Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (58 page)

‘I
will
play my part,’ she screamed.

But she fell back in a faint. And so Florine took over her part and made her reputation in it, for she saved the play. All the Press gave her an ovation, as a consequence of which she became the great actress who is well-known today. Her triumph exasperated Lucien in the highest degree.

‘… A wretched creature who owes you her daily bread I Let the Gymnase buy you out of your engagement if it wants to. I shall be the Comte de Rubempré. I shall make a fortune and marry you!’

‘That would be foolish,’ said Coralie, throwing a wan look at him.

‘Foolish?’ cried Lucien. ‘Well then, in a few days you’ll be living in a fine house, you’ll have a carriage, and I’ll write a part for you!’

He took two thousand francs and ran off to Frascati’s. The unhappy man stayed there seven hours, a prey to all the furies, though outwardly calm and cool. During the whole day and a part of the night he had the most varying luck: he won as much as thirty thousand francs and left without a penny. When he got home, he found Finot there waiting for his ‘little articles’. Lucien made the mistake of complaining.

‘Oh, life’s not a bed of roses,’ Finot replied. ‘You were so
sudden with your half-right turn that you were bound to lose the support of the Liberal press, which has much more power than the ministerial and royalist press. You should never move from one camp into another before making a good bed in it, one in which you can console yourself for losses you must expect. But in any case a wise man goes and sees his friends, explains his motives and gets their advice about his abjuration. Then they become his accomplices, pity him, and then they agree, as Nathan and Merlin did with their cronies, to take in one another’s washing. Wolf doesn’t eat wolf. You yourself, in this affair, displayed the innocence of a lamb. You’ll have to show your teeth to your new party if you want to get a cut of the joint out of them. And so it’s not surprising that they’ve sacrificed you to Nathan. I won’t hide from you the noise, scandal and uproar your article against d’Arthez is raising. People are saying that Marat was a saint compared with you. They’re getting ready to attack you, and your book won’t survive it. How’s your novel going?’

‘There are the last pages,’ said Lucien, pointing to a batch of proofs.

‘Unsigned articles against little d’Arthez in the ministerial and Ultra papers are being attributed to you. Every day now
Le Réveil
is sticking pins into the people in the rue des Quatre-Vents; their gibes are funny, and therefore all the more murderous. Yet there’s a whole political clique, a grave and serious one, lined up behind Léon Giraud’s paper – they’ll get into power sooner or later.’

‘I haven’t set foot in
Le Réveil
for a week.’

‘Well, think about my little articles. Write fifty straight away and I’ll make one payment for the lot. But mind they conform to the tone of the paper.’

Thereupon Finot nonchalantly gave Lucien the subject for a humorous article against the Keeper of the Seals, telling him a spurious story which, he said, was going round the salons.

To make good his gambling losses Lucien, despite his depression, recovered his verve and mental agility, and composed thirty articles, each one amounting to two columns.
That done, he went to see Dauriat, sure of finding Finot there and wanting to hand them over quietly. He also wanted to hear the publisher explain why his poems were not in print. The shop was full of his enemies. At his entry, there was complete silence; all conversation ceased. Seeing himself sentenced as an outlaw, Lucien felt his courage redoubled, and he told himself, as he had done in the Luxembourg alley, ‘I
will
win through!’

Dauriat was neither patronizing nor kind; he was facetious, and stood firm on his rights: he would publish the
Marguerites
in his own good time and would wait until Lucien’s position could ensure their success, since he had bought the entire rights in them. When Lucien objected that Dauriat was obliged by the very nature of the contract and the status of the contracting parties to publish the collection, the publisher maintained the contrary view and said that in law he could not be held to an operation which he deemed ill-advised: he alone was the judge of its timeliness. Moreover there was a solution of which all the courts would approve: Lucien was entitled to return the three thousand francs, take his work back and get it published by a royalist firm.

Lucien withdrew, more vexed by the moderate tone Dauriat had adopted than he had been with his autocratic pompousness at their first interview. And so the
Marguerites
would no doubt only be published at the moment when he had on his side the auxiliary strength of an influential caucus or when he himself became a power to be reckoned with. The poet went home slowly, a prey to such discouragement as might have led him to suicide if action had followed thought. He found Coralie in bed, pale and ill.

‘Get her a part, or she’ll die,’ Bérénice said to Lucien while he was dressing to go to the house where Mademoiselle des Touches lived in the rue du Mont-Blanc: she was giving a soirée where he was to find Des Lupeaulx, Vignon, Blondet, Madame d’Espard and Madame de Bargeton.

It was being given in honour of Conti, the great composer who was renowned as one of the best singers outside the theatre, La Cinti, La Pasta, Garcia, Levasseur and two or
three illustrious amateur singers belonging to society. Lucien moved smoothly towards the spot where the Marquise, her cousin and Madame de Montcornet were sitting. The unhappy young man assumed a light, contented, happy air; he made jokes, displayed himself as he had been in his days of splendour and tried not to appear as if he needed the support of high society. He expatiated on the services he was rendering to the royalist party and offered as proof the cries of hate which the Liberals were raising.

‘You will be very amply rewarded, my friend,’ said Madame de Bargeton, directing a gracious smile at him. ‘Go to the Chancellery the day after tomorrow with the Heron and Des Lupeaulx, and there you’ll find your ordinance signed by His Majesty. Tomorrow the Keeper of the Seals is taking it to the Château; but the Council is sitting, and he’ll be late coming back. Anyway, if I heard the result in the evening, I’d send word to you. Where are you living?’

‘I’ll come for it,’ answered Lucien, ashamed to have to say that he lived in the rue de la Lune.

‘The Duc de Lenoncourt and the Duc de Navarreins have spoken of you to the King,’ said the Marquise, taking up the tale. ‘They spoke highly of your absolute and entire devotion, such devotion as merits an outstanding reward to requite you for the persecutions of the Liberal party. For that matter, the name and title of the Rubemprés, to which you have a right through your mother, will become illustrious through you. In the evening the King told the Lord Chancellor to bring him an ordinance authorizing Monsieur Lucien Chardon to bear the name and titles of the Comtes de Rubempré in his quality as grandson of the last Count through his mother. “Let us encourage the song-birds
¹
of Pindus,” he said after reading your sonnet on the lily, which happily my cousin remembered and which she had given to the Duke. Monsieur de Navarreins replied: “Particularly since Your Majesty can perform the miracle of changing song-birds into eagles.”’

Lucien’s effusive gratitude might have softened any woman
less deeply offended than Louise d’Espard de Nègrepelisse. The more handsome Lucien was, the more she thirsted for vengeance. Des Lupeaulx had been right: Lucien, had no flair. He was unable to guess that the alleged ordinance was only a hoax with Madame d’Espard’s hall-mark on it. Emboldened by his success and the flattering distinction which Mademoiselle des Touches showed him, he stayed at her house until two in the morning in order to speak to her privately. He had learnt in the royalist newspaper offices that Mademoiselle des Touches was secretly collaborating in a play with a part for the star of the moment, little Léontine Fay. Once the salons were deserted, he took Mademoiselle des Touches to a sofa in the boudoir, and so movingly related Coralie’s misfortune and his own that the illustrious hermaphrodite
¹
promised to have the chief part given to Coralie.

The morning after, just as Coralie, cheered by this promise, was coming back to life and lunching with her poet, Lucien was reading Lousteau’s newspaper, which contained the epigrammatical account of the fabricated anecdote about the Keeper of the Seals and his wife. The King himself was cleverly portrayed in it and ridiculed without the Public Prosecutor being able to intervene.

Here is the story to which the Liberal party tried to give the appearance of truth, but which was merely one more of the many clever slanders it spread abroad.

Louis the Eighteenth’s passion for amatory and musk-scented correspondence, full of madrigals and scintillating conceits, was interpreted in this article as the final phase in a love-life which had by now become theoretic: he was passing, it said, from deeds to ideas. His illustrious favourite, so cruelly lampooned by Béranger under the name of Octavie, had conceived some very serious misgivings. Her correspondence with His Majesty was languishing. The more sparkle Octavie displayed, the colder and duller her lover became. It was not long before Octavie discovered why she
was out of favour: her power was threatened by the piquant first-fruits of a new correspondence between the royal penman and the wife of the Keeper of the Seals. This excellent lady was reputed to be incapable of writing a love-letter, and therefore must purely and simply be a go-between acting for some boldly ambitious person. Who could be hiding behind these petticoats?

After making some enquiries, Octavie discovered that the King’s correspondent was his own Chancellor. She laid her plans. With the help of a dependable friend, she one day had the Minister detained by a stormy debate in the Chamber of Deputies and contrived a tête-à-tête during which she outraged the King’s self-esteem by showing that he was being duped. Louis XVIII fell into a characteristically royal and Bourbon rage, stormed at Octavie and refused to believe her. Octavie offered immediate proof by asking him to write a note which called peremptorily for a reply. The unhappy wife, thus taken by surprise, sent someone to fetch her husband from the Chamber. But this had been foreseen, and at that moment he was making a speech. His wife sweated blood, summoned up all her wit and replied with what little she had been able to muster.

‘Your Chancellor can tell you the rest!’ Octavie exclaimed, laughing at the King’s discomfiture.

Mendacious as this article was, it stung the Keeper of the Seals, his wife and the King to the quick. It is said that Des Lupeaulx, whose secret Finot never divulged, had invented the anecdote. This lively and mordant article delighted the Liberals and the party led by the King’s brother. It had amused Lucien without him thinking it to be anything else than a very pleasant
canard.
He went next day to pick up Des Lupeaulx and the Baron du Châtelet, who wished to convey his thanks to the Lord Chancellor for having been appointed a Councillor of State with special functions, made a Count and promised that he should be Prefect of the Charente as soon as the present Prefect had eked out the few months he needed to complete his term of office so that he could qualify for the maximum pension. The Comte du Châtelet – for the
du
was
inserted into the ordinance – took Lucien in his carriage and treated him as an equal. Had it not been for Lucien’s articles, he would perhaps not have been so promptly raised to such eminence: persecution by the Liberals had proved to be a stepping-stone for him. Des Lupeaulx was already at the Ministry in the Secretary-General’s cabinet. When he caught sight of Lucien, this official gave a start of astonishment and looked at Des Lupeaulx.

‘What! You dare to come here, sir?’ said the Secretary-General to the stupefied Lucien. ‘The Lord Chancellor has torn up the ordinance prepared for you. There it is!’ He pointed to some paper or other which had been torn to shreds. ‘The Minister wanted to know who had written yesterday’s appalling article–here is a copy of the issue,’ said the Secretary-General, tendering to Lucien the pages of his article. ‘You call yourself a royalist, sir, and you contribute to that infamous newspaper which is making the Ministers’ hair turn white, causing vexation to the Centre parties and working for our downfall. You lunch on the
Corsaire,
the
Miroir,
the
Constitutionnel
and the
Courrier;
you dine on the
Quotidienne
and the
Réveil,
and you have supper with Martainville, the most terrible antagonist the Ministry has: he’s urging the King towards absolutism, and that would lead to revolution as quickly as if he went over to the extreme Left. You are a journalist of great wit, but you’ll never be a politician. The Minister denounced you to the King as the author of the article, and in his anger the King reprimanded Monsieur le Duc de Navarreins, his first gentleman-in-waiting. You have made enemies, so much the more to be feared because they were favourably disposed to you! What may seem natural coming from an enemy is appalling when it comes from an ally.’

‘Why, you’ve behaved like a child, my dear,’ said Des Lupeaulx. ‘You’ve compromised me. Mesdames d’Espard and de Bargeton, and Madame de Montcornet, who had answered for you, must be furious. The Duke will certainly have vented his wrath on the Marquise and the Marquise will have scolded her cousin. Better keep away from them and wait.’

‘The Lord Chancellor is coming. Please leave,’ said the Secretary-General.

Lucien found himself in the Place Vendôme, as stunned as a man who has just been hit on the head with a bludgeon. As he walked back along the boulevards he tried to judge his own actions. He saw himself as the plaything of envious, avid and perfidious men. What was he in that ambitious world? A child running after the pleasures and enjoyments of vanity and sacrificing everything to them; a poet with no depth of thought, flitting like a moth from candle to candle, having no settled plan, the slave of circumstance, thinking sensibly but acting foolishly. He was suffering endless torments of conscience. To sum up, he was penniless, he felt worn out with toil and grief, and his articles were taking second place to those of Nathan and Merlin.