‘My Lord, your wit is too subtle for us at this moment. These ladies do not understand you,’ said Madame de Bargeton. This single word froze all laughter and made them turn their eyes on her with astonishment. ‘A poet who draws all his inspiration from the Bible finds his true mother in the Church. Monsieur de Rubempré, read to us Saint John at Pathmos, or Belshazzar’s Feast, in order to prove to my Lord Bishop that Rome is still the magna parens of Virgil.’
The women exchanged a smile on hearing Naïs pronounce these two Latin words.
On the threshold of life, men of the stoutest courage may well lose heart. At the first moment this affront cast Lucien down into watery depths; but he struck out and rose to the surface, vowing that he would dominate this gathering of people. Like a bull stung by a thousand darts, he pulled himself up in a rage and was about to do as Louise had said and recite Saint John at Pathmos; but most of the card-players, falling back into their routine habits, which afforded them a pleasure that poetry had not provided, returned to the whist-tables. Moreover, the irritated self-esteem of so many people would not have been fully avenged without the negative disdain for indigenous poetry which they displayed by deserting Lucien and Madame de Bargeton. They each had their special preoccupation: one of the men went and discussed the construction of a by-road with the Prefect; one of the women suggested that the evening’s pleasure might be varied with a little music. The high society of Angoulême, fully incompetent to judge poetry, was anxious to know what the Rastignacs and the Pimentels thought of Lucien, and several persons gathered round them. On important occasions the prestige enjoyed by these two families in the département was always recognized: everyone envied them and paid court to them, for they all foresaw the possibility of needing their protection.
‘What do you think of our poet and his poetry?’ Jacques asked the Marquise, over whose lands he was allowed to shoot.
‘Well,’ she replied with a smile, ‘it’s not bad as far as provincial verse goes. Anyhow so good-looking a poet can’t write anything bad.’
Everyone found this verdict adorable and went off to repeat it, but with greater malice than the Marquise had intended to put into it.
Then du Châtelet was asked to accompany Monsieur de Bartas as he massacred Figaro’s great song. Now that the door was opened to music, they simply had to listen to du Châtelet’s rendering of the chivalric ballad which Chateaubriand had written in Imperial days. Then came piano duets such as are played by little girls and called for by Madame du Brossard who wanted to show off her darling Camille’s talent to Monsieur de Séverac.
Madame de Bargeton, wounded by the general display of contempt for her poet, returned disdain for disdain by retiring into her boudoir while the music was on. She was followed by the Bishop whose Vicar-General had explained to him the deep irony contained in his unintended epigram and who wanted to make up for it. Mademoiselle de Rastignac, captivated by the poem, slipped into the boudoir without her mother noticing. As Louise sat down on the quilted sofa to which she had brought Lucien, she was able, without being seen or heard, to whisper in his ear: ‘Dear angel, they didn’t understand you, but
Your lines are sweet, I love to echo them.’
Consoled by this flattery, Lucien forgot his grief for a moment.
‘Renown can never be bought cheaply,’ said Louise, taking and pressing his hand. ‘You must suffer, really suffer, my friend; you will be great; grief is the price you must pay for immortality. I myself would love to have to endure the pains of conflict. God preserve you from the drabness of an existence free from struggles in which no eagle could ever spread his wings. I envy you your sufferings, for you at least are alive! You will put forth all your strength and have victory to hope for! Your struggle will be a glorious one. When you have climbed to that lofty sphere in which spirits of great intelligence are enthroned, be mindful of the poor folk whom fate has disinherited, whose intelligence is, morally speaking, stifled for lack of oxygen, who perish because, although they have always known what life can be, they have never lived; who have had keen eyes but have seen nothing; who have had delicate nostrils but have only known the scent of malodorous flowers. Sing then of the plant which withers deep down in the forest, choked by creeping ivies, by rampant and parasitic vegetation, never having felt the sun’s caress, and dying without coming into bloom! Would not that be a poem of awe-inspiring melancholy, a real fantasy? What a superb composition that would make: the picture of a girl born under Asian skies or some child of the desert transported to a cold western country, crying out for the sunshine she adores, dying of sufferings that no one understands, perishing of cold and starved of love! It would be a symbol of many people’s lives.’
‘You would thus be picturing the soul remembering Heaven,’ said the Bishop: ‘a poem which must have been written in time past – I was pleased to find a fragment of it in the Song of Songs.’
‘Do undertake it,’ said Laure de Rastignac, expressing her simple faith in Lucien’s genius.
‘There is room in France for a great sacred poem,’ the Bishop continued. ‘Believe me, fame and fortune will come to a man of talent who will work for Religion.’
‘He will undertake it, my Lord,’ said Madame de Bargeton in a grandiloquent tone. ‘Can you not see the idea of such a poem already dawning in his eyes like a glimmer of flame at day-break?’
‘Naïs is treating us very badly,’ Fifine was saying. ‘What can she be doing?’
‘Can’t you hear her?’ asked Stanislas. ‘She’s riding her hobby-horse – high-sounding words which nobody can make head or tail of.’
Amélie, Fifine, Adrien and Francis appeared at the door of the boudoir with Madame de Rastignac, who was coming to look for her daughter and take her home.
‘Naïs,’ said the two women, delighted to disturb the private conversation going on in the boudoir. ‘Won’t you be kind and play something for us?’
‘My dear child,’ replied Madame de Bargeton. ‘Monsieur de Rubempré is going to recite his Saint John at Pathmos, a splendid Biblical poem.’
‘Biblical!,’ echoed the astonished Fifine.
Amélie and Fifine returned to the drawing-room, and reported Louise’s announcement as pabulum for mockery. Lucien excused himself from reciting the poem on the grounds of defective memory. When he reappeared, he aroused not the slightest interest. They were all chatting or playing cards. The poet had been stripped of all his radiance; the landed proprietors saw no use in him at all; the social climbers feared him as a powerful menace to their ignorance; the women, jealous of Madame de Bargeton – the Beatrice of this new Dante, according to the Vicar-General – threw glances of cold disdain at him.
‘So that is the beau monde!’ Lucien said to himself as he walked down to L’Houmeau along the slopes of Beaulieu, for there are moments in life when one likes to take the longest way home, so that walking may favour the train of thought which one wishes to pursue. Far from feeling discouraged, Lucien’s fury at seeing his ambitions repulsed was giving him new strength. Like all men whom instinct drives upwards to a sphere which they reach before they are able to hold their own in it, he promised himself that he would stop at no sacrifice to maintain himself in high society. As he went along, he plucked out one by one the poisoned arrows which had been shot at him and, talking out loud to himself, he upbraided the ignoramuses he had had to deal with; subtle replies to their silly questions came to his mind, and he was exasperated at having thought of such witty retorts only when it was too late. As he reached the Bordeaux road which winds round the foot of the hill and skirts the banks of the Charente, he caught a glimpse in the moonlight of Eve and David, sitting on a log by the riverside, near a tannery: he followed the path which led down to them.
*
While Lucien was speeding towards his agony in Madame de Bargeton’s salon, his sister had put on a pink multi-striped percaline dress, her stitched-straw hat and a small silk shawl: a simple attire which made her look well-dressed, as is the case wit
h all persons in whom natural dignity sets off the slightest additional adornment. And so, having changed from her working dress, she had put David in a considerable flutter. Although the printer had resolved to propose to her, he was unable to utter a word when he gave the beautiful Eve his arm as they walked through L’Houmeau. Cupid is pleased with such deferential awe, not dissimilar to that which the glory of God arouses in His worshippers. The enamoured pair walked in silence towards the Pont Sainte-Anne in order to cross the left bank of the Charente. Eve found this silence embarrassing and paused half-way across the bridge in order to gaze at the river which, from that point to the place where the gunpowder factory was being built, forms a long pool on to which the setting sun was then casting a joyous stream of light.
‘What a lovely evening!’ she said in her search for a subject to talk about. ‘The air is both warm and fresh, the flowers smell sweet, and there’s a gorgeous sky.’
‘Everything speaks to the heart,’ replied David, trying to bring up the subject of love by way of analogy. ‘People who love find infinite pleasure discovering the poetry which fills their soul in the undulations of a landscape, the transparency of the atmosphere and the scents which rise from the earth. Nature speaks for them.’
‘She also loosens their tongues,’ said Eve, laughingly. ‘You were very quiet as we went through L’Houmeau. Do you know I felt really ill at ease?’
‘You looked so beautiful that I was struck dumb,’ David naively replied.
‘So I am less beautiful now?’
‘No; but I am so happy walking alone with you that…’
He was so nonplussed that he stood still and looked out over the hills with the Saintes road winding down them.
‘If you are enjoying this walk I am delighted, for I feel I owe you this evening in exchange for the one you have given up for my sake. In refusing to go to Madame de Bargeton’s house you have been just as generous as Lucien had been in running the risk of annoying her by the request he made.’
‘Not generous, but wise,’ David answered. ‘Since we are alone under the sky, with no other witnesses than the reeds and bushes on the river bank, allow, me, dear Eve, to express some of the anxiety I feel about the course Lucien is following at present. After what I have just told him, you will regard my fears, I hope, as a mark of scrupulous friendship. You and your mother have done everything you could to give him ideas above his station; but by rousing ambition in him, have you not imprudently doomed him to great suffering? How will he maintain his position in the society to which his tastes attract him? I know him! He is of the kind who like to reap without sowing. Social commitments will take up all his time, and time is the sole capital of people whose future depends on their intelligence: he loves to shine, and society will intensify his desires, which no amount of money will be able to satisfy. He will spend money and earn none; in short, you have got him into the habit of thinking he’s a great man; but society, before recognizing any sort of superiority, expects it to be strikingly successful. Now literary success is only achieved in solitude and through unremitting labour. What will Madame de Bargeton give your brother in return for so many days spent at her feet? Lucien is too proud to accept help from her, and we know he is still too poor to continue to mix with the society she keeps: a double source of ruin for him. Sooner or later this woman will abandon our dear brother after destroying his zest for work, after developing his taste for luxury, his contempt for our sober way of life, his love of enjoyment and his tendency to idleness, which is the kind of debauchery to which poets are prone. Yes, I tremble to think that his great lady may be using him as a plaything: either she loves him and he will forget all else; or she does not love him and will make him unhappy, for he’s infatuated with her.’
‘You chill me to the heart,’ said Eve, stopping in front of the Charente dam. ‘But so long as my mother has strength to carry on with her laborious profession, and so long as I live, the amount our work brings in will perhaps suffice for Lucien’s expenditure and enable him to wait for the tide of fortune to change. I shall never be short of courage, for the idea of working for a person one loves’ – Eve said this with heightened animation – ‘takes all the bitterness and tedium from toil. I am happy when I consider for whom I am taking so much trouble – if indeed you can call it trouble. No, have no fear: we will earn enough money for Lucien to move in society. There lies prosperity for him.’
‘There too lies disaster,’ David rejoindered. ‘Listen to me, dear Eve. The slow composition of works of genius calls either for a considerable ready-made fortune or a life of sublime unconcern lived in poverty. Believe me! Lucien holds the privations of indigence in such horror, he has so complacently sniffed the aroma of banquets, the perfume of success, his self-esteem has grown so big in Madame de Bargeton’s boudoir that he will try anything rather than sink down again: the amount your work brings in will never be proportionate to his needs.’
‘You are only a false friend after all!’ Eve exclaimed in desperation. ‘Or else you would not discourage us in this way.’
‘Eve! Eve!’ answered David. ‘I wish I were indeed Lucien’s brother. You alone can give me that title, which would enable him to accept everything from me and would give me the right to devote myself to him with the sacred love which you bring to the sacrifices you make – but also with the discernment of a level-headed person. Eve, my dear beloved child, make it possible for Lucien to possess a capital on which he can unashamedly draw. Will not a brother’s purse be the same as if it were his? If only you knew all the ideas that Lucien’s new situation has inspired in me! If he wants to visit Madame de Bargeton, he must cease to be my proof-reader; he must no longer live in L’Houmeau; you must no longer be a working-girl, and your mother must give up her employment. If you would consent to become my wife, the way would be made smooth. Lucien could live on my second floor while I built him a flat above the penthouse at the end of the courtyard, unless my father were willing to build a second storey. In this way we could arrange for him to lead a life free of care, a life of independence. The desire I have to stand by Lucien would give me, as regards my own future, an incentive which I should lack if I thought of myself alone; but it depends on you to sanction my devotion. One day perhaps he will go to Paris, the only theatre in which he can really make his début and where his talents can be appreciated and rewarded. Life in Paris is dear, and the three of us will not be too many to keep him going there. Besides this, do not both you and your mother need a support in life? Darling Eve, marry me for love of Lucien. Later perhaps you will come to love me when you see the effort I shall make to serve him and to make you happy. We are both of us equally moderate in our tastes, and our needs will not be great; Lucien’s happiness will be our major concern, and his affection for us will be the savings-bank in which we shall invest our fortune, our feelings and our sensations – all we have in fact!’
‘Convention is against us,’ said Eve, who was touched to see such great love taking so humble a role. ‘You are well-to-do and I am poor. One must be very much in love to rise superior to so great an obstacle.’
‘Then you don’t yet love me enough for that?’ cried David in consternation.
‘But perhaps your father would object…
‘That’s fine,’ David replied. ‘If my father’s consent is all that matters, you will be my wife. Eve, my darling Eve! You have just at this moment made my life very easy to bear. My heart, alas, was weighed down with feelings I dared not and could not express. Only tell me that you love me a little, and I shall have courage enough to tell you what else I have in mind.’
‘Indeed,’ she said, ‘you are making me feel very shy. But since we are confiding our feelings to each other, I will say that never in my life have my thoughts gone out to anyone but you. I have looked on you as one of those men to whom a woman may be proud to belong, and, as a poor working-girl with no prospects, I scarcely dared to hope for so happy a lot.’
‘Say no more, say no more,’ he sai
d, and he sat down on the wall of the dam, for they had come back to it after pacing frantically to and fro over the same ground.
‘Is there something the matter?’ she asked, for the first time showing that graceful solicitude which women feel for someone who belongs to them.
‘Nothing but good,’ he replied. ‘At the prospect of a life of complete happiness, one’s mind is dazed, one’s heart is full. Why am I the happier of us two?’ he asked in a tone of melancholy. ‘But I well know why.’
Eve looked at David with a coquettishly questioning air.
‘Dear Eve, I am getting more than I am giving. And so I shall always love you more than you will love me, because I have greater reason for loving you: you are an angel, I am only a man.’
‘That is too clever for me,’ replied Eve with a smile. ‘I really do love you.’
‘As much as you love Lucien?’ he broke in.
‘Enough to become your wife, devote myself to you and try to spare you any sorrow in the life we shall spend together. It will be a hard life to start with.’
‘Did you notice, darling, that I fell in love with you the very first day we met?’
‘Is there any woman who cannot tell when a man loves her?’
‘Then let me dispel the scruples you have about my supposed wealth. I am poor, dear Eve. Yes, my father has taken pleasure in ruining me; my work was as a matter of speculation for him, and he has acted like many so-called benefactors with those who are under an obligation to them. If I get rich it will be thanks to you. I am not talking as one who loves you, but as a thinking man. I must tell you of my shortcomings, tremendous ones for a man who has to make his career. My character, my habits, my favourite occupations make me unfit for anything connected with commerce and speculation, and yet we cannot get rich unless I develop some industrial ability. I may be capable of discovering a gold-mine, but I am singularly incapable of exploiting it. But you who, out of love for your brother, have been careful about the smallest things, who have a genius for thrift and the patient application of a real business woman, will be able to garner the harvest I shall have sown. Our predicament – I say “ours” because for long since I have considered myself to be one of the family – weighs so heavily on my heart that I have spent my days and nights looking for a means of making good. My knowledge of chemistry and the close watch I have kept on the needs of commerce have put me on the way to a lucrative discovery. I can’t tell you anything about it yet, for I foresee that I shall have to go slowly. We shall have a hard life for several years perhaps; but in the end I shall hit on a process of manufacture for which others are searching as well as myself, but which, if I get in first, will bring us a large fortune. I have said nothing about it to Lucien, for his impulsiveness would spoil everything: he would look upon my hopes as realities, would live like a lord and perhaps get into debt. So keep this secret. Your dear, sweet companionship alone will be able to comfort me while I make these long experiments, just as the desire to enrich you and Lucien will give me steadiness and tenacity…’
Lost Illusions Page 14