Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Really?’ said the manager.

  ‘Yes, they’re all being stingy with me. One of them cuts down my boxes, another refuses to take out fifty subscriptions to my paper. I’ve sent an ultimatum to the Opera-House: I’m now demanding a hundred subscriptions and four boxes a month. If they accept, my paper will have eight hundred subscribers who’ll get their copies and a thousand who’ll merely pay for them. I know how I can arrange for yet another two hundred subscriptions: b`y January we shall have twelve hundred…’

  ‘You’ll be our ruin in the long run,’ said the manager.

  ‘You’re not badly off, you, with your ten subscriptions. I got you two good articles in the Constitutionnel.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not complaining,’ the director exclaimed.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow evening, Lousteau,’ Finot continued. ‘You’ll give me your answer at the Theatre Français. There’s a first performance and, as I can’t review it, you’ll occupy the box belonging to my paper. I’m giving you the preference: you’ve gone to no end of trouble for me, and I’m grateful. Félicien Vernou suggests going without his salary for a year and is offering me twenty thousand francs for a third share in the paper; but I intend to keep complete control of it. Good-bye.’

  ‘He’s well named Finot,1 that man,’ said Lucien to Lousteau.

  ‘Oh, he’s a gallows-bird who’ll make his way,’ replied Etienne, without caring whether he was heard or not by the clever man who was closing the door of the box behind him.

  ‘Finot?’ said the theatre manager. ‘He’ll be a millionaire; he’ll enjoy universal consideration; perhaps he’ll even have friends.’

  ‘God in Heaven!’ said Lucien. ‘What a den of thieves! And you’re going to involve that delightful girl in such a negotiation?’ he asked, pointing at Florine who was throwing flirtatious glances in their direction.

  ‘She’ll bring it off,’ Lousteau answered. ‘You don’t know how devoted and how clever these dear creatures are.’

  The manager took up the story: ‘They redeem all their shortcomings, they wipe out all their lapses from virtue by the infinite range of their love, when they do love. An actress’s passion is so much more a thing of beauty because it stands out in such violent contrast with the people around her.’

  ‘It’s like finding a diamond in a dunghill, one fit to adorn the proudest of diadems,’ Lousteau rejoindered.

  ‘But look,’ the manager continued. ‘Coralie is woolgathering. Our friend is making a conquest of Coralie without knowing it: he’ll make her muff her best lines; she’s losing her timing – twice already she hasn’t taken a prompt. Monsieur, I beg of you, conceal yourself in the corner,’ he said to Lucien. ‘If Coralie has fallen in love with you, I’m going to tell her you have left the theatre,’

  ‘Not at all,’ cried Lousteau. ‘Tell her this gentleman will be at the supper, that she’ll do what she likes with him: then she’ll act as well as Mademoiselle Mars.’

  The manager went off.

  ‘What, my friend,’ said Lucien to Etienne. ‘You have no scruples in getting Mademoiselle Florine to extort thirty thousand francs from this druggist for only a half-share in what Finot has bought for that sum?’

  Lousteau gave Lucien no time to finish his argument. ‘Why, where do you hail from, my dear boy? He’s a cash-box which Cupid has provided.’

  ‘But what about your conscience?’

  ‘Conscience, my dear, is a kind of stick that everyone picks up to thrash his neighbour with, but one he never uses against himself. Devil take it, what are you grumbling about? In one day chance has worked a miracle for you that I’ve been waiting for these last two years, and it pleases you to find fault with the way it’s done. Damn it all, you seem to me to have intelligence, you’ll come by the independence of mind which intellectual adventurers have to possess in the world we’re living in, and yet you’re wading knee-deep in scruples like a nun accusing herself of having eaten her egg with concupiscence… If Florine brings this off I become an editor, I get a fixed salary of two hundred and fifty francs a month, I take over reviews in the big theatres, I leave Vernou with the light comedy theatres, and you get your foot in the stirrup by taking over the boulevard theatres from me. So you’ll get three francs a column and you’ll write one every day, thirty a month, which will bring you ninety francs a month. You’ll have sixty francs’ worth of boxes to sell to Barbet; also you can demand ten tickets a month from your theatres, forty tickets in all, and you’ll sell them for forty francs to the Barbet of the theatres, a man I’ll put you in touch with. And so I can see you earning two hundred francs a month. By making yourself useful to Finot you could place a hundred francs article in his new weekly paper, if you managed to display exceptional talent – for there you sign your articles, and can’t just toss things off as you can in the little newspaper. So then you’d have three hundred francs a month. My dear fellow, there are men of talent, like that poor devil d’Arthez who dines at Flicoteaux’s every day, who don’t earn three hundred francs in ten years. You’ll make four thousand francs a year by your pen, without reckoning in your income from the publishers if you write for them. Now a Sub-Prefect only gets a salary of three thousand francs, and yet he has a high old time in his District. I won’t mention free seats in the theatre, for this pleasure will quickly become a fatigue; but you’ll have access to the wings in four theatres. Be hard and witty for a month or two, you’ll be swamped with invitations and actresses’ parties; you’ll be courted by their lovers; you’ll only dine at Flicoteaux’s on the days when you haven’t thirty sous in your pocket and are not dining out. At five o’clock this evening, at the Luxembourg, you didn’t know what to do for yourself: now you’re about to become one of the hundred privileged persons who foist their opinions on the French public. In three days’ time, if we succeed, by printing thirty bons mots at the rate of three per diem you can make a man curse the day he was born; you can draw a regular income – in sensual pleasure – from all the actresses in your theatre; you can make a good play fall flat and send the whole of Paris flocking to a bad one. If Dauriat refuses to print your Marguerites without giving you something for them you can make him come to your rooms, humble and submissive, to buy them from you for two thousand francs. Use your talent and sling three articles into three different papers, each of them threatening murder to some of Dauriat’s speculations or a book he’s counting on, and you’ll see him come crawling up to your garret and clinging round it like clematis. Finally there’s your novel: the publishers, all of whom at present would show you the door more or less politely, will queue up outside your flat, and they’ll bid up to four thousand francs for a manuscript which old Doguereau would price at four hundred francs! Those are the profits from the journalist trade. That’s why we ward off all newcomers from the newspapers: one needs not only enormous talent, but also a lot of luck to get into them. And you’re quibbling over your good luck!… Look now, if we hadn’t met at Flicoteaux’s today you might have gone on stagnating for three months or died of starvation, like d’Arthez, in an attic. By the time d’Arthez has become as learned as Bayle and as great a writer as Rousseau we shall have made our fortune, and his fortune and fame will be at our mercy. Finot will be a deputy in the Chamber and the owner of a great newspaper; as for us, we shall be whatever we have wanted to be: peers of France or languishing in a debtors’ prison.’

  ‘And Finot,’ exclaimed Lucien, remembering the scene he had witnessed, ‘will sell his great newspaper to the Ministers who make the highest bid, just as he sells his commendations to Madame Bastienne and disparages Mademoiselle Virginie, by proving that the former’s hats are better than those the paper had cracked up first of all!’

  ‘You’re a simpleton, my dear,’ Lousteau curtly replied. ‘Three years ago Finot was down on his uppers, dined at Tabar’s for eighteen sous, botched a prospectus for ten francs, and his coat hung on him by a miracle as incomprehensible as that of the Immaculate Conception. He’s now the sole possessor of
a newspaper valued at a hundred thousand francs. With the subscriptions paid for but involving no delivery, with the genuine subscriptions and the indirect contributions levied by his uncle, he’s making twenty thousand francs a year; he eats the most sumptuous dinners every day; a month ago he bought himself a two-wheeler; and lastly, by tomorrow he’ll be running a weekly paper, having a sixth share in it which cost him nothing, with a salary of five hundred francs a month to which he’ll add a thousand francs’ worth of articles contributed gratis but for which he’ll charge his partners. You yourself, before anyone else, if Finot agrees to pay you fifty francs a page, will be only too happy to send him three articles for nothing. When you reach a similar position, then you can bring Finot to trial: one can only be tried by one’s peers. Haven’t you a great future before you if you fall in blindly with his official antagonisms, if you attack when Finot says “Attack!” and if you praise when Finot says “Praise!” When you want to wreak your spite on anyone, you can belabour your friend or your enemy by slipping a sentence in our paper every morning and saying to me: “Lousteau, let’s kill that man!” Then you’ll murder your victim all over again in a big article in the weekly paper. And finally, if it’s matter of capital importance to you, after you’ve made yourself necessary to Finot, he’ll let you deal the knockout blow in a great newspaper which by then will have a thousand subscribers.’

  ‘So you believe Florine will be able to persuade her druggist to make the deal?’ asked Lucien, his brain in a whirl.

  ‘I certainly think so… Here’s the interval. I’m going to say a word or two to her, and it will be settled tonight. Once I’ve primed her, Florine will have all my wit at her command, as well as her own.’

  ‘And this honest merchant is sitting there, gaping, admiring Florine without suspecting that he’s going to be stung for thirty thousand francs…!’

  ‘There you go again, more stupidity!’ exclaimed Lousteau. ‘One would think he was being robbed! Why, my dear man, if the Government buys the newspaper, in six months the druggist stands to get fifty thousand francs in return for his thirty thousand francs. Besides, Matifat won’t worry about the paper, but only about Florine’s interests. Once people know that Matifat and Camusot (for they’ll go in together) are owners of a review, there’ll be benevolent articles for Florine and Coralie in every paper. Florine will become famous and will perhaps get an engagement worth twelve thousand francs in another theatre. Lastly, Matifat will save on the thousand francs a month that presents and dinners to the journalists would cost him. You don’t understand either people or business matters.’

  ‘Poor man!’ said Lucien. ‘He’s looking forward to a pleasant night.’

  ‘What’s more,’ continued Lousteau, ‘he’ll be pestered with innumerable arguments until he’s shown Florine a receipt for the sixth share bought from Finot. As for me, the day after, I shall be an editor earning a thousand francs a month. And that will be the end of all my troubles!’ cried Florine’s lover.

  Lousteau went out, leaving Lucien dumbfounded, lost in deep thought as his mind flitted over the world as it is. Now that he had visited the Wooden Galleries and seen how publishers pull their strings and how literary reputations are concocted, the poet perceived the reverse side of the human conscience, the play of wheels within wheels in Parisian life, the machinery behind it all. He had been envying Lousteau for his good luck as he admired Florine’s acting. For a few moments he had already forgotten Matifat. He stayed where he was for an indeterminate time, perhaps five minutes – but it seemed like eternity to him. His mind was aflame with perfervid thoughts and his senses caught fire at the sight of the actresses with their wanton eyes embellished with mascara, their gleaming necks, their provocatively short skirts sensually flounced, their legs displayed in red stockings with green clocks, in fact so hosed and shod as to throw any pit into a flutter. Two sorts of corruption were advancing towards him in parallel motion like twin sheets of water uniting to form a flood. They swirled over the poet as he sat reclining in his corner of the box, his arm resting on the red velvet of the rail, his hand hanging limp, his eyes glued to the curtain, feeling so much more vulnerable to the enchantments this kind of life offered with its alternations of lightning flashes and clouds because it was as dazzling as a firework display after the profound darkness of his own laborious, inglorious, monotonous existence.

  16. Coralie

  SUDDENLY an amorous glance streamed through a chink in the theatre curtain to meet Lucien’s wandering regard. Awakened from his torpor, the poet recognized that this burning gaze was coming from Coralie; he lowered his head and looked at Camusot, who at that moment was returning to the box opposite.

  This enthusiastic playgoer was a worthy, thickset, stout vendor of silk-stuffs in the rue des Bourdonnais, a judge in the Tribunal of Commerce, the father of four children, married for the second time and blessed with an income of eighty thousand francs, but fifty-six years old, wearing what looked like a thatch of grey hair and having the smug air of a man who is making the most of his remaining years and, after pocketing the thousand and one affronts of a commercial career, has no intention of taking leave of the world before he has enjoyed his full share of this life’s pleasures. His forehead, which was the colour of butter fresh from the churn, and his monkish, florid cheeks did not seem broad enough to contain the beaming jubilation they expressed. Camusot’s wife was not with him, and he intended to applaud Coralie vociferously. The many vanities of this rich bourgeois were summed up in Coralie, whom he patronized with all the lordliness of an eighteenth-century nobleman. At that moment he believed himself to be half responsible for Coralie’s success, and he believed this all the more readily because he had paid for it. To give him countenance, he had his father-in-law beside him, a little old man with powdered hair and libidinous glance but none the less very respectable. Lucien’s gorge rose once more, and he remembered the pure, idealistic love he had felt for Madame de Bargeton for a whole year. Love as poets conceive it immediately spread its white wings: innumerable memories, with their hazy blue contours, enveloped the great man of Angoulême and he sank back into reveries. The curtain rose. Coralie and Florine were on the stage.

  ‘My dear, he’s no more thinking of you than of the Grand Turk,’ Florine whispered while Coralie was replying to a cue.

  Lucien could not help laughing, and he gazed at Coralie. This girl, one of the most charming and delightful actresses in Paris, a rival of Madame Perrin and Mademoiselle Fleuriet whom she resembled and whose fate she was to share, was the type of woman who at will can exercise her powers of fascination upon men. Her face was of the perfect Jewish type: long, oval, of a light ivory tint, with a garnet-red mouth and a chin as delicately turned as the brim of a cup. Eyelids and curving lashes masked the gleam of jet-black pupils, and beneath them one divined a languorous gaze, aglint on occasion with the fire of oriental passion. Olive shadows circled her eyes; she had full and gracefully arched eyebrows. Her dusky forehead, with its divided crown of ebony hair, so glossy that it caught the sheen of the lights, suggested a generosity of thought which might have betokened genius. But like many actresses Coralie was without intelligence, although she could bandy ironic repartee in the wings, and she had no education despite her knowledge of boudoir life: all she had was the wit which the senses confer and the good nature of a woman amorously inclined. In any case, what did the moral side of things matter when men’s eyes were dazzled by her smooth, round arms, her tapering fingers, the golden tint of her shoulders, such breasts as are sung of in the Song of Solomon, her neck with its rippling curves and her adorably shaped legs clad in red silk? This loveliness, truly poetic in its oriental charm, was set off by the conventional Spanish costume worn in the theatres. Coralie was the joy of the audience: all eyes were spanning her waist in its close-fitting basquine, caressing her Andalusian curves and the sensual undulations their movement transmitted to her skirt. The moment came when Lucien, as he saw that this creature was acting for him alone,
feeling henceforth no more concerned with Camusot than an urchin in the gallery is concerned with his apple-peel, placed sensual love above pure love, enjoyment above desire, while the demon of lust whispered shocking thoughts in his ear.

  ‘I know nothing,’ he toldhimself, ‘of the love which wallows in good cheer, wine and material joys. So far I have lived on ideals rather than realities. A man who wants to depict life must know all about it. This will be my first grand supper-party, my first orgy in unusual company: why should I not for once savour the much-vaunted delights into which the nobles of the last century flung themselves by living with wantons? Even if only to lift them on to the plane of true love, must I not experience the joys, ecstasies, transports, refinements and subtleties which the love of courtesans and actresses can offer? Is not this, after all, the poetry of the senses? Two months ago I looked on these women as divinities guarded by dragons one dared not approach. Here is one of greater beauty even than Florine, on whose account I was envying Lousteau. Why not take advantage of her whim, when the greatest lords pour out stores of wealth to buy one night with such women? When foreign ambassadors set foot in this underworld they think neither of yesterday nor tomorrow. What an idiot I should be to be more fastidious than princes, particularly since I’m not yet in love with anyone!’

  By now Lucien had forgotten Camusot. After showing Lousteau the deep disgust he felt for this most odious sharing of women, he was falling into the same pit and was immersed in lustful desire, carried away by the sophistry of passion.

  ‘Coralie has lost her heart to you,’ said Lousteau as he came back. ‘Your beauty, as rare as that of the most famous Greek sculptures, is doing unheard-of damage in the wings. You’re in luck, my boy. Coralie is eighteen, and in a few days’ time her beauty may bring her sixty thousand francs a year. She’s still quite a good girl. Her mother sold her three years ago for sixty thousand francs, and so far she has reaped nothing but disappointment and is searching for happiness. She took to the theatre out of despair, for she loathed de Marsay, the man who bought her originally; and when she came out of the galleys – our prince of dandies soon dropped her – she happened upon the worthy Camusot. She doesn’t lose any sleep over him, but since he’s like a father to her she puts up with him and lets herself be loved. She has already turned down the most lucrative propositions and sticks to Camusot because he doesn’t pester her. So you are her first love. Oh! one look at you was like a bullet in her heart, and Florine went to reason with her in her dressing-room where she’s in tears because of your indifference. The play will be a failure. Coralie is forgetting her lines, so it’s good-bye to the engagement Camusot was getting for her at the Gymnase.’