Camusot hurried at once to the Rue de la Lune,and Coralie went down to him.
When she came up again she held the warrants,in which Lucien was described as a tradesman,in her hand.How had she obtained those papers from Camusot?What promise had she given?Coralie kept a sad,gloomy silence,but when she returned she looked as if all the life had gone out of her.She played in Camille Maupin's play,and contributed not a little to the success of that illustrious literary hermaphrodite;but the creation of this character was the last flicker of a bright,dying lamp.On the twentieth night,when Lucien had so far recovered that he had regained his appetite and could walk abroad,and talked of getting to work again,Coralie broke down;a secret trouble was weighing upon her.Berenice always believed that she had promised to go back to Camusot to save Lucien.
Another mortification followed.Coralie was obliged to see her part given to Florine.Nathan had threatened the Gymnase with war if the management refused to give the vacant place to Coralie's rival.
Coralie had persisted till she could play no longer,knowing that Florine was waiting to step into her place.She had overtasked her strength.The Gymnase had advanced sums during Lucien's illness,she had no money to draw;Lucien,eager to work though he was,was not yet strong enough to write,and he helped besides to nurse Coralie and to relieve Berenice.From poverty they had come to utter distress;but in Bianchon they found a skilful and devoted doctor,who obtained credit for them of the druggist.The landlord of the house and the tradespeople knew by this time how matters stood.The furniture was attached.The tailor and dressmaker no longer stood in awe of the journalist,and proceeded to extremes;and at last no one,with the exception of the pork-butcher and the druggist,gave the two unlucky children credit.For a week or more all three of them--Lucien,Berenice,and the invalid--were obliged to live on the various ingenious preparations sold by the pork-butcher;the inflammatory diet was little suited to the sick girl,and Coralie grew worse.Sheer want compelled Lucien to ask Lousteau for a return of the loan of a thousand francs lost at play by the friend who had deserted him in his hour of need.Perhaps,amid all his troubles,this step cost him most cruel suffering.
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 Cafe 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 Sechard,with admirable skill.He endorsed the bills,and took them next morning to Metivier,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 cash-box,promising,as usual in such cases,to be ready to meet the bills as they fell due.
