"Hurrah for the writer of The Archer of Charles IX.! . . . Hurrah for the poet of the Marguerites! . . . Long live Lucien de Rubempre!"
After these three salvos, taken up by some few voices, three crowns and a quantity of bouquets were adroitly flung into the room through the open window. Ten minutes later the Place du Murier was empty, and silence prevailed in the streets.
"I would rather have ten thousand francs," said old Sechard, fingering the bouquets and garlands with a satirical expression. "You gave them daisies, and they give you posies in return; you deal in flowers."
"So that is your opinion of the honors shown me by my fellow-townsmen, is it?" asked Lucien. All his melancholy had left him, his face was radiant with good humor. "If you knew mankind, Papa Sechard, you would see that no moment in one's life comes twice. Such a triumph as this can only be due to genuine enthusiasm! . . . My dear mother, my good sister, this wipes out many mortifications."
Lucien kissed them; for when joy overflows like a torrent flood, we are fain to pour it out into a friend's heart. "When an author is intoxicated with success, he will hug his porter if there is nobody else on hand," according to Bixiou.
"Why, darling, why are you crying?" he said, looking into Eve's face.
"Ah! I know, you are crying for joy!"
"Oh me!" said her mother, shaking her head as she spoke. "Lucien has forgotten everything already; not merely his own troubles, but ours as well."
Mother and daughter separated, and neither dared to utter all her thoughts.
In a country eaten up with the kind of social insubordination disguised by the word Equality, a triumph of any kind whatsoever is a sort of miracle which requires, like some other miracles for that matter, the co-operation of skilled labor. Out of ten ovations offered to ten living men, selected for this distinction by a grateful country, you may be quite sure that nine are given from considerations connected as remotely as possible with the conspicuous merits of the renowned recipient. What was Voltaire's apotheosis at the Theatre-Francais but the triumph of eighteenth century philosophy? A triumph in France means that everybody else feels that he is adorning his own temples with the crown that he sets on the idol's head.
The women's presentiments proved correct. The distinguished provincial's reception was antipathetic to Angoumoisin immobility; it was too evidently got up by some interested persons or by enthusiastic stage mechanics, a suspicious combination. Eve, moreover, like most of her sex, was distrustful by instinct, even when reason failed to justify her suspicions to herself. "Who can be so fond of Lucien that he could rouse the town for him?" she wondered as she fell asleep. "The Marguerites are not published yet; how can they compliment him on a future success?"