"Will you leave it with me to correct?I will let you have it again to-morrow,"he went on."Flippancy depreciates a work;serious and conscientious criticism is sometimes praise in itself.I know a way to make your article more honorable both for yourself and for me.
Besides,I know my faults well enough."
"When you climb a hot,shadowless hillside,you sometimes find fruit to quench your torturing thirst;and I have found it here and now,"said Lucien,as he sprang sobbing to d'Arthez's arms and kissed his friend on the forehead."It seems to me that I am leaving my conscience in your keeping;some day I will come to you and ask for it again.""I look upon a periodical repentance as great hypocrisy,"d'Arthez said solemnly;"repentance becomes a sort of indemnity for wrongdoing.
Repentance is virginity of the soul,which we must keep for God;a man who repents twice is a horrible sycophant.I am afraid that you regard repentance as absolution."Lucien went slowly back to the Rue de la Lune,stricken dumb by those words.
Next morning d'Arthez sent back his article,recast throughout,and Lucien sent it in to the review;but from that day melancholy preyed upon him,and he could not always disguise his mood.That evening,when the theatre was full,he experienced for the first time the paroxysm of nervous terror caused by a debut;terror aggravated in his case by all the strength of his love.Vanity of every kind was involved.He looked over the rows of faces as a criminal eyes the judges and the jury on whom his life depends.A murmur would have set him quivering;any slight incident upon the stage,Coralie's exits and entrances,the slightest modulation of the tones of her voice,would perturb him beyond all reason.
The play in which Coralie made her first appearance at the Gymnase was a piece of the kind which sometimes falls flat at first,and afterwards has immense success.It fell flat that night.Coralie was not applauded when she came on,and the chilly reception reacted upon her.The only applause came from Camusot's box,and various persons posted in the balcony and galleries silenced Camusot with repeated cries of "Hush!"The galleries even silenced the claqueurs when they led off with exaggerated salvos.Martainville applauded bravely;Nathan,Merlin,and the treacherous Florine followed his example;but it was clear that the piece was a failure.A crowd gathered in Coralie's dressing-room and consoled her,till she had no courage left.She went home in despair,less for her own sake than for Lucien's.
"Braulard has betrayed us,"Lucien said.
Coralie was heartstricken.The next day found her in a high fever,utterly unfit to play,face to face with the thought that she had been cut short in her career.Lucien hid the papers from her,and looked them over in the dining-room.The reviewers one and all attributed the failure of the piece to Coralie;she had overestimated her strength;she might be the delight of a boulevard audience,but she was out of her element at the Gymnase;she had been inspired by a laudable ambition,but she had not taken her powers into account;she had chosen a part to which she was quite unequal.Lucien read on through a pile of penny-a-lining,put together on the same system as his attack upon Nathan.Milo of Crotona,when he found his hands fast in the oak which he himself had cleft,was not more furious than Lucien.He grew haggard with rage.His friends gave Coralie the most treacherous advice,in the language of kindly counsel and friendly interest.She should play (according to these authorities)all kind of roles,which the treacherous writers of these unblushing feuilletons knew to be utterly unsuited to her genius.And these were the Royalist papers,led off by Nathan.As for the Liberal press,all the weapons which Lucien had used were now turned against him.
Coralie heard a sob,followed by another and another.She sprang out of bed to find Lucien,and saw the papers.Nothing would satisfy her but she must read them all;and when she had read them,she went back to bed,and lay there in silence.
Florine was in the plot;she had foreseen the outcome;she had studied Coralie's part,and was ready to take her place.The management,unwilling to give up the piece,was ready to take Florine in Coralie's stead.When the manager came,he found poor Coralie sobbing and exhausted on her bed;but when he began to say,in Lucien's presence,that Florine knew the part,and that the play must be given that evening,Coralie sprang up at once.
"I will play!"she cried,and sank fainting on the floor.
So Florine took the part,and made her reputation in it;for the piece succeeded,the newspapers all sang her praises,and from that time forth Florine was the great actress whom we all know.Florine's success exasperated Lucien to the highest degree.
"A wretched girl,whom you helped to earn her bread!If the Gymnase prefers to do so,let the management pay you to cancel your engagement.I shall be the Comte de Rubempre;I will make my fortune,and you shall be my wife.""What nonsense!"said Coralie,looking at him with wan eyes.
"Nonsense!"repeated he."Very well,wait a few days,and you shall live in a fine house,you shall have a carriage,and I will write a part for you!"He took two thousand francs and hurried to Frascati's.For seven hours the unhappy victim of the Furies watched his varying luck,and outwardly seemed cool and self-contained.He experienced both extremes of fortune during that day and part of the night that followed;at one time he possessed as much as thirty thousand francs,and he came out at last without a sou.In the Rue de la Lune he found Finot waiting for him with a request for one of his short articles.Lucien so far forgot himself,that he complained.
