第104章

"Let us just try fifty francs,"he said.

And up the stairs again they went.An hour later they owned a thousand crowns.Black had turned up for the fifth consecutive time;they trusted that their previous luck would not repeat itself,and put the whole sum on the red--black turned up for the sixth time.They had lost.It was now six o'clock.

"Let us just try twenty-five francs,"said Lucien.

The new venture was soon made--and lost.The twenty-five francs went in five stakes.Then Lucien,in a frenzy,flung down his last twenty-five francs on the number of his age,and won.No words can describe how his hands trembled as he raked in the coins which the bank paid him one by one.He handed ten louis to Lousteau.

"Fly!"he cried;"take it to Very's."

Lousteau took the hint and went to order dinner.Lucien,left alone,laid his thirty louis on the red and won.Emboldened by the inner voice which a gambler always hears,he staked the whole again on the red,and again he won.He felt as if there were a furnace within him.

Without heeding the voice,he laid a hundred and twenty louis on the black and lost.Then to the torturing excitement of suspense succeeded the delicious feeling of relief known to the gambler who has nothing left to lose,and must perforce leave the palace of fire in which his dreams melt and vanish.

He found Lousteau at Very's,and flung himself upon the cookery (to make use of Lafontaine's expression),and drowned his cares in wine.

By nine o'clock his ideas were so confused that he could not imagine why the portress in the Rue de Vendome persisted in sending him to the Rue de la Lune.

"Mlle.Coralie has gone,"said the woman."She has taken lodgings elsewhere.She left her address with me on this scrap of paper."Lucien was too far gone to be surprised at anything.He went back to the cab which had brought him,and was driven to the Rue de la Lune,making puns to himself on the name of the street as he went.

The news of the failure of the Panorama-Dramatique had come like a thunder-clap.Coralie,taking alarm,made haste to sell her furniture (with the consent of her creditors)to little old Cardot,who installed Florentine in the rooms at once.The tradition of the house remained unbroken.Coralie paid her creditors and satisfied the landlord,proceeding with her "washing-day,"as she called it,while Berenice bought the absolutely indispensable necessaries to furnish a fourth-floor lodging in the Rue de la Lune,a few doors from the Gymnase.Here Coralie was waiting for Lucien's return.She had brought her love unsullied out of the shipwreck and twelve hundred francs.

Lucien,more than half intoxicated,poured out his woes to Coralie and Berenice.

"You did quite right,my angel,"said Coralie,with her arms about his neck."Berenice can easily negotiate your bills with Braulard."The next morning Lucien awoke to an enchanted world of happiness made about him by Coralie.She was more loving and tender in those days than she had ever been;perhaps she thought that the wealth of love in her heart should make him amends for the poverty of their lodging.She looked bewitchingly charming,with the loose hair straying from under the crushed white silk handkerchief about her head;there was soft laughter in her eyes;her words were as bright as the first rays of sunrise that shone in through the windows,pouring a flood of gold upon such charming poverty.

Not that the room was squalid.The walls were covered with a sea-green paper,bordered with red;there was one mirror over the chimney-piece,and a second above the chest of drawers.The bare boards were covered with a cheap carpet,which Berenice had bought in spite of Coralie's orders,and paid for out of her own little store.A wardrobe,with a glass door and a chest,held the lovers'clothing,the mahogany chairs were covered with blue cotton stuff,and Berenice had managed to save a clock and a couple of china vases from the catastrophe,as well as four spoons and forks and half-a-dozen little spoons.The bedroom was entered from the dining-room,which might have belonged to a clerk with an income of twelve hundred francs.The kitchen was next the landing,and Berenice slept above in an attic.The rent was not more than a hundred crowns.

The dismal house boasted a sham carriage entrance,the porter's box being contrived behind one of the useless leaves of the gate,and lighted by a peephole through which that personage watched the comings and goings of seventeen families,for this hive was a "good-paying property,"in auctioneer's phrase.

Lucien,looking round the room,discovered a desk,an easy-chair,paper,pens,and ink.The sight of Berenice in high spirits (she was building hopes on Coralie's debut at the Gymnase),and of Coralie herself conning her part with a knot of blue ribbon tied about it,drove all cares and anxieties from the sobered poet's mind.

"So long as nobody in society hears of this sudden comedown,we shall pull through,"he said."After all,we have four thousand five hundred francs before us.I will turn my new position in Royalist journalism to account.To-morrow we shall start the Reveil;I am an old hand now,and I will make something out."And Coralie,seeing nothing but love in the words,kissed the lips that uttered them.By this time Berenice had set the table near the fire and served a modest breakfast of scrambled eggs,a couple of cutlets,coffee,and cream.Just then there came a knock at the door,and Lucien,to his astonishment,beheld three of his loyal friends of old days--d'Arthez,Leon Giraud,and Michel Chrestien.He was deeply touched,and asked them to share the breakfast.