His brothers of the cenacle! And Lucien could hear the verdict and laugh.
He had seen himself in print; he had just experienced the ineffable joy of the author, that first pleasurable thrill of gratified vanity which comes but once. The full import and bearing of his article became apparent to him as he read and reread it. The garb of print is to manuscript as the stage is to women; it brings beauties and defects to light, killing and giving life; the fine thoughts and the faults alike stare you in the face.
Lucien, in his excitement and rapture, gave not another thought to Nathan. Nathan was a stepping-stone for him—that was all; and he (Lucien) was happy exceedingly—he thought himself rich. The money brought by Dauriat was a very Potosi for the lad who used to go about unnoticed through the streets of Angoulême and down the steep path into L’Houmeau to Postel’s garret, where his whole family had lived upon an income of twelve hundred francs. The pleasures of his life in Paris must inevitably dim the memories of those days; but so keen were they, that, as yet, he seemed to be back again in the Place du Mûrier. He thought of Eve, his beautiful, noble sister, of David his friend, and of his poor mother, and he sent Bérénice out to change one of the notes. While she went he wrote a few lines to his family, and on the maid’s return he sent her to the coach-office with a packet of five hundred francs addressed to his mother. He could not trust himself; he wanted to sent the money at once; later he might not be able to do it. Both Lucien and Coralie looked upon this restitution as a meritorious action. Coralie put her arms about her lover and kissed him, and thought him a model son and brother; she could not make enough of him, for generosity is a trait of character which delights these kindly creatures, who always carry their hearts in their hands.
“We have a dinner now every day for a week,” she said; “we will make a little carnival; you have worked quite hard enough.”
Coralie, fain to delight in the beauty of a man whom all other women should envy her, took Lucien back to Staub. He was not dressed finely enough for her. Thence the lovers went to drive in the Bois de Boulogne, and came back to dine at Mme. du Val-Noble’s. Rastignac, Bixiou, des Lupeaulx, Finot, Blondet, Vignon, the Baron de Nucingen, Beaudenord, Philippe Bridau, Conti, the great musician, all the artists and speculators, all the men who seek for violent sensations as a relief from immense labors, gave Lucien a welcome among them. And Lucien had gained confidence; he gave himself out in talk as though he had not to live by his wit, and was pronounced to be a “clever fellow” in the slang of the coterie of semi-comrades.
“Oh! we must wait and see what he has in him,” said Théodore Gaillard, a poet patronized by the Court, who thought of starting a Royalist paper to be entitled the Réveil at a later day.
After dinner, Merlin and Lucien, Coralie and Mme. du Val-Noble, went to the Opéra, where Merlin had a box. The whole party adjourned thither, and Lucien triumphant reappeared upon the scene of his first serious check.
He walked in the lobby, arm in arm with Merlin and Blondet, looking the dandies who had once made merry at his expense between the eyes. Châtelet was under his feet. He clashed glances with de Marsay, Vandenesse, and Manerville, the bucks of that day. And indeed Lucien, beautiful and elegantly arrayed, had caused a discussion in the Marquise d’Espard’s box; Rastignac had paid a long visit, and the Marquise and Mme. de Bargeton put up their opera-glasses at Coralie. Did the sight of Lucien send a pang of regret through Mme. de Bargeton’s heart? This thought was uppermost in the poet’s mind. The longing for revenge aroused in him by the sight of the Corinne of Angoulême was as fierce as on that day when the lady and her cousin had cut him in the Champs-Élysées.
“Did you bring an amulet with you from the provinces?”—It was Blondet who made this inquiry some few days later, when he called at eleven o’clock in the morning and found that Lucien was not yet risen.—“His good looks are making ravages from cellar to garret, high and low,” continued Blondet, kissing Coralie on the forehead. “I have come to enlist you, dear fellow,” he continued, grasping Lucien by the hand. “Yesterday, at the Italiens, the Comtesse de Montcornet asked me to bring you to her house. You will not give a refusal to a charming woman? You meet people of the first fashion there.”
“If Lucien is nice, he will not go to see your Countess,” put in Coralie. “What call is there for him to show his face in fine society? He would only be bored there.”
“Have you a vested interest in him? Are you jealous of fine ladies?”
“Yes,” cried Coralie. “They are worse than we are.”
“How do you know that, my pet?” asked Blondet.
“From their husbands,” retorted she. “You are forgetting that I once had six months of de Marsay.”
“Do you suppose, child, that I am particularly anxious to take such a handsome fellow as your poet to Mme. de Montcornet’s house? If you object, let us consider that nothing has been said. But I don’t fancy that the women are so much in question as a poor devil that Lucien pilloried in his newspaper; he is begging for mercy and peace. The Baron du Châtelet is imbecile enough to
