Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘After you have thought over what I have the honour of telling you, you will come and see me again. – You’ll come back to me’ – this the publisher repeated emphatically in response to a proudly defiant gesture from Lucien.

  ‘Far from finding a publisher ready to risk two thousand francs for a young and unknown writer, you won’t even find a publisher’s assistant who’ll take the trouble to read your scrawl. I have read it, and can point out several mistakes of French in it. You have written observer for faire observer and malgré que… Malgré takes a direct object.’ Lucien looked humiliated. ‘When I see you again, you will have lost a hundred francs,’ he added, ‘for then I shall only give you a hundred crowns.’ He got up and bowed, but at the doorway he said: ‘If you hadn’t talent and promise, if I didn’t take an interest in studious young people, I shouldn’t have offered you such fine terms. A hundred francs a month! Think it over. After all, a novel tucked away in a drawer isn’t like a horse in a stable: it doesn’t need food. But it doesn’t provide any either!’

  Lucien took his manuscript, threw it on the floor and exclaimed:

  ‘Monsieur, I would rather burn it!’

  ‘That’s a poet all over!’ said the old man.

  Lucien devoured his roll and gulped down his milk and went downstairs. His room was not spacious enough: if he had stayed in it he would have stalked round and round like a caged lion in the Paris Zoo.

  4. First friendship

  IN the Sainte-Geneviève Library, which Lucien was making for, he had noticed, sitting always in the same corner, a young man of about twenty-four who worked with that kind of steady application which nothing can distract or disturb and by which one may recognize real toilers in the literary sphere. This young man was no doubt a reader of long standing, for both the staff and the librarian himself were very obliging to him: the librarian let him take books home and Lucien used to see the studious stranger return them the next day: our poet felt that here was a brother in poverty and hopefulness. Short, thin and pale, this hard-working man had a fine forehead hidden behind a mass of black, somewhat unruly hair; he also had fine hands, and the eye of casual observers was drawn to him by his vague resemblance to the portrait of Bonaparte in the engraving taken from the painting by Robert Lefebvre. This engraving is a poem in itself: one of ardent melancholy, restrained ambition and concealed energy. Study it closely, and you will find that it breathes of genius, discretion, subtlety and grandeur. The eyes, like a woman’s eyes, gleam with intelligence. They express a yearning for infinite space and a longing for difficulties to be overcome. Even if Bonaparte’s name were not inscribed underneath, you would still gaze at it for just as long a time. The young man who was a replica of this engraving usually wore stocking-footed trousers, thick soled shoes, a frock-coat of coarse cloth, a black cravat, a grey and white cloth waistcoat buttoned right up and a cheap hat. His disdain for superfluous adornment was obvious. This mysterious stranger, marked with the stamp which genius imprints on the brow of its slaves was, as Lucien observed, one of the most regular customers at Flicoteaux’s. He ate sparingly, paying no attention to items on the menu, with which he seemed to be quite familiar, and drank water only. At the library or at the restaurant, in all he said or did, he manifested a kind of dignity which no doubt came from the consciousness that his life was dedicated to a great task, something which set him apart from other men. There was thought in the very look he gave. Meditation had its abode in that fine, nobly-shaped forehead. His bright black eyes, with their prompt and keen regard, betokened the habit of seeing into the heart of things. His gestures were simple and his countenance was grave.

  Lucien felt an instinctive respect for him. Several times already they had exchanged glances, as if they were about to speak to one another, on entering or leaving the library or the restaurant; but so far neither of them had ventured to do so. The young man worked in silence at the far end of the reading-room, in that part of it backing on to the Place de la Sorbonne. And so Lucien had not been able to make his acquaintance, although he felt drawn to this assiduous young student and the indefinable symptoms of exceptional talent that were evident in him. Both of them, as they acknowledged to each other later on, were naturally modest and timid and subject to all the tremors of self-consciousness which men of solitude tend to enjoy. Had it not been for their sudden meeting at the moment when disaster had just befallen Lucien, they might never perhaps have got into communication. But on entering the rue des Grès, Lucien caught sight of the young stranger as he was coming away from Sainte-Geneviève.

  ‘The library is closed, Monsieur. I don’t know why,’ the latter said to him.

  At this moment Lucien had tears in his eyes. He thanked the stranger with one of those gestures which are more eloquent than speech and induce young men to open their hearts to one another. They walked together down the rue des Grés in the direction of the rue de La Harpe.

  ‘In that case I shall take a walk in the Luxembourg gardens,’ said Lucien. ‘Once one has left one’s room it is difficult to go back and work.’

  ‘True,’ replied the stranger, ‘one has lost the thread of necessary ideas. You seem downcast, Monsieur.’

  ‘A strange thing has just happened to me,’ said Lucien.

  He recounted his visit to the quays, then the old publisher’s visit to him and the proposals which had been put to him, giving his name and saying a few words about his predicament, telling him that in the course of about a month, he had spent sixty francs on food, thirty francs for his room, twenty francs on theatre tickets, ten francs for the reading-room: a hundred francs in all. He had only a hundred and twenty francs left.

  ‘Monsieur,’ said the stranger. ‘Your history is mine and that of a thousand or more young people who each year migrate from the provinces to Paris. And still we are not the unluckiest ones. You see that theatre?’ – he pointed to the roof-tops of the Odéon – ‘One day there came to live in one of the houses in the square a man of talent who had been plunged into the depths of poverty. He was married – an additional misfortune with which as yet neither of us is afflicted – to a woman he loved; he was blessed – if that is the word to use – with two children; he was riddled with debts but he trusted to his pen. He offered the Odéon a five-act comedy; it was accepted and put first on the waiting-list, the actors were rehearsing it, and the manager was speeding up the rehearsals: five strokes of luck, one might say five dramas even more difficult of accomplishment than the actual writing of his five acts. The poor author, lodging in a garret which you can see from here, used up his last resources in order to keep going while his play was being produced; his wife took her clothes to the pawnshop; their family lived on bread alone. On the day of the final rehearsal, the day before the first performance, he owed fifty francs in the district for household expenses – the baker, the milkman, the concierge. He had kept to the strict necessities of life: one coat, one shirt, one pair of trousers, one waistcoat and a pair of boots. Being sure of success, he came and embraced his wife and announced the end of their privations. “At last nothing stands in our way!” he cried. “Fire does,” his wife replied. “Look, the Odéon is burning.” Yes, Monsieur, the Odéon was on fire. And so do not complain. You have clothes, you have neither wife nor children, you happen to have a hundred and twenty francs in your pocket, and you owe nothing to anyone. Actually, the play in question ran to a hundred and fifty performances at the Louvois theatre. The King allotted a pension to the author. As Buffon said, genius is patience. Patience is indeed the quality in man which most resembles the process which Nature follows in her creations. And what is Art, Monsieur? It is Nature in concentrated form.’

  By then the two young men were pacing up and down the Luxembourg gardens. Soon Lucien learned the name, which has since become famous, of the stranger who was striving to console him. He was Daniel d’Arthez, today one of the most illustrious writers of our time and one of those rare people who, as a poet has neatly expressed it, present

&nbs
p; Fine talent matched with fine integrity.

  ‘It costs a lot,’ said Daniel in his gentle voice, ‘to become a great man. The works of genius are watered with its tears. Talent is a living organism whose infancy, like that of all creatures, is liable to malady. Society rejects defective talent as Nature sweeps away weak or misshapen creatures. Whoever wishes to rise above the common level must be prepared for a great struggle and recoil before no obstacle. A great writer is just simply a martyr whom the stake cannot kill.’

  ‘You bear the stamp of genius on your brow,’ d’Arthez continued, summing Lucien up in a single glance. ‘If at heart you have not the will-power and the seraphic patience needed, if, while the caprice of destiny keeps you still far from your goal, you do not continue on your path towards the infinite, as a tortoise in any country follows the path leading it back to its beloved ocean, give up this very day.’

  ‘You also then expect to suffer great trials?’ asked Lucien.

  ‘Ordeals of every kind,’ the young man replied in a resigned tone. ‘Calumny, treachery, injustice from my rivals; effrontery, trickery, ruthlessness from the business world. If you are doing fine work, what does an initial setback matter?’

  ‘Will you read and judge my work?’ asked Lucien.

  ‘I will,’ said d’Arthez. ‘I live in the rue des Quatre-Vents, in a house where once lived a most illustrious man, one of the brightest geniuses of our time, and a phenomenon in the world of science. He was Desplein, the greatest surgeon known, and here he first endured martyrdom as he battled with the initial difficulties of life and reputation in Paris. Remembering this every evening gives me the dose of courage I need every morning. I live in the room where often, like Rousseau, but with no Thérèse, he fed on bread and cherries. Come in an hour’s time. I shall be there.’

  The two poets parted, clasping each other’s hand with an indescribable effusion of melancholy tenderness. Daniel d’Arthez went and pawned his watch in order to buy two large faggots of wood so that his new friend might find a fire to warm him, for the weather was cold. Lucien arrived on time and his first view was that of an even less respectable-looking building than the one in which he was lodging, with a gloomy passage from the far end of which rose a dark staircase. Daniel d’Arthez’s room on the fifth floor had two miserable windows, and between them was a bookcase of blackened wood, full of labelled filing cases. A narrow little bed of painted wood, like those used in schools, a secondhand night-commode and two armchairs upholstered in horsehair occupied the farther end of this room, whose walls were covered with chequered paper to which smoke and age had given a sort of varnish. A long table laden with papers stood between the fireplace and one of the windows. Opposite the fireplace was a shabby mahogany chest of drawers. The floor was completely covered with a carpet picked up at a sale, and this necessary luxury saved the expense of heating. In front of the table was a commonplace desk-chair covered in red sheepskin faded through long use; six poor-quality chairs made up the rest of the furniture. On the mantelpiece Lucien noticed an old branched sconce of the kind used at the card-table, furnished with four wax candles and a shade. When Lucien, discerning all round him the symptoms of stark poverty, asked why he used wax candles, d’Arthez replied that he could not bear the smell of burning tallow. This peculiarity indicated his very delicate physical sensitivity, which is also a sign of acute moral sensibility.

  The reading lasted seven hours. Daniel listened with scrupulous attention without saying a word or making any remark – one of the rarest proofs of good taste that can be given by anyone who is himself an author.

  ‘Well?’ Lucien asked as he laid his manuscript on the mantelpiece.

  ‘You are on the right and proper track,’ the young man answered gravely. ‘But you must reshape your work. If you don’t want to ape Walter Scott you must invent a different manner for yourself, whereas you have imitated him. Like him, you begin with long conversations in order to pose your characters; after they have talked you proceed with description and action. The clash of wills necessary in any work of dramatic quality comes last. Let me see you reverse the terms of the problem. Replace these diffuse colloquies, at which Scott is magnificent but which lack colour in your novel, by the sort of description for which the French language is so well adapted. Let your dialogue be the expected sequel and the climax of your preparations. Launch yourself straight into the action. Let me see you attack your subject sometimes broadside on, sometimes from the rear. In short, vary your plan of action so as never to repeat yourself. You will thus blaze a new trail while adapting the Scotsman’s drama in dialogue form to the history of France. Walter Scott lacks passion; it is a closed book to him; or perhaps he found it was ruled out by the hypocritical morals of his native land. Woman for him is duty incarnate. With rare exceptions, his heroines are absolutely identical; as painters say, he has only one pouncing pattern. His women all proceed from Clarissa Harlowe; reducing them all to one simple idea, he was only able to strike off copies of one and the same type and vary them with a more or less vivid colouring. Woman brings disorder into society through passion. Passion is infinite in its manifestations. Therefore, depict the passions and you will have at your command the immense resources which this great genius denied himself in order to provide reading matter for every family in prudish England. Dealing with France, you will be able to oppose to the dour figures of Calvinism the attractive peccadillos and brilliant manners of Catholicism against the background of the most impassioned period of our history. Every authentic reign from Charlemagne onwards will require at least one work, and sometimes four or five, as in the case of Louis the Fourteenth, Henry the Fourth and Francis the First. In this way you will write a pictorial history of France in which you will describe costume, furniture, the outside and inside of buildings and private life, whilst conveying the spirit of the times instead of laboriously narrating a sequence of known facts. You will find scope for originality in correcting the popular errors which give a distorted view of most of our kings. Be so bold, in your first work, as to rehabilitate that great and magnificent figure, Catherine de Medici, whom you have sacrificed to the prejudices which still cling to her memory. And then depict Charles the Ninth as he really was, and not as Protestant writers make him out to have been. After ten years of perseverance you will achieve fame and fortune.’

  By then it was nine o’clock. Lucien emulated the unsuspected generosity of his future friend by inviting him out to dinner at Edon’s restaurant, and it cost him twelve francs. While they were dining Daniel confided to Lucien the secret of his hopes and studies. D’Arthez would not allow that any talent could be exceptional without a profound knowledge of metaphysics. At present he was delving into and assimilating all the philosophic treasures of ancient and modern times. He wanted to be a profound philosopher, like Molière before he ever wrote a comedy. He was studying the world in writing and the living world: thought and fact. Among his friends were erudite naturalists, young medical men, political writers and artists: a confraternity of studious, serious and promising people. He made his way by writing conscientious and poorly-paid articles for biographical and encyclopaedic dictionaries or dictionaries of natural science. He kept such writing to the minimum required for earning his living and continuing his studies. D’Arthez had in hand an imaginative work which he had undertaken solely in order to explore the resources of language. This book, still unfinished, which he took up and laid down as the whim came, was reserved for his days of great penury. It was a psychological work of considerable scope cast in the form of a novel. Although Daniel was modest in his revelations, he seemed a gigantic figure to Lucien. When he left the restaurant at eleven o’clock, Lucien had conceived a lively friendship for this man of such unassuming virtue and, unwittingly, of so sublime a nature. Faithfully and unquestioningly he followed Daniel’s advice. Daniel’s fine talent, already matured by reflection and an original kind of criticism developed in solitude for his own especial purposes, had suddenly opened a door admitt
ing Lucien to the most splendid palaces of the imagination. The lips of the provincial had been touched by a burning coal, and the words of the industrious Parisian had fallen on fertile soil in the brain of the poet from Angoulême. He began to reshape his novel.

  5. The ‘Cénacle’1

  THE poet from the provinces was so happy to have found in the wilderness of Paris one soul abounding in generous feelings which accorded with his own that he acted like all young people starved of affection: he attached himself like a chronic malady to d’Arthez, called for him so that they could go to the Library together, went for walks with him in the Luxembourg gardens on fine days and escorted him home every evening to his wretched room after dining with him at Flicoteaux’s. In short he clung as closely to him as a soldier huddling against his comrade in the icy steppes of Russia. During the early days of his acquaintance with Daniel, Lucien noticed, not without chagrin, that his presence created some embarrassment whenever Daniel and his bosom friends were together. At such times the conversation of these rare creatures, about whom d’Arthez talked to him with ardent enthusiasm, would be kept within the bounds of a reserve inconsistent with the warm friendship they so visibly felt for one another. On these occasions Lucien discreetly took his leave, feeling ill at ease because of the ostracism of which he was the object and the curiosity aroused in him by these unknown persons who addressed each other by their Christian names only. Each of them, like d’Arthez himself, bore on his forehead the stamp of his own particular genius. After some secret resistance which Daniel fought without Lucien’s knowledge, he was at last deemed worthy of admission to this high-minded confraternity, and from then on he came to know its members, united as they were by the closest sympathy and the gravity of their intellectual pursuits and meeting almost every evening in d’Arthez’s room. All of them felt that d’Arthez was destined to become a great writer: they had regarded him as their leader ever since they had been bereaved of their first leader, a mystical genius, and one of the most outstanding intellects of that period who, for reasons it would be irrelevant to report here, had gone home to his native province, and whom Lucien often heard them refer to as Louis. It will be readily understood how much interest and curiosity was necessarily awakened in a poet by these persons if some information is given here about those of them who since that time, like d’Arthez, have risen to the peak of their reputation; for not all of them survived.