Debts are becoming to a young man,but after the age of five-and-twenty they are inexcusable.It should be observed that there are certain natures in which a really poetic temper is united with a weakened will;and these while absorbed in feeling,that they may transmute personal experience,sensation,or impression into some permanent form are essentially deficient in the moral sense which should accompany all observation.Poets prefer rather to receive their own impressions than to enter into the souls of others to study the mechanism of their feelings and thoughts.So Lucien neither asked his associates what became of those who disappeared from among them,nor looked into the futures of his so-called friends.Some of them were heirs to property,others had definite expectations;yet others either possessed names that were known in the world,or a most robust belief in their destiny and a fixed resolution to circumvent the law.Lucien,too,believed in his future on the strength of various profound axiomatic sayings of Blondet's:"Everything comes out all right at last--If a man has nothing,his affairs cannot be embarrassed--We have nothing to lose but the fortune that we seek--Swim with the stream;it will take you somewhere--A clever man with a footing in society can make a fortune whenever he pleases."That winter,filled as it was with so many pleasures and dissipations,was a necessary interval employed in finding capital for the new Royalist paper;Theodore Gaillard and Hector Merlin only brought out the first number of the Reveil in March 1822.The affair had been settled at Mme.du Val-Noble's house.Mme.du val-Noble exercised a certain influence over the great personages,Royalist writers,and bankers who met in her splendid rooms--"fit for a tale out of the Arabian Nights,"as the elegant and clever courtesan herself used to say--to transact business which could not be arranged elsewhere.The editorship had been promised to Hector Merlin.Lucien,Merlin's intimate,was pretty certain to be his right-hand man,and a feuilleton in a Ministerial paper had been promised to him besides.
All through the dissipations of that winter Lucien had been secretly making ready for this change of front.Child as he was,he fancied that he was a deep politician because he concealed the preparation for the approaching transformation-scene,while he was counting upon Ministerial largesses to extricate himself from embarrassment and to lighten Coralie's secret cares.Coralie said nothing of her distress;she smiled now,as always;but Berenice was bolder,she kept Lucien informed of their difficulties;and the budding great man,moved,after the fashion of poets,by the tale of disasters,would vow that he would begin to work in earnest,and then forget his resolution,and drown his fleeting cares in excess.One day Coralie saw the poetic brow overcast,and scolded Berenice,and told her lover that everything would be settled.
Mme.d'Espard and Mme.de Bargeton were waiting for Lucien's profession of his new creed,so they said,before applying through Chatelet for the patent which should permit Lucien to bear the so-much desired name.Lucien had proposed to dedicate the Marguerites to Mme.
d'Espard,and the Marquise seemed to be not a little flattered by a compliment which authors have been somewhat chary of paying since they became a power in the land;but when Lucien went to Dauriat and asked after his book,that worthy publisher met him with excellent reasons for the delay in its appearance.Dauriat had this and that in hand,which took up all his time;a new volume by Canalis was coming out,and he did not want the two books to clash;M.de Lamartine's second series of Meditations was in the press,and two important collections of poetry ought not to appear together.
By this time,however,Lucien's needs were so pressing that he had recourse to Finot,and received an advance on his work.When,at a supper-party that evening,the poet journalist explained his position to his friends in the fast set,they drowned his scruples in champagne,iced with pleasantries.Debts!There was never yet a man of any power without debts!Debts represented satisfied cravings,clamorous vices.A man only succeeds under the pressure of the iron hand of necessity.Debts forsooth!
"Why,the one pledge of which a great man can be sure,is given him by his friend the pawnbroker,"cried Blondet.
"If you want everything,you must owe for everything,"called Bixiou.
"No,"corrected des Lupeaulx,"if you owe for everything,you have had everything."The party contrived to convince the novice that his debts were a golden spur to urge on the horses of the chariot of his fortunes.
There is always the stock example of Julius Caesar with his debt of forty millions,and Friedrich II.on an allowance of one ducat a month,and a host of other great men whose failings are held up for the corruption of youth,while not a word is said of their wide-reaching ideas,their courage equal to all odds.
Creditors seized Coralie's horses,carriage,and furniture at last,for an amount of four thousand francs.Lucien went to Lousteau and asked his friend to meet his bill for the thousand francs lent to pay gaming debts;but Lousteau showed him certain pieces of stamped paper,which proved that Florine was in much the same case.Lousteau was grateful,however,and offered to take the necessary steps for the sale of Lucien's Archer of Charles IX.
"How came Florine to be in this plight?"asked Lucien.
"The Matifat took alarm,"said Lousteau."We have lost him;but if Florine chooses,she can make him pay dear for his treachery.I will tell you all about it."Three days after this bootless errand,Lucien and Coralie were breakfasting in melancholy spirits beside the fire in their pretty bedroom.Berenice had cooked a dish of eggs for them over the grate;for the cook had gone,and the coachman and servants had taken leave.
