Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (56 page)

Vernou wrote of Lucien’s passion for gambling and pilloried
The Archer
in advance as an unpatriotic work in which the author took sides with the Catholic cut-throats against their Calvinist victims. Within a week the quarrel became envenomed. Lucien was counting on his friend Lousteau, who owed him a thousand francs and with whom he had come to a secret understanding. But Lousteau became Lucien’s sworn enemy for the following reasons:

For the last three months Nathan had been in love with Florine and was wondering how he could steal her from
Lousteau, for whom moreover she was playing the role of Providence. The actress was in such distress and despair at finding herself without an engagement that Nathan, being a colleague of Lucien, went to see Coralie and begged her to offer Florine a part in a play of his own, undertaking to procure a conditional engagement at the Gymnase for the out-of-work actress. Florine, intoxicated with ambition, did not hesitate. She had had time to weigh up Lousteau. Nathan was a man of both literary and political ambition, one whose energy was equal to his needs, whereas Lousteau’s vices were sapping his will-power. The actress, desirous of making a glamorous return to the stage, handed the druggist’s letters over to Nathan, and Nathan forced Matifat to buy them back with the sixth share in the newspaper which Finot coveted. Florine thus obtained a magnificent flat in the rue Hauteville and accepted Nathan as her ‘protector’ in the teeth of the journalistic and theatre world. Lousteau was so cruelly hurt by this event that he burst into tears at the end of a dinner his friends gave to console him. The guests at this feast judged that Nathan had played his cards well. A few journalists like Finot and Vernou were well aware of the dramatist’s passion for Florine, but they were all agreed that Lucien had hatched the plot and thus violated the sacred laws of friendship. According to them, party spirit and the desire to serve his new friends had driven this newly-fledged royalist to unpardonable conduct.

‘Nathan is swept away by the logic of passion,’ cried Bixiou, ‘whereas the provincial great man, as Blondet calls him, is acting in cold blood!’

And so the destruction of Lucien, the intruder, the little scoundrel who wanted to make one meal of all and sundry, was unanimously resolved and deeply meditated. Vernou hated Lucien and undertook to give him no respite. In order to avoid paying three thousand francs to Lousteau, Finot accused Lucien of having prevented him from gaining fifty thousand francs by letting Nathan into the secret of the operation against Matifat. Nathan, on Florine’s advice, had contrived to get Finot’s support by selling him his ‘little sixth’
for for fifteen thousand francs. Lousteau, having lost his three thousand francs, never forgave Lucien for the enormous damage done to his interests. Wounds of self-esteem become incurable once oxide of silver gets into them.

For the first fortnight the maddened Lucien poured forth a torrent of articles in the royalist newspapers in which he and Hector Merlin shared the burden of literary criticism. Every day, from the battlements of
Le Réveil,
he maintained a steady fire of wit, and was supported in this by Martainville, the only man who served him without ulterior motives, knowing nothing of the bargains struck during bouts of revelry, or in Dauriat’s office in the Wooden Galleries or the theatre green-rooms, between journalists of both parties who were secretly hand in glove. When Lucien entered the Vaudeville
foyer
he was no longer treated as a friend. Only the people of his own party shook hands with him, whereas Nathan, Hector Merlin and Théodore Gaillard unashamedly fraternized with Finot, Lousteau, Vernon and a handful of journalists graced with the label of ‘decent types’. In this period, the Vaudeville was a centre for literary slander, a kind of sanctum frequented by people of all parties, politicians and magistrates. On one occasion, after administering a reprimand in a certain Chamber of the Council, a presiding magistrate who had scolded one
of his colleagues for sweeping round the green-rooms in his magisterial gown, found himself rubbing gowns in the Vaudeville
foyer
with the very person he had reprimanded. After a time, Lousteau became friends once more with Nathan when he met him there. Finot was there nearly every evening. When the opportunity occurred, Lucien studied the attitude of his enemies, and the unfortunate young man always discerned implacable coldness in them.

At that time the party spirit engendered much more serious hatred than it does today. Springs have been so over-stretched today that in the long run animosity has weakened. Criticism of today, after making a burnt-offering of a man’s book, proffers a hand to him. The victim must embrace the officiating priest under penalty of running the gauntlet of pleasantry. If he refuses, a writer passes for an unsociable man, quarrelsome, eaten up with self-conceit, unapproachable, resentful, full of rancour. Today, when an author has received treacherous stabs in the back, avoided the snares set for him with infamous hypocrisy and suffered the worst possible treatment, he hears his assassins wishing him good-day and putting forth claims to his esteem and even his friendship. Everything is condoned and justified in a period when virtue has been transformed into vice and certain vices have been extolled as virtues. Camaraderie has become the holiest of freedoms. The leaders of diametrically opposed opinions talk to one another in dulcet tones and with courtly conceits. Formerly, as may perhaps be remembered, it needed courage for certain Royalist writers and some Liberal writers to meet in the same theatre. The most provocative taunts were made for everybody to hear. Looks exchanged were like loaded pistols and the slightest spark could set off a quarrel. What man has not overheard his neighbour’s imprecations at the entry of certain persons who were special targets for the attacks of one or the other two parties? For indeed there were then only two parties, Royalists and Liberals, Romanticists and Classicists: an identical hatred in different guise, a hatred great enough to explain why guillotines had been set up under the National Convention.

And so Lucien, now an out-and-out Royalist and Romantic, after having begun as a rabid Liberal and Voltairian, found himself under the same weight of enmity as hung over the man most abhorred by the Liberals at that period: Martainville, the only man who stood by him and liked him. The fellowship between them did harm to Lucien. Parties are ungrateful to those on outpost duty and readily abandon them as forlorn hopes. In politics especially, those who want to succeed must move with the main body of the army. The most spiteful tactics the
petits journaux
could adopt was to couple the names of Lucien and Martainville. The Liberal faction threw them into each other’s arms. This friendship, whether false or genuine, brought down upon them articles steeped in gall from the pen of Félicien, whom Lucien’s success in high society exasperated and who believed, like all the poet’s former comrades, that he was about to be elevated to higher status. And so the poet’s alleged betrayal was characterized in more envenomed terms and embellished with all kinds of aggravating circumstances. Lucien was known as
Judas the Less
and Martainville as
Judas the Greater,
for Martainville was rightly or wrongly accused of having surrendered the Seine bridge at Pecq to the invading Prussians in 1815. Lucien laughingly replied to Des Lupeaulx that he for his part had assuredly surrendered the
pons asinorum.
Lucien’s luxurious way of living, unsubstantial as it was and built upon expectations, revolted his friends who could forgive him neither for his now non-existent carriage – they fancied he was still running one – nor the splendour of his life in the rue de Vendôme. They all instinctively felt that a handsome, intelligent young man whom they themselves had schooled in corruption might rise to any heights: so they used all possible means to strike him down.

A few days before Coralie’s first appearance at the Gymnase, Lucien went arm in arm with Hector Merlin to the Vaudeville
foyer.
Merlin was scolding his friend for having served Nathan’s ends by helping Florine.

‘You have made two deadly enemies in Lousteau and Nathan. I gave you good advice and you didn’t take it.
You’ve dealt out praise and done good turns right and left, but you’ll be cruelly punished for your kind deeds. Florine and Coralie will never be on good terms now they’re acting on the same stage: one of them will want to score off the other. You have only our newspapers to defend Coralie. In addition to the advantage which his profession as a dramatist gives him, Nathan has the Liberal papers at his disposal in the matter of theatres, and he has been in journalism rather longer than you!’

This remark was an echo to Lucien’s secret misgivings: neither Nathan nor Gaillard treated him with the candour that he had the right to expect. Yet he could not complain – he was so recent a convert! Gaillard overwhelmed him by telling him that newcomers had to give proof of loyalty for a long time before their party could trust them. Among the staff of the royalist and ministerial newspapers Lucien met with unexpected jealousy, that kind of jealousy which arises between all men who have any sort of cake to share and makes them like dogs quarrelling over a bone: growls, posture and character are the same in both cases. These writers played a thousand underhand tricks in order to discredit one another with the Government, accused one another of lukewarmness and hatched the most perfidious intrigues in order to get rid of rivals. The Liberals had no motive for internecine conflicts because they were far removed from power and the favours it can confer. When Lucien acquired some glimmering of this inextricable tangle of ambitions, he had not the courage to take a sword to cut through the knots, nor did he feel patient enough to untie them. He did not have it in him to be the Aretino, or the Beaumarchais, or the Fréron of his age, but clung to his one desire – to get his ordinance, realizing that with his name restored he could make a fine marriage. His fortune would then only depend on a stroke of luck which his beauty would help to bring about. Lousteau, who had been on such confidential terms with him, knew his secret, and as a journalist was able to aim a deadly thrust at the Angoulême poet’s most vulnerable spot. Accordingly, on the very day when Merlin brought Lucien to the Vaudeville
Theatre, Etienne had set a horrible trap for him – one into which in his naïvety he was destined to fall and perish.

‘Here’s our handsome Lucien,’ said Finot, dragging Des Lupeaulx, with whom he was chatting, up to Lucien whose hand he grasped with a truly feline affectation of friendship. ‘A know of no other example of such a rapid rise to fortune as his,’ said Finot, looking in turn at Lucien and the master of requests. ‘In Paris there are two kinds of fortune: one is a material commodity – money, which anyone can pick up; the other is immaterial – relationships, position, access to the kind of society which certain persons cannot enter whatever their material fortune. My friend…’

‘… Our friend,’ said Des Lupeaulx, throwing a flattering glance at Lucien.

‘… Our friend,’ Finot continued, tapping Lucien’s hand between his own, ‘has made a brilliant fortune in this respect. In truth, Lucien has more resourcefulness, more talents, more wit than all those who envy him, and he’s ravishingly good-looking. His former friends can’t forgive him for his success and so they say he’s merely been lucky.’

‘Such luck,’ said Des Lupeaulx, ‘never comes to fools or incompetents. After all, can one call Bonaparte’s destiny a matter of luck? There were a score of top generals before him in command of the armies of Italy, just as at present there are a hundred young men who want to be admitted to the salon of Mademoiselle des Touches, who’s already regarded as your future wife in social circles, my dear!’ He clapped Lucien on the shoulder. ‘Oh! you’re in great favour. Madame d’Espard, Madame de Bargeton and Madame de Montcornet are infatuated with you. Aren’t you going this evening to Madame Firmiani’s reception, and tomorrow to the Duchesse de Grandlieu’s at-home?’

‘Yes,’ said Lucien.

‘Allow me to introduce a young banker to you, Monsieur du Tillet, a man worthy of you who has made a fine fortune, and in a short time.’

Lucien and Du Tillet greeted each other, entered into conversation, and the banker invited Lucien to dinner. Finot and
Des Lupeaulx, two men of equal depth who knew each other well enough to keep on terms of friendship, made a show of resuming a conversation they had begun, left Lucien, Merlin, Du Tillet and Nathan chatting together, and moved off towards one of the divans with which the Vaudeville
foyer
was furnished.

‘Well now, my dear friend,’ said Finot to Des Lupeaulx, ‘tell me the truth. Is Lucien getting serious patronage? He has become the
bête noire
of all my staff; and before supporting them in their conspiracy, I wanted to consult you in order to know whether it would be better to foil it and serve him.’

At this point the master of requests and Finot, for a moment or two, gazed at each other with deep attention.

‘My friend,’ said Des Lupeaulx, ‘how can you imagine that the Marquise d’Espard, Châtelet and Madame de Bargeton, who has had the baron appointed Prefect of the Charente and made a Count as a preparation for their triumphal return to Angoulême, have forgiven Lucien for his attacks? They have thrown him into the royalist party in order to eliminate him. This very day they are all looking for motives for refusing what has been promised to this childish creature: find some, and you’ll have rendered the most tremendous service to these two ladies, one for which they’ll remember you sooner or later. I’m in their confidence, and they detest the little fellow to an amazing extent. This Lucien might have reconciled himself with his cruellest enemy, Madame de Bargeton, by ceasing his attacks, but on terms which all women love to carry out – you understand me? He’s handsome, young, he could have drowned this hatred under torrents of love, he would then have become the Comte de Rubempré and the ‘cuttle-fish’ would have obtained some post for him – some sinecure – in the King’s household. Lucien would have proved a very charming reader for Louis XVIII, been put in charge of some library or other, appointed master of requests
pro forma
or made a director in some department of the Privy Purse. The little idiot has missed his chance. That’s perhaps what they haven’t forgiven him for. Instead of dictating terms he’s had them dictated to him. The day when Lucien let himself be
duped by the promise of an ordinance, Baron Châtelet took a great step forward. Coralie has ruined that young man. If she hadn’t been his mistress, he would have wanted the ‘cuttle-fish’ back – and he’d have got her.’

‘Then we can lay him low,’ said Finot.

‘How are you going to do it?’ Des Lupeaulx asked him with a casual air: he wanted to win credit for this service with the Marquise d’Espard.

‘He has a contract which obliges him to work with Lousteau’s
petit journal,
and it will be all the easier to get him to write articles because he hasn’t a penny. If the Keeper of the Seals sees himself baited in a humorous article, and if we can prove that Lucien wrote it, he will regard him as a man unworthy of the King’s bounties. In order to get this provincial prodigy a bit flustered, we are engineering a flop for Coralie: he’ll see his mistress hissed off the stage. Once the ordinance is kept pending for an indefinite period, we shall then chaff our victim about his aristocratic pretensions, talk of his mother, a midwife, and his father, an apothecary. Lucien’s courage is only skin-deep: he’ll cave in, and we’ll send him back where he came from. Nathan got Florine to sell me Matifat’s sixth share in the Review, I’ve bought the paper-manufacturer’s share, and so am in it alone with Dauriat. We can come to an agreement, you and I, to take the newspaper over to the Court party. I only sided with Florine and Nathan on condition that I got back my sixth share: they sold it to me, and I must serve them. But, beforehand, I wanted to know what Lucien’s chances were.’

‘You’re living up to your name!’ said Des Lupeaulx with a laugh. ‘Believe me, I like people of your sort.’

‘Well then,’ said Finot to the master of requests, ‘can you get a definite engagement for Florine?’

‘Yes; but let’s get rid of Lucien, for Rastignac and De Marsay want to hear the last of him.’

‘Sleep in peace,’ said Finot. ‘Nathan and Merlin will go on writing articles which Gaillard has promised to insert. Lucien won’t be able to produce a line, and in this way we shall cut off his supplies. He’ll only have Martainville’s paper for
defending himself and Coralie: one paper against all the rest. He won’t be able to stand up to it.’

‘I’ll tell you some of the Minister’s tender spots. But let me have the manuscript of the article you’re making Lucien write,’ Des Lupeaulx replied, taking care not to inform Finot that the ordinance promised to Lucien was a hoax.