Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  When the two friends arrived, Lucien was amazed to see what power the Press wielded.

  ‘This gentleman is with me,’ said Etienne to the box-office man who bowed obsequiously to him.

  ‘You’ll find it very difficult to get seats,’ said the chief ticket-collector. ‘The only ones left are in the manager’s box.’

  Etienne and Lucien wasted some time wandering along corridors and parleying with box-openers.

  ‘Let’s go inside. We’ll speak to the manager and he’ll let us into his box. Besides, I want to introduce you to Florine, the star of the evening.’

  At a sign from Lousteau, the orchestra usher took a small key and unlocked a concealed door in a large wall. Lucien followed his friend and passed suddenly out of the well-lit corridor into the black hole which in practically every theatre connects front and back-stage. Then, walking up a few damp steps, the provincial poet arrived behind the scenes, where the strangest of spectacles awaited him. The narrowness of the supporting struts, the height of the theatre, the ladders with their lamps, the flats, so ugly when seen from close quarters, the actors’ heavy make-up, their costumes, so bizarre and made of such coarse material, the stagehands with their greasy jackets, the dangling ropes, the stage-manager striding about with his hat on, the extras sitting round, the hanging back-cloths, the firemen, all this array of ludicrous, dismal, dirty, hideous and tawdry objects was so unlike what Lucien had seen from out front that his astonishment was unbounded. They were finishing a good, broad melodrama entitled Bertram, a play copied from a tragedy by Maturin which was held in infinite esteem by Nodier, Lord Byron and Walter Scott, but fell flat in Paris.

  ‘Keep hold of my arm unless you want to fall through a trap-door, bring a forest down on you, overturn a palace or run foul of a thatched cottage,’ said Etienne to Lucien. – ‘Is Florine in her dressing-room, my jewel?’ he asked an actress who was attending to the play and getting ready to walk on.

  ‘Yes, my love. Thank you for what you wrote about me. It was all the kinder seeing that Florine was starting here.’

  ‘Come now, don’t spoil your effect, little one,’ Lousteau said to her. ‘Rush on, up with your hand! Try your Hold, unhappy wretch! on me, for there are two thousand francs’ takings this evening.’

  Lucien was staggered to see the actress strike a pose and cry out Hold, unhappy wretch! in such a way as to make his blood run cold. She was no longer the same woman.

  ‘So that’s the theatre,’ he said to Lousteau.

  ‘It’s the same,’ his new friend answered, ‘as the bookshop in the Wooden Galleries and any literary periodical: it’s all cooked up!’

  Nathan appeared.

  ‘What brings you here?’ Lousteau asked him.

  ‘Why, I’m doing the small theatres for the Gazette until something better turns up.’

  ‘Well then, have supper with us this evening, and give Florine a good write-up in return.’

  ‘I’m entirely at your service.’ Nathan replied.

  ‘You know she’s now living in the rue de Bondy?’

  ‘Who’s the handsome young man you have with you, Lousteau my pet?’ asked the actress as she returned from the stage to the wings.

  ‘Ah! my dear, a great poet, a man who’s going to be famous. As you’ll be supping together, Monsieur Nathan, let me introduce Monsieur Lucien de Rubempré.’

  ‘You bear a fine name,’ said Raoul to Lucien.

  ‘Lucien, this is Monsieur Raoul Nathan,’ said Etienne to his new friend.

  ‘Upon my word, Monsieur, I was reading you two days ago, and I couldn’t conceive why, after writing such a book and such a collection of poems, you should be so humble with journalists.’

  ‘Wait till your first book comes out,’ Nathan replied with a wry smile.

  ‘Well well!’ exclaimed Vernou as he caught sight of this trio. ‘Fancy Ultras and Liberals shaking hands!’

  ‘In the mornings,’ said Nathan, ‘I hold the views of my newspaper, but in the evenings I think as I like. When editors are away their staff will play.’

  ‘Etienne,’ said Félicien Vernou, addressing Lousteau. ‘Finot came with me, he’s looking for you. And… here he is.’

  ‘Hang it all! Isn’t there a single seat left?’ asked Finot.

  ‘There’s always one for you in our hearts,’ said the actress, giving him a most pleasant smile.

  ‘Well now, little Florville. So you’ve already got over your love affair? They were saying you’d been abducted by a Russian prince.’

  ‘Do women get abducted today?’ asked Florville, the actress who had declaimed Hold, unhappy wretch! ‘We spent ten days at Saint-Mandé; my prince got away with it by paying compensation to the management. – The manager,’ continued Florville with a laugh, ‘is going to ask his Maker to send along lots of Russian princes: the compensation they pay would bring him takings without overheads.’

  ‘And you, little one,’ said Finot to a pretty girl in peasant costume who had been listening. ‘Where did you steal those diamond ear-rings you’re wearing? Have you been at work on an Indian prince?’

  ‘No, just a shoe-polish merchant, an Englishman who’s already left me. It isn’t everybody that can hook millionaire businessmen bored with their home life, like Florine and Coralie. Aren’t they lucky?’

  ‘You’ll miss your cue, Florville,’ cried Lousteau. ‘Your colleague’s shoe-polish is going to your head.’

  ‘If you want to make a hit,’ said Nathan, ‘instead of shrieking out your entry line He is saved! like a Fury, walk on quite sedately, go down to the footlights and say He is saved! in a chest voice, just as La Pasta sings O patria! in Tancrède. Off you go!’ he added, giving her a push.

  ‘It’s too late, she’s making a mess of it!’ said Vernou.

  ‘Why, what’s she done? The audience is clapping like mad,’ said Lousteau.

  ‘She got down on her knees and showed her bosom. That’s her angle,’ said the actress who had been bereaved of her shoe-polish lover.

  ‘– The manager’s letting us have his box, you’ll find me there,’ said Finot to Etienne.

  Lousteau then escorted Lucien behind the theatre through the maze of wings, corridors and staircases to the third storey and into a small room, where Nathan and Félicien Vernou arrived after them.

  ‘Good day or good evening, gentlemen,’ said Florine. ‘Monsieur,’ she said, addressing a short, stout man who was standing in a corner, ‘these gentlemen are the arbiters of my destiny; they hold my future in their hands. But by tomorrow morning, I hope, they’ll be under our table if Monsieur Lousteau hasn’t forgotten anything…’

  ‘Forgotten?’ said Etienne. ‘You’ll have Blondet from the Débats, the real Blondet, Blondet in person, in short Blondet.’

  ‘Oh! my dear little Lousteau! Here, I simply must give you a kiss!’ she said, throwing her arms round his neck.

  At this demonstration Matifat, the stout man, looked grave. At sixteen, Florine was thin. Her beauty, like a promising flower bud, could only please such artists as prefer a sketch to a finished picture. The features of this charming actress already had all their characteristic delicacy, and she reminded one of Goethe’s Mignon. Matifat, a rich druggist from the rue des Lombards, had thought that a small-part actress in a boulevard theatre would not be expensive; but in eleven months Florine had cost him sixty thousand francs. Nothing seemed more extraordinary to Lucien than this honest and upright merchant stuck there like a statue in a corner of this ten-foot square nook, prettily papered, adorned with a swing-mirror, a couch, two chairs, a carpet, a mantelpiece, and stocked with wardrobes. A dresser had nearly finished putting the actress into a Spanish costume. The play was an imbroglio in which Florine was taking the part of a countess.

  ‘In five years’ time this creature will be the most beautiful actress in Paris,’ said Nathan to Félicien.

  ‘Well now, my loves,’ said Florine, turning round to the three journalists, ‘give me a good press tomorrow. In the first p
lace, I’ve hired carriages for tonight, because I’m sending you back home as drunk as carnival revellers. Matifat has found some wines, oh! wines fit for Louis XVIII, and he’s engaged the Prussian ambassador’s chef.’

  ‘We have only to look at Monsieur to hope for spacious fare,’ said Nathan.

  ‘Well, he knows he’s entertaining the most dangerous men in Paris,’ Florine replied.

  Matifat cast an anxious glance at Lucien, for the young man’s great beauty was arousing his jealousy.

  ‘But there’s one here I don’t know,’ said Florine, noticing Lucien. ‘Which of you has brought the Apollo Belvedere from Florence? Monsieur is as handsome as one of Girodet’s full-length portraits.’

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ said Lousteau. ‘This gentleman is a poet from the provinces whom I neglected to introduce to you. You are so beautiful this evening that it’s impossible to think of the trivial civilities of daily life.’

  ‘I suppose he must be rich if he writes poetry,’ said Florine.

  ‘As poor as Job,’ Lucien replied.

  ‘That’s some temptation for girls like us!’ said the actress.

  Du Bruel, the author of the play, suddenly came in. He was a young man in a frock-coat, small and slender, with something about him of the civil servant, the man of property and the stockbroker.

  ‘My little Florine, you know your part well, I hope? No drying! Be careful with the scene in the second act: be caustic and subtle. Mind you say I do not love you in the way we agreed.’

  ‘Why do you accept parts with such sentences in them?’ Matifat asked Florine.

  The druggist’s question was hailed with a general peal of laughter.

  ‘What does that matter to you, since it’s not you I’m saying it to, silly old donkey? Oh! he tickles me to death with the nonsense he talks,’ she added, looking towards the authors. ‘On my word as a respectable girl, I’d like to pay him for every silly thing he says, except that I should soon be ruined.’

  ‘Yes, but you look at me as you say that, just like when you’re rehearsing, and it frightens me,’ said the druggist.

  ‘Very well then, I’ll look at my little Lousteau when I say it,’ she replied.

  A bell rang out through the corridors.

  ‘Off you go all of you,’ said Florine, ‘Let me read my part over again so that I can try and make sense of it.’

  Lucien and Lousteau were the last to go. Lousteau kissed Florine’s shoulders, and Lucien heard the actress say: ‘Not a hope for this evening. The old idiot told his wife he was going into the country.’

  ‘Isn’t she a peach?’ Etienne said to Lucien.

  ‘But, my friend, this Matifat…’ Lucien exclaimed.

  ‘Dear me, my boy, you still know nothing about life in Paris. There are certain things one has to put up with. It’s as if you loved a married woman, that’s all. What can’t be cured must be endured.’

  15. A use for druggists

  ETIENNE and Lucien entered a stage-box on the ground floor, where they found the theatre manager and Finot. Matifat was in the box opposite with one of his friends named Camusot, a silk-merchant and protector of Coralie, accompanied by a decent little old man, his father-in-law. These three middle-class citizens were wiping the lenses of their opera-glasses while gazing down at the pit, disturbed by the flurry of movement they saw there. The boxes contained the quaint social medley usually present on first nights: journalists and their mistresses, demi-mondaines with their paramours, a few old playgoers with a liking for first performances and such society people as enjoyed the sort of emotions presented. In a first-tier box was the Director-General and his family, the man who had found a berth for Du Bruel in a finance department, a sinecure from which the writer of vaudevilles drew a salary. Since his dinner at Flicoteaux’s, Lucien was moving on from one astonishment to another. Literary life, which for the last fortnight had seemed to him so wretched, so denuded, so horrible in Lousteau’s room, so servile and yet so insolent in the Wooden Galleries, was opening out in strange splendour and revealing some singular aspects. This mixture of ups and downs, compromises with conscience, highhandedness and pusillanimity, treachery and dissipation, grandeur and servitude had put him in a daze like a man who is watching an extraordinary spectacle.

  ‘Do you think Du Bruel’s play will make money for you?’ Finot asked the manager.

  ‘It’s a comedy of intrigue in which Du Bruel has tried to imitate Beaumarchais. The boulevard public doesn’t like that kind of play: it wants its fill of emotion. Wit is not appreciated here. This evening everything depends on Florine and Coralie who are ravishingly graceful and beautiful. These two creatures wear very short skirts and do Spanish dances. The public may well be carried away. This performance is a toss-up. If the papers write me a few witty reviews – if the play succeeds – I may make three hundred thousand francs.’

  ‘Plainly then it can only be a mild success,’ said Finot.

  ‘There’s a conspiracy hatched by the three neighbouring theatres, so there’ll be hissing in any case. But I’ve taken steps to thwart their evil schemes. I’ve paid extra to the claqueurs they’re sending so that they’ll hiss in the wrong places. Over there are three business men, and in order to get an ovation for Coralie and Florine, they’ve each taken a hundred tickets and given them to acquaintances capable of throwing the claqueurs out. The claqueurs, having received double pay, will let themselves be kicked out, and a bit of horse-play like that always puts the audience in a good mood.’

  ‘Two hundred tickets!’ cried Finot. ‘What precious allies!’

  ‘Yes. If I had two other pretty actresses as richly supported as Florine and Coralie I could make ends meet.’

  For two hours it had been dinned into Lucien’s ears that money was the solution to all problems. In the theatres as in the publishing-houses, in the publishing-houses as in editorial offices, there was no question of art or fame. These insistent tickings of the great Money pendulum throbbed through his head and heart. While the overture was being played, he could not help contrasting the clappings and hissings in the riotous pit with the scenes of calm and pure poetry he had enjoyed in David’s printing-office and the vision they shared of the wonders of Art, the noble triumphs of genius and the shining wings of glory. A tear glistened in the poet’s eye as he remembered the evenings spent with the Cénacle.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Etienne Lousteau.

  ‘I see poetry being dragged through the mire,’ he replied.

  ‘Well well, my friend, so you still have your illusions!’

  ‘But why should one grovel and submit to these vulgar Matifats and Camusots, as the actresses submit to the journalists and we ourselves submit to the publishers?’

  ‘My boy,’ Etienne whispered as he pointed to Finot, ‘you see that stupid fellow there, without wit or talent but greedy, out for a fortune at all costs and clever at business: the man who, in Dauriat’s shop, rooked me of forty per cent while pretending to oblige me?… Well, he’s had letters in which various nascent geniuses have gone down on their knees to him for a hundred francs.’

  Lucien was seized with heartfelt disgust and he remembered the drawing left on the green baize of the editorial table: Finot, my hundred francs!

  ‘Better to die,’ he said.

  ‘Better to live,’ Etienne retorted.

  Just as the curtain rose, the manager went back-stage to give some orders.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ Finot then said to Etienne. ‘I have Dauriat’s word. I’m in for a third share in the ownership of the weekly paper. I’ve settled for thirty thousand francs cash down on condition I become editor and director. It’s a splendid deal. Blondet tells me that laws are being drafted to muzzle the Press, and only existing newspapers will keep going. In six months a million will be needed to start a new paper. So I clinched the bargain without having more than ten thousand francs of my own. Listen. If you can get Matifat to buy the half of my share – one sixth – I’ll make you editor of my little
newspaper with a salary of two hundred and fifty francs a month. You’ll be my figure-head. I want to maintain control of the editing and keep all my interests in it while appearing to have no hand in it. You’ll get paid for all the articles at a rate of five francs a column: in this way you can reap a bonus of fifteen francs a day by only paying three francs a column and by saving on the unpaid articles. That amounts to another four hundred and fifty francs a month. But I want to be free to use the paper to attack or defend people and affairs as I see fit while leaving you free to satisfy your personal animosities and friendships so long as they don’t hamper my policy. I may side with the ministry or the Ultras – I haven’t decided yet; but I want, under cover, to keep my relations with the Liberals going. I’m telling you everything because you’re a good chap. I may perhaps hand over to you the Parliamentary sessions in the Constitutionnel – I doubt whether I could go on doing them. And so, use Florine for this bit of wangling, and tell her to put pressure on the druggist: I have only two days for backing out if I can’t raise the money. Dauriat has sold another third for thirty thousand francs to his printer and paper-maker. As for him, he gets his third for nothing, and makes ten thousand francs on the deal since the whole transaction only costs him fifty thousand francs. But in a year’s time this newspaper will be worth two hundred thousand francs to sell to the Government if, as people make out, it has sense enough to buy up the periodicals.’

  ‘You’re a lucky man,’ said Lousteau.

  ‘If you had gone through all the bad times I have, you wouldn’t say that. But at the present time, you see, I can’t get over the misfortune of having a hatter for a father, one who still actually sells his hats in the rue du Coq. Only a revolution could make a successful man of me; and, short of a social upheaval, I need millions. I’m not sure that a revolution wouldn’t suit me better. If I had a name like your friend’s all would be plain sailing. Quiet! Here’s the manager.’

  ‘Good-bye,’ said Finot, rising to his feet. ‘I’m going to the Opera-House and maybe I’ll have a duel on my hands tomorrow: I’m writing and signing F a devastating article on two dancers who have generals for lovers. I’m going all out against the Opera-House.’