Etienne Lousteau

“ Instead of looking for the meaning of these speeches, Etienne made a jest of them at Malaga's, whither he went with his father-in-law elect; for the notary and the journalist were the best of friends.
Lousteau had already given himself the airs of a person of importance; his life at last was to have a purpose; he was in luck's way, and in a few days would be the owner of a delightful little house in the Rue Saint-Lazare; he was going to be married to a charming woman, he would have about twenty thousand francs a year, and could give the reins to his ambition ”

“ Behold how the New World twice set a bad example to the Old!”
“In journalism,” said Lousteau, “everything that is probable is true. That is an axiom.”
“Criminal procedure is based on the same rule,” said Vernou.
“Very well, we meet here at nine o’clock,” and with that they rose, and the sitting broke up with the most affecting demonstrations of intimacy and good-will.
“What have you done to Finot, Lucien, that he should make a special arrangement with you? You are the only one that he has bound to himself,” said Etienne Lousteau, as they came downstairs. ”

“ From that day forth Etienne lived in luxury; and Dinah, on first nights, could hold her own with the best dressed women in Paris. Lousteau was so fatuous as to affect, among his friends, the attitude of a man overborne, bored to extinction, ruined by Madame de la Baudraye.
"Oh, what would I not give to the friend who would deliver me from Dinah! But no one ever can!" said he. "She loves me enough to throw herself out of the window if I told her." ”

“ I will go and see Etienne Lousteau, Vernou——"
"I cannot go beyond my orders, my boy," said the veteran. "What! do you cry out against your foster-mother for a matter of fifteen francs? you that turn out an article as easily as I smoke a cigar. Fifteen francs! why, you will give a bowl of punch to your friends, or win an extra game of billiards, and there's an end of it!"
"Finot's savings will cost him very dear," said the contributor as he took his departure.
"Now, would not anybody think that he was Rousseau and Voltaire rolled in one?" the cashier remarked to himself as he glanced at Lucien. ”

“ After a short scrutiny, he returned them to Lucien with a serious countenance.
"MM Fendant and Cavalier are delightful young fellows; they have plenty of intelligence; but, I have no money," he said blandly.
"My friend here would be willing to meet you in the matter of discount——" Etienne began.
"I would not take the bills on any consideration," returned the little broker. The words slid down upon Lousteau's suggestion like the blade of the guillotine on a man's neck. ”

“ At this moment Madame de la Baudraye came in, dressed in a velvet gown, and accompanied by her mother, who shot angry flashes at Lousteau. It would have been too rash for Dinah to seem cold or severe to Lousteau in Gatien's presence; and Etienne, taking advantage of this, offered his arm to the supposed Lucretia; however, she declined it.
"Do you mean to cast off a man who has vowed to live for you?" said he, walking close beside her. "I shall stop at Sancerre and go home to-morrow." ”

“ He shone for a time in the salon of Madame de Bargeton, born Marie-Louise-Anais de Negrepelisse, who became enamored of him, enticed him to Paris, and there deserted him, at the instigation of her cousin, Madame d'Espard. He met the members of the Cenacle on rue des Quatre-Vents, and became well acquainted with D'Arthez. Etienne Lousteau, who revealed to him the shameful truth concerning literary life, introduced him to the well-known publisher, Dauriat, and escorted him to an opening night at the Panorama-Dramatique theatre, where the poet saw the charming Coralie. ”

“ You smoke, she preaches at me, poor woman! But she takes great care of the children, she takes them out, she is absolutely devoted, and idolizes me. Would you hinder her from crying?"
"What will be thought of me?"
"But we do not live for the world!" cried she, raising Etienne and making him sit by her. "Besides, we shall be married some day — we have the risks of a sea voyage — — "
"I never thought of that," said Lousteau simply; and he added to himself, "Time enough to part when little La Baudraye is safe back again." ”

“ Lucien and Lousteau were the last to go. Lousteau set a kiss on Florine's shoulder, and Lucien heard her say, "Not to-night. Impossible. That stupid old animal told his wife that he was going out into the country."
"Isn't she charming?" said Etienne, as they came away.
"But—but that Matifat, my dear fellow——"
"Oh! you know nothing of Parisian life, my boy. Some things cannot be helped. Suppose that you fell in love with a married woman, it comes to the same thing. It all depends on the way that you look at it."
Etienne and Lucien entered the stage-box, and found the manager there with Finot. ”

“ The manager went, and Lucien turned to Etienne. "What! do you mean to say that you will ask that druggist, through Mlle. Florine, to pay thirty thousand francs for one-half a share, when Finot gave no more for the whole of it? And ask without the slightest scruple?——"
Lousteau interrupted Lucien before he had time to finish his expostulation. "My dear boy, what country can you come from? The druggist is not a man; he is a strong box delivered into our hands by his fancy for an actress." ”

“ I say! here are Ultras and Liberals actually shaking hands!” cried Vernou, spying the trio.
“In the morning I hold the views of my paper,” said Nathan, “in the evening I think as I please; all journalists see double at night.”
Felicien Vernou turned to Lousteau.
“Finot is looking for you, Etienne; he came with me, and—here he is!”
“Ah, by the by, there is not a place in the house, is there?” asked Finot.
“You will always find a place in our hearts,” said the actress, with the sweetest smile imaginable. ”

“ When two beings have sung together all the duets of that enchanting score, and still love each other, it may be said that they love truly.
Lousteau, however, had not time to repeat himself, for he was to leave Anzy in the early days of November. His paper required his presence in Paris. Before breakfast, on the day before he was to leave, the journalist and Dinah saw the master of the house come in with an artist from Nevers, who restored carvings of all kinds. ”

“ Dinah turned as red as a poppy, and Madame Piedefer assumed a stern expression.
“Poor Bianchon! he is on the road to Paris. A noble soul!” said Lousteau.
“Oh, yes!” cried Madame de la Baudraye, “he is high-minded, full of delicate feeling——”
“We were in such good spirits when we set out,” said Lousteau; “now you are overdone, and you speak to me so bitterly—why? Are you not accustomed to being told how handsome and how clever you are? For my part, I say boldly, before Gatien, I give up Paris; I mean to stay at Sancerre and swell the number of your cavalieri serventi. ”

“ My follies, as you may suppose, are a thing of the past.—In those days it was pleasure that ran away with me; now I am ambitious; but, in our day, to get on at all a man must be free from debt, have a good income, a wife, and a family. If I pay taxes enough to qualify me, I may be a deputy yet, like any other man.”
Maitre Cardot appreciated this profession of faith. Lousteau had laid himself out to please and the notary liked him, feeling himself more at his ease, as may be easily imagined, with a man who had known his father’s secrets than he would have been with another. ”

“ Lousteau, clever as he was, did not think it strange that the wife of a rich notary should wish to inspect a volume costing fifteen francs before deciding on the purchase. Your clever man never condescends to study the middle-class, who escape his ken by this want of attention; and while he is making game of them, they are at leisure to throttle him.
So one day early in January 1837, Madame Cardot and her daughter took a hackney coach and went to the Rue des Martyrs to return the parts of Gil Blas to Felicie's betrothed, both delighted at the thought of seeing Lousteau's rooms. ”

“ In 1836, Lousteau, worn by sixteen years of struggle in the Capital, and aged quite as much by pleasure as by penury, hard work, and disappointments, looked eight-and-forty, though he was no more than thirty-seven. He was already bald, and had assumed a Byronic air in harmony with his early decay and the lines furrowed in his face by over-indulgence in champagne. He ascribed these signs-manual of dissipation to the severities of a literary life, declaring that the Press was murderous ”

“ He accused himself with all the more virulence because he was waging war with the sharpest poverty of all — poverty unconfessed. Like all essentially light and frivolous natures, he cherished the singular point of honor which consists in never derogating in the eyes of one's own little public, which makes men on the Bourse commit crimes to escape expulsion from the temple of the goddess Per-cent, and has given some criminals courage enough to perform acts of virtue.
Lousteau dined and breakfasted and smoked as if he were a rich man. ”

“ These details of Lousteau’s life and fortune are indispensable, for this penury and this bohemian existence of a man to whom Parisian luxury had become a necessity, were fated to have a cruel influence on Dinah’s life. Those to whom the bohemia of Paris is familiar will now understand how it was that, by the end of a fortnight, the journalist, up to his ears in the literary environment, could laugh about his Baroness with his friends and even with Madame Schontz. To such readers as regard such things as utterly mean, it is almost useless to make excuses which they will not accept. ”

“ Lousteau dined and breakfasted and smoked as if he were a rich man. Not for an inheritance would he have bought any but the dearest cigars, for himself as well as for the playwright or author with whom he went into the shop. The journalist took his walks abroad in patent leather boots; but he was constantly afraid of an execution on goods which, to use the bailiff’s slang, had already received the last sacrament. Fanny Beaupre had nothing left to pawn, and her salary was pledged to pay her debts. ”

“ Tired, sometimes, by the incessant vicissitudes of a literary life, and as much bored by amusement as a courtesan, Lousteau would get out of the tideway and sit on the bank, and say to one and another of his intimate allies—Nathan or Bixiou, as they sat smoking in his scrap of garden, looking out on an evergreen lawn as big as a dinner-table:
“What will be the end of us? White hairs are giving us respectful hints!”
“Lord! we shall marry when we choose to give as much thought to the matter as we give to a drama or a novel,” said Nathan.
“And Florine?” retorted Bixiou. ”

“ Lousteau takes him to the shop of a rich Palais-Royal bookseller and newspaper proprietor. "Each time the bookseller opened his lips he grew in Lucien's eyes; the young man seemed to see politics and literature converging towards this shop as their true centre. To find an eminent poet prostituting his muse to a journalist ... was a terrible lesson to the great man from the country.... Money! in that word lies the solution of every problem. He is lonely, unknown, has only a doubtful friendship to look to for happiness. ”

“ Can a man have any illusions in the trade I follow?”
By opening the game in this tone, Lousteau cut out all excursions in the Pays de Tendre, where genuine passion beats the bush so long; he went straight to the point and placed himself in a position to force the offer of what women often make a man pray for, for years; witness the hapless Public Prosecutor, to whom the greatest favor had consisted in clasping Dinah’s hand to his heart more tenderly than usual as they walked, happy man! ”

“ In short, the joke is too stale. Your excuses are more familiar than a patent medicine—”
“I may say to you, like the Regent to Cardinal Dubois, ‘That is kicking enough!’” said Lousteau, laughing.
“Oh, venerable young man,” replied Bixiou, “the iron has touched the sore to the quick. You are worn out, aren’t you? Well, then; in the heyday of youth, under the pressure of penury, what have you done? You are not in the front rank, and you have not a thousand francs of your own. ”

“ The coins dropped jingling into the till.
"What queer business are you up to?" asked Lousteau of the artist, an opium-eater who dwelt among visions of enchanted palaces till he either could not or would not create.
"He lends you a good deal more than an ordinary pawnbroker on anything you pledge; and, besides, he is so awfully charitable, he allows you to take your clothes out when you must have something to wear. I am going to dine with the Kellers and my mistress to-night," he continued; "and to me it is easier to find thirty sous than two hundred francs, so I keep my wardrobe here. ”

“ Madame de la Baudraye had at last thoroughly understood Lousteau’s character.
“He is,” she said to her mother, “a poet, defenceless against disaster, mean out of laziness, not for want of heart, and rather too prone to pleasure; in short, a great cat, whom it is impossible to hate. What would become of him without me? I hindered his marriage; he has no prospects. His talent would perish in privations.”
“Oh, my Dinah!” Madame Piedefer had exclaimed, “what a hell you live in! What is the feeling that gives you strength enough to persist?” ”