A Distinguished Provincial at Paris | Page 9

decide
to bring an interest of a kind hitherto lacking into your life, let it not be
this so-called genius, I implore you. How if you have made a mistake?
Suppose that in a few days' time, when you have compared him with
men whom you will meet, men of real ability, men who have
distinguished themselves in good earnest; suppose that you should
discover, dear and fair siren, that it is no lyre-bearer that you have
borne into port on your dazzling shoulders, but a little ape, with no
manners and no capacity; a presumptuous fool who may be a wit in
L'Houmeau, but turns out a very ordinary specimen of a young man in
Paris? And, after all, volumes of verse come out every week here, the
worst of them better than all M. Chardon's poetry put together. For
pity's sake, wait and compare! To-morrow, Friday, is Opera night," he
continued as the carriage turned into the Rue Nueve-de-Luxembourg;
"Mme. d'Espard has the box of the First Gentlemen of the Chamber,
and will take you, no doubt. I shall go to Mme. de Serizy's box to
behold you in your glory. They are giving Les Danaides."
"Good-bye," said she.
Next morning Mme. de Bargeton tried to arrange a suitable toilette in
which to call on her cousin, Mme. d'Espard. The weather was rather
chilly. Looking through the dowdy wardrobe from Angouleme, she
found nothing better than a certain green velvet gown, trimmed
fantastically enough. Lucien, for his part, felt that he must go at once
for his celebrated blue best coat; he felt aghast at the thought of his
tight jacket, and determined to be well dressed, lest he should meet the
Marquise d'Espard or receive a sudden summons to her house. He must
have his luggage at once, so he took a cab, and in two hours' time spent
three or four francs, matter for much subsequent reflection on the scale
of the cost of living in Paris. Having dressed himself in his best, such as
it was, he went to the Rue Nueve-de-Luxembourg, and on the doorstep

encountered Gentil in company with a gorgeously be-feathered
chasseur.
"I was just going round to you, sir, madame gave me a line for you,"
said Gentil, ignorant of Parisian forms of respect, and accustomed to
homely provincial ways. The chasseur took the poet for a servant.
Lucien tore open the note, and learned that Mme. de Bargeton had gone
to spend the day with the Marquise d'Espard. She was going to the
Opera in the evening, but she told Lucien to be there to meet her. Her
cousin permitted her to give him a seat in her box. The Marquise
d'Espard was delighted to procure the young poet that pleasure.
"Then she loves me! my fears were all nonsense!" said Lucien to
himself. "She is going to present me to her cousin this very evening."
He jumped for joy. He would spend the day that separated him from the
happy evening as joyously as might be. He dashed out in the direction
of the Tuileries, dreaming of walking there until it was time to dine at
Very's. And now, behold Lucien frisking and skipping, light of foot
because light of heart, on his way to the Terrasse des Feuillants to take
a look at the people of quality on promenade there. Pretty women walk
arm-in-arm with men of fashion, their adorers, couples greet each other
with a glance as they pass; how different it is from the terrace at
Beaulieu! How far finer the birds on this perch than the Angouleme
species! It is as if you beheld all the colors that glow in the plumage of
the feathered tribes of India and America, instead of the sober
European families.
Those were two wretched hours that Lucien spent in the Garden of the
Tuileries. A violent revulsion swept through him, and he sat in
judgment upon himself.
In the first place, not a single one of these gilded youths wore a
swallow-tail coat. The few exceptions, one or two poor wretches, a
clerk here and there, an annuitant from the Marais, could be ruled out
on the score of age; and hard upon the discovery of a distinction
between morning and evening dress, the poet's quick sensibility and

keen eyes saw likewise that his shabby old clothes were not fit to be
seen; the defects in his coat branded that garment as ridiculous; the cut
was old-fashioned, the color was the wrong shade of blue, the collar
outrageously ungainly, the coat tails, by dint of long wear, overlapped
each other, the buttons were reddened, and there were fatal white lines
along the seams. Then his waistcoat was too short, and so grotesquely
provincial, that he hastily buttoned his coat over it;