________________________________________________
_ When Lucien returned home, he found Coralie stretched out straight and stiff on a pallet-bed; Berenice, with many tears, had wrapped her in a coarse linen sheet, and put lighted candles at the four corners of the bed. Coralie's face had taken that strange, delicate beauty of death which so vividly impresses the living with the idea of absolute calm; she looked like some white girl in a decline; it seemed as if those pale, crimson lips must open and murmur the name which had blended with the name of God in the last words that she uttered before she died.
Lucien told Berenice to order a funeral which should not cost more than two hundred francs, including the service at the shabby little church of the Bonne-Nouvelle. As soon as she had gone out, he sat down to a table, and beside the dead body of his love he composed ten rollicking songs to fit popular airs. The effort cost him untold anguish, but at last the brain began to work at the bidding of Necessity, as if suffering were not; and already Lucien had learned to put Claude Vignon's terrible maxims in practice, and to raise a barrier between heart and brain. What a night the poor boy spent over those drinking songs, writing by the light of the tall wax candles while the priest recited the prayers for the dead!
Morning broke before the last song was finished. Lucien tried it over to a street-song of the day, to the consternation of Berenice and the priest, who thought that he was mad:--
Lads, 'tis tedious waste of time
To mingle song and reason;
Folly calls for laughing rhyme,
Sense is out of season.
Let Apollo be forgot
When Bacchus fills the drinking-cup;
Any catch is good, I wot,
If good fellows take it up.
Let philosophers protest,
Let us laugh,
And quaff,
And a fig for the rest!
As Hippocrates has said,
Every jolly fellow,
When a century has sped,
Still is fit and mellow.
No more following of a lass
With the palsy in your legs?
--While your hand can hold a glass,
You can drain it to the dregs,
With an undiminished zest.
Let us laugh,
And quaff,
And a fig for the rest!
Whence we come we know full well.
Whiter are we going?
Ne'er a one of us can tell,
'Tis a thing past knowing.
Faith! what does it signify,
Take the good that Heaven sends;
It is certain that we die,
Certain that we live, my friends.
Life is nothing but a jest.
Let us laugh,
And quaff,
And a fig for the rest!
He was shouting the reckless refrain when d'Arthez and Bianchon arrived, to find him in a paroxysm of despair and exhaustion, utterly unable to make a fair copy of his verses. A torrent of tears followed; and when, amid his sobs, he had told his story, he saw the tears standing in his friends' eyes.
"This wipes out many sins," said d'Arthez.
"Happy are they who suffer for their sins in this world," the priest said solemnly.
At the sight of the fair, dead face smiling at Eternity, while Coralie's lover wrote tavern-catches to buy a grave for her, and Barbet paid for the coffin--of the four candles lighted about the dead body of her who had thrilled a great audience as she stood behind the footlights in her Spanish basquina and scarlet green-clocked stockings; while beyond in the doorway, stood the priest who had reconciled the dying actress with God, now about to return to the church to say a mass for the soul of her who had "loved much,"--all the grandeur and the sordid aspects of the scene, all that sorrow crushed under by Necessity, froze the blood of the great writer and the great doctor. They sat down; neither of them could utter a word.
Just at that moment a servant in livery announced Mlle. des Touches. That beautiful and noble woman understood everything at once. She stepped quickly across the room to Lucien, and slipped two thousand-franc notes into his hand as she grasped it.
"It is too late," he said, looking up at her with dull, hopeless eyes.
The three stayed with Lucien, trying to soothe his despair with comforting words; but every spring seemed to be broken. At noon all the brotherhood, with the exception of Michel Chrestien (who, however, had learned the truth as to Lucien's treachery), was assembled in the poor little church of the Bonne-Nouvelle; Mlle. de Touches was present, and Berenice and Coralie's dresser from the theatre, with a couple of supernumeraries and the disconsolate Camusot. All the men accompanied the actress to her last resting-place in Pere Lachaise. Camusot, shedding hot tears, had solemnly promised Lucien to buy the grave in perpetuity, and to put a headstone above it with the words:
CORALIE
AGED NINETEEN YEARS
August, 1822
Lucien stayed there, on the sloping ground that looks out over Paris, until the sun had set.
"Who will love me now?" he thought. "My truest friends despise me. Whatever I might have done, she who lies here would have thought me wholly noble and good. I have no one left to me now but my sister and mother and David. And what do they think of me at home?"
Poor distinguished provincial! He went back to the Rue de la Lune; but the sight of the rooms was so acutely painful, that he could not stay in them, and he took a cheap lodging elsewhere in the same street. Mlle. des Touches' two thousand francs and the sale of the furniture paid the debts.
Berenice had two hundred francs left, on which they lived for two months. Lucien was prostrate; he could neither write nor think; he gave way to morbid grief. Berenice took pity upon him.
"Suppose that you were to go back to your own country, how are you to get there?" she asked one day, by way of reply to an exclamation of Lucien's.
"On foot."
"But even so, you must live and sleep on the way. Even if you walk twelve leagues a day, you will want twenty francs at least."
"I will get them together," he said.
He took his clothes and his best linen, keeping nothing but strict necessaries, and went to Samanon, who offered fifty francs for his entire wardrobe. In vain he begged the money-lender to let him have enough to pay his fare by the coach; Samanon was inexorable. In a paroxysm of fury, Lucien rushed to Frascati's, staked the proceeds of the sale, and lost every farthing. Back once more in the wretched room in the Rue de la Lune, he asked Berenice for Coralie's shawl. The good girl looked at him, and knew in a moment what he meant to do. He had confessed to his loss at the gaming-table; and now he was going to hang himself.
"Are you mad, sir? Go out for a walk, and come back again at midnight. I will get the money for you; but keep to the Boulevards, do not go towards the Quais."
Lucien paced up and down the Boulevards. He was stupid with grief. He watched the passers-by and the stream of traffic, and felt that he was alone, and a very small atom in this seething whirlpool of Paris, churned by the strife of innumerable interests. His thoughts went back to the banks of his Charente; a craving for happiness and home awoke in him; and with the craving, came one of the sudden febrile bursts of energy which half-feminine natures like his mistake for strength. He would not give up until he had poured out his heart to David Sechard, and taken counsel of the three good angels still left to him on earth.
As he lounged along, he caught sight of Berenice--Berenice in her Sunday clothes, speaking to a stranger at the corner of the Rue de la Lune and the filthy Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, where she had taken her stand.
"What are you doing?" asked Lucien, dismayed by a sudden suspicion.
"Here are your twenty francs," said the girl, slipping four five-franc pieces into the poet's hand. "They may cost dear yet; but you can go," and she had fled before Lucien could see the way she went; for, in justice to him, it must be said that the money burned his hand, he wanted to return it, but he was forced to keep it as the final brand set upon him by life in Paris.
ADDENDUM
Note: A Distinguished Provincial at Paris is part two of a trilogy. Part one is entitled Two Poets and part three is Eve and David. In other addendum references parts one and three are usually combined under the title Lost Illusions.
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Barbet
A Man of Business
The Seamy Side of History
The Middle ClassesBeaudenord, Godefroid de
The Ball at Sceaux
The Firm of Nucingen
Berenice
Lost Illusions
Bianchon, Horace
Father Goriot
The Atheist's Mass
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
Lost Illusions
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Secrets of a Princess
The Government Clerks
Pierrette
A Study of Woman
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Honorine
The Seamy Side of History
The Magic Skin
A Second Home
A Prince of Bohemia
Letters of Two Brides
The Muse of the Department
The Imaginary Mistress
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
The Country Parson
In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
Another Study of Woman
La Grande Breteche
Blondet, Emile
Jealousies of a Country Town
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Modeste Mignon
Another Study of Woman
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
The Firm of Nucingen
The Peasantry
Blondet, Virginie
Jealousies of a Country Town
The Secrets of a Princess
The Peasantry
Another Study of Woman
The Member for Arcis
A Daughter of Eve
Braulard
Cousin Betty
Cousin Pons
Bridau, Joseph
The Purse
A Bachelor's Establishment
A Start in Life
Modeste Mignon
Another Study of Woman
Pierre Grassou
Letters of Two Brides
Cousin Betty
The Member for Arcis
Bruel, Jean Francois du
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Government Clerks
A Start in Life
A Prince of Bohemia
The Middle Classes
A Daughter of Eve
Bruel, Claudine Chaffaroux, Madame du
A Bachelor's Establishment
A Prince of Bohemia
Letters of Two Brides
The Middle Classes
Cabirolle, Agathe-Florentine
A Start in Life
Lost Illusions
A Bachelor's Establishment
Camusot
A Bachelor's Establishment
Cousin Pons
The Muse of the Department
Cesar Birotteau
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de
Letters of Two Brides
Modeste Mignon
The Magic Skin
Another Study of Woman
A Start in Life
Beatrix
The Unconscious Humorists
The Member for Arcis
Cardot, Jean-Jerome-Severin
A Start in Life
Lost Illusions
A Bachelor's Establishment
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Cesar Birotteau
Carigliano, Duchesse de
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
The Peasantry
The Member for Arcis
Cavalier
The Seamy Side of History
Chaboisseau
The Government Clerks
A Man of Business
Chatelet, Sixte, Baron du
Lost Illusions
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Thirteen
Chatelet, Marie-Louise-Anais de Negrepelisse, Baronne du
Lost Illusions
The Government Clerks
Chrestien, Michel
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Secrets of a Princess
Collin, Jacques
Father Goriot
Lost Illusions
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Member for Arcis
Coloquinte
A Bachelor's Establishment
Coralie, Mademoiselle
A Start in Life
A Bachelor's Establishment
Dauriat
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Modeste Mignon
Desroches (son)
A Bachelor's Establishment
Colonel Chabert
A Start in Life
A Woman of Thirty
The Commission in Lunacy
The Government Clerks
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Firm of Nucingen
A Man of Business
The Middle Classes
Arthez, Daniel d'
Letters of Two Brides
The Member for Arcis
The Secrets of a Princess
Espard, Jeanne-Clementine-Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, Marquise d'
The Commission in Lunacy
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Letters of Two Brides
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
Beatrix
Finot, Andoche
Cesar Birotteau
A Bachelor's Establishment
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Government Clerks
A Start in Life
Gaudissart the Great
The Firm of Nucingen
Foy, Maximilien-Sebastien
Cesar Birotteau
Gaillard, Theodore
Beatrix
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Unconscious Humorists
Gaillard, Madame Theodore
Jealousies of a Country Town
A Bachelor's Establishment
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Beatrix
The Unconscious Humorists
Galathionne, Prince and Princess (both not in each story)
The Secrets of a Princess
The Middle Classes
Father Goriot
A Daughter of Eve
Beatrix
Gentil
Lost Illusions
Giraud, Leon
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Secrets of a Princess
The Unconscious Humorists
Giroudeau
A Start in Life
A Bachelor's Establishment
Grindot
Cesar Birotteau
Lost Illusions
A Start in Life
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Beatrix
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
Lambert, Louis
Louis Lambert
A Seaside Tragedy
Listomere, Marquis de
The Lily of the Valley
A Study of Woman
Listomere, Marquise de
The Lily of the Valley
Lost Illusions
A Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve
Lousteau, Etienne
A Bachelor's Establishment
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
A Daughter of Eve
Beatrix
The Muse of the Department
Cousin Betty
A Prince of Bohemia
A Man of Business
The Middle Classes
The Unconscious Humorists
Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des
The Muse of the Department
Eugenie Grandet
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Government Clerks
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Ursule Mirouet
Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de
The Thirteen
The Ball at Sceaux
Lost Illusions
A Marriage Settlement
Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
The Lily of the Valley
Father Goriot
Jealousies of a Country Town
Ursule Mirouet
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modeste Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
Matifat (wealthy druggist)
Cesar Birotteau
A Bachelor's Establishment
Lost Illusions
The Firm of Nucingen
Cousin Pons
Meyraux
Louis Lambert
Montcornet, Marechal, Comte de
Domestic Peace
Lost Illusions
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Peasantry
A Man of Business
Cousin Betty
Montriveau, General Marquis Armand de
The Thirteen
Father Goriot
Lost Illusions
Another Study of Woman
Pierrette
The Member for Arcis
Nathan, Raoul
Lost Illusions
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
Letters of Two Brides
The Seamy Side of History
The Muse of the Department
A Prince of Bohemia
A Man of Business
The Unconscious Humorists
Nathan, Madame Raoul
The Muse of the Department
Lost Illusions
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Government Clerks
A Bachelor's Establishment
Ursule Mirouet
Eugenie Grandet
The Imaginary Mistress
A Prince of Bohemia
Negrepelisse, De
The Commission in Lunacy
Lost Illusions
Nucingen, Baron Frederic de
The Firm of Nucingen
Father Goriot
Pierrette
Cesar Birotteau
Lost Illusions
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Another Study of Woman
The Secrets of a Princess
A Man of Business
Cousin Betty
The Muse of the Department
The Unconscious Humorists
Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
Father Goriot
The Thirteen
Eugenie Grandet
Cesar Birotteau
Melmoth Reconciled
Lost Illusions
The Commission in Lunacy
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Modeste Mignon
The Firm of Nucingen
Another Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve
The Member for Arcis
Palma (banker)
The Firm of Nucingen
Cesar Birotteau
Gobseck
Lost Illusions
The Ball at Sceaux
Pombreton, Marquis de
Lost Illusions
Jealousies of a Country Town
Rastignac, Eugene de
Father Goriot
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Ball at Sceaux
The Commission in Lunacy
A Study of Woman
Another Study of Woman
The Magic Skin
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
The Gondreville Mystery
The Firm of Nucingen
Cousin Betty
The Member for Arcis
The Unconscious Humorists
Rhetore, Duc Alphonse de
A Bachelor's Establishment
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Letters of Two Brides
Albert Savarus
The Member for Arcis
Ridal, Fulgence
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Unconscious Humorists
Rubempre, Lucien-Chardon de
Lost Illusions
The Government Clerks
Ursule Mirouet
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Samanon
The Government Clerks
A Man of Business
Cousin Betty
Sechard, David
Lost Illusions
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Sechard, Madame David
Lost Illusions
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Tillet, Ferdinand du
Cesar Birotteau
The Firm of Nucingen
The Middle Classes
A Bachelor's Establishment
Pierrette
Melmoth Reconciled
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
The Member for Arcis
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists
Touches, Mademoiselle Felicite des
Beatrix
Lost Illusions
A Bachelor's Establishment
Another Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve
Honorine
Beatrix
The Muse of the Department
Vandenesse, Comte Felix de
The Lily of the Valley
Lost Illusions
Cesar Birotteau
Letters of Two Brides
A Start in Life
The Marriage Settlement
The Secrets of a Princess
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
Vernou, Felicien
A Bachelor's Establishment
Lost Illusions
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
A Daughter of Eve
Cousin Betty
Vignon, Claude
A Daughter of Eve
Honorine
Beatrix
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists
[THE END]
Honore de Balzac's Novel: Distinguished Provincial at Paris
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