Lucien had gone to Paris; and David Séchard, with the courage
and intelligence of the ox which painters give the Evangelist for
accompanying symbol, set himself to make the large fortune for which he
had wished that evening down by the Charente, when he sat with Eve by
the weir, and she gave him her hand and her heart. He wanted to make the
money quickly, and less for himself than for Eve’s sake and Lucien’s. He
would place his wife amid the elegant and comfortable surroundings that
were hers by right, and his strong arm should sustain her brother’s
ambitions--this was the programme that he saw before his eyes in letters
of fire.
Journalism and politics, the immense development of the book trade,
of literature and of the sciences; the increase of public interest in
matters touching the various industries in the country; in fact, the
whole social tendency of the epoch following the establishment of the
Restoration produced an enormous increase in the demand for paper. The
supply required was almost ten times as large as the quantity in which
the celebrated Ouvrard speculated at the outset of the Revolution.
Then Ouvrard could buy up first the entire stock of paper and then the
manufacturers; but in the year 1821 there were so many paper-mills in
France, that no one could hope to repeat his success; and David had
neither audacity enough nor capital enough for such speculation.
Machinery for producing paper in any length was just coming into use
in England. It was one of the most urgent needs of the time, therefore,
that the paper trade should keep pace with the requirements of the
French system of civil government, a system by which the right of
discussion was to be extended to every man, and the whole fabric based
upon continual expression of individual opinion; a grave misfortune, for
the nation that deliberates is but little wont to act.
So, strange coincidence! while Lucien was drawn into the great machinery
of journalism, where he was like to leave his honor and his intelligence
torn to shreds, David Séchard, at the back of his printing-house,
foresaw all the practical consequences of the increased activity of the
periodical press. He saw the direction in which the spirit of the age
was tending, and sought to find means to the required end. He saw also
that there was a fortune awaiting the discoverer of cheap paper, and the
event has justified his clearsightedness. Within the last fifteen years,
the Patent Office has received more than a hundred applications from
persons claiming to have discovered cheap substances to be employed in
the manufacture of paper. David felt more than ever convinced that this
would be no brilliant triumph, it is true, but a useful and immensely
profitable discovery; and after his brother-in-law went to Paris, he
became more and more absorbed in the problem which he had set himself to
solve.
The expenses of his marriage and of Lucien’s journey to Paris had
exhausted all his resources; he confronted the extreme of poverty at
the very outset of married life. He had kept one thousand francs for the
working expenses of the business, and owed a like sum, for which he had
given a bill to Postel the druggist. So here was a double problem for
this deep thinker; he must invent a method of making cheap paper, and
that quickly; he must make the discovery, in fact, in order to apply the
proceeds to the needs of the household and of the business. What words
can describe the brain that can forget the cruel preoccupations caused
by hidden want, by the daily needs of a family and the daily drudgery of
a printer’s business, which requires such minute, painstaking care; and
soar, with the enthusiasm and intoxication of the man of science, into
the regions of the unknown in quest of a secret which daily eludes the
most subtle experiment? And the inventor, alas! as will shortly be seen,
has plenty of woes to endure, besides the ingratitude of the many; idle
folk that can do nothing themselves tell them, “Such a one is a born
inventor; he could not do otherwise. He no more deserves credit for his
invention than a prince for being born to rule! He is simply exercising
his natural faculties, and his work is its own reward,” and the people
believe them.
Marriage brings profound mental and physical perturbations into a
girl’s life; and if she marries under the ordinary conditions of
lower middle-class life, she must moreover begin to study totally new
interests and initiate herself in the intricacies of business. With
marriage, therefore, she enters upon a phase of her existence when she
is necessarily on the watch before she can act. Unfortunately, David’s
love for his wife retarded this training; he dared not tell her the
real state of affairs on the day after their wedding, nor for some time
afterwards. His father’s avarice condemned him to the most grinding
poverty, but he could not bring himself to spoil the honeymoon by
beginning his wife’s commercial education and prosaic apprenticeship to
his laborious craft. So it came to pass that housekeeping, no less than
working expenses, ate up the thousand francs, his whole fortune. For
four months David gave no thought to the future, and his wife remained
in ignorance. The awakening was terrible! Postel’s bill fell due; there
was no money to meet it, and Eve knew enough of the debt and its cause
to give up her bridal trinkets and silver.
That evening Eve tried to induce David to talk of their affairs, for she
had noticed that he was giving less attention to the business and more
to the problem of which he had once spoken to her. Since the first few
weeks of married life, in fact, David spent most of his time in the
shed in the backyard, in the little room where he was wont to mould his
ink-rollers. Three months after his return to Angoulême, he had replaced
the old fashioned round ink-balls by rollers made of strong glue and
treacle, and an ink-table, on which the ink was evenly distributed, an
improvement so obvious that Cointet Brothers no sooner saw it than they
adopted the plan themselves.
By the partition wall of this kitchen, as it were, David had set up a
little furnace with a copper pan, ostensibly to save the cost of fuel
over the recasting of his rollers, though the moulds had not been used
twice, and hung there rusting upon the wall. Nor was this all; a solid
oak door had been put in by his orders, and the walls were lined with
sheet-iron; he even replaced the dirty window sash by panes of ribbed
glass, so that no one without could watch him at his work.
When Eve began to speak about the future, he looked uneasily at her,
and cut her short at the first word by saying, “I know all that you must
think, child, when you see that the workshop is left to itself, and
that I am dead, as it were, to all business interests; but see,” he
continued, bringing her to the window, and pointing to the mysterious
shed, “there lies our fortune. For some months yet we must endure our
lot, but let us bear it patiently; leave me to solve the problem of
which I told you, and all our troubles will be at an end.”
David was so good, his devotion was so thoroughly to be taken upon his
word, that the poor wife, with a wife’s anxiety as to daily expenses,
determined to spare her husband the household cares and to take the
burden upon herself. So she came down from the pretty blue-and-white
room, where she sewed and talked contentedly with her mother, took
possession of one of the two dens at the back of the printing-room,
and set herself to learn the business routine of typography. Was it not
heroism in a wife who expected ere long to be a mother?
During the past few months David’s workmen had left him one by one;
there was not enough work for them to do. Cointet Brothers, on the other
hand, were overwhelmed with orders; they were employing all the workmen
of the department; the alluring prospect of high wages even brought them
a few from Bordeaux, more especially apprentices, who thought themselves
sufficiently expert to cancel their articles and go elsewhere. When
Eve came to look into the affairs of Séchard’s printing works, she
discovered that he employed three persons in all.
First in order stood Cérizet, an apprentice of Didot’s, whom David had
chosen to train. Most foremen have some one favorite among the great
numbers of workers under them, and David had brought Cérizet to
Angoulême, where he had been learning more of the business. Marion, as
much attached to the house as a watch-dog, was the second; and the third
was Kolb, an Alsacien, at one time a porter in the employ of the Messrs.
Didot. Kolb had been drawn for military service, chance brought him to
Angoulême, and David recognized the man’s face at a review just as
his time was about to expire. Kolb came to see David, and was smitten
forthwith by the charms of the portly Marion; she possessed all the
qualities which a man of his class looks for in a wife--the robust
health that bronzes the cheeks, the strength of a man (Marion could lift
a form of type with ease), the scrupulous honesty on which an Alsacien
sets such store, the faithful service which bespeaks a sterling
character, and finally, the thrift which had saved a little sum of a
thousand francs, besides a stock of clothing and linen, neat and
clean, as country linen can be. Marion herself, a big, stout woman
of thirty-six, felt sufficiently flattered by the admiration of a
cuirassier, who stood five feet seven in his stockings, a well-built
warrior, strong as a bastion, and not unnaturally suggested that
he should become a printer. So, by the time Kolb received his full
discharge, Marion and David between them had transformed him into a
tolerably creditable “bear,” though their pupil could neither read nor
write.
Job printing, as it is called, was not so abundant at this season but
that Cérizet could manage it without help. Cérizet, compositor, clicker,
and foreman, realized in his person the “phenomenal triplicity” of Kant;
he set up type, read proof, took orders, and made out invoices; but the
most part of the time he had nothing to do, and used to read novels in
his den at the back of the workshop while he waited for an order for a
bill-head or a trade circular. Marion, trained by old Séchard, prepared
and wetted down the paper, helped Kolb with the printing, hung the
sheets to dry, and cut them to size; yet cooked the dinner, none the
less, and did her marketing very early of a morning.
Eve told Cérizet to draw out a balance-sheet for the last six months,
and found that the gross receipts amounted to eight hundred francs. On
the other hand, wages at the rate of three francs per day--two francs to
Cérizet, and one to Kolb--reached a total of six hundred francs; and as
the goods supplied for the work printed and delivered amounted to some
hundred odd francs, it was clear to Eve that David had been carrying
on business at a loss during the first half-year of their married life.
There was nothing to show for rent, nothing for Marion’s wages, nor for
the interest on capital represented by the plant, the license, and
the ink; nothing, finally, by way of allowance for the host of things
included in the technical expression “wear and tear,” a word which owes
its origin to the cloths and silks which are used to moderate the force
of the impression, and to save wear to the type; a square of stuff (the
_blanket_) being placed between the platen and the sheet of paper in the
press.
Eve made a rough calculation of the resources of the printing office and
of the output, and saw how little hope there was for a business drained
dry by the all-devouring activity of the brothers Cointet; for by this
time the Cointets were not only contract printers to the town and the
prefecture, and printers to the Diocese by special appointment--they
were paper-makers and proprietors of a newspaper to boot. That
newspaper, sold two years ago by the Séchards, father and son, for
twenty-two thousand francs, was now bringing in eighteen thousand francs
per annum. Eve began to understand the motives lurking beneath the
apparent generosity of the brothers Cointet; they were leaving the
Séchard establishment just sufficient work to gain a pittance, but not
enough to establish a rival house.
When Eve took the management of the business, she began by taking stock.
She set Kolb and Marion and Cérizet to work, and the workshop was put to
rights, cleaned out, and set in order. Then one evening when David came
in from a country excursion, followed by an old woman with a huge bundle
tied up in a cloth, Eve asked counsel of him as to the best way of
turning to profit the odds and ends left them by old Séchard, promising
that she herself would look after the business. Acting upon her
husband’s advice, Mme. Séchard sorted all the remnants of paper which
she found, and printed old popular legends in double columns upon a
single sheet, such as peasants paste on their walls, the histories
of _The Wandering Jew_, _Robert the Devil_, _La Belle Maguelonne_ and
sundry miracles. Eve sent Kolb out as a hawker.
Cérizet had not a moment to spare now; he was composing the naive pages,
with the rough cuts that adorned them, from morning to night; Marion
was able to manage the taking off; and all domestic cares fell to Mme.
Chardon, for Eve was busy coloring the prints. Thanks to Kolb’s activity
and honesty, Eve sold three thousand broad sheets at a penny apiece, and
made three hundred francs in all at a cost of thirty francs.
But when every peasant’s hut and every little wine-shop for twenty
leagues round was papered with these legends, a fresh speculation
must be discovered; the Alsacien could not go beyond the limits of the
department. Eve, turning over everything in the whole printing house,
had found a collection of figures for printing a “Shepherd’s Calendar,”
a kind of almanac meant for those who cannot read, letterpress being
replaced by symbols, signs, and pictures in colored inks, red, black and
blue. Old Séchard, who could neither read nor write himself, had made a
good deal of money at one time by bringing out an almanac in hieroglyph.
It was in book form, a single sheet folded to make one hundred and
twenty-eight pages.
Thoroughly satisfied with the success of the broad sheets, a piece
of business only undertaken by country printing offices, Mme. Séchard
invested all the proceeds in the _Shepherd’s Calendar_, and began it
upon a large scale. Millions of copies of this work are sold annually
in France. It is printed upon even coarser paper than the _Almanac of
Liege_, a ream (five hundred sheets) costing in the first instance about
four francs; while the printed sheets sell at the rate of a halfpenny
apiece--twenty-five francs per ream.
Mme. Séchard determined to use one hundred reams for the first
impression; fifty thousand copies would bring in two thousand francs. A
man so deeply absorbed in his work as David in his researches is seldom
observant; yet David, taking a look round his workshop, was astonished
to hear the groaning of a press and to see Cérizet always on his feet,
setting up type under Mme. Séchard’s direction. There was a pretty
triumph for Eve on the day when David came in to see what she was doing,
and praised the idea, and thought the calendar an excellent stroke of
business. Furthermore, David promised to give advice in the matter of
colored inks, for an almanac meant to appeal to the eye; and finally, he
resolved to recast the ink-rollers himself in his mysterious workshop,
so as to help his wife as far as he could in her important little
enterprise.
But just as the work began with strenuous industry, there came letters
from Lucien in Paris, heart-sinking letters that told his mother and
sister and brother-in-law of his failure and distress; and when Eve,
Mme. Chardon, and David each secretly sent money to their poet, it must
be plain to the reader that the three hundred francs they sent were like
their very blood. The overwhelming news, the disheartening sense that
work as bravely as she might, she made so little, left Eve looking
forward with a certain dread to an event which fills the cup of
happiness to the full. The time was coming very near now, and to herself
she said, “If my dear David has not reached the end of his researches
before my confinement, what will become of us? And who will look after
our poor printing office and the business that is growing up?”
The _Shepherd’s Calendar_ ought by rights to have been ready before the
1st of January, but Cérizet was working unaccountably slowly; all the
work of composing fell to him; and Mme. Séchard, knowing so little,
could not find fault, and was fain to content herself with watching the
young Parisian.
Cérizet came from the great Foundling Hospital in Paris. He had been
apprenticed to the MM. Didot, and between the ages of fourteen and
seventeen he was David Séchard’s fanatical worshiper. David put him
under one of the cleverest workmen, and took him for his copy-holder,
his page. Cérizet’s intelligence naturally interested David; he won
the lad’s affection by procuring amusements now and again for him,
and comforts from which he was cut off by poverty. Nature had endowed
Cérizet with an insignificant, rather pretty little countenance, red
hair, and a pair of dull blue eyes; he had come to Angoulême and brought
the manners of the Parisian street-boy with him. He was formidable by
reason of a quick, sarcastic turn and a spiteful disposition. Perhaps
David looked less strictly after him in Angoulême; or, perhaps, as the
lad grew older, his mentor put more trust in him, or in the sobering
influences of a country town; but be that as it may, Cérizet (all
unknown to his sponsor) was going completely to the bad, and the
printer’s apprentice was acting the part of a Don Juan among little work
girls. His morality, learned in Paris drinking-saloons, laid down the
law of self-interest as the sole rule of guidance; he knew, moreover,
that next year he would be “drawn for a soldier,” to use the popular
expression, saw that he had no prospects, and ran into debt, thinking
that soon he should be in the army, and none of his creditors would run
after him. David still possessed some ascendency over the young fellow,
due not to his position as master, nor yet to the interest that he
had taken in his pupil, but to the great intellectual power which the
sometime street-boy fully recognized.
Before long Cérizet began to fraternize with the Cointets’ workpeople,
drawn to them by the mutual attraction of blouse and jacket, and the
class feeling, which is, perhaps, strongest of all in the lowest ranks
of society. In their company Cérizet forgot the little good doctrine
which David had managed to instil into him; but, nevertheless, when the
others joked the boy about the presses in his workshop (“old sabots,” as
the “bears” contemptuously called them), and showed him the magnificent
machines, twelve in number, now at work in the Cointets’ great printing
office, where the single wooden press was only used for experiments,
Cérizet would stand up for David and fling out at the braggarts.
“My gaffer will go farther with his ‘sabots’ than yours with their
cast-iron contrivances that turn out mass books all day long,” he
would boast. “He is trying to find out a secret that will lick all the
printing offices in France and Navarre.”
“And meantime you take your orders from a washer-woman, you snip of a
foreman, on two francs a day.”
“She is pretty though,” retorted Cérizet; “it is better to have her to
look at than the phizes of your gaffers.”
“And do you live by looking at his wife?”
From the region of the wineshop, or from the door of the printing
office, where these bickerings took place, a dim light began to break in
upon the brothers Cointet as to the real state of things in the Séchard
establishment. They came to hear of Eve’s experiment, and held it
expedient to stop these flights at once, lest the business should begin
to prosper under the poor young wife’s management.
“Let us give her a rap over the knuckles, and disgust her with the
business,” said the brothers Cointet.
One of the pair, the practical printer, spoke to Cérizet, and asked him
to do the proof-reading for them by piecework, to relieve their reader,
who had more than he could manage. So it came to pass that Cérizet
earned more by a few hours’ work of an evening for the brothers Cointet
than by a whole day’s work for David Séchard. Other transactions
followed; the Cointets seeing no small aptitude in Cérizet, he was told
that it was a pity that he should be in a position so little favorable
to his interests.
“You might be foreman some day in a big printing office, making
six francs a day,” said one of the Cointets one day, “and with your
intelligence you might come to have a share in the business.”
“Where is the use of my being a good foreman?” returned Cérizet. “I am
an orphan, I shall be drawn for the army next year, and if I get a bad
number who is there to pay some one else to take my place?”
“If you make yourself useful,” said the well-to-do printer, “why should
not somebody advance the money?”
“It won’t be my gaffer in any case!” said Cérizet.
“Pooh! Perhaps by that time he will have found out the secret.”
The words were spoken in a way that could not but rouse the worst
thoughts in the listener; and Cérizet gave the papermaker and printer a
very searching look.
“I do not know what he is busy about,” he began prudently, as the master
said nothing, “but he is not the kind of man to look for capitals in the
lower case!”
“Look here, my friend,” said the printer, taking up half-a-dozen sheets
of the diocesan prayer-book and holding them out to Cérizet, “if you
can correct these for us by to-morrow, you shall have eighteen francs
to-morrow for them. We are not shabby here; we put our competitor’s
foreman in the way of making money. As a matter of fact, we might let
Mme. Séchard go too far to draw back with her _Shepherd’s Calendar_,
and ruin her; very well, we give you permission to tell her that we
are bringing out a _Shepherd’s Calendar_ of our own, and to call her
attention too to the fact that she will not be the first in the field.”
Cérizet’s motive for working so slowly on the composition of the almanac
should be clear enough by this time.
When Eve heard that the Cointets meant to spoil her poor little
speculation, dread seized upon her; at first she tried to see a proof of
attachment in Cérizet’s hypocritical warning of competition; but before
long she saw signs of an over-keen curiosity in her sole compositor--the
curiosity of youth, she tried to think.
“Cérizet,” she said one morning, “you stand about on the threshold, and
wait for M. Séchard in the passage, to pry into his private affairs;
when he comes out into the yard to melt down the rollers, you are there
looking at him, instead of getting on with the almanac. These things
are not right, especially when you see that I, his wife, respect his
secrets, and take so much trouble on myself to leave him free to give
himself up to his work. If you had not wasted time, the almanac would
be finished by now, and Kolb would be selling it, and the Cointets could
have done us no harm.”
“Eh! madame,” answered Cérizet. “Here am I doing five francs’ worth of
composing for two francs a day, and don’t you think that that is enough?
Why, if I did not read proofs of an evening for the Cointets, I might
feed myself on husks.”
“You are turning ungrateful early,” said Eve, deeply hurt, not so much
by Cérizet’s grumbling as by his coarse tone, threatening attitude, and
aggressive stare; “you will get on in life.”
“Not with a woman to order me about though, for it is not often that the
month has thirty days in it then.”
Feeling wounded in her womanly dignity, Eve gave Cérizet a withering
look and went upstairs again. At dinner-time she spoke to David.
“Are you sure, dear, of that little rogue Cérizet?”
“Cérizet!” said David. “Why, he was my youngster; I trained him, I took
him on as my copy-holder. I put him to composing; anything that he is he
owes to me, in fact! You might as well ask a father if he is sure of his
child.”
Upon this, Eve told her husband that Cérizet was reading proofs for the
Cointets.
“Poor fellow! he must live,” said David, humbled by the consciousness
that he had not done his duty as a master.
“Yes, but there is a difference, dear, between Kolb and Cérizet--Kolb
tramps about twenty leagues every day, spends fifteen or twenty sous,
and brings us back seven and eight and sometimes nine francs of sales;
and when his expenses are paid, he never asks for more than his wages.
Kolb would sooner cut off his hand than work a lever for the Cointets;
Kolb would not peer among the things that you throw out into the yard if
people offered him a thousand crowns to do it; but Cérizet picks them up
and looks at them.”
It is hard for noble natures to think evil, to believe in ingratitude;
only through rough experience do they learn the extent of human
corruption; and even when there is nothing left them to learn in this
kind, they rise to an indulgence which is the last degree of contempt.
“Pooh! pure Paris street-boy’s curiosity,” cried David.
“Very well, dear, do me the pleasure to step downstairs and look at the
work done by this boy of yours, and tell me then whether he ought not to
have finished our almanac this month.”
David went into the workshop after dinner, and saw that the calendar
should have been set up in a week. Then, when he heard that the Cointets
were bringing out a similar almanac, he came to the rescue. He took
command of the printing office, Kolb helped at home instead of selling
broadsheets. Kolb and Marion pulled off the impressions from one form,
while David worked another press with Cérizet, and superintended the
printing in various inks. Every sheet must be printed four separate
times, for which reason none but small houses will attempt to produce
a _Shepherd’s Calendar_, and that only in the country where labor is
cheap, and the amount of capital employed in the business is so small
that the interest amounts to little. Wherefore, a press which turns out
beautiful work cannot compete in the printing of such sheets, coarse
though they may be.
So, for the first time since old Séchard retired, two presses were at
work in the old house. The calendar was, in its way, a masterpiece; but
Eve was obliged to sell it for less than a halfpenny, for the Cointets
were supplying hawkers at the rate of three centimes per copy. Eve made
no loss on the copies sold to hawkers; on Kolb’s sales, made directly,
she gained; but her little speculation was spoiled. Cérizet saw that
his fair employer distrusted him; in his own conscience he posed as the
accuser, and said to himself, “You suspect me, do you? I will have
my revenge,” for the Paris street-boy is made on this wise. Cérizet
accordingly took pay out of all proportion to the work of proof-reading
done for the Cointets, going to their office every evening for the
sheets, and returning them in the morning. He came to be on familiar
terms with them through the daily chat, and at length saw a chance of
escaping the military service, a bait held out to him by the brothers.
So far from requiring prompting from the Cointets, he was the first to
propose the espionage and exploitation of David’s researches.
Eve saw how little she could depend upon Cérizet, and to find another
Kolb was simply impossible; she made up her mind to dismiss her one
compositor, for the insight of a woman who loves told her that Cérizet
was a traitor; but as this meant a deathblow to the business, she took
a man’s resolution. She wrote to M. Métivier, with whom David and the
Cointets and almost every papermaker in the department had business
relations, and asked him to put the following advertisement into a trade
paper:
“FOR SALE, as a going concern, a Printing Office, with License and
Plant; situated at Angoulême. Apply for particulars to M. Métivier, Rue
Serpente.”
The Cointets saw the advertisement. “That little woman has a head on her
shoulders,” they said. “It is time that we took her business under our
own control, by giving her enough work to live upon; we might find a
real competitor in David’s successor; it is in our interest to keep an
eye upon that workshop.”
The Cointets went to speak to David Séchard, moved thereto by this
thought. Eve saw them, knew that her stratagem had succeeded at once,
and felt a thrill of the keenest joy. They stated their proposal. They
had more work than they could undertake, their presses could not keep
pace with the work, would M. Séchard print for them? They had sent to
Bordeaux for workmen, and could find enough to give full employment to
David’s three presses.
“Gentlemen,” said Eve, while Cérizet went across to David’s workshop to
announce the two printers, “while my husband was with the MM. Didot he
came to know of excellent workers, honest and industrious men; he will
choose his successor, no doubt, from among the best of them. If he sold
his business outright for some twenty thousand francs, it might bring
us in a thousand francs per annum; that would be better than losing a
thousand yearly over such trade as you leave us. Why did you envy us the
poor little almanac speculation, especially as we have always brought it
out?”
“Oh, why did you not give us notice, madame? We would not have
interfered with you,” one of the brothers answered blandly (he was known
as the “tall Cointet”).
“Oh, come gentlemen! you only began your almanac after Cérizet told you
that I was bringing out mine.”
She spoke briskly, looking full at “the tall Cointet” as she spoke. He
lowered his eyes; Cérizet’s treachery was proven to her.
This brother managed the business and the paper-mill; he was by far the
cleverer man of business of the two. Jean showed no small ability in the
conduct of the printing establishment, but in intellectual capacity he
might be said to take colonel’s rank, while Boniface was a general. Jean
left the command to Boniface. This latter was thin and spare in person;
his face, sallow as an altar candle, was mottled with reddish patches;
his lips were pinched; there was something in his eyes that reminded you
of a cat’s eyes. Boniface Cointet never excited himself; he would listen
to the grossest insults with the serenity of a bigot, and reply in
a smooth voice. He went to mass, he went to confession, he took the
sacrament. Beneath his caressing manners, beneath an almost spiritless
look, lurked the tenacity and ambition of the priest, and the greed of
the man of business consumed with a thirst for riches and honors. In
the year 1820 “tall Cointet” wanted all that the _bourgeoisie_
finally obtained by the Revolution of 1830. In his heart he hated the
aristocrats, and in religion he was indifferent; he was as much or as
little of a bigot as Bonaparte was a member of the Mountain; yet his
vertebral column bent with a flexibility wonderful to behold before the
noblesse and the official hierarchy; for the powers that be, he humbled
himself, he was meek and obsequious. One final characteristic will
describe him for those who are accustomed to dealings with all kinds of
men, and can appreciate its value--Cointet concealed the expression of
his eyes by wearing colored glasses, ostensibly to preserve his sight
from the reflection of the sunlight on the white buildings in the
streets; for Angoulême, being set upon a hill, is exposed to the full
glare of the sun. Tall Cointet was really scarcely above middle height;
he looked much taller than he actually was by reason of the thinness,
which told of overwork and a brain in continual ferment. His lank, sleek
gray hair, cut in somewhat ecclesiastical fashion; the black trousers,
black stockings, black waistcoat, and long puce-colored greatcoat
(styled a _lévite_ in the south), all completed his resemblance to a
Jesuit.
Boniface was called “tall Cointet” to distinguish him from his brother,
“fat Cointet,” and the nicknames expressed a difference in character
as well as a physical difference between a pair of equally redoubtable
personages. As for Jean Cointet, a jolly, stout fellow, with a face from
a Flemish interior, colored by the southern sun of Angoulême, thick-set,
short and paunchy as Sancho Panza; with a smile on his lips and a pair
of sturdy shoulders, he was a striking contrast to his older brother.
Nor was the difference only physical and intellectual. Jean might almost
be called Liberal in politics; he belonged to the Left Centre, only went
to mass on Sundays, and lived on a remarkably good understanding with
the Liberal men of business. There were those in L’Houmeau who said that
this divergence between the brothers was more apparent than real. Tall
Cointet turned his brother’s seeming good nature to advantage very
skilfully. Jean was his bludgeon. It was Jean who gave all the hard
words; it was Jean who conducted the executions which little beseemed
the elder brother’s benevolence. Jean took the storms department; he
would fly into a rage, and propose terms that nobody would think
of accepting, to pave the way for his brother’s less unreasonable
propositions. And by such policy the pair attained their ends, sooner or
later.
Eve, with a woman’s tact, had soon divined the characters of the two
brothers; she was on her guard with foes so formidable. David, informed
beforehand of everything by his wife, lent a profoundly inattentive mind
to his enemies’ proposals.
“Come to an understanding with my wife,” he said, as he left the
Cointets in the office and went back to his laboratory. “Mme. Séchard
knows more about the business than I do myself. I am interested in
something that will pay better than this poor place; I hope to find a
way to retrieve the losses that I have made through you----”
“And how?” asked the fat Cointet, chuckling.
Eve gave her husband a look that meant, “Be careful!”
“You will be my tributaries,” said David, “and all other consumers of
papers besides.”
“Then what are you investigating?” asked the hypocritical Boniface
Cointet.
Boniface’s question slipped out smoothly and insinuatingly, and again
Eve’s eyes implored her husband to give an answer that was no answer, or
to say nothing at all.
“I am trying to produce paper at fifty per cent less than the present
cost price,” and he went. He did not see the glances exchanged between
the brothers. “That is an inventor, a man of his build cannot sit with
his hands before him.--Let us exploit him,” said Boniface’s eyes. “How
can we do it?” said Jean’s.
Mme. Séchard spoke. “David treats me just in the same way,” she said.
“If I show any curiosity, he feels suspicious of my name, no doubt, and
out comes that remark of his; it is only a formula, after all.”
“If your husband can work out the formula, he will certainly make a
fortune more quickly than by printing; I am not surprised that he
leaves the business to itself,” said Boniface, looking across the empty
workshop, where Kolb, seated upon a wetting-board, was rubbing his bread
with a clove of garlic; “but it would not suit our views to see this
place in the hands of an energetic, pushing, ambitious competitor,”
he continued, “and perhaps it might be possible to arrive at an
understanding. Suppose, for instance, that you consented for a
consideration to allow us to put in one of our own men to work your
presses for our benefit, but nominally for you; the thing is sometimes
done in Paris. We would find the fellow work enough to enable him to
rent your place and pay you well, and yet make a profit for himself.”
“It depends on the amount,” said Eve Séchard. “What is your offer?” she
added, looking at Boniface to let him see that she understood his scheme
perfectly well.
“What is your own idea?” Jean Cointet put in briskly.
“Three thousand francs for six months,” said she.
“Why, my dear young lady, you were proposing to sell the place outright
for twenty thousand francs,” said Boniface with much suavity. “The
interest on twenty thousand francs is only twelve hundred francs per
annum at six per cent.”
For a moment Eve was thrown into confusion; she saw the need for
discretion in matters of business.
“You wish to use our presses and our name as well,” she said; “and, as
I have already shown you, I can still do a little business. And then we
pay rent to M. Séchard senior, who does not load us with presents.”
After two hours of debate, Eve obtained two thousand francs for
six months, one thousand to be paid in advance. When everything was
concluded, the brothers informed her that they meant to put in Cérizet
as lessee of the premises. In spite of herself, Eve started with
surprise.
“Isn’t it better to have somebody who knows the workshop?” asked the fat
Cointet.
Eve made no reply; she took leave of the brothers, vowing inwardly to
look after Cérizet.
“Well, here are our enemies in the place!” laughed David, when Eve
brought out the papers for his signature at dinner-time.
“Pshaw!” said she, “I will answer for Kolb and Marion; they alone
would look after things. Besides, we shall be making an income of four
thousand francs from the workshop, which only costs us money as it is;
and looking forward, I see a year in which you may realize your hopes.”
“You were born to be the wife of a scientific worker, as you said by the
weir,” said David, grasping her hand tenderly.
But though the Séchard household had money sufficient that winter,
they were none the less subjected to Cérizet’s espionage, and all
unconsciously became dependent upon Boniface Cointet.
“We have them now!” the manager of the paper-mill had exclaimed as he
left the house with his brother the printer. “They will begin to regard
the rent as regular income; they will count upon it and run themselves
into debt. In six months’ time we will decline to renew the agreement,
and then we shall see what this man of genius has at the bottom of his
mind; we will offer to help him out of his difficulty by taking him into
partnership and exploiting his discovery.”
Any shrewd man of business who should have seen tall Cointet’s face as
he uttered those words, “taking him into partnership,” would have known
that it behooves a man to be even more careful in the selection of the
partner whom he takes before the Tribunal of Commerce than in the
choice of the wife whom he weds at the Mayor’s office. Was it not enough
already, and more than enough, that the ruthless hunters were on the
track of the quarry? How should David and his wife, with Kolb and Marion
to help them, escape the toils of a Boniface Cointet?
A draft for five hundred francs came from Lucien, and this, with
Cérizet’s second payment, enabled them to meet all the expenses of Mme.
Séchard’s confinement. Eve and the mother and David had thought that
Lucien had forgotten them, and rejoiced over this token of remembrance
as they rejoiced over his success, for his first exploits in journalism
made even more noise in Angoulême than in Paris.
But David, thus lulled into a false security, was to receive a
staggering blow, a cruel letter from Lucien:--
_Lucien to David._
“MY DEAR DAVID,--I have drawn three bills on you, and negotiated
them with Métivier; they fall due in one, two, and three months’
time. I took this hateful course, which I know will burden you
heavily, because the one alternative was suicide. I will explain
my necessity some time, and I will try besides to send the amounts
as the bills fall due.
“Burn this letter; say nothing to my mother and sister; for, I
confess it, I have counted upon you, upon the heroism known so
well to your despairing brother,
“LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRE.”
By this time Eve had recovered from her confinement.
“Your brother, poor fellow, is in desperate straits,” David told her. “I
have sent him three bills for a thousand francs at one, two, and three
months; just make a note of them,” and he went out into the fields to
escape his wife’s questionings.
But Eve had felt very uneasy already. It was six months since Lucien
had written to them. She talked over the news with her mother till her
forebodings grew so dark that she made up her mind to dissipate them.
She would take a bold step in her despair.
Young M. de Rastignac had come to spend a few days with his family.
He had spoken of Lucien in terms that set Paris gossip circulating in
Angoulême, till at last it reached the journalist’s mother and sister.
Eve went to Mme. de Rastignac, asked the favor of an interview with her
son, spoke of all her fears, and asked him for the truth. In a moment
Eve heard of her brother’s connection with the actress Coralie, of his
duel with Michel Chrestien, arising out of his own treacherous behavior
to Daniel d’Arthez; she received, in short, a version of Lucien’s
history, colored by the personal feeling of a clever and envious dandy.
Rastignac expressed sincere admiration for the abilities so terribly
compromised, and a patriotic fear for the future of a native genius;
spite and jealousy masqueraded as pity and friendliness. He spoke of
Lucien’s blunders. It seemed that Lucien had forfeited the favor of a
very great person, and that a patent conferring the right to bear the
name and arms of Rubempré had actually been made out and subsequently
torn up.
“If your brother, madame, had been well advised, he would have been on
the way to honors, and Mme. de Bargeton’s husband by this time; but what
can you expect? He deserted her and insulted her. She is now Mme. la
Comtesse Sixte du Châtelet, to her own great regret, for she loved
Lucien.”
“Is it possible!” exclaimed Mme. Séchard.
“Your brother is like a young eagle, blinded by the first rays of glory
and luxury. When an eagle falls, who can tell how far he may sink before
he drops to the bottom of some precipice? The fall of a great man is
always proportionately great.”
Eve came away with a great dread in her heart; those last words pierced
her like an arrow. She had been wounded to the quick. She said not a
word to anybody, but again and again a tear rolled down her cheeks, and
fell upon the child at her breast. So hard is it to give up illusions
sanctioned by family feeling, illusions that have grown with our growth,
that Eve had doubted Eugène de Rastignac. She would rather hear a
true friend’s account of her brother. Lucien had given them d’Arthez’s
address in the days when he was full of enthusiasm for the brotherhood;
she wrote a pathetic letter to d’Arthez, and received the following
reply:--
_D’Arthez to Mme. Séchard._
“MADAME,--You ask me to tell you the truth about the life that
your brother is leading in Paris; you are anxious for
enlightenment as to his prospects; and to encourage a frank answer
on my part, you repeat certain things that M. de Rastignac has
told you, asking me if they are true. With regard to the purely
personal matter, madame, M. de Rastignac’s confidences must be
corrected in Lucien’s favor. Your brother wrote a criticism of my
book, and brought it to me in remorse, telling me that he could
not bring himself to publish it, although obedience to the orders
of his party might endanger one who was very dear to him. Alas!
madame, a man of letters must needs comprehend all passions, since
it is his pride to express them; I understood that where a
mistress and a friend are involved, the friend is inevitably
sacrificed. I smoothed your brother’s way; I corrected his
murderous article myself, and gave it my full approval.
“You ask whether Lucien has kept my friendship and esteem; to this
it is difficult to make an answer. Your brother is on a road that
leads him to ruin. At this moment I still feel sorry for him;
before long I shall have forgotten him, of set purpose, not so
much on account of what he has done already as for that which he
inevitably will do. Your Lucien is not a poet, he has the poetic
temper; he dreams, he does not think; he spends himself in
emotion, he does not create. He is, in fact--permit me to say it
--a womanish creature that loves to shine, the Frenchman’s great
failing. Lucien will always sacrifice his best friend for the
pleasure of displaying his own wit. He would not hesitate to sign
a pact with the Devil to-morrow if so he might secure a few years
of luxurious and glorious life. Nay, has he not done worse
already? He has bartered his future for the short-lived delights
of living openly with an actress. So far, he has not seen the
dangers of his position; the girl’s youth and beauty and devotion
(for she worships him) have closed his eyes to the truth; he
cannot see that no glory or success or fortune can induce the
world to accept the position. Very well, as it is now, so it will
be with each new temptation--your brother will not look beyond the
enjoyment of the moment. Do not be alarmed: Lucien will never go
so far as a crime, he has not the strength of character; but he
would take the fruits of a crime, he would share the benefit but
not the risk--a thing that seems abhorrent to the whole world,
even to scoundrels. Oh, he would despise himself, he would repent;
but bring him once more to the test, and he would fail again; for
he is weak of will, he cannot resist the allurements of pleasure,
nor forego the least of his ambitions. He is indolent, like all
who would fain be poets; he thinks it clever to juggle with the
difficulties of life instead of facing and overcoming them. He
will be brave at one time, cowardly at another, and deserves
neither credit for his courage, nor blame for his cowardice.
Lucien is like a harp with strings that are slackened or tightened
by the atmosphere. He might write a great book in a glad or angry
mood, and care nothing for the success that he had desired for so
long.
“When he first came to Paris he fell under the influence of an
unprincipled young fellow, and was dazzled by his companion’s
adroitness and experience in the difficulties of a literary life.
This juggler completely bewitched Lucien; he dragged him into a
life which a man cannot lead and respect himself, and, unluckily
for Lucien, love shed its magic over the path. The admiration that
is given too readily is a sign of want of judgment; a poet ought
not to be paid in the same coin as a dancer on the tight-rope. We
all felt hurt when intrigue and literary rascality were preferred
to the courage and honor of those who counseled Lucien rather to
face the battle than to filch success, to spring down into the
arena rather than become a trumpet in the orchestra.
“Society, madame, oddly enough, shows plentiful indulgence to
young men of Lucien’s stamp; they are popular, the world is
fascinated by their external gifts and good looks. Nothing is
asked of them, all their sins are forgiven; they are treated like
perfect natures, others are blind to their defects, they are the
world’s spoiled children. And, on the other hand, the world is
stern beyond measure to strong and complete natures. Perhaps in
this apparently flagrant injustice society acts sublimely, taking
a harlequin at his just worth, asking nothing of him but
amusement, promptly forgetting him; and asking divine great deeds
of those before whom she bends the knee. Everything is judged by
laws of its being; the diamond must be flawless; the ephemeral
creation of fashion may be flimsy, bizarre, inconsequent. So
Lucien may perhaps succeed to admiration in spite of his mistakes;
he has only to profit by some happy vein or to be among good
companions; but if an evil angel crosses his path, he will go to
the very depths of hell. ‘Tis a brilliant assemblage of good
qualities embroidered upon too slight a tissue; time wears the
flowers away till nothing but the web is left; and if that is poor
stuff, you behold a rag at the last. So long as Lucien is young,
people will like him; but where will he be as a man of thirty?
That is the question which those who love him sincerely are bound
to ask themselves. If I alone had come to think in this way of
Lucien, I might perhaps have spared you the pain which my plain
speaking will give you; but to evade the questions put by your
anxiety, and to answer a cry of anguish like your letter with
commonplaces, seemed to me alike unworthy of you and of me, whom
you esteem too highly; and besides, those of my friends who knew
Lucien are unanimous in their judgment. So it appeared to me to be
a duty to put the truth before you, terrible though it may be.
Anything may be expected of Lucien, anything good or evil. That is
our opinion, and this letter is summed up in that sentence. If the
vicissitudes of his present way of life (a very wretched and
slippery one) should bring the poet back to you, use all your
influence to keep him among you; for until his character has
acquired stability, Paris will not be safe for him. He used to
speak of you, you and your husband, as his guardian angels; he has
forgotten you, no doubt; but he will remember you again when
tossed by tempest, with no refuge left to him but his home. Keep
your heart for him, madame; he will need it.
“Permit me, madame, to convey to you the expression of the sincere
respect of a man to whom your rare qualities are known, a man who
honors your mother’s fears so much, that he desires to style
himself your devoted servant,
“D’ARTHEZ.”
Two days after the letter came, Eve was obliged to find a wet-nurse; her
milk had dried up. She had made a god of her brother; now, in her eyes,
he was depraved through the exercise of his noblest faculties; he was
wallowing in the mire. She, noble creature that she was, was incapable
of swerving from honesty and scrupulous delicacy, from all the pious
traditions of the hearth, which still burns so clearly and sheds its
light abroad in quiet country homes. Then David had been right in his
forecasts! The leaden hues of grief overspread Eve’s white brow. She
told her husband her secret in one of the pellucid talks in which
married lovers tell everything to each other. The tones of David’s voice
brought comfort. Though the tears stood in his eyes when he knew that
grief had dried his wife’s fair breast, and knew Eve’s despair that she
could not fulfil a mother’s duties, he held out reassuring hopes.
“Your brother’s imagination has let him astray, you see, child. It is so
natural that a poet should wish for blue and purple robes, and hurry as
eagerly after festivals as he does. It is a bird that loves glitter and
luxury with such simple sincerity, that God forgives him if man condemns
him for it.”
“But he is draining our lives!” exclaimed poor Eve.
“He is draining our lives just now, but only a few months ago he saved
us by sending us the first fruits of his earnings,” said the good David.
He had the sense to see that his wife was in despair, was going beyond
the limit, and that love for Lucien would very soon come back. “Fifty
years ago, or thereabouts, Mercier said in his _Tableau de Paris_ that
a man cannot live by literature, poetry, letters, or science, by the
creatures of his brain, in short; and Lucien, poet that he is, would not
believe the experience of five centuries. The harvests that are watered
with ink are only reaped ten or twelve years after the sowing, if indeed
there is any harvest after all. Lucien has taken the green wheat for the
sheaves. He will have learned something of life, at any rate. He was the
dupe of a woman at the outset; he was sure to be duped afterwards by the
world and false friends. He has bought his experience dear, that is all.
Our ancestors used to say, ‘If the son of the house brings back his two
ears and his honor safe, all is well----’”
“Honor!” poor Eve broke in. “Oh, but Lucien has fallen in so many ways!
Writing against his conscience! Attacking his best friend! Living upon
an actress! Showing himself in public with her. Bringing us to lie on
straw----”
“Oh, that is nothing----!” cried David, and suddenly stopped short. The
secret of Lucien’s forgery had nearly escaped him, and, unluckily, his
start left a vague, uneasy impression on Eve.
“What do you mean by nothing?” she answered. “And where shall we find
the money to meet bills for three thousand francs?”
“We shall be obliged to renew the lease with Cérizet, to begin with,”
said David. “The Cointets have been allowing him fifteen per cent on
the work done for them, and in that way alone he has made six hundred
francs, besides contriving to make five hundred francs by job printing.”
“If the Cointets know that, perhaps they will not renew the lease. They
will be afraid of him, for Cérizet is a dangerous man.”
“Eh! what is that to me!” cried David, “we shall be rich in a very
little while. When Lucien is rich, dear angel, he will have nothing but
good qualities.”
“Oh! David, my dear, my dear; what is this that you have said
unthinkingly? Then Lucien fallen into the clutches of poverty would not
have the force of character to resist evil? And you think just as M.
d’Arthez thinks! No one is great unless he has strength of character,
and Lucien is weak. An angel who must not be tempted--what is that?”
“What but a nature that is noble only in its own region, its own sphere,
its heaven? I will spare him the struggle; Lucien is not meant for it.
Look here! I am so near the end now that I can talk to you about the
means.”
He drew several sheets of white paper from his pocket, brandished them
in triumph, and laid them on his wife’s lap.
“A ream of this paper, royal size, would cost five francs at the most,”
he added, while Eve handled the specimens with almost childish surprise.
“Why, how did you make these sample bits?” she asked.
“With an old kitchen sieve of Marion’s.”
“And are you not satisfied yet?” asked Eve.
“The problem does not lie in the manufacturing process; it is a question
of the first cost of the pulp. Alas, child, I am only a late comer in
a difficult path. As long ago as 1794, Mme. Masson tried to use printed
paper a second time; she succeeded, but what a price it cost! The
Marquis of Salisbury tried to use straw as a material in 1800, and the
same idea occurred to Seguin in France in 1801. Those sheets in your
hand are made from the common rush, the _arundo phragmites_, but I
shall try nettles and thistles; for if the material is to continue to be
cheap, one must look for something that will grow in marshes and waste
lands where nothing else can be grown. The whole secret lies in the
preparation of the stems. At present my method is not quite simple
enough. Still, in spite of this difficulty, I feel sure that I can give
the French paper trade the privilege of our literature; papermaking
will be for France what coal and iron and coarse potter’s clay are for
England--a monopoly. I mean to be the Jacquart of the trade.”
Eve rose to her feet. David’s simple-mindedness had roused her to
enthusiasm, to admiration; she held out her arms to him and held him
tightly to her, while she laid her head upon his shoulder.
“You give me my reward as if I had succeeded already,” he said.
For all answer, Eve held up her sweet face, wet with tears, to his, and
for a moment she could not speak.
“The kiss was not for the man of genius,” she said, “but for my
comforter. Here is a rising glory for the glory that has set; and,
in the midst of my grief for the brother that has fallen so low, my
husband’s greatness is revealed to me.--Yes, you will be great, great
like the Graindorges, the Rouvets, and Van Robais, and the Persian who
discovered madder, like all the men you have told me about; great men
whom nobody remembers, because their good deeds were obscure industrial
triumphs.”
“What are they doing just now?”
It was Boniface Cointet who spoke. He was walking up and down outside in
the Place du Mûrier with Cérizet watching the silhouettes of the husband
and wife on the blinds. He always came at midnight for a chat with
Cérizet, for the latter played the spy upon his former master’s every
movement.
“He is showing her the paper he made this morning, no doubt,” said
Cérizet.
“What is it made of?” asked the paper manufacturer.
“Impossible to guess,” answered Cérizet; “I made a hole in the roof and
scrambled up and watched the gaffer; he was boiling pulp in a copper pan
all last night. There was a heap of stuff in a corner, but I could make
nothing of it; it looked like a heap of tow, as near as I could make
out.”
“Go no farther,” said Boniface Cointet in unctuous tones; “it would not
be right. Mme. Séchard will offer to renew your lease; tell her that you
are thinking of setting up for yourself. Offer her half the value of the
plant and license, and, if she takes the bid, come to me. In any case,
spin the matter out. . . . Have they no money?”
“Not a sou,” said Cérizet.
“Not a sou,” repeated tall Cointet.--“I have them now,” said he to
himself.
Métivier, paper manufacturers’ wholesale agent, and Cointet Brothers,
printers and paper manufacturers, were also bankers in all but name.
This surreptitious banking system defies all the ingenuity of the Inland
Revenue Department. Every banker is required to take out a license
which, in Paris, costs five hundred francs; but no hitherto devised
method of controlling commerce can detect the delinquents, or compel
them to pay their due to the Government. And though Métivier and the
Cointets were “outside brokers,” in the language of the Stock Exchange,
none the less among them they could set some hundreds of thousands of
francs moving every three months in the markets of Paris, Bordeaux, and
Angoulême. Now it so fell out that that very evening Cointet Brothers
had received Lucien’s forged bills in the course of business. Upon this
debt, tall Cointet forthwith erected a formidable engine, pointed, as
will presently be seen, against the poor, patient inventor.
By seven o’clock next morning, Boniface Cointet was taking a walk by the
mill stream that turned the wheels in his big factory; the sound of the
water covered his talk, for he was talking with a companion, a young
man of nine-and-twenty, who had been appointed attorney to the Court of
First Instance in Angoulême some six weeks ago. The young man’s name was
Pierre Petit-Claud.
“You are a schoolfellow of David Séchard’s, are you not?” asked tall
Cointet by way of greeting to the young attorney. Petit-Claud had lost
no time in answering the wealthy manufacturer’s summons.
“Yes, sir,” said Petit-Claud, keeping step with tall Cointet.
“Have you renewed the acquaintance?”
“We have met once or twice at most since he came back. It could hardly
have been otherwise. In Paris I was buried away in the office or at
the courts on week-days, and on Sundays and holidays I was hard at
work studying, for I had only myself to look to.” (Tall Cointet nodded
approvingly.) “When we met again, David and I, he asked me what I
had done with myself. I told him that after I had finished my time at
Poitiers, I had risen to be Maître Olivet’s head-clerk, and that some
time or other I hoped to make a bid for his berth. I know a good deal
more of Lucien Chardon (de Rubempré he calls himself now), he was Mme.
de Bargeton’s lover, our great poet, David Séchard’s brother-in-law, in
fact.”
“Then you can go and tell David of your appointment, and offer him your
services,” said tall Cointet.
“One can’t do that,” said the young attorney.
“He has never had a lawsuit, and he has no attorney, so one can do
that,” said Cointet, scanning the other narrowly from behind his colored
spectacles.
A certain quantity of gall mingled with the blood in Pierre
Petit-Claud’s veins; his father was a tailor in L’Houmeau, and his
schoolfellows had looked down upon him. His complexion was of the muddy
and unwholesome kind which tells a tale of bad health, late hours and
penury, and almost always of a bad disposition. The best description of
him may be given in two familiar expressions--he was sharp and snappish.
His cracked voice suited his sour face, meagre look, and magpie eyes of
no particular color. A magpie eye, according to Napoleon, is a sure
sign of dishonesty. “Look at So-and-so,” he said to Las Cases at Saint
Helena, alluding to a confidential servant whom he had been obliged to
dismiss for malversation. “I do not know how I could have been deceived
in him for so long; he has a magpie eye.” Tall Cointet, surveying the
weedy little lawyer, noted his face pitted with smallpox, the thin hair,
and the forehead, bald already, receding towards a bald cranium; saw,
too, the confession of weakness in his attitude with the hand on the
hip. “Here is my man,” said he to himself.
As a matter of fact, this Petit-Claud, who had drunk scorn like water,
was eaten up with a strong desire to succeed in life; he had no money,
but nevertheless he had the audacity to buy his employer’s connection
for thirty thousand francs, reckoning upon a rich marriage to clear off
the debt, and looking to his employer, after the usual custom, to find
him a wife, for an attorney always has an interest in marrying his
successor, because he is the sooner paid off. But if Petit-Claud counted
upon his employer, he counted yet more upon himself. He had more than
average ability, and that of a kind not often found in the provinces,
and rancor was the mainspring of his power. A mighty hatred makes a
mighty effort.
There is a great difference between a country attorney and an attorney
in Paris; tall Cointet was too clever not to know this, and to turn
the meaner passions that move a pettifogging lawyer to good account. An
eminent attorney in Paris, and there are many who may be so qualified,
is bound to possess to some extent the diplomate’s qualities; he had
so much business to transact, business in which large interests are
involved; questions of such wide interest are submitted to him that he
does not look upon procedure as machinery for bringing money into his
pocket, but as a weapon of attack and defence. A country attorney, on
the other hand, cultivates the science of costs, _broutille_, as it is
called in Paris, a host of small items that swell lawyers’ bills and
require stamped paper. These weighty matters of the law completely fill
the country attorney’s mind; he has a bill of costs always before his
eyes, whereas his brother of Paris thinks of nothing but his fees. The
fee is a honorarium paid by a client over and above the bill of costs,
for the more or less skilful conduct of his case. One-half of the bill
of costs goes to the Treasury, whereas the entire fee belongs to the
attorney. Let us admit frankly that the fees received are seldom as
large as the fees demanded and deserved by a clever lawyer. Wherefore,
in Paris, attorneys, doctors, and barristers, like courtesans with
a chance-come lover, take very considerable precautions against the
gratitude of clients. The client before and after the lawsuit would
furnish a subject worthy of Meissonier; there would be brisk bidding
among attorneys for the possession of two such admirable bits of genre.
There is yet another difference between the Parisian and the country
attorney. An attorney in Paris very seldom appears in court, though he
is sometimes called upon to act as arbitrator (_référé_). Barristers,
at the present day, swarm in the provinces; but in 1822 the country
attorney very often united the functions of solicitor and counsel. As
a result of this double life, the attorney acquired the peculiar
intellectual defects of the barrister, and retained the heavy
responsibilities of the attorney. He grew talkative and fluent, and
lost his lucidity of judgment, the first necessity for the conduct of
affairs. If a man of more than ordinary ability tries to do the work of
two men, he is apt to find that the two men are mediocrities. The Paris
attorney never spends himself in forensic eloquence; and as he seldom
attempts to argue for and against, he has some hope of preserving his
mental rectitude. It is true that he brings the balista of the law
to work, and looks for the weapons in the armory of judicial
contradictions, but he keeps his own convictions as to the case, while
he does his best to gain the day. In a word, a man loses his head not so
much by thinking as by uttering thoughts. The spoken word convinces the
utterer; but a man can act against his own bad judgment without warping
it, and contrive to win in a bad cause without maintaining that it is
a good one, like the barrister. Perhaps for this very reason an old
attorney is the more likely of the two to make a good judge.
A country attorney, as we have seen, has plenty of excuses for his
mediocrity; he takes up the cause of petty passions, he undertakes
pettifogging business, he lives by charging expenses, he strains the
Code of procedure and pleads in court. In a word, his weak points are
legion; and if by chance you come across a remarkable man practising as
a country attorney, he is indeed above the average level.
“I thought, sir, that you sent for me on your own affairs,” said
Petit-Claud, and a glance that put an edge on his words fell upon tall
Cointet’s impenetrable blue spectacles.
“Let us have no beating about the bush,” returned Boniface Cointet.
“Listen to me.”
After that beginning, big with mysterious import, Cointet set himself
down upon a bench, and beckoned Petit-Claud to do likewise.
“When M. du Hautoy came to Angoulême in 1804, on his way to his
consulship at Valence, he made the acquaintance of Mme. de Senonches,
then Mlle. Zéphirine, and had a daughter by her,” added Cointet for
the attorney’s ear----“Yes,” he continued, as Petit-Claud gave a start;
“yes, and Mlle. Zéphirine’s marriage with M. de Senoches soon followed
the birth of the child. The girl was brought up in my mother’s house;
she is the Mlle. Françoise de la Haye in whom Mme. de Senoches takes an
interest; she is her godmother in the usual style. Now, my mother farmed
land belonging to old Mme. de Cardanet, Mlle. Zéphirine’s grandmother;
and as she knew the secret of the sole heiress of the Cardanets and the
Senonches of the older branch, they made me trustee for the little sum
which M. François du Hautoy meant for the girl’s fortune. I made my own
fortune with those ten thousand francs, which amount to thirty thousand
at the present day. Mme. de Senonches is sure to give the wedding
clothes, and some plate and furniture to her goddaughter. Now, I can
put you in the way of marrying the girl, my lad,” said Cointet, slapping
Petit-Claud on the knee; “and when you marry Françoise de la Haye,
you will have a large number of the aristocracy of Angoulême as your
clients. This understanding between us (under the rose) will open up
magnificent prospects for you. Your position will be as much as any one
could want; in fact, they don’t ask better, I know.”
“What is to be done?” Petit-Claud asked eagerly. “You have an attorney,
Maître Cachan----”
“And, moreover, I shall not leave Cachan at once for you; I shall only
be your client later on,” said Cointet significantly. “What is to be
done, do you ask, my friend? Eh! why, David Séchard’s business. The poor
devil has three thousand francs’ worth of bills to meet; he will not
meet them; you will stave off legal proceedings in such a way as to
increase the expenses enormously. Don’t trouble yourself; go on, pile on
items. Doublon, my process-server, will act under Cachan’s directions,
and he will lay on like a blacksmith. A word to the wise is sufficient.
Now, young man?----”
An eloquent pause followed, and the two men looked at each other.
“We have never seen each other,” Cointet resumed; “I have not said
a syllable to you; you know nothing about M. du Hautoy, nor Mme. de
Senonches, nor Mlle. de la Haye; only, when the time comes, two months
hence, you will propose for the young lady. If we should want to see
each other, you will come here after dark. Let us have nothing in
writing.”
“Then you mean to ruin Séchard?” asked Petit-Claud.
“Not exactly; but he must be in jail for some time----”
“And what is the object?”
“Do you think that I am noodle enough to tell you that? If you have wit
enough to find out, you will have sense enough to hold your tongue.”
“Old Séchard has plenty of money,” said Petit-Claud. He was beginning
already to enter into Boniface Cointet’s notions, and foresaw a possible
cause of failure.
“So long as the father lives, he will not give his son a farthing; and
the old printer has no mind as yet to send in an order for his funeral
cards.”
“Agreed!” said Petit-Claud, promptly making up his mind. “I don’t ask
you for guarantees; I am an attorney. If any one plays me a trick, there
will be an account to settle between us.”
“The rogue will go far,” thought Cointet; he bade Petit-Claud
good-morning.
The day after this conference was the 30th of April, and the Cointets
presented the first of the three bills forged by Lucien. Unluckily, the
bill was brought to poor Mme. Séchard; and she, seeing at once that the
signature was not in her husband’s handwriting, sent for David and asked
him point-blank:
“You did not put your name to that bill, did you?”
“No,” said he; “your brother was so pressed for time that he signed for
me.”
Eve returned the bill to the bank messenger sent by the Cointets.
“We cannot meet it,” she said; then, feeling that her strength was
failing, she went up to her room. David followed her.
“Go quickly to the Cointets, dear,” Eve said faintly; “they will have
some consideration for you; beg them to wait; and call their attention
besides to the fact that when Cérizet’s lease is renewed, they will owe
you a thousand francs.”
David went forthwith to his enemies. Now, any foreman may become a
master printer, but there are not always the makings of a good man of
business in a skilled typographer; David knew very little of business;
when, therefore, with a heavily-beating heart and a sensation of
throttling, David had put his excuses badly enough and formulated his
request, the answer--“This is nothing to do with us; the bill has
been passed on to us by Métivier; Métivier will pay us. Apply to M.
Métivier”--cut him short at once.
“Oh!” cried Eve when she heard the result, “as soon as the bill is
returned to M. Métivier, we may be easy.”
At two o’clock the next day, Victor-Ange-Herménégilde Doublon, bailiff,
made protest for non-payment at two o’clock, a time when the Place du
Mûrier is full of people; so that though Doublon was careful to stand
and chat at the back door with Marion and Kolb, the news of the protest
was known all over the business world of Angoulême that evening. Tall
Cointet had enjoined it upon Master Doublon to show the Séchards the
greatest consideration; but when all was said and done, could the
bailiff’s hypocritical regard for appearances save Eve and David from
the disgrace of a suspension of payment? Let each judge for himself.
A tolerably long digression of this kind will seem all too short;
and ninety out of every hundred readers shall seize with avidity upon
details that possess all the piquancy of novelty, thus establishing yet
once again the trust of the well-known axiom, that there is nothing so
little known as that which everybody is supposed to know--the Law of the
Land, to wit.
And of a truth, for the immense majority of Frenchmen, a minute
description of some part of the machinery of banking will be as
interesting as any chapter of foreign travel. When a tradesman living
in one town gives a bill to another tradesman elsewhere (as David was
supposed to have done for Lucien’s benefit), the transaction ceases
to be a simple promissory note, given in the way of business by one
tradesman to another in the same place, and becomes in some sort a
letter of exchange. When, therefore, Métivier accepted Lucien’s three
bills, he was obliged to send them for collection to his correspondents
in Angoulême--to Cointet Brothers, that is to say. Hence, likewise, a
certain initial loss for Lucien in exchange on Angoulême, taking the
practical shape of an abatement of so much per cent over and above the
discount. In this way Séchard’s bills had passed into circulation in the
bank. You would not believe how greatly the quality of banker, united
with the august title of creditor, changes the debtor’s position. For
instance, when a bill has been passed through the bank (please note
that expression), and transferred from the money market in Paris to
the financial world of Angoulême, if that bill is protested, then the
bankers in Angoulême must draw up a detailed account of the expenses
of protest and return; ‘tis a duty which they owe to themselves. Joking
apart, no account of the most romantic adventure could be more mildly
improbable than this of the journey made by a bill. Behold a certain
article in the Code of commerce authorizing the most ingenious
pleasantries after Mascarille’s manner, and the interpretation thereof
shall make apparent manifold atrocities lurking beneath the formidable
word “legal.”
Master Doublon registered the protest and went himself with it to MM.
Cointet Brothers. The firm had a standing account with their bailiff;
he gave them six months’ credit; and the lynxes of Angoulême practically
took a twelvemonth, though tall Cointet would say month by month to
the lynxes’ jackal, “Do you want any money, Doublon?” Nor was this all.
Doublon gave the influential house a rebate upon every transaction;
it was the merest trifle, one franc fifty centimes on a protest, for
instance.
Tall Cointet quietly sat himself down at his desk and took out a small
sheet of paper with a thirty-five centime stamp upon it, chatting as he
did so with Doublon as to the standing of some of the local tradesmen.
“Well, are you satisfied with young Gannerac?”
“He is not doing badly. Lord, a carrier drives a trade----”
“Drives a trade, yes; but, as a matter of fact, his expenses are a heavy
pull on him; his wife spends a good deal, so they tell me----”
“Of _his_ money?” asked Doublon, with a knowing look.
The lynx meanwhile had finished ruling his sheet of paper, and now
proceeded to trace the ominous words at the head of the following
account in bold characters:--