Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Here are some securities; I should be infinitely obliged if you would take them from me, Monsieur,’ he said as he remained standing in front of the seated merchant.

  ‘You have taken something from me, Monsieur,’ said Camusot. ‘I remember that!’

  Thereupon Lucien explained Coralie’s situation, in a low voice and whispering in the silk-merchant’s ear, so close that the latter could hear the humiliated poet’s heart-beats. It was not in Camusot’s intentions that Coralie should suffer failure. As he listened, the merchant looked at the signatures with a smile: he was a judge in the Tribunal de Commerce and knew in what predicament the publishers stood. He gave Lucien four thousand five hundred francs on condition that he endorsed the bills: for values received in silk-stuffs. Lucien immediately went to see Braulard and paid handsomely to make sure of a fine success for Coralie. Braulard promised to come, and indeed came, to the dress rehearsal in order to settle at what points in the play his ‘Romans’ should bring their horny hands into action and carry the house with them. Lucien handed the remaining money to Coralie without telling her of the approach he had made to Camusot; he calmed her anxiety and that of Bérénice: they were already hard put to it to make ends meet. Martainville, one of the most knowledgeable men of the time in theatre matters, had come along several times to help Coralie learn her part. Lucien had obtained the promise of favourable articles from several royalist journalists and so had no forebodings of misfortune.

  Then, the evening before Coralie’s opening, a disaster befell Lucien. D’Arthez’s book had come out. The editor of Hector Merlin’s newspaper gave the work to Lucien as the man most competent to review it: he owed his fatal reputation in this field to the articles he had written on Nathan. The office was full of people, and all the staff of journalists was there. Martainville had come to settle a detail concerning the general policy adopted by the royalist newspapers in their polemics against the Liberal press. Nathan, Merlin and all the collaborators on Le Réveil were in conference about the influence which Léon Giraud’s twice-weekly journal was exerting, an influence so much more pernicious because its language was prudent, sage and moderate! They started talking about the Cénacle of the rue des Quatre-Vents, which they called a ‘conventicle’. It had been decided that the royalist papers should wage a systematic war to the death on these dangerous adversaries – who were in fact to pave the way for the ‘Doctrinaires’, the sect whose fatal activities, from the day when the meanest of vengeful motives brought the most brilliant royalist writer into alliance with it, were destined to overthrow the Bourbons. D’Arthez, of whose absolutist opinions the journalists were unaware, fell under the anathema pronounced against the Cénacle and was to be the first victim. His book was to be ‘flayed’, to use the stereotyped term.

  Lucien refused to write the article, and his refusal excited the most violent scandal among the important members of the royalist party present at the meeting. They roundly declared to Lucien that a new convert had no will of his own; if it did not suit him to adhere to Throne and Altar he could rejoin his former party. Merlin and Martainville drew him aside and amicably remarked to him that he was exposing Coralie to the hostility which the Liberal papers had vowed against him, and that she would no longer have the royalist and ministerial papers to defend her. If matters remained as they were, her performance would no doubt give rise to heated polemics which would bring her the renown for which every actress yearns.

  ‘You don’t know the ropes,’ said Martainville. ‘For three months her acting will be subject to the cross-fire of our articles, and she’ll pick up thirty thousand francs in the provinces during her three months’ vacation. For a mere scruple which will prevent your entry into politics, one which you should tread underfoot, you’re going to destroy Coralie and your own future: you’re throwing away your livelihood.’

  Lucien saw that he must choose between d’Arthez and Coralie: his mistress would be ruined if he did not slaughter d’Arthez in the big newspaper and Le Réveil. The unhappy poet returned home sick at heart, sat down by the fire in his bedroom and read the book: it was one of the finest in modern literature. His tears fell on one page after another and he hesitated for a long time, but in the end he wrote a mocking article of the kind at which he was so skilful and laid hold of the book as children lay hold of a beautiful bird to pluck its feathers and torture it. His terrible banter was bound to do the book harm. As he re-read this fine work, all Lucien’s better feelings were reawakened; at midnight he went across Paris, arrived at d’Arthez’s apartment and perceived, flickering through the window-panes, the chaste and modest glimmer at which he had so often gazed with feelings of admiration which were truly deserved by the noble constancy of this really great man. Lacking the courage to go upstairs, he sat for a few moments on a boundary-stone. At last, urged on by his good angel, he knocked, and found d’Arthez reading, with no fire in his room.

  ‘What has happened to you?’ asked the young author at the sight of Lucien, guessing that only some terrible misfortune could have brought him there.

  ‘Your book is sublime,’ cried Lucien, his eyes full of tears, ‘and they’ve ordered me to attack it.’

  ‘Poor boy, you’re making a hard living,’ said d’Arthez.

  ‘I ask you only one favour: keep my visit a secret, and leave me to my occupations as a damned soul in my particular hell. Perhaps one arrives nowhere without acquiring callouses in the most sensitive places of one’s heart.’

  ‘You haven’t changed!’ said d’Arthez.

  ‘You think I’m a coward? No, d’Arthez, no! I’m a child madly in love.’

  And he explained his situation.

  ‘Let me see the article,’ said d’Arthez, moved at all that Lucien told him about Coralie.

  Lucien gave him the manuscript. D’Arthez read it, and could not refrain from smiling. ‘What a disastrous way of using one’s wit!’ he exclaimed; but he stopped as he saw Lucien sunk into an armchair, overwhelmed with genuine grief. ‘Will you let me correct it? I’ll return it tomorrow. Mockery brings dishonour on a book, while grave and serious criticism is sometimes praise. I can make your article more honourable both to you and to me. Besides, I alone am thoroughly aware of my own shortcomings.’

  ‘When climbing an arid slope, one sometimes finds fruit to slake the torment of a raging thirst. That fruit I find here!’ said Lucien, throwing himself into d’Arthez’s arms and imprinting a kiss on his brow with the words: ‘I feel as if I were entrusting my conscience to you, so that you may give it back to me one day!’

  ‘I regard periodic repentances as a great hypocrisy,’ said d’Arthez solemnly, ‘for repentance is then only a bonus given to evil deeds. Repentance is a virginity which our souls owe to God: a man who twice repents is therefore a reprehensible sycophant. I’m afraid you only look on penitence as a prelude to absolution.’

  The words left Lucien thunderstruck as he walked slowly back to the rue de la Lune. Next day the poet took his article, revised and returned by d’Arthez, to the newspaper; but from that day he was eaten up with a melancholy which he was not always able to disguise. When that evening he saw that the Gymnase auditorium was full, he felt the terrible emotions which a first night at the theatre arouses; in his case they were intensified by all the power of love. All his vanity was at stake. He scrutinized every face as a man in the dock gazes at the faces of the jurymen and magistrates. Any murmur of disapproval made him start; any trivial incident on the stage, Coralie’s entrances and exits, the slightest vocal inflexions were bound to perturb him beyond measure. The play in which Coralie was appearing was one of those which fail but bounce up again: it failed. When Coralie came on stage she was not applauded, and the coldness manifested in the pit came as a blow to her. She received no applause from the boxes – except that of Camusot. Persons posted in the balcony and the gallery quietened the silk-merchant with repeated cries of ‘Hush!’ The gallery imposed silence on the claqueurs whenever they gave forth salvoes which were obv
iously overdone. Martainville was stout in his applause, and the hypocritical Florine, Nathan and Merlin followed suit. As soon as the play had collapsed, Coralie’s dressing-room was crowded; but this crowd made matters worse by the consolations they offered her. The actress fell back in despair, less on her own account than on Lucien’s.

  ‘Braulard has let us down,’ he said.

  Coralie was so heart-broken that she developed an acute fever. The next day it proved impossible for her to act: she felt she was cut short in her career. Lucien hid the newspapers from her by opening them in the dining-room. All the feuilleton writers blamed Coralie for the play’s failure. She had overrated her ability, they said. She was the delight of the boulevard theatres but out of place at the Gymnase. A laudable ambition had driven her there, but she had disregarded her limitations and had misinterpreted her role.

  Lucien then read various paragraphs about Coralie concocted according to the hypocritical recipe of his articles on Nathan. He burst into a rage worthy of Milo of Croton when he felt his fingers caught in the oak-tree which he himself had split open; he became livid. Those friends of his were giving Coralie most perfidious advice in admirably kind, indulgent and sympathetic phraseology. She ought, they said, to play parts which the unprincipled authors of these infamous feuilletons knew well were entirely unsuited to her talent. This from the royalist papers, no doubt schooled in their role by Nathan. As for the Liberal papers and the petits journaux, they came out with the perfidies and banterings that Lucien himself had practised. Coralie heard one or two sobs, leapt out of bed to go to Lucien, caught sight of the papers and read them. After reading them she went back to bed and remained silent. Florine was in the plot, had foreseen the outcome and learned Coralie’s part, Nathan having coached her for it. The theatre management stood by the play and wanted to give Coralie’s part to Florine. The manager came to see the wretched actress, who was weeping and dejected; but when he told her in Lucien’s presence that Florine had learnt the part and that the play simply must go on that evening, she sat up and jumped out of bed.

  ‘I will play my part,’ she screamed.

  But she fell back in a faint. And so Florine took over her part and made her reputation in it, for she saved the play. All the Press gave her an ovation, as a consequence of which she became the great actress who is well-known today. Her triumph exasperated Lucien in the highest degree.

  ‘… A wretched creature who owes you her daily bread I Let the Gymnase buy you out of your engagement if it wants to. I shall be the Comte de Rubempré. I shall make a fortune and marry you!’

  ‘That would be foolish,’ said Coralie, throwing a wan look at him.

  ‘Foolish?’ cried Lucien. ‘Well then, in a few days you’ll be living in a fine house, you’ll have a carriage, and I’ll write a part for you!’

  He took two thousand francs and ran off to Frascati’s. The unhappy man stayed there seven hours, a prey to all the furies, though outwardly calm and cool. During the whole day and a part of the night he had the most varying luck: he won as much as thirty thousand francs and left without a penny. When he got home, he found Finot there waiting for his ‘little articles’. Lucien made the mistake of complaining.

  ‘Oh, life’s not a bed of roses,’ Finot replied. ‘You were so sudden with your half-right turn that you were bound to lose the support of the Liberal press, which has much more power than the ministerial and royalist press. You should never move from one camp into another before making a good bed in it, one in which you can console yourself for losses you must expect. But in any case a wise man goes and sees his friends, explains his motives and gets their advice about his abjuration. Then they become his accomplices, pity him, and then they agree, as Nathan and Merlin did with their cronies, to take in one another’s washing. Wolf doesn’t eat wolf. You yourself, in this affair, displayed the innocence of a lamb. You’ll have to show your teeth to your new party if you want to get a cut of the joint out of them. And so it’s not surprising that they’ve sacrificed you to Nathan. I won’t hide from you the noise, scandal and uproar your article against d’Arthez is raising. People are saying that Marat was a saint compared with you. They’re getting ready to attack you, and your book won’t survive it. How’s your novel going?’

  ‘There are the last pages,’ said Lucien, pointing to a batch of proofs.

  ‘Unsigned articles against little d’Arthez in the ministerial and Ultra papers are being attributed to you. Every day now Le Réveil is sticking pins into the people in the rue des Quatre-Vents; their gibes are funny, and therefore all the more murderous. Yet there’s a whole political clique, a grave and serious one, lined up behind Léon Giraud’s paper – they’ll get into power sooner or later.’

  ‘I haven’t set foot in Le Réveil for a week.’

  ‘Well, think about my little articles. Write fifty straight away and I’ll make one payment for the lot. But mind they conform to the tone of the paper.’

  Thereupon Finot nonchalantly gave Lucien the subject for a humorous article against the Keeper of the Seals, telling him a spurious story which, he said, was going round the salons.

  To make good his gambling losses Lucien, despite his depression, recovered his verve and mental agility, and composed thirty articles, each one amounting to two columns. That done, he went to see Dauriat, sure of finding Finot there and wanting to hand them over quietly. He also wanted to hear the publisher explain why his poems were not in print. The shop was full of his enemies. At his entry, there was complete silence; all conversation ceased. Seeing himself sentenced as an outlaw, Lucien felt his courage redoubled, and he told himself, as he had done in the Luxembourg alley, ‘I will win through!’

  Dauriat was neither patronizing nor kind; he was facetious, and stood firm on his rights: he would publish the Marguerites in his own good time and would wait until Lucien’s position could ensure their success, since he had bought the entire rights in them. When Lucien objected that Dauriat was obliged by the very nature of the contract and the status of the contracting parties to publish the collection, the publisher maintained the contrary view and said that in law he could not be held to an operation which he deemed ill-advised: he alone was the judge of its timeliness. Moreover there was a solution of which all the courts would approve: Lucien was entitled to return the three thousand francs, take his work back and get it published by a royalist firm.

  Lucien withdrew, more vexed by the moderate tone Dauriat had adopted than he had been with his autocratic pompousness at their first interview. And so the Marguerites would no doubt only be published at the moment when he had on his side the auxiliary strength of an influential caucus or when he himself became a power to be reckoned with. The poet went home slowly, a prey to such discouragement as might have led him to suicide if action had followed thought. He found Coralie in bed, pale and ill.

  ‘Get her a part, or she’ll die,’ Bérénice said to Lucien while he was dressing to go to the house where Mademoiselle des Touches lived in the rue du Mont-Blanc: she was giving a soirée where he was to find Des Lupeaulx, Vignon, Blondet, Madame d’Espard and Madame de Bargeton.

  It was being given in honour of Conti, the great composer who was renowned as one of the best singers outside the theatre, La Cinti, La Pasta, Garcia, Levasseur and two or three illustrious amateur singers belonging to society. Lucien moved smoothly towards the spot where the Marquise, her cousin and Madame de Montcornet were sitting. The unhappy young man assumed a light, contented, happy air; he made jokes, displayed himself as he had been in his days of splendour and tried not to appear as if he needed the support of high society. He expatiated on the services he was rendering to the royalist party and offered as proof the cries of hate which the Liberals were raising.

  ‘You will be very amply rewarded, my friend,’ said Madame de Bargeton, directing a gracious smile at him. ‘Go to the Chancellery the day after tomorrow with the Heron and Des Lupeaulx, and there you’ll find your ordinance signed by His Majesty. Tomorrow the K
eeper of the Seals is taking it to the Château; but the Council is sitting, and he’ll be late coming back. Anyway, if I heard the result in the evening, I’d send word to you. Where are you living?’

  ‘I’ll come for it,’ answered Lucien, ashamed to have to say that he lived in the rue de la Lune.

  ‘The Duc de Lenoncourt and the Duc de Navarreins have spoken of you to the King,’ said the Marquise, taking up the tale. ‘They spoke highly of your absolute and entire devotion, such devotion as merits an outstanding reward to requite you for the persecutions of the Liberal party. For that matter, the name and title of the Rubemprés, to which you have a right through your mother, will become illustrious through you. In the evening the King told the Lord Chancellor to bring him an ordinance authorizing Monsieur Lucien Chardon to bear the name and titles of the Comtes de Rubempré in his quality as grandson of the last Count through his mother. “Let us encourage the song-birds1 of Pindus,” he said after reading your sonnet on the lily, which happily my cousin remembered and which she had given to the Duke. Monsieur de Navarreins replied: “Particularly since Your Majesty can perform the miracle of changing song-birds into eagles.”’

  Lucien’s effusive gratitude might have softened any woman less deeply offended than Louise d’Espard de Nègrepelisse. The more handsome Lucien was, the more she thirsted for vengeance. Des Lupeaulx had been right: Lucien, had no flair. He was unable to guess that the alleged ordinance was only a hoax with Madame d’Espard’s hall-mark on it. Emboldened by his success and the flattering distinction which Mademoiselle des Touches showed him, he stayed at her house until two in the morning in order to speak to her privately. He had learnt in the royalist newspaper offices that Mademoiselle des Touches was secretly collaborating in a play with a part for the star of the moment, little Léontine Fay. Once the salons were deserted, he took Mademoiselle des Touches to a sofa in the boudoir, and so movingly related Coralie’s misfortune and his own that the illustrious hermaphrodite1 promised to have the chief part given to Coralie.