Another mortification followed.  Coralie was obliged to see her part given to Florine.  Nathan had threatened the Gymnase with war if the management refused to give the vacant place to Coralie’s rival.  Coralie had persisted till she could play no longer, knowing that Florine was waiting to step into her place.  She had overtasked her strength.  The Gymnase had advanced sums during Lucien’s illness, she had no money to draw; Lucien, eager to work though he was, was not yet strong enough to write, and he helped besides to nurse Coralie and to relieve Berenice.  From poverty they had come to utter distress; but in Bianchon they found a skilful and devoted doctor, who obtained credit for them of the druggist.  The landlord of the house and the tradespeople knew by this time how matters stood.  The furniture was attached.  The tailor and dressmaker no longer stood in awe of the journalist, and proceeded to extremes; and at last no one, with the exception of the pork-butcher and the druggist, gave the two unlucky children credit.  For a week or more all three of them—­Lucien, Berenice, and the invalid—­were obliged to live on the various ingenious preparations sold by the pork-butcher; the inflammatory diet was little suited to the sick girl, and Coralie grew worse.  Sheer want compelled Lucien to ask Lousteau for a return of the loan of a thousand francs lost at play by the friend who had deserted him in his hour of need.  Perhaps, amid all his troubles, this step cost him most cruel suffering.

Lousteau was not to be found in the Rue de la Harpe.  Hunted down like a hare, he was lodging now with this friend, now with that.  Lucien found him at last at Flicoteaux’s; he was sitting at the very table at which Lucien had found him that evening when, for his misfortune, he forsook d’Arthez for journalism.  Lousteau offered him dinner, and Lucien accepted the offer.

As they came out of Flicoteaux’s with Claude Vignon (who happened to be dining there that day) and the great man in obscurity, who kept his wardrobe at Samanon’s, the four among them could not produce enough specie to pay for a cup of coffee at the Cafe Voltaire.  They lounged about the Luxembourg in the hope of meeting with a publisher; and, as it fell out, they met with one of the most famous printers of the day.  Lousteau borrowed forty francs of him, and divided the money into four equal parts.

Misery had brought down Lucien’s pride and extinguished sentiment; he shed tears as he told the story of his troubles, but each one of his comrades had a tale as cruel as his own; and when the three versions had been given, it seemed to the poet that he was the least unfortunate among the four.  All of them craved a respite from remembrance and thoughts which made trouble doubly hard to bear.

Lousteau hurried to the Palais Royal to gamble with his remaining nine francs.  The great man unknown to fame, though he had a divine mistress, must needs hie him to a low haunt of vice to wallow in perilous pleasure.  Vignon betook himself to the Rocher de Cancale to drown memory and thought in a couple of bottles of Bordeaux; Lucien parted company with him on the threshold, declining to share that supper.  When he shook hands with the one journalist who had not been hostile to him, it was with a cruel pang in his heart.