Le Réveil

Le Réveil is a royalist newspaper founded by Théodore Gaillard and Hector Merlin to answer the jokes and attacks of liberal journals. Its arrival turns Lucien de Rubempré’s political conversion into a public spectacle: a new paper promises him influence, but its opening campaign makes the price of that promise visible in the hostility of the press he has left behind.

Foundation and Political Purpose

The project took shape during a winter of social activity, as Gaillard and Hector Merlin sought the capital required to establish the paper. The first issue appeared in March 1822. The enterprise was arranged at the salon of Madame du Val-Noble, whose gathering brought together royalist writers, bankers, and great lords to discuss business that could be conducted there. The newspaper therefore emerged not as an isolated literary venture but from a social network linking political allegiance, money, and personal influence.

Le Réveil was conceived as a reply to the humor of the liberal press, particularly that of Le Miroir. Its political identity mattered to the people joining it: the royalist party expected the government to change hands, and supporters saw an opportunity to position themselves for favor. The paper’s purpose was consequently both polemical and practical. It would fight its opponents in print while giving its contributors a place within an anticipated shift in political power.

Lucien’s Recruitment and the Launch

Coralie urged Lucien to join the royalist side. She argued that the Liberals were unlikely to overthrow the government, whereas royalist service could bring him the countship of Rubempré, a seat in the Chamber of Peers, and a wealthy marriage. She also relayed news that Gaillard was founding Le Réveil to answer the liberal papers. Her counsel joined political calculation to social ambition: in her view, the royalist cause was not only likely to prosper but fashionable.

Lucien concealed his change of direction from Étienne Lousteau and his other friends, believing that secrecy would protect his maneuver. He also expected ministerial generosity to help settle his accounts and relieve the concealed financial distress surrounding Coralie. That expectation sat uneasily beside his habits: when informed of Coralie’s difficulties, he might briefly promise to work, but then forgot the promise and returned to dissipation. The paper thus entered his life as both a political instrument and a hoped-for remedy for private financial problems.

His friends from the literary circle confronted him before he formally joined. Daniel d’Arthez, accompanied by Léon Giraud and Michel Chrestien, objected that Lucien could not move from writing for liberal journals to defending the government, the right, and the Romantics without staining his character. They reminded him that he had attacked all three. Their appeal made the contradiction explicit: the new affiliation was not a gradual clarification of his convictions but a reversal with a public record behind it. After they left, Lucien joined Le Réveil’s list of contributors the next day.

The paper advertised his name as a conquest in a prospectus distributed by the Ministry in one hundred thousand copies. Lucien then attended a nine-hour inaugural banquet near Frascati with leading figures of the royalist press, including Martinville, Auger, Destains, and Hector Merlin. The scale of the prospectus and the length of the celebration gave the launch the character of a coordinated political event, presenting Lucien’s defection as a prize secured by the new journal.

Editorial Combat and Press Retaliation

At the banquet, the contributors resolved on a campaign against liberal writers and the Classicists. Lucien volunteered to attack heroes of Le Constitutionnel, including the sergeant Mercier, the collected works of Jouy, and prominent speakers of the Left. The gathering ended with a unanimous decision for an all-out war, its differences and reservations submerged in punch. Le Réveil’s opening identity was therefore defined not merely by royalist advocacy but by organized ridicule and attack.

The launch also exposed the limits of party loyalty in the newspaper world. A remark made at the banquet was published the next day in Le Miroir, after a bookseller who had attended revealed it; the disclosure was attributed to Lucien. Liberal papers seized on his defection and made him their target. They mocked the failure of his sonnets and publicized the claim that Dauriat would rather lose a thousand écus than print them, branding Lucien the poet without sonnets. The attack connected his political reversal to his precarious literary reputation, turning the new contributor into a convenient subject for ridicule.

For the first fifteen days, Lucien answered with a torrent of articles in Le Réveil, sharing the burden of criticism with Hector Merlin. Martinville served him without ulterior motives, but the wider journalistic circle was less straightforward. At the foyer of the Vaudeville, Lucien found that only people aligned with his new party offered him a hand, while Nathan, Merlin, and Gaillard continued to fraternize with Finot, Lousteau, and Vernou. Journalists who publicly faced one another across party lines could remain privately connected through the camaraderie of the press. Lucien, newly committed to the conflict, read their continued intimacy as coldness from his enemies.

Significance and Limits

Le Réveil’s launch shows how political journalism in Lucien’s Paris could function as a route to patronage and advancement as well as a forum for argument. The prospectus turned recruitment into publicity; the banquet converted political alignment into a collective declaration; and the ensuing articles made literary reputation part of the struggle. For Lucien, the paper offered the possibility of influence and distinction, but joining it also intensified the public consequences of his earlier work and made his change of allegiance impossible to keep private.

The evidence presents the newspaper chiefly through its founding, its royalist purpose, and the opening press war rather than through its later organization or full history. Within that account, Le Réveil is both a political counterstroke against liberal journalism and a test of Lucien’s attempt to make ambition, literary work, and party allegiance serve the same end. His vigorous early attacks do not erase the contradiction his friends identified; instead, the paper gives that contradiction a platform and an audience.