‘I too had guessed,’ Eve interrupted, ‘that you were one of those inventors who, like my poor father, need a woman to take care of them.’
‘So you really love me! Oh! don’t be afraid to tell me. Your very name has been a symbol of my love for you. Eve was once the only woman in the world, and what was literally true for Adam is a spiritual truth for me. Dear God! You love me?’
‘I do,’ she said, and these simple syllables were drawn out by her way of pronouncing them, as if to convey the magnitude of her feeling.
‘Come then, let us sit down here,’ he said, leading Eve by the hand towards a long beam beneath the wheels of a paper-mill. ‘Let me breathe in the evening air, listen to the croaking of the tree-frogs, admire the moonlight shining on the water. Let me take in this scene of nature, in every detail of which I feel that my happiness is written, and which I see for the first time in its splendour, illuminated by love, embellished by you, my dear, darling Eve! This is the first moment of sheer joy that fate has ever given me! I doubt whether Lucien can be as happy as I am!’
Feeling Eve’s hand moist and trembling in his, David let a tear fall on it.
‘Wont you tell me your secret?’ asked Eve, in a coaxing voice.
‘You have the right to know it, for your father was interested in this question, which is going to be an important one, for this reason: the collapse of the Empire is going to make the use of cotton stuffs almost general, thanks to the cheapness of this material compared to linen thread. At present paper is still made with hemp and linen rags; but this ingredient is dear, and its dearness is holding back the great momentum which the French Press will inevitably acquire. Now the supply of rags cannot be arbitrarily increased. It depends on the use of linen, and the population of a country only provides a limited quantity of it. This quantity can only be increased by a rise in the birth-rate. To bring about a notable change in its population, a country needs a quarter of a century and a great revolution in its manner of life, trade and agriculture. If therefore the needs of the paper-industry become greater than France’s supply of rags, two or three times greater, for instance, in order to keep paper cheap, it would be necessary to make it out of some other material than rags. This argument is based on a fact which is happening here. In the paper-mills of Angoulême – they will be the last to make paper out of linen rag – the use of cotton for making pulp is increasing at an appalling rate.’
At a question from Eve, who had no idea what pulp was, David gave her some information about paper-making which will not be out of place in a work which owes its very existence as much to paper as to the printing-press: but no doubt this long digression between the two lovers will be better for being summarized.
Paper, which is no less wonderful a product than printing, of which it is the basis, had long been in existence in China when it penetrated through the underground channels of commerce to Asia Minor where, about 750 A.D., according to various traditions, they used paper made of cotton, pounded and reduced to a mash. The need of a substitute for parchment, which was exceedingly dear, led to the invention, in imitation of the ‘bombycine’ paper, as cotton paper was called in the East, of rag-paper, some say at Basel, in 1170, by refugee Greeks, others at Padua, in 1301, by an Italian named Pax. Thus the paper industry progressed slowly and obscurely, but it is certain that in the reign of Charles VI the pulp for playing-cards was being manufactured in Paris. When those immortal figures – Fust, Coster and Gutenberg – invented the printed book, certain artisans, unknown people like so many great artists in this period, adapted paper-making to the needs of typography. In this same fifteenth century, so vigorous and so ingenuous, the names given to the different sizes of paper, like those given to kinds of type, were characteristic of the ingenuousness of the times. Thus we have Raisin, Jésus, Colombier, Pot, Ecu, Coquille, Couronne, drawing their names from the grape-cluster, the image of Our Lord, the crown, the shield, the tankard, in short from the watermark stamped in the middle of the sheet; just as later, in Napoleon’s time, they used an eagle: hence the paper called Grand-Aigle. Likewise they drew the names of types – Cicero, Saint Augustin, Gros-Canon – from the liturgical books, works of theology and the treatises of Cicero for which these characters were used at the beginning. The italic was invented by the Aldi of Venice: hence its name. Before the invention of machine-made paper of unlimited length, the largest formats were the Grand-Jésus and the Grand-Colombier; and as yet the latter was scarcely used except for atlases and engravings. In fact, the dimensions of printing-paper had to correspond to those of the press-stone. At the time when David was explaining all this, the idea of paper in reels still seemed fanciful in France, although Denis Robert d’Essone, in 1799 or thereabouts, had already invented a machine for making it which more recently Didot-Saint-Léger tried to perfect. The invention of vellum paper by Ambroise Didot only dates from 1780. This rapid glance amply demonstrates that all the great advances due to man’s ingenuity and intelligence were only achieved exceedingly slowly and by means of imperceptible accretions, just as Nature proceeds. In order to reach perfection, writing and perhaps language itself passed through the same groping stages as typography and paper-making.
‘In the whole of Europe,’ said the printer by way of conclusion, ‘rag-pickers collect rags and old linen and buy up the remnants from every kind of textile. These remnants are sorted out and stored by wholesale rag-merchants, and they supply the paper-mills. To give you some idea of this trade, I will tell you, Mademoiselle, that in 1814 a banker named Cardon, the owner of the pulping-troughs of Buges and Langlée, where Léorier de l’Isle attempted as early as 1776 to solve the same problem as your father, had a law-suit with a Monsieur Proust over an error amounting to two millions’ pound weight of rags, a matter of ten million livres, that is to say about four million francs. The manufacturer washes his rags and boils them down to a clear pulp, and this is screened – just as a cook runs a sauce through the strainer – on to an iron framework called a mould, fitted with a fine wire gauze in the centre of which is the watermark which gives its name to the paper. Consequently the size of the paper depends on the size of the mould. Whilst I was with Messrs Didot, this problem was being investigated, and it still is; for the improvement your father was striving after is one of the most imperious needs of our time. And this is why: although the long-lasting quality of linen thread as compared to cotton thread makes the former cheaper than the latter in the long run, since poor people always have to draw a lesser or greater sum from their pockets, and since the weaker always go to the wall, they lose enormously by this. The middle classes do the same. Thus linen thread is in short supply. In England, where four-fifths of the population wear cotton instead of linen, paper is now made out of scarcely anything but cotton rags. This paper, which in the first place has the drawback of tearing and breaking, dissolves so easily in water that a book made of cotton paper would be reduced to a mash after a quarter of an hour in water, whereas an old book would not be ruined if it stayed in it for two hours. An old book could be dried; it might turn yellow and fade, but the text would still be legible and the work would not be destroyed. We are nearing the time when, as fortunes are equalized and so diminished, poverty will be wide-spread; we shall require cheap linen-wear and cheap books, just as people are beginning to require small pictures for lack of space in which to hang big ones. Neither the shirts nor the books will last, that’s all. Sound products are disappearing everywhere. So then the problem facing us is of the highest importance for literature, the sciences and politics. That is why a lively discussion took place one day in my office over the ingredients used in China for the manufacture of paper. There, from time immemorial, thanks to the raw materials used, paper-making reached a perfection which is lacking in ours. Much interest was then being shown in Chinese paper, far superior to ours in lightness and fineness, for these precious qualities don’t make it any less tough and, though thin, it is not at all transparent. A very well-informed proof-reader (in Paris so
me proof-readers are well up in science: at this moment Lachevardière employs Fourier and Pierre Leroux as proof-readers), namely the Comte de Saint-Simon, a proof-reader for the time being, came in while this discussion was on. He then told us that, according to Kempfer and Du Halde, broussonetia provided the Chinese with the material for their paper which, like ours, is entirely vegetable. Another proof-reader maintained that Chinese paper was chiefly made of animal matter, namely silk, so abundant in China. A bet was made in my presence, and as Messrs Didot are printers to the Institut de France, naturally the question was submitted to members of that scientific assembly. Monsieur Marcel, former director of the Imperial Printing Works, was selected as arbitrator, and he referred the two printers to Monsieur l’Abbé Grozier, the Arsenal Librarian. The Abbé Grower’s verdict was that both of them lost the bet. Chinese paper is made neither of silk nor of broussonetia: the pulp for it is made from bamboo fibre ground down. The Abbé Grozier possessed a Chinese book, a work which was both iconographical and technological, containing numerous plates illustrating paper-making in all its stages, and he showed us a first-rate sketch of a paper-factory in which coloured bamboo canes were heaped in a corner. When Lucien told me that your father, thanks to a sort of intuition peculiar to men of talent, had conceived of a method for replacing linen waste by an exceedingly common vegetable matter which territorial production could directly provide, as the Chinese do by using fibrous stalks, I sifted out all the attempts made by my predecessors and at last began to study the question. The bamboo is a reed; I naturally thought of the reeds which grow in our country. Labour costs nothing in China – three sous a day; and so the Chinese, once the paper is removed from the mould, can place it sheet by sheet between heated slabs of white porcelain, by which means they press it and give it a sheen, consistency, lightness and satiny softness which make it the finest paper in the world. Well, the Chinese hand-process must be replaced by some machine or other. The use of machinery will solve the problem of cheapness which the low cost of labour makes possible in China. If we succeeded in producing cheap paper of the Chinese quality we should reduce the weight and thickness of books by more than one half. A bound edition of Voltaire which, when printed on our vellum paper, weighs more than two hundred and fifty pounds, would not weigh fifty pounds on Chinese paper. And that would certainly be an achievement. Finding much-needed shelf-space in libraries will become a more and more difficult problem in a period when a general reduction in size – both things and men – is affecting everything, even human habitations. The great mansions and suites of rooms in Paris will sooner or later be demolished, for soon private fortunes will be no longer able to keep up the constructions of our forefathers. What a shame it is that our era cannot make books which will last! Ten years more, and Holland paper, that is to say paper made of linen rags, will be altogether unobtainable! Now your generous brother passed on to me your father’s idea of using certain fibrous plants for the making of paper, and you see that if I succeed, you will be entitled to…’ At this moment Lucien came up to his sister and interrupted David’s generous proposition.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘if you have enjoyed this evening, but it has been a cruel one for me.’
‘Why, my poor Lucien, what has happened?’ asked Eve, noticing the excited expression on Lucien’s face.
The exasperated poet told the tale of the anguish he had suffered, and poured into their sympathetic hearts the flood of thoughts with which he was tormented. Eve and David listened in silence, pained to watch this torrent of grief by which Lucien revealed both the greatness and the pettiness in his character.
‘Monsieur de Bargeton,’ concluded Lucien, ‘is an old man who without doubt will soon be carried off by an attack of indigestion. Well, I will assert myself over this arrogant society, I will marry Madame de Bargeton. I read in her eyes this evening a love as great as mine. Yes, the humiliations I received wounded her too; she poured balm on my sufferings; she is as great and noble as she is beautiful and gracious! No, she will never betray me.’
‘Is it not high time we made life smoother for him?’ David whispered to Eve.
Eve quietly squeezed David’s arm, and he, understanding her thoughts, made haste to tell Lucien the plans they had been considering. The two lovers were as wrapped up in their own concerns as Lucien was with his, so that Eve and David, eager to get his approval for their engagement, did not notice the start of surprise which the admirer of Madame de Bargeton gave when he learnt that David was to marry his sister. Lucien was dreaming of a fine match for his sister as soon as he had risen to some high position, in order that his ambitions might be furthered by the interest which an influential family might take in him. He was distressed to think that this union might prove one more obstacle to his social success.
‘If Madame de Bargeton consents to become Madame de Rubempré, she will never want David Séchard as a brother-in-law!’ This sentence briefly and clearly conveys the ideas which were gnawing at Lucien’s heart. And the bitter thought came to him: ‘Louise is right. People with a future are never understood by their families.’
If this alliance had been proposed to him at any other moment than when his imagination was putting Monsieur de Bargeton into his coffin, he would no doubt have evinced the liveliest joy. Had he reflected about his present situation and asked himself what kind of future Eve Chardon, a lovely but penniless girl, could hope for, he would have regarded this marriage as an unhoped-for piece of good luck. But he was living in one of those golden dreams in which young people, cantering along on their ifs, leap over all barriers. He had seen himself dominating society, and it wounded the poet in him to come down to earth so quickly. Eve and David supposed that their brother was silent because he was overwhelmed with so much generosity. For these two noble creatures, tacit acceptance was a proof of true amity. With warm and hearty eloquence the printer began to describe the happiness awaiting all four of them. In spite of remonstrances from Eve, he furnished his first floor with all the luxury a lover could imagine. With ingenuous good faith he constructed a second floor for Lucien and an upper storey of the penthouse for Madame Chardon, on whom he wanted to lavish all the care which filial solicitude can inspire. In short he prophesied such happiness for the family and such independence for his brother-in-law that Lucien fell under the spell of David’s voice and Eve’s caresses, and, as they took the road home under the shady trees along the calm and gleaming river, beneath the starry sky in the warm night air, he forgot the painful crown of thorns which Society had crammed down on his head. In short Monsieur de Rubempré acknowledged David. His volatile character quickly plunged him back into the pure, hard-working, middle class life he had led hitherto: he saw it in fairer colours and free from care. The hubbub of aristocratic society moved farther and farther away. Finally, when they were back on the paving-stones of L’Houmeau, the ambitious young man clasped David’s hand like a true brother and adjusted his mood to that of the happy couple.
‘If only your father doesn’t stand out against your marrying,’ he said to David.
‘You know well he doesn’t bother about me! The old man lives for himself alone. But tomorrow I’ll go and see him at Marsac, if only to persuade him to undertake the alterations we need.’
David saw brother and sister home and asked Madame Chardon for Eve’s hand in marriage with the eagerness of a man who can brook no delay. The mother took her daughter’s hand and joyfully put it in David’s; the emboldened lover kissed his beautiful fiancée on the forehead; she smiled at him and blushed.
‘This is the betrothal of poor folk,’ the mother said, raising her eyes as if to beseech the blessing of God. ‘You are very brave, my child,’ she said to David, ‘for we are badly off, and I am afraid it may be contagious.’
‘We shall be rich and happy,’ said David solemnly. ‘To begin with, you will give up your work as sick-nurse, and you will come and live with your daughter and Lucien in Angoulême.’
Thereupon the three young
people lost no time in telling the astonished mother of their wonderful project, abandoning themselves to one of those impulsive family conferences in the course of which one delights in harvesting crops only just sown and relishing every joy in advance. It was time to send David home, though he would have liked the evening to last for ever. One o’clock was striking when Lucien escorted his future brother-in-law as far as the Porte-Palet. The worthy Postel, disturbed at these unusual comings and goings, was standing behind his Venetian shutter; he had opened the window and was asking himself, when he saw the light still on in Eve’s flat, ‘What’s happening at the Chardon’s?’
Lost Illusions Page 15
