Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (46 page)

‘Even as things are, there’s not such a lot of money for the staff,’ he said to Giroudeau.

‘The more there were of you, the less each one would get,’ the captain replied. ‘So there it is!’

The old veteran twirled his leaded cane, went out grunting his
hrrum-hrrum
and looked surprised when he saw Lucien getting into the fine carriage which was waiting in the boulevard.

‘Nowadays it’s you who are the military men, and we the civilians,’ the soldier said to him.

‘You’ll succeed, darling. But don’t be as good as you are beautiful: you’d come to ruin. Be hard on people – that’s the way to get on.’

Coralie and Lucien went for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne, and there they once more met the Marquise d’Espard, Madame de Bargeton and Baron Châtelet. Madame de Bargeton gave Lucien a seductive glance which could well be taken for a salutation. Camusot had ordered the best of all possible dinners. Coralie, now that she knew she was rid of him, was so charming to the wretched silk-merchant that he could not remember her having been so gracious or attractive during the fourteen months of their relationship.

‘Come now,’ he said to himself. ‘Why not keep on with her in spite of what’s happened?’

He proposed on the quiet to Coralie that he should buy her six thousand francs’ income in Government stock – which his wife would know nothing about – if she would continue to be his mistress; he would be willing to turn a blind eye on her affair with Lucien.

‘Would I betray such an angel?… Take a look at him, you old scarecrow, and then at yourself!’ she said, pointing to the poet, whom Camusot had plied with drink to make him slightly tipsy.

Camusot decided to wait for indigence to give him back the woman whom indigence had delivered over to him once before.

‘Very well, I’ll just be your friend,’ he said, kissing her on the forehead.

Lucien left Coralie and Camusot in order to go to the Wooden Galleries. How changed in mind he was since his initiation into the mysteries of journalism! He mingled boldly with the swirling crowd in the Galleries, assumed an insolent air because he had a mistress and made a free and easy entrance into Dauriat’s shop because he was a journalist. He found a great gathering there and exchanged handshakes with Blondet, Nathan, Finot and all the literary men with whom he had been fraternizing for a week. He felt important and flattered himself that he outshone his companions; the modicum of wine he had taken had a wonderfully stimulating effect on him: he was witty and showed that he was able to howl with the pack. None the less, Lucien did not receive the tacit approval, mute or spoken, on which he was counting: he sensed an initial surge of jealousy in this gathering, as yet not so much anxious as curious to know how highly this talented newcomer would rate among them and how big a slice he would grab of the journalistic cake. Finot, who looked on Lucien as a mine to be exploited, and Lousteau, who believed he had a claim on his gratitude, were the only ones, so it seemed to the poet, who smiled on him. Lousteau, who had already taken on the airs of an editor, tapped smartly on the window-panes of Dauriat’s office.

‘One moment, my friend,’ the publisher replied, raising his head above the green curtains and recognizing him.

This moment lasted an hour, after which Lucien and his friend entered the sanctum.

‘Well now,’ the new editor asked. ‘Have you thought over our friend’s piece of business?’

‘Indeed I have,’ said Dauriat, leaning forward in his armchair like an oriental potentate. ‘I’ve glanced through the collection of poems and got a man of taste, a good judge, to read them, for I don’t claim to be a connoisseur in poetry. I, my friend, buy ready-made reputations as an Englishman buys ready-made love. You are as great a poet, my boy, as you are a handsome youngster. On my word as an honest man – I don’t mean as a publisher, mind you – your sonnets are magnificent and you’ve put good work into them, a rare enough thing when one has inspiration and verve. In short, you know how to rhyme – one of the qualities of the modern school. Your
Marguerites
make a fine book, but there’s no money in them, and I can only go in for very big undertakings. My conscience won’t let me take your sonnets; it would be impossible for me to push them, and there’s not enough to be made out of them for what it would cost to make a success of them. Moreover you won’t go on writing poetry: your book is a book apart. You’re a young man! You’re bringing me the eternal collection of early poems that all literary men compose on leaving school; they’re keen on them to start with, and later on they make fun of them. Your friend Lousteau no doubt has a poem stowed away somewhere. Lousteau, haven’t you a poem you laid great store by?’ asked Dauriat, throwing Etienne an astute glance of complicity.

‘Well now,
could
I have been expected to write in prose?’ asked Lousteau.

‘There you are, you see!’ Dauriat continued. ‘And yet he’s never mentioned it to me, but our friend here knows all about publishing and business. The question for me,’ he said to Lucien in oily tones, ‘is not whether you’re a great poet. You have much, but much merit: if I were a beginner in the book-trade, I should make the mistake of publishing your volume. But today, in the first place, my sleeping partners and shareholders would cut off funds – it’s enough for me to have lost twenty thousand francs last year to turn them against poetry,
and they are my masters. Nevertheless that’s not the crux of the matter. I admit that you may be a great poet, but will you be productive? Will you turn out sonnets regularly? Will you run to ten volumes? Will you be a business proposition? Indeed no: you’ll make a delightful writer of prose and you’ve too much intelligence to spoil it with padding; you stand to make thirty thousand francs a year in journalism, and you won’t barter them for the three thousand francs you’d find it hard to rake in with your hemistichs, stanzas and similar trash!’

‘You know, Dauriat,’ said Lousteau, ‘that this gentleman is on our paper.’

‘Yes,’ answered Dauriat. ‘I’ve read his article and – in his own interest, be it understood – I refuse the
Marguerites
. Yes, Monsieur, you’ll get more money from me in the next six months for the articles I shall ask from you than you would for your unsaleable poetry.’

‘But what about my reputation as a writer?’ cried Lucien.

Dauriat and Lousteau burst out laughing.

‘God save us!’ said Lousteau. ‘The man still has his illusions.’

‘Reputation as a writer,’ Dauriat replied, ‘means ten years’ perseverance and the alternative of a hundred thousand francs’ loss or gain for the publisher. If you find people crazy enough to print your poems, in a year from now you’ll think well of me when you learn the result of the operation.’

‘Have you the manuscript with you?’ asked Lucien, coldly.

‘Here it is, my friend,’ replied Dauriat, who was now adopting singularly sugary tones with Lucien.

Lucien took the scroll without looking to see the position of the string, so certain it seemed that Dauriat had read the
Marguerites
. He went out with Lousteau without appearing either dismayed or discontented. Dauriat walked through the shop with the two friends, talking about his newspaper and that of Lousteau. Lucien was unconcernedly toying with the manuscript of the
Marguerites
.

‘Do you believe Dauriat read your sonnets or had them read?’ Etienne whispered to Lucien.

‘Yes,’ said Lucien.

‘Look at the “seals”!’

Lucien perceived that the ink-lines and the string were in a state of perfect conjunction.

‘Which sonnet did you most particularly notice?’ Lucien asked the publisher, turning pale with suppressed rage.

‘They are all worthy of notice, my friend,’ Dauriat replied. ‘But the one on the marguerite is delicious and ends with a very subtle and delicate thought. By that I divined what success your prose is bound to obtain. And so I recommended you straight away to Finot. Write articles for us – we’ll pay well for them. You see, it’s all very fine thinking of reputation, but keep your feet on the ground and take everything that comes your way. You’ll be able to write verses when you’re rich.’

The poet made an abrupt exit into the Galleries in order not to explode: he was furious.

‘At all cost,’ said the poet.

‘Here’s a copy of Nathan’s book that Dauriat has just handed me. The second edition comes out tomorrow; read it again and knock off an article tearing it to shreds. Félicien Vernou can’t stand Nathan because he thinks his success is jeopardizing the future success of his own work. It’s a mania of little minds like his to imagine that there’s no place in the sun for two successes. And so he’ll get your article into the big daily he works for.’

‘But what can one say against the book? It’s a fine book!’ Lucien exclaimed.

‘Oh come, my dear, learn your trade,’ said Lousteau with a laugh. ‘Even if the book’s a masterpiece, your pen must
prove that it’s a piece of stupid nonsense, a dangerous and unwholesome work.’

‘How can I do that?’

‘By making every quality a defect.’

‘Such a
tour de force
is beyond me.’

‘My dear, a journalist is an acrobat, and you must get hardened to the drawbacks of the profession. Look now, I’m a decent chap, and I’ll tell you what to do in such a case. Pay attention, my boy.’

‘You’ll begin by saying it’s a fine work: after that you can enjoy yourself saying what you like about it. The public will say: “This critic isn’t jealous, he’ll certainly be impartial.” From then on it will regard your criticism as conscientious. Having thus acquired your reader’s esteem, you’ll regret to have to cast blame on the system which such books are going to inaugurate in French literature. Does not France, you will ask, hold intellectual sway over the whole world? Until now, century after century, French writers have made Europe keep to the path of analysis and philosophical enquiry through the power of style and the originality of form they have given to ideas. And here you slip in – for the bourgeois reader – some praise for Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Buffon. You’ll explain how inexorable the French language has been and prove that it puts a polish on thought. You’ll fire off axioms like this: in France a great writer is always a great man; his native tongue always constrains him to think; this is not the case in other countries, and so forth. You’ll prove your contention by comparing Rabener, the German satirist of manners, to La Bruyère. There’s nothing like talking about an unknown foreign writer to give standing to a critic – Cousin has used Kant as a springboard. Once you’ve set foot on that territory, you launch an aphorism which sums up and explains for halfwits the system of our eighteenth century men of genius by calling their literature a
literature of ideas
. Using this term as a weapon, you fling all the illustrious departed at the head of living authors. Then you explain how in our day a new literature is being produced which misuses dialogue, the most facile of literary forms, and description, which exempts
people from thinking. Over against the novels of Voltaire, Diderot, Sterne and Lesage, so substantial, so incisive, you’ll set the modern novel which renders everything in images and to which Walter Scott has given far too
dramatic
a character. In such a genre there’s room only for truly original minds. The Scott type of novel is a genre and not a system, you’ll say. You’ll blast this baneful genre in which ideas are thinned down and flattened out, a genre which every type of mind can exploit, a genre which makes it easy for anyone to become an author, a genre which in short you’ll call the
literature of imagery
.

‘You’ll direct this line of argument against Nathan and show he’s an imitator with only a semblance of talent. His book lacks the great, closely-woven style of the eighteenth century; and you’ll show that the author has put events in the place of feelings. Life is not merely movement; ideas are not merely pictures! Reel off maxims like that and the public will repeat them. Despite the merit of the work then, it appears disastrous and dangerous to you; it opens the gates of the Temple of Fame to the mob – and you’ll give a far-off glimpse of a host of minor authors eager to imitate so facile a form. From then on you can let yourself go in thunderous lamentations about the decadence of taste, and you’ll slip in words of praise for Messrs Etienne, Jouy, Tissot, Gosse, Duval, Benjamin Constant, Aignan, Baour-Lormian and Villemain, all of them leading spokesmen of the Liberal Napoleonic party whose protection Vernou’s paper enjoys. You’ll show this glorious phalanx resisting the invasion of the Romantics, standing out for ideas and style against imagery and verbiage, continuing the Voltairian school and opposing the Anglo-German school, in the same way as the seventeen orators of the Left are fighting for the nation against the Ultras of the Right. Under the aegis of these names, venerated by the immense majority of Frenchmen who will always side with the left-wing Opposition, you can pulverize Nathan whose work, though it contains traits of superior beauty, gives freedom of the city to a literature devoid of ideas.

‘From now on, the point at issue – do you take my meaning?
– is no longer Nathan and his book, but the glory of France. It’s the duty of every honest and courageous writer to react vigorously against these importations from abroad. In that way you flatter the subscriber. Your line is that France is wise to all these tricks and not easy to take in. If the publisher, for reasons you don’t want to go into, has calculated on getting away with it, the real public has promptly done justice to the errors committed by the five hundred dolts who constitute the publisher’s vanguard. You’ll say that after being lucky enough to sell one edition of this book, he’s overreaching himself by bringing out a second one, and you’ll regret that so shrewd a man should know so little about the instincts of the nation. That’s your main line of attack. Put a sprinkling of wit into these arguments, season them with a dash of vinegar, and you’ll have Dauriat sizzling in the journalistic frying-pan. But don’t forget to wind up with a show of pity for Nathan’s mistake in taking the wrong road: once he leaves it, contemporary literature will be indebted to him for some fine works.’

Lucien was stupefied as he listened to Lousteau’s words: the scales fell from his eyes and he became alive to literary truths of which he had not even guessed.

‘But what you tell me,’ he exclaimed, ‘is full of reason and relevance.’

‘If it were not, how could you make an attack on Nathan’s book?’ said Lousteau. ‘That, my boy, is Article Number One for the demolition of a work. It’s the critic’s pickaxe. But there are lots of other recipes! You’ll learn as you go on. When you’re obliged to speak in unqualified terms about a man you don’t like – sometimes newspaper-owners and editors have their hands forced – you’ll bring into play the negative gambits of what we call a leading article. You head the article with the title of the book you’re expected to review; you begin with generalities enabling you to talk about the Greeks and the Romans, and then you say at the end: “These considerations bring us to Monsieur So-and-So’s book which will be the subject of a second article.” And the second article never appears. Thus you smother a book between a couple of promises. What you’re writing here isn’t an article against
Nathan, but one against Dauriat: that calls for a pickaxe. A pickaxe glances off a fine work, but it cuts right through to a bad one: in the first case, it hurts only the publisher; in the second case it does the public a service. These forms of literary criticism are used just as much in political criticism.’

Etienne’s cruel lesson was opening shutters in Lucien’s imagination and he caught on admirably to the tricks of the trade.

‘Let’s go to the office,’ said Lousteau. ‘We shall find our friends there and we’ll settle how to drive home the attack on Nathan. You’ll see how they’ll laugh!’

Arriving at the rue Saint-Fiacre, they climbed together to the attic in which the newspaper was being made up, and Lucien was as surprised as he was delighted to see the kind of glee with which his colleagues agreed to demolish Nathan’s book. Hector Merlin took a square of paper and wrote the following lines which he carried off to his newspaper: