Lucien was forced to choose between d’Arthez and Coralie. His mistress would be ruined unless he dealt his friend a death-blow in the _Réveil_ and the great newspaper. Poor poet! He went home with death in his soul; and by the fireside he sat and read that finest production of modern literature. Tears fell fast over it as the pages turned. For a long while he hesitated, but at last he took up the pen and wrote a sarcastic article of the kind that he understood so well, taking the book as children might take some bright bird to strip it of its plumage and torture it. His sardonic jests were sure to tell. Again he turned to the book, and as he read it over a second time, his better self awoke. In the dead of night he hurried across Paris, and stood outside d’Arthez’s house. He looked up at the windows and saw the faint pure gleam of light in the panes, as he had so often seen it, with a feeling of admiration for the noble steadfastness of that truly great nature. For some moments he stood irresolute on the curbstone; he had not courage to go further; but his good angel urged him on. He tapped at the door and opened, and found d’Arthez sitting reading in a fireless room. “What has happened?” asked d’Arthez, for news of some dreadful kind was visible in Lucien’s ghastly face. “Your book is sublime, d’Arthez,” said Lucien, with tears in his eyes, “and they have ordered me to write an attack upon it.” “Poor boy! the bread that they give you is hard indeed!” said d’Arthez “I only ask for one favor, keep my visit a secret and leave me to my hell, to the occupations of the damned. Perhaps it is impossible to attain to success until the heart is seared and callous in every most sensitive spot.” “The same as ever!” cried d’Arthez. “Do you think me a base poltroon? No, d’Arthez; no, I am a boy half crazed with love,” and he told his story. “Let us look at the article,” said d’Arthez, touched by all that Lucien said of Coralie. Lucien held out the manuscript; d’Arthez read, and could not help smiling. “Oh, what a fatal waste of intellect!” he began. But at the sight of Lucien overcome with grief in the opposite armchair, he checked himself. “Will you leave it with me to correct? I will let you have it again to-morrow,” he went on. “Flippancy depreciates a work; serious and conscientious criticism is sometimes praise in itself. I know a way to make your article more honorable both for yourself and for me. Besides, I know my faults well enough.” “When you climb a hot, shadowless hillside, you sometimes find fruit to quench your torturing thirst; and I have found it here and now,” said Lucien, as he sprang sobbing to d’Arthez’s arms and kissed his friend on the forehead. “It seems to me that I am leaving my conscience in your keeping; some day I will come to you and ask for it again.”