Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the President of the Secret Council
remained silently musing for some moments; but his countenance was no
longer moody and overcast,--his nostrils were dilated, as in triumph;
there was a half-smile of pride on his lips. Rameau watched him
curiously and admiringly. The young man had the impressionable,
excitable temperament common to Parisian genius,--especially when it
nourishes itself on absinthe. He enjoyed the romance of belonging to a
secret society; he was acute enough to recognize the sagacity by which
this small conclave was kept out of those crazed combinations for
impracticable theories more likely to lead adventurers to the Tarpeian
Rock than to the Capitol, while yet those crazed combinations might, in
some critical moment, become strong instruments in the hands of practical
ambition. Lebeau fascinated him, and took colossal proportions in his
intoxicated vision,--vision indeed intoxicated at this moment, for before
it floated the realized image of his aspirations,--a journal of which he
was to be the editor-in-chief; in which his poetry, his prose, should
occupy space as large as he pleased; through which his name, hitherto
scarce known beyond a literary clique, would resound in salon and club
and cafe, and become a familiar music on the lips of fashion. And he
owed this to the man seated there,--a prodigious man.
"Cher poete," said Lebeau, breaking silence, "it gives me no mean
pleasure to think I am opening a career to one whose talents fit him for
those goals on which they who reach write names that posterity shall
read. Struck with certain articles of yours in the journal made
celebrated by the wit and gayety of Savarin, I took pains privately to
inquire into your birth, your history, connections, antecedents. All
confirmed my first impression,--that you were exactly the writer I wish
to secure to our cause. I therefore sought you in your rooms,
unintroduced and a stranger, in order to express my admiration of your
compositions. _Bref_, we soon became friends; and after comparing minds,
I admitted you, at your request, into this Secret Council. Now, in
proposing to you the conduct of the journal I would establish, for which
I am prepared to find all necessary funds, I am compelled to make
imperative conditions. Nominally you will be editor-in-chief: that
station, if the journal succeeds, will secure you position and fortune;
if it fail, you fail with it. But we will not speak of failure; I must
have it succeed. Our interest, then, is the same. Before that interest
all puerile vanities fade away. Nominally, I say, you are editor-in-
chief; but all the real work of editing will, at first, be done by
others."
"Ah!" exclaimed Rameau, aghast and stunned. Lebeau resumed,
"To establish the journal I propose needs more than the genius of youth;
it needs the tact and experience of mature years."
Rameau sank back on his chair with a sullen sneer on his pale lips.
Decidedly Lebeau was not so great a man as he had thought.
"A certain portion of the journal," continued Lebeau, "will be
exclusively appropriated to your pen."
Rameau's lip lost the sneer.
"But your pen must be therein restricted to compositions of pure fancy,
disporting in a world that does not exist; or, if on graver themes
connected with the beings of the world that does exist, the subjects will
be dictated to you and revised. Yet even in the higher departments of a
journal intended to make way at its first start, we need the aid, not
indeed of men who write better than you, but of men whose fame is
established,--whose writings, good or bad, the public run to read, and
will find good even if they are bad. You must consign one column to the
playful comments and witticisms of Savarin."
"Savarin? But he has a journal of his own. He will not, as an author,
condescend to write in one just set up by me; and as a politician, he as
certainly will not aid in an ultrademocratic revolution. If he care for
politics at all, he is a constitutionalist, an Orleanist."
"Enfant! as an author Savarin will condescend to contribute to your
journal, first, because it in no way attempts to interfere with his own;
secondly,--I can tell you a secret, Savarin's journal no longer suffices
for his existence. He has sold more than two-thirds of its property; he
is in debt, and his creditor is urgent; and to-morrow you will offer
Savarin thirty thousand francs for one column from his pen, and signed by
his name, for two months from the day the journal starts. He will
accept, partly because the sum will clear off the debt that hampers him,
partly because he will take care that the amount becomes known; and that
will help him to command higher terms for the sale of the remaining
shares in the journal he now edits, for the new book which you told me he
intended to write, and for the new journal which he will be sure to set
up as soon as he has disposed of the old one. You say that, as a
politician, Savarin, an Orleanist, will not aid in an ultra-democratic
revolution. Who asks him to do so? Did I not imply at the meeting that
we commence our journal with politics the mildest? Though revolutions
are not made with rose-water, it is rose-water that nourishes their
roots. The polite cynicism of authors, read by those who float on the
surface of society, prepares the way for the social ferment in its deeps.
Had there been no Voltaire, there would have been no Camille Desmoulins;
had there been no Diderot, there would have been no Marat. We start as
polite cynics. Of all cynics Savarin is the politest. But when I bid
high for him, it is his clique that I bid for. Without his clique he is
but a wit; with his clique, a power. Partly out of that clique, partly
out of a circle beyond it, which Savarin can more or less influence, I
select ten. Here is the list of them; study it. _Entre nous_, I esteem
their writings as little as I do artificial flies; but they are the
artificial flies at which, in this particular season of the year, the
public rise. You must procure at least five of the ten; and I leave you
carte blanche as to the terms. Savarin gained, the best of them will be
proud of being his associates. Observe, none of these messieurs of
brilliant imagination are to write political articles; those will be
furnished to you anonymously, and inserted without erasure or omission.
When you have secured Savarin, and five at least of the collaborateurs in
the list, write to me at my office. I give you four days to do this; and
the day the journal starts you enter into the income of fifteen thousand
francs a year, with a rise in salary proportioned to profits. Are you
contented with the terms?"
"Of course I am; but supposing I do not gain the aid of Savarin, or five
at least of the list you give, which I see at a glance contains names the
most _a la mode_ in this kind of writing, more than one of them of high
social rank, whom it is difficult for me even to approach,--if, I say, I
fail?"
"What! with a carte blanche of terms? fie! Are you a Parisian? Well, to
answer you frankly, if you fail in so easy a task, you are not the man to
edit our journal, and I shall find another. _Allez, courage_! Take my
advice; see Savarin the first thing to-morrow morning. Of course, my
name and calling you will keep a profound secret from him, as from all.
Say as mysteriously as you can that parties you are forbidden to name
instruct you to treat with M. Savarin, and offer him the terms I have
specified, the thirty thousand francs paid to him in advance the moment
he signs the simple memorandum of agreement. The more mysterious you
are, the more you will impose,--that is, wherever you offer money and
don't ask for it."
Here Lebeau took up his hat, and, with a courteous nod of adieu, lightly
descended the gloomy stairs.