Napoleon, Christopher Columbus, Julius Caesar, had made their start in life, in company with all those illustrious gamblers who had begun by being riddled with debts, suffering indigence or misunderstanding, or held as madmen, bad sons, bad fathers and bad brothers, but who later had become the pride of their family, of their country, of the whole world.

  These arguments responded to Lucien’s secret failings and encouraged the progress of corruption in his heart; so ardent were his desires that he gave a priori assent to any means of advancement. But not to succeed is to commit the crime of social lèse-majesté. Has not a man who comes to defeat done to death all those middle-class virtues on which society is built? When it sees a Marius sitting among the ruins of them it drives him out with horror. Lucien, who did not know that his course lay between the infamy of a convict-prison and the palms awarded to genius, was soaring over the Mount Sinai of the Prophets without seeing that below him were the Dead Sea and the horrible winding-sheet of Gomorrha.

  Louise was so successful in releasing her poet’s heart and mind from the swaddling-bands in which provincial life had wrapped them that Lucien was eager to find out if he could conquer this lofty prey without suffering the humiliation of a refusal. The social evening which had been announced provided an opportunity to make this test. His love for her was mingled with ambition. He was in love and he wanted to rise; this two-fold urge is very natural in young people who have a heart to satisfy and indigence to fight against. Society’s present-day habit of inviting all its children to one and the same banquet arouses their ambitions in the very morning of life. It robs youth of its graces and vitiates most of its generous sentiments by
adulterating them with calculation. Poetic idealism would have it otherwise, but the fiction one would wish to accept is too often belied in reality for a more favourable picture to be given of young men as they are in the nineteenth century. Lucien felt that his calculation was motivated by a noble sentiment, his friendship for David.

  He wrote a long letter to Louise, for he found boldness easier on paper than in speech. It took him twelve pages, which he recopied three times, to tell her of his father’s genius, his baffled hopes and the terrible poverty in which he was forced to live. He depicted his beloved sister as an angel, David as a budding Cuvier who, although on his own way to greatness, was at once father, brother and friend to him. He would consider himself unworthy of being loved by Louise, who represented the peak of glory for him, if he did not ask her to do for David what she was doing for him. He would give up everything rather than betray David Séchard and wanted David to share in his success. It was one of those frantic letters in which young people threaten to shoot themselves if their request is refused, full of immature casuistry and the insensate logic of exalted minds; a delightful sample of word-spinning embroidered with the naïve declarations which come straight from the writer’s heart without his knowing it, and which please women so much. After handing this letter to the lady’s-maid, Lucien had spent the day at the printing-office, correcting proofs, superintending a number of jobs and dealing with certain minor printing-office matters. He had said nothing to David about the letter: at the time of life when one still has the heart of a child such noble reticence is natural. Moreover, he was perhaps beginning to be afraid of the Phocian’s axe which David could wield expertly; perhaps he feared the keenness of a scrutiny which pierced through to his soul. After the Chénier reading, David’s reproach, which felt to Lucien like a doctor’s finger probing a wound, had touched him to the quick and made him divulge the secret which hitherto he had kept to himself.