he _Marguerites_! . . . Long live Lucien de Rubempre!"

After these three salvos, taken up by some few voices, three crowns and
a quantity of bouquets were adroitly flung into the room through the
open window. Ten minutes later the Place du Murier was empty, and
silence prevailed in the streets.

"I would rather have ten thousand francs," said old Sechard, fingering
the bouquets and garlands with a satirical expression. "You gave them
daisies, and they give you posies in return; you deal in flowers."

"So that is your opinion of the honors shown me by my fellow-townsmen,
is it?" asked Lucien. All his melancholy had left him, his face was
radiant with good humor. "If you knew mankind, Papa Sechard, you would
see that no moment in one's life comes twice. Such a triumph as this can
only be due to genuine enthusiasm! . . . My dear mother, my good sister,
this wipes out many mortifications."

Lucien kissed them; for when joy overflows like a torrent flood, we
are fain to pour it out into a friend's heart. "When an author is
intoxicated with success, he will hug his porter if there is nobody else
on hand," according to Bixiou.

"Why, darling, why are you crying?" he said, looking into Eve's face.
"Ah! I know, you are crying for joy!"

"Oh me!" said her mother, shaking her head as she spoke. "Lucien has
forgotten everything already; not merely his own troubles, but ours as
well."

Mother and daughter separated, and neither dared to utter all her
thoughts.

In a country eaten up with the kind of social insubordination disguised
by the word Equality, a triumph of any kind whatsoever is a sort of
miracle which requires, like some other miracles for that matter, the
co-operation of skilled labor. Out of ten ovations offered to ten living
men, selected for this distinction by a grateful country, you may be
quite sure that nine are given from considerations connected as remotely
as possible with the conspicuous merits of the renowned recipient. What
was Voltaire's apotheosis at the Theatre-Francais but the triumph of
eighteenth century philosophy? A triumph in France means that everybody
else feels that he is adorning his own temples with the crown that he
sets on the idol's head.

The women's presentiments proved correct. The distinguished provincial's
reception was antipathetic to Angoumoisin immobility; it was too
evidently got up by some interested persons or by enthusiastic stage
mechanics, a suspicious combination.