Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (80 page)

‘Let me tell you briefly another little story you’ve never heard. An ambitious young man, a priest, wanted to get into public affairs and became the sycophant of a favourite – a queen’s favourite. The favourite took an interest in the priest and promoted him to the rank of minister by getting him a seat on the Council. One evening, one of those men who think they’re doing a service (never do a man a service without his asking), wrote to tell the ambitious young man that his benefactor was in danger of his life. The King was angry at having a master, and the next day the favourite was to be murdered if he showed himself at the palace. Well now, young man! What would you have done on receiving such a letter?’

‘I should have gone straight away to warn my benefactor,’ Lucien promptly replied.

‘You’re certainly still the child your life-story has shown you to be,’ said the priest. ‘The man in question said to himself: “If the King is ready to commit a crime, my benefactor is done for. I must pretend I received this letter too late.” And he slept until it was time for the favourite to be murdered.’

‘But he was a monster!’ said Lucien, suspecting that the priest’s intention was to test his moral rectitude.

‘All great men are monsters,’ the Canon replied. ‘That man was Cardinal Richelieu, and his benefactor was the Maréchal d’Ancre. You see you don’t know your history of France. Was I not right in telling you that the history taught in schools is a collection of dates and facts which in the first place are extremely dubious and which have not the slightest significance? What use is it to you to have heard of Joan of Arc? Have you ever drawn the conclusion that if France had at that time accepted the Angevin dynasty, the Plantagenets, two united peoples would be ruling the whole world today; and that the two islands in which all the political disturbances of Europe are fomented would be two provinces of France?… And have you studied the means whereby the Medicis, once simple merchants, came to be Grand-Dukes of Tuscany?’

‘A poet, in France, doesn’t have to be as learned as a Benedictine.’

‘Well, young man, they came to be Grand-Dukes in the same way as Richelieu came to be a minister. If you had searched history to find out the human causes of events instead of learning “facts” by heart, in tabloid form, you would have deduced your own principles of conduct from it. From what I have just chosen haphazard from the collection of genuine facts, this law emerges: look upon men, and women particularly, as mere tools, but without letting them realize it. Worship as if he were God himself the man who, being higher placed than you, can be of use to you, and don’t leave him until he has paid dear for the servility you have shown him. In short, in your dealings with the world, be as ruthless as a Jew, be as base as he is; if you want to gain power, do what he does to gain money. And mark this too: have no more concern for a man in disgrace than you would if he had never existed. Shall I tell you why you must behave in this way? You want to dominate society, don’t you? You must begin by obeying society and studying it closely. Scholars study books, politicians study men, their interests and the motives for their acts. Now the world, society and the common
run of men are fatalists: they bow to the accomplished fact. Do you know why I’m giving you this little lecture on history? It’s because I believe you to be inordinately ambitious.’

‘Yes, father, I am.’

‘I could see that,’ the Canon went on. ‘But at the moment you’re saying to yourself: “This canon from Spain is inventing anecdotes and squeezing the juice out of history in order to prove to me that I’ve been too virtuous.”’

Lucien smiled at seeing his thoughts so well divined.

‘Well, young man! Let’s take a few commonly accepted facts of history. One day France is practically conquered by the English and the King has only one province left. Two persons emerge from the common people: a poor girl, that same Joan of Arc I was talking about, and a burgher named Jacques Cœur. She offers her sword and the prestige of her maidenhood, he offers his gold, and the kingdom is saved. But the girl is captured… The King, who could have ransomed the girl, lets her be burnt alive!
As for the heroic burgher, the King allows him to be accused of capital crimes by his courtiers, who swoop down on all his property. The spoils torn from this innocent man, pursued, hemmed in and struck down by justice, enrich five noble houses… And this man, the father of the Archbishop of Bourges, leaves the country never to return, without a penny of his French belongings and having no other money of his own except what he had entrusted to Arabs and Saracens in Egypt. You may reply that such examples of ingratitude belong to the distant past, that they are separated from the present by three centuries of public education, that the skeletons of that period belong to the realm of fable. Well, young man, do you believe in France’s latest demi-god, Napoleon? He kept one of his generals in disgrace, was reluctant to make a marshal of him and never willingly made use of his services. His name was Kellermann. Why did Napoleon behave like this? Kellermann saved France and the First Consul on the field of Marengo by a dashing cavalry charge which was applauded amid the blood and fire of battle. This heroic charge was never
mentioned in army despatches. The reason for Napoleon’s coldness towards Kellermann is the reason for the disgrace which befell Fouché and Prince Talleyrand: it’s the ingratitude of Charles VII and Richelieu all over again, the ingratitude…’

‘But, father, supposing you save my life and make my fortune, you’re making my burden of gratitude to you a very light one!’

‘Little scamp,’ said the Abbé with a smile, tweaking Lucien’s ear with an almost royal familiarity, ‘if you showed me ingratitude you would then prove yourself a strong man and I should bend the knee before you. However you’re not yet at that stage. You’ve been just like a school-boy, in too much of a hurry to become one of the masters. That’s what’s wrong with Frenchmen in your generation: they’ve all been spoiled by Napoleon’s meteoric success. You’re leaving the service because you couldn’t get the epaulettes you want. But have you concentrated all your desire and actions on a single purpose?’

‘Alas, no!’ said Lucien.

‘You’ve been what the English call
inconsistent,’
the Abbé continued with a smile.

‘Does it matter what I
have
been, if I can no longer
be
anything?’

‘Let there be behind all your fine qualities a force which is
semper virens,’
said the priest, wanting to show that he knew a little Latin, ‘and nothing in the world will stand against you. I am already quite fond of you…’

Lucien gave an incredulous smile.

‘Yes,’ the stranger went on in answer to this smile. ‘I’m as interested in you as if you were my son, and I have enough power to be able to speak to you frankly. Do you know what I like about you? You’ve made a clean breast of your past and so can listen to a lecture on morals which you won’t get anywhere else; for men in the herd are even more hypocritical than they are when self-interest forces them to act apart. That’s why one spends a good deal of one’s life weeding out what one has allowed to grow in one’s heart during adolescence. This operation is called gaining experience.’

As he listened to the priest Lucien was thinking: ‘This man is some elderly politician delighted to amuse himself as he travels along. The whim has taken him to muddle the ideas of a poor young wretch whom he found on the verge of suicide. He’ll drop me once he’s had his little joke… But he’s an expert in paradox and strikes me as being quite a match for Blondet or Lousteau.’

Despite so sage a reflection, the diplomat’s effort at corruption made a deep impression on a man only too disposed to welcome it, and its effect was the more devastating because it was supported by well-known facts. Caught in the spell of this cynical conversation, Lucien was all the more inclined to cling on to life again because he felt as if he had been snatched by a powerful arm from a suicide’s watery grave.

In this respect, the priest was obviously fighting a winning battle. And so, from time to time, a mischievous smile had seasoned his historical sarcasms.

‘That, young man,’ he replied with the astuteness of a priest who sees that his wiles are succeeding, ‘is the concluding point in my sermon, and you will allow me to hold it in reserve, otherwise we shall be together for the rest of the day!’

‘Very well, talk ethics to me,’ said Lucien, thinking to himself: ‘I’ll try and bring him out.’

‘Ethics, young man,’ said the priest, ‘begin with law. If religion alone were at stake, there would be no need for law: religious peoples have few laws. Above civil law there is political law. Well, would you like to know what a politically-minded man finds inscribed above the door-way to this nineteenth century of yours? In 1793 Frenchmen invented popular
sovereignty and it ended up in imperial absolutism. So much for our national history. As for morals, Madame Tallien and Madame de Beauharnais behaved in much the same way, but Napoleon married the one and made her your Empress, and never admitted the other to his court although she was a princess. Napoleon was a Jacobin in 1793; in 1804 he donned the Iron Crown. From 1806 onwards the ferocious champions of ‘Equality or Death’ acquiesced in the creation of a new nobility, which Louis XVIII was to legitimize. The emigrant aristocracy, which lords it today in its Faubourg Saint-German, behaved worse still: it took to usury, commerce, pastry-making, cooking, farming and sheep-rearing. In France then, in politics as well as ethics, all and sundry reached a goal which gave the lie to their beginnings: their opinions belied their behaviour, or else their behaviour belied their opinions. Logic went by the board, both with the people in power and private individuals. So you no longer have any ethics. Today, with you, success is the ruling motive for all the action you take of whatever kind. Deeds therefore are nothing in themselves: they exist entirely in the ideas other people have about them. Hence, young man, another precept: put up a fine outward show! Hide the reverse of the coin, but keep the obverse bright and shining. Discretion, a watchword for ambitious persons, is also that of the Society of Jesus to which I belong: adopt it as yours. Great people commit almost as many despicable deeds as the very poor, but they commit them under cover and make a parade of virtue; and so they remain great. Humble folk keep their virtues under cover and only expose their misery to the light of day; and so they are despised. You hid what was great in you and only showed your sores. You flaunted your actress-mistress in public and lived with her in her rooms. There was nothing reprehensible in this; everybody recognized that you were both perfectly free to do as you liked; but you were flouting social conventions and failed to win the respect which society accords to those who observe its rules. If you had left Coralie to this Monsieur Camusot or if you had kept your relations with her secret, you would have married Madame de Bargeton and you’d now be Prefect of Angoulême and the Marquis de Rubempré.

‘Change your tactics. Make a display of your beauty, grace, wit, poetic talent. If you indulge in minor infamies, do it within four walls. From then on you’ll no longer be guilty of tarnishing the back-cloth in the great theatre which we call the world. Napoleon had a phrase for this: “Wash your dirty linen in private.” There is a corollary to this second precept:
form
is all-important. Understand clearly what I mean by
form.
There are uneducated people who, under the pressure of need, steal a sum of money with violence from somebody else: they are dubbed criminals and brought to justice. An impecunious genius invents a process which will bring him a fortune if he can exploit it: you lend him three thousand francs (like the Cointets who took over your debt of three thousand francs in order to despoil your brother-in-law), you persecute him into ceding you the whole or part of his secret, and you only have your conscience to reckon with: your conscience won’t bring you to the Court of Assizes. The enemies of social order take advantage of this contrast in order to yelp at justice and, in the name of the people, get angry because a burglar or a chicken-stealer in an inhabited area is sent to the galleys, whereas a man who ruins whole families by fraudulent bankruptcy gets off with a few months’ imprisonment at the worst. But these hypocrites know full well that by sentencing the burglar the judges are upholding the barriers between rich and poor. If these were overthrown social order would come to an end. Whereas the bankrupt, the clever rogue who diverts an inheritance, the banker who brings a business to ruin in order to line his pockets, is merely an instrument by which fortunes change hands.

‘Thus, my son, society is forced, for its own sake, to make distinctions; that is what I want you to do for your own sake. The great point is to measure up to the whole of society. Napoleon, Richelieu and the Medicis measured up to their century. Present-day society no longer worships the true God, but the Golden Calf! That is the religion of your Charter, which politically speaking takes no account of anything but property. Is that not tantamount to saying to every subject: “Try and get rich”?… Once you have managed to make a fortune in a legal way and have become the wealthy Marquis
de Rubempré, then you’ll allow yourself the luxury of a sense of honour. You’ll then make such a parade of scrupulousness that no one will dare to accuse you of ever having fallen short of it, even though you had done so in the process of getting on. – Not that I would ever advise that!’ the priest added, taking Lucien’s hand and patting it.

‘What then must you get into that handsome head of yours? Just this simple idea: set yourself a splendid goal, but don’t let anyone see what means you adopt and the steps you take to reach it. You have been acting like a child: be a man. Do what a hunter does. Lie in wait, lie in ambush in the world of Paris. Keep on the watch for a lucky chance which will bring you your quarry. Spare neither your person nor your so-called dignity, for we are all at the beck and call of something, perhaps a vice, perhaps a need. But observe the law of laws: secretiveness!’

‘You horrify me, father!’ said Lucien. ‘This sounds to me like a code for highwaymen.’

‘You’re right,’ said the Canon, ‘but it’s not of my invention. That’s the way upstarts have reasoned, both the dynasty of Austria and the dynasty of France. You have nothing: you’re in the same situation as the Medicis, Richelieu and Napoleon when they first conceived their ambitions. These people, my boy, reckoned that their future had to be paid for with ingratitude, treachery and the most flagrant inconsistencies of conduct. Who wants all must dare all. Let’s reason it out. When you sit down to a game of
bouillotte,
do you argue about the rules? They exist, you accept them.’

‘Well now,’ thought Lucien. ‘He knows how to play
bouillotte.’

‘How do you behave over a game of
bouillotte?’
asked the priest. ‘Do you practise that finest of all virtues, openness? Not only do you hide your hand, you even try to make your opponents believe that you’re going to lose the game when you’re sure of winning it. In short, you dissimulate, don’t you?… You lie in order to win a hundred francs!… What would you say of a player who was generous enough to inform the others that he held four aces? Well, an ambitious
man who wants to follow the precepts of virtue while he’s struggling along in a career in which his antagonists scrap them, is a child to whom hardened politicians would say what card-players say to the man who throws his honours cards away: “Monsieur, you should never play
bouillotte.”
Is it you who make the rules in the ambition-game? Why did I tell you to measure up to society? Because in these days, young man, society has gradually arrogated to itself so many rights over the individual that the individual finds himself obliged to fight back against society. There are no longer any laws, merely conventions, that is to say humbug: nothing but
form.’

Lucien made a gesture of astonishment.

‘Ah, my child,’ said the priest, fearing that he had shocked the unsophisticated young man. ‘Did you expect to find the angel Gabriel in an Abbé whose shoulders have to bear all the iniquity in the diplomatic tug-of-war between two kings? I’m an intermediary between Ferdinand VII and Louis XVIII, two great kings who both owe their thrones to shrewd scheming… I believe in God, but I have even greater belief in our Order, and our Order only believes in the temporal power. To strengthen the temporal power, our Order supports the Church Apostolic, Catholic and Roman, that is to say the sum total of sentiments which keep the common people in bounds. We are the modern Knights Templars, and we have our doctrine. Like that of the Templars, our organization was broken up for the same reasons: it had measured up to society. You want to be a soldier? I will be your commanding officer. Obey me as a wife obeys her husband, as a child obeys his mother, and I guarantee that in less than three years’ time you’ll be the Marquis de Rubempré, you’ll marry into one of the noblest families in the Faubourg Saint-Germain and one day you’ll have a seat on the bench of Peers. At this moment, if I had not amused you with my conversation, what would you be? An undiscoverable corpse deep down in a bed of mud. Well, use your imagination as a poet…’ (At this point Lucien gazed at his protector with curiosity.) ‘The young man sitting here in this barouche with the Abbé Carlos Herrera, honorary
canon in the cathedral chapter of Toledo, secret envoy of his Majesty Ferdinand VII to His Majesty the King of France, bearing a despatch in which the former probably says: “When you have freed me from my enemies, have all the people I am humouring at present hanged, including my envoy so that he will really be a secret one”… this young man,’ said the stranger, ‘has nothing in common with the poet who has just died. I’ve fished you out of the water, brought you back to life, and you belong to me as a creature belongs to its creator, the afreet to the genie, the icoglan to the sultan, the body to the soul! My strong arm will maintain you on your road to power, and yet I promise you a life of pleasure, honour and continuous festivity… You’ll never lack for money. You will shine and show off while I, bending low in the mud of the foundations, shall be propping up the brilliant edifice of your fortune. I myself love power for power’s sake! I shall always be happy to see you enjoying the things which are forbidden to me. In short, I shall live in you!… And in any case, the day when this pact between a human being and a demon, a child and a diplomat, no longer suits you, you can still go and find some little pool, like the one you mentioned, to drown yourself in: you’ll be slightly more or slightly less than what you are today – an unhappy or a dishonoured man.’