“If the key had been lost?”
“He would now be a dead man.”
“Dead? But ought you not to
grant the last request he made, and
to give him his liberty on the con-
ditions----”
“You do not know him.”
“But--”
“Silence! I took you for my
lover, not for my confessor.”
Adolphe was silent.
“And then comes an exquisite galloping goat, a tail-piece drawn by
Normand, and cut by Duplat.--the names are signed,” said Lousteau.
“Well, and then?” said such of the audience as understood.
“That is the end of the chapter,” said Lousteau. “The fact of this
tailpiece changes my views as to the authorship. To have his book got
up, under the Empire, with vignettes engraved on wood, the writer must
have been a Councillor of State, or Madame Barthelemy-Hadot, or the late
lamented Desforges, or Sewrin.”
“‘Adolphe was silent.’--Ah!” cried Bianchon, “the Duchess must have been
under thirty.”
“If there is no more, invent a conclusion,” said Madame de la Baudraye.
“You see,” said Lousteau, “the waste sheet has been printed fair on
one side only. In printer’s lingo, it is a back sheet, or, to make it
clearer, the other side which would have to be printed is covered all
over with pages printed one above another, all experiments in making
up. It would take too long to explain to you all the complications of a
making-up sheet; but you may understand that it will show no more trace
of the first twelve pages that were printed on it than you would in the
least remember the first stroke of the bastinado if a Pasha condemned
you to have fifty on the soles of your feet.”
“I am quite bewildered,” said Madame Popinot-Chandier to Monsieur
Gravier. “I am vainly trying to connect the Councillor of State, the
Cardinal, the key, and the making-up----”
“You have not the key to the jest,” said Monsieur Gravier. “Well! no
more have I, fair lady, if that can comfort you.”
“But here is another sheet,” said Bianchon, hunting on the table where
the proofs had been laid.
“Capital!” said Lousteau, “and it is complete and uninjured. It is
signed IV.; J, Second Edition. Ladies, the figure IV. means that this
is part of the fourth volume. The letter J, the tenth letter of the
alphabet, shows that this is the tenth sheet. And it is perfectly clear
to me, that in spite of any publisher’s tricks, this romance in four
duodecimo volumes, had a great success, since it came to a second
edition.--We will read on and find a clue to the mystery.