for fifty sous.  Great was the outcry in the trade; but the newspapers preserved a profound silence.  Barbet had not foreseen this “clearance;” he had a belief in Lucien’s abilities; for once he had broken his rule and taken two hundred copies.  The prospect of a loss drove him frantic; the things he said of Lucien were fearful to hear.  Then Barbet took a heroic resolution.  He stocked his copies in a corner of his shop, with the obstinacy of greed, and left his competitors to sell their wares at a loss.  Two years afterwards, when d’Arthez’s fine preface, the merits of the book, and one or two articles by Leon Giraud had raised the value of the book, Barbet sold his copies, one by one, at ten francs each.

Lucien knew nothing of all this, but Berenice and Coralie could not refuse to allow Hector Merlin to see his dying comrade, and Hector Merlin made him drink, drop by drop, the whole of the bitter draught brewed by the failure of Fendant and Cavalier, made bankrupts by his first ill-fated book.  Martainville, the one friend who stood by Lucien through thick and thin, had written a magnificent article on his work; but so great was the general exasperation against the editor of L’Aristarque, L’Oriflamme, and Le Drapeau Blanc, that his championship only injured Lucien.  In vain did the athlete return the Liberal insults tenfold, not a newspaper took up the challenge in spite of all his attacks.

Coralie, Berenice, and Bianchon might shut the door on Lucien’s so-called friends, who raised a great outcry, but it was impossible to keep out creditors and writs.  After the failure of Fendant and Cavalier, their bills were taken into bankruptcy according to that provision of the Code of Commerce most inimical to the claims of third parties, who in this way lose the benefit of delay.

Lucien discovered that Camusot was proceeding against him with great energy.  When Coralie heard the name, and for the first time learned the dreadful and humiliating step which her poet had taken for her sake, the angelic creature loved him ten times more than before, and would not approach Camusot.  The bailiff bringing the warrant of arrest shrank back from the idea of dragging his prisoner out of bed, and went back to Camusot before applying to the President of the Tribunal of Commerce for an order to remove the debtor to a private hospital.  Camusot hurried at once to the Rue de la Lune, and Coralie went down to him.

When she came up again she held the warrants, in which Lucien was described as a tradesman, in her hand.  How had she obtained those papers from Camusot?  What promise had she given?  Coralie kept a sad, gloomy silence, but when she returned she looked as if all the life had gone out of her.  She played in Camille Maupin’s play, and contributed not a little to the success of that illustrious literary hermaphrodite; but the creation of this character was the last flicker of a bright, dying lamp.  On the twentieth night, when Lucien had so far recovered that he had regained his appetite and could walk abroad, and talked of getting to work again, Coralie broke down; a secret trouble was weighing upon her.  Berenice always believed that she had promised to go back to Camusot to save Lucien.