“If only you could have seen your face whilst you were reading,” cried Louise, using the familiar tu, the caress of speech, since yesterday, while her white hands wiped the pearls of sweat from the brows on which she set a poet’s crown. “There were sparks of fire in those beautiful eyes! From your lips, as I watched them, there fell the golden chains that suspend the hearts of men upon the poet’s mouth. You shall read Chénier through to me from beginning to end; he is the lover’s poet. You shall not be unhappy any longer; I will not have it. Yes, dear angel, I will make an oasis for you, there you shall live your poet’s life, sometimes busy, sometimes languid; indolent, full of work, and musing by turns; but never forget that you owe your laurels to me, let that thought be my noble guerdon for the sufferings which I must endure. Poor love! the world will not spare me any more than it has spared you; the world is avenged on all happiness in which it has no share. Yes, I shall always be a mark for envy—did you not see that last night? The bloodthirsty insects are quick enough to drain every wound that they pierce. But I was happy; I lived. It is so long since all my heartstrings vibrated.”
The tears flowed fast, and for all answer Lucien took Louise’s hand and gave it a lingering kiss. Everyone about him soothed and caressed the poet’s vanity; his mother and his sister and David and Louise now did the same. Everyone helped to raise the imaginary pedestal on which he had set himself. His friends’s kindness and the fury of his enemies combined to establish him more firmly in an unreal world. A young imagination readily falls in with the flattering estimates of others, a handsome young fellow so full of promise finds others eager to help him on every side, and only after one or two sharp and bitter lessons does he begin to see himself as an ordinary mortal.
“My beautiful Louise, do you mean in very truth to be my Beatrice, a Beatrice who condescends to be loved?”
Louise raised the fine eyes, hitherto down-dropped.
“If you show yourself worthy—some day!” she said, with an angelic smile which belied her words. “Are you not happy? To be the sole possessor of a heart, to speak freely at all times, with the certainty of being understood, is not this happiness?”
“Yes,” he answered, with a lover’s pout of vexation.
“Child!” she exclaimed, laughing at him. “Come, you have something to tell me, have you not? You came in absorbed in thought, my Lucien.”
Lucien, in fear and trembling, confided to his beloved that David was in love with his sister Eve, and that his sister Eve was in love with David, and that the two were to be married shortly.
“Poor Lucien!” said Louise, “he was afraid he should be beaten and scolded, as if it was he himself that was going to be married! Why, where is the harm?” she continued, her fingers toying with Lucien’s hair. “What is your family to me when you are an exception? Suppose that my father were to marry his cook, would that trouble you much? Dear boy, lovers are for each other their whole family. Have I a greater interest than my Lucien in the world? Be great, find the way to win fame, that is our affair!”
This selfish answer made Lucien the happiest of mortals. But in the middle of the fantastic reasonings, with which Louise convinced him that they two were alone in the world, in came M. de Bargeton. Lucien frowned and seemed to be taken aback, but Louise made him a sign, and asked him to stay to dinner and to read André de Chénier aloud to them until people arrived for their evening game at cards.
“You will give her pleasure,” said M. de Bargeton, “and me also. Nothing suits me better than listening to reading aloud after dinner.”
Cajoled by M. de Bargeton, cajoled by Louise, waited upon with the respect which servants show to a favored guest of the house, Lucien remained in the Hôtel de Bargeton, and began to think of the luxuries which he enjoyed for the time being as the rightful accessories of Lucien de Rubempré. He felt his position so strong through Louise’s love and M. de Bargeton’s weakness, that as the rooms filled, he assumed a lordly air, which that fair lady encouraged. He tasted the delights of despotic sway which Naïs had acquired by right of conquest, and liked to share with him; and, in short, that evening he tried to act up to the part of the lion of the little town. A few of those who marked these airs drew their own conclusions from them, and thought that, according to the old expression, he had come to the last term with the lady. Amélie, who had come with M. du Châtelet, was sure of the deplorable fact, in a corner of the drawing-room, where the jealous and envious gathered together.
“Do not think of calling Naïs to account for the vanity of a youngster, who is as proud as he can be because he has got into society, where he never expected to set foot,” said Châtelet. “Don’t you see that this Chardon takes the civility of a woman of the world for an advance? He does not know the difference between the silence of real passion and the patronizing graciousness due to his good looks and youth and talent. It would be too bad if women were blamed for all the desires which they inspire. He certainly is in love with her, but as for Naïs—”
“Oh!
