Lousteau was not to be found in the Rue de la Harpe. Hunted down like a hare, he was lodging now with this friend, now with that. Lucien found him at last at Flicoteaux’s; he was sitting at the very table at which Lucien had found him that evening when, for his misfortune, he forsook d’Arthez for journalism. Lousteau offered him dinner, and Lucien accepted the offer.
As they came out of Flicoteaux’s with Claude Vignon (who happened to be dining there that day) and the great man in obscurity, who kept his wardrobe at Samanon’s, the four among them could not produce enough specie to pay for a cup of coffee at the Café Voltaire. They lounged about the Luxembourg in the hope of meeting with a publisher; and, as it fell out, they met with one of the most famous printers of the day. Lousteau borrowed forty francs of him, and divided the money into four equal parts.
Misery had brought down Lucien’s pride and extinguished sentiment; he shed tears as he told the story of his troubles, but each one of his comrades had a tale as cruel as his own; and when the three versions had been given, it seemed to the poet that he was the least unfortunate among the four. All of them craved a respite from remembrance and thoughts which made trouble doubly hard to bear.
Lousteau hurried to the Palais Royal to gamble with his remaining nine francs. The great man unknown to fame, though he had a divine mistress, must needs hie him to a low haunt of vice to wallow in perilous pleasure. Vignon betook himself to the Rocher de Cancale to drown memory and thought in a couple of bottles of Bordeaux; Lucien parted company with him on the threshold, declining to share that supper. When he shook hands with the one journalist who had not been hostile to him, it was with a cruel pang in his heart.
“What shall I do?” he asked aloud.
“One must do as one can,” the great critic said. “Your book is good, but it excited jealousy, and your struggle will be hard and long. Genius is a cruel disease. Every writer carries a canker in his heart, a devouring monster, like the tapeworm in the stomach, which destroys all feeling as it arises in him. Which is the stronger? The man or the disease? One has need be a great man, truly, to keep the balance between genius and character. The talent grows, the heart withers. Unless a man is a giant, unless he has the thews of a Hercules, he must be content either to lose his gift or to live without a heart. You are slender and fragile, you will give way,” he added, as he turned into the restaurant.
Lucien returned home, thinking over that terrible verdict. He beheld the life of literature by the light of the profound truths uttered by Vignon.
“Money! money!” a voice cried in his ears.
Then he drew three bills of a thousand francs each, due respectively in one, two, and three months, imitating the handwriting of his brother-in-law, David Séchard, with admirable skill. He endorsed the bills, and took them next morning to Métivier, the paper-dealer in the Rue Serpente, who made no difficulty about taking them. Lucien wrote a few lines to give his brother-in-law notice of this assault upon his cashbox, promising, as usual in such cases, to be ready to meet the bills as they fell due.
When all debts, his own and Coralie’s, were paid, he put the three hundred francs which remained into Bérénice’s hands, bidding her to refuse him money if he asked her for it. He was afraid of a return of the gambler’s frenzy. Lucien worked away gloomily in a sort of cold, speechless fury, putting forth all his powers into witty articles, written by the light of the lamp at Coralie’s bedside. Whenever he looked up in search of ideas, his eyes fell on that beloved face, white as porcelain, fair with the beauty that belongs to the dying, and he saw a smile on her pale lips, and her eyes, grown bright with a more consuming pain than physical suffering, always turned on his face.
Lucien sent in his work, but he could not leave the house to worry editors, and his articles did not appear. When he at last made up his mind to go to the office, he met with a cool reception from Théodore Gaillard, who had advanced him money, and turned his literary diamonds to good account afterwards.
“Take care, my dear fellow, you are falling off,” he said. “You must not let yourself down, your work wants inspiration!”
“That little Lucien has written himself out with his romance and his first articles,” cried Félicien Vernou, Merlin, and the whole chorus of his enemies, whenever his name came up at Dauriat’s or the Vaudeville. “The work he is sending us is pitiable.”
“To have written oneself out” (in the slang of journalism), is a verdict very hard to live down. It passed everywhere from mouth to mouth, ruining Lucien, all unsuspicious as he was. And, indeed, his burdens were too heavy for his strength. In the midst of a heavy strain of work, he was sued for the bills which he had drawn in David Séchard’s name. He had recourse to Camusot’s experience, and Coralie’s sometime adorer was generous enough to assist the man she loved. The intolerable situation lasted for two whole months; the days being diversified by stamped
