"Very well,I will come to this gentleman's lodging for them at the beginning of the month.He is a friend of yours,and I will treat him as I do you.You have five theatres;you will get thirty tickets--that will be something like seventy-five francs a month.Perhaps you will be wanting an advance?"added Braulard,lifting a cash-box full of coin out of his desk.
"No,no,"said Lousteau;"we will keep that shift against a rainy day.""I will work with Coralie,sir,and we will come to an understanding,"said Braulard,addressing Lucien,who was looking about him,not without profound astonishment.There was a bookcase in Braulard's study,there were framed engravings and good furniture;and as they passed through the drawing room,he noticed that the fittings were neither too luxurious nor yet mean.The dining-room seemed to be the best ordered room,he remarked on this jokingly.
"But Braulard is an epicure,"said Lousteau;"his dinners are famous in dramatic literature,and they are what you might expect from his cash-box.""I have good wine,"Braulard replied modestly.--"Ah!here are my lamplighters,"he added,as a sound of hoarse voices and strange footsteps came up from the staircase.
Lucien on his way down saw a march past of claqueurs and retailers of tickets.It was an ill smelling squad,attired in caps,seedy trousers,and threadbare overcoats;a flock of gallows-birds with bluish and greenish tints in their faces,neglected beards,and a strange mixture of savagery and subservience in their eyes.A horrible population lives and swarms upon the Paris boulevards;selling watch guards and brass jewelry in the streets by day,applauding under the chandeliers of the theatre at night,and ready to lend themselves to any dirty business in the great city.
"Behold the Romans!"laughed Lousteau;"behold fame incarnate for actresses and dramatic authors.It is no prettier than our own when you come to look at it close.""It is difficult to keep illusions on any subject in Paris,"answered Lucien as they turned in at his door."There is a tax upon everything --everything has its price,and anything can be made to order--even success."Thirty guests were assembled that evening in Coralie's rooms,her dining room would not hold more.Lucien had asked Dauriat and the manager of the Panorama-Dramatique,Matifat and Florine,Camusot,Lousteau,Finot,Nathan,Hector Merlin and Mme.du Val-Noble,Felicien Vernou,Blondet,Vignon,Philippe Bridau,Mariette,Giroudeau,Cardot and Florentine,and Bixiou.He had also asked all his friends of the Rue des Quatre-Vents.Tullia the dancer,who was not unkind,said gossip,to du Bruel,had come without her duke.The proprietors of the newspapers,for whom most of the journalists wrote,were also of the party.
At eight o'clock,when the lights of the candles in the chandeliers shone over the furniture,the hangings,and the flowers,the rooms wore the festal air that gives to Parisian luxury the appearance of a dream;and Lucien felt indefinable stirrings of hope and gratified vanity and pleasure at the thought that he was the master of the house.But how and by whom the magic wand had been waved he no longer sought to remember.Florine and Coralie,dressed with the fanciful extravagance and magnificent artistic effect of the stage,smiled on the poet like two fairies at the gates of the Palace of Dreams.And Lucien was almost in a dream.
His life had been changed so suddenly during the last few months;he had gone so swiftly from the depths of penury to the last extreme of luxury,that at moments he felt as uncomfortable as a dreaming man who knows that he is asleep.And yet,he looked round at the fair reality about him with a confidence to which envious minds might have given the name of fatuity.
Lucien himself had changed.He had grown paler during these days of continual enjoyment;languor had lent a humid look to his eyes;in short,to use Mme.d'Espard's expression,he looked like a man who is loved.He was the handsomer for it.Consciousness of his powers and his strength was visible in his face,enlightened as it was by love and experience.Looking out over the world of letters and of men,it seemed to him that he might go to and fro as lord of it all.Sober reflection never entered his romantic head unless it was driven in by the pressure of adversity,and just now the present held not a care for him.The breath of praise swelled the sails of his skiff;all the instruments of success lay there to his hand;he had an establishment,a mistress whom all Paris envied him,a carriage,and untold wealth in his inkstand.Heart and soul and brain were alike transformed within him;why should he care to be over nice about the means,when the great results were visibly there before his eyes.
As such a style of living will seem,and with good reason,to be anything but secure to economists who have any experience of Paris,it will not be superfluous to give a glance to the foundation,uncertain as it was,upon which the prosperity of the pair was based.
Camusot had given Coralie's tradesmen instructions to grant her credit for three months at least,and this had been done without her knowledge.During those three months,therefore,horses and servants,like everything else,waited as if by enchantment at the bidding of two children,eager for enjoyment,and enjoying to their hearts'content.
Coralie had taken Lucien's hand and given him a glimpse of the transformation scene in the dining-room,of the splendidly appointed table,of chandeliers,each fitted with forty wax-lights,of the royally luxurious dessert,and a menu of Chevet's.Lucien kissed her on the forehead and held her closely to his heart.
