Part 39 (2/2)

”If you see Samanon in a bookseller's shop, or calling on a paper-merchant or a printer, you may know that it is all over with that man,” said the artist. ”Samanon is the undertaker come to take the measurements for a coffin.”

”You won't discount your bills now, Lucien,” said Etienne.

”If Samanon will not take them, n.o.body else will; he is the _ultima ratio_,” said the stranger. ”He is one of Gigonnet's lambs, a spy for Palma, Werbrust, Gobseck, and the rest of those crocodiles who swim in the Paris money-market. Every man with a fortune to make, or unmake, is sure to come across one of them sooner or later.”

”If you cannot discount your bills at fifty per cent,” remarked Lousteau, ”you must exchange them for hard cash.”

”How?”

”Give them to Coralie; Camusot will cash them for her.--You are disgusted,” added Lousteau, as Lucien cut him short with a start. ”What nonsense! How can you allow such a silly scruple to turn the scale, when your future is in the balance?”

”I shall take this money to Coralie in any case,” began Lucien.

”Here is more folly!” cried Lousteau. ”You will not keep your creditors quiet with four hundred francs when you must have four thousand. Let us keep a little and get drunk on it, if we lose the rest at _rouge et noir_.”

”That is sound advice,” said the great man.

Those words, spoken not four paces from Frascati's, were magnetic in their effect. The friends dismissed their cab and went up to the gaming-table.

At the outset they won three thousand francs, then they lost and fell to five hundred; again they won three thousand seven hundred francs, and again they lost all but a five-franc piece. After another turn of luck they staked two thousand francs on an even number to double the stake at a stroke; an even number had not turned up for five times in succession, and this was the sixth time. They punted the whole sum, and an odd number turned up once more.

After two hours of all-absorbing, frenzied excitement, the two dashed down the staircase with the hundred francs kept back for the dinner.

Upon the steps, between two pillars which support the little sheet-iron veranda to which so many eyes have been upturned in longing or despair, Lousteau stopped and looked into Lucien's flushed, excited face.

”Let us just try fifty francs,” he said.

And up the stairs again they went. An hour later they owned a thousand crowns. Black had turned up for the fifth consecutive time; they trusted that their previous luck would not repeat itself, and put the whole sum on the red--black turned up for the sixth time. They had lost. It was now six o'clock.

”Let us just try twenty-five francs,” said Lucien.

The new venture was soon made--and lost. The twenty-five francs went in five stakes. Then Lucien, in a frenzy, flung down his last twenty-five francs on the number of his age, and won. No words can describe how his hands trembled as he raked in the coins which the bank paid him one by one. He handed ten louis to Lousteau.

”Fly!” he cried; ”take it to Very's.”

Lousteau took the hint and went to order dinner. Lucien, left alone, laid his thirty louis on the red and won. Emboldened by the inner voice which a gambler always hears, he staked the whole again on the red, and again he won. He felt as if there were a furnace within him. Without heeding the voice, he laid a hundred and twenty louis on the black and lost. Then to the torturing excitement of suspense succeeded the delicious feeling of relief known to the gambler who has nothing left to lose, and must perforce leave the palace of fire in which his dreams melt and vanish.

He found Lousteau at Very's, and flung himself upon the cookery (to make use of Lafontaine's expression), and drowned his cares in wine. By nine o'clock his ideas were so confused that he could not imagine why the portress in the Rue de Vendome persisted in sending him to the Rue de la Lune.

”Mlle. Coralie has gone,” said the woman. ”She has taken lodgings elsewhere. She left her address with me on this sc.r.a.p of paper.”

Lucien was too far gone to be surprised at anything. He went back to the cab which had brought him, and was driven to the Rue de la Lune, making puns to himself on the name of the street as he went.

The news of the failure of the Panorama-Dramatique had come like a thunder-clap. Coralie, taking alarm, made haste to sell her furniture (with the consent of her creditors) to little old Cardot, who installed Florentine in the rooms at once. The tradition of the house remained unbroken. Coralie paid her creditors and satisfied the landlord, proceeding with her ”was.h.i.+ng-day,” as she called it, while Berenice bought the absolutely indispensable necessaries to furnish a fourth-floor lodging in the Rue de la Lune, a few doors from the Gymnase. Here Coralie was waiting for Lucien's return. She had brought her love unsullied out of the s.h.i.+pwreck and twelve hundred francs.

Lucien, more than half intoxicated, poured out his woes to Coralie and Berenice.

”You did quite right, my angel,” said Coralie, with her arms about his neck. ”Berenice can easily negotiate your bills with Braulard.”

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