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Updated: June 26, 2025
"Well, so you are a journalist, are you?" asked Leon Giraud. "The fame of your first appearance has reached even the Latin Quarter." "I am not a journalist yet," returned Lucien. "Aha! So much the better," said Michel Chrestien. "I told you so!" said d'Arthez. "Lucien knows the value of a clean conscience.
"When they find out that I am tolerating Camusot, how they will despise me," he thought. "Look here," said the fierce republican, with humorous fierceness, "you can be a great writer, but a little play-actor you shall never be," and he took up his hat and went out. "He is hard, is Michel Chrestien," commented Lucien. "Hard and salutary, like the dentist's pincers," said Bianchon.
And you shall paint her portrait; she shall sit to you if you like for your Venetian lady brought by the old woman to the senator." "All women who love are angelic," said Michel Chrestien. Just at that moment Raoul Nathan flew upon Lucien, and grasped both his hands and shook them in a sudden access of violent friendship.
The mother thought only of her son; she herself counted for nothing; sustained by love, she was unaware of her sufferings. D'Arthez, Michel Chrestien, Fulgence Ridal, Pierre Grassou, and Bianchon often kept Joseph company, and she heard them talking art in a low voice in a corner of her room.
"We have all of us found a bit of extra work," said Bianchon; "for my own part, I have been looking after a rich patient for Desplein; d'Arthez has written an article for the Revue Encyclopedique; Chrestien thought of going out to sing in the Champs Elysees of an evening with a pocket-handkerchief and four candles, but he found a pamphlet to write instead for a man who has a mind to go into politics, and gave his employer six hundred francs worth of Machiavelli; Leon Giraud borrowed fifty francs of his publisher, Joseph sold one or two sketches; and Fulgence's piece was given on Sunday, and there was a full house."
"Don't think us unkind, dear boy," said Michel Chrestien; "we are looking forward. We are afraid lest some day you may prefer a petty revenge to the joys of pure friendship. Read Goethe's Tasso, the great master's greatest work, and you will see how the poet-hero loved gorgeous stuffs and banquets and triumph and applause. Very well, be Tasso without his folly.
"And what sort of a friendship is it which recoils from complicity?" demanded he one evening of Michel Chrestien; Lucien and Leon Giraud were walking home with their friend. "We shrink from nothing," Michel Chrestien made reply.
"And how about our sonnets," said Michel Chrestien; "is that the way they will win us the fame of a second Petrarch?" "Faciamus experimentum in anima vili," retorted Lucien with a smile. "And woe unto him whom reviewers shall spare, flinging him crowns at his first appearance, for he shall be shelved like the saints in their shrines, and no man shall pay him the slightest attention," said Vernou.
By the time your victory is won, I shall have gained my end." "We will cut off your hair," said Michel Chrestien, with a laugh. "I shall have my children by that time," said Lucien; "and if you cut off my head, it will not matter." The three could make nothing of Lucien. Intercourse with the great world had developed in him the pride of caste, the vanities of the aristocrat.
"You will need a lot of capital," continued Lucien. "No, only devotion," said d'Arthez. "Anybody might take him for a perfumer's assistant," burst out Michel Chrestien, looking at Lucien's head, and sniffing comically. "You were seen driving about in a very smart turnout with a pair of thoroughbreds, and a mistress for a prince, Coralie herself." "Well, and is there any harm in it?"
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