Works of Honore De Balzac, page 476
This federation of interests and affection lasted for twenty years without a collision or disappointment. Death alone could thin the numbers of the noble Pleiades, taking first Louis Lambert, later Meyraux and Michel Chrestien.
When Michel Chrestien fell in 1832 his friends went, in spite of the perils of the step, to find his body at Saint-Merri; and Horace Bianchon, Daniel d’Arthez, Leon Giraud, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence Ridal performed the last duties to the dead, between two political fires. By night they buried their beloved in the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise; Horace Bianchon, undaunted by the difficulties, cleared them away one after another — it was he indeed who besought the authorities for permission to bury the fallen insurgent and confessed to his old friendship with the dead Federalist. The little group of friends present at the funeral with those five great men will never forget that touching scene.
As you walk in the trim cemetery you will see a grave purchased in perpetuity, a grass-covered mound with a dark wooden cross above it, and the name in large red letters — MICHEL CHRESTIEN. There is no other monument like it. The friends thought to pay a tribute to the sternly simple nature of the man by the simplicity of the record of his death.
So, in that chilly garret, the fairest dreams of friendship were realized. These men were brothers leading lives of intellectual effort, loyally helping each other, making no reservations, not even of their worst thoughts; men of vast acquirements, natures tried in the crucible of poverty. Once admitted as an equal among such elect souls, Lucien represented beauty and poetry. They admired the sonnets which he read to them; they would ask him for a sonnet as he would ask Michel Chrestien for a song. And, in the desert of Paris, Lucien found an oasis in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.
At the beginning of October, Lucien had spent the last of his money on a little firewood; he was half-way through the task of recasting his work, the most strenuous of all toil, and he was penniless. As for Daniel d’Arthez, burning blocks of spent tan, and facing poverty like a hero, not a word of complaint came from him; he was as sober as any elderly spinster, and methodical as a miser. This courage called out Lucien’s courage; he had only newly come into the circle, and shrank with invincible repugnance from speaking of his straits. One morning he went out, manuscript in hand, and reached the Rue du Coq; he would sell The Archer of Charles IX. to Doguereau; but Doguereau was out. Lucien little knew how indulgent great natures can be to the weaknesses of others. Every one of the friends had thought of the peculiar troubles besetting the poetic temperament, of the prostration which follows upon the struggle, when the soul has been overwrought by the contemplation of that nature which it is the task of art to reproduce. And strong as they were to endure their own ills, they felt keenly for Lucien’s distress; they guessed that his stock of money was failing; and after all the pleasant evenings spent in friendly talk and deep meditations, after the poetry, the confidences, the bold flights over the fields of thought or into the far future 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 Ridal and Bridau, their work lies miles away from the booksellers. There is no help for it; I must make up my mind one way or another.”
“Stick by us, and make up your mind to it,” said Bianchon. “Bear up bravely, and trust in hard work.”
“But what is hardship for you is death for me,” Lucien put in quickly.
“Before the cock crows thrice,” smiled Leon Giraud, “this man will betray the cause of work for an idle life and the vices of Paris.”
“Where has work brought you?” asked Lucien, laughing.
“When you start out from Paris for Italy, you don’t find Rome half-way,” said Joseph Bridau. “You want your pease to grow ready buttered for you.”
The conversation ended in a joke, and they changed the subject. Lucien’s friends, with their perspicacity and delicacy of heart, tried to efface the memory of the little quarrel; but Lucien knew thenceforward that it was no easy matter to deceive them. He soon fell into despair, which he was careful to hide from such stern mentors as he imagined them to be; and the Southern temper that runs so easily through the whole gamut of mental dispositions, set him making the most contradictory resolutions.
Again and again he talked of making the plunge into journalism; and time after time did his friends reply with a “Mind you do nothing of the sort!”
“It would be the tomb of the beautiful, gracious Lucien whom we love and know,” said d’Arthez.
“You would not hold out for long between the two extremes of toil and pleasure which make up a journalist’s life, and resistance is the very foundation of virtue. You would be so delighted to exercise your power of life and death over the offspring of the brain, that you would be an out-and-out journalist in two months’ time. To be a journalist — that is to turn Herod in the republic of letters. The man who will say anything will end by sticking at nothing. That was Napoleon’s maxim, and it explains itself.”
“But you would be with me, would you not?” asked Lucien.
“Not by that time,” said Fulgence. “If you were a journalist, you would no more think of us than the Opera girl in all her glory, with her adorers and her silk-lined carriage, thinks of the village at home and her cows and her sabots. You could never resist the temptation to pen a witticism, though it should bring tears to a friend’s eyes. I come across journalists in theatre lobbies; it makes me shudder to see them. Journalism is an inferno, a bottomless pit of iniquity and treachery and lies; no one can traverse it undefiled, unless, like Dante, he is protected by Virgil’s sacred laurel.”
But the more the set of friends opposed the idea of journalism, the more Lucien’s desire to know its perils grew and tempted him. He began to debate within his own mind; was it not ridiculous to allow want to find him a second time defenceless? He bethought him of the failure of his attempts to dispose of his first novel, and felt but little tempted to begin a second. How, besides, was he to live while he was writing another romance? One month of privation had exhausted his stock of patience. Why should he not do nobly that which journalists did ignobly and without principle? His friends insulted him with their doubts; he would convince them of his strength of mind. Some day, perhaps, he would be of use to them; he would be the herald of their fame!
“And what sort of a friendship is it which recoils from complicity?” demanded he one evening of Michel Chrestien; Lucien and Leon Giraud were walking home with their friend.
“We shrink from nothing,” Michel Chrestien made reply. “If you were so unlucky as to kill your mistress, I would help you to hide your crime, and could still respect you; but if you were to turn spy, I should shun you with abhorrence, for a spy is systematically shameless and base. There you have journalism summed up in a sentence. Friendship can pardon error and the hasty impulse of passion; it is bound to be inexorable when a man deliberately traffics in his own soul, and intellect, and opinions.”
“Why cannot I turn journalist to sell my volume of poetry and the novel, and then give up at once?”
“Machiavelli might do so, but not Lucien de Rubempre,” said Leon Giraud.
“Very well,” exclaimed Lucien; “I will show you that I can do as much as Machiavelli.”
“Oh!” cried Michel, grasping Leon’s hand, “you have done it, Leon. — Lucien,” he continued, “you have three hundred francs in hand; you can live comfortably for three months; very well, then, work hard and write another romance. D’Arthez and Fulgence will help you with the plot; you will improve, you will be a novelist. And I, meanwhile, will enter one of those lupanars of thought; for three months I will be a journalist. I will sell your books to some bookseller or other by attacking his publications; I will write the articles myself; I will get others for you. We will organize a success; you shall be a great man, and still remain our Lucien.”
