Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (49 page)

Lucien, taken with this paradox, put his wit astride the skittish mule which is the offspring of Pegasus and Balaam’s
she-ass. He began to gallop through the fields of thought during his ride in the Bois de Boulogne; he discovered original and attractive features in Blondet’s thesis. He dined as happy men dine, went to Dauriat’s office and signed the contract ceding all rights in the manuscript – without seeing the drawbacks of this – then he made a trip to the newspaper office, where he threw two columns together, and went back to the rue de Vendôme. Next morning, it turned out that the previous day’s ideas had germinated, as happens with all minds which are bursting with sap and whose faculties have as yet had little exercise. Lucien derived pleasure from thinking out this new article and set about it with enthusiasm. From his pen flowed all the fine sallies born of paradox. He was witty and mocking, he even rose to new reflexions on feeling, ideas and imagery in literature. With subtle ingenuity, in order to praise Nathan, he recaptured the first impressions about the book he had had at the reading-room in the Cour du Commerce. After being a harsh and scathing, a bantering and humorous critic, he became quite poetic in a few final periods whose majestic balance was like that of a perfume-laden censer swinging before an altar.

‘There’s a hundred francs, Coralie!’ he cried, holding up the eight sheets which he had written while she was dressing.

In this state of verve, he dashed off the terrible article against Châtelet and Madame de Bargeton which he had promised Blondet. That whole morning he enjoyed in secret one of the liveliest pleasures known to journalists, that of whetting the epigram, polishing the cold blade which finds a sheath in the victim’s heart and carving the handle of it for the readers’ delectation. The public admires the intellectual craftsmanship which has gone to the making of this dagger-hilt and sees no harm in it, not knowing that the steel of a vengeful witticism artfully probes and burrows into someone’s self-esteem and inflicts innumerable wounds. This horrible pleasure, sombre and solitary, savoured in secrecy, is like a duel fought with an absent person who is killed from a distance with the shaft of a pen, as if the journalist had the fantastic power of wish-fulfilment accorded to the possessors of talismans in Arabian
tales. An epigram is wit prompted by hatred, and hatred springs from man’s evil passions just as all his good qualities are distilled from love. And so there is no man who fails to be witty when avenging himself for the same reason that there is no man who fails to obtain enjoyment from love. Despite the facility and vulgarity of this kind of wit in France, it is always well received. Lucien’s article was destined to put, and it did put, the finishing touch to the reputation for malice and spitefulness which his newspaper acquired: it struck through to the heart of two people, grievously wounding Madame de Bargeton, his erstwhile Laura, and Baron Châtelet, his rival.

‘Well now,’ Coralie said to him. ‘Let’s take a ride in the Bois: the horses are harnessed and stamping. You mustn’t kill yourself with work.’

‘Let’s take the Nathan article to Hector. Decidedly a newspaper’s like the lance of Achilles, which cured the wounds it had inflicted,’ said Lucien, emending a few phrases in his script.

The two lovers set off and made a splendid parade in the Paris which, not long since, had repudiated Lucien and was now beginning to take notice of him. The fact of commanding notice in Paris, having realized its immensity and the difficulty of making an impression there, put Lucien in a state of elation which went to his head.

‘My darling,’ said the actress, ‘let’s call at your tailor’s to get your clothes pressed or try on the new ones if they’re ready. If you go to your fine ladies’ houses, I want you to wipe the floor with such people as the monster De Marsay, little Rastignac, Ajuda-Pinto, Maxime de Trailles and the Vandenesse brothers, in fact all those foppish creatures! Don’t forget that Coralie is your mistress! And remember not to aim any darts at her!’

‘I must go and do my job at the Ambigu,’ he said. There was a full house at the Ambigu and no seat for Lucien. He went back-stage and bitterly complained at there being no reserved seat for him. The stage-manager, who did not know him as yet, told him that two tickets had been sent to his newspaper and washed his hands of him.

‘I shall write about the play according to the amount of it I’ve heard,’ said Lucien with an air of pique.

‘Are you crazy?’ the leading lady said to the stage-manager. ‘He’s Coralie’s lover.’

The stage-manager immediately turned to Lucien and said: ‘Monsieur, I’ll go and talk to the house-manager.’

Thus the slightest incidents showed Lucien how powerful the Press was and flattered his vanity. The house-manager
went and asked the Duc de Rhétoré and Tullia, the
prima donna
, who were in a stage-box, to take him in with them. The duke recognized Lucien and consented.

‘You have brought two people to despair,’ the young man said to him, referring to Baron Châtelet and Madame de Bargeton.

‘What will they feel like tomorrow then?’ asked Lucien. ‘Up to now my friends have merely been sharp-shooting at them, but tonight I’m firing off a red-hot cannon-ball. Tomorrow you’ll see why we make fun of Potelet. The article is entitled: “Potelet in 1811 and Potelet in 1821.” Châtelet will be exposed as one of those types who have betrayed their benefactor by rallying to the Bourbons. After I’ve shown them all I can do, I’ll go to Madame de Montcornet’s salon.’

In the conversation which ensued Lucien displayed sparkling wit: he was intent on showing this aristocrat what a gross mistake Madame d’Espard and Madame de Bargeton had made in spurning him. But, when the duke maliciously called him Chardon, he gave himself away by attempting to establish his right to bear the name of Rubempré.

‘You ought,’ the duke said to him, ‘to become a royalist. You have proved you are a man of wit: now prove you’re a man of good sense. The only way to get a royal ordinance restoring the title and name of your maternal ancestors is to ask for it as a reward for services rendered to the Chateau. The Liberals will never make you a count! Mark my words, in the long run the restored monarchy will get the better of the Press, the only power to be feared. There has been too much delay: the Press ought to be muzzled. Take advantage of its last moments of freedom to show you’re a man to be reckoned with. In a few years’ time a name and a title will be a more stable form of wealth than talent. So you can have everything: intelligence, noble rank and good looks, and the world will be at your feet. At present therefore be a Liberal only in order to put a better price on your royalism.’

The duke begged Lucien to accept the invitation to dinner which would be coming from the envoy with whom he had supped in Florine’s rooms. Lucien was immediately won over
by the nobleman’s reflexions and was charmed to see opening before him the doors of the salons from which he had believed a few months ago that he was permanently excluded. He marvelled at the power of ideas: evidently the Press and intellectual ability were a passport in present-day society. He appreciated the possibility that Lousteau regretted having opened the gates of the Temple to him; he was already, for personal reasons, aware of the need for setting up barriers which ambitious people rushing up to Paris from the provinces found it difficult to clamber over. If a young poet came and appealed to him as impetuously as he had appealed to Lousteau, he scarcely dared ask himself what sort of reception he would give him. The young duke perceived that Lucien was meditating deeply on these matters and was in no doubt as to their cause: he had revealed the whole political vista to this ambitious youth, unstable of will but unbounded in his desires, just as the journalists, like the Devil tempting Jesus, had taken him to the pinnacle of the Temple and shown him the kingdoms and riches of the world of literature. Lucien did not suspect that a little conspiracy was being woven against him by those who were at that moment suffering from the newspaper attacks, or that Monsieur de Rhétoré had a finger in the pie. The latter had alarmed Madame d’Espard’s coterie by talking of Lucien’s wit in their presence. Commissioned by Madame de Bargeton to sound the journalist, he had been hoping they would meet at the Ambigu-Comique. Neither polite society nor the journalists should be credited with deep schemes or well-concerted treachery. Neither the one nor the other plan their campaigns in advance: their Machiavellism lives so to speak from hand to mouth and consists in always being on the spot, ready for anything, ready to take what comes, good or evil, and to watch for moments when passion puts a man at their mercy. During Florine’s supper, the duke had sized up Lucien’s character: now he had captured him by playing on his vanity and was practising his diplomatic ability on him.

When the play was over, Lucien hurried to the rue Saint-Fiacre to write his review of it. His criticism was deliberately
harsh and mordant: it pleased him to try out his power. This melodrama was better than that of the Panorama-Dramatique; but he wanted to find out if he was capable, as he had been told he was, of damning a good play and bringing success to a bad one. Next day, at lunch with Coralie, he unfolded the newspaper, after telling her that he had torn the Ambigu-Comique play to shreds. He was more than mildly astonished to read, after his article on Madame de Bargeton and Châtelet, a review of the Ambigu play that had been so toned down during the night that, while his witty analysis of it remained intact, a favourable verdict emerged from it. The play was sure to fill the theatre coffers. His fury was indescribable: he decided to thrash the matter out with Lousteau. He believed himself to be indispensable and resolved that he would not let himself be dominated and exploited like a nincompoop. In order to put his power on a firm footing, he wrote an article in which he summed up and counterbalanced all the opinions about Nathan’s book set forth in Dauriat’s and Finot’s respective Reviews. Then, once his blood was up, he tossed off one of his ‘Variétés’ articles due for the little paper. In the first flush of enthusiasm, young journalists give loving care to their articles and in this way, very imprudently, they use up all their ammunition. The director of the Panorama-Dramatique was giving the first performance of a vaudeville in order to leave Florine and Coralie a free evening. It was to be played before the supper began. Lousteau came for Lucien’s article on it; he had written it in advance, having attended the dress rehearsal so that there need be no anxiety about the paper being set up in time. When Lucien had read him one of those charming little articles on Parisian foibles – which brought success to the newspaper – Etienne kissed him on both eyes and hailed him as the Providence of the daily press.

‘Why then do you amuse yourself changing the gist of my articles?’ asked Lucien, who had only written this brilliant article in order to give greater cogency to his grievances.

‘Who, I?’ exclaimed Lousteau.

‘Well then, who was it altered my article?’

‘My dear,’ Etienne replied with a laugh. ‘You’re not yet
au fait
as concerns business. The Ambigu provides us with twenty subscribers, and the paper is only delivered to nine of them: the director, the orchestra conductor, the stage-manager, their mistresses and three joint owners of the theatre. In this way each of the boulevard theatres pays the newspaper eight hundred francs. There’s the same amount of money in boxes allotted to Finot, without counting the subscriptions taken out by actors and actresses. So the rascal reaps eight thousand francs from the boulevard theatres. That being the case with the small theatres, guess what the big ones bring in! Do you understand? We have to show a great deal of indulgence.’

‘What you mean is that I’m not free to write what I think.’

‘Why, what matter, if you make a good thing out of it?’ asked Lousteau. ‘Besides, my dear, what have you got against this theatre? You must have some motive for slashing yesterday’s play. If we slashed for the fun of it we should endanger the paper. If we made well-deserved attacks it would lose all its power. Has the manager fallen short with you?’

‘He hadn’t kept a seat for me.’

‘Right!’
said Lousteau. ‘I’ll show the manager your article and tell him I softened it down: you’ll get more out of it than if it had appeared. Ask him for some tickets tomorrow: he’ll give a blank signature for forty per month, and I’ll take you to a man with whom you’ll come to an arrangement for unloading them; he’ll buy them from you for half the price of the seats. You’ll meet another Barbet, a leader of the
claque.
He doesn’t live far away. We’ve time enough. Come on.’

‘But, my dear man, Finot is plying a scandalous trade by thus levying indirect taxes on the products of thought. Sooner or later…’

‘Get along with you! Where were you born? cried Lousteau. ‘What do you take Finot for? Underneath his false good nature, his hypocritical airs, his ignorance and stupidity you’ll find all the astuteness of the hatmaker from whose loins he sprang. Didn’t you see in his den in the newspaper office an old Empire veteran, his uncle? This uncle is not only a respectable man, he’s lucky enough to pass for a numskull.

It’s he that’s involved in all the pecuniary transactions. An ambitious man in Paris is very well off when he has at his side a catspaw who lets himself be involved like that. In politics as in journalism there are lots of cases in which the chiefs must never get entangled. If Finot went into politics, his uncle would be his secretary and rake in on his own account the levies made in ministerial bureaux on important affairs, Giroudeau, whom you’d take at first glance for a simpleton, has just enough cunning to be a stooge who can’t be caught out. He’s on sentry-go to save our ears from being deafened with complaints, objections and pestering by would-be recruits. I don’t believe you’ll find his like on any other newspaper.’