Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (59 page)

He went along in a haphazard fashion, lost in his reflections. As he made his way he saw, in several of the reading-rooms which were then beginning to supply books as well as periodicals, a notice on which his name stood out underneath a strange and to him unknown title:
By Monsieur Lucien Chardon de Rubempré.
His novel was out, he had been ignorant of the fact, and the newspapers were saying nothing about it. He stood there with his arms hanging down, motionless, and did not notice a group of most elegant young men, among them Rastignac, De Marsay and a few others of his acquaintance. Nor did he observe that Michel Chrestien and Léon Giraud were approaching him.

‘You are Monsieur Chardon?’ asked Michel in a voice which vibrated inside Lucien like the chords of a harp.

‘Don’t you know me?’ he answered, turning pale.

Michel spat in his face.

‘There’s an honorarium for your article against d’Arthez. If everybody, in his own cause or that of his friends, behaved as I am doing, the Press would still be what it ought to be: a priestly function, respectable and respected.’

Lucien had staggered back. He leaned on Rastignac, and said to him and to De Marsay: ‘Gentlemen, you could scarcely refuse to be my seconds. But first I want to make the score even and the matter irreparable.’

He gave Michel a sharp and unexpected slap in the face. The dandies and Michel’s friends interposed between the republican and the royalist to prevent this conflict from degenerating into a street brawl. Rastignac took hold of Lucien and led him to his own flat in the rue Taitbout, a few yards away from this scene, which had taken place in the Boulevard de Gant in the dinner hour. Thanks to this circumstance, no crowd had gathered round as is usual in such cases. De Marsay came to seek out Lucien, and the two dandies forced him to dine gaily with them at the Café Anglais, where they got drunk.

‘Are you good at épée?’ De Marsay asked him.

‘I have never handled a sword.’

‘With fire-arms?’ asked Rastignac.

‘I have never in my life fired a single pistol-shot.’

‘You have chance on your side,’ said De Marsay. ‘You are a formidable opponent: you might kill your man.’

At five in the morning Rastignac came for Lucien. ‘My friend, your lodging is in keeping with the street you live in.’ This was all he said to him by way of greeting. ‘Let us be first at the rendezvous on the Clignancourt road. That will show good taste, and we must set a good example.’

‘These are the proceedings,’ said De Marsay as soon as their cab turned into the Faubourg Saint-Denis. ‘You are fighting
with pistols at a distance of twenty-five paces, and are free to walk towards one another to a distance of fifteen paces. Thus each of you has five steps to take and three shots to fire – no more. Whatever happens, you undertake both of you to advance no further. We are to load your opponent’s pistols and his seconds will load yours. The weapons have been chosen at an armourer’s by the four seconds together. I promise you, we have given some assistance to chance: you will fight with cavalry pistols.’

Life had become a nightmare to Lucien; he cared not whether he lived or died. And so the courage special to suicides enabled him to make a brave show in the eyes of those who were watching the duel. He did not move forward but maintained his stance. This unconcern was taken for cool calculation and they considered the poet to be a very level-headed person. Michel Chrestien advanced to his full limit. The two opponents fired simultaneously since the insults had been regarded as equal on both sides. At the first shots Chrestien’s bullet grazed Lucien’s chin while the latter’s passed ten feet over his adversary’s head. At the second shot Michel’s bullet lodged in the collar of the poet’s coat, which fortunately was padded and stiffened with buckram. At the third shot, Lucien was hit in the chest and fell flat.

‘Is he dead?’ asked Michel.

‘No,’ said the surgeon, ‘He’ll pull through.’

‘So much the worse,’ Michel retorted.

‘Yes indeed, so much the worse,’ Lucien repeated, bursting into tears.

Midday found the unhappy young man in bed in his room; it had taken five hours and great care to transport him there. Although his condition was not dangerous, cautious treatment was needed: a fever might bring about unwelcome complications. Coralie kept her despair and affliction in control. So long as her lover was in danger, she stayed up at nights with Bérénice, conning her parts. Lucien was in danger for two months. Coralie, poor girl, was sometimes playing roles demanding gaiety, whilst her inner self was saying: ‘Perhaps my dear Lucien is dying at this moment.’

During this period, Lucien was tended by Bianchon: he owed his life to the devotion of this friend whom he had so heinously offended but to whom d’Arthez had confided the secret of Lucien’s visit, thus vindicating the unhappy poet. During one moment of lucidity, Lucien told him he had written no other article on d’Arthez’s book than the solemn and pondered article inserted into Hector Merlin’s paper.

At the end of the first month, Fendant and Cavalier filed their petition. Bianchon told the actress to hide this frightful news from Lucien. The famous
Archer of Charles the Ninth,
published under an eccentric title, had not met with the slightest success. In order to scrape up some more money before filing his petition Fendant, without Cavalier’s knowledge, had sold the whole stock of the work to some philistines who resold it at a reduced price through the book-pedlars. At this moment Lucien’s novel was gracing the parapets of the bridges and quays of Paris. The bookshop on the Quai des Augustins, which had taken a certain quantity of copies, stood therefore to lose a considerable sum thanks to the sudden drop in price: the four 12mo volumes which it had bought for four francs fifty centimes were being offered for two francs fifty. The trade made a loud outcry, but the newspapers continued to maintain the deepest silence. Barbet had not foreseen that the work would be so promptly scrapped, since he believed in Lucien’s talent. Forsaking his usual practice, he had pounced on two hundred copies, and the prospect of a loss drove him frantic: he said horrible things about Lucien. Then he made a heroic decision: with the pigheadedness peculiar to misers, he stored his copies in a corner of his shop and let his colleagues unload theirs at a very low price. Later, in 1824, when d’Arthez’s fine preface, the intrinsic worth of the book and two articles written by Léon Giraud had restored it to its real value, Barbet sold his copies one by one for ten francs each.

Despite the precautions taken by Bérénice and Coralie, they were unable to prevent Hector Merlin from visiting his moribund ‘friend’, and he made him drink, drop by drop, this bitter bowl of ‘broth’, a word used in the book-trade to
describe the baleful operation which Fendant and Cavalier had embarked on in publishing the work of a beginner. Martainville, the only man loyal to Lucien, wrote a magnificent article in favour of the work, but Liberals and Ministerials alike were so exasperated with the editor of the
Aristarque,
the
Oriflamme
and the
Drapeau Blanc
that the efforts of this sturdy athlete, who always repaid the Liberal party with ten insults for one, did some damage to Lucien. No newspaper took up the gauntlet of polemics, however sharp the attacks made by the royalist bravo. Coralie, Bérénice and Bianchon shut the door on all Lucien’s so-called friends, who made loud protests; but it was impossible to stave off the bailiffs. Fendant and Cavalier’s bankruptcy made their bills immediately due by virtue of a provision in the Commercial Code, which inflicts maximum damage on third parties because it deprives them of the benefits of forward deals.

Lucien found that Camusot was taking vigorous proceedings against him. On seeing his name cited, the actress realized the terrible and humiliating step her poet, in her opinion so angelic, had been forced to take; she loved him ten times more for it, and was unwilling to beg Camusot to relent. When the bailiff’s men came for their prisoner, they found him in bed and recoiled at the idea of taking him away. They went to see Camusot before asking the President of the Tribunal to state in which hospital they were to deposit the debtor. Camusot immediately hurried to the rue de la Lune. Coralie went downstairs and came up again with the documents of the proceedings which, on the strength of Lucien’s endorsement, made him out to be a tradesman. How had she obtained these papers from Camusot? What promise had she made? She maintained the most gloomy silence, but she looked half dead as she mounted the stairs.

Coralie performed in Camille Maupin’s play and contributed much to the success achieved by the illustrious hermaphrodite writer. Her creation of this role, however, proved to be the last flicker from this lovely lamp. At the twentieth performance, just when Lucien, restored to health, was beginning to take his food and walk about, and was talking of getting back
to work, Coralie fell ill: she was devoured by a secret sorrow. Bérénice was persuaded that she had promised to return to Camusot in order to save Lucien. Coralie had the mortification of seeing her role given to Florine, for Nathan threatened war on the Gymnase in the event of Florine not taking Coralie’s place. By performing her part till the last moment in order not to let her rival rob her of it, Coralie overtaxed her strength; the Gymnase had advanced her some money, and she could not ask for any more from the theatre coffers; in spite of his willingness, Lucien was still not fit for work, moreover he was nursing Coralie in order to relieve Bérénice. And so this poverty-stricken household came to absolute destitution, although it was lucky enough to find in Bianchon a skilful and devoted doctor who obtained credit for it at the chemist’s. Coralie’s and Lucien’s situation soon became known to tradespeople and the landlord. The furniture was seized. The dressmaker and the tailor, no longer fearing him as a journalist, took merciless proceedings against the Bohemian couple. In the end, only the pork-butcher and the chemist allowed credit to the unhappy pair. Lucien, Bérénice and their patient were obliged for about a week to eat nothing but pork in all the varied and ingenious forms which pork-butchers give to it. Pork-butcher’s meat, which causes inflammation of the intestine, aggravated the actress’s malady.

This indigence forced Lucien to go and ask Lousteau for the thousand francs owed to him by this treacherous man, his former friend, and amid all his woes this was the step it cost him most to take. Lousteau could no longer return to his room in the rue de La Harpe: he was being sued for debt and tracked down like a hare. It was only in Flicoteaux’s restaurant that Lucien was able to find the man who had so disastrously introduced him into the literary world. He was dining at the same table as when Lucien had met him – to his misfortune – on the day when he had moved away from d’Arthez. Lousteau offered him dinner – and Lucien accepted!

After leaving Flicoteaux’s, Claude Vignon, who was dining there that day, Lousteau, Lucien and the anonymous great man whose clothes were kept stored in Samanon’s pawnshop
thought of going to the Café Voltaire for coffee, but they were simply not able to put thirty sous together from among the coppers jingling in their respective pockets. They strolled through the Luxembourg gardens hoping to meet a publisher there, and in fact they came upon one of the best known printers of the time, of whom Lousteau requested forty francs which he produced. Lousteau divided the sum into four equal portions, each of the writers taking one. Indigence had extinguished all pride and feeling in Lucien; he wept in front of these three men of letters as he told them of his plight; but each of his companions had just as cruel and terrible a drama to relate to him: when each one had told his sad tale, the poet found he was the least unfortunate of the four. And so they all felt the need to forget both their misery and the thoughts which made it twice as black. Lousteau rushed off to the Palais-Royal to gamble with the nine francs left out of his ten. The anonymous great man, although he had a ravishing mistress, went to a low-down brothel in order to wallow in the mire of dangerous pleasures. Vignon betook himself to the Petit Rocher de Cancale, intending to down two bottles of claret in order to abdicate both reason and memory. Lucien parted from Claude Vignon at the door of the restaurant, refusing to share Vignon’s supper. The handshake which the provincial celebrity gave to the only Liberal journalist who had not been hostile to him was accompanied by a horrible feeling of depression.

‘What am I to do?’ he asked him.

‘One has to take what comes,’ said the celebrated critic. ‘Your book’s a fine one, but it has made people envious; you’ve a long, hard struggle before you. Genius is a terrible malady. In every writer’s heart is a monster which devours all feelings like a tapeworm the moment they are born. Which will prevail, the malady over the man, or the man over the malady? One must certainly be a great man to keep the balance between genius and character. As talent increases the heart dries up. Short of being a colossus, short of having the shoulders of Hercules, one remains either without heart or without talent. You are of slight and slender build,
you’ll lose the battle,’ he added as he disappeared into the restaurant.

Lucien returned home pondering over this terrible pronouncement, the profound truth of which gave him a luminous view of literary life.

‘Money! Money!’ a voice cried out within him.

He wrote out three bills for a thousand francs, payable to himself, each to fall due after one, two and three months, making a perfect forgery of David Séchard’s signature. He endorsed them. Then, next day, he took them to Métivier, the paper-merchant in the rue Serpente, and Métivier discounted them without demur. Lucien wrote a few lines to his brother-in-law to inform him of this inroad on his capital and made the usual promise to meet the bills at maturity. When Coralie’s debts and his own were paid, there remained three hundred francs which the poet handed over to Bérénice, telling her to refuse him if he asked for money: he feared that he might be seized with the desire to return to the gambling-den.