“And if she would not leave the stage?”

“I should die of mortification, jealousy, and all sorts of pain.  You cannot pluck love out of your heart as you draw a tooth.”

Lucien’s face grew dark and thoughtful.

“When they find out that I am tolerating Camusot, how they will despise me,” he thought.

“Look here,” said the fierce republican, with humorous fierceness, “you can be a great writer, but a little play-actor you shall never be,” and he took up his hat and went out.

“He is hard, is Michel Chrestien,” commented Lucien.

“Hard and salutary, like the dentist’s pincers,” said Bianchon.  “Michel foresees your future; perhaps in the street, at this moment, he is thinking of you with tears in his eyes.”

D’Arthez was kind, and talked comfortingly, and tried to cheer Lucien.  The poet spent an hour with his friends, then he went, but his conscience treated him hardly, crying to him, “You will be a journalist—­a journalist!” as the witch cried to Macbeth that he should be king hereafter!

Out in the street, he looked up at d’Arthez’s windows, and saw a faint light shining in them, and his heart sank.  A dim foreboding told him that he had bidden his friends good-bye for the last time.

As he turned out of the Place de la Sorbonne into the Rue de Cluny, he saw a carriage at the door of his lodging.  Coralie had driven all the way from the Boulevard du Temple for the sake of a moment with her lover and a “good-night.”  Lucien found her sobbing in his garret.  She would be as wretchedly poor as her poet, she wept, as she arranged his shirts and gloves and handkerchiefs in the crazy chest of drawers.  Her distress was so real and so great, that Lucien, but even now chidden for his connection with an actress, saw Coralie as a saint ready to assume the hair-shirt of poverty.  The adorable girl’s excuse for her visit was an announcement that the firm of Camusot, Coralie, and Lucien meant to invite Matifat, Florine, and Lousteau (the second trio) to supper; had Lucien any invitations to issue to people who might be useful to him?  Lucien said that he would take counsel of Lousteau.

A few moments were spent together, and Coralie hurried away.  She spared Lucien the knowledge that Camusot was waiting for her below.

Next morning, at eight o’clock, Lucien went to Etienne Lousteau’s room, found it empty, and hurried away to Florine.  Lousteau and Florine, settled into possession of their new quarters like a married couple, received their friend in the pretty bedroom, and all three breakfasted sumptuously together.