Lost Illusions

  All this, my dear boy, shows how much we love our friends in misfortune. Florine, whom I’ve been feeble enough to forgive, asks you to send us a review of Nathan’s latest work.

  Good-bye, my son. I can only pity you for having gone back to the chemist’s bottle you came out of before you made an old comrade of

  Your Friend,

  ETIENNE L.

  ‘Poor fellows! They even gambled for me!’ he said to himself, quite touched.

  Sometimes, from insalubrious regions or those where one has suffered most, come wafts of air which seem to be laden with the perfumes of Eden. In a humdrum life the memory of sufferings brings an indescribable pleasure. Eve was stupefied when her brother came downstairs in his new clothes: he was scarcely recognizable.

  ‘I can now go for a walk in Beaulieu!’ he exclaimed. ‘They won’t say of me: “he came home in tatters!” Look, here’s a watch you can have. It really is mine. Besides, like me, it’s out of order.’

  ‘What a child you are!’ said Eve. ‘One can’t be cross with you for long.’

  ‘Do you think then, dear girl, that I asked for all that with the silly idea of cutting a figure in Angoulême? I don’t care a rap for all that!’ he said, thrashing the air with his cane, which had a pommel of chased gold. ‘I want to repair the harm I’ve done: that’s why I’m in battle array.’

  Lucien’s success as a well-dressed man was the only real triumph he was to achieve, but it was a tremendous one. Envy loosens as many tongues as admiration freezes. Women raved about him, men talked scandal about him, and he might well have exclaimed, like Sedaine in his song, ‘It’s all because of the clothes I’m wearing!’ He left two cards at the Prefecture and also paid a visit to Petit-Claud, but he happened to be out. The next day, the day of the banquet, all the Paris newspapers had the following lines in their news item from Angoulême:

  ANGOULÊME. The return of the young poet whose beginnings were so brilliant, the author of The Archer of Charles the Ninth, which is the only historical novel in France not imitated from Sir Walter Scott, the preface to which is an event in literature, has been singled out for an ovation as flattering to the city as it is to Monsieur Lucien de Rubempré. Angoulême has lost no time in giving a patriotic banquet in his honour. The new Prefect, very recently installed, has associated himself with this public demonstration by acclaiming the author of the Marguerites, whose budding talent had been so warmly encouraged by Madame la Comtesse du Châtelet.

  In France, once an impetus is given nothing can stay its course. The colonel of the regiment stationed in Angoulême produced his regimental band. The proprietor of the Bell, the famous hostelry of L’Houmeau, who was also its maître d’hôtel, and whose consignments of truffled turkey travel as far as China and are despatched in most magnificent porcelain, took charge of the catering: he had decorated his great dining-hall with hangings whereon intertwined bouquets and laurel wreaths made a superb display. By five o’clock forty people, all in formal dress, were assembled there. Lucien’s fellow-citizens were represented by a crowd of over a hundred people, attracted for the most part by the presence of the bandsmen in the courtyard.

  ‘All Angoulême is here!’ said Petit-Claud, taking his stance at the window.

  ‘I just can’t understand it,’ Postel was saying to his wife, who had come to listen to the band. ‘Why, the Prefect, the Receiver-General, the Colonel, the manager of the Gunpowder Factory, our M.P., the Mayor, the Headmaster, the manager of the Ruelle foundry, the Chairman of the Court, the Public Attorney, Monsieur Milhaud, all the town authorities are here!’

  When all were seated at table, the band struck out with variations on the tune of Long live the King, long live France! – an air which never became popular. It was then five o’clock. At eight the appearance of dessert – sixty-five dishes, the pièce de résistance being a Mount Olympus in icing sugar with a chocolate figure of France on top – was a signal for toasts to begin.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said the Prefect, rising to his feet: ‘The King! The lawful monarchy! Is it not to the peace which the Bourbons have restored to us that we owe the generation of poets and thinkers thanks to whom France still holds pride of place in literature?’

  ‘Long live the King!’ shouted the guests, among whom the supporters of the Government were in great force.

  The venerable headmaster stood up. ‘To our young poet,’ he said, ‘to the hero of the day, who has combined the grace and poetry of Petrarch, in a form of verse which Boileau declared was so difficult, with the talent of a prose-writer!’

  ‘Bravo! Bravo!’

  The Colonel stood up. ‘Messieurs, let us drink to him as a Royalist, for the hero of this feast has had the courage to defend the right principles!’

  ‘Bravo!’ said the Prefect, giving the cue for applause.

  Petit-Claud stood up. ‘All Lucien’s comrades drink to the glory of the College of Angoulême and its venerable headmaster who is so dear to us, and to whom we must express gratitude for all he has contributed to our successes!’

  The old headmaster, who had not expected this toast, wiped his eyes. Lucien stood up. The deepest silence ensued, and the poet turned pale. At this instant the headmaster, who was on his left, placed a laurel wreath on his head. Everyone clapped. There were tears in Lucien’s eyes and a break in his voice.

  ‘He’s drunk,’ the future Public Attorney of Nevers whispered to Petit-Claud.

  ‘Not with wine,’ the solicitor replied.

  ‘My dear fellow-citizens, my dear schoolfellows,’ said Lucien at last. ‘I could wish that the whole of France might witness this scene. Thus it is that men are nurtured, thus it is that great works and great deeds are accomplished in our country. And yet, seeing what little I have done and what great honour I am receiving, I can only feel embarrassed and entrust to the future the task of justifying the acclamation I am receiving today. The memory of this moment will give me new strength for struggles to come. Allow me to single out for your homage the lady who was both my first Muse and my protectress, and to drink also to my native city. And so then, to the beautiful Comtesse Sixte du Châtelet and the noble city of Angoulême!’

  ‘He didn’t do too badly,’ said the Public Attorney with a nod of approval. ‘Our toasts were pre-arranged. His was improvised.’

  At ten o’clock the guests went away in groups. David Séchard, hearing the unaccustomed music, asked Basine what was going on in L’Houmeau. She replied: ‘They are giving a banquet in honour of your brother-in-law Lucien.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said, ‘that he must have regretted that I couldn’t be there!’

  At midnight, Petit-Claud escorted Lucien back to the Place du Mûrier. There Lucien said to the solicitor: ‘My dear, we are friends for life!’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said the solicitor, ‘my contract of marriage with Mademoiselle de La Haye is being signed at the house of her godmother, Madame de Sénonches. Do me the pleasure of coming. Madame de Sénonches has asked me to bring you, and you will meet the Prefect’s wife, who will feel very flattered by your toast – no doubt she will have heard about it.’

  ‘I had my motive for that,’ said Lucien.

  ‘Oh! you’ll save David.’

  ‘I’m sure I shall,’ the poet replied.

  At this moment David appeared as if by magic. And this is how it came about.

  26. The snake in the grass

  DAVID was in an impossible position: his wife absolutely forbade him either to receive Lucien or to let him know where he was hiding. Meanwhile Lucien was writing him affectionate letters telling him that in a few days’ time he would have atoned for his misdeeds. Now Mademoiselle Clerget had handed David the two following letters and explained to him the motive behind the celebrations of which the music had reached his ears.

  Darling, just go on as if Lucien were not here. Don’t worry about anything, but get this idea firmly fixed in your dear head: our safety depends entirely on the impossibility of your enemies finding out where you are.
I am in the unhappy position of having more confidence in Kolb, Marion and Basine than in my brother. Alas! My poor Lucien is no longer the ingenuous, tender-hearted poet we once knew. It’s precisely because he’s trying to meddle in your affairs and presuming to get our debts paid (out of pride, my dear David) that I fear him. He has had some fine clothes sent him from Paris and a hundred francs in gold – in a beautiful purse. He put them at my disposal and we are living on them. At last we have one enemy less: your father has left us. We owe his departure to Petit-Claud who got wise to Papa Séchard’s intentions and brought them to naught by telling him that henceforth you would do nothing without Petit-Claud’s advice, and that Petit-Claud himself would not let you cede any part of your invention without a preliminary indemnity of thirty thousand francs: fifteen thousand to begin with to clear off your debts, and fifteen thousand which you would get unconditionally whether you succeed or not. I can’t make out what Petit-Claud is after.

  Love and kisses to you, those of a wife to her unhappy husband. Our tiny Lucien is well. It’s lovely to see this little flower coming into bloom in the midst of our domestic storms I Mother is praying hard as usual and would embrace you almost as tenderly as

  Your own Eve.

  As can be seen, Petit-Claud and the Cointets, alarmed by old Séchard’s peasant cunning, had got rid of him, the more easily because his grape-harvest was calling him back to his Marsac vineyards. Lucien’s letter, enclosed in Eve’s, ran thus:

  My dear David,

  All goes well. I am armed cap-à-pie. I’m beginning my campaign today and in two days’ time I shall have covered some distance. With what pleasure I shall embrace you when you are free and clear of the debts I saddled you with! But I am hurt and saddened for life at the mistrust my sister and mother continue to show me. Don’t I already know you are hiding in Basine’s house? Every time she comes to our house she brings news of you and your answers to my letters. Anyway it’s obvious that Eve had only her laundry friend to rely on. I shall be very near you today and cruelly grieved not to have you with me at the banquet which is being given me. Local patriotism in Angoulême has earned me a small triumph. It will be forgotten in a few days, but the joy you felt would be the only sincere one. Anyhow, a few more days, and you will entirely forgive the man who values more than any mundane glory the privilege of being

  Your brother,

  LUCIEN.

  David’s heart was sharply torn between these two contending forces, unequal though they were, for he adored his wife, and his friendship for Lucien had diminished now that he felt less esteem for him. But solitude can effect great changes in strength of feeling. A man who is alone and a prey to preoccupations like those in which David was immersed gives in to thoughts which would have no purchase on him in the normal routine of life. Thus, as he read the letter Lucien had written amid the fanfares of his unexpected triumph, he was profoundly touched at the words of regret which he had hoped Lucien would express. Tender-hearted people are unable to resist such minor manifestations of sentiment, and think they mean as much to others as to themselves. They are like the last drop of water which overflows a brimming cup. And so, as midnight approached, no entreaties from Basine could prevent David from going to see Lucien.

  ‘No one,’ he told her, ‘is about at this time in the streets of Angoulême. I shall not be seen and they can’t arrest me at night. Even if I did meet anyone, I could use the means devised by Kolb to get back to my hiding-place. And besides, it’s much too long since I kissed my wife and child.’ Basine yielded to these specious arguments and let him leave the house.

  In consequence, just as Lucien and Petit-Claud were saying good-night to each other, David came up and cried: ‘Lucien!’ The two brothers fell into one another’s arms, weeping. The emotion which surged up in Lucien sprang from the kind of friendship which nothing can destroy, by which men always lay insufficient store, but which they blame themselves later for having betrayed. David was feeling the urge to forgive. This generous-hearted, noble-minded inventor desired above all to have things out with Lucien and dispel the clouds overcasting the affection between brother and sister. With such sentimental considerations in mind he had lost sight of the dangers arising from his financial situation.

  Petit-Claud said to his client: ‘Go to your house, and at least make the most of your imprudence by embracing your wife and child! And mind no one sees you!’

  ‘What a pity!’ he exclaimed as he stood alone in the Place du Mûrier. ‘Oh! If only Cérizet were here!’

  Just as the solicitor was making this aside while walking along the boarded enclosure built round the square in which, today, the Law-Courts proudly stand, he heard someone knocking on a board behind him, like the pounding of knuckles on a door. ‘I am here,’ said Cérizet, speaking through a chink between two badly-joined boards. ‘I saw David leaving L’Houmeau. I already had an idea where he was hiding. Now I’m sure, and I know where we can nab him. But if we’re to set a trap for him I must learn something about Lucien’s plans, and you’ve gone and sent them home. At any rate stay here on some pretext or other. When David and Lucien come out again, bring them near where I am. They’ll think they’re alone and I shall hear what they say when they part company.’

  ‘You’re a clever devil!’ Petit-Claud said in a low voice.

  ‘God help us!’ Cérizet retorted. ‘What wouldn’t a man do to get what you’ve promised me!’

  Petit-Claud moved away from the fence and as he paced round the Place du Mûrier he looked up to the windows of the room in which the Séchard family was assembled and fixed his mind on the future as if to give himself courage, for Cériset’s stratagem might make a knock-out blow possible. Petit-Claud was a thoroughly shifty, treacherous, two-faced man, one of those who never swallow any bait that the present holds out or let themselves get caught up in any attachment once they have studied the vagaries of the human heart and the twists and turns of self-interest. That is why, from the beginning, he had placed little faith in Cointet. In the eventuality of his marriage project failing without him having grounds for accusing tall Cointet of double dealing, he had thought out a way of causing him trouble. But now that he had succeeded at the Bargeton mansion, he was playing fair with Cointet. The scheme he had held in reserve had now become superfluous and would jeopardize the political situation to which he aspired.

  These are the foundations on which he had wished to base his future importance. In L’Houmeau Gannerac and some other big tradesmen were beginning to form a Liberal committee connected by business relationships with the leaders of the Opposition. The accession to power of the Villèle cabinet, accepted by the moribund Louis XVIII, had heralded a change of tactics in the Opposition: now that Napoleon was dead, they were giving up the dangerous method of conspiracies. The Liberal party was organizing a system of law-abiding resistance. It was aiming at getting control in the constituencies in order to reach its goal by winning over the masses. Petit-Claud, born and brought up in L’Houmeau as a rabid Liberal, was the life and soul and also the secret counsellor of the Opposition in the Lower Town, kept under as it was by the aristocracy of the Upper Town. He had been the first to see the danger of allowing to the Cointets the monopoly of the Press in the Charente valley, where the Opposition needed an organ in order to keep abreast with other towns.

  ‘Let each of us give Gannerac a five-hundred franc note,’ said Petit-Claud, ‘and he will have over twenty thousand francs to buy the Séchard printing-office. We’ll lend this sum to the purchaser and so control the running of it.’ The solicitor got this idea adopted with a view to thereby strengthening his position as regards both Cointet and Séchard, and naturally his eye fell on Cérizet as being the sort of scoundrel he could make into a stout supporter of the Liberal party.

  ‘If you can find out where your former boss is and deliver him into our hands,’ he had said to Séchard’s former compositor, ‘we’ll lend you twenty thousand francs to buy his printing-works, and probably you’ll be put
in charge of the journal. So get busy.’ More certain of the activity of a man like Cérizet than of that of all the Doublons in the world, Petit-Claud had then promised tall Cointet that David should be arrested. However, once he had begun to cherish the hope of becoming a magistrate, he foresaw that he might have to turn his back on the Liberals; but he had so successfully worked up the L’Houmeau people that the funds needed for the purchase of the printing-works were in hand. Petit-Claud resolved to let things take their natural course. ‘Bah!’ he had told himself. ‘Cérizet will break some Press law or other and I’ll take advantage of it to display my talents.’

  He went up to the printing-office door and said to Kolb, who was standing guard. ‘Go upstairs and tell David to get away while he can, and see you take all possible precautions. It’s one o’clock, I’m going home.’

  When Kolb moved from the doorstep Marion took his place. Lucien and David came out: Kolb walked a hundred paces ahead of them and Marion a hundred paces behind. While the two brothers were passing alongside the boarding, Lucien was talking animatedly to David.

  ‘My dear David,’ he said, ‘my plan is exceedingly simple; but how can I talk about it before Eve? She would never understand the means I shall adopt. I’m sure that Louise has deep down in her heart a desire that I shall be able to reawaken, and I want her solely in order to avenge myself on that imbecile of a prefect. Once we are lovers, if only for a week, I shall persuade her to ask the Ministry to allot you a subsidy of twenty thousand francs for your researches. Tomorrow I shall be seeing the creature again in the little boudoir where our love affair began – according to Petit-Claud, nothing has been altered there. I’ll do a bit of acting. And so, the day after tomorrow, in the morning, I’ll send you word by Basine to tell you whether I’ve been hissed or clapped… Do you understand now why I wanted clothes from Paris? One can’t play a role like that in rags.’