Lucien told Berenice to order a funeral which should not cost more than two hundred francs,including the service at the shabby little church of the Bonne-Nouvelle.As soon as she had gone out,he sat down to a table,and beside the dead body of his love he composed ten rollicking songs to fit popular airs.The effort cost him untold anguish,but at last the brain began to work at the bidding of Necessity,as if suffering were not;and already Lucien had learned to put Claude Vignon's terrible maxims in practice,and to raise a barrier between heart and brain.What a night the poor boy spent over those drinking songs,writing by the light of the tall wax candles while the priest recited the prayers for the dead!
Morning broke before the last song was finished.Lucien tried it over to a street-song of the day,to the consternation of Berenice and the priest,who thought that he was mad:--Lads,'tis tedious waste of time To mingle song and reason;Folly calls for laughing rhyme,Sense is out of season.
Let Apollo be forgot When Bacchus fills the drinking-cup;Any catch is good,I wot,If good fellows take it up.
Let philosophers protest,Let us laugh,And quaff,And a fig for the rest!
As Hippocrates has said,Every jolly fellow,When a century has sped,Still is fit and mellow.
No more following of a lass With the palsy in your legs?--While your hand can hold a glass,You can drain it to the dregs,With an undiminished zest.
Let us laugh,And quaff,And a fig for the rest!
Whence we come we know full well.
Whiter are we going?
Ne'er a one of us can tell,'Tis a thing past knowing.
Faith!what does it signify,Take the good that Heaven sends;It is certain that we die,Certain that we live,my friends.
Life is nothing but a jest.
Let us laugh,And quaff,And a fig for the rest!
He was shouting the reckless refrain when d'Arthez and Bianchon arrived,to find him in a paroxysm of despair and exhaustion,utterly unable to make a fair copy of his verses.A torrent of tears followed;and when,amid his sobs,he had told his story,he saw the tears standing in his friends'eyes.
"This wipes out many sins,"said d'Arthez.
"Happy are they who suffer for their sins in this world,"the priest said solemnly.
At the sight of the fair,dead face smiling at Eternity,while Coralie's lover wrote tavern-catches to buy a grave for her,and Barbet paid for the coffin--of the four candles lighted about the dead body of her who had thrilled a great audience as she stood behind the footlights in her Spanish basquina and scarlet green-clocked stockings;while beyond in the doorway,stood the priest who had reconciled the dying actress with God,now about to return to the church to say a mass for the soul of her who had "loved much,"--all the grandeur and the sordid aspects of the scene,all that sorrow crushed under by Necessity,froze the blood of the great writer and the great doctor.They sat down;neither of them could utter a word.
Just at that moment a servant in livery announced Mlle.des Touches.
That beautiful and noble woman understood everything at once.She stepped quickly across the room to Lucien,and slipped two thousand-franc notes into his hand as she grasped it.
"It is too late,"he said,looking up at her with dull,hopeless eyes.
