Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘The Solitary in the provinces appearing the ladies astonishes.’ – ‘The effect of The Solitary on domestic pets.’ – ‘Among the savages, The Solitary explained, the most brilliant success obtains.’ – ‘The Solitary translated into Chinese and presented, by the author, of Pekin to the Emperor.’ – ‘By Mont-Sau-vage, Elodie raped.’ (Lucien thought this caricature very indecent, but it made him laugh) – ‘By the newspapers, The Solitary under a canopy carried round processionally.’ – ‘The Solitary, bursting a press, the bears injures.’ – ‘Read backwards, astonishes The Solitary the Academicians by its exceptional beauty.’

  Lucien noticed a drawing on a newspaper band representing a journalist holding out his hand, with ‘Finot, my hundred francs!’ written underneath and signed with a name which, though now well-known, will never be illustrious. Between the fireplace and the window stood a writing-desk with drawers, a document tray and an oblong hearth-rug: the whole was covered with a thick coating of dust. The windows had only short curtains. On the top of the desk were about twenty works which had been desposited there during the day, engravings, sheets of music, snuff-boxes with the 1814 Charter inscribed on the lid, a copy of the ninth edition of The Solitary, which was still the great joke of the moment, and a dozen sealed letters. When Lucien had inventoried this odd furniture and pondered lengthily upon it, and when it struck five, he returned to the pensioner to question him. Colocynth had finished his crust and was waiting as patiently as a soldier on sentry-go for the bemedalled officer, who was probably strolling about in the boulevard. At this moment, after the swish of a skirt and an easily recognizable feminine trip had been heard on the staircase, a woman appeared in the doorway. She was quite pretty.

  ‘Monsieur,’ she said, addressing Lucien. ‘I know now why you cry up Mademoiselle Virginie’s hats so much, and I have come to take out a subscription, for a year to start with. But tell me what the terms are…’

  ‘Madame, I do not belong to the newspaper.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘A subscription to date from October?’ asked the pensioner.

  ‘What does Madame require?’ said the old officer as he came in.

  He began to confer with the fair milliner. When Lucien, tired of waiting, went back to the outer room, he heard this final sentence: ‘But I shall be delighted, Monsieur. Mademoiselle Florentine can come to my shop and choose anything she wants. I have the ribbons in stock. So the matter is settled: you will say nothing more about Virginie. She’s a bungler incapable of inventing a new shape. I’m a woman with ideas!’

  Lucien heard a certain number of crown pieces tumbling into the cash-box. Then the officer began to make up his day’s accounts.

  ‘Monsieur, I have been here an hour,’ said the poet with an air of annoyance.

  ‘They haven’t turned up,’ said the Napoleonic veteran with a show of polite concern. ‘I’m not surprised. I haven’t seen them for some time. You see, it’s the beginning of the month. The beggars only come on the 29th or the 30th for their pay.’

  ‘And Monsieur Finot?’ asked Lucien, having noted the editor’s name.

  ‘He’s at his home in the rue Feydeau. – Colocynth, old boy, take him all that has come in today and get the copy off to the printer’s.’

  ‘Where then is the newspaper made up?’ asked Lucien as if he were talking to himself.

  ‘The newspaper?’ said the cashier, taking the remainder of the stamp-money from Colocynth. ‘The newspaper?’ Hrrum! Hrrum! – Old boy, go to the printing-office tomorrow at six to see that the carriers get a move on. – The newspaper, Monsieur, is made up in the street, in the contributor’s homes, in the printing-office, between eleven o’clock and midnight. In the Emperor’s time, Monsieur, there were none of these waste-paper dumps about. He would have shaken all that off with a corporal and four men; he wouldn’t have put up with all this claptrap. But I’ve said enough. If it suits my nephew’s book and if they’re writing for his son – Hrrum! Hrrum! – there’s no harm in it after all. Well well! Subscribers don’t seem to be making a mass attack; I’m leaving the sentry-box.’

  ‘Monsieur, you seem to know all about the editing of the newspaper.’

  ‘The money side of it – Hrrum! Hrrum!’ said the soldier, clearing his throat of all the phlegm it contained. ‘It goes by talent: two or three francs for a column of fifty lines, each line having forty letters not counting the spaces. There you are! As for the contributors, they’re a rum lot, these little whipper-snappers. I wouldn’t have taken them on as rank-and-file soldiers. Because they cover blank paper with scrawl they seem to look down on an old captain of dragoons in the Imperial Guard, a retired battalion commander who went with Napoleon into every capital in Europe.’

  Lucien, pushed towards the door by the Napoleonic veteran who was brushing his blue frockcoat and showing every intention of leaving, had the courage to block the exit.

  ‘I have come for a job on the staff,’ he said. ‘And I assure you I have every respect for a captain of the Imperial Guard: they were men of bronze.’

  ‘Well said, my little civvie,’ the officer replied, giving him a tap on the stomach. ‘But what class of contributors do you want to join?’ the old trooper continued as he pushed by Lucien to go downstairs. He only halted in order to light his cigar at the concierge’s lodge.

  ‘Mother Chollet, if subscriptions come, take them in and make a note of them. – Subscriptions all the time, that’s all I’m concerned with,’ he added, turning to Lucien who had followed him. ‘Finot’s my nephew, the only one in my family who made things easier for me. And so whoever picks a quarrel with Finot finds himself up against old Giroudeau, captain of dragoons in the Imperial Guard, who started off as a cavalry trooper in the Sambre-et-Meuse army, and for five years was a fencing-master in the first Hussars, in the army of Italy. One, two! and the grouser’s a gonner!’ he imitated the lunge of a fencer as he said this.

  ‘So then, young fellow, we have different corps in the editorial staff. There’s the contributor who contributes and draws his pay, the contributor who contributes and draws no pay – what we call a volunteer; thirdly, there’s the contributor who contributes nothing, and he’s not the biggest fool among them: he never goes wrong, he pretends he’s a writer, belongs to the newspaper, stands us dinners, loafs about in the theatres and keeps an actress; he’s a very lucky one. Which do you want to be?’

  ‘Why, a contributor who works well and therefore is paid well.’

  ‘There you go, like all rookies who want to be field-marshals! Take old Giroudeau’s advice: left wheel in single file, quick march, go and pick up nails in the gutter like that fine chap over there: you can see he’s been in the service by the way he moves. Isn’t it a scandal that an old soldier who’s looked straight into the cannon’s muzzle a thousand times should be picking up nails in Paris? God Almighty! You’re a poor sort of God not to have stood by the Emperor! – In short, young man, the party you met this morning earned forty francs last month. Will you do better? And Finot says he’s the cleverest man on his staff.’

  ‘When you went into the battle of the Sambre-et-Meuse, were you told it was dangerous?’

  ‘You bet I was!’

  ‘Well then?…’

  ‘Well then, go and see my nephew Finot, a fine chap, the straightest chap you’ll meet – if you manage to meet him, for he darts about like a fish. In his trade, you see, he doesn’t have to write but make other people write. It appears that these types prefer to dally with actresses rather than scribble on paper. Oh, they’re a rum lot! Here’s to our next meeting.’

  The cashier thrust forward his fearful leaded cane – the sort that did good work at the first performance of Germanicus – and left Lucien standing in the street, as stupefied by this vision of an editor’s office as he had been by the final results of literary effort in the office of Vidal and Porchon. He called ten times on Andoche Finot, the editor of the newspaper, in the rue Feydeau, without ever finding him. Early in the morning
s, Finot was not yet back home. At midday he was out on business – he would be lunching, Lucien was told, at such and such a café. Lucien would go to that café and, overcoming his extreme repugnance, ask the barmaid for Finot: Finot had just left. Finally, worn out, Lucien looked on Finot as an apocryphal and fabulous personage, and found it simpler to watch for Etienne Lousteau at Flicoteaux’s restaurant. No doubt this young journalist would explain the mystery overhanging the existence of the newspaper to which he was attached.

  8. The sonnets

  SINCE that most blessed day when Lucien had made Daniel d’Arthez’s acquaintance, he had changed his table at Flicoteaux’s. The two friends dined side by side and chatted in a low voice about great literature, subjects to be treated and the manner of presenting, starting and finishing them. At present, d’Arthez was correcting the manuscript of The Archer of Charles the Ninth; he recast certain chapters, wrote the finest pages to be found in it and composed the splendid preface which perhaps overshadows the work but which brought so much illumination to writers of the new school. One day, just as Lucien was sitting down beside Daniel, who had been waiting for him, and while they were still shaking hands, he saw Etienne Lousteau turning the door-handle. He abruptly let go Daniel’s hand and told the waiter he wanted to dine in his old place near the counter. D’Arthez looked at Lucien with one of those benign glances in which reproach is wrapped in forgiveness: it went so keenly to the poet’s heart that he took hold of Daniel’s hand and pressed it anew.

  ‘This is a matter of importance for me,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’

  Lucien was in his former seat by the time Lousteau was taking his. He was the first to greet him, they soon got into conversation, and it was pursued with such animation that Lucien went off for the manuscript of Les Marguerites while Lousteau finished his dinner. He had obtained leave to submit his sonnets to the journalist and was counting on his apparent benevolence in order to find a publisher or get a job with the newspaper. When he returned, Lucien saw Daniel in a corner of the restaurant, leaning sadly on his elbow and looking at him with melancholy; but Lucien was so poverty-stricken and so spurred on by ambition that he pretended not to see his brother of the Cénacle and followed Lousteau out.

  Before evening fell, the journalist and the neophyte went and sat down under the trees in that part of the Luxembourg gardens which leads to the rue de l’Ouest from the broad Avenue de l’Observatoire. In those days this street was one long stretch of mud lined with boardings and marshes, with houses only beginning at the approach to the rue de Vaugirard. So few people passed along it that, at the dinner hour in Paris, a pair of lovers might well have a quarrel and start making it up without fear of being seen. The only possible spoil-sport was the veteran on sentry-go at the small gate opening on the rue de l’Ouest, if that venerable soldier took it into his head to increase the number of his monotonous rounds. It was in this alley, on a wooden bench, that Etienne listened to some samples chosen from Les Marguerites. Etienne, after two years of apprenticeship, had his foot in the stirrup as a newspaper man, and he counted some of the celebrities of that period among his friends: Lucien therefore found him an impressive figure. And so, as he unrolled the manuscript of Les Marguerites, the provincial poet deemed it necessary to deliver a sort of preface.

  ‘The sonnet, Monsieur, is one of the most difficult forms of poetry and in general has been abandoned. No one in France has been able to rival Petrarch, whose native language, infinitely more supple than ours, allows conceits of thought repugnant to our positivism (if you will excuse the word). That is why I thought it original to begin with a collection of sonnets. Victor Hugo has taken to the ode, Canalis goes in for a wayward kind of poetry, Béranger monopolizes the chanson, while Casimir Delevigne has taken tragedy as his domain and Lamartine the “meditation”.’

  ‘Are you a classicist or a romantic?’ asked Lousteau.

  Lucien’s air of surprise betokened such ignorance of the state of things in the Republic of Letters that Lousteau judged it necessary to enlighten him.

  ‘My friend, you are coming into the thick of a fierce battle and must make a prompt decision. Literature is primarily divided into several zones; but our great men are split into two camps. The royalists are romantics, the liberals are classicists. Divergence in literary opinion is added to divergence in political opinion: hence war between fading and budding reputations, a war in which no weapons are barred: ink spilt in torrents, cutting epigrams, stinging calumnies, unrestrained abuse. By a strange anomaly, the romantic royalists call for literary freedom and the abrogation of laws which provide our literature with its conventional forms; while the liberals cling to the unities, regular rhythm in the alexandrine line and classical themes. And so in each camp literary opinions are at variance with political ones. If you stand aloof you will stand alone. Which side will you take?’

  ‘Which is the stronger party?’

  ‘The liberal press has far more subscribers than the royalist and ministerial press; nevertheless Canalis is making his way, even though he stands for monarchy and religion, even though he’s protected by Court and Clergy. – Come now! Sonnets belong to the pre-Boileau literature,’ said Etienne, seeing that Lucien was frightened at having to choose between two banners. ‘Be a romantic. The romantics are all young folk and the classicists are periwigs: the romantics will win.’

  The word ‘periwig’ was the latest epithet invented by romantic journalism for the adornment of the classicist.

  ‘THE FIELD DAISY,’ Lucien announced, choosing as a suitable beginning the first of two sonnets which justified the title of the collection:

  Not always for our vision’s sole delight

  Field daisies, do you lavish your rich hues.

  There’s poetry in them, and you, their Muse,

  Quicken our hopes and wake our inner sight.

  Your golden stamens set in silver white

  Are symbols of the treasures man pursues.

  A thread of mystic blood your vein imbues

  To show success is bought with pain and spite.

  Was it to hail the Spring your buds unfurled

  When Jesus, rising to a fairer world,

  Showered forth virtues from His gracious wing?

  And when you bloom afresh at Autumn’s hour

  Is it to tell us pleasures have their sting,

  And radiant youth must fade like any flower?

  Lucien’s pride was piqued by Lousteau’s complete unresponsiveness while listening to this sonnet. He was not yet acquainted with the disconcerting impassivity which hardened critics acquire and is a distinguishing mark in journalists equally tired of prose, drama and verse. Our poet, accustomed to receiving applause, gulped down his disappointment; he then read out the sonnet which was a favourite with Madame de Bargeton and some of his Cénacle friends.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he thought, ‘this will wring a word from him.’

  SONNET NO. TWO

  THE MARGUERITE

  I am the Marguerite. No fairer flower

  Spangled the verdure of the velvet sward.

  My simple beauty was its own reward

  And morning freshness was my lasting dower.

  Alas! against my will a new-born power

  To me harsh fate was minded to award:

  Prophetic gifts within my petals stored

  Have brought me pain and death. O doleful hour!

  No more in peace and silence do I live.

  An answer to fond sweethearts must I give:

  ‘He loves me, loves me not.’ So runs the story

  Torn from the gleaming whiteness of my gown.

  – What other blossoms, thus despoiled of glory

  But yield their secret to be trodden down?

  When he had finished, the poet looked at his Aristarchus: Etienne Lousteau was contemplating the trees in the nursery plantation.

  ‘Well?’ asked Lucien.

  ‘Well, my friend. Carry on. Am I not listening? In Paris, to lis
ten without saying a word is high praise.’

  ‘Perhaps you have had enough?’ said Lucien.

  ‘Continue,’ was the journalist’s reply.

  Lucien then read the following sonnet; but he was filled with mortification, for Lousteau’s inscrutable calm cast a chill on his recital. Had he had more experience of literary life, he would have known that, with writers, silence and curtness in such circumstances betoken the jealousy aroused by a fine work, just as their admiration denotes the pleasure they feel on listening to a mediocre work which confirms them in their self-esteem.

  SONNET NO. THIRTY

  THE CAMELLIA

  Each flower’s a word in Nature’s book to read.

  On love and beauty is the rose intent;

  Sweet modesty the violets represent

  And simple candour is the lily’s screed.

  But the Camellia, not of Nature’s breed,

  Unstately lily, rosebud void of scent,

  To bloom in frigid seasons seems content

  And chilly virgin’s coquetry to feed.

  Yet, in the theatre, when fair women lean