For Lucien, life had become a bad dream.  He did not care whether he lived or died.  The courage of suicide helped him in some sort to carry things off with a dash of bravado before the spectators.  He stood in his place; he would not take a step, a piece of recklessness which the others took for deliberate calculation.  They thought the poet an uncommonly cool hand.  Michel Chrestien came as far as his limit; both fired twice and at the same time, for either party was considered to be equally insulted.  Michel’s first bullet grazed Lucien’s chin; Lucien’s passed ten feet above Chrestien’s head.  The second shot hit Lucien’s coat collar, but the buckram lining fortunately saved its wearer.  The third bullet struck him in the chest, and he dropped.

“Is he dead?” asked Michel Chrestien.

“No,” said the surgeon, “he will pull through.”

“So much the worse,” answered Michel.

“Yes; so much the worse,” said Lucien, as his tears fell fast.

By noon the unhappy boy lay in bed in his own room.  With untold pains they had managed to remove him, but it had taken five hours to bring him to the Rue de la Lune.  His condition was not dangerous, but precautions were necessary lest fever should set in and bring about troublesome complications.  Coralie choked down her grief and anguish.  She sat up with him at night through the anxious weeks of his illness, studying her parts by his bedside.  Lucien was in danger for two long months; and often at the theatre Coralie acted her frivolous role with one thought in her heart, “Perhaps he is dying at this moment.”

Lucien owed his life to the skill and devotion of a friend whom he had grievously hurt.  Bianchon had come to tend him after hearing the story of the attack from d’Arthez, who told it in confidence, and excused the unhappy poet.  Bianchon suspected that d’Arthez was generously trying to screen the renegade; but on questioning Lucien during a lucid interval in the dangerous nervous fever, he learned that his patient was only responsible for the one serious article in Hector Merlin’s paper.

Before the first month was out, the firm of Fendant and Cavalier filed their schedule.  Bianchon told Coralie that Lucien must on no account hear the news.  The famous Archer of Charles IX., brought out with an absurd title, had been a complete failure.  Fendant, being anxious to realize a little ready money before going into bankruptcy, had sold the whole edition (without Cavalier’s knowledge) to dealers in printed paper.  These, in their turn, had disposed of it at a cheap rate to hawkers, and Lucien’s book at that moment was adorning the bookstalls along the Quays.  The booksellers on the Quai des Augustins, who had previously taken a quantity of copies, now discovered that after this sudden reduction of the price they were like to lose heavily on their purchases; the four duodecimo volumes, for which they had paid four francs fifty centimes, were being given away