oticed that no one except Louise, M. de Bargeton, the
Bishop, and some few who wished to please the mistress of the house,
spoke of him as M. de Rubempre; for his formidable audience he was M.
Chardon. Lucien's courage sank under their inquisitive eyes. He could
read his plebeian name in the mere movements of their lips, and hear the
anticipatory criticisms made in the blunt, provincial fashion that too
often borders on rudeness. He had not expected this prolonged ordeal
of pin-pricks; it put him still more out of humor with himself. He grew
impatient to begin the reading, for then he could assume an attitude
which should put an end to his mental torments; but Jacques was giving
Mme. de Pimentel the history of his last day's sport; Adrien was holding
forth to Mlle. Laure de Rastignac on Rossini, the newly-risen music
star, and Astolphe, who had got by heart a newspaper paragraph on
a patent plow, was giving the Baron the benefit of the description.
Lucien, luckless poet that he was, did not know that there was scarce a
soul in the room besides Mme. de Bargeton who could understand poetry.
The whole matter-of-fact assembly was there by a misapprehension, nor
did they, for the most part, know what they had come out for to see.
There are some words that draw a public as unfailingly as the clash of
cymbals, the trumpet, or the mountebank's big drum; "beauty," "glory,"
"poetry," are words that bewitch the coarsest intellect.

When every one had arrived; when the buzz of talk ceased after repeated
efforts on the part of M. de Bargeton, who, obedient to his wife,
went round the room much as the beadle makes the circle of the church,
tapping the pavement with his wand; when silence, in fact, was at last
secured, Lucien went to the round table near Mme. de Bargeton. A fierce
thrill of excitement ran through him as he did so. He announced in an
uncertain voice that, to prevent disappointment, he was about to read
the masterpieces of a great poet, discovered only recently (for although
Andre de Chenier's poems appeared in 1819, no one in Angouleme had so
much as heard of him). Everybody interpreted this announcement in one
way--it was a shift of Mme. de Bargeton's, meant to save the poet's
self-love and to put the audience at ease.

Lucien began with _Le Malade_, and the poem was received with a murmur
of applause; but he followed it with _L'Aveugle_, which proved too great
a strain upon the average intellect. None but artists or