“Oh! come, it will only be a moderate success, I can see,” said Finot.
“Three of the theatres have got up a plot,” continued the manager; “they will even hiss the piece, but I have made arrangements to defeat their kind intentions. I have squared the men in their pay; they will make a muddle of it. A couple of city men yonder have taken a hundred tickets apiece to secure a triumph for Florine and Coralie, and given them to acquaintances able and ready to act as chuckers out. The fellows, having been paid twice, will go quietly, and a scene of that sort always makes a good impression on the house.”
“Two hundred tickets! What invaluable men!” exclaimed Finot.
“Yes. With two more actresses as handsomely kept as Florine and Coralie, I should make something out of the business.”
For the past two hours the word money had been sounding in Lucien’s ears as the solution of every difficulty. In the theatre as in the publishing trade, and in the publishing trade as in the newspaper-office—it was everywhere the same; there was not a word of art or of glory. The steady beat of the great pendulum, Money, seemed to fall like hammer-strokes on his heart and brain. And yet while the orchestra played the overture, while the pit was full of noisy tumult of applause and hisses, unconsciously he drew a comparison between this scene and others that came up in his mind. Visions arose before him of David and the printing-office, of the poetry that he came to know in that atmosphere of pure peace, when together they beheld the wonders of Art, the high successes of genius, and visions of glory borne on stainless wings. He thought of the evenings spent with d’Arthez and his friends, and tears glittered in his eyes.
“What is the matter with you?” asked Etienne Lousteau.
“I see poetry fallen into the mire.”
“Ah! you have still some illusions left, my dear fellow.”
“Is there nothing for it but to cringe and submit to thickheads like Matifat and Camusot, as actresses bow down to journalists, and we ourselves to the booksellers?”
“My boy, do you see that dull-brained fellow?” said Etienne, lowering his voice, and glancing at Finot. “He has neither genius nor cleverness, but he is covetous; he means to make a fortune at all costs, and he is a keen man of business. Didn’t you see how he made forty per cent out of me at Dauriat’s, and talked as if he were doing me a favor?—Well, he gets letters from not a few unknown men of genius who go down on their knées to him for a hundred francs.”