You will be written up;people are afraid of you;I shall have no difficulty in selling your book.I am the same man of business that Iwas four days ago.It is not I who have changed;it is YOU.Last week your sonnets were so many cabbage leaves for me;to-day your position has ranked them beside Delavigne.""Ah well,"said Lucien,"if you have not read my sonnets,you have read my article."With the sultan's pleasure of possessing a fair mistress,and the certainty of success,he had grown satirical and adorably impertinent of late.
"Yes,my friend;do you think I should have come here in such a hurry but for that?That terrible article of yours is very well written,worse luck.Oh!you have a very great gift,my boy.Take my advice and make the most of your vogue,"he added,with good humor,which masked the extreme insolence of the speech."But have you yourself a copy of the paper?Have you seen your article in print?""Not yet,"said Lucien,"though this is the first long piece of prose which I have published;but Hector will have sent a copy to my address in the Rue Charlot.""Here--read!"...cried Dauriat,copying Talma's gesture in Manlius.
Lucien took the paper but Coralie snatched it from him.
"The first-fruits of your pen belong to me,as you well know,"she laughed.
Dauriat was unwontedly courtier-like and complimentary.He was afraid of Lucien,and therefore he asked him to a great dinner which he was giving to a party of journalists towards the end of the week,and Coralie was included in the invitation.He took the Marguerites away with him when he went,asking HIS poet to look in when he pleased in the Wooden Galleries,and the agreement should be ready for his signature.Dauriat never forgot the royal airs with which he endeavored to overawe superficial observers,and to impress them with the notion that he was a Maecenas rather than a publisher;at this moment he left the three thousand francs,waving away in lordly fashion the receipt which Lucien offered,kissed Coralie's hand,and took his departure.
"Well,dear love,would you have seen many of these bits of paper if you had stopped in your hole in the Rue de Cluny,prowling about among the musty old books in the Bibliotheque de Sainte-Genevieve?"asked Coralie,for she knew the whole story of Lucien's life by this time.
"Those little friends of yours in the Rue des Quatre-Vents are great ninnies,it seems to me."His brothers of the cenacle!And Lucien could hear the verdict and laugh.
He had seen himself in print;he had just experienced the ineffable joy of the author,that first pleasurable thrill of gratified vanity which comes but once.The full import and bearing of his article became apparent to him as he read and re-read it.The garb of print is to manu as the stage is to women;it brings beauties and defects to light,killing and giving life;the fine thoughts and the faults alike stare you in the face.
Lucien,in his excitement and rapture,gave not another thought to Nathan.Nathan was a stepping-stone for him--that was all;and he (Lucien)was happy exceedingly--he thought himself rich.The money brought by Dauriat was a very Potosi for the lad who used to go about unnoticed through the streets of Angouleme and down the steep path into L'Houmeau to Postel's garret,where his whole family had lived upon an income of twelve hundred francs.The pleasures of his life in Paris must inevitably dim the memories of those days;but so keen were they,that,as yet,he seemed to be back again in the Place du Murier.
He thought of Eve,his beautiful,noble sister,of David his friend,and of his poor mother,and he sent Berenice out to change one of the notes.While she went he wrote a few lines to his family,and on the maid's return he sent her to the coach-office with a packet of five hundred francs addressed to his mother.He could not trust himself;he wanted to sent the money at once;later he might not be able to do it.
Both Lucien and Coralie looked upon this restitution as a meritorious action.Coralie put her arms about her lover and kissed him,and thought him a model son and brother;she could not make enough of him,for generosity is a trait of character which delights these kindly creatures,who always carry their hearts in their hands.
"We have a dinner now every day for a week,"she said;"we will make a little carnival;you have worked quite hard enough."Coralie,fain to delight in the beauty of a man whom all other women should envy her,took Lucien back to Staub.He was not dressed finely enough for her.Thence the lovers went to drive in the Bois de Boulogne,and came back to dine at Mme.du Val-Noble's.Rastignac,Bixiou,des Lupeaulx,Finot,Blondet,Vignon,the Baron de Nucingen,Beaudenord,Philippe Bridau,Conti,the great musician,all the artists and speculators,all the men who seek for violent sensations as a relief from immense labors,gave Lucien a welcome among them.And Lucien had gained confidence;he gave himself out in talk as though he had not to live by his wit,and was pronounced to be a "clever fellow"in the slang of the coterie of semi-comrades.
"Oh!we must wait and see what he has in him,"said Theodore Gaillard,a poet patronized by the Court,who thought of starting a Royalist paper to be entitled the Reveil at a later day.
After dinner,Merlin and Lucien,Coralie and Mme.du Val-Noble,went to the Opera,where Merlin had a box.The whole party adjourned thither,and Lucien triumphant reappeared upon the scene of his first serious check.
He walked in the lobby,arm in arm with Merlin and Blondet,looking the dandies who had once made merry at his expense between the eyes.
Chatelet was under his feet.He clashed glances with de Marsay,Vandenesse,and Manerville,the bucks of that day.And indeed Lucien,beautiful and elegantly arrayed,had caused a discussion in the Marquise d'Espard's box;Rastignac had paid a long visit,and the Marquise and Mme.de Bargeton put up their opera-glasses at Coralie.
