V

When every one had arrived; when the buzz of talk ceased after

repeated efforts on the part of M. de Bargeton, who, obedient to his

wife, went round the room much as the beadle makes the circle of the

church, tapping the pavement with his wand; when silence, in fact, was

at last secured, Lucien went to the round table near Mme. de Bargeton.

A fierce thrill of excitement ran through him as he did so. He

announced in an uncertain voice that, to prevent disappointment, he

was about to read the masterpieces of a great poet, discovered only

recently (for although Andre de Chenier's poems appeared in 1819, no

one in Angouleme had so much as heard of him). Everybody interpreted

this announcement in one way--it was a shift of Mme. de Bargeton's,

meant to save the poet's self-love and to put the audience at ease.

Lucien began with Le Malade, and the poem was received with a murmur

of applause; but he followed it with L'Aveugle, which proved too great

a strain upon the average intellect. None but artists or those endowed

with the artistic temperament can understand and sympathize with him

in the diabolical torture of that reading. If poetry is to be rendered

by the voice, and if the listener is to grasp all that it means, the

most devout attention is essential; there should be an intimate

alliance between the reader and his audience, or swift and subtle

communication of the poet's thought and feeling becomes impossible.

Here this close sympathy was lacking, and Lucien in consequence was in

the position of an angel who should endeavor to sing of heaven amid

the chucklings of hell. An intelligent man in the sphere most

stimulating to his faculties can see in every direction, like a snail;

he has the keen scent of a dog, the ears of a mole; he can hear, and

feel, and see all that is going on around him. A musician or a poet

knows at once whether his audience is listening in admiration or fails

to follow him, and feels it as the plant that revives or droops under

favorable or unfavorable conditions. The men who had come with their

wives had fallen to discussing their own affairs; by the acoustic law

before mentioned, every murmur rang in Lucien's ear; he saw all the

gaps caused by the spasmodic workings of jaws sympathetically

affected, the teeth that seemed to grin defiance at him.

When, like the dove in the deluge, he looked round for any spot on

which his eyes might rest, he saw nothing but rows of impatient faces.

Their owners clearly were waiting for him to make an end; they had

come together to discuss questions of practical interest. With the

exceptions of Laure de Rastignac, the Bishop, and two or three of the

young men, they one and all looked bored. As a matter of fact, those

who understand poetry strive to develop the germs of another poetry,

quickened within them by the poet's poetry; but this glacial audience,

so far from attaining to the spirit of the poet, did not even listen

to the letter.

Lucien felt profoundly discouraged; he was damp with chilly

perspiration; a glowing glance from Louise, to whom he turned, gave

him courage to persevere to the end, but this poet's heart was

bleeding from countless wounds.

"Do you find this very amusing, Fifine?" inquired the wizened Lili,

who perhaps had expected some kind of gymnastics.

"Don't ask me what I think, dear; I cannot keep my eyes open when any

one begins to read aloud."

"I hope that Nais will not give us poetry often in the evenings," said

Francis. "If I am obliged to attend while somebody reads aloud after

dinner, it upsets my digestion."

"Poor dearie," whispered Zephirine, "take a glass of eau sucree."

"It was very well declaimed," said Alexandre, "but I like whist better

myself."

After this dictum, which passed muster as a joke from the play on the

word "whist," several card-players were of the opinion that the

reader's voice needed a rest, and on this pretext one or two couples

slipped away into the card-room. But Louise, and the Bishop, and

pretty Laure de Rastignac besought Lucien to continue, and this time

he caught the attention of his audience with Chenier's spirited

reactionary Iambes. Several persons, carried away by his impassioned

delivery, applauded the reading without understanding the sense.

People of this sort are impressed by vociferation, as a coarse palate

is ticked by strong spirits.

During the interval, as they partook of ices, Zephirine despatched

Francis to examine the volume, and informed her neighbor Amelie that

the poetry was in print.

Amelie brightened visibly.

"Why, that is easily explained," said she. "M. de Rubempre works for a

printer. It is as if a pretty woman should make her own dresses," she

added, looking at Lolotte.

"He printed his poetry himself!" said the women among themselves.

"Then, why does he call himself M. de Rubempre?" inquired Jacques. "If

a noble takes a handicraft, he ought to lay his name aside."

"So he did as a matter of fact," said Zizine, "but his name was

plebeian, and he took his mother's name, which is noble."

"Well, if his verses are printed, we can read them for ourselves,"

said Astolphe.

This piece of stupidity complicated the question, until Sixte du

Chatelet condescended to inform these unlettered folk that the

prefatory announcement was no oratorical flourish, but a statement of

fact, and added that the poems had been written by a Royalist brother

of Marie-Joseph Chenier, the Revolutionary leader. All Angouleme,

except Mme. de Rastignac and her two daughters and the Bishop, who had

really felt the grandeur of the poetry, were mystified, and took

offence at the hoax. There was a smothered murmur, but Lucien did not

heed it. The intoxication of the poetry was upon him; he was far away

from the hateful world, striving to render in speech the music that

filled his soul, seeing the faces about him through a cloudy haze. He

read the sombre Elegy on the Suicide, lines in the taste of a by-gone

day, pervaded by sublime melancholy; then he turned to the page where

the line occurs, "Thy songs are sweet, I love to say them over," and

ended with the delicate idyll Neere.

Mme. de Bargeton sat with one hand buried in her curls, heedless of

the havoc she wrought among them, gazing before her with unseeing

eyes, alone in her drawing-room, lost in delicious dreaming; for the

first time in her life she had been transported to the sphere which

was hers by right of nature. Judge, therefore, how unpleasantly she

was disturbed by Amelie, who took it upon herself to express the

general wish.

"Nais," this voice broke in, "we came to hear M. Chardon's poetry, and

you are giving us poetry out of a book. The extracts are very nice,

but the ladies feel a patriotic preference for the wine of the

country; they would rather have it."

"The French language does not lend itself very readily to poetry, does

it?" Astolphe remarked to Chatelet. "Cicero's prose is a thousand

times more poetical to my way of thinking."

"The true poetry of France is song, lyric verse," Chatelet answered.

"Which proves that our language is eminently adapted for music," said

Adrien.

"I should like very much to hear the poetry that has cost Nais her

reputation," said Zephirine; "but after receiving Amelie's request in

such a way, it is not very likely that she will give us a specimen."

"She ought to have them recited in justice to herself," said Francis.

"The little fellow's genius is his sole justification."

"You have been in the diplomatic service," said Amelie to M. du

Chatelet, "go and manage it somehow."

"Nothing easier," said the Baron.

The Princess' private secretary, being accustomed to petty manoeuvres

of this kind, went to the Bishop and contrived to bring him to the

fore. At the Bishop's entreaty, Nais had no choice but to ask Lucien

to recite his own verses for them, and the Baron received a

languishing smile from Amelie as the reward of his prompt success.

"Decidedly, the Baron is a very clever man," she observed to Lolotte.

But Amelie's previous acidulous remark about women who made their own

dresses rankled in Lolotte's mind.

"Since when have you begun to recognize the Emperor's barons?" she

asked, smiling.

Lucien had essayed to deify his beloved in an ode, dedicated to her

under a title in favor with all lads who write verse after leaving

school. This ode, so fondly cherished, so beautiful--since it was the

outpouring of all the love in his heart, seemed to him to be the one

piece of his own work that could hold its own with Chenier's verse;

and with a tolerably fatuous glance at Mme. de Bargeton, he announced

"TO HER!" He struck an attitude proudly for the delivery of the

ambitious piece, for his author's self-love felt safe and at ease

behind Mme. de Bargeton's petticoat. And at the selfsame moment Mme.

de Bargeton betrayed her own secret to the women's curious eyes.

Although she had always looked down upon this audience from her own

loftier intellectual heights, she could not help trembling for Lucien.

Her face was troubled, there was a sort of mute appeal for indulgence

in her glances, and while the verses were recited she was obliged to

lower her eyes and dissemble her pleasure as stanza followed stanza.

TO HER.

Out of the glowing heart of the torrent of glory and light,

At the foot of Jehovah's throne where the angels stand afar,

Each on a seistron of gold repeating the prayers of the night,

Put up for each by his star.

Out from the cherubim choir a bright-haired Angel springs,

Veiling the glory of God that dwells on a dazzling brow,

Leaving the courts of heaven to sink upon silver wings

Down to our world below.

God looked in pity on earth, and the Angel, reading His thought,

Came down to lull the pain of the mighty spirit at strife,

Reverent bent o'er the maid, and for age left desolate brought

Flowers of the springtime of life.

Bringing a dream of hope to solace the mother's fears,

Hearkening unto the voice of the tardy repentant cry,

Glad as angels are glad, to reckon Earth's pitying tears,

Given with alms of a sigh.

One there is, and but one, bright messenger sent from the skies

Whom earth like a lover fain would hold from the hea'nward flight;

But the angel, weeping, turns and gazes with sad, sweet eyes

Up to the heaven of light.

Not by the radiant eyes, not by the kindling glow

Of virtue sent from God, did I know the secret sign,

Nor read the token sent on a white and dazzling brow

Of an origin divine.

Nay, it was Love grown blind and dazed with excess of light,

Striving and striving in vain to mingle Earth and Heaven,

Helpless and powerless against the invincible armor bright

By the dread archangel given.

Ah! be wary, take heed, lest aught should be seen or heard

Of the shining seraph band, as they take the heavenward way;

Too soon the Angel on Earth will learn the magical word

Sung at the close of the day.

Then you shall see afar, rifting the darkness of night,

A gleam as of dawn that spread across the starry floor,

And the seaman that watch for a sign shall mark the track of their flight,

A luminous pathway in Heaven and a beacon for evermore.

"Do you read the riddle?" said Amelie, giving M. du Chatelet a

coquettish glance.

"It is the sort of stuff that we all of us wrote more or less after we

left school," said the Baron with a bored expression--he was acting

his part of arbiter of taste who has seen everything. "We used to deal

in Ossianic mists, Malvinas and Fingals and cloudy shapes, and

warriors who got out of their tombs with stars above their heads.

Nowadays this poetical frippery has been replaced by Jehovah, angels,

seistrons, the plumes of seraphim, and all the paraphernalia of

paradise freshened up with a few new words such as 'immense, infinite,

solitude, intelligence'; you have lakes, and the words of the

Almighty, a kind of Christianized Pantheism, enriched with the most

extraordinary and unheard-of rhymes. We are in quite another latitude,

in fact; we have left the North for the East, but the darkness is just

as thick as before."

"If the ode is obscure, the declaration is very clear, it seems to

me," said Zephirine.

"And the archangel's armor is a tolerably thin gauze robe," said

Francis.

Politeness demanded that the audience should profess to be enchanted

with the poem; and the women, furious because they had no poets in

their train to extol them as angels, rose, looked bored by the

reading, murmuring, "Very nice!" "Charming!" "Perfect!" with frigid

coldness.

"If you love me, do not congratulate the poet or his angel," Lolotte

laid her commands on her dear Adrien in imperious tones, and Adrien

was fain to obey.

"Empty words, after all," Zephirine remarked to Francis, "and love is

a poem that we live."

"You have just expressed the very thing that I was thinking, Zizine,

but I should not have put it so neatly," said Stanislas, scanning

himself from top to toe with loving attention.

"I would give, I don't know how much, to see Nais' pride brought down

a bit," said Amelie, addressing Chatelet. "Nais sets up to be an

archangel, as if she were better than the rest of us, and mixes us up

with low people; his father was an apothecary, and his mother is a

nurse; his sister works in a laundry, and he himself is a printer's

foreman."

"If his father sold biscuits for worms" (vers), said Jacques, "he

ought to have made his son take them."

"He is continuing in his father's line of business, for the stuff that

he has just been reading to us is a drug in the market, it seems,"

said Stanislas, striking one of his most killing attitudes. "Drug for

drug, I would rather have something else."

Every one apparently combined to humiliate Lucien by various

aristocrats' sarcasms. Lili the religious thought it a charitable deed

to use any means of enlightening Nais, and Nais was on the brink of a

piece of folly. Francis the diplomatist undertook the direction of the

silly conspiracy; every one was interested in the progress of the

drama; it would be something to talk about to-morrow. The ex-consul,

being far from anxious to engage in a duel with a young poet who would

fly into a rage at the first hint of insult under his lady's eyes, was

wise enough to see that the only way of dealing Lucien his deathblow

was by the spiritual arm which was safe from vengeance. He therefore

followed the example set by Chatelet the astute, and went to the

Bishop. Him he proceeded to mystify.

He told the Bishop that Lucien's mother was a woman of uncommon powers

and great modesty, and that it was she who found the subjects for her

son's verses. Nothing pleased Lucien so much, according to the

guileful Francis, as any recognition of her talents--he worshiped his

mother. Then, having inculcated these notions, he left the rest to

time. His lordship was sure to bring out the insulting allusion, for

which he had been so carefully prepared, in the course of

conversation.

When Francis and the Bishop joined the little group where Lucien

stood, the circle who gave him the cup of hemlock to drain by little

sips watched him with redoubled interest. The poet, luckless young

man, being a total stranger, and unaware of the manners and customs of

the house, could only look at Mme. de Bargeton and give embarrassed

answers to embarrassing questions. He knew neither the names nor

condition of the people about him; the women's silly speeches made him

blush for them, and he was at his wits' end for a reply. He felt,

moreover, how very far removed he was from these divinities of

Angouleme when he heard himself addressed sometimes as M. Chardon,

sometimes as M. de Rubempre, while they addressed each other as

Lolotte, Adrien, Astolphe, Lili and Fifine. His confusion rose to a

height when, taking Lili for a man's surname, he addressed the coarse

M. de Senonches as M. Lili; that Nimrod broke in upon him with a

"MONSIEUR LULU?" and Mme. de Bargeton flushed red to the eyes.

"A woman must be blind indeed to bring this little fellow among us!"

muttered Senonches.

Zephirine turned to speak to the Marquise de Pimentel--"Do you not see

a strong likeness between M. Chardon and M. de Cante-Croix, madame?"

she asked in a low but quite audible voice.

"The likeness is ideal," smiled Mme. de Pimentel.

"Glory has a power of attraction to which we can confess," said Mme.

de Bargeton, addressing the Marquise. "Some women are as much

attracted by greatness as others by littleness," she added, looking at

Francis.

The was beyond Zephirine's comprehension; she thought her consul a

very great man; but the Marquise laughed, and her laughter ranged her

on Nais' side.

"You are very fortunate, monsieur," said the Marquis de Pimentel,

addressing Lucien for the purpose of calling him M. de Rubempre, and

not M. Chardon, as before; "you should never find time heavy on your

hands."

"Do you work quickly?" asked Lolotte, much in the way that she would

have asked a joiner "if it took long to make a box."

The bludgeon stroke stunned Lucien, but he raised his head at Mme. de

Bargeton's reply--

"My dear, poetry does not grow in M. de Rubempre's head like grass in

our courtyards."

"Madame, we cannot feel too reverently towards the noble spirits in

whom God has set some ray of this light," said the Bishop, addressing

Lolotte. "Yes, poetry is something holy. Poetry implies suffering. How

many silent nights those verses that you admire have cost! We should

bow in love and reverence before the poet; his life here is almost

always a life of sorrow; but God doubtless reserves a place in heaven

for him among His prophets. This young man is a poet," he added laying

a hand on Lucien's head; "do you not see the sign of Fate set on that

high forehead of his?"

Glad to be so generously championed, Lucien made his acknowledgments

in a grateful look, not knowing that the worthy prelate was to deal

his deathblow.

Mme. de Bargeton's eyes traveled round the hostile circle. Her glances

went like arrows to the depths of her rivals' hearts, and left them

twice as furious as before.

"Ah, monseigneur," cried Lucien, hoping to break thick heads with his

golden sceptre, "but ordinary people have neither your intellect nor

your charity. No one heeds our sorrows, our toil is unrecognized. The

gold-digger working in the mine does not labor as we to wrest

metaphors from the heart of the most ungrateful of all languages. If

this is poetry--to give ideas such definite and clear expressions that

all the world can see and understand--the poet must continually range

through the entire scale of human intellects, so that he can satisfy

the demands of all; he must conceal hard thinking and emotion, two

antagonistic powers, beneath the most vivid color; he must know how to

make one word cover a whole world of thought; he must give the results

of whole systems of philosophy in a few picturesque lines; indeed, his

songs are like seeds that must break into blossom in other hearts

wherever they find the soil prepared by personal experience. How can

you express unless you first have felt? And is not passion suffering.

Poetry is only brought forth after painful wanderings in the vast

regions of thought and life. There are men and women in books, who

seem more really alive to us than men and women who have lived and

died--Richardson's Clarissa, Chenier's Camille, the Delia of Tibullus,

Ariosto's Angelica, Dante's Francesca, Moliere's Alceste,

Beaumarchais' Figaro, Scott's Rebecca the Jewess, the Don Quixote of

Cervantes,--do we not owe these deathless creations to immortal

throes?"

"And what are you going to create for us?" asked Chatelet.

"If I were to announce such conceptions, I should give myself out for

a man of genius, should I not?" answered Lucien. "And besides, such

sublime creations demand a long experience of the world and a study of

human passion and interests which I could not possibly have made; but

I have made a beginning," he added, with bitterness in his tone, as he

took a vengeful glance round the circle; "the time of gestation is

long----"

"Then it will be a case of difficult labor," interrupted M. du Hautoy.

"Your excellent mother might assist you," suggested the Bishop.

The epigram, innocently made by the good prelate, the long-looked-for

revenge, kindled a gleam of delight in all eyes. The smile of

satisfied caste that traveled from mouth to mouth was aggravated by M.

de Bargeton's imbecility; he burst into a laugh, as usual, some

moments later.

"Monseigneur, you are talking a little above our heads; these ladies

do not understand your meaning," said Mme. de Bargeton, and the words

paralyzed the laughter, and drew astonished eyes upon her. "A poet who

looks to the Bible for his inspiration has a mother indeed in the

Church.--M. de Rubempre, will you recite Saint John in Patmos for us,

or Belshazzar's Feast, so that his lordship may see that Rome is still

the Magna Parens of Virgil?"

The women exchanged smiles at the Latin words.

The bravest and highest spirits know times of prostration at the

outset of life. Lucien had sunk to the depths at the blow, but he

struck the bottom with his feet, and rose to the surface again, vowing

to subjugate this little world. He rose like a bull, stung to fury by

a shower of darts, and prepared to obey Louise by declaiming Saint

John in Patmos; but by this time the card-tables had claimed their

complement of players, who returned to the accustomed groove to find

amusement there which poetry had not afforded them. They felt besides

that the revenge of so many outraged vanities would be incomplete

unless it were followed up by contemptuous indifference; so they

showed their tacit disdain for the native product by leaving Lucien

and Mme. de Bargeton to themselves. Every one appeared to be absorbed

in his own affairs; one chattered with the prefect about a new

crossroad, another proposed to vary the pleasures of the evening with

a little music. The great world of Angouleme, feeling that it was no

judge of poetry, was very anxious, in the first place, to hear the

verdict of the Pimentels and the Rastignacs, and formed a little group

about them. The great influence wielded in the department by these two

families was always felt on every important occasion; every one was

jealous of them, every one paid court to them, foreseeing that they

might some day need that influence.

"What do you think of our poet and his poetry?" Jacques asked of the

Marquise. Jacques used to shoot over the lands belonging to the

Pimentel family.

"Why, it is not bad for provincial poetry," she said, smiling; "and

besides, such a beautiful poet cannot do anything amiss."

Every one thought the decision admirable; it traveled from lip to lip,

gaining malignance by the way. Then Chatelet was called upon to

accompany M. du Bartas on the piano while he mangled the great solo

from Figaro; and the way being opened to music, the audience, as in

duty bound listened while Chatelet in turn sang one of Chateaubriand's

ballads, a chivalrous ditty made in the time of the Empire. Duets

followed, of the kind usually left to boarding-school misses, and

rescued from the schoolroom by Mme. du Brossard, who meant to make a

brilliant display of her dear Camille's talents for M. de Severac's

benefit.

Mme. du Bargeton, hurt by the contempt which every one showed her

poet, paid back scorn for scorn by going to her boudoir during these

performances. She was followed by the prelate. His Vicar-General had

just been explaining the profound irony of the epigram into which he

had been entrapped, and the Bishop wished to make amends. Mlle. de

Rastignac, fascinated by the poetry, also slipped into the boudoir

without her mother's knowledge.

Louise drew Lucien to her mattress-cushioned sofa; and with no one to

see or hear, she murmured in his ear, "Dear angel, they did not

understand you; but, 'Thy songs are sweet, I love to say them over.' "

And Lucien took comfort from the pretty speech, and forgot his woes

for a little.

"Glory is not to be had cheaply," Mme. de Bargeton continued, taking

his hand and holding it tightly in her own. "Endure your woes, my

friend, you will be great one day; your pain is the price of your

immortality. If only I had a hard struggle before me! God preserve you

from the enervating life without battles, in which the eagle's wings

have no room to spread themselves. I envy you; for if you suffer, at

least you live. You will put out your strength, you will feel the hope

of victory; your strife will be glorious. And when you shall come to

your kingdom, and reach the imperial sphere where great minds are

enthroned, then remember the poor creatures disinherited by fate,

whose intellects pine in an oppressive moral atmosphere, who die and

have never lived, knowing all the while what life might be; think of

the piercing eyes that have seen nothing, the delicate senses that

have only known the scent of poison flowers. Then tell in your song of

plants that wither in the depths of the forest, choked by twining

growths and rank, greedy vegetation, plants that have never been

kissed by the sunlight, and die, never having put forth a blossom. It

would be a terribly gloomy poem, would it not, a fanciful subject?

What a sublime poem might be made of the story of some daughter of the

desert transported to some cold, western clime, calling for her

beloved sun, dying of a grief that none can understand, overcome with

cold and longing. It would be an allegory; many lives are like that."

"You would picture the spirit which remembers Heaven," said the

Bishop; "some one surely must have written such a poem in the days of

old; I like to think that I see a fragment of it in the Song of

Songs."

"Take that as your subject," said Laure de Rastignac, expressing her

artless belief in Lucien's powers.

"The great sacred poem of France is still unwritten," remarked the

Bishop. "Believe me, glory and success await the man of talent who

shall work for religion."

"That task will be his," said Mme. de Bargeton rhetorically. "Do you

not see the first beginnings of the vision of the poem, like the flame

of dawn, in his eyes?"

"Nais is treating us very badly," said Fifine; "what can she be

doing?"

"Don't you hear?" said Stanislas. "She is flourishing away, using big

words that you cannot make head or tail of."

Amelie, Fifine, Adrien, and Francis appeared in the doorway with Mme.

de Rastignac, who came to look for her daughter.

"Nais," cried the two ladies, both delighted to break in upon the

quiet chat in the boudoir, "it would be very nice of you to come and

play something for us."

"My dear child, M. de Rubempre is just about to recite his Saint John

in Patmos, a magnificent biblical poem."

"Biblical!" echoed Fifine in amazement.

Amelie and Fifine went back to the drawing-room, taking the word back

with them as food for laughter. Lucien pleaded a defective memory and

excused himself. When he reappeared, nobody took the slightest notice

of him; every one was chatting or busy at the card-tables; the poet's

aureole had been plucked away, the landowners had no use for him, the

more pretentious sort looked upon him as an enemy to their ignorance,

while the women were jealous of Mme. de Bargeton, the Beatrice of this

modern Dante, to use the Vicar-General's phrase, and looked at him

with cold, scornful eyes.

"So this is society!" Lucien said to himself as he went down to

L'Houmeau by the steps of Beaulieu; for there are times when we choose

to take the longest way, that the physical exercise of walking may

promote the flow of ideas.

So far from being disheartened, the fury of repulsed ambition gave

Lucien new strength. Like all those whose instincts bring them to a

higher social sphere which they reach before they can hold their own

in it, Lucien vowed to make any sacrifice to the end that he might

remain on that higher social level. One by one he drew out the

poisoned shafts on his way home, talking aloud to himself, scoffing at

the fools with whom he had to do, inventing neat answers to their

idiotic questions, desperately vexed that the witty responses occurred

to him so late in the day. By the time that he reached the Bordeaux

road, between the river and the foot of the hill, he thought that he

could see Eve and David sitting on a baulk of timber by the river in

the moonlight, and went down the footpath towards them.

While Lucien was hastening to the torture in Mme. de Bargeton's rooms,

his sister had changed her dress for a gown of pink cambric covered

with narrow stripes, a straw hat, and a little silk shawl. The simple

costume seemed like a rich toilette on Eve, for she was one of those

women whose great nature lends stateliness to the least personal

detail; and David felt prodigiously shy of her now that she had

changed her working dress. He had made up his mind that he would speak

of himself; but now as he gave his arm to this beautiful girl, and

they walked through L'Houmeau together, he could find nothing to say

to her. Love delights in such reverent awe as redeemed souls know on

beholding the glory of God. So, in silence, the two lovers went across

the Bridge of Saint Anne, and followed the left bank of the Charente.

Eve felt embarrassed by the pause, and stopped to look along the

river; a joyous shaft of sunset had turned the water between the

bridge and the new powder mills into a sheet of gold.

"What a beautiful evening it is!" she said, for the sake of saying

something; "the air is warm and fresh, and full of the scent of

flowers, and there is a wonderful sky."

"Everything speaks to our heart," said David, trying to proceed to

love by way of analogy. "Those who love find infinite delight in

discovering the poetry of their own inmost souls in every chance

effect of the landscape, in the thin, clear air, in the scent of the

earth. Nature speaks for them."

"And loosens their tongues, too," Eve said merrily. "You were very

silent as we came through L'Houmeau. Do you know, I felt quite

uncomfortable----"

"You looked so beautiful, that I could not say anything," David

answered candidly.

"Then, just now I am not so beautiful?" inquired she.

"It is not that," he said; "but I was so happy to have this walk alone

with you, that----" he stopped short in confusion, and looked at the

hillside and the road to Saintes.

"If the walk is any pleasure to you, I am delighted; for I owe you an

evening, I think, when you have given up yours for me. When you

refused to go to Mme. de Bargeton's, you were quite as generous as

Lucien when he made the demand at the risk of vexing her."

"No, not generous, only wise," said David. "And now that we are quite

alone under the sky, with no listeners except the bushes and the reeds

by the edge of the Charente, let me tell you about my anxiety as to

Lucien's present step, dear Eve. After all that I have just said, I

hope that you will look on my fears as a refinement of friendship. You

and your mother have done all that you could to put him above his

social position; but when you stimulated his ambition, did you not

unthinkingly condemn him to a hard struggle? How can he maintain

himself in the society to which his tastes incline him? I know Lucien;

he likes to reap, he does not like toil; it is his nature. Social

claims will take up the whole of his time, and for a man who has

nothing but his brains, time is capital. He likes to shine; society

will stimulate his desires until no money will satisfy them; instead

of earning money, he will spend it. You have accustomed him to believe

in his great powers, in fact, but the world at large declines to

believe in any man's superior intellect until he has achieved some

signal success. Now success in literature is only won in solitude and

by dogged work. What will Mme. de Bargeton give your brother in return

for so many days spent at her feet? Lucien has too much spirit to

accept help from her; and he cannot afford, as we know, to cultivate

her society, twice ruinous as it is for him. Sooner or later that

woman will throw over this dear brother of ours, but not before she

has spoiled him for hard work, and given him a taste for luxury and a

contempt for our humdrum life. She will develop his love of enjoyment,

his inclination for idleness, that debauches a poetic soul. Yes, it

makes me tremble to think that this great lady may make a plaything of

Lucien. If she cares for him sincerely, he will forget everything else

for her; or if she does not love him, she will make him unhappy, for

he is wild about her."

"You have sent a chill of dread through my heart," said Eve, stopping

as they reached the weir. "But so long as mother is strong enough for

her tiring life, so long as I live, we shall earn enough, perhaps,

between us to keep Lucien until success comes. My courage will never

fail," said Eve, brightening. "There is no hardship in work when we

work for one we love; it is not drudgery. It makes me happy to think

that I toil so much, if indeed it is toil, for him. Oh, do not be in

the least afraid, we will earn money enough to send Lucien into the

great world. There lies his road to success."

"And there lies his road to ruin," returned David. "Dear Eve, listen

to me. A man needs an independent fortune, or the sublime cynicism of

poverty, for the slow execution of great work. Believe me, Lucien's

horror of privation is so great, the savor of banquets, the incense of

success is so sweet in his nostrils, his self-love has grown so much

in Mme. de Bargeton's boudoir, that he will do anything desperate

sooner than fall back, and you will never earn enough for his

requirements.

"Then you are only a false friend to him!" Eve cried in despair, "or

you would not discourage us in this way."

"Eve! Eve!" cried David, "if only I could be a brother to Lucien! You

alone can give me that title; he could accept anything from me then; I

should claim the right of devoting my life to him with the love that

hallows your self-sacrifice, but with some worldly wisdom too. Eve, my

darling, give Lucien a store from which he need not blush to draw! His

brother's purse will be like his own, will it not? If you only knew

all my thoughts about Lucien's position! If he means to go to Mme. de

Bargeton's, he must not be my foreman any longer, poor fellow! He

ought not to live in L'Houmeau; you ought not to be a working girl;

and your mother must give up her employment as well. If you would

consent to be my wife, the difficulties will all be smoothed away.

Lucien might live on the second floor in the Place du Murier until I

can build rooms for him over the shed at the back of the yard (if my

father will allow it, that is.). And in that way we would arrange a

free and independent life for him. The wish to support Lucien will

give me a better will to work than I ever should have had for myself

alone; but it rests with you to give me the right to devote myself to

him. Some day, perhaps, he will go to Paris, the only place that can

bring out all that is in him, and where his talents will be

appreciated and rewarded. Living in Paris is expensive, and the

earnings of all three of us will be needed for his support. And

besides, will not you and your mother need some one to lean upon then?

Dear Eve, marry me for love of Lucien; perhaps afterwards you will

love me when you see how I shall strive to help him and to make you

happy. We are, both of us, equally simple in our tastes; we have few

wants; Lucien's welfare shall be the great object of our lives. His

heart shall be our treasure-house, we will lay up all our fortune, and

think and feel and hope in him."

"Worldly considerations keep us apart," said Eve, moved by this love

that tried to explain away its greatness. "You are rich and I am poor.

One must love indeed to overcome such a difficulty."

"Then you do not care enough for me?" cried the stricken David.

"But perhaps your father would object----"

"Never mind," said David; "if asking my father is all that is

necessary, you will be my wife. Eve, my dear Eve, how you have

lightened life for me in a moment; and my heart has been very heavy

with thoughts that I could not utter, I did not know how to speak of

them. Only tell me that you care for me a little, and I will take

courage to tell you the rest."

"Indeed," she said, "you make me quite ashamed; but confidence for

confidence, I will tell you this, that I have never thought of any one

but you in my life. I looked upon you as one of those men to whom a

woman might be proud to belong, and I did not dare to hope so great a

thing for myself, a penniless working girl with no prospects."

"That is enough, that is enough," he answered, sitting down on the bar

by the weir, for they had gone to and fro like mad creatures over the

same length of pathway.

"What is the matter?" she asked, her voice expressing for the first

time a woman's sweet anxiety for one who belongs to her.

"Nothing but good," he answered. "It is the sight of a whole lifetime

of happiness that dazzles me, as it were; it is overwhelming. Why am I

happier than you?" he asked, with a touch of sadness. "For I know that

I am happier."

Eve looked at David with mischievous, doubtful eyes that asked an

explanation.

"Dear Eve, I am taking more than I give. So I shall always love you

more than you love me, because I have more reason to love. You are an

angel; I am a man."

"I am not so learned," Eve said, smiling. "I love you----"

"As much as you love Lucien?" he broke in.

"Enough to be your wife, enough to devote myself to you, to try not to

add anything to your burdens, for we shall have some struggles; it

will not be quite easy at first."

"Dear Eve, have you known that I loved you since the first day I saw

you?"

"Where is the woman who does not feel that she is loved?"

"Now let me get rid of your scruples as to my imaginary riches. I am a

poor man, dear. Yes, it pleased my father to ruin me; he made a

speculation of me, as a good many so-called benefactors do. If I make

a fortune, it will be entirely through you. That is not a lover's

speech, but sober, serious earnest. I ought to tell you about my

faults, for they are exceedingly bad ones in a man who has his way to

make. My character and habits and favorite occupations all unfit me

for business and money-getting, and yet we can only make money by some

kind of industry; if I have some faculty for the discovery of gold-

mines, I am singularly ill-adapted for getting the gold out of them.

But you who, for your brother's sake, went into the smallest details,

with a talent for thrift, and the patient watchfulness of the born man

of business, you will reap the harvest that I shall sow. The present

state of things, for I have been like one of the family for a long

time, weighs so heavily upon me, that I have spent days and nights in

search of some way of making a fortune. I know something of chemistry,

and a knowledge of commercial requirements has put me on the scent of

a discovery that is likely to pay. I can say nothing as yet about it;

there will be a long while to wait; perhaps for some years we may have

a hard time of it; but I shall find out how to make a commercial

article at last. Others are busy making the same researches, and if I

am first in the field, we shall have a large fortune. I have said

nothing to Lucien, his enthusiastic nature would spoil everything; he

would convert my hopes into realities, and begin to live like a lord,

and perhaps get into debt. So keep my secret for me. Your sweet and

dear companionship will be consolation in itself during the long time

of experiment, and the desire to gain wealth for you and Lucien will

give me persistence and tenacity----"

"I had guessed this too," Eve said, interrupting him; "I knew that you

were one of those inventors, like my poor father, who must have a

woman to take care of them."

"Then you love me! Ah! say so without fear to me, who saw a symbol of

my love for you in your name. Eve was the one woman in the world; if

it was true in the outward world for Adam, it is true again in the

inner world of my heart for me. My God! do you love me?"

"Yes," said she, lengthening out the word as if to make it cover the

extent of feeling expressed by a single syllable.

"Well, let us sit here," he said, and taking Eve's hand, he went to a

great baulk of timber lying below the wheels of a paper-mill. "Let me

breathe the evening air, and hear the frogs croak, and watch the

moonlight quivering upon the river; let me take all this world about

us into my soul, for it seems to me that my happiness is written large

over it all; I am seeing it for the first time in all its splendor,

lighted up by love, grown fair through you. Eve, dearest, this is the

first moment of pure and unmixed joy that fate has given to me! I do

not think that Lucien can be as happy as I am."

David felt Eve's hand, damp and quivering in his own, and a tear fell

upon it.

"May I not know the secret?" she pleaded coaxingly.

"You have a right to know it, for your father was interested in the

matter, and to-day it is a pressing question, and for this reason.

Since the downfall of the Empire, calico has come more and more into

use, because it is so much cheaper than linen. At the present moment,

paper is made of a mixture of hemp and linen rags, but the raw

material is dear, and the expense naturally retards the great advance

which the French press is bound to make. Now you cannot increase the

output of linen rags, a given population gives a pretty constant

result, and it only increases with the birth-rate. To make any

perceptible difference in the population for this purpose, it would

take a quarter of a century and a great revolution in habits of life,

trade, and agriculture. And if the supply of linen rags is not enough

to meet one-half nor one-third of the demand, some cheaper material

than linen rags must be found for cheap paper. This deduction is based

on facts that came under my knowledge here. The Angouleme paper-

makers, the last to use pure linen rags, say that the proportion of

cotton in the pulp has increased to a frightful extent of late years."

In answer to a question from Eve, who did not know what "pulp" meant,

David gave an account of paper-making, which will not be out of place

in a volume which owes its existence in book form to the paper

industry no less than to the printing-press; but the long digression,

doubtless, had best be condensed at first.

Paper, an invention not less marvelous than the other dependent

invention of printing, was known in ancient times in China. Thence by

the unrecognized channels of commerce the art reached Asia Minor,

where paper was made of cotton reduced to pulp and boiled. Parchment

had become so extremely dear that a cheap substitute was discovered in

an imitation of the cotton paper known in the East as Charta

bombycina. The imitation, made from rags, was first made at Basel, in

1170, by a colony of Greek refugees, according to some authorities; or

at Padua, in 1301, by an Italian named Pax, according to others. In

these ways the manufacture of paper was perfected slowly and in

obscurity; but this much is certain, that so early as the reign of

Charles VI., paper pulp for playing-cards was made in Paris.

When those immortals, Faust, Coster, and Gutenberg, invented the Book,

craftsmen as obscure as many a great artist of those times

appropriated paper to the uses of typography. In the fifteenth

century, that naive and vigorous age, names were given to the various

formats as well as to the different sizes of type, names that bear the

impress of the naivete of the times; and the various sheets came to be

known by the different watermarks on their centres; the grapes, the

figure of our Saviour, the crown, the shield, or the flower-pot, just

as at a later day, the eagle of Napoleon's time gave the name to the

"double-eagle" size. And in the same way the types were called Cicero,

Saint-Augustine, and Canon type, because they were first used to print

the treatises of Cicero and theological and liturgical works. Italics

are so called because they were invented in Italy by Aldus of Venice.

Before the invention of machine-made paper, which can be woven in any

length, the largest sized sheets were the grand jesus and the double

columbier (this last being scarcely used now except for atlases or

engravings), and the size of paper for printers' use was determined by

the dimensions of the impression-stone. When David explained these

things to Eve, web-paper was almost undreamed of in France, although,

about 1799, Denis Robert d'Essonne had invented a machine for turning

out a ribbon of paper, and Didot-Saint-Leger had since tried to

perfect it. The vellum paper invented by Ambroise Didot only dates

back as far as 1780.