Lucien’s attack on d’Arthez’s book

Lucien de Rubempré’s attack on Daniel d’Arthez’s book turns a newspaper assignment into a test of loyalty, ambition, and conscience. Pressed by his royalist colleagues to ridicule the work, Lucien writes the article despite admiring the book and knowing the cost to his friendship. His midnight visit to d’Arthez exposes the conflict behind the printed criticism: Lucien asks his friend to keep the visit secret, and d’Arthez offers to revise the manuscript into a more serious review. The episode binds literary judgment to factional maneuvering and makes Lucien’s success as a journalist inseparable from the compromises that torment him.

The Assignment and Its Stakes

The book appeared just before Coralie’s stage debut. At the newspaper office, the editor-in-chief assigned the review to Lucien, whose reputation for criticism had been built in part on his articles about Nathan. The timing made the task more than a literary exercise: Lucien had borrowed 4,500 francs from Camusot to support Coralie, and had secured promises of favorable notices from several royalist writers. Camusot, a silk merchant who knew the precarious circumstances of booksellers, lent the money on the condition that Lucien endorse the bill as payment received in silks. Lucien concealed this arrangement from Coralie while trying to steady her and Bérénice, who were already struggling to manage their household.

The royalist newspaper office had become a meeting place for a wider political campaign. Its writers discussed the influence of Léon Giraud’s semi-weekly paper, whose prudent and moderate language they considered dangerous. They also spoke of Le Cénacle, which they treated as an organized enemy. The royalist papers had decided to wage a systematic war against the group, and d’Arthez became a target by association, although his absolutist opinions were not known. The assignment thus required Lucien to attack a friend’s book as part of a partisan campaign, not simply to assess its merits.

When Lucien refused, the assembled royalists objected that a new convert had no right to choose which duties of the cause to accept. Merlin and Martinville took him aside and argued that his scruple would leave Coralie exposed to hostile liberal papers, without the protection of royalist and ministerial coverage. Martinville predicted that a controversy would keep her performing for three months and bring her 30,000 francs during a provincial engagement. The argument sharpened the trap: Lucien was told that sparing d’Arthez would threaten both Coralie’s livelihood and his own future.

The Article and the Visit

Lucien returned home distressed and read the book before writing. Its quality made the assignment painful: he wept as he read, hesitated for a long time, and then produced a mocking article of the kind he knew how to write. The narrator compares his treatment of the work to a child plucking and tormenting a beautiful bird. The image makes the article’s violence clear: Lucien’s wit, an asset in the press, becomes an instrument for damaging what he privately recognizes as fine.

After rereading the book, Lucien’s admiration overcame him. At midnight he crossed Paris and stopped outside d’Arthez’s home, looking through the windows at the familiar, modest light. He remained outside for a time, then went in and found d’Arthez reading without a fire. Lucien admitted that the book was sublime and that he had been ordered to attack it. He explained his predicament and asked d’Arthez to keep the visit secret, presenting himself not as a principled opponent of the assignment but as a man overwhelmed by love for Coralie and trapped by his circumstances.

At d’Arthez’s request, Lucien handed over the manuscript. D’Arthez smiled at the waste of Lucien’s talent in mockery, but seeing his genuine distress, offered to revise the piece. He proposed replacing the damaging joke with grave, serious criticism, arguing that such criticism could itself honor the work and make the article more honorable to both men. He also observed that he knew his own faults well enough to help shape the review. Lucien accepted the offer with tears and affection, describing d’Arthez’s intervention as a moment of relief. Yet d’Arthez warned him that repeated repentance could become a license for wrongdoing, rather than a true return to conscience.

Publication and Consequences

The next day, Lucien took the article to the newspaper after d’Arthez had returned it revised. The episode does not disclose the finished review’s specific judgments; it establishes instead that the article Lucien submitted was no longer the mocking manuscript he had first written. The compromise did not undo his participation in the attack, and d’Arthez’s warning left him with a sharper awareness of the danger of treating remorse as absolution.

That evening, Lucien watched Coralie’s debut at the Gymnase Theatre from a state of acute apprehension. His attention moved across the audience as if he were an accused man searching the faces of a jury; every murmur, entrance, exit, or change in Coralie’s voice unsettled him. The play fell. Coralie received no applause when she first appeared, and Camusot’s clapping from the boxes was answered by repeated calls for silence. Spectators in the galleries silenced the claque when its applause became too conspicuously exaggerated. Martinville applauded courageously, while Florine, Nathan, and Merlin followed his lead.

The contrast between the promised publicity and the cold reception made the cost of Lucien’s choice immediate without establishing that his article alone caused the failure. After the performance, a crowd gathered in Coralie’s dressing room, but its consolations only deepened her distress. She was anguished less for herself than for Lucien. Meanwhile, Lucien was left with the melancholy that had taken hold after his visit to d’Arthez. His article had been softened, but he had still delivered it; the night joined the moral unease of that decision to the public disappointment of Coralie’s debut.

Significance in Lucien’s Career

The episode shows how political allegiance in the press could turn literary criticism into a weapon against writers who had not themselves been shown to oppose the faction attacking them. D’Arthez is made vulnerable because the royalist newspapers identify him with Le Cénacle, while Lucien’s assignment is justified through the practical rewards that a campaign of publicity might bring Coralie. Artistic judgment, partisan loyalty, and economic need converge in a single review.

For Lucien, the scene marks neither a clean refusal nor an untroubled surrender. He writes the mocking attack, recognizes its injustice, seeks d’Arthez’s private judgment, and submits a revised version that remains part of the newspaper’s campaign. D’Arthez’s intervention preserves a measure of seriousness in the criticism but does not erase the compromise. The episode therefore makes the difference between feeling remorse and changing course central to Lucien’s journalistic life: conscience returns, but it must contend with the habits and dependencies that have already shaped his choices.