Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  Lucien was looking round, not without astonishment, at Braulard’s office in which he saw a library, engravings and decent furniture. As he passed through the drawing-room, he observed that the furniture in it struck a compromise between shoddiness and ostentation. The dining-room seemed to him to be the best-kept room, and he made a joking remark about it. ‘Why, Braulard’s a gastronome’ said Lousteau, ‘His dinners, which get mentioned in plays, are in keeping with his cash-box.’

  ‘I have some good wines,’ was Braulard’s modest reply. ‘Hallo, here are my lamp-lighters,’ he cried as he heard the sound of husky voices and footsteps clumping upstairs.

  As Lucien went out, he saw filing in front of him the evil-smelling squad of claqueurs and ticket-touts, all wearing caps, well-worn trousers, threadbare frockcoats, with hangdog, dirty blue, dirty green, muddy, scraggy faces, long beards, and eyes which were at once ferocious and fawning: a nauseous population which lives and swarms in the Paris boulevards, sells safety-chains and ‘gold’ jewellery for twenty-five sous in the mornings, and in the evenings claps its hands under the theatre chandeliers; which in short adapts itself to all the unclean exigencies of Parisian life.

  ‘There go the “Romans”!1 said Lousteau with a laugh. ‘There goes fame for actresses and dramatists. Seen from close to, it’s no more prepossessing than our own.’

  ‘It’s hard,’ answered Lucien as they returned to his rooms, ‘to keep one’s illusions about anything in Paris. Everything is taxed, everything is sold, everything is manufactured, even success.’

  30. A journalist’s christening-party

  LUCIEN’S guests were Dauriat, the manager of the Panorama-Dramatique, Matifat and Florine, Camusot, Lousteau, Finot, Nathan, Hector Merlin and Madame du Val-Noble, Félicien Vernou, Blondet, Vignon, Philippe Bridau, Mariette, Giroudeau, Cardot with Florentine, and Bixiou. He had invited his friends of the Cénacle. The dancer Tullia who, it was said, was not cruelly disposed to Du Bruel, was also of the party (though without her duke), as well as the owners of the newspapers for which Nathan, Merlin, Vignon and Vernou worked. The guests formed an assembly of thirty persons: Coralie’s dining-room could hold no more.

  About eight o’clock, in the light of the chandeliers, furniture, hangings and flowers, this abode assumed the festive air which lends a dream-like appearance to Parisian luxury. Lucien experienced an indescribable thrill of happiness, satisfied vanity and hopefulness on beholding himself the master in these premises, being no longer able to fathom how or by whose agency this stroke of the magic wand had come about. Florine and Coralie, dressed with the extravagant care and artistic lavishness typical of actresses, smiled on the poet like two angels whose task it was to open the gates of a dreamland palace to him. In fact Lucien was practically in a dream. In a few months his life had been so abruptly transformed, he had so swiftly passed from extreme indigence to extreme opulence that at moments he was seized with anxiety like people who, while they are dreaming, are aware they are asleep. Nevertheless, at the sight of this splendid reality, his eye expressed a kind of self-confidence which envious people would have described as self-complacency. He had changed in himself. Having known happiness every day, he had lost some of his colour, there was a moist and langorous expression in his eyes; in short, to use a phrase of Madame d’Espard, he had the very look of a man who is loved. He was all the more handsome for that. Consciousness of the power and strength he possessed was discernible in a countenance illumined by love and the experience he had gained. He was at last face to face with the literary and social world and believed he could stride about in it as a dominating figure. To this poet, whom only the weight of misfortune was to bring to reflection, the present seemed to hold no cares. The sails of his skiff were bellying out with success, and the instruments needed for the course he was to steer were at his command: a well-furnished house, a mistress whom the whole of Paris envied him, carriage and horses, and finally incalculable sums to be drawn from his pen. His heart, mind and soul had undergone a like metamorphosis: he no longer thought of quibbling about the means in view of the great ends achieved.

  His scale of living will seem so rightly suspect to thrifty minds with some knowledge of life in Paris that it will not be superfluous to reveal the foundation, slight as it was, on which the material well-being of the actress and her poet was based. Without committing himself, Camusot had instructed the furnishers to give Coralie credit for at least three months. Horses and servants and everything else were to be available as if by magic to these two children eager for enjoyment and enjoying everything blissfully. Coralie took Lucien by the hand and allowed him an initial glance at the theatrical splendour of the dining-room adorned with a magnificent dinner-service, the candelabras with their forty branches, the royal delicacies of the dessert and the menu itself, which Chevet had produced. Lucien kissed Coralie’s brow and clasped her to his heart.

  ‘I shall succeed, my child,’ he told her, ‘and I will reward you for so much love and devotion.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ she said. ‘Are you contented?’

  ‘If I weren’t I should be hard to please.’

  ‘Well, a smile from you pays for everything,’ she replied, and with a sinuous grace she brought her lips to his.

  They found Florins, Lousteau, Matifat and Camusot arranging the card-tables. Lucien’s friends were arriving – all these people already called themselves Lucien’s friends. They played cards from nine to midnight. Luckily for him, Lucien knew no card-games; but Lousteau lost a thousand francs and borrowed them from Lucien who did not feel he could refuse the loan to a friend. At about ten o’clock Michel, Fulgence and Joseph turned up. Lucien withdrew into a corner to chat with them, and he noticed a fairly cold and serious, not to say constrained expression on their faces. D’Arthez had been unable to come as he was finishing his book. Léon Giraud was attending to the publication of the first number of his Review. The Cénacle had sent along its three artists as being less likely than the rest to feel out of place in festivities of this kind.

  ‘Well, my dears,’ said Lucien putting on a little tone of superiority, ‘You’ll see that the little humbug may yet become a great politician.’

  ‘I ask nothing better than to be proved wrong,’ said Michel.

  ‘You’re living with Coralie until something better turns up?’ asked Fulgence.

  ‘Yes,’ Lucien continued with an attempt at simple candour. ‘Coralie had a poor old silk-merchant who worshipped her: she threw him out. I’m luckier than your brother Philip,’ he added, turning to Joseph Bridau, ‘who doesn’t know how to cope with Mariette.’

  ‘In short,’ said Fulgence, ‘You’re as good as any other man now; you’ll make your way.’

  ‘I’m a man who’ll always be the same to you in whatever situation he may be,’ Lucien replied.

  Michel and Fulgence looked at each other and exchanged a mocking smile which Lucien noticed: it made him realize how absurd his remark had been.

  ‘Coralie is wonderfully beautiful,’ exclaimed Joseph Bridau. ‘What a splendid picture one could make of her!’

  ‘She’s kind-hearted too,’ answered Lucien. ‘Upon my word, she’s angelic. But you shall do her portrait: take her, if you like, as the model for your ‘Venetian girl brought to the senator by an old woman.’

  ‘All women in love are angelic,’ said Michel Chrestien.

  At this moment Raoul Nathan swooped down on Lucien with a frenzied show of friendliness, took his hands and clasped them.

  ‘My good friend, not only are you a great man, but also a man of heart, and today that’s more rare than genius,’ he said. ‘You’re devoted to your friends. In short, I’m yours for life and death and shall never forget what you’ve done for me this week.’

  Lucien, at the height of joy on seeing himself so flattered by a man of renown, again assumed a superior air as he looked at his three friends from the Cénacle. Nathan’s arrival was due to the fact that Merlin had shown him the proof of the article pra
ising his book, which was to appear in the next day’s newspaper.

  ‘I only agreed to write the attack,’ Lucien whispered to Nathan, ‘On condition that I replied to it myself. I’m on your side.’

  He turned back to his three Cénacle friends, delighted at having had an opportunity to justify the remark which had drawn a laugh from Fulgence.

  ‘Let d’Arthez’s book appear, and I’m in a position to serve his interests. The mere chance of this would induce me to stick to journalism.’

  ‘But have you a free hand?’ asked Michel.

  ‘As free as one can have when one is indispensable,’ Lucien replied with a poor pretence at modesty.

  By midnight the guests were at table and the festivities began. Conversation was freer in Lucien’s than it had been in Matifat’s flat, for no-one suspected the divergence of outlook which existed between the three deputies of the Cénacle and the representatives of the Press. The latter, with their young minds so depraved by their addiction to pros and cons, came to grips and flung at one another the most deplorable axioms of the sophistical code which journalism was then engendering. Claude Vignon, who wanted criticism to preserve its august character, held forth against the tendency of the petits journaux to indulge in personalities, and asserted that later on writers would reach the point of discrediting themselves. Whereupon Marlin and Finot openly embarked on a defence of the policy of what is called blague in journalistic slang; he maintained it would be a means for hall-marking talent.

  ‘All those who can survive the test will be men of really stout calibre,’ said Lousteau.

  ‘Besides,’ said Merlin, ‘while great men are receiving their ovations, a concert of insults must be raised around them, as at the Roman triumphs.’

  ‘But then,’ said Lucien, ‘all the writers who get mocked at will believe they’re attending their own triumph!’

  ‘Mightn’t one say that applies to you?’ cried Finot.

  ‘But our sonnets,’ said Michel Chrestien, ‘would they not bring us a crown of gold, as to Petrarch?’

  ‘Crowns of gold have already come into this,’ said Dauriat. This word-play aroused general acclamation.

  ‘Faciamus experimentum in anima vili,’ Lucien retorted with a smile.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Vernou. ‘Woe to those whom the press doesn’t challenge and those to whom it throws garlands when their first work comes out! Such people will be consigned like saints to their niches and nobody will pay them the slightest attention.’

  ‘They’ll be told, as Champcenetz told the Marquis de Genlis when he was looking too lovingly at his own wife: “Move on, friend, you’ve had your turn!’” said Blondet.

  ‘Success is mortal in France,’ said Finot. ‘We’re too envious of one another not to want to forget other people’s triumphs and make sure everybody else forgets them.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, the opposition of views gives life to literature,’ said Claude Vignon.

  ‘As in Nature,’ exclaimed Fulgence, ‘in which life emerges from two opposing principles. The victory of one spells death for the other.’

  ‘As in politics too,’ added Michel Chrestien.

  ‘We have just seen the proof of it,’ said Lousteau. ‘This week Dauriat will sell two thousand copies of Nathan’s book. Why? Because his book, having been attacked, will be well defended.’

  ‘How could an article like this one,’ asked Merlin, taking out the proofs of the next day’s newspaper, ‘not sell off an edition?’

  ‘Read me the article,’ said Dauriat. ‘I’m always a publisher, even at supper.’

  Merlin read out Lucien’s triumphant article, and all the gathering applauded.

  ‘Now could this second article have been written without the first one?’ asked Lousteau.

  Dauriat drew from his pocket the proof of the third article and read it. Finot listened attentively, since it was destined for the second number of his Review; and, in his capacity as editor, he expressed exaggerated enthusiasm.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘If Bossuet were alive in our century he would not have written in different vein.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ said Merlin. ‘Today Bossuet would be a journalist.’

  ‘Here’s to Bossuet the Second!’ said Claude Vignon, raising his glass with an ironic bow to Lucien.

  ‘Here’s to my Christopher Columbus!’ Lucien replied, drinking a toast to Dauriat.

  ‘Bravo!’ Nathan shouted.

  ‘Who are you calling a bravo?’ asked Merlin spitefully, looking both at Finot and Lucien.

  ‘If you go on like this,’ said Dauriat, ‘we shan’t be able to follow your drift, and these gentlemen’ – he pointed to Matifat and Camusot – ‘won’t understand you. Joking is like cotton thread: it breaks when it’s too finely spun. That’s what Bonaparte said.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Lousteau. ‘We are the witnesses of a grave, inconceivable, unprecedented and truly surprising event. Don’t you wonder at the rapidity with which our friend has changed from a provincial into a journalist?’

  ‘My children,’ said Finot, standing up with a bottle of champagne in his hand, ‘we have all protected and encouraged our host’s beginnings in a career in which he has surpassed our expectations. In two months he has won his spurs with the fine articles we have all read. I propose we give him his authentic christening as a journalist.’

  ‘And put a wreath of roses round his head in order to register his double victory!’ shouted Bixiou with a glance towards Coralie.

  Coralie beckoned to Bérénice who went and fetched some old artificial flowers from the actresses’ boxes. A garland of roses was soon woven once the bulky chamber-maid had brought the flowers, with which the drunkest among them decked themselves grotesquely. Finot, the high priest of these ceremonies, poured a few drops of champagne on Lucien’s fine fair head and with delightful gravity pronounced these sacramental words;

  ‘In the name of the Stamp-Duty, the Caution-Money and the Laying-on of Fines, I baptise thee journalist. May thy articles sit lightly upon thee!’

  ‘… And be paid for without deduction for the blank spaces!’ added Merlin.

  At this juncture Lucien observed the saddened faces of Michel Chrestien, Joseph Bridau and Fulgence Ridal who took up their hats and left amid jeering hurrahs.

  ‘Chrestien and Christians, they’re queer cattle!’ said Merlin.

  ‘Fulgence was a good chap,’ Lousteau replied. ‘But they’ve corrupted his morals.’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Claude Vignon.

  ‘Some solemn young men,’ answered Blondet, ‘who gather together in a philosophical and religious conventicle in the rue des Quatre-Vents where they worry about the general destinies of Humanity.’

  ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’

  ‘… They’re trying to find out whether humanity revolves on its own axis,’ Blondet continued, ‘or whether it’s moving forward. They were hard put to it to decide between rectilinear and parabolic motion, discovered that the Biblical triangle was nonsensical, and then some prophet or other rose among them who pronounced in favour of the spiral.’

  ‘Men may well league together to invent more dangerous absurdities,’ cried Lucien, trying to defend the Cénacle.

  ‘You may take such theories for idle words,’ said Félicien Vernou, ‘but the time comes when they are translated into rifle-shots and guillotines.’

  ‘As yet,’ said Blondet, ‘they’re still searching for the providential idea behind champagne, the humanitarian meaning of trousers and the tiny insect that makes the world go round. They put great men who have fallen – Vico, Saint-Simon, Fourier – on their feet again. I’m very much afraid they’re turning poor Joseph Bridau’s ideas upside-down.’

  ‘They’re responsible,’ said Lousteau, ‘for Bianchon, who comes from the same province and college as myself, giving me the cold shoulder.’

  ‘Are mental gymnastics and orthopaedy taught there?’ asked Merlin.

  ‘That could be,’ Finot replied, �
��since Bianchon is inclined to take to their moonshine.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Lousteau, ‘he’ll make a great doctor.’

  ‘Isn’t d’Arthez their nominal leader,’ said Nathan, ‘a young fellow who’s destined to swallow us up in one gulp?’

  ‘He’s a man of genius!’ cried Lucien.

  ‘I’d rather have a glass of sherry,’ said Claude Vignon with a smile.

  By this time, everyone was explaining his character to his neighbour. When intelligent people come to the stage of wanting to explain themselves, to open their hearts to one another, it is certain that they are riding at full speed towards intoxication. An hour later, all the guests, having become the best friends in the world, were accepting one another as great men, men of mark, men with a future before them. In his capacity as host, Lucien had retained some clarity of mind; he listened to certain sophistries which impressed him and added the final touch to his demoralization.

  ‘My children,’ said Finot. ‘The Liberal party is obliged to liven up its polemics, for at present it has nothing to say against the Government. So you can imagine what a quandary the Opposition is in. Which of you would like to write a pamphlet demanding the re-establishment of the right of primogeniture in order to raise an outcry against the secret designs of the Court? The pamphlet will be well paid for.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Hector Merlin. ‘That’s in my line of opinion.’

  ‘Your party would say you’re compromising yourself,’ Finot retorted. ‘Félicien, you can take on this pamphlet. Dauriat will publish it. We won’t let on.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Vernou.

  ‘Six hundred francs. You’ll sign it “Count C”.’

  ‘It’s a deal!’ said Vernou.

  ‘So you’re going to lift the canard into the field of politics?’ asked Lucien.

  ‘It’s the Chabot affair transferred to the sphere of ideas,’ Finot replied. ‘You accuse the Government of having certain intentions, and thus unleash public opinion against it.’