Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (57 page)

Des Lupeaulx left the
foyer.
Finot went over to Lucien and, with the tone of geniality which took in so many people, explained why he could not forgo the copy due to him. He shrank, he said, from the idea of a law-suit which would ruin the hopes his friend was placing in the royalist party. He liked people who were strong-minded enough to make a bold change of front. Had not Lucien and he to rub shoulders with each other through life? Would not each of them have innumerable little services to render the other? Lucien needed a reliable man in the Liberal party in order to launch attacks on the ministerialists or Ultras if they refused to serve his interests.

‘Suppose they fool you, what will you do then?’ Finot concluded. ‘If some minister, believing he has you tied to the halter of your apostasy, ceases to be afraid of you and sends you about your business, won’t you have to set a few dogs on him to bite him in the calf? Well now, you’re at daggers drawn with Lousteau who’s out for your blood. You and Félicien are no longer on speaking terms. I’m the only one you have left! One of the rules of my profession is to live on good terms with really able men. You can do for me, in the society you frequent, equivalent services to those I shall do for you in the Press. But business before all else! Send me some purely literary articles: they won’t compromise you, and you’ll have discharged your obligations.’

Lucien saw nothing but friendliness, mingled with artful calculations, in Finot’s proposals. Flattery from him and Des Lupeaulx had put him into a good humour: he thanked Finot!

This cruel moment had come to Lucien. Everything had gone too happily for him in the social and the literary world; he had been too lucky, and was to see men and things turning against him. The first blow was the sharpest and most grievous of all: it reached him in what he thought to be an invulnerable spot, his heart and his love. Coralie might not be keen-witted, but she had shining qualities of soul and the gift for revealing them in the sudden impulses which are characteristic of great actresses. These strange manifestations, so long as they have not become a matter of habit through long use, are subject to whims of character, and often to a praiseworthy modesty which dominates actresses who are still young. Inwardly naive and timid, outwardly bold and uninhibited as a player has to be, Coralie, still in love, felt her woman’s heart reacting against the mask she wore as an actress. The art of counterfeiting sentiment, a sublime sort of insincerity, had not yet triumphed over nature in her. She was ashamed of giving to the public what love alone could rightfully claim. Also she had a weakness peculiar to women who are truly feminine. Whilst knowing that her vocation was to reign as a sovereign on the stage,
she yet stood in need of success. Incapable of facing an audience with which she was not in sympathy, she always trembled as she walked on; and then she might well be frozen by a cold reception. Thanks to this terrible sensitivity, each new part she played was like a first appearance for her. Applause induced a sort of intoxication in her which had no effect on her self-esteem but which alone could give her courage: a murmur of disapproval or the silence of a listless public upset her completely; a large and attentive audience, eyes focused on her with admiration and benevolence, galvanized her, and then she could enter into communication with the nobler qualities in all their souls and felt she had the power to elevate and move them. This dual effect accentuated both the sensitiveness of the genius in her and its constitutive elements, and also laid bare the poor girl’s delicacy and tenderness.

Lucien had come to appreciate the treasures stored in her heart and realized that his mistress was still very much of a girl. Unskilled in the insincerities common to actresses, Coralie was incapable of defending herself against the backstage rivalries and machinations which were a matter of habit with Florine, as dangerous and depraved a young woman as Coralie was simple and generous. It was necessary for roles to come Coralie’s way: she was too proud to go begging to authors and submit to their degrading terms, or to give herself to the first pen-pusher who tried to blackmail her into sleeping with him. Talent, rare enough in the strange art of histrionics, is only one condition of success; for a long time talent is even a drawback unless there goes with it some genius for intrigue: this Coralie absolutely lacked. Foreseeing what sufferings lay in store for his mistress when she began at the Gymnase, Lucien wanted at all cost to procure a triumph for her. The money left over from the sale of furniture and that which Lucien earned had all gone in costumes, equipment for her dressing-room and all the expenses an opening performance entails. A few days beforehand, Lucien took a humiliating step under the stimulus of love: he went with Fendant and Cavalier’s bills to the Golden Cocoon in the rue des Bourdonnais
to propose that Camusot should discount them. The poet was not yet so corrupted as to be able to advance coolly to this encounter. The road he took became littered with many sorrows and paved with the most dire reflections as he vacillated between ‘I will! – I won’t!’ Nevertheless he arrived at the cold and dark little office, which drew its light from an inner court, where he found, gravely seated, no longer the man in love with Coralie, the compliant, ineffectual libertine, the doubting Thomas he had known, but the solemn paterfamilias, the smooth, self-righteous business man wearing the respectable mask of a magistrate in the Tribunal de Commerce, entrenched as head of a firm behind an authoritative coldness, surrounded by clerks, cashiers, green filing cabinets, invoices and samples, with his wife on guard and his daughter, a simply-dressed girl, near by. Lucien trembled from head to foot as he approached, for the worthy merchant cast at him the glance of insolent unconcern he had already seen in the eyes of the discounters.

‘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 obviously 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.