In a passage between the Rue Basse-du-Rempart and the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, Raoul had one or two bare, cold rooms on the third floor of a thin, ugly house. This was his abode for the general public, for literary novices, creditors, intruders, and the whole race of bores who were not allowed to cross the threshold of private life. His real home, which was the stage of his wider life and public appearances, he made with Florine, a second-rate actress who, ten years before, had been raised to the rank of a great dramatic artist by the combined efforts of Nathan’s friends, the newspaper critics, and a few literary men.

For ten years Raoul had been so closely attached to this woman, that he spent half his life in her house, taking his meals there whenever he had no engagements outside nor friends to entertain. Florine, to a finished depravity, added a very pretty wit, which constant intercourse with artists and daily practice had developed and sharpened. Wit is generally supposed to be a rare quality among actors. It seems an easy inference that those who spend their lives in bringing the outside to perfection should have little left with which to furnish the interior. But anyone who considers the small number of actors and actresses in a century, compared with the quantity of dramatic authors and attractive women produced by the same population, will see reason to dispute this notion. It rests, in fact, on the common assumption that personal feeling must disappear in the imitative expression of passion, whereas the real fact is that intelligence, memory, and imagination are the only powers employed in such imitation. Great artists are those who, according to Napoleon’s definition, can intercept at will the communication established by nature between sensation and thought. Molière and Talma loved more passionately in their old age than is usual with ordinary mortals.

Florine’s position forced her to listen to the talk of alert and calculating journalists and to the prophecies of garrulous literary men, while keeping an eye on certain politicians who used her house as a means of profiting by the sallies of her guests. The mixture of angel and demon which she embodied made her a fitting hostess for these profligates, who reveled in her impudence and found unfailing amusement in the perversity of her mind and heart.

Her house, enriched with offerings from admirers, displayed in its exaggerated magnificence an entire regardlessness of cost. Women of this type set a purely arbitrary value on their possessions; in a fit of temper they will smash a fan or a scent-bottle worthy of a queen, and they will be inconsolable if anything happens to a ten-franc basin which their lapdogs drink out of. The dining-room, crowded with rare and costly gifts, may serve as a specimen of the regal and insolent profusion of the establishment.

The whole room, including the ceiling, was covered with carved oak, left unstained, and set off with lines of dull gold. In the panels, encircled by groups of children playing with chimaeras, were placed the lights, which illuminated here a rough sketch by Decamps; there a plaster angel holding a basin of holy water, a present from Antonin Moine; further on a dainty picture of Eugène Devéria; the sombre figure of some Spanish alchemist by Louis Boulanger; an autograph letter from Lord Byron to Caroline in an ebony frame, carved by Elschoet, with a letter of Napoleon to Josephine to match it. The things were arranged without any view to symmetry, and yet with a sort of unstudied art; the whole effect took one, as it were, by storm. There was a union of carelessness and desire to please, such as can only be found in the homes of artists. The exquisitely-carved mantelpiece was bare except for a whimsical Florentine statue in ivory, attributed to Michelangelo, representing a Pan discovering a woman disguised as a young herd, the original of which is at the Treasury in Vienna. On either side of this hung an iron candelabrum, the work of some Renaissance chisel. A Boule timepiece on a tortoiseshell bracket, lacquered with copper arabesques, glittered in the middle of a panel between two statuettes, survivals from some ruined abbey. In the corners of the room on pedestals stood gorgeously resplendent lamps⁠—the fee paid by some maker to Florine for trumpeting his wares among her friends, who were assured that Japanese pots, with rich fittings, made the only possible stand for lamps. On a marvelous whatnot lay a display of silver, well-earned trophy of a combat in which some English lord had been forced to acknowledge the superiority of the French nation. Next came porcelain reliefs. The whole room displayed the charming profusion of an artist whose furniture represents his capital.

The bedroom, in violet, was a young ballet-girl’s dream: velvet curtains, lined with silk, were draped over inner folds of tulle; the ceiling was in white cashmere relieved with violet silk; at the foot of the bed lay an ermine rug; within the bed-curtains, which fell in the form of an inverted lily, hung a lantern by which to read the proofs of next day’s papers. A yellow drawing-room, enriched with ornaments the color of Florentine bronze, carried out the same impression of magnificence, but a detailed description would make these pages too much of a broker’s inventory. To find anything comparable to these treasures, it would be necessary to visit the Rothschilds’ house close by.

Sophie Grignoult, who, following the usual custom of taking a stage name, was known as Florine, had made her debut, beautiful as she was, in a subordinate capacity. Her triumph and her wealth she owed to Raoul Nathan. The association of these two careers, common enough in the dramatic and literary world, did not injure Raoul, who, in his character as a man of high pretensions, respected the proprieties. Nevertheless, Florine’s fortune was far from assured. Her professional income, arising from her salary and what she could earn in her holidays, barely sufficed for dress and housekeeping. Nathan helped her with contributions levied on new ventures in trade, and was always chivalrous and ready to act as her protector; but the support he gave was neither regular nor solid. This instability, this hand-to-mouth life, had no terrors for Florine. She believed in her talent and her beauty; and this robust faith had something comic in it for those who heard her, in answer to remonstrances, mortgaging her future on such security.

“I can live on my means whenever I like,” she would say. “I have fifty francs in the funds now.”

No one could understand how, with her beauty, Florine had remained seven years in obscurity; but as a matter of fact, she was enrolled as a supernumerary at the age of thirteen, and made her debut two years later in a humble theatre on the boulevards. At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman. She was now twenty-eight, an age which with French women is the culminating point of their beauty. Painters admired most of all her shoulders, glossy white, with olive tints about the back of the neck, but firm and polished, reflecting the light like watered silk. When she turned her head, the neck made magnificent curves in which sculptors delighted. On this neck rose the small, imperious head of a Roman empress, graceful and finely moulded, round and self-assertive, like that of Poppaea. The features were correct, yet expressive, and the unlined forehead was that of an easygoing woman who takes all trouble lightly, yet can be obstinate as a mule on occasion and deaf to all reason. This forehead, with its pure unbroken sweep, gave value to the lovely flaxen hair, generally raised in front, in Roman fashion, in two equal masses and twisted into a high knot at the back, so as to prolong the curve of the neck and bring out its whiteness. Dark, delicate eyebrows, such as a Chinese artist pencils, framed the heavy lids, covered with a network of tiny pink veins. The pupils, sparkling with fire but spotted with patches of brown, gave to her look the fierce fixity of a wild beast, emblematic of the courtesan’s cold heartlessness. The lovely gazelle-like iris was a beautiful gray, and fringed with black lashes, a bewitching contrast which brought out yet more strikingly the expression of calm and expectant desire. Darker tints encircled the eyes; but it was the artistic finish with which she used them that was most remarkable. Those darting, sidelong glances which nothing escaped, the upward gaze of her dreamy pose, the way she had of keeping the iris fixed, while charging it with the most intense passion and without moving the head or stirring a muscle of the face⁠—a trick, this, learned on the stage⁠—the keen sweep which would embrace a whole room to find out the man she wanted⁠—these were the arts which made of her eyes the most terrible, the sweetest, the strangest in the world.

Rouge had spoiled the delicate transparency of her soft cheeks. But if it was beyond her power to blush or grow pale, she had a slender nose, indented by pink, quivering nostrils, which seemed to breathe the sarcasm and mockery of Molière’s waiting-maids. Her mouth, sensual and luxurious, lending itself to irony as readily as to love, owed much of its beauty to the finely-cut edges of the little groove joining the upper lip to the nose. Her white, rather fleshy, chin portended storms in love. Her hands and arms might have been an empress’. But the feet were short and thick, ineradicable sign of low birth. Never had heritage wrought more woe. In her efforts to change it, Florine had stopped short only at amputation. But her feet were obstinate, like the Bretons from whom she sprang, and refused to yield to any science or manipulation. Florine therefore wore long boots, stuffed with cotton, to give her an arched instep. She was of medium height, and threatened with corpulence, but her figure still kept its curves and precision.

Morally, she was past mistress in all the airs and graces, tantrums, quips, and caresses of her trade; but she gave them a special character by affecting childishness and edging in a sly thrust under cover of innocent laughter. With all her apparent ignorance and giddiness, she was at home in the mysteries of discount and commercial law. She had waded through so many bad times to reach her day of precarious triumph! She had descended, story by story, to the ground-floor, through such a coil of intrigue! She knew life under so many forms; from that which dines off bread and cheese to that which toys listlessly with apricot fritters; from that which does its cooking and washing in the corner of a garret with an earthen stove to that which summons its vassal host of big-paunched chefs and impudent scullions. She had indulged in credit without killing it. She knew everything of which good women are ignorant, and could speak all languages. A child of the people by her origin, the refinement of her beauty allied her to the upper classes. She was hard to overreach and impossible to mystify; for, like spies, barristers, and those who have grown old in statecraft, she kept an open mind for every possibility. She knew how to deal with tradespeople and their little tricks, and could quote prices with an auctioneer. Lying back, like some fair young bride, on her couch, with the part she was learning in her hand, she might have passed for a guileless and ignorant girl of sixteen, protected only by her innocence. But let some importunate creditor arrive, and she was on her feet like a startled fawn, a good round oath upon her lips.

“My good fellow,” she would address him, “your insolence is really too high an interest on my debt. I am tired of the sight of you; go and send the bailiffs. Rather them than your imbecile face.”

Florine gave charming dinners, concerts, and crowded receptions, where the play was very high. Her women friends were all beautiful. Never had an old woman been seen at her parties; she was entirely free from jealousy, which seemed to her a confession of weakness. Among her old acquaintances were Coralie and la Torpille; among those of the day, the Tullias, Euphrasie, the Aquilinas, Mme. du Val-Noble, Mariette;⁠—those women who float through Paris like threads of gossamer in the air, no one knowing whence they come or whither they go; queens today, tomorrow drudges. Her rivals, too, came, actresses and singers, the whole company, in short, of that unique feminine world, so kindly and gracious in its recklessness, whose Bohemian life carries away with its dash, its spirit, its scorn of tomorrow, the men who join the frenzied dance. Though in Florine’s house Bohemianism flourished unchecked to a chorus of gay artists, the mistress had all her wits about her, and could use them as not one of her guests. Secret saturnalia of literature and art were held there side by side with politics and finance. There passion reigned supreme; there temper and the whim of the moment received the reverence which a simple society pays to honor and virtue. There might be seen Blondet, Finot, Étienne Lousteau, her seventh lover, who believed himself to be the first, Félicien Vernou, the journalist, Couture, Bixiou, Rastignac formerly, Claude Vignon, the critic, Nucingen the banker, du Tillet, Conti the composer; in a word, the whole diabolic legion of ferocious egotists in every walk of life. There also came the friends of the singers, dancers, and actresses whom Florine knew.

Every member of this society hated or loved every other member according to circumstances. This house of call, open to celebrities of every kind, was a sort of brothel of wit, a galleys of the mind. Not a guest there but had filched his fortune within the four corners of the law, had worked through ten years of squalor, had strangled two or three love affairs, and had made his mark, whether by a book or a waistcoat, a drama or a carriage and pair. Their time was spent in hatching mischief, in exploring roads to wealth, in ridiculing popular outbreaks, which they had incited the day before, and in studying the fluctuations of the money market. Each man, as he left the house, donned again the livery of his beliefs, which he had cast aside on entering in order to abuse at his ease his own party, and admire the strategy and skill of its opponents, to put in plain words thoughts which men keep to themselves, to practise, in fine, that license of speech which goes with license in action. Paris is the one place in the world where houses of this eclectic sort exist, in which ever taste, every vice, every opinion, finds a welcome, so long as it comes in decent garb.

It remains to be said that Florine is still a second-rate actress. Further, her life is neither an idle nor an enviable one. Many people, deluded by the splendid vantage ground which the theatre gives to a woman, imagine her to live in a perpetual carnival. How many a poor girl, buried in some porter’s lodge or under an attic roof, dreams on her return from the theatre of pearls and diamonds, of dresses decked with gold and rich sashes, and pictures herself, the glitter of the footlights on her hair, applauded, purchased, worshiped, carried off. And not one of them knows the facts of that treadmill existence, how an actress is forced to attend rehearsals under penalty of a fine, to read plays, and perpetually study new parts, at a time when two or three hundred pieces a year are played in Paris. In the course of each performance, Florine changes her dress two or three times, and often she returns to her dressing-room half-dead with exhaustion. Then she has to get rid of the red or white paint with the aid of plentiful cosmetics, and dust the powder out of her hair, if she has heen playing an eighteenth century part. Barely has she time to dine. When she is playing, an actress can neither lace her stays, nor eat, nor talk. For supper again Florine has no time. On returning from a performance, which nowadays is not over till past midnight, she has her toilet for the night to make and orders to give. After going to bed at one or two in the morning, she has to be up in time to revise her parts, to order her dresses, to explain them and try them on; then lunch, read her love-letters, reply to them, transact business with her hired applauders, so that she may be properly greeted on entering and leaving the stage, and, while paying the bill for her triumphs of the past month, order wholesale those of the present. In the days of Saint Genest, a canonized actor, who neglected no means of grace and wore a hair-shirt, the stage, we must suppose, did not demand this relentless activity. Often Florine is forced to feign an illness if she wants to go into the country and pick flowers like an ordinary mortal.

Yet these purely mechanical occupations are nothing in comparison with the mental worries, arising from intrigues to be conducted, annoyances to vanity, preferences shown by authors, competition for parts, with its triumphs and disappointments, unreasonable actors, ill-natured rivals, and the importunities of managers and critics, all of which demand another twenty-four hours in the day.

And, lastly, there is the art itself and all the difficulties it involves⁠—the interpretation of passion, details of mimicry, and stage effects, with thousands of opera-glasses ready to pounce on the slightest flaw in the most brilliant presentment. These are the things which wore away the life and energy of Talma, Lekain, Baron, Contat, Clairon, Champmeslé. In the pandemonium of the greenroom self-love is sexless; the successful artist, man or woman, has all other men and women for enemies.

As to profits, however handsome Florine’s salaries may be, they do not cover the cost of the stage finery, which⁠—not to speak of costumes⁠—demands an enormous expenditure in long gloves and shoes, and does not do away with the necessity for evening and visiting dresses. One-third of such a life is spent in begging favors, another in making sure the ground already won, and the remainder in repelling attacks; but all alike is work. If it contains also moments of intense happiness, that is because happiness here is rare and stolen, long waited for, a chance godsend amid the hateful grind of forced pleasure and stage smiles.

To Florine, Raoul’s power was a sovereign protection. He saved her many a vexation and worry, in the fashion of a great noble of former days defending his mistress; or, to take a modern instance, like the old men who go on their knees to the editor when their idol has been scarified by some halfpenny print. He was more than a lover to her; he was a staff to lean on. She tended him like a father, and deceived him like a husband; but there was nothing in the world she would not have sacrificed for him. Raoul was indispensable to her artistic vanity, to the tranquillity of her self-esteem, and to her dramatic future. Without the intervention of some great writer, no great actress can be produced; we owe la Champmeslé to Racine, as we owe Mars to Monvel and Andrieux. Florine, on her side, could do nothing for Raoul, much as she would have liked to be useful or necessary to him. She counted on the seductions of habit, and was always ready to open her rooms and offer the profusion of her table to help his plans or his friends. In fact, she aspired to be for him what Madame de Pompadour was for Louis XV; and there were actresses who envied her position, just as there were journalists who would have changed places with Raoul.

Now, those who know the bent of the human mind to opposition and contrast will easily understand that Raoul, after ten years of this rakish Bohemian life, should weary of its ups and downs, its revelry and its writs, its orgies and its fasts, and should feel drawn to a pure and innocent love, as well as to the gentle harmony of a great lady’s existence. In the same way, the Comtesse Félix longed to introduce the torments of passion into a life the bliss of which had cloyed through its sameness. This law of life is the law of all art, which exists only through contrast. A work produced independently of such aid is the highest expression of genius, as the cloister is the highest effort of Christianity.

Raoul, on returning home, found a note from Florine, which her maid had brought, but was too sleepy to read it. He went to bed in the restful satisfaction of a tender love, which had so far been lacking to his life. A few hours later, he found important news in this letter, news of which neither Rastignac nor de Marsay had dropped a hint. Florine had learned from some indiscreet friend that the Chamber was to be dissolved at the close of the session. Raoul at once went to Florine’s, and sent for Blondet to meet him there.

In Florine’s boudoir, their feet upon the firedogs, Émile and Raoul dissected the political situation of France in 1834. On what side lay the best chance for a man who wanted to get on? Every shade of opinion was passed in review⁠—Republicans pure and simple, Republicans with a President, Republicans without a republic, Dynastic Constitutionalists and Constitutionalists without a dynasty, Conservative Ministerialists and Absolutist Ministerialists; lastly, the compromising right, the aristocratic right, the Legitimist right, the Henri-quinquist right, and the Carlist right. As between the party of obstruction and the party of progress there could be no question; as well might one hesitate between life and death.

The vast number of newspapers at this time in circulation, representing different shades of party, was significant of the chaotic confusion⁠—the slush, as it might vulgarly be called⁠—to which politics were reduced. Blondet, the man of his day with most judgment, although, like a barrister unable to plead his own cause, he could use it only on behalf of others, was magnificent in these friendly discussions. His advice to Nathan was not to desert abruptly.

“It was Napoleon who said that young republics cannot be made out of old monarchies. Therefore, do you, my friend, become the hero, the pillar, the creator of a left centre in the next Chamber, and a political future is before you. Once past the barrier, once in the Ministry, a man can do what he pleases, he can wear the winning colors.”

Nathan decided to start a political daily paper, of which he should have the complete control, and to affiliate to it one of those small society sheets with which the press swarmed, establishing at the same time a connection with some magazine. The press had been the mainspring of so many fortunes around him that Nathan refused to listen to Blondet’s warnings against trusting to it. In Blondet’s opinion, the speculation was unsafe, because of the multitude of competing papers, and because the power of the press seemed to him used up. Raoul, strong in his supposed friends and in his courage, was keen to go forward; with a gesture of pride he sprang to his feet and exclaimed:

“I shall succeed!”

“You haven’t a penny!”

“I shall write a play!”

“It will fall dead.”

“Let it,” said Nathan.

He paced up and down Florine’s room, followed by Blondet, who thought he had gone crazy; he cast covetous glances on the costly treasures piled up around; then Blondet understood him.

“There’s more than one hundred thousand francs’ worth here,” said Émile.

“Yes,” said Raoul, with a sigh towards Florine’s sumptuous bed; “but I would sell patent safety-chains on the boulevards and live on fried potatoes all my life rather than sell a single patera from these rooms.”

“Not one patera, no,” said Blondet, “but the whole lot! Ambition is like death; it clutches all because life, it knows, is hounding it on.”

“No! a thousand times, no! I would accept anything from that Countess of yesterday, but to rob Florine of her nest?⁠ ⁠…”

“To overthrow one’s mint,” said Blondet, with a tragic air, “to smash up the coining-press, and break the stamp, is certainly serious.”

“From what I can gather, you are abandoning the stage for politics,” said Florine, suddenly breaking in on them.

“Yes, my child, yes,” said Raoul good-naturedly, putting his arm round her neck and kissing her forehead. “Why that frown? It will be no loss to you. Won’t the minister be better placed than the journalist for getting a first-rate engagement for the queen of the boards? You will still have your parts and your holidays.”

“Where is the money to come from?” she asked.

“From my uncle,” replied Raoul.

Florine knew this “uncle.” The word meant a moneylender, just as “my aunt” was the vulgar name for a pawnbroker.

“Don’t bother yourself, my pretty one,” said Blondet to Florine, patting her on the shoulder. “I will get Massol to help him. He’s a barrister, and, like the rest of them, intends to have a turn at being Minister of Justice. Then there’s du Tillet, who wants a seat in the Chamber; Finot, who is still backing a society paper; Plantin, who has his eye on a post under the Conseil d’État, and who has some share in a magazine. No fear! I won’t let him ruin himself. We will get a meeting here with Étienne Lousteau, who will do the light stuff, and Claude Vignon for the serious criticism. Félicien Vernou will be the charwoman of the paper, the barrister will sweat for it, du Tillet will look after trade and the Exchange, and we shall see where this union of determined men and their tools will land us.”

“In the workhouse or on the Government bench, those refuges for the ruined in body or mind,” said Raoul.

“What about the dinner?”

“We’ll have it here,” said Raoul, “five days hence.”

“Let me know how much you need,” said Florine simply.

“Why, the barrister, du Tillet, and Raoul can’t start with less than one hundred thousand francs apiece,” said Blondet. “That will run the paper very well for eighteen months, time enough to make a hit or miss in Paris.”

Florine made a gesture of approval. The two friends then took a cab and set out in quest of guests, pens, ideas, and sources of support. The beautiful actress on her part sent for four dealers in furniture, curiosities, pictures, and jewelry. The dealers, who were all men of substance, entered the sanctuary and made an inventory of its whole contents, just as though Florine were dead. She threatened them with a public auction in case they hardened their hearts in hopes of a better opportunity. She had, she told them, excited the admiration of an English lord in a medieval part, and she wished to dispose of all her personal property, in order that her apparently destitute condition might move him to present her with a splendid house, which she would furnish as a rival to Rothschilds’. With all her arts, she only succeeded in getting an offer of seventy thousand francs for the whole of the spoil, which was well worth one hundred and fifty thousand. Florine, who did not care a button for the things, promised they should be handed over in seven days for eighty thousand francs.

“You can take it or leave it,” she said.

The bargain was concluded. When the dealers had gone, the actress skipped for joy, like the little hills of King David. She could not contain herself for delight; never had she dreamed of such wealth. When Raoul returned, she pretended to be offended with him, and declared that she was deserted. She saw through it all now; men don’t change their party or leave the stage for the Chamber without some reason. There must be a rival! Her instinct told her so! Vows of eternal love rewarded her little comedy.

Five days later, Florine gave a magnificent entertainment. The ceremony of christening the paper was then performed amidst floods of wine and wit, oaths of fidelity, of good fellowship, and of serious alliance. The name, forgotten now, like the Libéral, the Communal, the Départemental, the Garde National, the Fédéral, the Impartial, was something which ended in al, and was bound not to take. Descriptions of banquets have been so numerous in a literary period which had more firsthand experience of starving in an attic, that it would be difficult to do justice to Florine’s. Suffice it to say that, at three in the morning, Florine was able to undress and go to bed as if she had been alone, though not one of her guests had left. These lights of their age were sleeping like pigs. When, early in the morning, the packers, commissionaires, and porters arrived to carry off the gorgeous trappings of the famous actress, she laughed aloud to see them lifting these celebrities like heavy pieces of furniture and depositing them on the floor.

Thus the splendid collection went its way.

Florine carried her personal remembrances to shops where the sight of them did not enlighten passersby as to how and when these flowers of luxury had been paid for. It was agreed to leave her until the evening a few specially reserved articles, including her bed, her table, and her crockery, so that she might offer breakfast to her guests. These witty gentlemen, having fallen asleep under the beauteous drapery of wealth, awoke to the cold, naked walls of poverty, studded with nail-marks and disfigured by those incongruous patches which are found at the back of wall decorations, as ropes behind an opera scene.

“Why, Florine, the poor girl has an execution in the house!” cried Bixiou, one of the guests. “Quick! your pockets, gentlemen! A subscription!”

At these words the whole company was on foot. The net sweepings of the pockets came to thirty-seven francs, which Raoul handed over with mock ceremony to the laughing Florine. The happy courtesan raised her head from the pillow and pointed to a heap of banknotes on the sheet, thick as in the golden days of her trade. Raoul called Blondet.

“I see it now,” said Blondet. “The little rogue has sold off without a word to us. Well done, Florine!”

Delighted with this stroke, the few friends who remained carried Florine in triumph and deshabille to the dining-room. The barrister and the bankers had gone. That evening Florine had a tremendous reception at the theatre. The rumor of her sacrifice was all over the house.

“I should prefer to be applauded for my talent,” said Florine’s rival to her in the greenroom.

“That is very natural on the part of an artist who has never yet won applause except for the lavishness of her favors,” she replied.

During the evening Florine’s maid had her things moved to Raoul’s flat in the Passage Sandrié. The journalist was to pitch his camp in the building where the newspaper office was opened.

Such was the rival of the ingenuous Mme. de Vandenesse. Raoul’s fancy was a link binding the actress to the lady of title. It was a ghastly tie like this which was severed by that Duchess of Louis XIV’s time who poisoned Lecouvreur; nor can such an act of vengeance be wondered at, considering the magnitude of the offence.