‘But the Government will bring in represssive laws,’ said Du Bruel. ‘It’s already drawing them up.’
‘Bah!’ said Nathan. ‘What can the law do against French wit, the most subtle of all dissolvents?’
‘Ideas,’ Vignon continued, ‘can only be neutralized by ideas. Terror and despotism alone can stifle the French genius, whose language lends itself admirably to allusion and double entendre. The more repressive the law becomes, the more will wit spurt forth like steam through a safety-valve. Thus, when the King does something good, if the newspapers are against him it will be the minister who has done it all, and vice versa. If a newspaper invents some outrageous calumny, it attributes it to information received. If a private person complains it will get off with an apology for the liberty taken. If it is hauled before the courts, it complains that it was not asked to rectify its statement. But ask it for a rectification and it will laughingly refuse, making light of the crime it has committed. Finally, if the victim wins his case, it ridicules him. If a penalty is imposed, if the damages are too high, it will pillory the plaintiff as an enemy of liberty, his country and enlightenment in general. It will show up Monsieur So-and-So as a thief while making out that he is the most honest man in the kingdom. So its crimes are trifles, those who attack it are monsters! And in a given space of time it can make its readers believe anything it wants. Also, nothing it doesn’t approve of can be patriotic and it is never in the wrong. It will use religion to attack religion and the Charter to attack the King; it will scoff at the judicial bench when the judicial bench offends it and praise it when it has pandered to popular passions. In order to get subscribers it will invent the most moving fables; it will play the clown like Bobèche. A newspaper will serve up its father raw, with no other seasoning than its jokes, rather than fail to interest or amuse its public. It will be like an actor putting his son’s ashes into the cinerary urn so that he can weep real tears, or like a mistress sacrificing everything to her lover!’
‘In short it’s the common people in folio size,’ Blondet exclaimed, interrupting Vignon.
‘Yes,’ Vignon continued, ‘but a common people which is hypocritical and ungenerous. It will put a ban on talent, just as Athens put it on Aristides. We shall see the newspapers, which originally were run by men of honour, fall subsequently into the hands of the greatest mediocrities possessing the patience and india-rubber faint-heartedness lacking in men of fine genius, or into the hands of grocers with money enough to buy the products of the pen. We can already see this happening! But in ten years’ time any urchin fresh from school will believe he’s a great man; he’ll climb on to the column of a newspaper in order to kick his predecessors in the teeth; he’ll pull their feet from under them in order to get their place. Napoleon was very right to muzzle the Press. I would wager that, under a government which they had themselves brought into power, the Opposition news-sheets would use the same arguments and the same articles to topple it over as they now use to attack the King’s ministry, once it refused them anything whatsoever. The more concessions are made to the journalists, the more demanding they’ll become. The journalists who have made the grade will give place to famished and poverty-stricken journalists. It’s an incurable sore which will become more and more cancerous, more and more insufferable; and the greater the evil, the more it will be tolerated, until the day comes when, thanks to their abundance, the newspapers will be in a confusion like that of Babel. We know, the whole lot of us, that the papers will go further in ingratitude than kings, further in speculation and calculation than the dirtiest kind of commerce, that they will rot our intelligences by selling us their mental fire-water every morning. But we shall all write for them, like the people who work a quicksilver mine knowing that they’ll die of it. Look at the young man over there, sitting beside Coralie – what’s his name? Lucien. He’s handsome, he’s a poet and, what is worth more for him, a man of wit. Well, he’ll enter one of those intellectual brothels called newspapers, throw his best ideas into it, dry up his brains, corrupt his soul, commit those anonymous acts of treachery which, in the war of ideas, stand in lieu of stratagems, pillages, arson, shifts and tacks in the wars waged by bandits. When he, like a thousand others, has been at great expense of genius for the profit of the shareholder, these vendors of poison will let him die of hunger if he’s thirsty, and of thirst if he’s hungry.’
‘Thank you,’ said Finot.
‘But, Heaven forgive me,’ said Claude Vignon. ‘I knew all that. I’m in the same convict prison, and the arrival of a new convict gives me pleasure. Blondet and I have more in us than Monsieur X and Monsieur Y who batten on our talent. None the less we shall always be exploited by them. We have some feeling underneath our intelligence, but we haven’t enough ferocity to qualify as exploiters. We’re lazy, contemplative, meditative, critical of all and sundry: they’ll suck out our brains and then accuse us of loose living.’
‘I thought you men would be a bit more amusing,’ cried Florine.
‘Florine is right,’ said Blondet. ‘Let’s leave the cure of public ills to the quacks – our statesmen. As Charlet said: “One never spits into the wine-vats.”’
‘Do you know what Vignon puts me in mind of?’ said Lousteau, turning to Lucien. ‘One of those gross women in the rue du Pélican who tells a schoolboy: “Little man, you’re too young for a place like this…”’
This sally raised a laugh and amused even Coralie. The merchants listened as they went on eating and drinking.
‘What a nation!’ said the envoy to the Duc de Rhétoré. ‘So much good and so much evil in conjunction! Gentlemen, you are spendthrifts who cannot come to ruin.’
Thus it happened, by the blessing of chance, that no information was lacking to Lucien about the precipice over which he was to fall. D’Arthez had set the poet on the noble path of toil by inciting in him the feeling which overcomes all obstacles. Even Lousteau had, for a selfish motive, tried to stave him off by showing journalism and literature in their true light. Lucien had been reluctant to believe in so much hidden corruption; but now at last he was hearing journalists crying out in pain and could see them at work disembowelling their foster-mother as they predicted the future. In the course of that evening he had seen things as they were. Instead of feeling horror-stricken as he looked into the very heart of Parisian corruption so well characterized by Blucher, he was enjoying this witty company to the point of intoxication. It seemed to him that these extraordinary men, under the damascene armour of their vices and the glittering helmet of their cold analysis, were superior to the grave and austere brethren of the Cénacle. Besides, he was savouring the first delights of affluence, he was under the spell of luxury and the tyranny of sumptuous fare; his wayward instincts were reviving, he was drinking choice wines for the first time, he was sampling the exquisite products of first-class cooking; he saw a minister, a duke and his little dancer mingling with the journalists and admiring the atrocious power they wielded; he felt a terrible itch to dominate this world of potentates and believed he had the power to overcome them. Finally there was Coralie who had been made happy by only a few sentences from him: he had examined her in the light of the festive candles through the steam arising from the dishes and the mists of intoxication, and she was so beautified by love that she seemed sublime to him! Moreover this girl was the prettiest, the most beautiful actress in Paris. The Cénacle, that celestial sphere of noble intelligence, was bound to lose the battle against such wholesale temptation. Lucien’s vanity, a vanity peculiar to authors, had just been flattered by men of experience; he had received praise from his future rivals. The success of his article and his conquest of Coralie were two triumphs which might well have turned an older head than his. During the discussion, everyone had eaten and drunk well. Lousteau, sitting next to Camusot, three or four times poured kirsch into the merchant’s wine without anyone noticing and played on his vanity to get him to drink copiously. This manoeuvre was so carefully carried out that the merchant was unawa
re of it: he thought that in his particular line he was as sprightly as the journalists.
An exchange of sharp pleasantries began as the dessert delicacies and the wines went round. The diplomat, a man of much intelligence, made a sign to the Duke and the dancer as soon as he heard the buzz of nonsensical remarks which, as this man of acumen well knew, herald the grotesque scenes that bring orgies to an end, and all three of them departed. As soon as Camusot’s wits became fuddled, Coralie and Lucien who, during the supper, had been behaving like amorous adolescents, fled downstairs and jumped into a cab. Camusot was under the table, and Matifat thought he had disappeared with the actress. He left his guests smoking, drinking, laughing, bickering, and followed Florine when she went off to bed. As daylight overtook the combatants, or rather Blondet, this intrepid wine-bibber, the only one still capable of speech, invited the sleepers to drink a toast to rosy-fingered Dawn.
19. An actress’s apartments
LUCIEN was unused to Parisian orgies; he was still in possession of his reasoning faculties as he went downstairs, but the open air made him feel hideously drunk. Coralie and her maid had to help the poet up to the first floor of the fine house in the rue de Vendôme where the actress lived. On the staircase Lucien nearly collapsed and was disgustingly sick.
‘Quick, Bérénice,’ cried Coralie. ‘Tea, make some tea!’
‘It’s nothing. It’s the fresh air,’ said Lucien. ‘Also, I’ve never drunk so much.’
‘Poor child! he’s as innocent as a lamb,’ said Bérénice, a stout woman from Normandy, as ugly as Coralie was beautiful.
At last Lucien, without realizing it, was put into Coralie’s bed. With the help of Bérénice the actress had undressed her poet with the loving care of a mother for her small child. He kept on saying: ‘It’s nothing. It’s the fresh air. Thank you, Mamma.’
‘How sweet the way he says “Mamma”!’ exclaimed Coralie, kissing his hair.
‘What a pleasure to love such an angel, Mademoiselle. Where did you pick him up? I never thought that a man could be as handsome as you are beautiful.’
Lucien wanted to sleep, not knowing where he was or what was going on. Coralie made him swallow several cups of tea and then left him sleeping.
‘The concierge didn’t see us, or anyone else?’ asked Coralie.
‘No, I was waiting up for you.’
‘Victorine knows nothing about it?’
‘Not likely,’ said Bérénice.
Ten hours later, at about noon, Lucien woke up under Coralie’s gaze. She had been watching him as he slept! The poet in him understood. She was still in her fine dress, abominably stained, but she was going to treat it as a relic. Lucien recognized the devotion and delicate attentiveness of true love awaiting its reward: he gave Coralie one look. She undressed in an instant and slipped like a grass-snake into bed beside Lucien. By five o’clock the poet was again asleep, sunk deep in voluptuous pleasure. He had caught a glimpse of the actress’s bedroom, a ravishingly luxurious creation in white and pink, a wonderland of choice and dainty objects excelling those which Lucien had already admired in Florine’s flat. Coralie was now up, since she had to be at the theatre by seven in order to play her Andalusian role. She had again been contemplating her poet as he slept off his sensual enjoyment; she had been enthralled and could never be sated with this noble love which united heart and senses and enraptured both. The deification which makes it possible to feel as two separate people on earth and to love as one single person in heaven was like a priest’s absolution to her. For that matter, who would not have found exoneration in Lucien’s more than human beauty? As she knelt by the bed, happy to love for love’s sake, the actress felt a sort of sanctification. This state of delight was disturbed by Bérénice.
‘Here comes Camusot. He knows you are here,’ she called out.
Lucien stood up, his innate generosity prompting him to do no harm to Coralie. Bérénice drew aside a curtain, and Lucien retreated into a charming dressing-room where Bérénice and her mistress brought him his clothes with extraordinary rapidity. When the merchant appeared, Coralie caught sight of the poet’s boots, which Bérénice had put in front of the fire to warm after covertly polishing them. Both servant and mistress had forgotten these incriminating boots. Bérénice departed after exchanging an anxious look with her mistress. Coralie threw herself on to her settee and invited Camusot to sit down in a gondola chair facing her. The good man, who adored Coralie, was looking at the boots and dared not lift his eyes to his mistress.
‘Ought I to make a fuss and leave Coralie on account of this pair of boots? It would be a trifling thing to get angry about. There are boots everywhere. These would look better in a shoemaker’s shop-window or strolling about on a man’s legs in the boulevards. Here however, with no legs in them, they tell a tale which doesn’t argue for fidelity. I’m fifty, that’s true: I have to be as blind as Cupid.’
There was no excuse for this cowardly monologue. The pair of boots were not half-boots like those in use today and which might in some measure be invisible to an unobservant man; they were, as fashion then ordained, full-length boots, very elegant, with tassels, the sort which glistened above close-fitting, almost invariably light-coloured trousers and reflected objects as in a looking-glass. So these boots were staring the honest silk-merchant in the face and, we must add, breaking his heart.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Coralie.
‘Nothing,’ he replied.
‘Ring the bell,’ said Coralie, smiling at Camusot’s cowardice. ‘Bérénice,’ she said to her Norman maid as she entered, ‘find me some button-hooks so that I can try these wretched boots on again. And don’t forget to bring them to my dressing-room this evening.’
‘What? Are they your boots?’ Camusot asked, breathing more easily.
‘My goodness, what do you think?’ she said with a haughty air. ‘You great silly, you surely don’t believe?… Oh yes, he would believe it!’ she said to Bérénice. ‘I’ve a man’s role in What’s-his-name’s play, and I’ve never dressed as a man before. The theatre shoemaker brought me those boots to practise walking in them while I was waiting for the pair he measured me for. He helped me on with them, but they hurt me so much I took them off; none the less I must try them again.’
‘Don’t put them on again if they’re uncomfortable,’ said Camusot, who had found them very uncomfortable indeed.
‘That would be more sensible,’ said Bérénice, ‘instead of Mademoiselle torturing herself as she did. It made her cry, Monsieur, and if I were a man I’d never let a woman I loved cry! It would be better if they were made of morocco leather. But the management is so stingy! Monsieur, you ought to go and order some for her…’
‘Yes, I will,’ said the merchant. – ‘You’re only just getting up,’ he said to Coralie.
‘This very minute. I didn’t get to bed till six o’clock, after looking for you everywhere. You made me keep my cab waiting for seven hours. That’s all the care you take of me! Neglecting me for the bottle! I had to take care of myself, seeing that I shall now be performing every evening so long as The Alcalde makes money. I don’t want to belie that young man’s article!’
‘He’s handsome, that boy,’ said Camusot.
‘You think so? I don’t like men of that kind: they’re too much like women. And besides they don’t know how to love like you silly old business men who find life so boring!’
‘Will Monsieur be dining with Madame?’ asked Bérénice.
‘No. My mouth’s all furred up.’
‘You got nicely sozzled last night. Oh, Papa Camusot, let me tell you I don’t like men who drink…’
‘I suppose you’ll give that young man a present,’ said the merchant.
‘Indeed yes, I prefer to pay them that way, instead of doing what Florine does. Well then, you bad lot, I love you, but you’d better leave me – or else give me a carriage so that I needn’t waste time in future.’
‘You’ll have it tomorrow for the dinne
r with your manager at the Rocher de Cancale. Sunday evening the new play won’t be on.’
‘Come along, I’m going to dine,’ said Coralie; and she took Camusot off.
An hour later Lucien was released by Bérénice. She had been Coralie’s childhood companion and she was as sharp and nimble-minded as she was corpulent.
‘Stay here. Coralie will come back alone. She’s even ready to get rid of Camusot if he worries you,’ said Bérénice to Lucien. ‘But, dear child of her heart, you’re too much of an angel to ruin her. She told me she’s made up her mind to give everything up and leave this paradise to go and live with you in your garret. Oh! jealous and envious people have made it plain to her that you hadn’t a penny to bless yourself with and that you lived in the Latin quarter. Mind you, I’d go with you and do your housework. But I’ve managed to cheer the poor child up. Isn’t it a fact, Monsieur, that you’ve too much sense to do anything so idiotic? You’ll see all right that that lump of a man will only get the carcase and that you’ll be the pet, the beloved, the idol she’ll give her soul to. If you knew how good she is when I put her through her parts! A perfect darling! She well deserved that God should send her one of his angels, she was so disgusted with life. She was very unhappy with her mother, who used to beat her and then sold her! Yes, Monsieur, a mother selling her own child! If I had a daughter I’d look after her as I do my little Coralie; she’s been like my own child to me. This is the first good time I’ve seen her having, the first time she’s had lots of applause. It seems that because of what you wrote about her, they’re getting up a fine claque for the next performance. While you were asleep Braulard came to work things out with her.’