Lucien's author's vanity had just been gratified by the praises of those who know;by the appreciation of his future rivals;the success of his articles and his conquest of Coralie might have turned an older head than his.
During the discussion,moreover,every one at table had made a remarkably good supper,and such wines are not met with every day.
Lousteau,sitting beside Camusot,furtively poured cherry-brandy several times into his neighbor's wineglass,and challenged him to drink.And Camusot drank,all unsuspicious,for he thought himself,in his own way,a match for a journalist.The jokes became more personal when dessert appeared and the wine began to circulate.The German Minister,a keen-witted man of the world,made a sign to the Duke and Tullia,and the three disappeared with the first symptoms of vociferous nonsense which precede the grotesque scenes of an orgy in its final stage.Coralie and Lucien had been behaving like children all the evening;as soon as the wine was uppermost in Camusot's head,they made good their escape down the staircase and sprang into a cab.
Camusot subsided under the table;Matifat,looking round for him,thought that he had gone home with Coralie,left his guests to smoke,laugh,and argue,and followed Florine to her room.Daylight surprised the party,or more accurately,the first dawn of light discovered one man still able to speak,and Blondet,that intrepid champion,was proposing to the assembled sleepers a health to Aurora the rosy-fingered.
Lucien was unaccustomed to orgies of this kind.His head was very tolerably clear as he came down the staircase,but the fresh air was too much for him;he was horribly drunk.When they reached the handsome house in the Rue de Vendome,where the actress lived,Coralie and her waiting-woman were obliged to assist the poet to climb to the first floor.Lucien was ignominiously sick,and very nearly fainted on the staircase.
"Quick,Berenice,some tea!Make some tea,"cried Coralie.
"It is nothing;it is the air,"Lucien got out,"and I have never taken so much before in my life.""Poor boy!He is as innocent as a lamb,"said Berenice,a stalwart Norman peasant woman as ugly as Coralie was pretty.Lucien,half unconscious,was laid at last in bed.Coralie,with Berenice's assistance,undressed the poet with all a mother's tender care.
"It is nothing,"he murmured again and again."It is the air.Thank you,mamma.""How charmingly he says 'mamma,'"cried Coralie,putting a kiss on his hair.
"What happiness to love such an angel,mademoiselle!Where did you pick him up?I did not think a man could be as beautiful as you are,"said Berenice,when Lucien lay in bed.He was very drowsy;he knew nothing and saw nothing;Coralie made him swallow several cups of tea,and left him to sleep.
"Did the porter see us?Was there anyone else about?"she asked.
"No;I was sitting up for you."
"Does Victoire know anything?"
"Rather not!"returned Berenice.
Ten hours later Lucien awoke to meet Coralie's eyes.She had watched by him as he slept;he knew it,poet that he was.It was almost noon,but she still wore the delicate dress,abominably stained,which she meant to lay up as a relic.Lucien understood all the self-sacrifice and delicacy of love,fain of its reward.He looked into Coralie's eyes.In a moment she had flung off her clothing and slipped like a serpent to Lucien's side.
At five o'clock in the afternoon Lucien was still sleeping,cradled in this voluptuous paradise.He had caught glimpses of Coralie's chamber,an exquisite creation of luxury,a world of rose-color and white.He had admired Florine's apartments,but this surpassed them in its dainty refinement.
Coralie had already risen;for if she was to play her part as the Andalusian,she must be at the theatre by seven o'clock.Yet she had returned to gaze at the unconscious poet,lulled to sleep in bliss;she could not drink too deeply of this love that rose to rapture,drawing close the bond between the heart and the senses,to steep both in ecstasy.For in that apotheosis of human passion,which of those that were twain on earth that they might know bliss to the full creates one soul to rise to love in heaven,lay Coralie's justification.Who,moreover,would not have found excuse in Lucien's more than human beauty?To the actress kneeling by the bedside,happy in love within her,it seemed that she had received love's consecration.Berenice broke in upon Coralie's rapture.
"Here comes Camusot!"cried the maid."And he knows that you are here."Lucien sprang up at once.Innate generosity suggested that he was doing Coralie an injury.Berenice drew aside a curtain,and he fled into a dainty dressing-room,whither Coralie and the maid brought his clothes with magical speed.
Camusot appeared,and only then did Coralie's eyes alight on Lucien's boots,warming in the fender.Berenice had privately varnished them,and put them before the fire to dry;and both mistress and maid alike forgot that tell-tale witness.Berenice left the room with a scared glance at Coralie.Coralie flung herself into the depths of a settee,and bade Camusot seat himself in the gondole,a round-backed chair that stood opposite.But Coralie's adorer,honest soul,dared not look his mistress in the face;he could not take his eyes off the pair of boots.
