第30章
Again and again he talked of making the plunge into journalism;and time after time did his friends reply with a "Mind you do nothing of the sort!""It would be the tomb of the beautiful,gracious Lucien whom we love and know,"said d'Arthez.
"You would not hold out for long between the two extremes of toil and pleasure which make up a journalist's life,and resistance is the very foundation of virtue.You would be so delighted to exercise your power of life and death over the offspring of the brain,that you would be an out-and-out journalist in two months'time.To be a journalist--that is to turn Herod in the republic of letters.The man who will say anything will end by sticking at nothing.That was Napoleon's maxim,and it explains itself.""But you would be with me,would you not?"asked Lucien.
"Not by that time,"said Fulgence."If you were a journalist,you would no more think of us than the Opera girl in all her glory,with her adorers and her silk-lined carriage,thinks of the village at home and her cows and her sabots.You could never resist the temptation to pen a witticism,though it should bring tears to a friend's eyes.Icome across journalists in theatre lobbies;it makes me shudder to see them.Journalism is an inferno,a bottomless pit of iniquity and treachery and lies;no one can traverse it undefiled,unless,like Dante,he is protected by Virgil's sacred laurel."But the more the set of friends opposed the idea of journalism,the more Lucien's desire to know its perils grew and tempted him.He began to debate within his own mind;was it not ridiculous to allow want to find him a second time defenceless?He bethought him of the failure of his attempts to dispose of his first novel,and felt but little tempted to begin a second.How,besides,was he to live while he was writing another romance?One month of privation had exhausted his stock of patience.Why should he not do nobly that which journalists did ignobly and without principle?His friends insulted him with their doubts;he would convince them of his strength of mind.Some day,perhaps,he would be of use to them;he would be the herald of their fame!
"And what sort of a friendship is it which recoils from complicity?"demanded he one evening of Michel Chrestien;Lucien and Leon Giraud were walking home with their friend.
"We shrink from nothing,"Michel Chrestien made reply."If you were so unlucky as to kill your mistress,I would help you to hide your crime,and could still respect you;but if you were to turn spy,I should shun you with abhorrence,for a spy is systematically shameless and base.There you have journalism summed up in a sentence.Friendship can pardon error and the hasty impulse of passion;it is bound to be inexorable when a man deliberately traffics in his own soul,and intellect,and opinions.""Why cannot I turn journalist to sell my volume of poetry and the novel,and then give up at once?""Machiavelli might do so,but not Lucien de Rubempre,"said Leon Giraud.
"Very well,"exclaimed Lucien;"I will show you that I can do as much as Machiavelli.""Oh!"cried Michel,grasping Leon's hand,"you have done it,Leon.--Lucien,"he continued,"you have three hundred francs in hand;you can live comfortably for three months;very well,then,work hard and write another romance.D'Arthez and Fulgence will help you with the plot;you will improve,you will be a novelist.And I,meanwhile,will enter one of those lupanars of thought;for three months I will be a journalist.I will sell your books to some bookseller or other by attacking his publications;I will write the articles myself;I will get others for you.We will organize a success;you shall be a great man,and still remain our Lucien.""You must despise me very much,if you think that I should perish while you escape,"said the poet.
"O Lord,forgive him;it is a child!"cried Michel Chrestien.
When Lucien's intellect had been stimulated by the evenings spent in d'Arthez's garret,he had made some study of the jokes and articles in the smaller newspapers.He was at least the equal,he felt,of the wittiest contributors;in private he tried some mental gymnastics of the kind,and went out one morning with the triumphant idea of finding some colonel of such light skirmishers of the press and enlisting in their ranks.He dressed in his best and crossed the bridges,thinking as he went that authors,journalists,and men of letters,his future comrades,in short,would show him rather more kindness and disinterestedness than the two species of booksellers who had so dashed his hopes.He should meet with fellow-feeling,and something of the kindly and grateful affection which he found in the cenacle of the Rue des Quatre-Vents.Tormented by emotion,consequent upon the presentiments to which men of imagination cling so fondly,half believing,half battling with their belief in them,he arrived in the Rue Saint-Fiacre off the Boulevard Montmartre.Before a house,occupied by the offices of a small newspaper,he stopped,and at the sight of it his heart began to throb as heavily as the pulses of a youth upon the threshold of some evil haunt.