Lost Illusions

Lost Illusions is part of Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy), a vast cycle of interconnected novels portraying French society in the early 19th century. The story continues in Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes.

The novel begins in 1819 in the provincial city of Angoulême, divided between an aristocratic Upper Town and the commercial suburb of l'Houmeau. Jérôme-Nicolas Séchard, an illiterate, miserly former pressman who acquired a printing house during the Revolution, summons his son, David Séchard, home from Paris to take over the business. Old Séchard sells the decrepit equipment for 30,000 francs, far above its value. David, generous and scientifically minded, accepts the unfair terms out of filial respect and retreats into intellectual pursuits while the business declines.

David reconnects with Lucien Chardon, a strikingly beautiful young poet whose impoverished family lives in l'Houmeau. Lucien's mother works as a midwife, and his sister Eve labors as a laundress's forewoman. David offers Lucien a position at the printing house, and the two become inseparable, dreaming of literary greatness. David quietly falls in love with Eve, while the Cointet brothers, rival printers, systematically divert business from the neglected Séchard press.

Lucien gains entry to the salon of Mme de Bargeton (née Anaïs de Nègrepelisse, called Louise), a passionate noblewoman who presides over Angoulême's leading social circle. She becomes his patron and beloved, encouraging him to adopt his mother's noble name, de Rubempré, and filling him with visions of Parisian glory. Their relationship scandalizes the local aristocracy, and when a rival nobleman spreads gossip about finding Lucien at Louise's feet, her husband challenges the man to a duel and wounds him. The incident forces Louise to flee to Paris.

On the eve of David and Eve's wedding, Lucien abandons his family to follow Louise. David and Eve sacrifice their savings to fund his departure. In Paris, however, the relationship disintegrates almost immediately. Louise, advised by the scheming Baron Sixte du Châtelet, separates from Lucien to protect her reputation. At the opera, a young aristocrat named Rastignac reveals Lucien's humble origins to fashionable society. The Marquise d'Espard, Louise's powerful cousin, refuses to receive him, and Louise abandons Lucien entirely. Within days he is alone with dwindling funds, unsold manuscripts, and shattered illusions.

Lucien moves to a squalid room in the Latin Quarter. At the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, he meets Daniel d'Arthez, a brilliant young writer of profound integrity, who introduces him to the Cénacle, a circle of gifted intellectuals including the medical student Bianchon, the philosopher Léon Giraud, and the republican idealist Michel Chrestien. These friends collectively revise Lucien's novel, An Archer of Charles IX, and warn him repeatedly against journalism, which they regard as morally fatal.

Despite these warnings, Lucien befriends Étienne Lousteau, a bitter, impoverished journalist who initiates him into the literary underworld. Lousteau takes him to the publisher Dauriat, who dismisses Lucien's poetry as commercially worthless, and then backstage at a boulevard theatre. There Lucien meets Florine, Lousteau's actress mistress, and Coralie, a young actress who falls passionately in love with the poet. At a lavish supper, Lucien writes a brilliant theatre review and achieves instant success. The critic Claude Vignon warns prophetically about journalism's power to corrupt, but Lucien, intoxicated by praise and Coralie's devotion, ignores the warning.

Lucien's rise is swift. He earns a steady income, moves into Coralie's apartment, and lives in luxury funded by her protector, the silk merchant Camusot. Dauriat, who had refused Lucien's poetry, now buys the manuscript for 3,000 francs, acknowledging the power of the press rather than literary merit. Lousteau teaches Lucien the mechanics of journalistic corruption: how to demolish a book one day and praise it the next. Following the cynical instructions of Émile Blondet, an influential journalist, Lucien writes contradictory articles on a novel by the writer Raoul Nathan, demonstrating his ability to argue any position with equal brilliance.

Lucien is drawn into aristocratic society through the Marquise d'Espard and Louise, now Countess du Châtelet, who seek to neutralize his journalistic attacks by co-opting him. They dangle before him the prospect of a royal patent restoring the name de Rubempré. Seduced by this promise, Lucien switches his political allegiance to the Royalist cause. His former Liberal colleagues turn on him savagely. Coralie's career at the Gymnase theatre is sabotaged by Florine, backed by Nathan and the Liberal press. The Cénacle visits Lucien one last time to beg him not to betray his principles.

The promised patent proves a trap. When Lucien is tricked into writing a satirical article against the Keeper of the Seals, the minister of justice, the Ministry destroys his patent, and his aristocratic protectors abandon him. Michel Chrestien confronts Lucien over a published attack on d'Arthez's book; the confrontation leads to a duel in which Lucien is shot and barely survives. During his recovery, Coralie nurses him while her own health declines. In desperation, Lucien forges three promissory notes in David Séchard's name, cashing them for 3,000 francs.

Coralie dies in poverty. Lucien composes drinking songs by candlelight at her deathbed to raise money for her funeral. After the burial, Coralie's maid Bérénice prostitutes herself to give Lucien 20 francs for his journey home. He sets off for Angoulême on foot.

Meanwhile, David has been pursuing his invention for manufacturing cheap paper from vegetable fibers while Eve struggles to keep the family solvent. The Cointet brothers, led by the calculating Boniface Cointet, use Lucien's forged bills as leverage, employing the lawyer Petit-Claud, who pretends to defend David while secretly working for the Cointets. The legal assault generates ruinous costs, and David goes into hiding to avoid arrest for debt.

Lucien's return is orchestrated by Petit-Claud into a false triumph, complete with a serenade and civic banquet. His vanity revived, Lucien ignores Eve's warnings and resolves to save David through his influence over Countess du Châtelet. He reconquers Louise at a party, and the Prefect agrees to petition the Ministry on David's behalf. But Petit-Claud and Cointet accelerate their plans: The apprentice Cérizet forges a letter in Lucien's handwriting luring David out of hiding, and the bailiff arrests David in the street.

Consumed by guilt, Lucien writes a farewell letter to Eve and sets out to drown himself. On the road he encounters a traveller dressed as a Spanish priest, Abbé Carlos Herrera, who offers a Faustian bargain: total obedience in exchange for wealth, the title of Marquis de Rubempré, and a return to Parisian society. Herrera sends 15,000 francs to free David, and Lucien accepts. The priest's Herculean build, scarred face, and intimate knowledge of Parisian society, including the Rastignac family, suggest he is the archcriminal Vautrin, known elsewhere in La Comédie Humaine as Jacques Collin.

The money arrives too late to change the terms Eve and David have already signed with the Cointets. Boniface Cointet takes out the patent in his own name, manufactures cheap paper using David's formula, and eventually forces David out of the partnership entirely. Eve and David retire to a small estate near Marsac. Old Séchard dies in 1829, leaving a substantial inheritance that, combined with gains after the July Revolution of 1830, secures them in comfortable obscurity. Boniface Cointet becomes a multimillionaire and a Peer of France, a high-ranking noble legislator under the monarchy, building his fortune on David's discovery. Petit-Claud rises to Attorney-General. The novel closes by stating that Lucien's return to Paris with the Spanish priest belongs to the sequel.