Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Alas, no!’ said Lucien.

  ‘You’ve been what the English call inconsistent,’ the Abbé continued with a smile.

  ‘Does it matter what I have been, if I can no longer be anything?’

  ‘Let there be behind all your fine qualities a force which is semper virens,’ said the priest, wanting to show that he knew a little Latin, ‘and nothing in the world will stand against you. I am already quite fond of you…’

  Lucien gave an incredulous smile.

  ‘Yes,’ the stranger went on in answer to this smile. ‘I’m as interested in you as if you were my son, and I have enough power to be able to speak to you frankly. Do you know what I like about you? You’ve made a clean breast of your past and so can listen to a lecture on morals which you won’t get anywhere else; for men in the herd are even more hypocritical than they are when self-interest forces them to act apart. That’s why one spends a good deal of one’s life weeding out what one has allowed to grow in one’s heart during adolescence. This operation is called gaining experience.’

  As he listened to the priest Lucien was thinking: ‘This man is some elderly politician delighted to amuse himself as he travels along. The whim has taken him to muddle the ideas of a poor young wretch whom he found on the verge of suicide. He’ll drop me once he’s had his little joke… But he’s an expert in paradox and strikes me as being quite a match for Blondet or Lousteau.’

  Despite so sage a reflection, the diplomat’s effort at corruption made a deep impression on a man only too disposed to welcome it, and its effect was the more devastating because it was supported by well-known facts. Caught in the spell of this cynical conversation, Lucien was all the more inclined to cling on to life again because he felt as if he had been snatched by a powerful arm from a suicide’s watery grave.

  In this respect, the priest was obviously fighting a winning battle. And so, from time to time, a mischievous smile had seasoned his historical sarcasms.

  33. A lecture on ethics – by a disciple of Mendoza

  ‘IF your treatment of ethics in any way resembles your views on history,’ said Lucien, ‘I should very much like to know what the motive is for the charity you seem to be showing me at present.’

  ‘That, young man,’ he replied with the astuteness of a priest who sees that his wiles are succeeding, ‘is the concluding point in my sermon, and you will allow me to hold it in reserve, otherwise we shall be together for the rest of the day!’

  ‘Very well, talk ethics to me,’ said Lucien, thinking to himself: ‘I’ll try and bring him out.’

  ‘Ethics, young man,’ said the priest, ‘begin with law. If religion alone were at stake, there would be no need for law: religious peoples have few laws. Above civil law there is political law. Well, would you like to know what a politically-minded man finds inscribed above the door-way to this nineteenth century of yours? In 1793 Frenchmen invented popular sovereignty and it ended up in imperial absolutism. So much for our national history. As for morals, Madame Tallien and Madame de Beauharnais behaved in much the same way, but Napoleon married the one and made her your Empress, and never admitted the other to his court although she was a princess. Napoleon was a Jacobin in 1793; in 1804 he donned the Iron Crown. From 1806 onwards the ferocious champions of ‘Equality or Death’ acquiesced in the creation of a new nobility, which Louis XVIII was to legitimize. The emigrant aristocracy, which lords it today in its Faubourg Saint-German, behaved worse still: it took to usury, commerce, pastry-making, cooking, farming and sheep-rearing. In France then, in politics as well as ethics, all and sundry reached a goal which gave the lie to their beginnings: their opinions belied their behaviour, or else their behaviour belied their opinions. Logic went by the board, both with the people in power and private individuals. So you no longer have any ethics. Today, with you, success is the ruling motive for all the action you take of whatever kind. Deeds therefore are nothing in themselves: they exist entirely in the ideas other people have about them. Hence, young man, another precept: put up a fine outward show! Hide the reverse of the coin, but keep the obverse bright and shining. Discretion, a watchword for ambitious persons, is also that of the Society of Jesus to which I belong: adopt it as yours. Great people commit almost as many despicable deeds as the very poor, but they commit them under cover and make a parade of virtue; and so they remain great. Humble folk keep their virtues under cover and only expose their misery to the light of day; and so they are despised. You hid what was great in you and only showed your sores. You flaunted your actress-mistress in public and lived with her in her rooms. There was nothing reprehensible in this; everybody recognized that you were both perfectly free to do as you liked; but you were flouting social conventions and failed to win the respect which society accords to those who observe its rules. If you had left Coralie to this Monsieur Camusot or if you had kept your relations with her secret, you would have married Madame de Bargeton and you’d now be Prefect of Angoulême and the Marquis de Rubempré.

  ‘Change your tactics. Make a display of your beauty, grace, wit, poetic talent. If you indulge in minor infamies, do it within four walls. From then on you’ll no longer be guilty of tarnishing the back-cloth in the great theatre which we call the world. Napoleon had a phrase for this: “Wash your dirty linen in private.” There is a corollary to this second precept: form is all-important. Understand clearly what I mean by form. There are uneducated people who, under the pressure of need, steal a sum of money with violence from somebody else: they are dubbed criminals and brought to justice. An impecunious genius invents a process which will bring him a fortune if he can exploit it: you lend him three thousand francs (like the Cointets who took over your debt of three thousand francs in order to despoil your brother-in-law), you persecute him into ceding you the whole or part of his secret, and you only have your conscience to reckon with: your conscience won’t bring you to the Court of Assizes. The enemies of social order take advantage of this contrast in order to yelp at justice and, in the name of the people, get angry because a burglar or a chicken-stealer in an inhabited area is sent to the galleys, whereas a man who ruins whole families by fraudulent bankruptcy gets off with a few months’ imprisonment at the worst. But these hypocrites know full well that by sentencing the burglar the judges are upholding the barriers between rich and poor. If these were overthrown social order would come to an end. Whereas the bankrupt, the clever rogue who diverts an inheritance, the banker who brings a business to ruin in order to line his pockets, is merely an instrument by which fortunes change hands.

  ‘Thus, my son, society is forced, for its own sake, to make distinctions; that is what I want you to do for your own sake. The great point is to measure up to the whole of society. Napoleon, Richelieu and the Medicis measured up to their century. Present-day society no longer worships the true God, but the Golden Calf! That is the religion of your Charter, which politically speaking takes no account of anything but property. Is that not tantamount to saying to every subject: “Try and get rich”?… Once you have managed to make a fortune in a legal way and have become the wealthy Marquis de Rubempré, then you’ll allow yourself the luxury of a sense of honour. You’ll then make such a parade of scrupulousness that no one will dare to accuse you of ever having fallen short of it, even though you had done so in the process of getting on. – Not that I would ever advise that!’ the priest added, taking Lucien’s hand and patting it.

  ‘What then must you get into that handsome head of yours? Just this simple idea: set yourself a splendid goal, but don’t let anyone see what means you adopt and the steps you take to reach it. You have been acting like a child: be a man. Do what a hunter does. Lie in wait, lie in ambush in the world of Paris. Keep on the watch for a lucky chance which will bring you your quarry. Spare neither your person nor your so-called dignity, for we are all at the beck and call of something, perhaps a vice, perhaps a need. But observe the law of laws: secretiveness!’

  ‘You horrify me, father!’ said Lucien. ‘This sound
s to me like a code for highwaymen.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said the Canon, ‘but it’s not of my invention. That’s the way upstarts have reasoned, both the dynasty of Austria and the dynasty of France. You have nothing: you’re in the same situation as the Medicis, Richelieu and Napoleon when they first conceived their ambitions. These people, my boy, reckoned that their future had to be paid for with ingratitude, treachery and the most flagrant inconsistencies of conduct. Who wants all must dare all. Let’s reason it out. When you sit down to a game of bouillotte, do you argue about the rules? They exist, you accept them.’

  ‘Well now,’ thought Lucien. ‘He knows how to play bouillotte.’

  ‘How do you behave over a game of bouillotte?’ asked the priest. ‘Do you practise that finest of all virtues, openness? Not only do you hide your hand, you even try to make your opponents believe that you’re going to lose the game when you’re sure of winning it. In short, you dissimulate, don’t you?… You lie in order to win a hundred francs!… What would you say of a player who was generous enough to inform the others that he held four aces? Well, an ambitious man who wants to follow the precepts of virtue while he’s struggling along in a career in which his antagonists scrap them, is a child to whom hardened politicians would say what card-players say to the man who throws his honours cards away: “Monsieur, you should never play bouillotte.” Is it you who make the rules in the ambition-game? Why did I tell you to measure up to society? Because in these days, young man, society has gradually arrogated to itself so many rights over the individual that the individual finds himself obliged to fight back against society. There are no longer any laws, merely conventions, that is to say humbug: nothing but form.’

  Lucien made a gesture of astonishment.

  ‘Ah, my child,’ said the priest, fearing that he had shocked the unsophisticated young man. ‘Did you expect to find the angel Gabriel in an Abbé whose shoulders have to bear all the iniquity in the diplomatic tug-of-war between two kings? I’m an intermediary between Ferdinand VII and Louis XVIII, two great kings who both owe their thrones to shrewd scheming… I believe in God, but I have even greater belief in our Order, and our Order only believes in the temporal power. To strengthen the temporal power, our Order supports the Church Apostolic, Catholic and Roman, that is to say the sum total of sentiments which keep the common people in bounds. We are the modern Knights Templars, and we have our doctrine. Like that of the Templars, our organization was broken up for the same reasons: it had measured up to society. You want to be a soldier? I will be your commanding officer. Obey me as a wife obeys her husband, as a child obeys his mother, and I guarantee that in less than three years’ time you’ll be the Marquis de Rubempré, you’ll marry into one of the noblest families in the Faubourg Saint-Germain and one day you’ll have a seat on the bench of Peers. At this moment, if I had not amused you with my conversation, what would you be? An undiscoverable corpse deep down in a bed of mud. Well, use your imagination as a poet…’ (At this point Lucien gazed at his protector with curiosity.) ‘The young man sitting here in this barouche with the Abbé Carlos Herrera, honorary canon in the cathedral chapter of Toledo, secret envoy of his Majesty Ferdinand VII to His Majesty the King of France, bearing a despatch in which the former probably says: “When you have freed me from my enemies, have all the people I am humouring at present hanged, including my envoy so that he will really be a secret one”… this young man,’ said the stranger, ‘has nothing in common with the poet who has just died. I’ve fished you out of the water, brought you back to life, and you belong to me as a creature belongs to its creator, the afreet to the genie, the icoglan to the sultan, the body to the soul! My strong arm will maintain you on your road to power, and yet I promise you a life of pleasure, honour and continuous festivity… You’ll never lack for money. You will shine and show off while I, bending low in the mud of the foundations, shall be propping up the brilliant edifice of your fortune. I myself love power for power’s sake! I shall always be happy to see you enjoying the things which are forbidden to me. In short, I shall live in you!… And in any case, the day when this pact between a human being and a demon, a child and a diplomat, no longer suits you, you can still go and find some little pool, like the one you mentioned, to drown yourself in: you’ll be slightly more or slightly less than what you are today – an unhappy or a dishonoured man.’

  34. A Spanish profile

  ‘THAT was not one of the Archbishop of Granada’s homilies!’ Lucien exclaimed as the barouche drew to a halt at a relay post.

  ‘I don’t know what title you would give to this educational digest, my son – I’m going to adopt you and make you my heir – but it’s the code for ambitious people. God’s elect are few in number. There’s no choice: either one must bury oneself in a monastery – and there too the world is often to be found in miniature – or one must accept this code.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s better not to know all that,’ said Lucien in an attempt to sound the spiritual depths of this formidable priest.

  ‘What!’ the Canon rejoindered. ‘After playing your game without knowing the rules, you would give it up just when you’re holding strong cards, with a dependable sponsor to back you? And don’t you even want to take your revenge? Have you no desire to climb on the backs of the people who chased you from Paris?’

  Lucien shuddered, as if these terrible, nerve-shattering sounds came from some bronze instrument or a Chinese gong.

  ‘I’m only a humble priest,’ the man continued, and a malignant expression appeared on his sun-tanned face. ‘But if I had been humiliated, vexed, tortured, betrayed and sold as you have been by the rogues you told me about, I should feel like an Arab of the desert!… Yes, I would give myself over body and soul to vengeance. I wouldn’t care whether I ended my life on a gibbet, under the rack, impaled or guillotined as they do it in your country. But I wouldn’t let them cut off my head until I’d trampled my enemies underfoot.’

  Lucien remained silent. He was no longer anxious to ‘bring the priest out’.

  ‘Some men descend from Abel, some from Cain,’ said the priest by way of conclusion. ‘I’m a mixture of both: Cain to my enemies, Abel to my friends, and woe to him who awakens the Cain in me!… After all, you’re a Frenchman. I’m a Spaniard and a canon into the bargain!’

  ‘He’s more of an Arab than anything!’ thought Lucien, scrutinizing the protector that Heaven had just sent him.

  The Abbé Carlos Herrera had nothing about him that betokened the Jesuit or any member of a religious order. He was stout and short, with broad hands and broad chest, herculean strength and a glance that terrified, though it could be softened into mildness at will. His bronzed complexion, which allowed nothing to show of what went on inside him, inspired repulsion rather than attachment. A head of fine, long hair, powdered in the Talleyrand style, gave this strange diplomat the appearance of a bishop; moreover his blue ribbon, fringed with white, from which hung a cross of gold, was indicative of an ecclesiastical dignitary. His black silk stockings set off the curve of his athlete’s legs. His exquisitely spotless clothes bespoke a personal fastidiousness which one does not always find in priests, particularly in Spain. A tricorne figured on the front of his carriage, which was blazoned with the arms of Spain. Although there was much that was repulsive in his physiognomy, this effect was attenuated by his manners which were at once brusque and ingratiating; and it was evident that for Lucien the priest was doing his best to be seductive, wheedling, almost feline. Lucien noted all these details with an anxious air. He felt that this instant must settle the question of life or death for him, for they had come to the second relay stage after Ruffec. The Spanish priest’s latest words had set many chords in his heart vibrating; and, be it said to Lucien’s shame and that of the priest who, with perspicacious eye, was studying the poet’s handsome face, they were the most harshly resonant since they responded to sentiments of depravity. Lucien could see himself in Paris once more, snatching again at the reins of dominat
ion which his unskilled hands had let fall, and taking his revenge! The comparisons he had recently been making between provincial and Parisian life – his most urgent motive for suicide – were fading from his mind. He would be back again in congenial surroundings, but this time under the aegis of as deep and wicked a schemer as Cromwell.

  ‘I was alone before: now there will be two of us,’ he was thinking.

  The more he had laid bare his past misdeeds, the more interest the cleric had shown. His indulgence had increased in proportion to Lucien’s misfortunes, and he had shown no astonishment. None the less Lucien wondered about the motives of this conductor of royal intrigues. He first of all took refuge in a commonplace explanation: the generosity of Spaniards! A Spaniard is generous, an Italian will poison you out of jealousy, a Frenchman is frivolous, a German is ingenuous, a Jew is despicable, an Englishman is noble-hearted! Reverse these propositions and you will come nearer to the truth. The Jews have cornered the supply of gold, but they are great composers, great actors, great singers. They build palaces, write works like the Reisebilder, they are admirable poets. They are more powerful now than ever they were; their religion is accepted, and finally they lend money to the Pope! Germans are so given to hair-splitting that in their most trivial dealings with a foreigner they stipulate for a contract. Frenchmen have been clapping their hands for fifty years at the stupidities proffered by their National Theatre; they go on wearing inconceivable hats and only accept a change of government on condition that it remains the same! The English flaunt their perfidiousness in the face of the whole world, and their rapacity is equally horrible. The Spaniards, who once possessed the gold of the two Indies, are penniless. There’s no country in the world where less poisoning takes place than in Italy and where manners are so easy and so courteous. Spaniards have lived much on the reputation of the Moors.