Down to our world below.
God looked in pity on earth, and the Angel, reading His thought,

Came down to lull the pain of the mighty spirit at strife,
Reverent bent o'er the maid, and for age left desolate brought

Flowers of the springtime of life.
Bringing a dream of hope to solace the mother's fears,

Hearkening unto the voice of the tardy repentant cry,
Glad as angels are glad, to reckon Earth's pitying tears,

Given with alms of a sigh.
One there is, and but one, bright messenger sent from the skies

Whom earth like a lover fain would hold from the hea'nward flight;
But the angel, weeping, turns and gazes with sad, sweet eyes

Up to the heaven of light.
Not by the radiant eyes, not by the kindling glow

Of virtue sent from God, did I know the secret sign,
Nor read the token sent on a white and dazzling brow

Of an origin divine.
Nay, it was Love grown blind and dazed with excess of light,

Striving and striving in vain to mingle Earth and Heaven,
Helpless and powerless against the invincible armor bright

By the dread archangel given.
Ah! be wary, take heed, lest aught should be seen or heard

Of the shining seraph band, as they take the heavenward way;
Too soon the Angel on Earth will learn the magical word

Sung at the close of the day.
Then you shall see afar, rifting the darkness of night,

A gleam as of dawn that spread across the starry floor,
And the seaman that watch for a sign shall mark the track of their flight,

A luminouspathway in Heaven and a beacon for evermore.
"Do you read the riddle?" said Amelie, giving M. du Chatelet a

coquettish glance.
"It is the sort of stuff that we all of us wrote more or less after we

left school," said the Baron with a bored expression--he was acting
his part of arbiter of taste who has seen everything. "We used to deal

in Ossianic mists, Malvinas and Fingals and cloudy shapes, and
warriors who got out of their tombs with stars above their heads.

Nowadays this poetical frippery has been replaced by Jehovah, angels,
seistrons, the plumes of seraphim, and all the paraphernalia of

paradise freshened up with a few new words such as 'immense, infinite,
solitude, intelligence'; you have lakes, and the words of the

Almighty, a kind of Christianized Pantheism, enriched with the most
extraordinary and unheard-of rhymes. We are in quite another latitude,

in fact; we have left the North for the East, but the darkness is just
as thick as before."

"If the ode is obscure, the declaration is very clear, it seems to
me," said Zephirine.

"And the archangel's armor is a tolerably thin gauze robe," said
Francis.

Politeness demanded that the audience should profess to be enchanted
with the poem; and the women, furious because they had no poets in

their train to extol them as angels, rose, looked bored by the
reading, murmuring, "Very nice!" "Charming!" "Perfect!" with frigid

coldness.
"If you love me, do not congratulate the poet or his angel," Lolotte

laid her commands on her dear Adrien in imperious tones, and Adrien
was fain to obey.

"Empty words, after all," Zephirine remarked to Francis, "and love is
a poem that we live."

"You have just expressed the very thing that I was thinking, Zizine,
but I should not have put it so neatly," said Stanislas, scanning

himself from top to toe with loving attention.
"I would give, I don't know how much, to see Nais' pride brought down

a bit," said Amelie, addressing Chatelet. "Nais sets up to be an
archangel, as if she were better than the rest of us, and mixes us up

with low people; his father was an apothecary, and his mother is a
nurse; his sister works in a laundry, and he himself is a printer's

foreman."
"If his father sold biscuits for worms" (vers), said Jacques, "he

ought to have made his son take them."
"He is continuing in his father's line of business, for the stuff that

he has just been reading to us is a drug in the market, it seems,"
said Stanislas, striking one of his most killing attitudes. "Drug for

drug, I would rather have something else."
Every one apparently combined to humiliate Lucien by various

aristocrats' sarcasms. Lili the religious thought it a charitable deed
to use any means of enlightening Nais, and Nais was on the brink of a

piece of folly. Francis the diplomatist undertook the direction of the
silly conspiracy; every one was interested in the progress of the

drama; it would be something to talk about to-morrow. The ex-consul,
being far from anxious to engage in a duel with a young poet who would

fly into a rage at the first hint of insult under his lady's eyes, was
wise enough to see that the only way of dealing Lucien his deathblow

was by the spiritual arm which was safe from vengeance. He therefore
followed the example set by Chatelet the astute, and went to the

Bishop. Him he proceeded to mystify.
He told the Bishop that Lucien's mother was a woman of uncommon powers

and great modesty, and that it was she who found the subjects for her
son's verses. Nothing pleased Lucien so much, according to the

guileful Francis, as any recognition of her talents--he worshiped his
mother. Then, having inculcated these notions, he left the rest to

time. His lordship was sure to bring out the insulting allusion, for
which he had been so carefully prepared, in the course of

conversation.
When Francis and the Bishop joined the little group where Lucien

stood, the circle who gave him the cup of hemlock to drain by little
sips watched him with redoubled interest. The poet, luckless young

man, being a total stranger, and unaware of the manners and customs of
the house, could only look at Mme. de Bargeton and give embarrassed

answers to embarrassing questions. He knew neither the names nor
condition of the people about him; the women's silly speeches made him

blush for them, and he was at his wits' end for a reply. He felt,
moreover, how very far removed he was from these divinities of

Angouleme when he heard himself addressed sometimes as M. Chardon,
sometimes as M. de Rubempre, while they addressed each other as

Lolotte, Adrien, Astolphe, Lili and Fifine. His confusion rose to a
height when, taking Lili for a man's surname, he addressed the coarse

M. de Senonches as M. Lili; that Nimrod broke in upon him with a
"MONSIEUR LULU?" and Mme. de Bargeton flushed red to the eyes.

"A woman must be blind indeed to bring this little fellow among us!"
muttered Senonches.

Zephirine turned to speak to the Marquise de Pimentel--"Do you not see
a strong likeness between M. Chardon and M. de Cante-Croix, madame?"

she asked in a low but quite audible voice.
"The likeness is ideal," smiled Mme. de Pimentel.

"Glory has a power of attraction to which we can confess," said Mme.
de Bargeton, addressing the Marquise. "Some women are as much

attracted by greatness as others by littleness," she added, looking at
Francis.

The was beyond Zephirine's comprehension; she thought her consul a
very great man; but the Marquise laughed, and her laughter ranged her

on Nais' side.
"You are very fortunate, monsieur," said the Marquis de Pimentel,

addressing Lucien for the purpose of calling him M. de Rubempre, and
not M. Chardon, as before; "you should never find time heavy on your

hands."
"Do you work quickly?" asked Lolotte, much in the way that she would

have asked a joiner "if it took long to make a box."
The bludgeon stroke stunned Lucien, but he raised his head at Mme. de

Bargeton's reply--
"My dear, poetry does not grow in M. de Rubempre's head like grass in

our courtyards."
"Madame, we cannot feel too reverently towards the noble spirits in

whom God has set some ray of this light," said the Bishop, addressing
Lolotte. "Yes, poetry is something holy. Poetry implies suffering. How