Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (32 page)

S
INCE
that most blessed day when Lucien had made Daniel d’Arthez’s acquaintance, he had changed his table at Flicoteaux’s. The two friends dined side by side and chatted in a low voice about great literature, subjects to be treated and the manner of presenting, starting and finishing them. At present, d’Arthez was correcting the manuscript of
The Archer of Charles the Ninth;
he recast certain chapters, wrote the finest pages to be found in it and composed the splendid preface which perhaps overshadows the work but which brought so much illumination to writers of the new school. One day, just as Lucien was sitting down beside Daniel, who had been waiting for him, and while they were still shaking hands, he saw Etienne Lousteau turning the door-handle. He abruptly let go Daniel’s hand and told the waiter he wanted to dine in his old place near the counter. D’Arthez looked at Lucien with one of those benign glances in which reproach is wrapped in forgiveness: it went so keenly to the poet’s heart that he took hold of Daniel’s hand and pressed it anew.

‘This is a matter of importance for me,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’

Lucien was in his former seat by the time Lousteau was taking his. He was the first to greet him, they soon got into conversation, and it was pursued with such animation that Lucien went off for the manuscript of
Les Marguerites
while
Lousteau finished his dinner. He had obtained leave to submit his sonnets to the journalist and was counting on his apparent benevolence in order to find a publisher or get a job with the newspaper. When he returned, Lucien saw Daniel in a corner of the restaurant, leaning sadly on his elbow and looking at him with melancholy; but Lucien was so poverty-stricken and so spurred on by ambition that he pretended not to see his brother of the Cénacle and followed Lousteau out.

Before evening fell, the journalist and the neophyte went and sat down under the trees in that part of the Luxembourg gardens which leads to the rue de l’Ouest from the broad Avenue de l’Observatoire. In those days this street was one long stretch of mud lined with boardings and marshes, with houses only beginning at the approach to the rue de Vaugirard. So few people passed along it that, at the dinner hour in Paris, a pair of lovers might well have a quarrel and start making it up without fear of being seen. The only possible spoil-sport was the veteran on sentry-go at the small gate opening on the rue de l’Ouest, if that venerable soldier took it into his head to increase the number of his monotonous rounds. It was in this alley, on a wooden bench, that Etienne listened to some samples chosen from
Les Marguerites.
Etienne, after two years of apprenticeship, had his foot in the stirrup as a newspaper man, and he counted some of the celebrities of that period among his friends: Lucien therefore found him an impressive figure. And so, as he unrolled the manuscript of
Les Marguerites,
the provincial poet deemed it necessary to deliver a sort of preface.

‘The sonnet, Monsieur, is one of the most difficult forms of poetry and in general has been abandoned. No one in France has been able to rival Petrarch, whose native language, infinitely more supple than ours, allows conceits of thought repugnant to our
positivism
(if you will excuse the word). That is why I thought it original to begin with a collection of sonnets. Victor Hugo has taken to the ode, Canalis goes in for a wayward kind of poetry, Béranger monopolizes the
chanson,
while Casimir Delevigne has taken tragedy as his domain and Lamartine the “meditation”.’

‘Are you a classicist or a romantic?’ asked Lousteau.

Lucien’s air of surprise betokened such ignorance of the state of things in the Republic of Letters that Lousteau judged it necessary to enlighten him.

‘My friend, you are coming into the thick of a fierce battle and must make a prompt decision. Literature is primarily divided into several zones; but our great men are split into two camps. The royalists are romantics, the liberals are classicists. Divergence in literary opinion is added to divergence in political opinion: hence war between fading and budding reputations, a war in which no weapons are barred: ink spilt in torrents, cutting epigrams, stinging calumnies, unrestrained abuse. By a strange anomaly, the romantic royalists call for literary freedom and the abrogation of laws which provide our literature with its conventional forms; while the liberals cling to the unities, regular rhythm in the alexandrine line and classical themes. And so in each camp literary opinions are at variance with political ones. If you stand aloof you will stand alone. Which side will you take?’

‘Which is the stronger party?’

‘The liberal press has far more subscribers than the royalist and ministerial press; nevertheless Canalis is making his way, even though he stands for monarchy and religion, even though he’s protected by Court and Clergy. – Come now! Sonnets belong to the pre-Boileau literature,’ said Etienne, seeing that Lucien was frightened at having to choose between two banners. ‘Be a romantic. The romantics are all young folk and the classicists are
periwigs:
the romantics will win.’

The word ‘periwig’ was the latest epithet invented by romantic journalism for the adornment of the classicist.

‘THE FIELD DAISY,’ Lucien announced, choosing as a suitable beginning the first of two sonnets which justified the title of the collection:

Not always for our vision’s sole delight

Field daisies, do you lavish your rich hues.

There’s poetry in them, and you, their Muse,

Quicken our hopes and wake our inner sight.

Your golden stamens set in silver white

Are symbols of the treasures man pursues.

A thread of mystic blood your vein imbues

To show success is bought with pain and spite.

Was it to hail the Spring your buds unfurled

When Jesus, rising to a fairer world,

Showered forth virtues from His gracious wing?

And when you bloom afresh at Autumn’s hour

Is it to tell us pleasures have their sting,

And radiant youth must fade like any flower?

Lucien’s pride was piqued by Lousteau’s complete unresponsiveness while listening to this sonnet. He was not yet acquainted with the disconcerting impassivity which hardened critics acquire and is a distinguishing mark in journalists equally tired of prose, drama and verse. Our poet, accustomed to receiving applause, gulped down his disappointment; he then read out the sonnet which was a favourite with Madame de Bargeton and some of his Cénacle friends.

‘Perhaps,’ he thought, ‘this will wring a word from him.’

SONNET NO. TWO
THE MARGUERITE

I am the Marguerite. No fairer flower

Spangled the verdure of the velvet sward.

My simple beauty was its own reward

And morning freshness was my lasting dower.

Alas! against my will a new-born power

To me harsh fate was minded to award:

Prophetic gifts within my petals stored

Have brought me pain and death. O doleful hour!

No more in peace and silence do I live.

An answer to fond sweethearts must I give:

‘He loves me, loves me not.’ So runs the story

Torn from the gleaming whiteness of my gown.

– What other blossoms, thus despoiled of glory

But yield their secret to be trodden down?

When he had finished, the poet looked at his Aristarchus: Etienne Lousteau was contemplating the trees in the nursery plantation.

‘Well?’ asked Lucien.

‘Well, my friend. Carry on. Am I not listening? In Paris, to listen without saying a word is high praise.’

‘Perhaps you have had enough?’ said Lucien.

‘Continue,’ was the journalist’s reply.

Lucien then read the following sonnet; but he was filled with mortification, for Lousteau’s inscrutable calm cast a chill on his recital. Had he had more experience of literary life, he would have known that, with writers, silence and curtness in such circumstances betoken the jealousy aroused by a fine work, just as their admiration denotes the pleasure they feel on listening to a mediocre work which confirms them in their self-esteem.

SONNET NO. THIRTY
THE CAMELLIA

Each flower’s a word in Nature’s book to read.

On love and beauty is the rose intent;

Sweet modesty the violets represent

And simple candour is the lily’s screed.

But the Camellia, not of Nature’s breed,

Unstately lily, rosebud void of scent,

To bloom in frigid seasons seems content

And chilly virgin’s coquetry to feed.

Yet, in the theatre, when fair women lean

Over the balconies to view the scene,

Its alabaster petals give delight:

Snow-garlands, setting off the raven hair

Of love-inspiring ladies gathered there.

– No Phidias marble is more chastely white.

‘What do you think of my poor sonnets?’ Lucien asked in formal tones.

‘Are you asking for the truth?’ said Lousteau.

‘I am young enough to love truth, and I am too anxious for success not to hear it without getting annoyed – but not without feeling despair.’

‘Very well, my friend. The circumlocutions in the first one indicate a poem written in Angoulême, one which no doubt caused you too much effort for you to scrap it. The second and the third have more of a Paris atmosphere about them. But read me yet one more,’ he added, with a gesture which the provincial prodigy found charming.

Encouraged by this request, Lucien was more self-confident in reading the sonnet which d’Arthez and Bridau liked best, perhaps because of the colour in it.

SONNET NO. FIFTY
THE TULIP

The Tulip I. From Dutch line I descend:

So exquisite and of so pure a strain

In brilliant hues on graceful stem I reign.

Flemings, to own me, half their substance spend.

To feudal ladyship I do pretend

And hold me stately like a châtelaine.

Gay colours doth my coat of arms contain:

Gules fessed with argent and with purple bend.

The heavenly Gardener tressed with loving hands

His sunbeam threads and royal purple strands

To weave for me a tunic soft and neat.

No flower in His own garden shows more fair,

Though in my cup of daintiest china-ware

Nature has stored no wealth of odours sweet.

‘Well?’ asked Lucien after a moment of silence which seemed to him inordinately long.

‘M
Y
friend,’ said Etienne Lousteau gravely, looking at the tips of the boots which Lucien had brought from Angoulême and which he was finishing wearing out. ‘I advise you to black your boots with your ink in order to save boot-polish, to make toothpicks of your quill pens in order to give the appearance of having dined when, after leaving Flicoteaux’s, you stroll along the beautiful walks in this garden, and look for some sort of job. Become a bailiff’s man if you have pluck enough, a book-keeper if you prefer a sedentary life, or a soldier if you’ve a liking for military bands. You have the stuff of three poets in you; but, if you reckon to live on what your poetry brings in, you have time to die half a dozen deaths before you make your name. Now, judging by your rather youthful remarks, your intention is to coin money with your pen. I’m not passing judgement on your poetry: it’s far better than all the volumes of verse which clutter up the bookshops. Almost all those “nightingales”, marked at a slightly higher price than the others because they are printed on vellum, come fluttering down to the banks of the Seine, where you may go and study the songs they sing if one day you feel like making an instructive pilgrimage along the Paris quays from old Jérôme’s secondhand bookstall on the Pont Notre-Dame as far as the Pont-Royal. There you will find all the
Essays in Poesy, Inspirations, Elevations, Hymns, Chants, Ballads, Odes,
in short all the clutches that have hatched out during the last seven years: muses covered with dust, spattered with mud by passing cabs, thumb-marked by all the idlers who want to look at the vignettes on the title-pages.