Lucien sprang up and flung his arms about David.  David’s humility had made short work of many doubts and plenty of difficulties.  Was it possible not to feel twice tenderly towards this friend, who by the way of friendship had come to think the very thoughts that he, Lucien, had reached through ambition?  The aspirant for love and honors felt that the way had been made smooth for him; the young man and the comrade felt all his heart go out towards his friend.

It was one of those moments that come very seldom in our lives, when all the forces in us are sweetly strung, and every chord vibrating gives out full resonance.

And yet, this goodness of a noble nature increased Lucien’s human tendency to take himself as the centre of things.  Do not all of us say more or less, “L’Etat, c’est moi!” with Louis Quatorze?  Lucien’s mother and sister had concentrated all their tenderness on him, David was his devoted friend; he was accustomed to see the three making every effort for him in secret, and consequently he had all the faults of a spoiled eldest son.  The noble is eaten up with the egoism which their unselfishness was fostering in Lucien; and Mme. de Bargeton was doing her best to develop the same fault by inciting him to forget all that he owed to his sister, and mother, and David.  He was far from doing so as yet; but was there not ground for the fear that as his sphere of ambition widened, his whole thought perforce would be how he might maintain himself in it?

When emotion had subsided, David had a suggestion to make.  He thought that Lucien’s poem, Saint John in Patmos, was possibly too biblical to be read before an audience but little familiar with apocalyptic poetry.  Lucien, making his first appearance before the most exacting public in the Charente, seemed to be nervous.  David advised him to take Andre de Chenier and substitute certain pleasure for a dubious delight.  Lucien was a perfect reader, the listeners would enjoy listening to him, and his modesty would doubtless serve him well.  Like most young people, the pair were endowing the rest of the world with their own intelligence and virtues; for if youth that has not yet gone astray is pitiless for the sins of others, it is ready, on the other hand, to put a magnificent faith in them.  It is only, in fact, after a good deal of experience of life that we recognize the truth of Raphael’s great saying—­“To comprehend is to equal.”

The power of appreciating poetry is rare, generally speaking, in France; esprit soon dries up the source of the sacred tears of ecstasy; nobody cares to be at the trouble of deciphering the sublime, of plumbing the depths to discover the infinite.  Lucien was about to have his first experience of the ignorance and indifference of worldlings.  He went round by way of the printing office for David’s volume of poetry.