Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  At that time the party spirit engendered much more serious hatred than it does today. Springs have been so over-stretched today that in the long run animosity has weakened. Criticism of today, after making a burnt-offering of a man’s book, proffers a hand to him. The victim must embrace the officiating priest under penalty of running the gauntlet of pleasantry. If he refuses, a writer passes for an unsociable man, quarrelsome, eaten up with self-conceit, unapproachable, resentful, full of rancour. Today, when an author has received treacherous stabs in the back, avoided the snares set for him with infamous hypocrisy and suffered the worst possible treatment, he hears his assassins wishing him good-day and putting forth claims to his esteem and even his friendship. Everything is condoned and justified in a period when virtue has been transformed into vice and certain vices have been extolled as virtues. Camaraderie has become the holiest of freedoms. The leaders of diametrically opposed opinions talk to one another in dulcet tones and with courtly conceits. Formerly, as may perhaps be remembered, it needed courage for certain Royalist writers and some Liberal writers to meet in the same theatre. The most provocative taunts were made for everybody to hear. Looks exchanged were like loaded pistols and the slightest spark could set off a quarrel. What man has not overheard his neighbour’s imprecations at the entry of certain persons who were special targets for the attacks of one or the other two parties? For indeed there were then only two parties, Royalists and Liberals, Romanticists and Classicists: an identical hatred in different guise, a hatred great enough to explain why guillotines had been set up under the National Convention.

  And so Lucien, now an out-and-out Royalist and Romantic, after having begun as a rabid Liberal and Voltairian, found himself under the same weight of enmity as hung over the man most abhorred by the Liberals at that period: Martainville, the only man who stood by him and liked him. The fellowship between them did harm to Lucien. Parties are ungrateful to those on outpost duty and readily abandon them as forlorn hopes. In politics especially, those who want to succeed must move with the main body of the army. The most spiteful tactics the petits journaux could adopt was to couple the names of Lucien and Martainville. The Liberal faction threw them into each other’s arms. This friendship, whether false or genuine, brought down upon them articles steeped in gall from the pen of Félicien, whom Lucien’s success in high society exasperated and who believed, like all the poet’s former comrades, that he was about to be elevated to higher status. And so the poet’s alleged betrayal was characterized in more envenomed terms and embellished with all kinds of aggravating circumstances. Lucien was known as Judas the Less and Martainville as Judas the Greater, for Martainville was rightly or wrongly accused of having surrendered the Seine bridge at Pecq to the invading Prussians in 1815. Lucien laughingly replied to Des Lupeaulx that he for his part had assuredly surrendered the pons asinorum. Lucien’s luxurious way of living, unsubstantial as it was and built upon expectations, revolted his friends who could forgive him neither for his now non-existent carriage – they fancied he was still running one – nor the splendour of his life in the rue de Vendôme. They all instinctively felt that a handsome, intelligent young man whom they themselves had schooled in corruption might rise to any heights: so they used all possible means to strike him down.

  A few days before Coralie’s first appearance at the Gymnase, Lucien went arm in arm with Hector Merlin to the Vaudeville foyer. Merlin was scolding his friend for having served Nathan’s ends by helping Florine.

  ‘You have made two deadly enemies in Lousteau and Nathan. I gave you good advice and you didn’t take it. You’ve dealt out praise and done good turns right and left, but you’ll be cruelly punished for your kind deeds. Florine and Coralie will never be on good terms now they’re acting on the same stage: one of them will want to score off the other. You have only our newspapers to defend Coralie. In addition to the advantage which his profession as a dramatist gives him, Nathan has the Liberal papers at his disposal in the matter of theatres, and he has been in journalism rather longer than you!’

  This remark was an echo to Lucien’s secret misgivings: neither Nathan nor Gaillard treated him with the candour that he had the right to expect. Yet he could not complain – he was so recent a convert! Gaillard overwhelmed him by telling him that newcomers had to give proof of loyalty for a long time before their party could trust them. Among the staff of the royalist and ministerial newspapers Lucien met with unexpected jealousy, that kind of jealousy which arises between all men who have any sort of cake to share and makes them like dogs quarrelling over a bone: growls, posture and character are the same in both cases. These writers played a thousand underhand tricks in order to discredit one another with the Government, accused one another of lukewarmness and hatched the most perfidious intrigues in order to get rid of rivals. The Liberals had no motive for internecine conflicts because they were far removed from power and the favours it can confer. When Lucien acquired some glimmering of this inextricable tangle of ambitions, he had not the courage to take a sword to cut through the knots, nor did he feel patient enough to untie them. He did not have it in him to be the Aretino, or the Beaumarchais, or the Fréron of his age, but clung to his one desire – to get his ordinance, realizing that with his name restored he could make a fine marriage. His fortune would then only depend on a stroke of luck which his beauty would help to bring about. Lousteau, who had been on such confidential terms with him, knew his secret, and as a journalist was able to aim a deadly thrust at the Angoulême poet’s most vulnerable spot. Accordingly, on the very day when Merlin brought Lucien to the Vaudeville Theatre, Etienne had set a horrible trap for him – one into which in his naïvety he was destined to fall and perish.

  ‘Here’s our handsome Lucien,’ said Finot, dragging Des Lupeaulx, with whom he was chatting, up to Lucien whose hand he grasped with a truly feline affectation of friendship. ‘A know of no other example of such a rapid rise to fortune as his,’ said Finot, looking in turn at Lucien and the master of requests. ‘In Paris there are two kinds of fortune: one is a material commodity – money, which anyone can pick up; the other is immaterial – relationships, position, access to the kind of society which certain persons cannot enter whatever their material fortune. My friend…’

  ‘… Our friend,’ said Des Lupeaulx, throwing a flattering glance at Lucien.

  ‘… Our friend,’ Finot continued, tapping Lucien’s hand between his own, ‘has made a brilliant fortune in this respect. In truth, Lucien has more resourcefulness, more talents, more wit than all those who envy him, and he’s ravishingly good-looking. His former friends can’t forgive him for his success and so they say he’s merely been lucky.’

  ‘Such luck,’ said Des Lupeaulx, ‘never comes to fools or incompetents. After all, can one call Bonaparte’s destiny a matter of luck? There were a score of top generals before him in command of the armies of Italy, just as at present there are a hundred young men who want to be admitted to the salon of Mademoiselle des Touches, who’s already regarded as your future wife in social circles, my dear!’ He clapped Lucien on the shoulder. ‘Oh! you’re in great favour. Madame d’Espard, Madame de Bargeton and Madame de Montcornet are infatuated with you. Aren’t you going this evening to Madame Firmiani’s reception, and tomorrow to the Duchesse de Grandlieu’s at-home?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lucien.

  ‘Allow me to introduce a young banker to you, Monsieur du Tillet, a man worthy of you who has made a fine fortune, and in a short time.’

  Lucien and Du Tillet greeted each other, entered into conversation, and the banker invited Lucien to dinner. Finot and Des Lupeaulx, two men of equal depth who knew each other well enough to keep on terms of friendship, made a show of resuming a conversation they had begun, left Lucien, Merlin, Du Tillet and Nathan chatting together, and moved off towards one of the divans with which the Vaudeville foyer was furnished.

  ‘Well now, my dear friend,’ said Finot to Des Lupeaulx, ‘tell me the truth. Is Lucien getting serious patron
age? He has become the bête noire of all my staff; and before supporting them in their conspiracy, I wanted to consult you in order to know whether it would be better to foil it and serve him.’

  At this point the master of requests and Finot, for a moment or two, gazed at each other with deep attention.

  ‘My friend,’ said Des Lupeaulx, ‘how can you imagine that the Marquise d’Espard, Châtelet and Madame de Bargeton, who has had the baron appointed Prefect of the Charente and made a Count as a preparation for their triumphal return to Angoulême, have forgiven Lucien for his attacks? They have thrown him into the royalist party in order to eliminate him. This very day they are all looking for motives for refusing what has been promised to this childish creature: find some, and you’ll have rendered the most tremendous service to these two ladies, one for which they’ll remember you sooner or later. I’m in their confidence, and they detest the little fellow to an amazing extent. This Lucien might have reconciled himself with his cruellest enemy, Madame de Bargeton, by ceasing his attacks, but on terms which all women love to carry out – you understand me? He’s handsome, young, he could have drowned this hatred under torrents of love, he would then have become the Comte de Rubempré and the ‘cuttle-fish’ would have obtained some post for him – some sinecure – in the King’s household. Lucien would have proved a very charming reader for Louis XVIII, been put in charge of some library or other, appointed master of requests pro forma or made a director in some department of the Privy Purse. The little idiot has missed his chance. That’s perhaps what they haven’t forgiven him for. Instead of dictating terms he’s had them dictated to him. The day when Lucien let himself be duped by the promise of an ordinance, Baron Châtelet took a great step forward. Coralie has ruined that young man. If she hadn’t been his mistress, he would have wanted the ‘cuttle-fish’ back – and he’d have got her.’

  ‘Then we can lay him low,’ said Finot.

  ‘How are you going to do it?’ Des Lupeaulx asked him with a casual air: he wanted to win credit for this service with the Marquise d’Espard.

  ‘He has a contract which obliges him to work with Lousteau’s petit journal, and it will be all the easier to get him to write articles because he hasn’t a penny. If the Keeper of the Seals sees himself baited in a humorous article, and if we can prove that Lucien wrote it, he will regard him as a man unworthy of the King’s bounties. In order to get this provincial prodigy a bit flustered, we are engineering a flop for Coralie: he’ll see his mistress hissed off the stage. Once the ordinance is kept pending for an indefinite period, we shall then chaff our victim about his aristocratic pretensions, talk of his mother, a midwife, and his father, an apothecary. Lucien’s courage is only skin-deep: he’ll cave in, and we’ll send him back where he came from. Nathan got Florine to sell me Matifat’s sixth share in the Review, I’ve bought the paper-manufacturer’s share, and so am in it alone with Dauriat. We can come to an agreement, you and I, to take the newspaper over to the Court party. I only sided with Florine and Nathan on condition that I got back my sixth share: they sold it to me, and I must serve them. But, beforehand, I wanted to know what Lucien’s chances were.’

  ‘You’re living up to your name!’ said Des Lupeaulx with a laugh. ‘Believe me, I like people of your sort.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Finot to the master of requests, ‘can you get a definite engagement for Florine?’

  ‘Yes; but let’s get rid of Lucien, for Rastignac and De Marsay want to hear the last of him.’

  ‘Sleep in peace,’ said Finot. ‘Nathan and Merlin will go on writing articles which Gaillard has promised to insert. Lucien won’t be able to produce a line, and in this way we shall cut off his supplies. He’ll only have Martainville’s paper for defending himself and Coralie: one paper against all the rest. He won’t be able to stand up to it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you some of the Minister’s tender spots. But let me have the manuscript of the article you’re making Lucien write,’ Des Lupeaulx replied, taking care not to inform Finot that the ordinance promised to Lucien was a hoax.

  Des Lupeaulx left the foyer. Finot went over to Lucien and, with the tone of geniality which took in so many people, explained why he could not forgo the copy due to him. He shrank, he said, from the idea of a law-suit which would ruin the hopes his friend was placing in the royalist party. He liked people who were strong-minded enough to make a bold change of front. Had not Lucien and he to rub shoulders with each other through life? Would not each of them have innumerable little services to render the other? Lucien needed a reliable man in the Liberal party in order to launch attacks on the ministerialists or Ultras if they refused to serve his interests.

  ‘Suppose they fool you, what will you do then?’ Finot concluded. ‘If some minister, believing he has you tied to the halter of your apostasy, ceases to be afraid of you and sends you about your business, won’t you have to set a few dogs on him to bite him in the calf? Well now, you’re at daggers drawn with Lousteau who’s out for your blood. You and Félicien are no longer on speaking terms. I’m the only one you have left! One of the rules of my profession is to live on good terms with really able men. You can do for me, in the society you frequent, equivalent services to those I shall do for you in the Press. But business before all else! Send me some purely literary articles: they won’t compromise you, and you’ll have discharged your obligations.’

  Lucien saw nothing but friendliness, mingled with artful calculations, in Finot’s proposals. Flattery from him and Des Lupeaulx had put him into a good humour: he thanked Finot!

  38. The fateful week

  IN the lives of ambitious people and all those whose success depends on the aid they get from men and things for a plan of campaign more or less concerted and perseveringly followed out, a cruel moment comes when some power or other subjects them to severe trials. Everything goes wrong at once, on every side threads break or become entangled and misfortune looms at every point of the compass. When a man loses his head amid this moral chaos, he is lost. People who can stand up to these initial reverses, who can brace themselves against the storm, who can save themselves by making a formidable effort to climb above it, are the really strong men. So then, to every man who is not born rich comes what we must call his fateful week. For Napoleon it was the week of the retreat from Moscow.

  This cruel moment had come to Lucien. Everything had gone too happily for him in the social and the literary world; he had been too lucky, and was to see men and things turning against him. The first blow was the sharpest and most grievous of all: it reached him in what he thought to be an invulnerable spot, his heart and his love. Coralie might not be keen-witted, but she had shining qualities of soul and the gift for revealing them in the sudden impulses which are characteristic of great actresses. These strange manifestations, so long as they have not become a matter of habit through long use, are subject to whims of character, and often to a praiseworthy modesty which dominates actresses who are still young. Inwardly naive and timid, outwardly bold and uninhibited as a player has to be, Coralie, still in love, felt her woman’s heart reacting against the mask she wore as an actress. The art of counterfeiting sentiment, a sublime sort of insincerity, had not yet triumphed over nature in her. She was ashamed of giving to the public what love alone could rightfully claim. Also she had a weakness peculiar to women who are truly feminine. Whilst knowing that her vocation was to reign as a sovereign on the stage, she yet stood in need of success. Incapable of facing an audience with which she was not in sympathy, she always trembled as she walked on; and then she might well be frozen by a cold reception. Thanks to this terrible sensitivity, each new part she played was like a first appearance for her. Applause induced a sort of intoxication in her which had no effect on her self-esteem but which alone could give her courage: a murmur of disapproval or the silence of a listless public upset her completely; a large and attentive audience, eyes focused on her with admiration and benevolence, galvanized her, and then she could enter into commun
ication with the nobler qualities in all their souls and felt she had the power to elevate and move them. This dual effect accentuated both the sensitiveness of the genius in her and its constitutive elements, and also laid bare the poor girl’s delicacy and tenderness.

  Lucien had come to appreciate the treasures stored in her heart and realized that his mistress was still very much of a girl. Unskilled in the insincerities common to actresses, Coralie was incapable of defending herself against the backstage rivalries and machinations which were a matter of habit with Florine, as dangerous and depraved a young woman as Coralie was simple and generous. It was necessary for roles to come Coralie’s way: she was too proud to go begging to authors and submit to their degrading terms, or to give herself to the first pen-pusher who tried to blackmail her into sleeping with him. Talent, rare enough in the strange art of histrionics, is only one condition of success; for a long time talent is even a drawback unless there goes with it some genius for intrigue: this Coralie absolutely lacked. Foreseeing what sufferings lay in store for his mistress when she began at the Gymnase, Lucien wanted at all cost to procure a triumph for her. The money left over from the sale of furniture and that which Lucien earned had all gone in costumes, equipment for her dressing-room and all the expenses an opening performance entails. A few days beforehand, Lucien took a humiliating step under the stimulus of love: he went with Fendant and Cavalier’s bills to the Golden Cocoon in the rue des Bourdonnais to propose that Camusot should discount them. The poet was not yet so corrupted as to be able to advance coolly to this encounter. The road he took became littered with many sorrows and paved with the most dire reflections as he vacillated between ‘I will! – I won’t!’ Nevertheless he arrived at the cold and dark little office, which drew its light from an inner court, where he found, gravely seated, no longer the man in love with Coralie, the compliant, ineffectual libertine, the doubting Thomas he had known, but the solemn paterfamilias, the smooth, self-righteous business man wearing the respectable mask of a magistrate in the Tribunal de Commerce, entrenched as head of a firm behind an authoritative coldness, surrounded by clerks, cashiers, green filing cabinets, invoices and samples, with his wife on guard and his daughter, a simply-dressed girl, near by. Lucien trembled from head to foot as he approached, for the worthy merchant cast at him the glance of insolent unconcern he had already seen in the eyes of the discounters.