第18章

Lucien,like all neophytes,was modest and regular in his habits in those early days at the Hotel de Cluny.After the first unlucky venture in fashionable life which absorbed his capital,he threw himself into his work with the first earnest enthusiasm,which is frittered away so soon over the difficulties or in the by-paths of every life in Paris.The most luxurious and the very poorest lives are equally beset with temptations which nothing but the fierce energy of genius or the morose persistence of ambition can overcome.

Lucien used to drop in at Flicoteaux's about half-past four,having remarked the advantages of an early arrival;the bill-of-fare was more varied,and there was still some chance of obtaining the dish of your choice.Like all imaginative persons,he had taken a fancy to a particular seat,and showed discrimination in his selection.On the very first day he had noticed a table near the counter,and from the faces of those who sat about it,and chance snatches of their talk,he recognized brothers of the craft.A sort of instinct,moreover,pointed out the table near the counter as a spot whence he could parlay with the owners of the restaurant.In time an acquaintance would grow up,he thought,and then in the day of distress he could no doubt obtain the necessary credit.So he took his place at a small square table close to the desk,intended probably for casual comers,for the two clean serviettes were unadorned with rings.Lucien's opposite neighbor was a thin,pallid youth,to all appearance as poor as himself;his handsome face was somewhat worn,already it told of hopes that had vanished,leaving lines upon his forehead and barren furrows in his soul,where seeds had been sown that had come to nothing.Lucien felt drawn to the stranger by these tokens;his sympathies went out to him with irresistible fervor.

After a week's exchange of small courtesies and remarks,the poet from Angouleme found the first person with whom he could chat.The stranger's name was Etienne Lousteau.Two years ago he had left his native place,a town in Berri,just as Lucien had come from Angouleme.

His lively gestures,bright eyes,and occasionally curt speech revealed a bitter apprenticeship to literature.Etienne had come from Sancerre with his tragedy in his pocket,drawn to Paris by the same motives that impelled Lucien--hope of fame and power and money.

Sometimes Etienne Lousteau came for several days together;but in a little while his visits became few and far between,and he would stay away for five or six days in succession.Then he would come back,and Lucien would hope to see his poet next day,only to find a stranger in his place.When two young men meet daily,their talk harks back to their last conversation;but these continual interruptions obliged Lucien to break the ice afresh each time,and further checked an intimacy which made little progress during the first few weeks.On inquiry of the damsel at the counter,Lucien was told that his future friend was on the staff of a small newspaper,and wrote reviews of books and dramatic criticism of pieces played at the Ambigu-Comique,the Gaite,and the Panorama-Dramatique.The young man became a personage all at once in Lucien's eyes.Now,he thought,he would lead the conversation on rather more personal topics,and make some effort to gain a friend so likely to be useful to a beginner.The journalist stayed away for a fortnight.Lucien did not know that Etienne only dined at Flicoteaux's when he was hard up,and hence his gloomy air of disenchantment and the chilly manner,which Lucien met with gracious smiles and amiable remarks.But,after all,the project of a friendship called for mature deliberation.This obscure journalist appeared to lead an expensive life in which petits verres,cups of coffee,punch-bowls,sight-seeing,and suppers played a part.In the early days of Lucien's life in the Latin Quarter,he behaved like a poor child bewildered by his first experience of Paris life;so that when he had made a study of prices and weighed his purse,he lacked courage to make advances to Etienne;he was afraid of beginning a fresh series of blunders of which he was still repenting.And he was still under the yoke of provincial creeds;his two guardian angels,Eve and David,rose up before him at the least approach of an evil thought,putting him in mind of all the hopes that were centered on him,of the happiness that he owed to the old mother,of all the promises of his genius.

He spent his mornings in studying history at the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve.His very first researches made him aware of frightful errors in the memoirs of The Archer of Charles IX.When the library closed,he went back to his damp,chilly room to correct his work,cutting out whole chapters and piecing it together anew.And after dining at Flicoteaux's,he went down to the Passage du Commerce to see the newspapers at Blosse's reading-room,as well as new books and magazines and poetry,so as to keep himself informed of the movements of the day.And when,towards midnight,he returned to his wretched lodgings,he had used neither fuel nor candle-light.His reading in those days made such an enormous change in his ideas,that he revised the volume of flower-sonnets,his beloved Marguerites,working them over to such purpose,that scarce a hundred lines of the original verses were allowed to stand.

So in the beginning Lucien led the honest,innocent life of the country lad who never leaves the Latin Quarter;devoting himself wholly to his work,with thoughts of the future always before him;who finds Flicoteaux's ordinary luxurious after the simple home-fare;and strolls for recreation along the alleys of the Luxembourg,the blood surging back to his heart as he gives timid side glances to the pretty women.But this could not last.Lucien,with his poetic temperament and boundless longings,could not withstand the temptations held out by the play-bills.