Let me have purely literary articles;they will not compromise you,and we shall have executed our agreement."Lucien saw nothing but good-fellowship and a shrewd eye to business in Finot's offer;Finot and des Lupeaulx had flattered him,and he was in a good humor.He actually thanked Finot!
Ambitious men,like all those who can only make their way by the help of others and of circumstances,are bound to lay their plans very carefully and to adhere very closely to the course of conduct on which they determine;it is a cruel moment in the lives of such aspirants when some unknown power brings the fabric of their fortunes to some severe test and everything gives way at once;threads are snapped or entangled,and misfortune appears on every side.Let a man lose his head in the confusion,it is all over with him;but if he can resist this first revolt of circumstances,if he can stand erect until the tempest passes over,or make a supreme effort and reach the serene sphere about the storm--then he is really strong.To every man,unless he is born rich,there comes sooner or later "his fatal week,"as it must be called.For Napoleon,for instance,that week was the Retreat from Moscow.It had begun now for Lucien.
Social and literary success had come to him too easily;he had had such luck that he was bound to know reverses and to see men and circumstances turn against him.
The first blow was the heaviest and the most keenly felt,for it touched Lucien where he thought himself invulnerable--in his heart and his love.Coralie might not be clever,but hers was a noble nature,and she possessed the great actress'faculty of suddenly standing aloof from self.This strange phenomenon is subject,until it degenerates into a habit with long practice,to the caprices of character,and not seldom to an admirable delicacy of feeling in actresses who are still young.Coralie,to all appearance bold and wanton,as the part required,was in reality girlish and timid,and love had wrought in her a revulsion of her woman's heart against the comedian's mask.Art,the supreme art of feigning passion and feeling,had not yet triumphed over nature in her;she shrank before a great audience from the utterance that belongs to Love alone;and Coralie suffered besides from another true woman's weakness--she needed success,born stage queen though she was.She could not confront an audience with which she was out of sympathy;she was nervous when she appeared on the stage,a cold reception paralyzed her.Each new part gave her the terrible sensations of a first appearance.Applause produced a sort of intoxication which gave her encouragement without flattering her vanity;at a murmur of dissatisfaction or before a silent house,she flagged;but a great audience following attentively,admiringly,willing to be pleased,electrified Coralie.She felt at once in communication with the nobler qualities of all those listeners;she felt that she possessed the power of stirring their souls and carrying them with her.But if this action and reaction of the audience upon the actress reveals the nervous organization of genius,it shows no less clearly the poor child's sensitiveness and delicacy.Lucien had discovered the treasures of her nature;had learned in the past months that this woman who loved him was still so much of a girl.And Coralie was unskilled in the wiles of an actress--she could not fight her own battles nor protect herself against the machinations of jealousy behind the scenes.Florine was jealous of her,and Florine was as dangerous and depraved as Coralie was simple and generous.Roles must come to find Coralie;she was too proud to implore authors or to submit to dishonoring conditions;she would not give herself to the first journalist who persecuted her with his advances and threatened her with his pen.Genius is rare enough in the extraordinary art of the stage;but genius is only one condition of success among many,and is positively hurtful unless it is accompanied by a genius for intrigue in which Coralie was utterly lacking.
Lucien knew how much his friend would suffer on her first appearance at the Gymnase,and was anxious at all costs to obtain a success for her;but all the money remaining from the sale of the furniture and all Lucien's earnings had been sunk in costumes,in the furniture of a dressing-room,and the expenses of a first appearance.
A few days later,Lucien made up his mind to a humiliating step for love's sake.He took Fendant and Cavalier's bills,and went to the Golden Cocoon in the Rue des Bourdonnais.He would ask Camusot to discount them.The poet had not fallen so low that he could make this attempt quite coolly.There had been many a sharp struggle first,and the way to that decision had been paved with many dreadful thoughts.
Nevertheless,he arrived at last in the dark,cheerless little private office that looked out upon a yard,and found Camusot seated gravely there;this was not Coralie's infatuated adorer,not the easy-natured,indolent,incredulous libertine whom he had known hitherto as Camusot,but a heavy father of a family,a merchant grown old in shrewd expedients of business and respectable virtues,wearing a magistrate's mask of judicial prudery;this Camusot was the cool,business-like head of the firm surrounded by clerks,green cardboard boxes,pigeonholes,invoices,and samples,and fortified by the presence of a wife and a plainly-dressed daughter.Lucien trembled from head to foot as he approached;for the worthy merchant,like the money-lenders,turned cool,indifferent eyes upon him.
