Lucien’s journalistic baptism turns a private celebration at Coralie’s home into a public initiation into the Paris press. Finot pours champagne over Lucien’s head and declares him a journalist in the name of the stamp duty, the security deposit, and the fine: a comic sacrament that recognizes his success while making the costs and commercial machinery of journalism part of the joke. The ceremony crowns a rapid professional ascent, but the grave departure of three artists from the Cénacle makes the celebration a scene of division as well as arrival.

From rejected manuscript to newsroom success

Lucien’s initiation has a sharp contrast behind it. When he first approaches Vidal and Porchon, he asks to speak to the booksellers by name, then offers them his historical novel, The Archer of Charles IX. Vidal explains that the firm acts as a commission bookseller rather than a publisher, and that books it undertakes for itself are commercial ventures associated with established names. Its interest is in serious works such as histories and summaries. Lucien argues that his novel treats the conflict between Catholics supporting absolute government and Protestants seeking a republic, but this earnest description cannot secure him an opening. The episode establishes how little an aspiring writer’s sense of the importance of his work can accomplish without institutional access.

At Dauriat’s bookshop, Lucien encounters another gatekeeper. When he tries to speak, Dauriat turns to him with an impertinent manner and asks who he is; Étienne Lousteau intervenes, identifying Lucien as the person he has brought. Lucien watches the bookseller’s different degrees of familiarity with Finot, Blondet, and Nathan, and feels the chill of a hierarchy whose attention he has not yet earned. Later, when Dauriat returns the manuscript of The Daisies, Lucien asks for it coldly. Dauriat’s manner toward him has already softened, and he accompanies Lucien and Lousteau out while talking about their newspapers. The returned manuscript is not a publishing triumph, but the altered treatment marks a change in Lucien’s standing.

His newspaper work supplies the immediate grounds for the baptism. After writing a sharply biting review of a melodrama at the Ambigu-Comique, Lucien discovers that the published account has been softened overnight: it retains his analysis but ends in a favorable judgment of the play. He is furious and fears being exploited, yet he continues to seek influence through the press. He writes a balancing article on the opinions surrounding Nathan’s book for Dauriat and Finot’s review, then produces a short piece on Parisian life for the little newspaper. Lousteau praises that article and treats Lucien as an indispensable help to the paper. Finot’s later announcement that Lucien has proved himself in two months therefore rests on visible work, even as the earlier alteration shows that a journalist’s words do not necessarily reach print unchanged.

The party and its performers

The baptism takes place within an evening of conspicuous abundance. Coralie’s dining room can hold no more than thirty guests, and the gathering includes booksellers, journalists, actors, and Lucien’s former companions from the Cénacle. Among those named are Dauriat, the director of the Panorama-Dramatique, Matifat, Florine, Camusot, Étienne Lousteau, Finot, Nathan, Hector Merlin, Madame du Val-Noble, Félicien Vernou, Émile Blondet, Claude Vignon, Philippe Bridau, Giroudeau, and Bixiou. Tullia the dancer is also present, along with owners of newspapers where several of the journalists work. The mixture is itself significant: Lucien’s literary and theatrical connections have become part of a social gathering organized around his new success.

The rooms, furniture, hangings, and flowers take on a festive appearance under the lit chandeliers. Lucien sees himself as master of this luxurious setting and feels happiness, satisfied vanity, and hope. Within only a few months, he has passed from extreme poverty to extreme opulence; the speed of the change unsettles him even as he enjoys it. The ceremony is not simply an award for his writing. It comes amid the new social world his success has opened, and its theatricality echoes the public performance through which that world recognizes him.

The celebration also includes gambling. From nine until midnight the guests play, though Lucien knows no games. When Lousteau loses a thousand francs and asks to borrow the money, Lucien feels unable to refuse. Around ten, Michel Chrestien, Fulgence Ridal, and Joseph Bridau arrive. Lucien speaks with them apart from the others and notices their cold, serious, almost constrained expressions. Daniel d’Arthez cannot attend because he is finishing his book, while Léon Giraud is occupied with publishing the first issue of his review. The Cénacle is represented, but its presence does not mean that its members share the party’s enthusiasm.

A comic rite and a real division

Finot rises with a bottle of champagne and proposes that Lucien be formally baptized as a journalist. Bixiou calls for a crown of roses to mark Lucien’s double victory, looking toward Coralie. She signals to Bérénice, who fetches old artificial flowers from the actress’s boxes. A crown is quickly woven, and some of the most intoxicated guests put the flowers on in grotesque fashion. The improvised materials keep the ritual comic: this is not an official honor but a party-made ceremony, assembled from theatrical leftovers and champagne.

Finot acts as its officiant. With a few drops of champagne on Lucien’s blond head, he performs the baptism in the name of the stamp duty, security deposit, and fine, wishing that Lucien’s articles may be light to him. Merlin adds that they should be paid without deductions for blank space. The jokes reduce the journalist’s calling to both initiation and transaction: the new writer is welcomed, but the welcome names the fees and payments that govern the trade. The ceremony’s mock-sacred language gives the professional milestone a memorable form without concealing its material basis.

At that moment Lucien notices Michel Chrestien, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence Ridal putting on their hats and leaving amid a chorus of imprecations. Their exit cuts through the party’s triumph. Merlin calls them strange Christians, and Lousteau says that Fulgence had been a good fellow but had been corrupted by morality. The remark turns ethical seriousness into a punchline for the assembled journalists, while the departing men’s silence and departure register their refusal to join the joke. Lucien is therefore initiated not just into a profession but into a company whose easy complicity separates it from the moral commitments of his former circle.

What the baptism signifies

The scene gathers several stages of Lucien’s Parisian experience into one event: an unknown author rebuffed by booksellers, a supplicant admitted to Dauriat’s attention through Lousteau, and a working journalist praised by Finot before a room of publishers, performers, and writers. His advancement is real, but it depends on intermediaries and on a press in which articles can be altered before publication. The applause of his new associates and the departure of his old friends stand side by side, preventing the ritual from reading as an uncomplicated victory.

The baptism’s central irony lies in its formula. Lucien receives the title of journalist through a ceremony that invokes not truth, literary achievement, or public service, but the financial obligations attached to publication. The scene makes his new identity both a social distinction and a commercial condition. Its celebration marks his passage into the press, while the absent-minded ease with which the guests turn professional costs into jokes hints at the compromises and conflicts that accompany that passage.