19. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 479-496

Part Three: An Inventor's Tribulations, Introduction, 1. The doleful confession of a "child of the age"; 2. Back-kick from a donkey; The History of a Lawsuit, 3. The problem at issue; 4. A plucky wife

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Lucien leaves Paris, taking a bus as far as Longjumeau, where he sets out on foot, then hitches a ride to Tours, then on foot again to Poitiers and beyond. Along the road, he sees a barouche slowly climbing a slope. Unseen, he manages to scramble onto the back of the carriage between two pieces of luggage. He falls asleep and finds himself in the town of Mansle, where he had waited for Madame de Bargeton and his ride to Paris a year and half earlier. And, in a real stretch of a coincidence, it turns out that the carriage on which he has stowed away is that of "the new Prefect of the Charente -- the Comte Sixte du Châtelet -- and his wife, Louise de Nègrepelisse." The former Madame de Bargeton invites him to ride with them, but "Lucien coldly saluted the couple with a look which was both humble and menacing" and departs on foot.

Down to his last three francs and suffering from a fever, he begs lodging for a week from a miller named Courtois and his wife. He identifies himself as "Lucien de Rubempré, ... the son of Monsieur Chardon, who owned the chemist's shop in L'Houmeau before Postel. My sister married David Séchard, the printer in the Place du Mûrier in Angoulême." The miller recognizes David as "the son of the old fox who's running a vineyard at Marsac.... They say he's making his son sell up, and he owns more than two hundred thousand francs' worth of land, without counting what he keeps in his crock."

Lucien faints at the news that David is in financial difficulties, and the miller goes to fetch the doctor and the parish priest of Marsac, who know of Lucien's involvement with Madame de Bargeton as well as her marriage to Châtelet. The doctor tells Lucien that David is "probably in prison" because his father had refused to help him pay some debts -- those incurred by the notes Lucien had forged. Lucien confesses to the priest, telling him not only of the forgery but of his experiences in Paris. The priest agrees to go to Angoulême and find out what has happened to Lucien's mother and sister. In L'Houmeau, the priest learns from Postel, who bought the chemist's shop after Lucien's father died, and who wanted to marry Eve, that she's "living in appalling poverty." Postel, who signed the judgment against David that sent him to prison, tells the priest that Lucien can have his old room back. The priest sets off for Angoulême.

Balzac then flashes back to the story of David's troubles as he tries to develop a new process for making paper in response to the increased demand for it in the post-Restoration era of political discussion.

And so, curiously enough, while Lucien was getting caught in the cogwheels of the vast journalistic machine and running the risk of it tearing his honour and intelligence to shreds, David Séchard, in his distant printing office, was sureying the expansion of the periodical press in its material consequences. 

He had overextended himself in the wedding plans and in helping Lucien get to Paris, and he owed Postel a thousand francs, so the hope of making a breakthrough discovery was urgent.

David assures Eve, of course, that "all our tribulations will come to an end" once his invention succeeds. She is pregnant, but she decides to help out in the print shop while David works on his project. There are only three employees left: Cérizet, an apprentice David brought with him when he came home from Paris; Marion, who has been with the firm since old Séchard ran it; and Kolb, an Alsatian who had been stationed with the army in Angoulême. Marion and Kolb had fallen in love, even though she "was big and fat and thirty-six" and he "was five feet seven inches in height, well-built, and as strong as a fortress."

No one, however, has been keeping track of the accounts, so Eve asks to look at the books and discovers "that during the first six months of his wedded life David had failed to cover his rent, the interest on capital based on the value of his stock and his printer's license, Marion's wages, ink and finally the profits a printer should make." So Eve takes inventory and sets Kolb, Marion, and Cérizet to cleaning things up. She decides to use the paper on hand to print up broadsheets of "the illustrated folk-tales which peasants paste up on the walls of their cottages.... They cost her thirty francs to produce and brought in three hundred francs at a penny apiece." This success inspires her to use the profits to print a "Shepherd's Almanac" with a potential of two thousand francs' profit.

While this bustling activity was in its beginnings there came the heart-rending letters in which Lucien told his mother, sister and brother-in-law of his failure and financial difficulties in Paris. It is therefor easy to see that, in sending three hundred francs to the spoilt child, Eve, Madame Chardon and David had offered the poet their life's blood.

And as Eve's pregnancy advanced, there was good reason to wonder what would happen to them and their print shop.

4. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 118-148

Part One: The Two Poets, 4. Catastrophic sequels to provincial love

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Lucien and Madame de Bargeton are the talk of the town, but notoriety has only emboldened both of them. Madame de Bargeton has begun to use the familiar tu with him, and she is not at all disturbed, as Lucien feared she might be, at the prospect of David's marriage to his sister: "What does your family matter to me, since you are so much above it?" She invites him to stay for dinner and then for the soirée that follows, and thereby causes further gossip:

The next day there was no house in Angoulême in which the degree of intimacy between Monsieur Chardon, alias de Rubempré, and Madame de Bargeton was not a matter for discussion. At most they had exchanged a kiss or two, and society was already accusing them of the most guilty relations. Madame de Bargeton was paying the penalty for her pre-eminence. 

Meanwhile, both Lucien and David have begun banking on expectations: David on the money he will come into on the death of his father, since he has spent lavishly building a second floor onto the house, in preparation for his marriage and the seclusion that Lucien will need to become a great writer, and Lucien "was staking his happiness on the demise of Monsieur de Bargeton." He also assures himself that the thirty francs a month his mother and sister give him will be repaid "when the historical novel at which he had been working for two years -- The Archer of Charles the Ninth, and a volume of verse entitled The Marguerites -- would spread his renown through the world of literature." David, though not without misgivings, joins "in this conspiracy of self-sacrifice."

But Lucien is being spied upon by du Châtelet, who "wanted Madame de Bargeton to declare herself so openly for Lucien as to become what one calls a 'lost woman.'" The problem is, nothing that Lucien and Madame de Bargeton do goes "beyond the bounds of strict propriety." Even so, the gossip doesn't quiet down: "Provincial people are by nature malicious and love to balk nascent passion." Du Châtelet even keeps gossip about the supposed affair stirred up by saying he doesn't believe it's taking place: He claims "that Madame de Bargeton was playing with Lucien, that she was too proud and of too high a rank to condescend to a chemist's son." Stanislas de Chandour, who is married to Amélie, Madame de Bargeton's chief social rival, argues the other side vehemently. The conflict grows so heated that, after de Châtelet tells Stanislas that Madame de Bargeton never closes the door to her boudoir when Lucien is in it, Stanislas decides to spy on them.

But then Lucien and Madame de Bargeton have a quarrel.

Intent on playing the role of Ducinea in Lucien's life for seven or eight years, Madame de Bargeton wished, like so many provincial women, that possession should be paid for by a kind of serfdom, a period of constancy which would enable her to gauge her lover's worth.

Lucien, understandably, is unhappy at this: "'You have never loved me,' he cried."

At this moment, Stanslas arrived unheard, saw Lucien with bowed figure, his eyes for of tears and his head on Louise's lap. Satisfied with this sufficiently compromising tableau, Stanislas backed out towards du Châtelet, who was standing outside the drawing-room door. Madame de Bargeton quickly rushed forward, but failed to reach the two spies who, aware that they were intruding, had beat a hasty retreat.

And soon "everyone knew that Lucien had been discovered on his knees before Naïs." Not everyone agrees that they are lovers, but even they are scandalized by the age difference: "This little versifier is twenty-two at the most, and, between ourselves, Naïs is certainly forty."

Du Châtelet takes it on himself to go to see her and to warn her of the damage done to her reputation. But oddly, she seems happy: "She was sick to death of provincial life. At Châtelet's first word, her thoughts had flown to Paris." And after du Châtelet leaves, she calls in her husband, tells him what has happened, and suggests that he challenge Stanislas de Chandour to a duel. Monsieur de Bargeton goes straight to the du Chandours and does so. Stanislas is terrified, but forces himself to go through with it.

The next morning, Lucien's mother comes in with the news: "This morning, at five o'clock, Monsieur de Bargeton nearly killed Monsieur de Chandour on the duelling ground.... Monsieur de Bargeton, who behaved as if he were out for a stroll, fired twice and lodged a bullet in Monsieur de Chandour's neck.... The hospital surgeon has just now declared that Monsieur de Chandour's neck will never be straight again for the rest of his days." She advises Lucien not to show himself in public for fear that de Chandour's friends might challenge him to a duel. But a letter arrives from Madame de Bargeton asking him "to come and listen to your Beatrice, whose life is completely changed by this event and who has many things to say to you."

Meanwhile, the work has finished on the room that David and Eve will share after their wedding, which is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. It has, of course, cost more than expected, and David has also splurged on the wedding. Lucien's mother and sister have also spent money furnishing David's house.
This little rivalry in love and generosity was to bring the couple into tight circumstances from the very beginning of their marriage, surrounded though they were with all the appearances of middle-class ease which might pass as luxury in so backward a town as Angoulême then was.

Lucien slips away from his family to see Madame de Bargeton, who announces that she is going to Paris and her husband will stay with her father while she's away. She plans to use some influence to find a political position in Paris for Monsieur de Bargeton. "This morning's duel," she explains, "obliges me to shut up my house for some time, for some people will side with the Chandours against us." She wants Lucien to go on ahead of her and wait for her arrival: "I will pick you up in my carriage between Mansle and Ruffec, and we shall soon be in Paris.... Paris, the capital of the intellectual world, is the stage on which you will find success!" She wants him to fit his writing to the political climate: "Therefore you must be both a religious and a royalist poet."

Enraptured by the fantasy of succeeding in Paris and by the notion that "as a result of the journey during which circumstances would make them man and wife, Madame de Bargeton would belong entirely to him," he is ready to say yes to the plan until he remembers: "Good heavens! My sister is getting married the day after tomorrow!" Madame de Bargeton is indignant that he should let such a thing come between them: "'This morning I sent my husband off to fight a duel on your ! Go away, Monsieur, leave me! I have been mistaken in you.' She fell back in a swoon onto her sofa." He gives in.

On the way back, he rationalizes that his mother can move into the room David had prepared for him, and he calculates that he can borrow some money from Postel, who bought his father's apothecary shop, and continue to receive the money his mother and sister have been giving him. But when he tells them of the plan, they reveal how much they have spent on the wedding, and Eve is heartbroken that he won't attend it. She also calculates that he'll need at least two thousand francs, much more money than he has anticipated, just to have a wardrobe suitable for Paris. Madame Chardon goes to see Postel and returns to tell Lucien that he's only willing to lend a thousand and that he would want David to co-sign. David has just arrived, and is upset that Lucien won't be at the wedding. He has also just bought jewelry for Eve to wear at it. But he gives in and agrees not only to sign the note but to see to it that Lucien gets the other thousand he needs. They go to sign the note, and when they return they find mother and daughter "on their knees in prayer."

"If ever you forgot this scene," whispered David to Lucien, "You would be the most despicable of men."

He hires a horse and trap and drives Lucien to the place where Madame de Bargeton's carriage picks him up.

The printer climbed back into his shabby trap, and his heart was heavy as he drove away, for he had horrible presentiments of the fate in store for Lucien in Paris.