“You are lucky,” said Lousteau.
“If you had gone through all that I have endured, you would not say that of me. I had my fill of misery in those days, you see, and there was no help for it. My father is a hatter; he still keeps a shop in the Rue du Coq. Nothing but millions of money or a social cataclysm can open out the way to my goal; and of the two alternatives, I don’t know now that the revolution is not the easier. If I bore your friend’s name, I should have a chance to get on. Hush, here comes the manager. Goodbye,” and Finot rose to his feet, “I am going to the Opera. I shall very likely have a duel on my hands tomorrow, for I have put my initials to a terrific attack on a couple of dancers under the protection of two Generals. I am giving it them hot and strong at the Opéra.”
“Aha?” said the manager.
“Yes. They are stingy with me,” returned Finot, “now cutting off a box, and now declining to take fifty subscriptions. I have sent in my ultimatum; I mean to have a hundred subscriptions out of them and a box four times a month. If they take my terms, I shall have eight hundred readers and a thousand paying subscribers; and I know a way of getting another two hundred subscribers, so we shall have twelve hundred with the New Year.”
“You will end by ruining us,” said the manager.
“You are not much hurt with your ten subscriptions. I had two good notices put into the Constitutionnel.”
“Oh! I am not complaining of you,” cried the manager.
“Goodbye till tomorrow evening, Lousteau,” said Finot. “You can give me your answer at the Français; there is a new piece on there; and as I shall not be able to write the notice, you can take my box. I will give you preference; you have worked yourself to death for me, and I am grateful. Félicien Vernou offered twenty thousand francs for a third share of my little paper, and to work without a salary for a twelvemonth; but I want to be absolute master. Goodbye.”
“He is not named Finot” (finaud, slyboots) “for nothing,” said Lucien.
“He is a gallows-bird that will get on in the world,” said Étienne, careless whether the wily schemer overheard the remark or no, as he shut the door of the box.
“He!” said the manager. “He will be a millionaire; he will enjoy the respect of all who know him; he may perhaps have friends some day—”
“Good heavens! what a den!” said Lucien. “And are you going to drag that excellent creature into such a business?” he continued, looking at Florine, who gave them side glances from the stage.
“She will carry it through too. You do not know the devotion and the wiles of these beloved beings,” said Lousteau.
“They redeem their failings and expiate all their sins by boundless love, when they love,” said the manager. “A great love is all the grander in an actress by reason of its violent contrast with her surroundings.”
“And he who finds it, finds a diamond worthy of the proudest crown lying in the mud,” returned Lousteau.
“But Coralie is not attending to her part,” remarked the manager. “Coralie is smitten with our friend here, all unsuspicious of his conquest, and Coralie will make a fiasco; she is missing her cues, this is the second time she had not heard the prompter. Pray, go into the corner, monsieur,” he continued. “If Coralie is smitten with you, I will go and tell her that you have left the house.”
“No! no!” cried Lousteau; “tell Coralie that this gentleman is coming to supper, and that she can do as she likes with him, and she will play like Mlle. Mars.”
The manager went, and Lucien turned to Étienne. “What! do you mean to say that you will ask that druggist, through Mlle. Florine, to pay thirty thousand francs for one-half a share, when Finot gave no more for the whole of it? And ask without the slightest scruple?—”
Lousteau interrupted Lucien before he had time to finish his expostulation. “My dear boy, what country can you come from? The druggist is not a man; he is a strong box delivered into our hands by his fancy for an actress.”
“How about your conscience?”
“Conscience, my dear fellow, is a stick which everyone takes up to beat his neighbor and not for application to his own back. Come, now! who the devil are you angry with? In one day chance has worked a miracle for you, a miracle for which I have been waiting these two years, and you must needs amuse yourself by finding fault with the means? What! you appear to me to possess intelligence; you seem to be in a fair way to reach that freedom from prejudice which is a first necessity to intellectual adventurers in the world we live in; and are you wallowing in scruples worthy of a nun who accuses herself of eating an egg with concupiscence? … If Florine succeeds, I shall be editor of a newspaper with a fixed salary of two hundred and fifty francs per month; I shall take the important plays and leave the vaudevilles to Vernou, and you can take my place and do the Boulevard theatres, and so get a foot in the stirrup. You will make three francs per column and write a column a day—thirty columns a month means ninety francs; you will have some sixty francs worth of books to sell to Barbet; and lastly, you can demand ten tickets a month of each of your theatres—that is, forty tickets in all—and sell them for forty francs to a Barbet who deals in them (I will introduce you to the man),
