told his story.

"Let us look at the article," said d'Arthez, touched by all that Lucien
said of Coralie.

Lucien held out the manuscript; d'Arthez read, and could not help
smiling.

"Oh, what a fatal waste of intellect!" he began. But at the sight of
Lucien overcome with grief in the opposite armchair, he checked himself.

"Will you leave it with me to correct? I will let you have it again
to-morrow," he went on. "Flippancy depreciates a work; serious and
conscientious criticism is sometimes praise in itself. I know a way to
make your article more honorable both for yourself and for me. Besides,
I know my faults well enough."

"When you climb a hot, shadowless hillside, you sometimes find fruit to
quench your torturing thirst; and I have found it here and now," said
Lucien, as he sprang sobbing to d'Arthez's arms and kissed his friend
on the forehead. "It seems to me that I am leaving my conscience in your
keeping; some day I will come to you and ask for it again."

"I look upon a periodical repentance as great hypocrisy," d'Arthez
said solemnly; "repentance becomes a sort of indemnity for wrongdoing.
Repentance is virginity of the soul, which we must keep for God; a man
who repents twice is a horrible sycophant. I am afraid that you regard
repentance as absolution."

Lucien went slowly back to the Rue de la Lune, stricken dumb by those
words.

Next morning d'Arthez sent back his article, recast throughout, and
Lucien sent it in to the review; but from that day melancholy preyed
upon him, and he could not always disguise his mood. That evening, when
the theatre was full, he experienced for the first time the paroxysm of
nervous terror caused by a _debut_; terror aggravated in his case by all
the strength of his love. Vanity of every kind was involved. He looked
over the rows of faces as a criminal eyes the judges and the jury on
whom his life depends. A murmur would have set him quivering; any slight
incident upon the stage, Coralie's exits and entrances, the slightest
modulation of the tones of her voice, would perturb him beyond all
reason.

The play in which Coralie made her first appearance at the Gymnase was
a piece of the kind which sometimes falls flat at first, and afterwards
has immense success. It fell flat that night. Coralie was not applauded
when she came on, and the chilly reception reacted upon her. The only
applause came from Camusot's box, and various persons posted in the
balcony and galle