That amateur was a worthy silk-mercer of the Rue des Bourdonnais,stout and substantial,a judge in the commercial court,a father of four children,and the husband of a second wife.At the age of fifty-six,with a cap of gray hair on his head,he had the smug appearance of a man who has his eighty thousand francs of income;and having been forced to put up with a good deal that he did not like in the way of business,has fully made up his mind to enjoy the rest of his life,and not to quit this earth until he has had his share of cakes and ale.A brow the color of fresh butter and florid cheeks like a monk's jowl seemed scarcely big enough to contain his exuberant jubilation.
Camusot had left his wife at home,and they were applauding Coralie to the skies.All the rich man's citizen vanity was summed up and gratified in Coralie;in Coralie's lodging he gave himself the airs of a great lord of a bygone day;now,at this moment,he felt that half of her success was his;the knowledge that he had paid for it confirmed him in this idea.Camusot's conduct was sanctioned by the presence of his father-in-law,a little old fogy with powdered hair and leering eyes,highly respected nevertheless.
Again Lucien felt disgust rising within him.He thought of the year when he loved Mme.de Bargeton with an exalted and disinterested love;and at that thought love,as a poet understands it,spread its white wings about him;countless memories drew a circle of distant blue horizon about the great man of Angouleme,and again he fell to dreaming.
Up went the curtain,and there stood Coralie and Florine upon the stage.
"He is thinking about as much of you as of the Grand Turk,my dear girl,"Florine said in an aside while Coralie was finishing her speech.
Lucien could not help laughing.He looked at Coralie.She was one of the most charming and captivating actresses in Paris,rivaling Mme.
Perrin and Mlle.Fleuriet,and destined likewise to share their fate.
Coralie was a woman of a type that exerts at will a power of fascination over men.With an oval face of deep ivory tint,a mouth red as a pomegranate,and a chin subtly delicate in its contour as the edge of a porcelain cup,Coralie was a Jewess of the sublime type.The jet black eyes behind their curving lashes seemed to scorch her eyelids;you could guess how soft they might grow,or how sparks of the heat of the desert might flash from them in response to a summons from within.The circles of olive shadow about them were bounded by thick arching lines of eyebrow.Magnificent mental power,well-nigh amounting to genius,seemed to dwell in the swarthy forehead beneath the double curve of ebony hair that lay upon it like a crown,and gleamed in the light like a varnished surface;but like many another actress,Coralie had little wit in spite of her aptness at greenroom repartee,and scarcely any education in spite of her boudoir experience.Her brain was prompted by her senses,her kindness was the impulsive warm-heartedness of girls of her class.But who could trouble over Coralie's psychology when his eyes were dazzled by those smooth,round arms of hers,the spindle-shaped fingers,the fair white shoulders,and breast celebrated in the Song of Songs,the flexible curving lines of throat,the graciously moulded outlines beneath the scarlet silk stockings?And this beauty,worthy of an Eastern poet,was brought into relief by the conventional Spanish costume of the stage.Coralie was the delight of the pit;all eyes dwelt on the outlines moulded by the clinging folds of her bodice,and lingered over the Andalusian contour of the hips from which her skirt hung,fluttering wantonly with every movement.To Lucien,watching this creature,who played for him alone,caring no more for Camusot than a street-boy in the gallery cares for an apple-paring,there came a moment when he set desire above love,and enjoyment above desire,and the demon of Lust stirred strange thoughts in him.
"I know nothing of the love that wallows in luxury and wine and sensual pleasure,"he said within himself."I have lived more with ideas than with realities.You must pass through all experience if you mean to render all experience.This will be my first great supper,my first orgy in a new and strange world;why should I not know,for once,the delights which the great lords of the eighteenth century sought so eagerly of wantons of the Opera?Must one not first learn of courtesans and actresses the delights,the perfections,the transports,the resources,the subtleties of love,if only to translate them afterwards into the regions of a higher love than this?
And what is all this,after all,but the poetry of the senses?Two months ago these women seemed to me to be goddesses guarded by dragons that no one dared approach;I was envying Lousteau just now,but here is another handsomer than Florine;why should I not profit by her fancy,when the greatest nobles buy a night with such women with their richest treasures?When ambassadors set foot in these depths,they fling aside all thought of yesterday or to-morrow.I should be a fool to be more squeamish than princes,especially as I love no one as yet."Lucien had quite forgotten Camusot.To Lousteau he had expressed the utmost disgust for this most hateful of all partitions,and now he himself had sunk to the same level,and,carried away by the casuistry of his vehement desire,had given the reins to his fancy.
"Coralie is raving about you,"said Lousteau as he came in."Your countenance,worthy of the greatest Greek sculptors,has worked unutterable havoc behind the scenes.You are in luck my dear boy.
