while Chatelet in turn sang one of Chateaubriand's
ballads, a chivalrous ditty made in the time of the Empire. Duets
followed, of the kind usually left to boarding-school misses, and
rescued from the schoolroom by Mme. du Brossard, who meant to make a
brilliant display of her dear Camille's talents for M. de Severac's
benefit.

Mme. du Bargeton, hurt by the contempt which every one showed her
poet, paid back scorn for scorn by going to her boudoir during these
performances. She was followed by the prelate. His Vicar-General had
just been explaining the profound irony of the epigram into which he
had been entrapped, and the Bishop wished to make amends. Mlle. de
Rastignac, fascinated by the poetry, also slipped into the boudoir
without her mother's knowledge.

Louise drew Lucien to her mattress-cushioned sofa; and with no one
to see or hear, she murmured in his ear, "Dear angel, they did not
understand you; but, 'Thy songs are sweet, I love to say them over.'"

And Lucien took comfort from the pretty speech, and forgot his woes for
a little.

"Glory is not to be had cheaply," Mme. de Bargeton continued, taking his
hand and holding it tightly in her own. "Endure your woes, my friend,
you will be great one day; your pain is the price of your immortality.
If only I had a hard struggle before me! God preserve you from the
enervating life without battles, in which the eagle's wings have no room
to spread themselves. I envy you; for if you suffer, at least you live.
You will put out your strength, you will feel the hope of victory; your
strife will be glorious. And when you shall come to your kingdom, and
reach the imperial sphere where great minds are enthroned, then remember
the poor creatures disinherited by fate, whose intellects pine in an
oppressive moral atmosphere, who die and have never lived, knowing all
the while what life might be; think of the piercing eyes that have seen
nothing, the delicate senses that have only known the scent of poison
flowers. Then tell in your song of plants that wither in the depths
of the forest, choked by twining growths and rank, greedy vegetation,
plants that have never been kissed by the sunlight, and die, never
having put forth a blossom. It would be a terribly gloomy poem, would it
not, a fanciful subject? What a sublime poem might be made of the story
of some daughter of the desert transported to some cold, western clime,
calling for her beloved sun, dying of a grief that none