he would indulge in some impertinence that would promptly
consign him to the obscurity from which he had emerged. Pending
the decease of genius, Chatelet appeared to offer up his hopes as a
sacrifice at Mme. de Bargeton's feet; but with the ingenuity of a rake,
he kept his own plan in abeyance, watching the lovers' movements with
keenly critical eyes, and waiting for the opportunity of ruining Lucien.

From this time forward, vague rumors reported the existence of a great
man in Angoumois. Mme. de Bargeton was praised on all sides for the
interest which she took in this young eagle. No sooner was her conduct
approved than she tried to win a general sanction. She announced a
soiree, with ices, tea, and cakes, a great innovation in a city where
tea, as yet, was sold only by druggists as a remedy for indigestion. The
flower of Angoumoisin aristocracy was summoned to hear Lucien read his
great work. Louise had hidden all the difficulties from her friend, but
she let fall a few words touching the social cabal formed against him;
she would not have him ignorant of the perils besetting his career as
a man of genius, nor of the obstacles insurmountable to weaklings. She
drew a lesson from the recent victory. Her white hands pointed him to
glory that lay beyond a prolonged martyrdom; she spoke of stakes
and flaming pyres; she spread the adjectives thickly on her finest
_tartines_, and decorated them with a variety of her most pompous
epithets. It was an infringement of the copyright of the passages
of declamation that disfigure _Corinne_; but Louise grew so much the
greater in her own eyes as she talked, that she loved the Benjamin who
inspired her eloquence the more for it. She counseled him to take a bold
step and renounce his patronymic for the noble name of Rubempre; he need
not mind the little tittle-tattle over a change which the King, for
that matter, would authorize. Mme. de Bargeton undertook to procure
this favor; she was related to the Marquise d'Espard, who was a
Blamont-Chauvry before her marriage, and a _persona grata_ at Court. The
words "King," "Marquise d'Espard," and "the Court" dazzled Lucien like a
blaze of fireworks, and the necessity of the baptism was plain to him.

"Dear child," said Louise, with tender mockery in her tones, "the sooner
it is done, the sooner it will be sanctioned."

She went through social strata and showed the poet that this step would
raise him many rungs higher in the ladder. Seizin