“Have you a vested interest in him? Are you jealous of fine ladies?”
“Yes,” cried Coralie. “They are worse than we are.”
“How do you know that, my pet?” asked Blondet.
“From their husbands,” retorted she. “You are forgetting that I once had six months of de Marsay.”
“Do you suppose, child, that I am particularly anxious to take such a handsome fellow as your poet to Mme. de Montcornet’s house? If you object, let us consider that nothing has been said. But I don’t fancy that the women are so much in question as a poor devil that Lucien pilloried in his newspaper; he is begging for mercy and peace. The Baron du Châtelet is imbecile enough to take the thing seriously. The Marquise d’Espard, Mme. de Bargeton, and Mme. de Montcornet’s set have taken up the Heron’s cause; and I have undertaken to reconcile Petrarch and his Laura—Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien.”
“Aha!” cried Lucien, the glow of the intoxication of revenge throbbing full-pulsed through every vein. “Aha! so my foot is on their necks! You make me adore my pen, worship my friends, bow down to the fate-dispensing power of the press. I have not written a single sentence as yet upon the Heron and the Cuttlefish-bone.—I will go with you, my boy,” he cried, catching Blondet by the waist; “yes, I will go; but first, the couple shall feel the weight of this, for so light as it is.” He flourished the pen which had written the article upon Nathan.
“To-morrow,” he cried, “I will hurl a couple of columns at their heads. Then, we shall see. Don’t be frightened, Coralie, it is not love but revenge; revenge! And I will have it to the full!”
“What a man it is!” said Blondet. “If you but knew, Lucien, how rare such explosions are in this jaded Paris, you might appreciate yourself. You will be a precious scamp” (the actual expression was a trifle stronger); “you are in a fair way to be a power in the land.”
“He will get on,” said Coralie.
“Well, he has come a good way already in six weeks.”