第95章

d'Espard brought Mme.de Montcornet to her cousin,and Lucien became the hero of the evening,so to speak.He was flattered,petted,and made much of by the three women;he was entangled with art which no words can describe.His social success in this fine and brilliant circle was at least as great as his triumphs in journalism.Beautiful Mlle.des Touches,so well known as "Camille Maupin,"asked him to one of her Wednesday dinners;his beauty,now so justly famous,seemed to have made an impression upon her.Lucien exerted himself to show that his wit equaled his good looks,and Mlle.des Touches expressed her admiration with a playful outspokenness and a pretty fervor of friendship which deceives those who do not know life in Paris to its depths,nor suspect how continual enjoyment whets the appetite for novelty.

"If she should like me as much as I like her,we might abridge the romance,"said Lucien,addressing de Marsay and Rastignac.

"You both of you write romances too well to care to live them,"returned Rastignac."Can men and women who write ever fall in love with each other?A time is sure to come when they begin to make little cutting remarks.""It would not be a bad dream for you,"laughed de Marsay."The charming young lady is thirty years old,it is true,but she has an income of eighty thousand livres.She is adorably capricious,and her style of beauty wears well.Coralie is a silly little fool,my dear boy,well enough for a start,for a young spark must have a mistress;but unless you make some great conquest in the great world,an actress will do you harm in the long run.Now,my boy,go and cut out Conti.

Here he is,just about to sing with Camille Maupin.Poetry has taken precedence of music ever since time began."But when Lucien heard Mlle.des Touches'voice blending with Conti's,his hopes fled.

"Conti sings too well,"he told des Lupeaulx;and he went back to Mme.

de Bargeton,who carried him off to Mme.d'Espard in another room.

"Well,will you not interest yourself in him?"asked Mme.de Bargeton.

The Marquise spoke with an air half kindly,half insolent."Let M.

Chardon first put himself in such a position that he will not compromise those who take an interest in him,"she said."If he wishes to drop his patronymic and to bear his mother's name,he should at any rate be on the right side,should he not?""In less than two months I will arrange everything,"said Lucien.

"Very well,"returned Mme.d'Espard."I will speak to my father and uncle;they are in waiting,they will speak to the Chancellor for you."The diplomatist and the two women had very soon discovered Lucien's weak side.The poet's head was turned by the glory of the aristocracy;every man who entered the rooms bore a sounding name mounted in a glittering title,and he himself was plain Chardon.Unspeakable mortification filled him at the sound of it.Wherever he had been during the last few days,that pang had been constantly present with him.He felt,moreover,a sensation quite as unpleasant when he went back to his desk after an evening spent in the great world,in which he made a tolerable figure,thanks to Coralie's carriage and Coralie's servants.

He learned to ride,in order to escort Mme.d'Espard,Mlle.des Touches,and the Comtesse de Montcornet when they drove in the Bois,a privilege which he had envied other young men so greatly when he first came to Paris.Finot was delighted to give his right-hand man an order for the Opera,so Lucien wasted many an evening there,and thenceforward he was among the exquisites of the day.

The poet asked Rastignac and his new associates to a breakfast,and made the blunder of giving it in Coralie's rooms in the Rue de Vendome;he was too young,too much of a poet,too self-confident,to discern certain shades and distinctions in conduct;and how should an actress,a good-hearted but uneducated girl,teach him life?His guests were anything but charitably disposed towards him;it was clearly proven to their minds that Lucien the critic and the actress were in collusion for their mutual interests,and all of the young men were jealous of an arrangement which all of them stigmatized.The most pitiless of those who laughed that evening at Lucien's expense was Rastignac himself.Rastignac had made and held his position by very similar means;but so careful had he been of appearances,that he could afford to treat scandal as slander.

Lucien proved an apt pupil at whist.Play became a passion with him;and so far from disapproving,Coralie encouraged his extravagance with the peculiar short-sightedness of an all-absorbing love,which sees nothing beyond the moment,and is ready to sacrifice anything,even the future,to the present enjoyment.Coralie looked on cards as a safe-guard against rivals.A great love has much in common with childhood--a child's heedless,careless,spendthrift ways,a child's laughter and tears.

In those days there lived and flourished a set of young men,some of them rich,some poor,and all of them idle,called "free-livers"(viveurs);and,indeed,they lived with incredible insolence--unabashed and unproductive consumers,and yet more intrepid drinkers.

These spendthrifts mingled the roughest practical jokes with a life not so much reckless as suicidal;they drew back from no impossibility,and gloried in pranks which,nevertheless,were confined within certain limits;and as they showed the most original wit in their escapades,it was impossible not to pardon them.