Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  Séchard’s commitments were drawn up in the following terms:

  AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE UNDERSIGNED,

  etc…

  Monsieur David Séchard junior, master printer in Angoulême, having declared that he has invented a method for giving a uniform gloss to paper in the vat and for reducing the cost of manufacture of every kind of paper by more than fifty per cent by the introduction of vegetable matters into the pulp, whether by mixing them with the rag-stuff used up to the present day or by using them without the addition of rag-stuff, a Company is hereby formed between Monsieur David Séchard and Messrs Cointet brothers for the exploitation of the patent of invention to be taken out in regard to these processes on the following terms and conditions…

  One of the clauses in this deed completely deprived David Séchard of his rights in case he did not fulfil the undertakings set forth in this carefully worded document drawn up by tall Cointet and agreed by David.

  When Petit-Claud brought the deed the next morning at seven-thirty, he informed David and his wife that Cérizet was offering twenty thousand francs for the printing-works. The deed of sale could be signed that evening.

  ‘However,’ he warned them, ‘if the Cointets learnt about this purchase, they would be quite capable of refusing to sign your deed, continuing their persecution and selling you up…’

  ‘You’re sure Cérizet will pay?’ asked Eve, astonished to see the conclusion of a transaction of which she had despaired and which, three months earlier, would have been their salvation.

  ‘I have the money in my house,’ he flatly replied.

  ‘But it’s a piece of magic,’ said David, asking Petit-Claud for an explanation of this lucky event.

  ‘No, it’s simple enough. The tradesmen in L’Houmeau are going to found a newspaper.’

  ‘But I barred myself from doing that,’ cried David.

  ‘You did, but not your successor… In any case,’ he went on, ‘don’t worry about anything. Sell, pocket the price, and leave Cérizet to extricate himself from the conditions of sale – he’ll find his way out all right.’

  ‘That I can well believe,’ said Eve.

  ‘If you have barred yourself from founding a newspaper in Angoulême,’ Petit-Claud continued, ‘Cérizet’s financial backers will found one in L’Houmeau.’

  Eve, dazzled by the prospect of possessing thirty thousand francs and of being freed from want, now only looked on the deed of partnership as a secondary hope. And so Monsieur and Madame Séchard gave way over one point in the deed of association which gave rise to a final discussion. Tall Cointet demanded the right to take out the patent of invention in his own name. He succeeded in establishing the point that, once David’s financial rights were perfectly defined in the deed, it mattered little in which partner’s name the patent was registered. Stout Cointet terminated the argument: ‘It’s my brother who is paying for the patent and finding the expenses for the journey to Paris, and that means another two thousand francs! Let him take it out in his own name or there’s nothing doing.’

  And so the Shark won all hands down. The deed of partnership was signed at about half past four. By way of pin-money, tall Cointet presented Madame Séchard with a set of silver forks and spoons with fluted handles and a fine Ternaux shawl – to help her to forget the fire and fury of the discussion, as he put it! But scarcely were the contracts exchanged, scarcely had Cachan handed Petit-Claud the cancellation order and the other documents, as well as the three terrible bills forged by Lucien, when Kolb’s voice echoed in the staircase, preceded by the deafening clatter of a van from the stage-coach office which halted in front of the door.

  ‘Matame! Matame! Fifteen tousant francs!…’ he shouted. ‘Sent from Poitiers in tchenuine money py Monsieur Licien.’

  ‘Fifteen thousand francs!’ cried Eve with arms raised on high.

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ the carrier said, coming forward. ‘Fifteen thousand francs brought by the Paris-Bordeaux stage-coach, and to be sure it was a heavy load! I’ve a couple of men downstairs who are bringing up the sacks. They are sent by Monsieur Lucien Chardon de Rubempré… I’m bringing up a little leather bag in which there are five hundred francs in gold for you, and likely enough a letter too.’

  Eve read the following letter as in a dream:

  My dear sister,

  Here are fifteen thousand francs.

  Instead of committing suicide, I have bartered my life. I belong to myself no longer. I’m nothing more than the secretary of a Spanish diplomat. I’m his creature.

  I’m beginning a terrible existence all over again. Perhaps I should have done better to drown myself.

  Good-bye. David will be free, and with four thousand francs he can no doubt buy a little paper-mill and make a fortune.

  Give no more thought – that is what I wish – to

  Your unfortunate brother,

  LUCIEN.

  ‘My son is fated, as he wrote in his letter,’ said Madame Chardon as she watched the sacks being piled up, ‘to bring disaster, even when he does good.’

  ‘We’ve had a narrow squeeze!’ tall Cointet exclaimed when he arrived at the Place du MÛrier. ‘one hour later, those glittering coins would have cast their sheen on the deed of partnership and our man would have shied off it. In three months’ time, as he has promised us, we shall know how we stand.’

  That evening at seven o’clock, Cérizet bought and paid for the printing-press, the rent for the previous quarter remaining chargeable to him. The next day Eve sent fourteen thousand francs to the Receiver-General, in order to buy an income of two thousand francs in her husband’s name. Then she wrote to her father-in-law asking him to find a small property at Marsac for ten thousand francs as a basis for her personal fortune.

  39. The history of a business venture

  TALL Cointet’s plan was formidably simple. From the very beginning he had decided that it was impossible to size paper in the vat. The only real method for making a fortune seemed to him to be the addition of vegetable matter to rag pulp. He therefore proposed to take the following line with David: cheapness of pulp was unimportant, the great problem being that of sizing in the vat.

  His motive was that at the present time paper-manufacture was almost solely concerned with those kinds of writing-paper known as crown, fancy note-paper, foolscap and post-demy, all of which of course have to be sized. For a long time these had given Angoulême paper-making its reputation. And so this speciality, a monopoly which Angoulême manufacturers had enjoyed over long years, justified the Cointets in their exactions: we shall see that sized paper had no real place in their speculations. The demand for writing-paper is extremely restricted whereas that for unsized printing paper is almost unlimited. During the journey he made to Paris in order to take out the patent in his own name, tall Cointet was thinking of making deals which would result in great changes in his methods of manufacture. He took up his quarters at Métivier’s house and gave him instructions for robbing other paper-makers of their custom with the newspapers in the space of one year, by dropping the price per ream to so low a level that no mill could compete, and promising every journal a whiteness and quality superior to the finest ‘sorts’ in use up to then. Since supply-contracts with newspapers are forward deals, a certain period would be needed for sub rosa intrigues with the editorial managements in order to secure this monopoly; but Cointet reckoned that this would give him time to get rid of Séchard while Métivier was obtaining contracts with the leading Paris newspapers whose consumption was then reaching a figure of two hundred reams a day. Naturally Cointet gave Métivier a proportionate financial interest in these supplies so as to have an able representative in the Paris market and save himself time in travelling. Métivier’s fortune, today one of the most considerable in the paper trade, originated in this transaction. The supply of paper for the Paris Press fell into his hands for ten years without any competition being possible. Tall Cointet, his mind at ease about his future market in paper, returned to Paris soon
enough to attend the wedding of Petit-Claud, whose practice was sold and who was awaiting the appointment of his successor in order to take up Monsieur Milhaud’s post, which had been ear-marked for him as the Comtesse Châtelet’s protégé. The Assistant Deputy Public Attorney in Angoulême was appointed Deputy Public Attorney at Limoges and the Keeper of the Seals sent one of his proteges to the public prosecutor’s department in Angoulême. Thus the post of Deputy Attorney remained vacant for two months and this interval was a kind of honeymoon for Petit-Claud.

  While tall Cointet was away, David first of all made a batch of unsized news-print paper which was far superior to the kind then in use. Then he made a batch of splendid vellum for de luxe printing which the Cointet press used for an edition of the diocesan prayer-book. The raw material had been prepared by David himself in secret, for he would have no other workers with him than Kolb and Marion. On Cointet’s return the outlook changed completely: he examined the samples of paper manufactured and was only moderately satisfied.

  ‘My dear friend,’ he said to David. ‘Angouleme does all its trade in post-demy. What we need to do before anything else is to produce the finest post-demy at fifty per cent of the present cost.’

  David attempted to make a vatful of sized pulp for post-demy but only obtained a very rough paper on which the size was unevenly distributed. The day when this experiment was finished, after handling one of the sheets, David retired into a corner in order to gulp down his disappointment in solitude. But tall Cointet came up to him, treated his partner with charming affability and soothed him. ‘Don’t be despondent,’ he said, ‘Carry on! I’m not a bad sort, I understand how you feel, and I’ll see this through!…’

  ‘Really,’ David said to his wife when he went home to dinner. ‘We’re dealing with decent people. I never thought tall Cointet could be so generous!’ And he told her what his perfidious partner had said.

  The experiments continued for three months. David slept at the paper-mill and observed the results to be obtained by varying the composition of his pulp. At one moment he attributed his lack of success to the mixing of rag with his material and made a vatful from his own ingredients alone. At another he made an attempt at sizing a vatful wholly composed of rag. Continuing his work with admirable perseverance under the watchful eye of tall Cointet, whom the poor man no longer distrusted, he tried one homogeneous material after another until he had gone through the whole range of his ingredients, combining them with all the different kinds of size. For the first six months of 1823 David lived in the paper-mill with Kolb, if it can be called living to take no care for food, dress or appearance. He battled with his difficulties so desperately that any other men than the Cointets would have been lost in admiration, for this intrepid fighter was moved by no thought of self-interest. The time came when he had no other desire than to win through. With extraordinary discernment he studied the strange properties of substances when they are transformed by man into products answering to his requirements, Nature itself being broken in as it were and its secret resistances quelled. From this he deduced the great laws governing human industry, observing that creations of this sort can only be achieved through obedience to that ulterior relationship between things which he called the second nature of substances. At last, by the end of August, he succeeded in producing a paper, sized in the vat, absolutely similar to the kind which is in production at present and is used as proof-paper in printing-presses, although the ‘sorts’ are not uniform and the sizing is not always dependable. This result, a fine one in 1823 considering the stage paper-making had then reached, had cost ten thousand francs, and David had good hopes of solving his remaining difficulties.

  But then strange rumours spread round Angoulême and L’Houmeau to the effect that David Séchard was ruining the brothers Cointet. After consuming thirty thousand francs in experiments, so it was said, in the end he was only producing very bad paper. The other manufacturers, alarmed at this, were sticking to their old-fashioned processes and, being jealous of the Cointets, they spread the tale that this ambitious firm was on the verge of ruin. As for tall Cointet, he was ordering machines for manufacturing paper in reels while letting it be supposed that these machines were needed for David Séchard’s experiments. None the less this dissembler was mixing the ingredients indicated by Séchard in his pulp while still urging him to concern himself only with sizing in the vat. He was sending Métivier thousands of reams of newsprint.

  When September came, tall Cointet drew David aside, and when he learnt that David was planning to make a conclusive experiment, he persuaded him to give up the struggle.

  ‘My dear David,’ he said in amiable tones. ‘Go and visit your wife at Marsac and rest from your labours. We don’t want to ruin your health. What you regard as a great triumph is still only in its initial stages. We will now pause awhile before we go in for further experiments. Be reasonable: look at the results. We’re not only paper-manufacturers, we’re also printers and bankers, and people say you are ruining us…’

  David Séchard made a sublimely ingenuous gesture as a protest of good faith, and tall Cointet responded to it in this fashion: ‘Fifty thousand francs thrown into the Charente aren’t going to ruin us, but we don’t want to have to pay cash for everything we buy because of the slanders which are being circulated at our expense. We should be forced to put a stop to our operations. This brings us back to the terms of our contract and calls for reflection on both sides.’

  ‘He’s right!’ David said to himself. Immersed as he was in his large-scale experiments, he had given no thought to the actual running of the paper-mill.

  He returned to Marsac. During the last six months he had been visiting Eve every Saturday evening and leaving her on the Tuesday morning. Old Sechard had given her some good advice, and she had bought a house called La Verberie, just in front of her father-in-law’s vineyards, with three acres of garden and a vineyard inside the old man’s domain. She was living with her mother and Marion – very economically, because she was still short of five thousand francs to complete the purchase of this charming property, the prettiest in Marsac. The house stood between courtyard and garden. It was built of white chalk-stone, roofed with tiles and embellished with carvings, with which one can be lavish without great expense since chalk-stone is so easy to cut. The pretty furniture she had brought from Angoulême looked prettier still in these country parts, where no one then made the slightest show of luxury. In front, on the garden side, stood a row of pomegranates, orange-trees and rare plants which the previous owner himself, an old general who had died under the ministrations of the Abbe Marron, had cultivated.

  David and his wife were playing with little Lucien under an orange-tree, with old Séchard looking on, when the bailiff of Mansle in person brought a summons from the Cointet brothers to their partner for the setting-up of a court of arbitration to which, by the terms of their deed of association, any contention had to be referred. The brothers Cointet demanded the restitution of their six thousand francs, the patent rights, and any future rights in its exploitation – as compensation for the exorbitant expenses they had incurred without results.

  ‘They make out you’re ruining them’ the vine-grower said to his son. ‘Well, that’s the only thing you’ve ever done that I find pleasing.’

  At nine next morning Eve and David were in the ante-room of Monsieur Petit-Claud, who had now become the champion of widows and the protector of orphans. It seemed to them that all they could do now was to follow his advice.

  The magistrate gave a wonderful reception to his former clients and insisted that Monsieur and Madame Séchard should do him the pleasure of lunching with him.

  ‘So the Cointets are claiming six thousand francs from you!’ he said with a smile. ‘What do you still owe on the price of La Verberie?’

  ‘Five thousand francs, Monsieur. But I have two thousand towards it,’ Eve replied.

  ‘Keep your two thousand francs,’ Petit-Claud answered. ‘Let’s see, five tho
usand… You need another ten thousand to get comfortably settled in. Very well, within two hours the Cointets will bring you fifteen thousand francs…’

  Eve made a gesture of surprise.

  ‘… in return for your renouncing all the profits from the deed of partnership, which you will dissolve on friendly terms. Will that suit you?’

  ‘And we shall really have a legal right to the money?’

  ‘Quite legal,’ said the magistrate, still smiling. ‘The Cointets have caused you trouble enough. I’m going to put an end to their pretensions. Listen to me: I’m now a magistrate and must tell you the truth. Well, the Cointets are swindling you here and now; but you’re in their hands. You might win the suit they’re bringing against you if you decided to fight them. But do you still want to be at law with them ten years hence? Expert valuations and arbitrations will be multiplied and you’ll run the risk of getting the most conflicting opinions… And besides,’ he said with another smile, ‘I can’t think of any solicitor who could defend you. My successor isn’t up to it. Come now, an unsatisfactory settlement is better than even a sound case.’

  ‘I’ll accept any settlement that will leave us in peace,’ said David.

  ‘Paul!’ Petit-Claud shouted to his servant. ‘Go to Monsieur Ségaud, my successor…’ – ‘While we are lunching,’ he said to his former clients, ‘Ségaud will see the Cointets, and a few hours hence you’ll leave for Marsac, ruined, but easy in your minds. From ten thousand francs you’ll still get five hundred francs’ interest, and you’ll live happy on your little estate.’

  Two hours later, as Petit-Claud had predicted, Maǐtre Ségaud arrived with two deeds duly signed by the Cointets and fifteen thousand francs in notes.