第32章 SUICIDE(1)

In the month of May Vandenesse took his wife,as usual,to their country-seat,where she was consoled by the passionate letters she received from Raoul,to whom she wrote every day.

Marie's absence might have saved Raoul from the gulf into which he was falling,if Florine had been near him;but,unfortunately,he was alone in the midst of friends who had become his enemies from the moment that he showed his intention of ruling them.His staff of writers hated him "pro tem.,"ready to hold out a hand to him and console him in case of a fall,ready to adore him in case of success.

So goes the world of literature.No one is really liked but an inferior.Every man's hand is against him who is likely to rise.This wide-spread envy doubles the chances of common minds who excite neither envy nor suspicion,who make their way like moles,and,fools though they be,find themselves gazetted in the "Moniteur,"for three or four places,while men of talent are still struggling at the door to keep each other out.

The underhand enmity of these pretended friends,which Florine would have scented with the innate faculty of a courtesan to get at truth amid a thousand misleading circumstances,was by no means Raoul's greatest danger.His partners,Massol the lawyer,and du Tillet the banker,had intended from the first to harness his ardor to the chariot of their own importance and get rid of him as soon as he was out of condition to feed the paper,or else to deprive him of his power,arbitrarily,whenever it suited their purpose to take it.To them Nathan represented a certain amount of talent to use up,a literary force of the motive power of ten pens to employ.Massol,one of those lawyers who mistake the faculty of endless speech for eloquence,who possess the art of boring by diffusiveness,the torment of all meetings and assemblies where they belittle everything,and who desire to become personages at any cost,--Massol no longer wanted the place as Keeper of the Seals;he had seen some five or six different men go through that office in four years,and the robes disgusted him.

In exchange,his mind was now set on obtaining a chair on the Board of Education and a place in the Council of State;the whole adorned with the cross of the Legion of honor.Du Tillet and Nucingen had guaranteed the cross to him,and the office of Master of Petitions provided he obeyed them blindly.

The better to deceive Raoul,these men allowed him to manage the paper without control.Du Tillet used it only for his stock-gambling,about which Nathan understood next to nothing;but he had given,through Nucingen,an assurance to Rastignac that the paper would be tacitly obliging to the government on the sole condition of supporting his candidacy for Monsieur de Nucingen's place as soon as he was nominated peer of France.Raoul was thus being undermined by the banker and the lawyer,who saw him with much satisfaction lording it in the newspaper,profiting by all advantages,and harvesting the fruits of self-love,while Nathan,enchanted,believed them to be,as on the occasion of his equestrian wants,the best fellows in the world.He thought he managed them!Men of imagination,to whom hope is the basis of existence,never allow themselves to know that the most perilous moment in their affairs is that when all seems going well according to their wishes.

This was a period of triumph by which Nathan profited.He appeared as a personage in the world,political and financial.Du Tillet presented him to the Nucingens.Madame de Nucingen received him cordially,less for himself than for Madame de Vandenesse;but when she ventured a few words about the countess he thought himself marvellously clever in using Florine as a shield;he alluded to his relations with the actress in a tone of generous self-conceit.How could he desert a great devotion,for the coquetries of the faubourg Saint-Germain?

Nathan,manipulated by Nucingen and Rastignac,by du Tillet and Blondet,gave his support ostentatiously to the "doctrinaires"of their new and ephemeral cabinet.But in order to show himself pure of all bribery he refused to take advantage of certain profitable enterprises which were started by means of his paper,--he!who had no reluctance in compromising friends or in behaving with little decency to mechanics under certain circumstances.Such meannesses,the result of vanity and of ambition,are found in many lives like his.The mantle must be splendid before the eyes of the world,and we steal our friend's or a poor man's cloth to patch it.

Nevertheless,two months after the departure of the countess,Raoul had a certain Rabelaisian "quart d'heure"which caused him some anxiety in the midst of these triumphs.Du Tillet had advanced a hundred thousand francs,Florine's money had gone in the costs of the first establishment of the paper,which were enormous.It was necessary to provide for the future.The banker agreed to let the editor have fifty thousand francs on notes for four months.Du Tillet thus held Raoul by the halter of an IOU.By means of this relief the funds of the paper were secured for six months.In the eyes of some writers six months is an eternity.Besides,by dint of advertising and by offering illusory advantages to subscribers two thousand had been secured;an influx of travellers added to this semi-success,which was enough,perhaps,to excuse the throwing of more bank-bills after the rest.A little more display of talent,a timely political trial or crisis,an apparent persecution,and Raoul felt certain of becoming one of those modern "condottieri"whose ink is worth more than powder and shot of the olden time.