Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (38 page)

‘Why do you accept parts with such sentences in them?’ Matifat asked Florine.

The druggist’s question was hailed with a general peal of laughter.

‘What does that matter to you, since it’s not you I’m saying it to, silly old donkey? Oh! he tickles me to death with the nonsense he talks,’ she added, looking towards the authors. ‘On my word as a respectable girl, I’d like to pay him for every silly thing he says, except that I should soon be ruined.’

‘Yes, but you look at me as you say that, just like when you’re rehearsing, and it frightens me,’ said the druggist.

‘Very well then, I’ll look at my little Lousteau when I say it,’ she replied.

A bell rang out through the corridors.

‘Off you go all of you,’ said Florine, ‘Let me read my part over again so that I can try and make sense of it.’

Lucien and Lousteau were the last to go. Lousteau kissed Florine’s shoulders, and Lucien heard the actress say: ‘Not a hope for this evening. The old idiot told his wife he was going into the country.’

‘Isn’t she a peach?’ Etienne said to Lucien.

‘But, my friend, this Matifat…’ Lucien exclaimed.

‘Dear me, my boy, you still know nothing about life in Paris. There are certain things one has to put up with. It’s as if you loved a married woman, that’s all. What can’t be cured must be endured.’

‘Do you think Du Bruel’s play will make money for you?’ Finot asked the manager.

‘It’s a comedy of intrigue in which Du Bruel has tried to imitate Beaumarchais. The boulevard public doesn’t like that kind of play: it wants its fill of emotion. Wit is not appreciated here. This evening everything depends on Florine and Coralie who are ravishingly graceful and beautiful. These two creatures wear very short skirts and do Spanish dances. The public may well be carried away. This performance is a toss-up. If the papers write me a few witty reviews – if the play succeeds – I may make three hundred thousand francs.’

‘Plainly then it can only be a mild success,’ said Finot.

‘There’s a conspiracy hatched by the three neighbouring theatres, so there’ll be hissing in any case. But I’ve taken steps to thwart their evil schemes. I’ve paid extra to the
claqueurs
they’re sending so that they’ll hiss in the wrong places. Over there are three business men, and in order to get an ovation for Coralie and Florine, they’ve each taken a hundred tickets and given them to acquaintances capable of throwing the
claqueurs
out. The
claqueurs,
having received double pay, will let themselves be kicked out, and a bit of horse-play like that always puts the audience in a good mood.’

‘Two hundred tickets!’ cried Finot. ‘What precious allies!’

‘Yes. If I had two other pretty actresses as richly supported as Florine and Coralie I could make ends meet.’

For two hours it had been dinned into Lucien’s ears that money was the solution to all problems. In the theatres as in the publishing-houses, in the publishing-houses as in editorial offices, there was no question of art or fame. These insistent tickings of the great Money pendulum throbbed through his head and heart. While the overture was being
played, he could not help contrasting the clappings and hissings in the riotous pit with the scenes of calm and pure poetry he had enjoyed in David’s printing-office and the vision they shared of the wonders of Art, the noble triumphs of genius and the shining wings of glory. A tear glistened in the poet’s eye as he remembered the evenings spent with the Cénacle.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Etienne Lousteau.

‘I see poetry being dragged through the mire,’ he replied.

‘Well well, my friend, so you still have your illusions!’

‘But why should one grovel and submit to these vulgar Matifats and Camusots, as the actresses submit to the journalists and we ourselves submit to the publishers?’

‘My boy,’ Etienne whispered as he pointed to Finot, ‘you see that stupid fellow there, without wit or talent but greedy, out for a fortune at all costs and clever at business: the man who, in Dauriat’s shop, rooked me of forty per cent while pretending to oblige me?… Well, he’s had letters in which various nascent geniuses have gone down on their knees to him for a hundred francs.’

Lucien was seized with heartfelt disgust and he remembered the drawing left on the green baize of the editorial table:
Finot, my hundred francs!

‘Better to die,’ he said.

‘Better to live,’ Etienne retorted.

Just as the curtain rose, the manager went back-stage to give some orders.

‘My dear fellow,’ Finot then said to Etienne. ‘I have Dauriat’s word. I’m in for a third share in the ownership of the weekly paper. I’ve settled for thirty thousand francs cash down on condition I become editor and director. It’s a splendid deal. Blondet tells me that laws are being drafted to muzzle the Press, and only existing newspapers will keep going. In six months a million will be needed to start a new paper. So I clinched the bargain without having more than ten thousand francs of my own. Listen. If you can get Matifat to buy the half of my share – one sixth – I’ll make you editor of my little newspaper with a salary of two hundred and fifty francs a month. You’ll be my figure-head. I want to maintain control
of the editing and keep all my interests in it while appearing to have no hand in it. You’ll get paid for all the articles at a rate of five francs a column: in this way you can reap a bonus of fifteen francs a day by only paying three francs a column and by saving on the unpaid articles. That amounts to another four hundred and fifty francs a month. But I want to be free to use the paper to attack or defend people and affairs as I see fit while leaving you free to satisfy your personal animosities and friendships so long as they don’t hamper my policy. I may side with the ministry or the Ultras – I haven’t decided yet; but I want, under cover, to keep my relations with the Liberals going. I’m telling you everything because you’re a good chap. I may perhaps hand over to you the Parliamentary sessions in the
Constitutionnel
– I doubt whether I could go on doing them. And so, use Florine for this bit of wangling, and tell her to put pressure on the druggist: I have only two days for backing out if I can’t raise the money. Dauriat has sold another third for thirty thousand francs to his printer and paper-maker. As for him, he gets his third for nothing, and makes ten thousand francs on the deal since the whole transaction only costs him fifty thousand francs. But in a year’s time this newspaper will be worth two hundred thousand francs to sell to the Government if, as people make out, it has sense enough to buy up the periodicals.’

‘You’re a lucky man,’ said Lousteau.

‘If you had gone through all the bad times I have, you wouldn’t say that. But at the present time, you see, I can’t get over the misfortune of having a hatter for a father, one who still actually sells his hats in the rue du Coq. Only a revolution could make a successful man of me; and, short of a social upheaval, I need millions. I’m not sure that a revolution wouldn’t suit me better. If I had a name like your friend’s all would be plain sailing. Quiet! Here’s the manager.’

‘Good-bye,’ said Finot, rising to his feet. ‘I’m going to the Opera-House and maybe I’ll have a duel on my hands tomorrow: I’m writing and signing F a devastating article on two dancers who have generals for lovers. I’m going all out against the Opera-House.’

‘Really?’ said the manager.

‘Yes, they’re all being stingy with me. One of them cuts down my boxes, another refuses to take out fifty subscriptions to my paper. I’ve sent an ultimatum to the Opera-House: I’m now demanding a hundred subscriptions and four boxes a month. If they accept, my paper will have eight hundred subscribers who’ll get their copies and a thousand who’ll merely pay for them. I know how I can arrange for yet another two hundred subscriptions: b`y January we shall have twelve hundred…’

‘You’ll be our ruin in the long run,’ said the manager.

‘You’re not badly off, you, with your ten subscriptions. I got you two good articles in the
Constitutionnel
.’

‘Oh, I’m not complaining,’ the director exclaimed.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow evening, Lousteau,’ Finot continued. ‘You’ll give me your answer at the Theatre Français. There’s a first performance and, as I can’t review it, you’ll occupy the box belonging to my paper. I’m giving you the preference: you’ve gone to no end of trouble for me, and I’m grateful. Félicien Vernou suggests going without his salary for a year and is offering me twenty thousand francs for a third share in the paper; but I intend to keep complete control of it. Good-bye.’

‘He’s well named Finot,
¹
that man,’ said Lucien to Lousteau.

‘Oh, he’s a gallows-bird who’ll make his way,’ replied Etienne, without caring whether he was heard or not by the clever man who was closing the door of the box behind him.

‘Finot?’ said the theatre manager. ‘He’ll be a millionaire; he’ll enjoy universal consideration; perhaps he’ll even have friends.’

‘God in Heaven!’ said Lucien. ‘What a den of thieves! And you’re going to involve that delightful girl in such a negotiation?’ he asked, pointing at Florine who was throwing flirtatious glances in their direction.

‘She’ll bring it off,’ Lousteau answered. ‘You don’t know how devoted and how clever these dear creatures are.’

The manager took up the story: ‘They redeem all their
shortcomings, they wipe out all their lapses from virtue by the infinite range of their love, when they do love. An actress’s passion is so much more a thing of beauty because it stands out in such violent contrast with the people around her.’

‘It’s like finding a diamond in a dunghill, one fit to adorn the proudest of diadems,’ Lousteau rejoindered.

‘But look,’ the manager continued. ‘Coralie is woolgathering. Our friend is making a conquest of Coralie without knowing it: he’ll make her muff her best lines; she’s losing her timing – twice already she hasn’t taken a prompt. Monsieur, I beg of you, conceal yourself in the corner,’ he said to Lucien. ‘If Coralie has fallen in love with you, I’m going to tell her you have left the theatre,’

‘Not at all,’ cried Lousteau. ‘Tell her this gentleman will be at the supper, that she’ll do what she likes with him: then she’ll act as well as Mademoiselle Mars.’

The manager went off.

‘What, my friend,’ said Lucien to Etienne. ‘You have no scruples in getting Mademoiselle Florine to extort thirty thousand francs from this druggist for only a half-share in what Finot has bought for that sum?’

Lousteau gave Lucien no time to finish his argument. ‘Why, where do you hail from, my dear boy? He’s a cash-box which Cupid has provided.’

‘But what about your conscience?’

‘Conscience, my dear, is a kind of stick that everyone picks up to thrash his neighbour with, but one he never uses against himself. Devil take it, what are you grumbling about? In one day chance has worked a miracle for you that I’ve been waiting for these last two years, and it pleases you to find fault with the way it’s done. Damn it all, you seem to me to have intelligence, you’ll come by the independence of mind which intellectual adventurers have to possess in the world we’re living in, and yet you’re wading knee-deep in scruples like a nun accusing herself of having eaten her egg with concupiscence… If Florine brings this off I become an editor, I get a fixed salary of two hundred and fifty francs a month, I take over reviews in the big theatres, I leave Vernou with the
light comedy theatres, and you get your foot in the stirrup by taking over the boulevard theatres from me. So you’ll get three francs a column and you’ll write one every day, thirty a month, which will bring you ninety francs a month. You’ll have sixty francs’ worth of boxes to sell to Barbet; also you can demand ten tickets a month from your theatres, forty tickets in all, and you’ll sell them for forty francs to the Barbet of the theatres, a man I’ll put you in touch with. And so I can see you earning two hundred francs a month. By making yourself useful to Finot you could place a hundred francs article in his new weekly paper, if you managed to display exceptional talent – for there you sign your articles, and can’t just toss things off as you can in the little newspaper. So then you’d have three hundred francs a month. My dear fellow, there are men of talent, like that poor devil d’Arthez who dines at Flicoteaux’s every day, who don’t earn three hundred francs in ten years. You’ll make four thousand francs a year by your pen, without reckoning in your income from the publishers if you write for them. Now a Sub-Prefect only gets a salary of three thousand francs, and yet he has a high old time in his District. I won’t mention free seats in the theatre, for this pleasure will quickly become a fatigue; but you’ll have access to the wings in four theatres. Be hard and witty for a month or two, you’ll be swamped with invitations and actresses’ parties; you’ll be courted by their lovers; you’ll only dine at Flicoteaux’s on the days when you haven’t thirty sous in your pocket and are not dining out. At five o’clock this evening, at the Luxembourg, you didn’t know what to do for yourself: now you’re about to become one of the hundred privileged persons who foist their opinions on the French public. In three days’ time, if we succeed, by printing thirty
bons mots
at the rate of three per diem you can make a man curse the day he was born; you can draw a regular income – in sensual pleasure – from all the actresses in your theatre; you can make a good play fall flat and send the whole of Paris flocking to a bad one. If Dauriat refuses to print your
Marguerites
without giving you something for them you can make him come to your rooms, humble and submissive, to buy
them from you for two thousand francs. Use your talent and sling three articles into three different papers, each of them threatening murder to some of Dauriat’s speculations or a book he’s counting on, and you’ll see him come crawling up to your garret and clinging round it like clematis. Finally there’s your novel: the publishers, all of whom at present would show you the door more or less politely, will queue up outside your flat, and they’ll bid up to four thousand francs for a manuscript which old Doguereau would price at four hundred francs! Those are the profits from the journalist trade. That’s why we ward off all newcomers from the newspapers: one needs not only enormous talent, but also a lot of luck to get into them. And you’re quibbling over your good luck!… Look now, if we hadn’t met at Flicoteaux’s today you might have gone on stagnating for three months or died of starvation, like d’Arthez, in an attic. By the time d’Arthez has become as learned as Bayle and as great a writer as Rousseau we shall have made our fortune, and his fortune and fame will be at our mercy. Finot will be a deputy in the Chamber and the owner of a great newspaper; as for us, we shall be whatever we have wanted to be: peers of France or languishing in a debtors’ prison.’

‘And Finot,’ exclaimed Lucien, remembering the scene he had witnessed, ‘will sell his great newspaper to the Ministers who make the highest bid, just as he sells his commendations to Madame Bastienne and disparages Mademoiselle Virginie, by proving that the former’s hats are better than those the paper had cracked up first of all!’

‘You’re a simpleton, my dear,’ Lousteau curtly replied. ‘Three years ago Finot was down on his uppers, dined at Tabar’s for eighteen sous, botched a prospectus for ten francs, and his coat hung on him by a miracle as incomprehensible as that of the Immaculate Conception. He’s now the sole possessor of a newspaper valued at a hundred thousand francs. With the subscriptions paid for but involving no delivery, with the genuine subscriptions and the indirect contributions levied by his uncle, he’s making twenty thousand francs a year; he eats the most sumptuous dinners every day; a month
ago he bought himself a two-wheeler; and lastly, by tomorrow he’ll be running a weekly paper, having a sixth share in it which cost him nothing, with a salary of five hundred francs a month to which he’ll add a thousand francs’ worth of articles contributed gratis but for which he’ll charge his partners. You yourself, before anyone else, if Finot agrees to pay you fifty francs a page, will be only too happy to send him three articles for nothing. When you reach a similar position, then you can bring Finot to trial: one can only be tried by one’s peers. Haven’t you a great future before you if you fall in blindly with his official antagonisms, if you attack when Finot says “Attack!” and if you praise when Finot says “Praise!” When you want to wreak your spite on anyone, you can belabour your friend or your enemy by slipping a sentence in our paper every morning and saying to me: “Lousteau, let’s kill that man!” Then you’ll murder your victim all over again in a big article in the weekly paper. And finally, if it’s matter of capital importance to you, after you’ve made yourself necessary to Finot, he’ll let you deal the knockout blow in a great newspaper which by then will have a thousand subscribers.’