"Six hundred francs.Sign it 'Le Comte C,three stars.'""It's a bargain,"said Felicien Vernou.
"So you are introducing the canard to the political world,"remarked Lousteau.
"It is simply the Chabot affair carried into the region of abstract ideas,"said Finot."Fasten intentions on the Government,and then let loose public opinion.""How a Government can leave the control of ideas to such a pack of scamps as we are,is matter for perpetual and profound astonishment to me,"said Claude Vignon.
"If the Ministry blunders so far as to come down into the arena,we can give them a drubbing.If they are nettled by it,the thing will rankle in people's minds,and the Government will lose its hold on the masses.The newspaper risks nothing,and the authorities have everything to lose.""France will be a cipher until newspapers are abolished by law,"said Claude Vignon."You are making progress hourly,"he added,addressing Finot."You are a modern order of Jesuits,lacking the creed,the fixed idea,the discipline,and the union."They went back to the card-tables;and before long the light of the candles grew feeble in the dawn.
"Lucien,your friends from the Rue des Quatre-Vents looked as dismal as criminals going to be hanged,"said Coralie.
"They were the judges,not the criminals,"replied the poet.
"Judges are more amusing than THAT,"said Coralie.
For a month Lucien's whole time was taken up with supper parties,dinner engagements,breakfasts,and evening parties;he was swept away by an irresistible current into a vortex of dissipation and easy work.
He no longer thought of the future.The power of calculation amid the complications of life is the sign of a strong will which poets,weaklings,and men who live a purely intellectual life can never counterfeit.Lucien was living from hand to mouth,spending his money as fast as he made it,like many another journalist;nor did he give so much as a thought to those periodically recurrent days of reckoning which chequer the life of the bohemian in Paris so sadly.
In dress and figure he was a rival for the great dandies of the day.
Coralie,like all zealots,loved to adorn her idol.She ruined herself to give her beloved poet the accoutrements which had so stirred his envy in the Garden of the Tuileries.Lucien had wonderful canes,and a charming eyeglass;he had diamond studs,and scarf-rings,and signet-rings,besides an assortment of waistcoats marvelous to behold,and in sufficient number to match every color in a variety of costumes.His transition to the estate of dandy swiftly followed.When he went to the German Minister's dinner,all the young men regarded him with suppressed envy;yet de Marsay,Vandenesse,Ajuda-Pinto,Maxime de Trailles,Rastignac,Beaudenord,Manerville,and the Duc de Maufrigneuse gave place to none in the kingdom of fashion.Men of fashion are as jealous among themselves as women,and in the same way.
Lucien was placed between Mme.de Montcornet and Mme.d'Espard,in whose honor the dinner was given;both ladies overwhelmed him with flatteries.
"Why did you turn your back on society when you would have been so well received?"asked the Marquise."Every one was prepared to make much of you.And I have a quarrel with you too.You owed me a call--Iam still waiting to receive it.I saw you at the Opera the other day,and you would not deign to come to see me nor to take any notice of me.""Your cousin,madame,so unmistakably dismissed me--""Oh!you do not know women,"the Marquise d'Espard broke in upon him.
"You have wounded the most angelic heart,the noblest nature that Iknow.You do not know all that Louise was trying to do for you,nor how tactfully she laid her plans for you.--Oh!and she would have succeeded,"the Marquise continued,replying to Lucien's mute incredulity."Her husband is dead now;died,as he was bound to die,of an indigestion;could you doubt that she would be free sooner or later?And can you suppose that she would like to be Madame Chardon?
It was worth while to take some trouble to gain the title of Comtesse de Rubempre.Love,you see,is a great vanity,which requires the lesser vanities to be in harmony with itself--especially in marriage.
I might love you to madness--which is to say,sufficiently to marry you--and yet I should find it very unpleasant to be called Madame Chardon.You can see that.And now that you understand the difficulties of Paris life,you will know how many roundabout ways you must take to reach your end;very well,then,you must admit that Louise was aspiring to an all but impossible piece of Court favor;she was quite unknown,she is not rich,and therefore she could not afford to neglect any means of success.
"You are clever,"the Marquise d'Espard continued;"but we women,when we love,are cleverer than the cleverest man.My cousin tried to make that absurd Chatelet useful--Oh!"she broke off,"I owe not a little amusement to you;your articles on Chatelet made me laugh heartily."Lucien knew not what to think of all this.Of the treachery and bad faith of journalism he had had some experience;but in spite of his perspicacity,he scarcely expected to find bad faith or treachery in society.There were some sharp lessons in store for him.
