Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (37 page)

‘To the Panorama-Dramatique, and drive fast – you’ll get thirty sous for the journey,’ said Etienne to the cabby. Then he replied to Lucien’s remark, his self-esteem agreeably tickled at being able to pose as Lucien’s mentor. ‘Dauriat’s a rogue who sells about fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand
francs’ worth of books every year. His rapacity is just as great as Barbet’s, but he operates on a massive scale. Dauriat has some civility, he can be generous, but he’s vain. What wit he has is made up from what he hears people around him saying. His shop is an excellent meeting-place, and gives one a chance to chat with the best minds of our time. There, my friend, a young man learns more in an hour than he would in ten years poring over books. Articles are discussed, subjects are concocted, contact is made with famous or influential men who may prove useful. Today, in order to succeed, one needs to be in with such people. It’s all a matter of chance, you see. The most dangerous thing is to churn out wit all alone in a corner.’

‘But the insolence of the man!’ said Lucien.

‘Pooh! We all make fun of Dauriat. You need him and he tramples on you; but he needs the
Journal des Débats
, and Emile Blondet spins him round like a top. Oh! if you get into the writing racket you’ll learn a lot more yet. Well now, didn’t I tell you so?’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Lucien answered. ‘In Dauriat’s shop, I suffered even more cruelly than I expected according to your plan of action.’

‘But why let yourself suffer? The thing we give our lives for, the subject we rack our brains over and wrestle with for nights on end, the race we run across the fields of thought, the monument we build with our heart’s blood: editors regard all that as a good or a bad piece of business. Your manuscript will sell well or it won’t. That’s their whole problem. For them a book is merely a capital risk. The finer it is, the less chance it has of selling. Every exceptional man rises above the masses, and therefore his success is in direct ratio to the time needed for his work to prove its value. No publisher is willing to wait for that. Today’s book must be sold out tomorrow. Following that policy, publishers refuse substantial books which can only gradually obtain the serious approval they need.’

‘D’Arthez was right,’ Lucien exclaimed.

‘So you know d’Arthez,’ said Lousteau. ‘I know nothing
more dangerous than those lone spirits who think, as that fellow does, they can bring the world to their feet. By firing a young man’s imagination with a flattering belief in the immense power which at first everyone feels he possesses, such seekers after posthumous glory prevent him from bestirring himself at an age when activity is possible and profitable. I’m all for Mahomet’s policy: he commanded the mountain to come to him and then cried out: “If you won’t come to me, I’ll go to you!”

This sally, which had such forceful logic behind it, was of a kind to make Lucien waver between the system of resigned poverty preached by the Cénacle and the militant doctrine put forward by Lousteau. And so the poet from Angoulême relapsed into silence until they arrived at the Boulevard du Temple.

The Panorama-Dramatique, now replaced by a private house, was a charming theatre standing opposite the rue Charlot in the Boulevard du Temple. Two of its managing bodies in turn succumbed without scoring a single success, although Vignol, one of the actors who took over from Potier, made his
début
there, as well as Florine, the actress who was to become so famous five years later. Theatres, like men, are dependent on chance events. The Panorama-Dramatique had to compete with L’Ambigu, La Gaieté, La Porte-Saint-Martin and the musical comedy theatres: it was unable to hold out against their machinations, the restricted terms of its licence and the shortage of good plays. Authors were not inclined to fall out with established theatres in favour of one whose existence seemed problematical. However, the management was counting on the new play, a kind of comic melodrama by a young author, du Bruel, a man who wrote in collaboration with a few reputed authors but claimed to have written this one by himself. It had been composed for Florine’s
début:
until then she had been an extra at La Gaieté, where for a year she had had walking-on parts in which she had drawn attention to herself without being able to secure an engagement; and so the Panorama had enticed her away from the neighbouring theatre. Another actress, Coralie, was also to make her
début
in this play.

When the two friends arrived, Lucien was amazed to see what power the Press wielded.

‘This gentleman is with me,’ said Etienne to the box-office man who bowed obsequiously to him.

‘You’ll find it very difficult to get seats,’ said the chief ticket-collector. ‘The only ones left are in the manager’s box.’

Etienne and Lucien wasted some time wandering along corridors and parleying with box-openers.

‘Let’s go inside. We’ll speak to the manager and he’ll let us into his box. Besides, I want to introduce you to Florine, the star of the evening.’

At a sign from Lousteau, the orchestra usher took a small key and unlocked a concealed door in a large wall. Lucien followed his friend and passed suddenly out of the well-lit corridor into the black hole which in practically every theatre connects front and back-stage. Then, walking up a few damp steps, the provincial poet arrived behind the scenes, where the strangest of spectacles awaited him. The narrowness of the supporting struts, the height of the theatre, the ladders with their lamps, the flats, so ugly when seen from close quarters, the actors’ heavy make-up, their costumes, so bizarre and made of such coarse material, the stagehands with their greasy jackets, the dangling ropes, the stage-manager striding about with his hat on, the extras sitting round, the hanging back-cloths, the firemen, all this array of ludicrous, dismal, dirty, hideous and tawdry objects was so unlike what Lucien had seen from out front that his astonishment was unbounded. They were finishing a good, broad melodrama entitled
Bertram
, a play copied from a tragedy by Maturin which was held in infinite esteem by Nodier, Lord Byron and Walter Scott, but fell flat in Paris.

‘Keep hold of my arm unless you want to fall through a trap-door, bring a forest down on you, overturn a palace or run foul of a thatched cottage,’ said Etienne to Lucien. – ‘Is Florine in her dressing-room, my jewel?’ he asked an actress who was attending to the play and getting ready to walk on.

‘Yes, my love. Thank you for what you wrote about me. It was all the kinder seeing that Florine was starting here.’

‘Come now, don’t spoil your effect, little one,’ Lousteau
said to her. ‘Rush on, up with your hand! Try your
Hold, unhappy wretch!
on me, for there are two thousand francs’ takings this evening.’

Lucien was staggered to see the actress strike a pose and cry out
Hold, unhappy wretch!
in such a way as to make his blood run cold. She was no longer the same woman.

‘So that’s the theatre,’ he said to Lousteau.

‘It’s the same,’ his new friend answered, ‘as the bookshop in the Wooden Galleries and any literary periodical: it’s all cooked up!’

Nathan appeared.

‘What brings
you
here?’ Lousteau asked him.

‘Why, I’m doing the small theatres for the
Gazette
until something better turns up.’

‘Well then, have supper with us this evening, and give Florine a good write-up in return.’

‘I’m entirely at your service.’ Nathan replied.

‘You know she’s now living in the rue de Bondy?’

‘Who’s the handsome young man you have with you, Lousteau my pet?’ asked the actress as she returned from the stage to the wings.

‘Ah! my dear, a great poet, a man who’s going to be famous. As you’ll be supping together, Monsieur Nathan, let me introduce Monsieur Lucien de Rubempré.’

‘You bear a fine name,’ said Raoul to Lucien.

‘Lucien, this is Monsieur Raoul Nathan,’ said Etienne to his new friend.

‘Upon my word, Monsieur, I was reading you two days ago, and I couldn’t conceive why, after writing such a book and such a collection of poems, you should be so humble with journalists.’

‘Wait till
your
first book comes out,’ Nathan replied with a wry smile.

‘Well well!’ exclaimed Vernou as he caught sight of this trio. ‘Fancy Ultras and Liberals shaking hands!’

‘In the mornings,’ said Nathan, ‘I hold the views of my newspaper, but in the evenings I think as I like.
When editors are away their staff will play
.’

‘Etienne,’ said Félicien Vernou, addressing Lousteau. ‘Finot came with me, he’s looking for you. And… here he is.’

‘Hang it all! Isn’t there a single seat left?’ asked Finot.

‘There’s always one for you in our hearts,’ said the actress, giving him a most pleasant smile.

‘Well now, little Florville. So you’ve already got over your love affair? They were saying you’d been abducted by a Russian prince.’

‘Do women get abducted today?’ asked Florville, the actress who had declaimed
Hold, unhappy wretch!
‘We spent ten days at Saint-Mandé; my prince got away with it by paying compensation to the management. – The manager,’ continued Florville with a laugh, ‘is going to ask his Maker to send along lots of Russian princes: the compensation they pay would bring him takings without overheads.’

‘And you, little one,’ said Finot to a pretty girl in peasant costume who had been listening. ‘Where did you steal those diamond ear-rings you’re wearing? Have you been at work on an Indian prince?’

‘No, just a shoe-polish merchant, an Englishman who’s already left me. It isn’t everybody that can hook millionaire businessmen bored with their home life, like Florine and Coralie. Aren’t they lucky?’

‘You’ll miss your cue, Florville,’ cried Lousteau. ‘Your colleague’s shoe-polish is going to your head.’

‘If you want to make a hit,’ said Nathan, ‘instead of shrieking out your entry line
He is saved!
like a Fury, walk on quite sedately, go down to the footlights and say
He is saved!
in a chest voice, just as La Pasta sings
O patria!
in
Tancrède.
Off you go!’ he added, giving her a push.

‘It’s too late, she’s making a mess of it!’ said Vernou.

‘Why, what’s she done? The audience is clapping like mad,’ said Lousteau.

‘She got down on her knees and showed her bosom. That’s her angle,’ said the actress who had been bereaved of her shoe-polish lover.

‘– The manager’s letting us have his box, you’ll find me there,’ said Finot to Etienne.

Lousteau then escorted Lucien behind the theatre through the maze of wings, corridors and staircases to the third storey and into a small room, where Nathan and Félicien Vernou arrived after them.

‘Good day or good evening, gentlemen,’ said Florine. ‘Monsieur,’ she said, addressing a short, stout man who was standing in a corner, ‘these gentlemen are the arbiters of my destiny; they hold my future in their hands. But by tomorrow morning, I hope, they’ll be under our table if Monsieur Lousteau hasn’t forgotten anything…’

‘Forgotten?’ said Etienne. ‘You’ll have Blondet from the
Débats
, the real Blondet, Blondet in person, in short Blondet.’

‘Oh! my dear little Lousteau! Here, I simply must give you a kiss!’ she said, throwing her arms round his neck.

At this demonstration Matifat, the stout man, looked grave. At sixteen, Florine was thin. Her beauty, like a promising flower bud, could only please such artists as prefer a sketch to a finished picture. The features of this charming actress already had all their characteristic delicacy, and she reminded one of Goethe’s Mignon. Matifat, a rich druggist from the rue des Lombards, had thought that a small-part actress in a boulevard theatre would not be expensive; but in eleven months Florine had cost him sixty thousand francs. Nothing seemed more extraordinary to Lucien than this honest and upright merchant stuck there like a statue in a corner of this ten-foot square nook, prettily papered, adorned with a swing-mirror, a couch, two chairs, a carpet, a mantelpiece, and stocked with wardrobes. A dresser had nearly finished putting the actress into a Spanish costume. The play was an imbroglio in which Florine was taking the part of a countess.

‘In five years’ time this creature will be the most beautiful actress in Paris,’ said Nathan to Félicien.

‘Well now, my loves,’ said Florine, turning round to the three journalists, ‘give me a good press tomorrow. In the first place, I’ve hired carriages for tonight, because I’m sending you back home as drunk as carnival revellers. Matifat has found some wines, oh! wines fit for Louis XVIII, and he’s engaged the Prussian ambassador’s chef.’

‘We have only to look at Monsieur to hope for spacious fare,’ said Nathan.

‘Well, he knows he’s entertaining the most dangerous men in Paris,’ Florine replied.

Matifat cast an anxious glance at Lucien, for the young man’s great beauty was arousing his jealousy.

‘But there’s one here I don’t know,’ said Florine, noticing Lucien. ‘Which of you has brought the Apollo Belvedere from Florence? Monsieur is as handsome as one of Girodet’s full-length portraits.’

‘Mademoiselle,’ said Lousteau. ‘This gentleman is a poet from the provinces whom I neglected to introduce to you. You are so beautiful this evening that it’s impossible to think of the trivial civilities of daily life.’

‘I suppose he must be rich if he writes poetry,’ said Florine.

‘As poor as Job,’ Lucien replied.

‘That’s some temptation for girls like us!’ said the actress.

Du Bruel, the author of the play, suddenly came in. He was a young man in a frock-coat, small and slender, with something about him of the civil servant, the man of property and the stockbroker.

‘My little Florine, you know your part well, I hope? No drying! Be careful with the scene in the second act: be caustic and subtle. Mind you say
I do not love you
in the way we agreed.’