13. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 384-396

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 29. The playwrights' banker; 30. A journalist's christening party

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Lucien and Lousteau go to see the claque leader Braulard, who turns out to be a gentleman (Lucien is shocked that Lousteau calls him "monsieur") of substance with a "fine-looking house" and an income of twenty thousand francs, although

To Lucien he looked like a working-class man grown rich: a coarse face, two very astute eyes, the hands of a professional claqueur, a complexion over which orgies had flowed like rain on the roof-tops, pepper-and-salt hair and a somewhat choked voice.

When he recognizes Lucien, Braulard thinks they have come about the claque for Coralie and tells him not to worry, but Lousteau informs him that it's really about his handling of the extra tickets Lucien is given for the theaters where he reviews. Braulard is happy to make a deal for scalping them, and in the conversation reveals some of the tricks he uses both as scalper and as claqueur for Coralie: "Listen: for her I'll have men posted in the gallery who'll make little hums of approval in order to start applause. That's a manoeuvre which gives an actress a send-off." As they leave Braulard's, they encounter "the evil-smelling squad of claqueurs and ticket-touts" waiting for him to give them their assignments.

"It's hard," answered Lucien as they returned to his rooms, "to keep one's illusions about anything in Paris. Everything is taxed, everything is sold, everything is manufactured, even success." 

Well, he should know. For he throws a large party celebrating his own manufactured success to which he not only invites the large company of journalists and publishers he has lately acquired, but also the sharers of his and Lousteau's mistresses, Matifat and Camusot, and "his friends of the Cénacle." Only three of the last show up: Michel Chrestien, Fulgence Ridal and Joseph Bridau. D'Arthez is "finishing his book" and Giraud is "attending to the publication of the first number of his Review. The Cénacle had sent along its three artisgts as being less likely than the rest to feel out of place in festivities of this kind."

Balzac gives us warning, however, that the extravagance of this celebration -- "an assembly of thirty persons: Coralie's dining-room could hold no more" -- may prove perilous because of "the foundation, slight as it was, on which the material well-being of the actress and her poet was based. Without committing himself, Camusot had instructed the furnishers to give Coralie credit for at least three months. Horses and servants and everything else were to be available as if by magic to these two children eager for enjoyment and enjoying everything blissfully."

Raoul Nathan is there, and he thanks Lucien effusively for the second article about his book, which causes Lucien to assume "a superior air as he looked at his three friends from the Cénacle." He is unconscious of the fact that they are judging him on his ability to write two articles that contradict each other, and when he tells them that he's in a position to give d'Arthez's book a laudatory review when it appears, Michel asks, "But have you a free hand?" Lucien answers, "with a poor pretense at modesty," "As free as one can have when one is indispensable." 

Then Dauriat reads the third article by Lucien on Nathan's book, to wild acclaim for the author.

"Gentlemen," said Lousteau. "We are the witnesses of a grave, inconceivable, unprecedented and truly surprising event. Don't you wonder at the rapidity with which our friend has changed from a provincial into a journalist?"

Lucien is crowned with artificial flowers by the drunken group. "At this juncture Lucien observed the saddened faces of Michel Chrestian, Joseph Bridau and Fulgence Ridal who took up their hats and left amid jeering hurrahs." Lucien tries to defend his former friends to his new ones, but they are hearing none of it.

Finot goes on to propose publishing a canard: an article "that will "accuse the Government of having certain intentions, and thus unleash public opinion against it." Vignon cynically observes, "It will always cause me the deepest astonishment to see a government giving up the guidance of ideas to scoundrels like us." (There were Matt Drudges and Rush Limbaughs two hundred years ago.)

As the dawn appears, Lucien and Coralie talk about the saddened members of the Cénacle:

"Your friends from the rue des Quatre-Vents were as gloomy as condemned criminals," said Coralie to her lover. 

"No," the poet answered. "It's they who were the judges."

"Judges are more fun," said Coralie.

10. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 328-343

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 20. Last visit to the Cénacle; 21. A variety of journalist; 22. Boots can change one's way of life

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Lucien can't help feeling a little guilty about betraying the ideals of the Cénacle, especially when he reads the masterly job they have done editing his novel:  "From chapter to chapter, the skilful and devoted pen of these great but as yet unknown men had changed dross into rich ore." The work they have done on the book "taught him more about literature and art than his four years of reading, comparison and study had done." So he faces them with dread, knowing, for example, "that, if Daniel had loved Coralie, he would have refused to share her with Camusot."

And sure enough, he is met with dismay when they learn that he's chosen journalism -- they already know it from having read his review in the newspaper. Léon Giraud tries to persuade him by saying that they "are going to bring out a journal in which neither truth nor justice will ever be outraged, in which we shall disseminate doctrines useful to humanity." But Lucien plays the skeptic: "'You won't have a single subscriber,' Lucien interjected with Machiavellian malice." In the end, he realizes "that he had been clasped to the heart of his true friends for the last time."

He returns to his room, where he finds Coralie in tears at the sight of his desolate living situation. The next day, he finds that the deal has gone through and Lousteau is now the editor of the newspaper. Florine congratulates Lucien on his good luck: "How many insignificant young people we see dragging along in Paris for years without getting an article into a paper!" He and Lousteau go to see Félicien Vernou, whom they find in a flat with his fat wife and noisy children, an explanation for Vernou's tendency to "resent other people's success and be discontented with everything while still remaining discontented with himself." And at one point Lucien makes a casual remark which turns Vernou into a "mortal enemy." When he tells Lousteau to drop him off at Coralie's, Lousteau mocks him:

"Ah! we're in love," said Lousteau. "It's a mistake! Do with Coralie what I do with Florine: treat her as a housekeeper, but be as free as a mountain goat!"

"You'd bring the saints to damnation!" said Lucien, laughing. 

"Demons are past being damned," Lousteau replied." 

He finds Camusot at Coralie's, both of them celebrating an extended engagement she has just received at the Gymnase theater. But then Camusot notices Lucien's boots, recognizing them as the ones Coralie claimed were hers. And Coralie announces defiantly that the boots Camusot had seen in her room were Lucien's, and that he had been hiding in her closet. Lucien decides to stand by her, and proclaims his love for Coralie, who tells Camusot that he can take back everything he has given her: "I prefer poverty with him to millions with you." Lucien, who has just seen the Vernou household, is not so sanguine: "A cold shudder ran down Lucien's back at the prospect of having a woman, an actress and a household on his hands." But fortunately Camusot gives in: "'Stay here and keep everything, Coralie,' said the merchant in a weak voice expressive of heart-felt grief." But he predicts that "it won't be long before you are living in penury. Whatever great talents this gentleman may possess, they won't be enough to provide for you."

When Camusot leaves, they take stock of their potential income, and although Lucien realizes it can't possibly be enough for the style of life Coralie has become accustomed to, he gives in:

He would have preferred to leave Coralie her freedom rather than to be pitch-forked into the obligations which such a union entails, but she was looking so beautiful, so shapely, so alluring that he was captivated by the picturesque aspects of this Bohemian life, and threw down the gauntlet to Fortune.

7. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 244-266

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 9. Good advice; 10. A third variety of publisher; 11. The Wooden Galleries

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Lousteau sums up Lucien's position simply: "You have the stuff of three poets in you; but, if you reckon to live on what your poetry brings in, you have time to die half a dozen deaths before you make your name." In short, he needs contacts in the publishing world, and he needs to know how it works: "In literature, as in the theatre, much happens behind the scenes." And he urges Lucien to get out while he still can: "Don't throw honour away, as I do, in order to live." He explains that he was penniless even after his first play was presented, and that he now lives primarily not on writing but on selling the tickets that theater owners give him in exchange for favorable reviews and the books that publishers send him for review. Actresses also pay for reviews, even unfavorable ones, because they know that it's better to be criticized than to be ignored. His mistress is an actress, though he once "dreamt of splendid love affairs with the most distinguished women in high society." And he has no scruples left: He will write a negative review of a book he admires if the editor tells him to because the publisher wouldn't send an extra copy of it.

Lucien still refuses to believe that he will end up like Lousteau, who tells him "I feel sorry for you. I see in you what I used to be, and I'm sure that in a year or two you'll be as I am now." So Lousteau agrees to act as a kind of mentor: "I'll introduce you this evening to one of the kings of the book trade and a few journalists."

Excited by the prospect of an immediate wrestle between mankind and himself, the inexperienced young man had no idea how real was the spiritual degradation which the journalist had denounced. He did not know he had to choose between two different paths, two systems for which the Cénacle and journalism respectively stood: the one way being long, honourable and certain, the other beset with reefs, dangerous, full of many runnels in which his conscience was bound to get bedraggled.... At the moment he could see no difference between d'Arthez's noble friendship and Lousteau's easy-going comradeship.

So he dresses himself up in his finest and, looking like "a Greek god," goes to Lousteau's "dirty and dreary" quarters. "What a difference there was between this cynical disorderliness and the decent poverty in which d'Arthez lived!" comments Balzac, continuing to lay the moralizing on a little bit too thickly. While Lucien is there, a bookseller named Barbet comes to inspect some review copies Lousteau is selling him. On most of them, the pages are still uncut, which causes Lucien to ask how Lousteau will write reviews of them if he hasn't read them and is now selling them. Barbet looks at him in astonishment and says, "It's plain to see that this gentleman hasn't the misfortune to be a man of letters." After the complex deal is finished -- it involves using "bills" (IOUs) in lieu of cash -- Lousteau explains how reviewing works:

Take Travels in Egypt: I opened the book and read a bit here and there without cutting the pages, and I discovered eleven mistakes in the French. I shall write a column to the effect that even if the author can interpret the duck-lingo carved on the Egyptian pebbles they call obelisks, he doesn't know his own language -- and I shall prove it to him. I shall say that instead of talking about natural history and antiquities he ought only to have concerned himself with the future of Egypt, the progress of civilization, the means of winning Egypt over to France which, after conquering it and then losing it again, could still establish a moral ascendancy over it. Then a few pages of patriotic twaddle, the whole interlarded with tirades on Marseilles, the Levant and our trading interests.

And if the author had done that, Lousteau explains, he would have criticized him for not paying "attention to Art" and giving the reader a picturesque travel book instead. He reveals that his mistress, Florine, reads the novels she gets and that he writes an article based on her opinions, except "When she's been bored by what she calls 'literary verbiage' I take the book into serious consideration." Lucien, "still imbued with the doctrines of the Cénacle," is startled by all this cynicism and asks "what about criticism, the sacred task of criticism?" Lousteau is beyond any such notions.

He shows Lucien a trick: He has marked a line between the string, wrapped around Lucien's manuscript of his poems, and the paper. It will reveal whether Dauriat actually removes the string and reads the manuscript. And they go off to "the Wooden Galleries, where the supposedly up-to-date publishers then reigned in all their glory." Balzac devotes a chapter to depicting the shambling, filthy, fleamarket-like, prostitute-filled galleries.

6. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 192-243

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 2. Flicoteaux; 3. Two varieties of publishers; 4. First friendship; 5. The "Cénacle"; 6. The flowers of poverty; 7. A newspaper seen from outside; 8. The sonnets

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Lucien discovers the student restaurant and hangout known as Flicoteaux -- "an eating-house, nothing less and nothing more," but also a place where "friendships have been formed between divers students who later have become famous, as this story will confirm." Cannily, he picks as a regular table one near the cash-desk, so he can get to know the people who run the restaurant and befriend them in the hope of their extending credit to him when he comes to need it. It's a table for two, and he frequently finds himself sitting with "a thin, pale young man" with a "handsome but ravaged face." Eventually he learns his name is Etienne Lousteau, another young man from the provinces who sustains himself by reviewing books and plays for a "little newspaper." Etienne eats at Flicoteaux only when he is broke.

He spends his mornings in the library researching his novel, his afternoons in his rooms rewriting it and correcting the errors he has made, and after dinner in a reading room going through recent periodicals "to keep up with the intellectual movement." This causes him to rewrite his book of sonnets completely. He sometimes goes to the theater, waiting in line for cheap seats, but still his money keeps dwindling and he considers looking for a journalism job. Lousteau, however, has stopped coming to Flicoteaux, so he has no contact in that business.

Finally, he decides to find a publisher for his manuscripts. The first one he visits is really a bookseller that only rarely publishes their own books, so they send him to Doguereau, who buys manuscripts. He is shocked by the commercial nature of book publishing: "that to these publishers books were like cotton bonnets to haberdashers, a commodity to be bought cheap and sold dear." Doguereau agrees to read The Archer of Charles the Ninth, which Lucien describes to him as "an historical work in the manner of Walter Scott which presents the conflict between Catholics and Protestants as a combat between two systems of government, involving a serious threat to the monarchy. I have taken sides with the Catholics." Doguereau almost decides not to read the novel after he hears that Lucien is also a poet ("Rhymesters come to grief when they write prose") but Lucien points out that Walter Scott also wrote verse.

Balzac observes that Lucien had failed to recognize in Doguereau "a publisher of the old school, a man belonging to the age when publishers liked to keep even a Voltaire or a Montesquieu under lock and key, starving in an attic." So, having read and been impressed by the novel, Doguereau goes to Lucien's room, planning at first to pay him a thousand francs for the manuscript and put him under contract for other novels. But when he sees the building where Lucien lives and realizes how hard up the writer must be for money, he decides to lower it to eight hundred, and then to six hundred when he finds the room is on the fourth floor. When he sees the bare little room, he tells Lucien, "I will buy it for four hundred francs" on the agreement that he write two novels a year for six years. Lucien balks, and when Doguereau tries harder tactics, warning him that he won't even get anyone else to read his manuscript, criticizes its grammar, and telling him that if he brings it back to him after trying other publishers his price will be only a hundred crowns, Lucien throws the manuscript on the floor and exclaims, "Monsieur, I would rather burn it!"

One day, on his way to the library, he meets a young man he has seen there who tells him it's closed. He is also a regular at Flicoteaux's but they have never spoken. The man tells Lucien that he looks downcast, and Lucien tells him of his troubles with the publisher and that he has only a hundred and twenty francs left. The man replies that the story is a familiar one -- his own, in fact -- and that there are "a thousand or more young people" like them. They walk together in the Luxembourg Gardens, and Lucien learns his name, Daniel d'Arthez, who Balzac tells us is "today one of the most illustrious writers of our time." D'Arthez tells Lucien, "You bear the stamp of genius on your brow," but that unless he he has "the will-power and the seraphic patience needed," he should "give up this very day." He agrees to critique Lucien's manuscript, and pawns his watch to buy firewood for his room.

D'Arthez listens for seven hours as Lucien reads, then gives him a serious critique, which includes some Balzacian analysis of the flaws in Scott, particularly as a model, and of British prudery: "Walter Scott lacks passion; it is a closed book to him; or perhaps he found it was ruled out by the hypocritical morals of his native land. Woman for him is duty incarnate... His women all proceed from Clarissa Harlowe." Lucien thanks him by taking him to dinner, spending another twelve francs. D'Arthez, he learns, is a student of philosophy who ekes out a living by writing "poorly-paid  articles for biographical and encyclopaedic dictionaries or dictionaries of natural science." And Lucien goes home to rewrite his novel along the lines suggested by him.

In the following days, Lucien "attached himself like a chronic malady to d'Arthez" and becomes acquainted with his circle of friends, a "cénacle" of which d'Arthez is the unofficial leader: Horace Bianchon, a surgeon; Léon Giraud, a philosopher; Joseph Bridau, a painter; Fulgence Ridal, a writer of comic verse and plays; and Michel Chrestien, a political thinker "who dreamed of a European federation" and who died in the June Rebellion of 1832. Too bad the edition I'm reading lacks annotation to clue us in to the originals of some of these men. Balzac paints an admiring, idealized portrait of the group, who, when Lucien spends his last sou, chip in to give him two hundred francs. He writes to Daniel, Eve, and his mother, who report that things are dire for them financially too, but send him three hundred francs, with which he is able to repay the cénacle. They are offended: "Here we don't lend money to one another, we give it," Bridau says. They urge him not to lose his poetic ideals, but to "put your trust in hard work."

Lucien, however, is ready to scrap his ideals and find work as a journalist, to the horror of the others: "That would be the end of the fine, gentle Lucien we love and know," d'Arthez says. Chrestien regards journalism as "treachery and infamy." When Lucien says he could just do it for a while to get back on his feet and then return to literature, Giraud says that's what Machiavelli would do, "but not Lucien de Rubempré." But Lucien is determined to play the Machiavel, and sets out to explore the possibilities of journalism. He goes to the offices of one of the "petits journaux" and encounters some Dickensian grub street characters, including a reviewer whose voice is "a cross between the miaowing of a cat and the asthmatic choke of a hyena." He learns that opinions in the newspaper are bought and sold. And he learns from the guardian of the newspaper offices, an old veteran of the Napoleonic campaigns named Girodeau, that the editor is Andoche Finot, who lives in the rue Feydeau. But after staking out Finot's lodgings without getting near him, he decides to hunt down Etienne Lousteau at Flicoteaux's.

Lucien has been dining side-by-side with d'Arthez at Flicoteaux's.

At present, d'Arthez was correcting the manuscript of The Archer of Charles the Ninth; he recast certain chapters, wrote the finest pages to be found in it and composed the splendid preface which perhaps overshadows the work but which brought so much illumination to writers of the new school. 

But when Lousteau appears at the restaurant, Lucien changes tables to eat with him, as "d'Arthez looked at Lucien with one of those benign glances in which reproach is wrapped in forgiveness." And when he leaves the restaurant with Lousteau, "he pretended not to see his brother of the Cénacle."

Lousteau explains to Lucien some of the rules of the literary world, one of which is that it's currentlhy divided into two camps, the romantics and the classicists, and that the royalists are romantics and the liberals classicists. Lousteau belongs to the romantics. Lucien reads him his sonnets, but is disturbed because Lousteau listens with no expression until he explains that "In Paris to listen without saying a word is high praise." Balzac explains:

Had he had more experience of literary life, he would have known that, with writers, silence and curtness in such circumstances betoken the jealousy aroused by a fine work, just as their admiration denotes the pleasrue they feel on listening to a mediocre work which confirms them in their self-esteem.