Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “Well, what is it, sir!” he exclaimed, thinking, when some one caught him by the arm, that his poetry had proved too great a temptation to some author’s honesty, and turning, he recognized Lousteau.

  “I felt sure that you would find your way here at last,” said his friend.

  The poet was standing in the doorway of a shop crowded with persons waiting for an audience with the sultan of the publishing trade. Printers, paper-dealers, and designers were catechizing Dauriat’s assistants as to present or future business.

  Lousteau drew Lucien into the shop. “There! that is Finot who edits my paper,” he said; “he is talking with Felicien Vernou, who has abilities, but the little wretch is as dangerous as a hidden disease.”

  “Well, old boy, there is a first night for you,” said Finot, coming up with Vernou. “I have disposed of the box.”

  “Sold it to Braulard?”

  “Well, and if I did, what then? You will get a seat. What do you want with Dauriat? Oh, it is agreed that we are to push Paul de Kock, Dauriat has taken two hundred copies, and Victor Ducange is refusing to give him his next. Dauriat wants to set up another man in the same line, he says. You must rate Paul de Kock above Ducange.”

  “But I have a piece on with Ducange at the Gaite,” said Lousteau.

  “Very well, tell him that I wrote the article. It can be supposed that I wrote a slashing review, and you toned it down; and he will owe you thanks.”

  “Couldn’t you get Dauriat’s cashier to discount this bit of a bill for a hundred francs?” asked Etienne Lousteau. “We are celebrating Florine’s house-warming with a supper to-night, you know.”

  “Ah! yes, you are treating us all,” said Finot, with an apparent effort of memory. “Here, Gabusson,” he added, handing Barbet’s bill to the cashier, “let me have ninety francs for this individual. — Fill in your name, old man.”

  Lousteau signed his name while the cashier counted out the money; and Lucien, all eyes and ears, lost not a syllable of the conversation.

  “That is not all, my friend,” Etienne continued; “I don’t thank you, we have sworn an eternal friendship. I have taken it upon myself to introduce this gentleman to Dauriat, and you must incline his ear to listen to us.”

  “What is on foot?” asked Finot.

  “A volume of poetry,” said Lucien.

  “Oh!” said Finot, with a shrug of the shoulders.

  “Your acquaintance cannot have had much to do with publishers, or he would have hidden his manuscript in the loneliest spot in his dwelling,” remarked Vernou, looking at Lucien as he spoke.

  Just at that moment a good-looking young man came into the shop, gave a hand to Finot and Lousteau, and nodded slightly to Vernou. The newcomer was Emile Blondet, who had made his first appearance in the Journal des Debats, with articles revealing capacities of the very highest order.

  “Come and have supper with us at midnight, at Florine’s,” said Lousteau.

  “Very good,” said the newcomer. “But who is going to be there?”

  “Oh, Florine and Matifat the druggist,” said Lousteau, “and du Bruel, the author who gave Florine the part in which she is to make her first appearance, a little old fogy named Cardot, and his son-in-law Camusot, and Finot, and — — ”

  “Does your druggist do things properly?”

  “He will not give us doctored wine,” said Lucien.

  “You are very witty, monsieur,” Blondet returned gravely. “Is he coming, Lousteau?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we shall have some fun.”

  Lucien had flushed red to the tips of his ears. Blondet tapped on the window above Dauriat’s desk.

  “Is your business likely to keep you long, Dauriat?”

  “I am at your service, my friend.”

  “That’s right,” said Lousteau, addressing his protege. “That young fellow is hardly any older than you are, and he is on the Debats! He is one of the princes of criticism. They are afraid of him, Dauriat will fawn upon him, and then we can put in a word about our business with the pasha of vignettes and type. Otherwise we might have waited till eleven o’clock, and our turn would not have come. The crowd of people waiting to speak with Dauriat is growing bigger every moment.”

  Lucien and Lousteau followed Blondet, Finot, and Vernou, and stood in a knot at the back of the shop.

  “What is he doing?” asked Blondet of the head-clerk, who rose to bid him good-evening.

  “He is buying a weekly newspaper. He wants to put new life into it, and set up a rival to the Minerve and the Conservateur; Eymery has rather too much of his own way in the Minerve, and the Conservateur is too blindly Romantic.”

  “Is he going to pay well?”

  “Only too much — as usual,” said the cashier.

  Just as he spoke another young man entered; this was the writer of a magnificent novel which had sold very rapidly and met with the greatest possible success. Dauriat was bringing out a second edition. The appearance of this odd and extraordinary looking being, so unmistakably an artist, made a deep impression on Lucien’s mind.

  “That is Nathan,” Lousteau said in his ear.

  Nathan, then in the prime of his youth, came up to the group of journalists, hat in hand; and in spite of his look of fierce pride he was almost humble to Blondet, whom as yet he only knew by sight. Blondet did not remove his hat, neither did Finot.

  “Monsieur, I am delighted to avail myself of an opportunity yielded by chance — — ”

  (“He is so nervous that he is committing a pleonasm,” said Felicien in an aside to Lousteau.)

  “ — — to give expression to my gratitude for the splendid review which you were so good as to give me in the Journal des Debats. Half the success of my book is owing to you.”

  “No, my dear fellow, no,” said Blondet, with an air of patronage scarcely masked by good-nature. “You have talent, the deuce you have, and I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  “Now that your review has appeared, I shall not seem to be courting power; we can feel at ease. Will you do me the honor and the pleasure of dining with me to-morrow? Finot is coming. — Lousteau, old man, you will not refuse me, will you?” added Nathan, shaking Etienne by the hand. — ”Ah, you are on the way to a great future, monsieur,” he added, turning again to Blondet; “you will carry on the line of Dussaults, Fievees, and Geoffrois! Hoffmann was talking about you to a friend of mine, Claude Vignon, his pupil; he said that he could die in peace, the Journal des Debats would live forever. They ought to pay you tremendously well.”

  “A hundred francs a column,” said Blondet. “Poor pay when one is obliged to read the books, and read a hundred before you find one worth interesting yourself in, like yours. Your work gave me pleasure, upon my word.”

  “And brought him in fifteen hundred francs,” said Lousteau for Lucien’s benefit.

  “But you write political articles, don’t you?” asked Nathan.

  “Yes; now and again.”

  Lucien felt like an embryo among these men; he had admired Nathan’s book, he had reverenced the author as an immortal; Nathan’s abject attitude before this critic, whose name and importance were both unknown to him, stupefied Lucien.

  “How if I should come to behave as he does?” he thought. “Is a man obliged to part with his self-respect? — Pray put on your hat again, Nathan; you have written a great book, and the critic has only written a review of it.”

  These thoughts set the blood tingling in his veins. Scarce a minute passed but some young author, poverty-stricken and shy, came in, asked to speak with Dauriat, looked round the crowded shop despairingly, and went out saying, “I will come back again.” Two or three politicians were chatting over the convocation of the Chambers and public business with a group of well-known public men. The weekly newspaper for which Dauriat was in treaty was licensed to treat of matters political, and the number of newspapers suffered to exist was growing smaller and smaller, till a paper was a piece of property as muc
h in demand as a theatre. One of the largest shareholders in the Constitutionnel was standing in the midst of the knot of political celebrities. Lousteau performed the part of cicerone to admiration; with every sentence he uttered Dauriat rose higher in Lucien’s opinion. Politics and literature seemed to converge in Dauriat’s shop. He had seen a great poet prostituting his muse to journalism, humiliating Art, as woman was humiliated and prostituted in those shameless galleries without, and the provincial took a terrible lesson to heart. Money! That was the key to every enigma. Lucien realized the fact that he was unknown and alone, and that the fragile clue of an uncertain friendship was his sole guide to success and fortune. He blamed the kind and loyal little circle for painting the world for him in false colors, for preventing him from plunging into the arena, pen in hand. “I should be a Blondet at this moment!” he exclaimed within himself.

  Only a little while ago they had sat looking out over Paris from the Gardens of the Luxembourg, and Lousteau had uttered the cry of a wounded eagle; then Lousteau had been a great man in Lucien’s eyes, and now he had shrunk to scarce visible proportions. The really important man for him at this moment was the fashionable bookseller, by whom all these men lived; and the poet, manuscript in hand, felt a nervous tremor that was almost like fear. He noticed a group of busts mounted on wooden pedestals, painted to resemble marble; Byron stood there, and Goethe and M. de Canalis. Dauriat was hoping to publish a volume by the last-named poet, who might see, on his entrance into the shop, the estimation in which he was held by the trade. Unconsciously Lucien’s own self-esteem began to shrink, and his courage ebbed. He began to see how large a part this Dauriat would play in his destinies, and waited impatiently for him to appear.

  “Well, children,” said a voice, and a short, stout man appeared, with a puffy face that suggested a Roman pro-consul’s visage, mellowed by an air of good-nature which deceived superficial observers. “Well, children, here am I, the proprietor of the only weekly paper in the market, a paper with two thousand subscribers!”

  “Old joker! The registered number is seven hundred, and that is over the mark,” said Blondet.

  “Twelve thousand, on my sacred word of honor — I said two thousand for the benefit of the printers and paper-dealers yonder,” he added, lowering his voice, then raising it again. “I thought you had more tact, my boy,” he added.

  “Are you going to take any partners?” inquired Finot.

  “That depends,” said Dauriat. “Will you take a third at forty thousand francs?”

  “It’s a bargain, if you will take Emile Blondet here on the staff, and Claude Vignon, Scribe, Theodore Leclercq, Felicien Vernou, Jay, Jouy, Lousteau, and — — ”

  “And why not Lucien de Rubempre?” the provincial poet put in boldly.

  “ — — and Nathan,” concluded Finot.

  “Why not the people out there in the street?” asked Dauriat, scowling at the author of the Marguerites. — ”To whom have I the honor of speaking?” he added, with an insolent glance.

  “One moment, Dauriat,” said Lousteau. “I have brought this gentleman to you. Listen to me, while Finot is thinking over your proposals.”

  Lucien watched this Dauriat, who addressed Finot with the familiar tu, which even Finot did not permit himself to use in reply; who called the redoubtable Blondet “my boy,” and extended a hand royally to Nathan with a friendly nod. The provincial poet felt his shirt wet with perspiration when the formidable sultan looked indifferent and ill pleased.

  “Another piece of business, my boy!” exclaimed Dauriat. “Why, I have eleven hundred manuscripts on hand, as you know! Yes, gentlemen, I have eleven hundred manuscripts submitted to me at this moment; ask Gabusson. I shall soon be obliged to start a department to keep account of the stock of manuscripts, and a special office for reading them, and a committee to vote on their merits, with numbered counters for those who attend, and a permanent secretary to draw up the minutes for me. It will be a kind of local branch of the Academie, and the Academicians will be better paid in the Wooden Galleries than at the Institut.”

  “‘Tis an idea,” said Blondet.

  “A bad idea,” returned Dauriat. “It is not my business to take stock of the lucubrations of those among you who take to literature because they cannot be capitalists, and there is no opening for them as bootmakers, nor corporals, nor domestic servants, nor officials, nor bailiffs. Nobody comes here until he has made a name for himself! Make a name for yourself, and you will find gold in torrents. I have made three great men in the last two years; and lo and behold three examples of ingratitude! Here is Nathan talking of six thousand francs for the second edition of his book, which cost me three thousand francs in reviews, and has not brought in a thousand yet. I paid a thousand francs for Blondet’s two articles, besides a dinner, which cost me five hundred — — ”

  “But if all booksellers talked as you do, sir, how could a man publish his first book at all?” asked Lucien. Blondet had gone down tremendously in his opinion since he had heard the amount given by Dauriat for the articles in the Debats.

  “That is not my affair,” said Dauriat, looking daggers at this handsome young fellow, who was smiling pleasantly at him. “I do not publish books for amusement, nor risk two thousand francs for the sake of seeing my money back again. I speculate in literature, and publish forty volumes of ten thousand copies each, just as Panckouke does and the Baudoins. With my influence and the articles which I secure, I can push a business of a hundred thousand crowns, instead of a single volume involving a couple of thousand francs. It is just as much trouble to bring out a new name and to induce the public to take up an author and his book, as to make a success with the Theatres etrangers, Victoires et Conquetes, or Memoires sur la Revolution, books that bring in a fortune. I am not here as a stepping-stone to future fame, but to make money, and to find it for men with distinguished names. The manuscripts for which I give a hundred thousand francs pay me better than work by an unknown author who asks six hundred. If I am not exactly a Maecenas, I deserve the gratitude of literature; I have doubled the prices of manuscripts. I am giving you this explanation because you are a friend of Lousteau’s my boy,” added Dauriat, clapping Lucien on the shoulder with odious familiarity. “If I were to talk to all the authors who have a mind that I should be their publisher, I should have to shut up shop; I should pass my time very agreeably no doubt, but the conversations would cost too much. I am not rich enough yet to listen to all the monologues of self-conceit. Nobody does, except in classical tragedies on the stage.”

  The terrible Dauriat’s gorgeous raiment seemed in the provincial poet’s eyes to add force to the man’s remorseless logic.

  “What is it about?” he continued, addressing Lucien’s protector.

  “It is a volume of magnificent poetry.”

  At that word, Dauriat turned to Gabusson with a gesture worthy of Talma.

  “Gabusson, my friend,” he said, “from this day forward, when anybody begins to talk of works in manuscript here — Do you hear that, all of you?” he broke in upon himself; and three assistants at once emerged from among the piles of books at the sound of their employer’s wrathful voice. “If anybody comes here with manuscripts,” he continued, looking at the finger-nails of a well-kept hand, “ask him whether it is poetry or prose; and if he says poetry, show him the door at once. Verses mean reverses in the booktrade.”

  “Bravo! well put, Dauriat,” cried the chorus of journalists.

  “It is true!” cried the bookseller, striding about his shop with Lucien’s manuscript in his hand. “You have no idea, gentlemen, of the amount of harm that Byron, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Casimir Delavigne, Canalis, and Beranger have done by their success. The fame of them has brought down an invasion of barbarians upon us. I know this: there are a thousand volumes of manuscript poetry going the round of the publishers at this moment, things that nobody can make head nor tail of, stories in verse that begin in the middle, like The Corsair and Lara. They set up to be origin
al, forsooth, and indulge in stanzas that nobody can understand, and descriptive poetry after the pattern of the younger men who discovered Delille, and imagine that they are doing something new. Poets have been swarming like cockchafers for two years past. I have lost twenty thousand francs through poetry in the last twelvemonth. You ask Gabusson! There may be immortal poets somewhere in the world; I know of some that are blooming and rosy, and have no beards on their chins as yet,” he continued, looking at Lucien; “but in the trade, young man, there are only four poets — Beranger, Casimir Delavigne, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo; as for Canalis — he is a poet made by sheer force of writing him up.”

  Lucien felt that he lacked the courage to hold up his head and show his spirit before all these influential persons, who were laughing with all their might. He knew very well that he should look hopelessly ridiculous, and yet he felt consumed by a fierce desire to catch the bookseller by the throat, to ruffle the insolent composure of his cravat, to break the gold chain that glittered on the man’s chest, trample his watch under his feet, and tear him in pieces. Mortified vanity opened the door to thoughts of vengeance, and inwardly he swore eternal enmity to that bookseller. But he smiled amiably.

  “Poetry is like the sun,” said Blondet, “giving life alike to primeval forests and to ants and gnats and mosquitoes. There is no virtue but has a vice to match, and literature breeds the publisher.”

  “And the journalist,” said Lousteau.

  Dauriat burst out laughing.

  “What is this after all?” he asked, holding up the manuscript.

  “A volume of sonnets that will put Petrarch to the blush,” said Lousteau.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I say,” answered Lousteau, seeing the knowing smile that went round the group. Lucien could not take offence but he chafed inwardly.

  “Very well, I will read them,” said Dauriat, with a regal gesture that marked the full extent of the concession. “If these sonnets of yours are up to the level of the nineteenth century, I will make a great poet of you, my boy.”