Lucien, in
his heart, was not over well pleased to see Chatelet again, and cursed
the chance that had brought the Baron to Paris. The Baron said that
ambition had brought him to town; he had hopes of an appointment as
secretary-general to a government department, and meant to take a seat
in the Council of State as Master of Requests. He had come to Paris to
ask for fulfilment of the promises that had been given him, for a man
of his stamp could not be expected to remain a comptroller all his
life; he would rather be nothing at all, and offer himself for
election as deputy, or re-enter diplomacy. Chatelet grew visibly
taller; Lucien dimly began to recognize in this elderly beau the
superiority of the man of the world who knows Paris; and, most of all,
he felt ashamed to owe his evening's amusement to his rival. And while
the poet looked ill at ease and awkward Her Royal Highness'
ex-secretary was quite in his element. He smiled at his rival's
hesitations, at his astonishment, at the questions he put, at the
little mistakes which the latter ignorantly made, much as an old salt
laughs at an apprentice who has not found his sea legs; but Lucien's
pleasure at seeing a play for the first time in Paris outweighed the
annoyance of these small humiliations.
That evening marked an epoch in Lucien's career; he put away a good
many of his ideas as to provincial life in the course of it.
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