Lucien’s luxurious life, hollow though it was, and founded on expectations, had estranged his friends.  They could not forgive him for the carriage which he had put down—­for them he was still rolling about in it—­nor yet for the splendors of the Rue de Vendome which he had left.  All of them felt instinctively that nothing was beyond the reach of this young and handsome poet, with intellect enough and to spare; they themselves had trained him in corruption; and, therefore, they left no stone unturned to ruin him.

Some few days before Coralie’s first appearance at the Gymnase, Lucien and Hector Merlin went arm-in-arm to the Vaudeville.  Merlin was scolding his friend for giving a helping hand to Nathan in Florine’s affair.

“You then and there made two mortal enemies of Lousteau and Nathan,” he said.  “I gave you good advice, and you took no notice of it.  You gave praise, you did them a good turn—­you will be well punished for your kindness.  Florine and Coralie will never live in peace on the same stage; both will wish to be first.  You can only defend Coralie in our papers; and Nathan not only has a pull as a dramatic author, he can control the dramatic criticism in the Liberal newspapers.  He has been a journalist a little longer than you!”

The words responded to Lucien’s inward misgivings.  Neither Nathan nor Gaillard was treating him with the frankness which he had a right to expect, but so new a convert could hardly complain.  Gaillard utterly confounded Lucien by saying roundly that newcomers must give proofs of their sincerity for some time before their party could trust them.  There was more jealousy than he had imagined in the inner circles of Royalist and Ministerial journalism.  The jealousy of curs fighting for a bone is apt to appear in the human species when there is a loaf to divide; there is the same growling and showing of teeth, the same characteristics come out.

In every possible way these writers of articles tried to injure each other with those in power; they brought reciprocal accusations of lukewarm zeal; they invented the most treacherous ways of getting rid of a rival.  There had been none of this internecine warfare among the Liberals; they were too far from power, too hopelessly out of favor; and Lucien, amid the inextricable tangle of ambitions, had neither the courage to draw sword and cut the knot, or the patience to unravel it.  He could not be the Beaumarchais, the Aretino, the Freron of his epoch; he was not made of such stuff; he thought of nothing but his one desire, the patent of nobility; for he saw clearly that for him such a restoration meant a wealthy marriage, and, the title once secured, chance and his good looks would do the rest.  This was all his plan, and Etienne Lousteau, who had confided so much to him, knew his secret, knew how to deal a deathblow to the poet of Angouleme.  That very night, as Lucien and Merlin went to the Vaudeville, Etienne had laid a terrible trap, into which an inexperienced boy could not but fall.