A few days later, Lucien made up his mind to a humiliating step for love’s sake.  He took Fendant and Cavalier’s bills, and went to the Golden Cocoon in the Rue des Bourdonnais.  He would ask Camusot to discount them.  The poet had not fallen so low that he could make this attempt quite coolly.  There had been many a sharp struggle first, and the way to that decision had been paved with many dreadful thoughts.  Nevertheless, he arrived at last in the dark, cheerless little private office that looked out upon a yard, and found Camusot seated gravely there; this was not Coralie’s infatuated adorer, not the easy-natured, indolent, incredulous libertine whom he had known hitherto as Camusot, but a heavy father of a family, a merchant grown old in shrewd expedients of business and respectable virtues, wearing a magistrate’s mask of judicial prudery; this Camusot was the cool, business-like head of the firm surrounded by clerks, green cardboard boxes, pigeonholes, invoices, and samples, and fortified by the presence of a wife and a plainly-dressed daughter.  Lucien trembled from head to foot as he approached; for the worthy merchant, like the money-lenders, turned cool, indifferent eyes upon him.

“Here are two or three bills, monsieur,” he said, standing beside the merchant, who did not rise from his desk.  “If you will take them of me, you will oblige me extremely.”

“You have taken something of me, monsieur,” said Camusot; “I do not forget it.”

On this, Lucien explained Coralie’s predicament.  He spoke in a low voice, bending to murmur his explanation, so that Camusot could hear the heavy throbbing of the humiliated poet’s heart.  It was no part of Camusot’s plans that Coralie should suffer a check.  He listened, smiling to himself over the signatures on the bills (for, as a judge at the Tribunal of Commerce, he knew how the booksellers stood), but in the end he gave Lucien four thousand five hundred francs for them, stipulating that he should add the formula “For value received in silks.”

Lucien went straight to Braulard, and made arrangements for a good reception.  Braulard promised to come to the dress-rehearsal, to determine on the points where his “Romans” should work their fleshy clappers to bring down the house in applause.  Lucien gave the rest of the money to Coralie (he did not tell her how he had come by it), and allayed her anxieties and the fears of Berenice, who was sorely troubled over their daily expenses.

Martainville came several times to hear Coralie rehearse, and he knew more of the stage than most men of his time; several Royalist writers had promised favorable articles; Lucien had not a suspicion of the impending disaster.