Perhaps it is impossible to
attain to success until the heart is seared and callous in every most
sensitive spot."
"The same as ever!" cried d'Arthez.
"Do you think me a base poltroon? No, d'Arthez; no, I am a boy half
crazed with love," and he told his story.
"Let us look at the article," said d'Arthez, touched by all that
Lucien said of Coralie.
Lucien held out the manuscript; d'Arthez read, and could not help
smiling.
"Oh, what a fatal waste of intellect!" he began. But at the sight of
Lucien overcome with grief in the opposite armchair, he checked
himself.
"Will you leave it with me to correct? I will let you have it again
to-morrow," he went on. "Flippancy depreciates a work; serious and
conscientious criticism is sometimes praise in itself. I know a way to
make your article more honorable both for yourself and for me.
Besides, I know my faults well enough."
"When you climb a hot, shadowless hillside, you sometimes find fruit
to quench your torturing thirst; and I have found it here and now,"
said Lucien, as he sprang sobbing to d'Arthez's arms and kissed his
friend on the forehead. "It seems to me that I am leaving my
conscience in your keeping; some day I will come to you and ask for it
again."
"I look upon a periodical repentance as great hypocrisy," d'Arthez
said solemnly; "repentance becomes a sort of indemnity for wrongdoing.
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