The more phlegmatic race, who take these
things quietly, lay their account with the oblivion which speedily
overtakes the spiteful article. These are the truly courageous men of
letters; and if the weaklings seem at first to be the strong men, they
cannot hold out for any length of time.
During that first fortnight, while the fury was upon him, Lucien
poured a perfect hailstorm of articles into the Royalist papers, in
which he shared the responsibilities of criticism with Hector Merlin.
He was always in the breach, pounding away with all his might in the
_Reveil_, backed up by Martainville, the only one among his associates
who stood by him without an afterthought. Martainville was not in the
secret of certain understandings made and ratified amid after-dinner
jokes, or at Dauriat's in the Wooden Galleries, or behind the scenes
at the Vaudeville, when journalists of either side met on neutral
ground.
When Lucien went to the greenroom of the Vaudeville, he met with no
welcome; the men of his own party held out a hand to shake, the others
cut him; and all the while Hector Merlin and Theodore Gaillard
fraternized unblushingly with Finot, Lousteau, and Vernou, and the
rest of the journalists who were known for "good fellows."
The greenroom of the Vaudeville in those days was a hotbed of gossip,
as well as a neutral ground where men of every shade of opinion could
meet; so much so that the President of a court of law, after reproving
a learned brother in a certain council chamber for "sweeping the
greenroom with his gown," met the subject of his strictures, gown to
gown, in the greenroom of the Vaudeville.
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