A Distinguished Provincial in Paris, Honoré de Balzac [urban books to read .txt] 📗

customer's financial status. The report had been satisfactory. Lucien had traveled post; Mme. de Bargeton brought him back from Vaudeville last Thursday in her carriage. Staub addressed Lucien as "Monsieur le Comte," and called his customer's attention to the artistic skill with which he had brought a charming figure into relief.

"A young man in such a costume has only to walk in the Tuileries," he said, "and he will marry an English heiress within a fortnight."

Lucien brightened a little under the influences of the German tailor's joke, the perfect fit of his new clothes, the fine cloth, and the sight of a graceful figure which met his eyes in the looking-glass. Vaguely he told himself that Paris was the capital of chance, and for the moment he believed in chance. Had he not a volume of poems and a magnificent romance entitled _The Archer of Charles IX._ in manuscript? He had hope for the future. Staub promised the overcoat and the rest of the clothes the next day.

The next day the bootmaker, linen-draper, and tailor all returned armed each with his bill, which Lucien, still under the charm of provincial habits, paid forthwith, not knowing how otherwise to rid himself of them. After he had paid, there remained but three hundred and sixty francs out of the two thousand which he had brought with him from Angouleme, and he had been but one week in Paris! Nevertheless, he dressed and went to take a stroll in the Terrassee des Feuillants. He had his day of triumph. He looked so handsome and so graceful, he was so well dressed, that women looked at him; two or three were so much struck with his beauty, that they turned their heads to look again. Lucien studied the gait and carriage of the young men on the Terrasse, and took a lesson in fine manners while he meditated on his three hundred and sixty francs.

That evening, alone in his chamber, an idea occurred to him which threw a light on the problem of his existence at the Gaillard-Bois, where he lived on the plainest fare, thinking to economize in this way. He asked for his account, as if he meant to leave, and discovered that he was indebted to his landlord to the extent of a hundred francs. The next morning was spent in running around the Latin Quarter, recommended for its cheapness by David. For a long while he looked about till, finally, in the Rue de Cluny, close to the Sorbonne, he discovered a place where he could have a furnished room for such a price as he could afford to pay. He settled with his hostess of the Gaillard-Bois, and took up his quarters in the Rue de Cluny that same day. His removal only cost him the cab fare.

When he had taken possession of his poor room, he made a packet of Mme. de Bargeton's letters, laid them on the table, and sat down to write to her; but before he wrote he fell to thinking over that fatal week. He did not tell himself that he had been the first to be faithless; that for a sudden fancy he had been ready to leave his Louise without knowing what would become of her in Paris. He saw none of his own shortcomings, but he saw his present position, and blamed Mme. de Bargeton for it. She was to have lighted his way; instead she had ruined him. He grew indignant, he grew proud, he worked himself into a paroxysm of rage, and set himself to compose the following epistle:--

"What would you think, madame, of a woman who should take a fancy
to some poor and timid child full of the noble superstitions which
the grown man calls 'illusions;' and using all the charms of
woman's coquetry, all her most delicate ingenuity, should feign a
mother's love to lead that child astray? Her fondest promises, the
card-castles which raised his wonder, cost her nothing; she leads
him on, tightens her hold upon him, sometimes coaxing, sometimes
scolding him for his want of confidence, till the child leaves his
home and follows her blindly to the shores of a vast sea. Smiling,
she lures him into a frail skiff, and sends him forth alone and
helpless to face the storm. Standing safe on the rock, she laughs
and wishes him luck. You are that woman; I am that child.

"The child has a keepsake in his hands, something which might
betray the wrongs done by your beneficence, your kindness in
deserting him. You might have to blush if you saw him struggling
for life, and chanced to recollect that once you clasped him to
your breast. When you read these words the keepsake will be in
your own safe keeping; you are free to forget everything.

"Once you pointed out fair hopes to me in the skies, I awake to
find reality in the squalid poverty of Paris. While you pass, and
others bow before you, on your brilliant path in the great world,
I, I whom you deserted on the threshold, shall be shivering in the
wretched garret to which you consigned me. Yet some pang may
perhaps trouble your mind amid festivals and pleasures; you may
think sometimes of the child whom you thrust into the depths. If
so, madame, think of him without remorse. Out of the depths of his
misery the child offers you the one thing left to him--his
forgiveness in a last look. Yes, madame, thanks to you, I have
nothing left. Nothing! was not the world created from nothing?
Genius should follow the Divine example; I begin with God-like
forgiveness, but as yet I know not whether I possess the God-like
power. You need only tremble lest I should go astray; for you
would be answerable for my sins. Alas! I pity you, for you will
have no part in the future towards which I go, with work as my
guide."

After penning this rhetorical effusion, full of the sombre dignity which an artist of one-and-twenty is rather apt to overdo, Lucien's thoughts went back to them at home. He saw the pretty rooms which David had furnished for him, at the cost of part of his little store, and a vision rose before him of quiet, simple pleasures in the past. Shadowy figures came about him; he saw his mother and Eve and David, and heard their sobs over his leave-taking, and at that he began to cry himself, for he felt very lonely in Paris, and friendless and forlorn.

Two or three days later he wrote to his sister:--

"MY DEAR EVE,--When a sister shares the life of a brother who
devotes himself to art, it is her sad privilege to take more
sorrow than joy into her life; and I am beginning to fear that I
shall be a great trouble to you. Have I not abused your goodness
already? have not all of you sacrificed yourselves to me? It is
the memory of the past, so full of family happiness, that helps me
to bear up in my present loneliness. Now that I have tasted the
first beginnings of poverty and the treachery of the world of
Paris, how my thoughts have flown to you, swift as an eagle back
to its eyrie, so that I might be with true affection again. Did
you see sparks in the candle? Did a coal pop out of the fire? Did
you hear singing in your ears? And did mother say, 'Lucien is
thinking of us,' and David answer, 'He is fighting his way in the
world?'

"My Eve, I am writing this letter for your eyes only. I cannot
tell any one else all that has happened to me, good and bad,
blushing for both, as I write, for good here is as rare as evil
ought to be. You shall have a great piece of news in a very few
words. Mme. de Bargeton was ashamed of me, disowned me, would not
see me, and gave me up nine days after we came to Paris. She saw
me in the street and looked another way; when, simply to follow
her into the society to which she meant to introduce me, I had
spent seventeen hundred and sixty francs out of the two thousand I
brought from Angouleme, the money so hardly scraped together. 'How
did you spend it?' you will ask. Paris is a strange bottomless
gulf, my poor sister; you can dine here for less than a franc, yet
the simplest dinner at a fashionable restaurant costs fifty
francs; there are waistcoats and trousers to be had for four
francs and two francs each; but a fashionable tailor never charges
less than a hundred francs. You pay for everything; you pay a
halfpenny to cross the kennel in the street when it rains; you
cannot go the least little way in a cab for less than thirty-two
sous.

"I have been staying in one of the best parts of Paris, but now I
am living at the Hotel de Cluny, in the Rue de Cluny, one of the
poorest and darkest slums, shut in between three churches and the
old buildings of the Sorbonne. I have a furnished room on the
fourth floor; it is very bare and very dirty, but, all the same, I
pay fifteen francs a month for it. For breakfast I spend a penny
on a roll and a halfpenny for milk, but I dine very decently for
twenty-two sous at a restaurant kept by a man named Flicoteaux in
the Place de la Sorbonne itself. My expenses every month will not
exceed sixty francs, everything included, until the winter begins
--at least I hope not. So my two hundred and forty francs ought to
last me for the first four months. Between now and then I shall
have sold _The Archer of Charles IX._ and the _Marguerites_ no doubt.
Do not be in the least uneasy on my account. If the present is
cold and bare and poverty-stricken, the blue distant future is
rich and splendid; most great men have known the vicissitudes
which depress but cannot overwhelm me.

"Plautus, the great comic Latin poet, was once a miller's lad.
Machiavelli wrote _The Prince_ at night, and by day was a common
working-man like any one else; and more than all, the great
Cervantes, who lost an arm at the battle of Lepanto, and helped to
win that famous day, was called a 'base-born, handless dotard' by
the