25. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 589-682

Part Three: An Inventor's Tribulations, The "Fatal Member of the Family", 22. An unexpected triumph; 23. How the triumph had been staged; 24. A rare kind of devotion; 25. The pride of his province?; 26. The snake in the grass; 27. Lucien takes his revenge; 28. The peak of disaster; 29. A last farewell; 30. A chance encounter; 31. The story of a favourite; 32. A history lecture for the ambitious -- by a disciple of Machiavelli; 33. A lecture on ethics -- by a disciple of Mendoza; 34. A Spanish profile; 35. Why criminality and corruption go hand in hand; 36. On the brink of surrender; 37. The effect of a night in gaol; 38. A day too late; 39. The history of a business venture; 40. Conclusion

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And so all the plot-knots have been knotted: The Cointets, Petit-Claud and old Séchard have made their plans for seizing David and his process, Lucien has returned and is ready prey for those conniving against David, and David is in deep trouble. Now it remains for the novelist to untie all the knots. He has several choices at this point: He can play the sentimental moralist and mete out justice, dispensing punishment for avarice (the Cointets and old Séchard), vanity (Lucien) and guile (Petit-Claud) and rewards for virtue (Eve and David). Or he can be the cynical realist and demonstrate what we know from the real world: that the vicious aren't always punished or the virtuous rewarded.

But Balzac chooses neither path to his dénouement. The novel, after all, is called Lost Illusions, and the readers should be under no illusion that their hopes for the characters will be fulfilled. Instead, Balzac becomes the cynical moralist (or sentimental realist) and gives us an ending with overtones of Goethe and Voltaire.

So Lucien opens the Angoulême newspaper and finds himself a celebrity: An article acclaims both his volume of poetry, Les Marguerites, but also his novel. He is called "a rival of Petrarch!!!" It also mentions the patronage of the former Madame de Bargeton, now Madame la Comtesse du Châtelet, and even revives the idea of his assuming "the name and title of the illustrious Rubempré family." Eve, of course, sees through this bit of puffery: The newspaper is owned by the Cointets, she points out, and under the circumstances, "here you must be on your guard about the slightest things." Lucien is only momentarily brought back to reality: A letter addressed to him arrives, inviting him to dine with Monsieur le Comte Sixte du Châtelet and Madame la Comtesse du Châtelet. Old Séchard is impressed: "They're talking about you in the town as if you were a somebody." But Eve protests, "You're surely not going to accept this invitation?" She suspects a conspiracy is afoot. Lucien replies that his influence with the Comtesse could save David: He'll tell her about the invention and she'll help get money from the government to fund it. And that night, Lucien is serenaded by the young people of Angoulême, who hurl flowers and laurel wreaths through the windows. He beams in triumph, but his mother and his sister are troubled with doubts.

As well they might be: the whole thing has been staged by Petit-Claud, who is in the midst of his negotiations for the hand of Françoise de La Haye. The Sénonches have, in fact, moved into the house formerly occupied by the Bargetons, and it is there that the solicitor is introduced to the Comtesse du Châtelet, in "the boudoir in which Lucien's misfortunes had begun and in which they were about to reach their consummation." Petit-Claud asks how she wishes Lucien to be received now that he has returned -- with "contempt or adulation." They decide on the latter, and Petit-Claud knows that he has succeeded. So the article, the serenade, and the invitation to dine with the Comte and Comtesse are the result. Petit-Claud also brings a deputation of Lucien's former schoolfellows to see him and to stage a banquet in his honor. And when Petit-Claud reveals to Lucien that he was the one who wrote the fawning newspaper article, he gains his complete trust.

Lucien writes to Lousteau to order fashionable clothes in exchange for forgiving the thousand-franc debt Lousteau owes him. Eve is astonished when she sees Lucien in the clothes that are sent. And at Lucien's instruction Lousteau also places an item in the Paris newspapers about how well-received his return to Angoulême has been. The banquet is a huge success as well, and even David, in his hiding place at Basine Clerget's, hears the music. Petit-Claud walks Lucien home afterward, telling him that tomorrow he will sign a contract of marriage to Mademoiselle de La Haye and that the Comtesse will be there, so that Lucien, who has praised her in a toast at the banquet, should also attend.

At that moment, David appears, even though Eve has written him warning him not to try to contact Lucien or let him know where the hiding-place is. But David has been in hiding too long, so he persuades Basine that he can slip out, see Lucien and his wife and child, and return safely. Petit-Claud watches as David and Lucien go in the house. Cérizet, who has been hiding nearby, has figured out David's hiding place, so he and Petit-Claud set a trap for David. The solicitor, though he has sworn he's a royalist in order to gain the hand of Mademoiselle de La Haye, is in fact a secret member of the Opposition. He now plots to buy the Séchard printing-office to start a Liberal newspaper under Cérizet's editorship. And the next day, Cérizet tells Petit-Claud that he has a plan to get David arrested.

Meanwhile, Lucien has David that his plan is to seduce the Comtesse and "persuade her to ask the Ministry to allot you a subsidy of twenty thousand francs for your researches." He goes to the Sénonches to witness the signing of the marriage contract of Petit-Claud and Mademoiselle de La Haye. He makes a huge impression on the Angoulême aristocracy in his finery, and makes a sensation when he is reunited with Madame du Châtelet. Once again, he uses the bishop as a foil in his encounter with her in the same boudoir. He whispers to her that he loved her, and the bishop "hastily regained the salon, realizing that his dignity might be compromised if he stayed with this pair of former lovers." Everyone else stays away until du Châtelet intervenes. But the Comtesse tells her husband, "I am talking to Monsieur de Rubempré about matters which are important to you. It's a question of rescuing an inventor who is about to fall victim to the basest form of intrigue, and you must come to his help." When du Châtelet tells Lucien, "From tonight your brother-in-law may consider himself out of danger," Cointet and Petit-Claud are shocked. But Petit-Claud assures Cointet that he still has a trick in store.

The trick is Cérizet's: He has seduced one of Basine's laundresses, getting her pregnant, and she reveals David's hiding place. From Petit-Claud, he obtains a letter Lucien has written to him on Eve's writing paper. He knows how to wash the paper to remove what Lucien has written and forges a note to David from Lucien saying that he can come out of hiding. The laundress is to tell Basine that Eve wants to see her, and while she's out, knock on the door of David's hiding place and give him the letter. The plan works, and David is arrested. When Eve and Lucien come across the bailiffs taking David away, she asks why he came out of hiding. It was Lucien's letter, he says. Eve faints, and Lucien, who "could not fathom the misunderstanding due to the forged letter," tells his mother that it's his fault. "Thunderstruck by his mother's maledictory glance, he went upstairs to his room and locked himself in."

In his room, Lucien writes a farewell letter to Eve in which he says, "in many a family there is a fatal being who, for that family, is a sort of blight. That is what I am in this family." He is "so afraid of the future that I don't want to have a future." Resolved to commit suicide, he tells her not to search for him. He remembers a deep pool near the Charente where he plans to fill his pocket with stones and drown himself, but on the way there he comes across a traveler who has disembarked from the stagecoach to Paris, going on foot while the coach makes its way slowly up a long hill. The man, who appears to be a Spanish priest, offers Lucien a cigar which he declines: "No cigar-smoke can blow away my sorrows," he says, and rejects the priest's offer to console him.

"Oh! I'm an out-an-out atheist. I don't believe in God, or in society, or in the possibility of happiness. Take a good look at me, father, for in a few hours' time I shall no longer exist. I shall never see the sun again!" said Lucien, somewhat bombastically, pointing to the heavens. 

The priest then tells Lucien that he needs a secretary, and offers to hire him, so Lucien joins him in the stagecoach and tells him the story of his life. Along the way, they pass the family home of the Rastignacs, which Lucien points out: "The first time he mentioned the name, the Spaniard gave a start." In a footnote, the translator tells us that the priest is actually "the master-criminal Vautrin in disguise" and that Vautrin had been involved with Rastignac in Balzac's Old Goriot.

The priest, aka Abbé Carlos Herrera, aka Vautrin, now reassures Lucien, "If the good Monsieur Séchard has made a discovery, he'll be a rich man. Rich people have never been put in prison for debt." And he proceeds to outline a very Machiavellian view of the world.

"Do you know why I'm giving you this little lecture on history? It's because I believe you to be inordinately ambitious."

"Yes, father, I am." 

"I could see that," the Canon went on. "But at this moment you're saying to yourself: 'This canon from Spain is inventing anecdotes and squeezing the juice out of history in order to prove to me that I've been too virtuous.'" 

Lucien smiled at seeing his thoughts so well divined. ... Caught in the spell of this cynical conversation, Lucien was all the more inclined to cling on to life again because he felt as if he had been snatched by a powerful arm from a suicide's watery grave.

Herrera-Vautrin's counsel is "secretiveness." And he tells Lucien, "Obey me as a wife obeys her husband, as a child obeys his mother, and I guarantee that in less than three years' time you'll be the Marquis de Rubempré, you'll marry into one of the noblest families in the Faubourg Saint-Germain and one day you'll have a seat on the bench of Peers." And if Lucien makes "this pact with me," he says, he will send fifteen thousand francs on the coach to Bordeaux to Lucien's sister. Lucien's skepticism about this offer vanishes when the "priest" shows him the money he is carrying with him on the stagecoach.

And so Lucien-Faust makes a deal with Vautrin-Mephistopheles.

Back in Angoulême, Petit-Claud is proposing another deal: a partnership between David and the Cointets. And Eve sees no choice but to accept it, for as the solicitor tells her, "If you try to safeguard your invention, your life will go on as it is now: nothing but legal wrangles." Of course, Boniface Cointet has every intention of screwing the Séchards on the deal. But the sordidness of the prison has already worn David down when Eve comes to see him there with the proposal. She is followed by Petit-Claud who, when he asks why David left his hiding place, hands him Cérizet's forged letter from Lucien. The solicitor pockets it "as if through absent-mindedness," thereby disposing of the evidence.

The money Herrera-Vautrin sends to Eve, however, arrives too late. The contract has been signed, on terms far more favorable to the Cointets than to David. And finally, the Cointets are able to buy David out of any share in the profits from the invention. "I'll accept any settlement that will leave us in peace," he says. So David and Eve retire to Marsac, where Eve has used part of the money Lucien sent to buy a tract of land next to old Séchard's. Kolb has learned the winery business from the old man, and when Séchard dies in 1829, David and Eve inherit "about two hundred thousand francs in real property." Boniface Cointet becomes a multimillionaire and a Peer of France. Petit-Claud becomes Attorney-General.

David Séchard has a loving wife, two sons and a daughter. He has had the good taste never to talk about his experiments. Eve has had the good sense to make him renounce the disastrous vocation of inventor.... He cultivates literature as a relaxation while living the happy, leisurely life of a landowner developing his estate. 

In other words, like Candide, he cultivates his garden. And as for Lucien-Faust, his story continues elsewhere in the Comédie humaine.

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.

17. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 440-462

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 37. Finot's finesses; 38. The fateful week

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Having burned his bridges, Lucien is left with friends only on the right. But even on that side, he attracts suspicion and jealousy, so he "clung to his one desire -- to get his ordinance, realizing that with his name restored he could make a fine marriage." Unfortunately, among his new enemies and former friends, Lousteau is aware of this ambition.

At the theater, Lucien runs into Finot, accompanied by Des Lupeaulx, who praises Lucien's ability to charm Mademoiselle des Touches ("who's already regarded as your future wife in social circles") as well as Mesdames d'Espard, de Bargeton and de Montcornet. But behind Lucien's back, Des Lupeaulx confides to Finot that the Marquise, Madame de Bargeton and Châtelet "have thrown him into the royalist party in order to eliminate him.... I'm in their confidence, and they detest the little fellow to an amazing extent." And Finot confides that his former friends are doing their part to demolish Lucien, who still has a contract with Lousteau and needs every penny he can earn, and that they "are engineering a flop for Coralie: he'll see his mistress hissed off the stage." Lucien doesn't suspect a thing.

And so comes what Balzac refers to as Lucien's "fateful week," his equivalent of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Coralie is going to work at a new theater, the Gymnase, her old one having gone bankrupt. And to make sure she's well received, he humbles himself and goes to Camusot with the remaining notes from Fendant and Cavalier. In order to protect Coralie from humiliation, Camusot agrees to give Lucien four thousand five hundred francs for the notes, endorsed "for value received in silk stuffs." Lucien then goes to the claqueur Braulard and pays to have them applaud Coralie.

The evening before Coralie's performance, d'Arthez's book is published, and Martainville, the editor of Le Réveil, orders Lucien to write a review denouncing it, largely to get back at another member of the Cénacle, Léon Giraud, whose new journal is becoming a serious rival to theirs. It doesn't matter that d'Arthez in fact shares their royalist opinions: He is simply the most convenient target. Lucien refuses to write the article, but Merlin and Martainville pressure him to do it by threatening to join in the attempt of the Liberal papers to mock Coralie's performance. Lucien has no choice: He reads d'Arthez's book and finds it "one of the finest in modern literature..., but in the end he wrote a mocking article of the kind at which he was so skillful and laid hold of the book as children lay hold of a beautiful bird to pluck its feathers and torture it."

Sickened by what he has written, he takes the article to d'Arthez and confesses what he has been forced to do. D'Arthez is moved by Lucien's dilemma and by his loyalty to Coralie, reads the article, and proposes to rewrite it himself: "I can make your article more honourable both to you and to me. Besides, I alone am thoroughly aware of my shortcomings." But he is also harshly critical of Lucien's moral weakness: "Repentance is a virginity which our souls owe to God: a man who twice repents is therefore a reprehensible sycophant. I'm afraid you only look on penitence as a prelude to absolution."

Coralie, terrified by the prospect of failure, fails. The claqueurs Lucien has hired are ineffective against their opponents, and the reviews are terrible. Coralie falls ill and withdraws from the play, to be replaced by Florine, "who took over her part and made her reputation in it, for she saved the play." Lucien vows to her, "I shall be the Comte de Rubempré. I shall make a fortune and marry you!" But Coralie knows he's only being foolish, which he proves by going out that evening and losing two thousand francs at the gambling tables.

Finot reports to Lucien that his attack on d'Arthez's novel, though revised by the attackee himself, is causing "scandal and uproar": "People are saying that Marat was a saint compared with you. They're getting ready to attack you, and your book won't survive it." (Lucien has been going over the last proofs of his novel before publication.)

Coralie is "in bed, pale and ill," and Bérénice warns Lucien that she will die if he doesn't find a new part for her. He goes to a soirée at Mademoiselle des Touches, where Madame de Bargeton gives him good news: He is to go tomorrow to the Chancellery, where the King has signed the decree making him Comte de Rubempré. Unfortunately, this is not only a hoax engineered by Madame d'Espard, but an article he has written making fun of the King and the Keeper of the Seals has just appeared in Lousteau's newspaper. So when he arrives at the Chancellery, he is denounced by the Secretary-General and shown the decree which the Lord Chancellor has torn to pieces. Des Lupeaulx, who has accompanied him, tells Lucien, "You've compromised me, Mesdames d'Espard and de Bargeton, and Madame de Montcornet, who had answered for you, must be furious."

Stunned, Lucien is walking past a bookstore when he sees that his novel has been published, "underneath a strange and to him unknown title." He hadn't been told of its publication, "and the newspapers were saying nothing about it." And then Michel Chrestien and Léon Giraud approach him on the street, and Michel spits in his face. Lucien slaps his face and challenges him to a duel.

15. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 409-424

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 32. The "viveurs"; 33. A fifth variety of publisher; 34. Blackmail

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Lucien falls in with "a society of young people, rich or poor, all of them idle, known as viveurs." They are reckless and spendthrift, wild, frenzied, with no thought for what tomorrow may bring. The prince of viveurs is Rastignac, who, Balzac tells us, finally wound up distinguishing himself in "a serious career." But for the moment he is a very bad influence on Lucien, though the chief bad influence is Blondet. Lucien "gave up hope of literary fame, believing it easier to come by success in politics." Coralie is hardly a stabilizing influence: "Lover and mistress piled up debts with alarming rapidity."

Like all poets, the great man in embryo showed a momentary concern for their disastrous situation, promised to work, forgot his promise and drowned his passing cares in debauchery.

He is also intriguing with Hector Merlin, who has been promised the editorship of the new conservative publication Le Réveil, against his old liberal friends.

Gradually, as horses, carriage, furniture, and the like are seized in lieu of payment for their debts, and more and more items go to the pawnshop, Lucien feels the need to do something. Only the tailor, the milliner and the dressmaker are still willing to supply them, and then only because "they trembled at the thought of displeasing a journalist capable of bringing their establishments into disrepute." So Lousteau suggests finding a publisher for The Archer of Charles the Ninth. He and Merlin dine with some publishers to talk up Lucien's book, and tell them has a stack of other manuscripts he can supply in addition to that one:

"You can guess, Lucien, that our publishers had eyes like saucers.... By the way, have you any saucers left?"
"They are under distraint," said Coralie.
"Point taken."

Lucien is "feeling quite gleeful at the thought of getting the most he could out of Lousteau before turning his back on the Liberals, whom he was planning to attack the more effectively for having studied them closely," but Lousteau is also getting a commission from the publishing firm of Fendant and Cavalier for bringing Lucien to them.

The publishers are interested in getting "the next Walter Scott," as in fact are all the Parisian publishers. Balzac satirizes this lack of imagination among publishers through them:

One of the major stupidities of Parisian commerce is that it hopes to achieve success by sticking to the same lines of enterprise as have paid off before, whereas success goes by contraries. In Paris, more than anywhere, success kills success.

Plus ça change.... How many publishers today are looking for the next John Grisham or Dan Brown? How many TV producers are working on the next "Lost" or "Glee"? How many summer movies are sequels or remakes of old TV shows? And like publishers today, Fendant and Cavalier are concerned with marketing: They want to change the title, The Archer of Charles the Ninth, because they don't think it will sell: "Cavalier would have to give a course of lectures on French history in order to sell a single copy in the provinces." But in the end, Lucien signs the contract, "provided the title suits me."

Meanwhile, Lousteau is having his own troubles with debts, his own mistress having been cut off by Matifat. He is talking about blackmail -- "an invention of the English press," which he explains to Lucien thus: "You embark on some sticky operation which a series of articles can bring to failure: a blackmailer is detailed to propose that you buy them off." It's not that different from the usual quid pro quo arrangements between reviewers and publishers or theater owners, except that a middleman is involved. And he tells Lucien that "Des Lupeaulx, whom you know, is perpetually busy carrying out negotiations of that sort with journalists." Lousteau is trying his own form of blackmail on Matifat, using the love letters Matifat wrote to Florine.

This piece of confidence sobered Lucien. His first thought was that he had exceedingly dangerous friends. Then he reflected that he must not fall out with them, for he might stand in need of their terrible power in case Madame d'Espard, Madame de Bargeton and Châtelet broke faith with him.

14. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 396-408

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 31. Polite society

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Lucien's appearance, in the new finery selected for him by Coralie, at the salon of Madame de Montcornet arouses "a kind of repressed envy among the young men present, those who reigned supreme in the realm of fashion, including De Marsay. And both the Comtesse de Montcornet and Madame d'Espard "had Lucien between them and overwhelmed him with coquettish attentions." The latter informs him that Madame de Bargeton's husband has died, and she defends her cousin's dumping of Lucien thus: "Do you think she wanted to become Madame Chardon?" On the other hand, "The title 'Comtesse de Rubempré' was well worth the trouble of acquiring." And she dangles before him the possibility of become Comte de Rubempré.

Lucien no longer knew what to think. Initiated as he was in the perfidies of journalism, he knew nothing of those of society. And so, despite his perspicacity, he was due for some hard lessons. 

She tells him that Châtelet hasn't been as hurt by the Heron and Cuttle-bone satires as he thought -- the articles may even have done him some benefit with the government because "while the newspapers ridicule Châtelet, they leave the Ministry in peace." And the Comtesse wants to introduce Lucien to the "fabulously rich" Mademoiselle des Touches, who writes under the pen-name Camille Maupin. Lucien begins to realize that "There was as much difference between a woman of the style and quality of the Comtesse de Montcornet and Coralie as there was between Coralie and a woman of the streets."

Madame d'Espard continues to butter up Lucien, praising his intelligence and his ability to adapt to "Parisian manners, and claiming that Madame de Bargeton had all along "wanted to obtain from the King an ordinance which would allow you to bear the name and title de Rubempré. She wanted to bury the Chardon." She points out a man named Des Lupeaulx, whose family name was originally Chardin, but who now is in line to become the Comte de Lupeaulx. All Lucien needs to do is what Emile Blondet has done:  "He's got into newspaper which supports the Government: all the powers that be approve of him; he can consort with the Liberals without danger since he has orthodox opinions." But if he stays with the left and with Coralie, she says, "You'll find yourself loaded with debts and sated with pleasure in a few years' time."

But when Lucien questions if what she says is true, she takes offense, "throwing Lucien a cold and haughty look which brought him down to earth again." The Comtesse, however, remains cordial and invites him to her next soirée, which Madame de Bargeton will attend.

When they leave the table, he is joined by Rastignac and Blondet. The latter tells Rastignac that Lucien has fallen in with Lousteau, whom he regards as stupid and mercenary. "As a Rubempré, Lucien is bound to have aristocratic leanings; as a journalist, he is bound to side with the Government, otherwise he'll never either be Rubempré or come to be a secretary-general." When Lucien tells them that he doesn't play whist, Rastignac offers to teach him. He also talks to Des Lupeaulx, whom he had met earlier at Madame du Val-Noble's, and reflects on how well he is getting along in society. But after he leaves, the others talk about him:

"What a fatuous man!" said Des Lupeaulx to the Marquise, when Lucien had taken his leave of her.
"He'll go rotten before he's ripe," de Marsay said to the Marquise with a smile. "You must have hidden reasons for turning his head like this." 

Coralie has come to wait for him, and she joins in the chorus urging him to go over to the government's side: "You can make yourself useful, become a peer of France and marry a rich woman." She tells him that a new royalist newspaper is being started, and urges him to join up with it, "but say nothing to Etienne or his friends -- they're quite capable of playing a nasty trick on you."

A week later, he goes to Madame de Montcornet's and sees Madame de Bargeton again. "She had become more what she would always have been if she had not lived in the provinces: a great lady." And he finds himself torn between "the beautiful, loving and voluptuous Coralie and the dry, haughty and cruel Louise." But he chooses the former, to Madame de Bargeton's anger. He does, however, contemplate a "quick romance" with the rich and beautiful Mademoiselle des Touches.

He then joins Madame de Bargeton and Madame d'Espard to talk about the ordinance which would make him a de Rubempré. The Marquise says that he must "put himself in a position to be protected without embarrassing those who protect him." He agrees to do so.

Thrilled by the glamour of aristocracy, the poet felt unspeakable mortification at hearing himself called Chardon when he saw that the salons only admitted men who bore high-sounding names with titles to set them off.

And at the end, Rastignac has taught him to play whist.

12. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 355-384

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 25. The battle begins; 26. Dauriat pays a call; 27. A study in the art of recantation; 28. Journalistic grandeurs and servitudes

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Furious at having his book of sonnets turned down by Dauriat, Lucien seeks revenge and finds it when Lousteau hands him a copy of Nathan's book and tells him to demolish it with a review. Lucien, who admires the book and likes Nathan, is at first reluctant until Lousteau explains: A second edition of the book is about to be issued by Dauriat. If the review is sufficiently scathing, Dauriat will lose money on the publication. (Nathan will not be financially harmed: He has already received whatever Dauriat has paid him for the rights to the book.)  Lousteau tells him the way to attack the book is "By making every quality a defect," and explains that he should start "by saying it's a fine work." That way he'll disarm the reader who "will regard your criticism as conscientious." Then he should shift the focus of the review to the larger topic of French literary history, and show that Nathan is "an imitator with only a semblance of talent." By setting it against the past, and by "standing out for ideas and style against imagery and verbiage, continuing the Voltairian school and opposing the Anglo-German school," he can "pulverize Nathan whose work, though it contains traits of superior beauty, gives freedom of the city to a literature devoid of ideas."

Lucien sets to the task and in three days produces what Hector Merlin calls "a masterpiece." He also writes another, lighter piece, which demonstrates his versatility. "'Dauriat will be thunderstruck by the article we've just been listening to,' said Lousteau to Lucien. 'You see now, my boy, what a newspaper can do!'" He also tells Lucien that the attack on Châtelet has been successful: "Madame de Bargeton is now definitely known in society as the Cuttle-bone and Châtelet is no longer called anything but Baron Heron." But Nathan has got word of Lucien's  review, and is worried about the harm it might do him.

The next day, Lucien is having lunch with Coralie when Dauriat arrives at her home. Coralie instructs Bérénice to keep him waiting, and when they finally admit the publisher he is ready to pay three thousand francs for Lucien's book as long as Lucien never attacks another of his publications. Lucien replies, "I can't pledge my pen. It belongs to my friends, just as theirs belongs to me." They agree instead that Lucien will give Dauriat fair warning of any future attacks, so he can "forestall them." And Dauriat admits, "Last week I wouldn't have given a fig for your sonnets, but your position today turns them into something rich and rare."

When Dauriat has left, Coralie tells Lucien that this would never have happened if had listened to his "little friends" in the Cénacle and stayed out of journalism. He is a little shocked when she refers to them as "a rare lot of simpletons," but he relishes the income he has received and sends off five hundred francs of it to his mother. And he and Coralie go off to dine with Madame du Val-Noble, where he meets "a whole world of artists and financiers," Rastignac among them, who give him "a wonderful welcome." They then go to the Opera. "Thus Lucien reappeared in triumph in the place where, some months ago, he had had so heavy a fall." He gets some "insolent stares" from some of the men who had mocked him earlier, but when Rastignac pays a visit to Madame d'Espard's box, he sees the Marquise and Madame de Bargeton "eyeing Coralie through their opera-glasses."

Was Lucien arousing some regret in Madame de Bargeton's heart? His mind was preoccupied with this thought: at the sight of the Corinna of Angoulême a desire for vengeance stirred his heart as on the day when, in the Champs-Élysée, she and her cousin had treated him with contempt.

Several days later, Blondet  brings Lucien an invitation to the salon of Madame la Comtesse de Montcornet, at the behest of Châtelet, who wants to make peace with the newspaper. Blondet has also "promised to reconcile Laura and Petrarch, that is to say Madame de Bargeton and Lucien." Lucien is triumphant: "I have them at my feet!" And sets out to write "an article on the Cuttle-Fish and the Heron." As for the visit to Madame de Montcornet's salon, he tells Coralie not to worry: "It's a question, not of love, but of revenge, and I intend it to be complete."

Meanwhile, Nathan has been hurt by the article -- for which Lucien has been paid an unprecedented hundred francs -- and Lousteau is worried that he might take revenge on Lucien: "Nathan's a journalist, he has friends, he could play a nasty trick on you at your first publication." He proposes that Lucien write another article praising Nathan. And when Lucien expresses astonishment that, after having attacked Nathan, they now want him to completely reverse his opinion, "Emile Blondet, Hector Merlin, Etienne Lousteau and Félicien Vernou all cut him short with a burst of laughter." And Blondet tells him, "My dear boy, in literature, every idea has its front and reverse side, and no one can presume to state which side is which." And as Lousteau had done for the first article, Blondet outlines the second, in which Lucien will argue that we are in an age of progress, which Nathan's book demonstrates: "Demolish your previous argument by showing that we're in advance on the eighteenth century."

The first article didn't have Lucien's name on it. It was signed with a C. The second will be signed with an L. And then, Blondet proposes, Lucien will write a third article signed with his own name, critiquing the articles by C and L and proclaiming that "Nathan's work is the finest the period has produced. That's as good as saying nothing at all -- they say it about every book. Your week will have earned you four hundred francs as well as the pleasure of having told the truth somewhere or other. People of sense will agree with C or L or Rubempré, perhaps with all three!" And Coralie likens what Lucien is doing to acting: "Do as I do: make faces at them for their money, and let's live happily."

So Lucien takes to the project, goes to sign the contract with Dauriat "ceding all rights in the manuscript -- without seeing the drawbacks of this," and writes "the terrible article against Châtelet and Madame de Bargeton which he had promised Blondet."

The fact of commanding notice in Paris, having realized its immensity and the difficult of making an impression there, put Lucien in a state of elation which went to his head. 

Two days later, he arrives at the Ambigu theater to review a play and discovers there are no tickets for him. He complains to the stage-manager who says the tickets had been sent to the newspaper and there's nothing he can do for him, but the leading lady recognizes him as "Coralie's lover" and Lucien finds himself sharing a box with the Duc de Rhétoré, whom he had met earlier at Florine's, and the dancer Tullia. The duke tells him that he has "brought two people to despair," meaning Châtelet and Madame de Bargeton, but "when the duke maliciously called him Chardon, he gave himself away by attempting to establish his right to bear the name of Rubempré." The duke advises him to become a royalist and get "a royal ordinance restoring the title and name of your maternal ancestors." He also invites Lucien to dinner.

Lucien did not suspect that a little conspiracy was being woven against him by those who were at that moment suffering from the newspaper attacks, or that Monsieur de Rhétoré had a finger in the pie.... During Florine's supper, the duke had sized up Lucien's character: now he had captured him by playing on his vanity and was practising his diplomatic ability on him.

Lucien writes a scathing review of the play, which appears in the same paper as the article about Madame de Bargeton and Châtelet, but the review has been edited so that "while his witty analysis of it remained intact, a favourable verdict emerged from it." He is furious, but Lousteau explains that the paper has a subscription deal with the theater: "We have to show a great deal of indulgence." When he protests that the theater didn't have a ticket for him, Lousteau promises to show the manager the original article and explain that he had toned it down. Lucien will get plenty of tickets from now on, including someone to whom he can scalp the extras. Lucien is mollified, but still somewhat scandalized at the chicanery involved.

11. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 343-355

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 23. The arcana of journalism; 24. Re-enter Dauriat

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Lucien signs a contract with the newspaper that is drafted by Finot and back-dated so that when Lousteau takes over the newspaper he can't change or back out of it. Giroudeau, who had previously blocked Lucien's efforts to get beyond the front door, is astonished: "You've never made such terms with anyone else," he tells Finot. But when he learns Lucien's name and realizes that he is the author of the much talked-about review, he proclaims, "You've got a gold-mine there." Finot tells Lucien, "You owe your position to Blondet and Vignon who see a future before you. And so don't blot your copy-book. Above all, don't trust your friends."

And so Lucien is admitted to the back rooms on the fifth floor of the building, where he sees Lousteau, Vernou, Merlin, and two other contributors he doesn't know yet. Lousteau tells him that they're planning more attacks on Châtelet who, after the first one appeared, had arrived at the offices demanding "satisfaction." Giroudeau handled him by saying the article had been written by Philippe Bridau, who was prepared to duel with him. Châtelet backed down. Vernou says, "We are busy drawing up an apology to the baron for tomorrow's number: every sentence in it is a dagger-thrust."

They proceed to plan out the editorial direction of the paper under its new editor, Lousteau. Among other things, they decide that if Dauriat doesn't accept Lucien's sonnets for publication, they'll mount an attack on his best writer, Nathan:  "We all like Nathan, but we're going to attack him," says Lousteau. They divvy up the theaters among themselves, and then plan other attacks, including some invented stories known as "canards." When Lucien is puzzled by the term, Merlin explains that a canard "is a story which looks as if it were true but which is invented to ginger up 'News in Brief' when it's a bit colourless." He attributes the use of canards to Benjamin Franklin, who fooled the Encyclopaedists with some made-up stories.

Riding in the carriage later with Coralie, Lucien praises his fellow contributors as "very decent fellows" and bathes in visions of success: "Here I am, a journalist sure of being able to earn six hundred francs a month if I work like a Trojan; also I shall get my two books accepted and write others, for my friends are going to organize a success for me!" Coralie advises him not to be too nice: "Be hard on people -- that's the way to get on." And once again they meet Madame d'Espard and Madame de Bargeton, this time accompanied by Châtelet, in the Bois de Boulogne. "Madame de Bargeton gave Lucien a seductive glance which could well be taken for a salutation."

Camusot is still smitten with Coralie, and proposes to buy her six thousand francs in Government stock if she would continue to be his mistress, and assures her he would ignore her relationship with Lucien. She turns him down, so "Camusot decided to wait for indigence to give him back the woman whom indigence had delivered over to him once before."

Lucien and Lousteau go to see Dauriat about his book, which Dauriat praises, but declines to publish. Instead, he wants Lucien to write articles for him: "you'll get more money from me in the next six months for the articles I shall ask from you than you would for your unsaleable poetry."

"But what about my reputation as a writer?" cried Lucien.

Dauriat and Lousteau burst out laughing. 

"God save us!" said Lousteau. "The man still has his illusions." 

When Lucien takes the manuscript from Dauriat, he checks the pen-mark under the string and sees that it is still aligned: Dauriat hasn't read his manuscript. When he asks Dauriat which sonnet he particularly liked, Dauriat lies to him. "The poet made an abrupt exit into the Galleries in order not to explode: he was furious."

9. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 294-328

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 16. Coralie; 17. How a news-sheet is edited; 18. The supper; 19. An actress's apartments

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Coralie, smitten with Lucien, looks out at him from behind the curtain, as Camusot and his father-in-law, Cardot, who is keeping another actress, return to their box. As for Lucien, "the demon of lust whispered shocking thoughts in his ear." He quickly forgets any scruples he may have had about Lousteau's bedding Matifat's mistress. Lousteau, witnessing what's going on, eggs Lucien on: Coralie, Lousteau tells him, is 18, and her mother sold her to a man named de Marsay three years ago. She loathed de Marsay, and puts up with Camusot "because he doesn't pester her. So you are her first love." He also warns Lucien that the play will be a failure if he doesn't return Coralie's affections because, distracted by Lucien, she's blowing her lines.

Lucien, dazzled by the prospect of a fling with Coralie, tells Lousteau "more things are happening to me in one evening than ever did in the first eighteen years of my life." And he tells about his affair with Madame de Bargeton and how Châtelet helped break it up. Lousteau decides that he'll write some nasty gossip about Châtelet for the paper and that Lucien should review the play. The paper's short on copy and needs it. Lucien agrees.

Du Bruel comes to ask Lucien to tell Coralie he'll go to her place with her after supper. He agrees, and Coralie "from that moment acted with wonderful verve." At the curtain call, Coralie is wildly acclaimed and when Camusot throws a bouquet of flowers at her, she picks it up and holds it out toward Lucien.

Florine's apartment is beautifully furnished, which explains to Lucien why Lousteau can put up with the disorder of his own quarters. While they're gathering there, a dancer from the opera, Tullia, rushes in to tell Finot that the opera has agreed to provide a hundred subscriptions and the boxes he wants, which puts him in a bind because he had been planning to run a scathing piece on the company if it didn't meet his demands. So Lucien and Lousteau get to work and knock out their copy to replace it. Lucien's is a clever paean to the play, especially to Coralie and, to a slightly lesser degree, to Florine. Balzac tells us that the review "started a revolution in journalism by the revelation it gave of a new and original style." Meanwhile, Lousteau's attack on Châtelet compares him to a heron trying to swallow a cuttle-bone, i.e., Madame de Bargeton. The effect it had in the Faubourg Saint-Germain "was one of the thousand and one causes for further severity of the laws passed against the Press." Finot announces, after Lucien reads his piece to the others, that he's now a member of the staff of the newspaper.

At supper, Coralie instructs Florine to get Camusot so drunk that he'll have to spend the night in Florine's flat. And Lucien congratulates himself on having made friends with Lousteau, "without suspecting that Lousteau already feared him as a dangerous rival." And Claude Vignon, a guest at the supper, delivers a scathing attack on the press and its power:

Napoleon gave the explanation of this phenomenon -- moral or immoral, whichever you like -- in a superb aphorism...:  In corporate crimes no one is implicated. A newspaper can behave in the most atrocious manner and no one on the staff considers that his own hands are soiled.... We shall see the newspapers, which originally were run by men of honour, fall subsequently into the hands of the greatest mediocrities possession the patience and india-rubber faint-heartedness lacking in men of fine genius, or into the  hands of grocers with money enough to buy the products of the pen.... But we shall all write for them, like the people who work at a quicksilver mine knowing that they'll die of it. 

And he prophesies pointedly about Lucien that newspaper work will "dry up his brains, corrupt his soul" and "let him die of hunger if he's thirsty, and of thirst if he's hungry." To which Balzac comments, "Thus it happened, by the blessing of chance, that no information was lacking to Lucien about the precipice over which he was to fall." D'Arthez had warned him of the same thing, and even Lousteau had depicted "literature and journalism in their true light." But Lucien is intoxicated by the wit of the company and heedless of any warnings: "he felt a terrible itch to dominate this world of potentates and believed he had the power to overcome them."

With Florine's help, Camusot drinks himself literally under the table, and Lucien and Coralie escape together. But he has drunk too much himself and after being "disgustingly sick" in the stairwell of Coralie's house, is put to bed by Coralie and her housekeeper, Bérénice.  When he wakes about noon the next day, she gets in bed with him. He goes back to sleep about five o'clock in the afternoon, but is awakened by the arrival of Camusot. In a scene out of a French farce, he hides behind a curtain but leaves his boots behind. Coralie pretends that they are boots she's been trying on for a trouser role, and Camusot falls for it. When they go off to dinner, Bérénice releases Lucien from his hiding place.

Lucien admires Coralie's beautifully appointed apartment, and Bérénice brings him food. Then he naps until Coralie comes back from the theater and spends another night with her. The next day they go out in a carriage Camusot has bought for Coralie:

In one of the lanes of the Bois de Boulogne their coupé encountered the barouche of Mesdames d'Espard and de Bargeton who gazed at Lucien with astonishment: he darted at them the contemptuous glance of a poet who foresees the fame in store for him and intends to exploit his power. 

It is "one of the sweetest moments in his life, and perhaps decided his destiny." The desire for revenge makes him forsake the disciplined life prescribed by the Cénacle. At dinner with many of the same people who had been at the post-theater supper, Lucien displays a new self-confidence: "he sparkled with wit and became the Lucien de Rubempré who for a few months was to be a shining light in the literary and artistic world." But he also begins to make an enemy of Hector Merlin, "the most dangerous of all the journalists present at the dinner." And at the gaming table he loses all of his money, though Coralie replaces it.

5. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 151-192

Part Two: A Great Man in Embryo, 1. First-fruits

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In fiction, traditionally it's a wealthy man who lures a poor young girl to the city, where he abandons her. In Lost Illusions, Balzac switches the sexes (although Lucien continues to think of himself as the seducer). This is the chapter in which the title begins to be fulfilled.

The first of Lucien's illusions to be swept away concerns money: He hasn't even reached Paris before he has spent on the road "almost the whole sum which was supposed to last him for a year in Paris." They arrive just before daybreak at the Hôtel du Gailliard-Bois in the rue de l'Echelle, where Madame de Bargeton tells him to take a room above her suite.

Lucien sleeps until four, but Madame de Bargeton is awakened two hours earlier by du Châtelet, who has tracked her down. He talks sense into her, telling her that fleeing Angoulême with a young man after her husband has fought a duel defending her honor is not the way to impress Madame d'Espard or the rest of Parisian society: "If anyone here knew you made the journey in the same carriage, you would be blacklisted by the very people you want to see." Moreover, even if she tries to keep it secret, there are plenty of people from Angoulême in Paris who will know the story. He offers to find suitable lodging for her.

When Lucien awakens and presents himself, she is further convinced that du Châtelet is right. She sees that Lucien "was handsome, but his clothes were ridiculous.... The contrast between Lucien and Châtelet was too blatant for Louise not the be struck by it." She tells him that they can't live together, or even let it be known that they arrived in Paris together. It's for his own good, she insists: "Your future depends on my position, and I must do nothing to prejudice it." He is stunned and hurt, but she assures him that he only needs to spend his nights apart from her: "you can spend the day in my flat without anyone taking exception."

A note arrives from du Châtelet to tell her he has found a flat in the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg, not far from the hotel. He also invites her to join him at the theater the following evening, and to bring Lucien. And fortunately for her, Madame d'Espard has been touched by a scandal involving her husband, who has "withdrawn from society for no apparent cause" (a note tells us that Balzac tells the story in The Petition of Lunacy). She "felt that she needed the approval of society; therefore she was happy to be able to replace [her husband] in this circumstance by befriending his relations" -- i.e. Madame de Bargeton.

Lucien strolls the boulevards and the rue de la Paix and discovers how out of fashion he is. And that evening at the theater he has a similar revelation about Madame de Bargeton: He becomes "aware that Madame de Bargeton's toilette, though passably ambitious, was behind the times" and that her hairstyle, which "he had found so seductive at Angoulême struck him as being in deplorable taste compared with the delicate inventiveness which lent distinction to the other women present." And she notices that he makes "a prodigiously ridiculous appearance in comparison with the young men in the dress circle." After du Châtelet leaves Lucien at his hotel, he says to her, "That poor lad is incredibly boring." She defends Lucien, "though she did it less for Lucien's sake than for her own."

The next day, she goes to see Madame d'Espard, and sends him a note that she is going to the opera that evening and that Madame d'Espard has invited him to join them. "'Louise does love me then! My fears are absurd,' thought Lucien. 'She is introducing me to her cousin this very evening.'" But a walk in the Tuileries reinforces his awareness that none of his clothes are suitable:

Lucien broke out in a cold sweat at the thought that, the same evening, he was to appear in these clothes before the Marquise d'Espard, a kinswoman of a First Gentleman of the Royal Bedchamber, a woman whose salon was frequented by all sorts of exceptionally illustrious people.

He becomes more painfully aware of the expensiveness of his ambitions, especially after dining in a restaurant where the bill "relieved him of the fifty francs which he had thought would carry hm a long way in Paris. His dinner had cost him as much as a month's existence in Angoulême." But he goes to a tailor and spends two hundred francs more getting outfitted in what he assumes to be the latest style. But the newness and showiness of his clothing betrays him anyway: When he arrives at the Opera, he looks to the ticket taker "like a best man at a wedding," and his claim to be a guest of Madame d'Espard is challenged. Even Madame de Bargeton doesn't recognize him at first, although when she does she compliments him: "You have made good use of your time," she whispers to him.

Ironically, she is the one who at first comes off poorly by comparison with Madame d'Espard in Lucien's eyes.

Lucien, drawing two-fold enlightenment from the beau monde in this pompous assembly and the eminent Marquise, at last saw Anaïs de Nègrepelisse for what she was and as she was seen by the people of Paris: a tall, desiccated woman with freckled skin, faded complexion and strikingly red hair; angular, affected, pretentious, provincial of speech and above all badly dressed! ... Both the dress and the woman in it lacked grace and bloom: the mottled velvet went with a mottled complexion.

But Madame de Bargeton has already realized how unfashionable she looks and has resolved to do something about it, with Madame d'Espard's help.

Meanwhile, Madame d'Espard has noticed that people are looking at them, and she takes a good look at Lucien for the first time and notices that he is "oddly dressed." And when du Châtelet enters, Lucien points him out, causing Madame d'Espard to give "an astonished smile which plainly asked 'Where was this young man brought up?'" The disdain in her expression humiliates Madame de Bargeton -- "the most mortifying sensation for a Frenchwoman and one she does not forgive her lover for inflicting on her."

Madame d'Espard points out Eugène de Rastignac and Madame de Nucingen in another box, explaining that her husband is "a contractor, a banker, a business man, a large-scale broker, a man who imposes himself on Paris society through his wealth -- and they say he has no scruples about the means he uses to increase it." Lucien wonders how the de Rastignacs, "whose income, as we know in Angoulême, is less than three thousand francs, manage to maintain their son in Paris?" Madame d'Espard makes a comment that Lucien doesn't understand, but implies that Rastignac is a skilled social climber. Madame de Bargeton is increasingly concerned about her association with Lucien, and things only get worse when four socially eminent men visit Madame d'Espard's box.

Henri de Marsay is an arbiter of style who "was liked, but he was feared," so that "One can imagine what a poor impression Lucien, starched, stilted, stiff and raw like the clothes he was wearing, made in such company." Félix de Vandenesse is pleasanter and warmer. General Montriveau is one of the leaders of Paris society, and Monsieur de Canalis is a young poet "on the threshold of glory." When she saw them, "Madame de Bargeton no longer wondered why the Marquise was paying little attention to Lucien." In fact, she begins to pity him and ventures to introduce him first to Canalis, as a fellow poet. Meanwhile, de Marsay is studying both Lucien and Madame de Bargeton "with a smile as if they were a pair of curious animals.... Félix de Vandenesse gave him a kindly look, Montriveau an appraising glance which went right through him." Finally, Madame d'Espard invites Canalis to dine with her on Monday with Lucien. And de Marsay says, "if you sponsor Monsieur for his intelligence, I will sponsor him for his good looks."

But this moment of promise ends when du Châtelet enters, using a prior acquaintance with Montriveau as a way to get an introduction to Madame d'Espard. Du Châtelet gives Lucien "one of those curt, cold nods with which one man disparages another." His "sardonic expression" causes de Marsay to whisper to Montriveau, "Ask him who is that curious young man dressed like a tailor's dummy." Lucien realizes that he is outclassed intellectually and "sensed that his appearance was that of a man who had dressed up for the first time in his life."

Madame de Bargeton hasn't quite yet tuned into the situation, and when de Marsay mentions Rastignac, and wonders if he knows Lucien, she says that it's hard not to believe "that the name of the great man of whom we are so proud has not reached his ears: his sister recently heard Monsieur de Rubempré reciting some beautiful poetry to us." But during the next act of the opera, the people in the other boxes are "the scene of animated conversation about Madame de Bargeton and Lucien." And she ponders how much more graciously Madame d'Arsac received du Châtelet than Lucien. The title of the novel begins to be explicated:

Losing his illusions about Madame de Bargeton while Madame de Bargeton was losing hers about him, the unhappy youth ... was fascinated by Madame d'Espard and fell in love with her immediately.... in short, this queenly person made the same impression on the poet as Madame de Bargeton had made on him in Angoulême. 

Moreover, Madame de Bargeton notices: "'He has never looked at me like that,' she thought. 'Good heavens, Châtelet was right!' It was then that she realized her mistake in loving him."

At the next intermission, de Marsay reveals the truth to Madame d'Espard about Lucien: that his name is Chardon, not Rubempré, and that his father was an apothecary. Rastignac has been making fun of Madame de Bargeton as well, with jokes about "that species of mummy whom the Marquise called her cousin and her precautions in taking a pharmacist about with her -- no doubt in order that he might keep her artificially alive with drugs." And behind her fan, Madame d'Espard talks to Madame de Bargeton and confirms the reports she has heard. Her loyalties lie with Madame de Bargeton, as a kinswoman, so she says, "I do not care to have my box filled with wags who are delighted to find me hobnobbing with an apothecary's son. Believe me, the best thing we can do is to leave together this very instant." Which they do, while Lucien's attention is directed toward the performance on stage. In the carriage, she persuades Madame de Bargeton to drop him, and announces that her door will be closed to Lucien.

Lucien's eyes are opened by their desertion and by du Châtelet's attempts to avoid him at the next intermission. He stays for the end of the opera, however, and watching the society people in the boxes thinks, "That is the society I have to tame." The next day, he goes to a more fashionable tailor and orders more clothes, but when he tries to visit Madame de Bargeton he is repeatedly told she is out or is not seeing anyone. He receives a letter from her saying that Madame d'Espard has taken ill and will not be able to honor the dinner invitation; Madame de Bargeton says that she will be keeping her company and can't see him. But he sees them together in a carriage on the Champs-Élysées, Madame de Bargeton having undergone a transformation in style under Madame d'Espard's tutelage. Rastignac and de Marsay, on horseback, accompany them, but when he bows to the women, "Madame de Bargeton pretended not to see him and the Marquise eyed him through her lorgnette, ignoring his salute."

The unhappy poet was seized with a mortal chill when he saw de Marsay staring at him through his monocle: the Parisian lion then let it fall in so singular a fashion that it seemed like the drop of the guillotine blade to Lucien.

He is, however, able to trap du Châtelet, leaving Madame de Bargeton's flat, into talking to him. Du Châtelet tells him the truth: that Rastignac had revealed his background and that de Marsay had provoked the flight of the ladies from the box. And he advises, "You are a man of genius: see if you can't avenge yourself. Society disdains you: disdain society." He tells him to send Madame de Bargeton's letters back to her. She will regard it as the action of a gentleman, and, "Later on, if you need her, she will not be hostile."

After settling up with the tailor, he has three hundred sixty francs left, out of the two thousand he brought with him. He finds a room in the Latin quarter, which David had recommended as being cheap. And in his anger he writes a letter to Madame de Bargeton, "bombastic but full of that sombre dignity which an artist of twenty-one tends to overdo." Among other things, he says, "Yes, Madame, thanks to you, I have nothing left. But the world was made out of nothing." He remembers the apartment David created for him in Angoulême, and weeps, "for he was alone in Paris, friendless and unprotected." A few days later, he writes to his sister, telling her what has happened, but vowing to stay on in Paris and to sell his novel and his book of verses.

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.

3. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 73-118

Part One: The Two Poets, 3. A social evening and a riverside stroll

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Lucien arrives early -- in fact, first -- at Madame de Bargeton's and is forced to make small talk with her husband, who is not up to the task of ransacking "the immense void within him in order to find something to say." Their awkward conversation proceeds by fits and starts, and Lucien becomes afraid that Monsieur Bargeton's silence is the result of suspicions about his relations with Madame de Bargeton. Finally, du Châtelet arrives, elegantly dressed, and surveys Lucien's clothing to conclude that he has nothing to worry about from this rival. "Lucien, already abashed by the finance official's elegance, told himself he would have his revenge when the gathering saw him with his face radiant with poetry." Finally, Madame de Bargeton enters.

Monsieur du Châtelet gallantly greeted this queenly person with nauseating compliments which drew a pleased smile form her, so happy she was to be praised in front of Lucien. She exchanged but one glance with her dear poet, and the politeness of her reply to the Director of Taxes was a virtual snub since it excluded him from the circle of her close acquaintances. 

A procession of guests enters, each of whom gets a detailed and satiric treatment reminiscent of Dickens or Daumier. "This gathering of odd people, with their strange assortment of dress and make-up, filled Lucien with awe, and his heart beat fast at finding himself the center of attention." He is introduced as "Monsieur de Rubempré" by Madame de Bargeton, but only her husband, the Bishop and a few others continue to call him that; "the greater part of this redoubtable gathering" continues to call him "Monsieur Chardon." He is "unaware that with the exception of Madame de Bargeton poetry was a closed book to the minds of everyone present."

He begins, as David had suggested, by reading from the volume by André Chénier. "Although André Chénier's poems had been published in 1819, no one in Angoulême had heard of him as yet." And as he reads he notices "the reflex action of wide yawns and the consequent exposure of teeth which seemed to be mocking him." Everyone in the audience is bored except for "two or three young people, and the Bishop," and Laure de Rastignac, the daughter of the Baron de Rastignac. Among the rest, some wonder why he read from a printed copy, and one of them explains that he works at a printing office. Finally du Châtelet explains that the poems aren't Lucien's but Chénier's, and the "assembly, with the exception of the Bishop, Madame de Rastignac and her two daughters, who had been impressed by the poetry, believed that it had been hoaxed and took offence at such deceit." Lucien continues to read from the book, however, until Madame de Bargeton is pressured to ask him to recite some of his own verse.

"He gazed at Madame de Bargeton with a somewhat fatuous air and announced the title: TO HER!" She is "visibly embarrassed," and the reaction after he reads the poem, revealing his infatuation, is one of polite hostility: "the ladies, enraged at having no poet at their service to call them angels, rose from their seats with boredom written on their faces and murmured in icy tones: Very good; lovely; perfect." One of them indignantly tells du Châtelet: "Letting a man call her an archangel! As if she were any better than us! And making us mix with such riff-raff: the son of a chemist and a sick-nurse, his sister a laundry-maid and himself a printer's assistant!" So "they set out to humiliate Lucien with their ironic and snobbish witticisms."

One of them, Francis du Hautoy, manages to implicate the Bishop, an admirer of Lucien's, in his plot to humiliate Lucien. He suggests to the Bishop that Lucien's poem was written about his mother. When he is praised by the Bishop, Lucien thanks him, "little knowing that the worthy prelate was about to become his executioner." Madame de Bargeton's triumphant look when the Bishop praises her protégé "struck home like so many javelins into the hearts of her rivals and redoubled their fury." So Lucien sets himself up for the kill, when he says, "Ideas gestate a long time in the womb of thought."

"You will have a painful delivery," interrupted Monsieur du Hautoy.
"Your excellent mother will be able to help you," said the Bishop.
This apparent witticism, so skilfully engineered, was the avenging shaft they had all been awaiting, and their eyes lit up with a gleam of delight. A smile of aristocratic satisfaction passed over everybody's face, and its effect was increased by Monsieur de Bargeton who, in his idiocy, gave vent to a belated laugh.
"My Lord, your wit is too subtle for us at this moment. These ladies do not understand you," said Madame de Bargeton. This single word froze all laughter and made them turn their eyes on her with astonishment. 

Madame de Bargeton urges Lucien to recite his poem "Saint John at Pathmos" to demonstrate that "A poet who draws all his inspiration from the Bible finds his true mother in the Church." But he is unable to recapture the attention of the group, some of which are now playing whist while others gather around the most aristocratic members of the assemblage, the Rastignacs and the Pimentels, to find out what they think of the poetry.

Madame de Bargeton withdraws to her boudoir, followed by Lucien, the Bishop ("whose Vicar-General had explained to him the deep irony contained in his untintended epigram and who wanted to make up for it") and Laure de Rastignac, who expresses "her simple faith in Lucien's genius." But they are in the minority:

The poet had been stripped of all his radiance; the landed proprietors saw no use in him at all; the social climbers feared him as a powerful menace to their ignorance; the women, jealous of Madame de Bargeton -- the Beatrice of this new Dante, according to the Vicar-General -- threw glances of cold disdain at him. 

So Lucien leaves, but not discouraged: His "fury at seeing his ambitious repulsed was giving him new strength." 

Meanwhile, David and Eve had been taking their walk along the river. Balzac is, unfortunately, no better at crafting a sentimental love scene than Dickens was, and some of the dialogue he gives the two lovers is exceedingly stilted, as when David proclaims, "People who love find infinite pleasure discovering the poetry which fills their soul in the undulations of a landscape, the transparency of the atmosphere and the scents which rise from the earth. Nature speaks for them."

Eve has initiated the walk on the pretext of talking about Lucien, which they do. David is concerned about the relationship with Madame de Bargeton because he knows that Lucien "loves to shine" and he fears, rightly, that "society will intensify his desires, which no amount of money will be able to satisfy" -- in short, that he will fall into "the kind of debauchery to which poets are prone," once Madame de Bargeton has cultivated "his taste for luxury." Eve is determined to support him, no matter what, but David warns her that "the amount your work brings in will never be proportionate to his needs." Eve is offended by his discouraging words, but he uses the need to support Lucien as a reason to propose marriage to her: They'll support him together. "Lucien could live on my second floor while I built him a flat above the penthouse at the end of the courtyard, unless my father were willing to build a second storey." That way, Lucien would have the privacy and independence he needs to write.

David admits that he's poor, and that "my father has taken pleasure in ruining me," but he tells Eve that she has "a genius for thrift" and that with her help, he can fulfill a project he's been working on. And he tells her that he has an idea for a cheaper way of making paper, based on her father's own idea of using "certain fibrous plants" instead of the cotton and linen rags currently used to make it. At this moment, Lucien returns from Madame de Bargeton, evidently downcast. He tells them what happened, and reveals his plan to marry Madame de Bargeton once her husband dies. They decide it's a good time to tell Lucien that they are planning to marry, but the effect on him is not what they think: He worries that "If Madame de Bargeton consents to become Madame de Rubempré, she will never want David Séchard as a brother-in-law!" But when they disclose their schemes to provide a place for Lucien to live, he brightens. David "prophesied such happiness for the family and such independence for his brother-in-law that Lucien fell under the spell of David's voice and Eve's caresses" and "forgot the painful crown of thorns which Society had crammed down on his head."

David goes to see his father to talk about his engagement to Eve and to see if he would be willing to add a second story to the house. When he arrives, his father is excitedly describing how successful his grape harvest has been and how much money he will make from it, but when David mentions his coming marriage, his father does an about-face: "Get married, all right. But as for giving you anything. I haven't a penny." He's upset at David's marring "a girl from L'Houmeu, you, a well-set-up business man" and demands the rent David owes him: "Sure enough, if you marry this girl from L'Houmeau, I'll square accounts with you. I'll sue you for my rent, for I can see no good coming from this." So David tells him he'll build the second story himself, and his father accuses him of holding out on the rent money. "David returned home in a sad mood:  he realized that if misfortune came he could not count on help from his father."

2. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 32-73

Part One: The Two Poets, 2. Madame de Bargeton

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The town of Angoulême sits on the top of a rocky promontory with the suburb of L'Houmeau at its foot. The suburb is "busy and prosperous," while "the administration, the Bishop's palace, the courts of justice and the  aristocracy" are in the upper town: "two social zones, everywhere and constantly hostile to each other." David's print shop and the pharmacy that Lucien's father once owned are in the lower town. "It follows that to introduce a man from L'Houmeau, the son of a chemist, in to Madame de Bargeton's circle constituted itself a minor revolution." But "Madame de Bargeton was enamoured of art and letters, an extravagance of taste, a mania which Angoulême openly deplored."

She had been born Marie-Louise-Anaïs de Nègrepelisse, the daughter of a country gentleman who "belonged to the younger branch of one of the most ancient families in southern France." Monsieur de Bargeton was also from an old family whose fortunes and titles had been lost; he had inherited Bargeton House in Angoulême "and had nothing more than the income from his land, which amounted to about ten thousand francs a year." Anaïs de Nègrepelisse, known as Naïs, had been educated by the Abbé Niollant, who hid out during the Revolution in her father's home and repaid his protector by educating his daughter. "The Abbé imbued his pupil with his own spirit of enquiry and readiness to pass judgement; and it did not occur to him that qualities essential in a man can become defects in a woman destined to the humble occupation of a wife and mother." He also gave her a taste for art and literature.

Naïs had weighed up the idea of marriage: the prospect did not entice her. She objected to submitting her intelligence and her person to any of the men of poor calibre and negative personality who had some her way. She wanted to command and was expected to obey. 

Her father chose for Monsieur de Bargeton, 22 years her senior, because he was "sufficiently devoid of wit and will for Naïs to be free to be behave as she pleased, and unmercenary enough to marry her without a dowry." Her plan was for them to move to Paris as soon as she came into her inheritance, but her father "was to keep her waiting so long that his son-in-law predeceased him," forcing her to "remain in Angoulême, where Naïs's brilliant mental qualities and the wealth of sensibility lying dormant in her heart were destined never to fructify, but rather, in course of time, to invite ridicule."

The story of the first eighteen years of Madame de Bargeton's married life can briefly be told. For some time she lived on her own substance or on distant hopes. Then, once she recognized that the life in Paris to which she aspired was barred to her through themediocrity of her fortune, she began scrutinizing the people about her, and her sense of isolation made her shudder.

Then finally, Monsieur Sixte du Châtelet entered her life when he was appointed Director of Indirect Taxes in Angoulême. "He was well-built and good-looking, a good dancer, expert in all games, with a moderate talent for amateur theatricals and drawing-room ballad.... Totally insensitive to poetry, he would boldly as leave to take ten minutes' stroll in order to produce some impromptu poem, some quatrain as dull as ditch-water, with more rhyme than reason in it." During the Napoleonic wars, he had been in the Empress's service, and was sent to Egypt as a diplomat, where he was captured and "wandered about for two years from desert to desert and from tribe to tribe as a captive of the Arabs who successively sold him to one another without drawing the slightest advantage from his talents."

The part Monsieur du Châtelet had played in her Imperial Highness's service, his reputation as a ladies'man, the singular events and sufferings attendant upon his travels in Egypt, all served to excite curiosity in the women of Angoulême. Having studied polite manners in the Upper Town, Monsieur le Baron Sixte du Châtelet adapted his conduct to them. He played the invalid and took on the role of a blasé and disillusioned man.

In Naïs he "glimpsed the possibility of her becoming a widow with great expectations, in short of making a marriage alliance with the Nègrepelisse family." He courted her by indulging her literary interest: "He brought her all the latest books and read the newly-published poetry to her. They went into raptures together over the works of the young poets. Her raptures were genuine, but he was bored." So when the headmaster of the lycée Lucien had attended showed him "some admirable lines from Lucien's pen," he went to Naïs with the news that "A budding genius had been born in L'Houmeau!"

She excitedly summoned Lucien, whose sister, Eve, "was able to draw a few gold coins from her savings-box in order to buy Lucien an elegant pair of shoes from the best shoe-maker in Angoulême and a new suit from the most fashionable tailor." He impressed Madame de Bargeton with his "exceptionally good looks, his shy demeanour and his voice. The poet was already poetry incarnate." And she struck him as "made for love but not in love, and delicate in spite of the strength in her." For his part, Monsieur du Châtelet "sensed a rival in this handsome young man."

He puffed himself out by relating -- and exaggerating -- the perils he had encountered on his travels; but if this made its mark on the imagination of Lucien the poet, it certainly did not frighten Lucien the lover.

Lucien becomes a regular at Madame de Bargeton's, where the condescension of the others in her circle "stirred his bile and confirmed him in a resentful republicanism which many patricians-to-be adopt at their first contact with high society." She becomes his patron, making him "her reader, her secretary."

And so Lucien, at first intimidated by this woman's high rank, experienced all the lively fear, hope and despair which, like so many hammer-strokes, dealing pain and pleasure alternately, beat down of first love and drive it so deep into the heart.

When he ventures to call her "Naïs," she scolds him for "using the name by which everybody called her" and "offered her beautiful angel the only one of her names which no one had used, and consented to be 'Louise' for him alone." She decides to "teach him Italian and German and perfect his manners."

But the gossips start talking. "Some people felt that 'society' was about to be turned upside-down." And when du Châtelet discovers that Lucien's mother is the midwife known as "Madame Charlotte," he decides to take his rival down. But she reminds him that Madame Chardon is the last member of the Rubempré family -- in the first chapter we Lucien's father had saved her from the guillotine by claiming she was pregnant with his child -- and that she was a penniless widow who has to support herself. "Madame de Bargeton's cool common sense silenced the lamentations of the nobility." And although Madame de Chandour sets up her own rival salon on Wednesdays, "Madame de Bargeton held her salon every evening," so her visitors get in the habit of it. She also gets even with du Châtelet by calling him "'Monsieur Châtelet,' thereby petrifying him by showing him that she knew his assumption of the 'particle' to be illegal." And one member of her circle says, "Before the Revolution, the greatest noblemen admitted nobodies, people like this little poet from L'Houmeau, to their houses.... But they did not admit tax-collectors, and after all, that is what Châtelet is." Du Châtelet is "cold-shouldered by everybody," so he "made up to Lucien and claimed to be his friend," even throwing a dinner in his honor. Meanwhile, he was "watching for an opportunity to exterminate Lucien."

Madame de Bargeton decides to invite the "flower of the aristocracy" to an event at which Lucien will be the centerpiece, reciting one of his poems. ''She advised him boldly to repudiate his own father by assuming the noble name of Rubempré and to take no notice of any outcry provoked by this change of patronymic." Through a family connection, she endeavors to get the sanction of the king to the name change. She "reawakened in him the fever for social distinction which David's cool reasoning had calmed, and proved to him that high society was the only stage on which he could play his part." Lucien kisses her hand "with the frenzy of a poet, a young man, a lover," and she allows him to "press his trembling lips on her brow."

Lucien, who did not know that his course lay between the infamy of a convict-prison and the palms awarded to genius, was soaring over the Mount Sinai of the Prophets without seeing that below him were the Dead Sea and the horrible winding-sheet of Gomorrha. 

Still, he feels compelled to share his good fortune with David, and he writes a letter to Madame de Bargeton urging her to invite David to the party, otherwise he'll feel compelled not to appear. Lucien "had not stopped to consider that it was impossible for David, in the twinkling of an eye, to leap over the gulf which it had taken him five months to cross" or that it might bring social "disaster" to her. David had none of the "elegance of manner, distinction of features and tone of voice" that Lucien possessed. And after he sends the letter, he begins to regret it. "Of such stuff was Lucien made: he veered as easily from bad to good as from good to bad."

In fact, David is, without knowing it, in a position to inherit a good deal of money from his father, whose investment in the Marsac vineyard had proved highly lucrative. He is still shyly in love with Lucien's sister, Eve, and "although the great love he bore her only expressed itself in trifling ways, Eve was well aware of it."

Madame de Bargeton's reply to his letter arrives, and it is diplomatically crafted, invoking the prejudice of "those who belong to the aristocracy of ignorance" and their inability to "recognize that intelligence confers nobility." So she says she would like to have a look at David before she decides to invite him. "Lucien did not know with what art a 'Yes' is used in polite society to prepare for a 'No,' or a 'No' as a preliminary to 'Yes.'" But when he tells David that she wants to see him, David declines: "My way of life is settled, Lucien. I am David Séchard, a printer of Angoulême.... I should be laughed at by bourgeois and nobility alike." He urges Lucien to "go forward alone and lay your hands on the prizes!"

And then David also advises Lucien that "his poem on Saint John of Pathmos was perhaps too biblical to be read in a circle with little acquaintance with apocalyptic poetry, and urges him to read from a volume of poems by André Chénier that they had recently admired. "Lucien was going to have his first taste of mundane ignorance and coldness of heart. He went to David's house to pick up the volume of poetry." And Eve suggests to David that they have a stroll along the Charente and talk about Lucien.

1. Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac, pp. 3-32

Part One: The Two Poets, 1. A provincial printing-office

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We begin, as the chapter heading indicates, in the print shop in Angoulême run by Jérôme-Nicolas Séchard, which is outfitted with "antiquated equipment." Séchard, who is illiterate, worked as a pressman in the print shop and bought it from the owner's widow; he has weathered revolution, wartime and restoration. He sent his only son, David, "to the town lycée, not so much in order to have him educated as to prepare the way for a successor," and then to Paris to learn "more advanced typography," with the understanding that he would also "amass a fair sum of money in the capital." 

Another print shop opened up in the town at about the time David returned from Paris. The aging Séchard had begun to drink more and more, and he decided to retire, and to sell the business to David. "If in the beginning he had thought of David as being an only child, he late had only looked on him as an obvious purchaser whose interests were opposed to his own: he wanted to sell dear, whereas David would want to buy cheap; therefore his son was an enemy to be vanquished." So Séchard tries a hard sell on David, overvaluing his mostly dilapidated equipment and stock. (A note: Balzac uses a Latin phrase, pede titubante, in this scene, for which I haven't been able to find an exact translation -- the Penguin edition's translator, Herbert J. Hunt, leaves it in Latin. I think it means that Séchard is staggering drunkenly, because the word "titubation" refers to a medical condition in which one staggers or reels. Pede, I think, is an inflected form of pes, or foot. Confirmation or contradiction of this translation would be welcome.) David is well aware from his experience in Paris that the shop is hopelessly antiquated, but Séchard argues "that provincial people were strongly rooted in their habits, and that any attempt to provide them with better products would be wasted."

David is "one of those shy and sensitive people who shrink from argument," and his father gets the upper hand in the deal:

Until such time as David Séchard had paid off the thirty thousand francs, profits were to be equally divided; once he had repaid this sum to his father, he would become the one and only owner of the printing-office. David ... decided he would be able to make good and accepted the terms. His father, accustomed to the niggling cautiousness of the peasant class, and knowing nothing of the wider scope of Parisian calculations, was astonished at so prompt a conclusion.

When David asks for money to help pay the wages of the shop's workers, however, his father refuses. He assumes that David has saved money from what he earned in Paris, and when David protests, "I had to live, and I had to buy books," he retorts, "People who buy books can't be much good at printing them." David starts to challenge his father, but "The noble-hearted young man decided to shoulder the burden." He is left with only a young woman named Marion to help with the business by doing odd jobs. Séchard retires to a vineyard he has bought "at Marsac, a little village some ten miles away from Angoulême."

David makes a major  mistake in running the business: "He maintained in political and religious matters a neutrality which was most injurious to his interests. He was living in a period when provincial tradespeople had to line up with a party in order to get customers." His rivals, the Cointet brothers, are on the monarchist side, and they steal away customers of the same political views by telling them that David's "father had sided with the Terrorists, ... was a drunkard, a Bonapartist, an old miser who sooner or later would surely leave piles of gold to his heir." The Cointets, "considerably enriched by the sale of prayer books and works of piety," offer to buy the advertising journal that Séchard printed in order to get a monopoly on official notices that had to be published. Séchard leaves his vineyard for a time and offers to sell the print-shop to the Cointets for sixty thousand francs; he settles for selling the advertising journal for twenty-two thousand, with the proviso that David would never "print any periodical whatsoever, under a penalty of thirty thousand francs' damages." In short, he sells David out, giving his interest in the business over to his son but keeping the rent on the house in which the shop is located.

David has reunited with a friend from the lycée, Lucien Chardon, the son of a pharmacist in Angoulême who had been working on a cure for gout. The father's death had  left the family in dire straits because his expectation of financial reward for the cure had led him to spare "no expense for the education of his son and daughter, so that budgeting for the family constantly ate away the income from his chemist's shop." His widow sold the chemist's shop, but the amount she received was barely enough for herself, let alone her family. She "became a nurse for women in labour, and her gentle manners gained her the preference over all others in the rich households." Lucien's sister, Eve, took a job supervising women in a laundry, and she and her mother supported Lucien, in whom they believed "as fervently as Mahomet's wife believed in her husband: there were no bounds to the sacrifices they made for his future." David hired Lucien as a proofreader, "and paid him a wage of forty francs a month, which saved him from despair."

Both David and Lucien were poets, with the difference that "Although he had been destined for the highest speculations of natural science, Lucien had an ardent thirst for literary glory, while David, whose meditative genius predisposed him to poetry, felt drawn towards the exact sciences." David also fell in love with Lucien's sister, Eve. David and Lucien were incompetent at running the printing shop, and when their rival, the Cointet brothers, realized that, they stopped competing with them: The Cointets realized it was better to have an incompetent rival muddling along than to let David be bought out by someone who really knew how to run the business.

David was sturdy and robustly built, with "the ardent melancholy of a mind capable of scanning the horizon from end to end and taking cognizance of all its undulations, one which readily found disillusion in imagined joys after subjecting them to the hard, clear light of analysis." Lucien had an almost feminine beauty and "the depravity of outlook characteristic of diplomats, who believe that any means however shameful they may be, are justified by success."

Although the printer seemed to enjoy the robust health of a peasant, he was a man of melancholic, even sickly genius and was lacking in self-confidence; whereas Lucien, possessing more initiative but less stability of mind, displayed an audacity which tallied ill with his languid, almost frail though femininely graceful physique. 

One day a stranger enters the print-shop and asks for an estimate on printing a memoir. David declines without even looking at the copy, saying that they didn't print "such sizable manuscripts" and suggesting he go to the Cointets. Lucien, however, looks at it and suggests the man leave it overnight so they can come up with the estimate. The man asks if he isn't Lucien Chardon, and says that he's happy to meet "a young poet of such brilliant promise. I come from Madame de Bargeton." He learns that the manuscript is a treatise on the cultivation of silkworms that the man wants published.

When the man leaves, David confronts Lucien with the fact that his friend is in love with Madame de Bargeton. Lucien admits it. He also reveals that he is scheduled to be reading his poems at her house tonight, but that he has told her that he won't do so unless David is also invited. He's awaiting her decision. David is moved by his friend's action.

This ambitious young man, who had just gained admission to the Bargeton mansion by making his poetic reputation a bridge between town and suburb, was as anxious about his patroness's decision as can be a court favourite apprehensive of disgrace when he has tried to extend his power. These words must seem obscure to those who have not yet observed the manners peculiar to cities divided into an upper and a lower town.