A Distinguished Provincial in Paris by Honoré de Balzac (great novels .TXT) 📖

of the nations, yet another trait was to prove how little Lucien had understood these new friends of his.

"Lucien, dear fellow," said Daniel, "you did not dine at Flicoteaux's yesterday, and we know why."

Lucien could not keep back the overflowing tears.

"You showed a want of confidence in us," said Michel Chrestien; "we shall chalk that up over the chimney, and when we have scored ten we will----"

"We have all of us found a bit of extra work," said Bianchon; "for my own part, I have been looking after a rich patient for Desplein; d'Arthez has written an article for the _Revue Encyclopedique_; Chrestien thought of going out to sing in the Champs Elysees of an evening with a pocket-handkerchief and four candles, but he found a pamphlet to write instead for a man who has a mind to go into politics, and gave his employer six hundred francs worth of Machiavelli; Leon Giraud borrowed fifty francs of his publisher, Joseph sold one or two sketches; and Fulgence's piece was given on Sunday, and there was a full house."

"Here are two hundred francs," said Daniel, "and let us say no more about it."

"Why, if he is not going to hug us all as if we had done something extraordinary!" cried Chrestien.

Lucien, meanwhile, had written to the home circle. His letter was a masterpiece of sensibility and goodwill, as well as a sharp cry wrung from him by distress. The answers which he received the next day will give some idea of the delight that Lucien took in this living encyclopedia of angelic spirits, each of whom bore the stamp of the art or science which he followed:--

_David Sechard to Lucien._

"MY DEAR LUCIEN,--Enclosed herewith is a bill at ninety days,
payable to your order, for two hundred francs. You can draw on M.
Metivier, paper merchant, our Paris correspondent in the Rue
Serpente. My good Lucien, we have absolutely nothing. Eve has
undertaken the charge of the printing-house, and works at her task
with such devotion, patience, and industry, that I bless heaven
for giving me such an angel for a wife. She herself says that it
is impossible to send you the least help. But I think, my friend
now that you are started in so promising a way, with such great
and noble hearts for your companions, that you can hardly fail to
reach the greatness to which you were born, aided as you are by
intelligence almost divine in Daniel d'Arthez and Michel Chrestien
and Leon Giraud, and counseled by Meyraux and Bianchon and Ridal,
whom we have come to know through your dear letter. So I have
drawn this bill without Eve's knowledge, and I will contrive
somehow to meet it when the time comes. Keep on your way, Lucien;
it is rough, but it will be glorious. I can bear anything but the
thought of you sinking into the sloughs of Paris, of which I saw
so much. Have sufficient strength of mind to do as you are doing,
and keep out of scrapes and bad company, wild young fellows and
men of letters of a certain stamp, whom I learned to take at their
just valuation when I lived in Paris. Be a worthy compeer of the
divine spirits whom we have learned to love through you. Your life
will soon meet with its reward. Farewell, dearest brother; you
have sent transports of joy to my heart. I did not expect such
courage of you.

"DAVID."

_Eve Sechard to Lucien._

"DEAR,--your letter made all of us cry. As for the noble hearts to
whom your good angel surely led you, tell them that a mother and a
poor young wife will pray for them night and morning; and if the
most fervent prayers can reach the Throne of God, surely they will
bring blessings upon you all. Their names are engraved upon my
heart. Ah! some day I shall see your friends; I will go to Paris,
if I have to walk the whole way, to thank them for their
friendship for you, for to me the thought has been like balm to
smarting wounds. We are working like day laborers here, dear. This
husband of mine, the unknown great man whom I love more and more
every day, as I discover moment by moment the wealth of his
nature, leaves the printing-house more and more to me. Why, I
guess. Our poverty, yours, and ours, and our mother's, is
heartbreaking to him. Our adored David is a Prometheus gnawed by a
vulture, a haggard, sharp-beaked regret. As for himself, noble
fellow, he scarcely thinks of himself; he is hoping to make a
fortune for _us_. He spends his whole time in experiments in
paper-making; he begged me to take his place and look after the
business, and gives me as much help as his preoccupation allows.
Alas! I shall be a mother soon. That should have been a crowning
joy; but as things are, it saddens me. Poor mother! she has grown
young again; she has found strength to go back to her tiring
nursing. We should be happy if it were not for these money cares.
Old Father Sechard will not give his son a farthing. David went
over to see if he could borrow a little for you, for we were in
despair over your letter. 'I know Lucien,' David said; 'he will
lose his head and do something rash.'--I gave him a good scolding.
'My brother disappoint us in any way!' I told him, 'Lucien knows
that I should die of sorrow.'--Mother and I have pawned a few
things; David does not know about it, mother will redeem them as
soon as she has made a little money. In this way we have managed
to put together a hundred francs, which I am sending you by the
coach. If I did not answer your last letter, do not remember it
against me, dear; we were working all night just then. I have been
working like a man. Oh, I had no idea that I was so strong!

"Mme. de Bargeton is a heartless woman; she has no soul; even if
she cared for you no longer, she owed it to herself to use her
influence for you and to help you when she had torn you from us to
plunge you into that dreadful sea of Paris. Only by the special
blessing of Heaven could you have met with true friends there
among those crowds of men and innumerable interests. She is not
worth a regret. I used to wish that there might be some devoted
woman always with you, a second myself; but now I know that your
friends will take my place, and I am happy. Spread your wings, my
dear great genius, you will be our pride as well as our beloved.

"EVE."

"My darling," the mother wrote, "I can only add my blessing to all
that your sister says, and assure you that you are more in my
thoughts and in my prayers (alas!) than those whom I see daily;
for some hearts, the absent are always in the right, and so it is
with the heart of your mother."

So two days after the loan was offered so graciously, Lucien repaid it. Perhaps life had never seemed so bright to him as at that moment; but the touch of self-love in his joy did not escape the delicate sensibility and searching eyes of his friends.

"Any one might think that you were afraid to owe us anything," exclaimed Fulgence.

"Oh! the pleasure that he takes in returning the money is a very serious symptom to my mind," said Michel Chrestien. "It confirms some observations of my own. There is a spice of vanity in Lucien."

"He is a poet," said d'Arthez.

"But do you grudge me such a very natural feeling?" asked Lucien.

"We should bear in mind that he did not hide it," said Leon Giraud; "he is still open with us; but I am afraid that he may come to feel shy of us."

"And why?" Lucien asked.

"We can read your thoughts," answered Joseph Bridau.

"There is a diabolical spirit in you that will seek to justify courses which are utterly contrary to our principles. Instead of being a sophist in theory, you will be a sophist in practice."

"Ah! I am afraid of that," said d'Arthez. "You will carry on admirable debates in your own mind, Lucien, and take up a lofty position in theory, and end by blameworthy actions. You will never be at one with yourself."

"What ground have you for these charges?"

"Thy vanity, dear poet, is so great that it intrudes itself even into thy friendships!" cried Fulgence. "All vanity of that sort is a symptom of shocking egoism, and egoism poisons friendship."

"Oh! dear," said Lucien, "you cannot know how much I love you all."

"If you loved us as we love you, would you have been in such a hurry to return the money which we had such pleasure in lending? or have made so much of it?"

"We don't lend here; we give," said Joseph Bridau roughly.

"Don't think us unkind, dear boy," said Michel Chrestien; "we are looking forward. We are afraid lest some day you may prefer a petty revenge to the joys of pure friendship. Read Goethe's _Tasso_, the great master's greatest work, and you will see how the poet-hero loved gorgeous stuffs and banquets and triumph and applause. Very well, be Tasso without his folly. Perhaps the world and its pleasures tempt you? Stay with us. Carry all the cravings of vanity into the world of imagination. Transpose folly. Keep virtue for daily wear, and let imagination run riot, instead of doing, as d'Arthez says, thinking high thoughts and living beneath them."

Lucien hung his head. His friends were right.

"I confess that you are stronger than I," he said, with a charming glance at them. "My back and shoulders are not made to bear the burden of Paris life; I cannot struggle bravely. We are born with different temperaments and faculties, and you know better than I that faults and virtues have their reverse side. I am tired already, I confess."

"We will stand by you," said d'Arthez; "it is just in these ways that a faithful friendship is of use."

"The help that I have just received is precarious, and every one of us is just as poor as another; want will soon overtake me again. Chrestien, at the service of the first that hires him, can do nothing with the publishers; Bianchon is quite out of it; d'Arthez's booksellers only deal in scientific and technical books--they have no connection with publishers of new literature; and as for Horace and Fulgence