Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (34 page)

‘Well, well!’ said the journalist. ‘One more Christian going down into the arena to face the lions! My dear fellow, there’s a first performance this evening at the Panorama-Dramatique. It doesn’t begin till eight. It’s six o’clock now. Go and put on your best clothes; in short, dress suitably. Come and call for me. I live in the rue de La Harpe, above the Café Servel, on the fourth floor. We’ll visit Dauriat first of all. You really mean to go on with it? Right! I’ll introduce you this evening to one of the kings of the book trade and a few journalists. After the show, we’ll have supper in my mistress’s flat with some friends, for the dinner we’ve had could scarcely be called a meal. There you’ll meet Finot, the editor and owner of my paper. You know how Minette of the Vaudeville Theatre improved on the old proverb?
Time and bride wait for no man.
Well, luck might well be our bride: let’s woo her!’

‘I shall never forget this day,’ said Lucien.

This affable friendliness, following the violent outcry of a poet describing the tactics of literary warfare, had as lively an effect on Lucien’s mind as formerly, in the same spot, the grave, edifying words of d’Arthez had had. Excited by the prospect of an immediate wrestle between mankind and himself, the inexperienced young man had no idea how real was the spiritual degradation which the journalist had denounced.
He did not know he had to choose between two different paths, two systems for which the Cénacle and journalism respectively stood: the one way being long, honourable and certain, the other beset with reefs, dangerous, full of miry runnels in which his conscience was bound to get bedraggled. His nature urged him to choose the shorter and apparently more pleasant route, to snatch at rapid and decisive means. At this moment he could see no difference between d’Arthez’s noble friendship and Lousteau’s easy-going comradeship. His unstable mind looked on journalism as a weapon within his grasp, one he had skill enough to handle: he was resolved to take it up. Dazzled as he was by the proposals made by his new friend – the unceremonious handshake he gave as they parted seemed gracious to Lucien – how could he have known that, in the army of the Press, everyone needs friends as generals need soldiers! Lousteau, aware that Lucien’s mind was made up, was recruiting him as a possible auxiliary. Lousteau was striking up a friendship for the first time and for the first time Lucien was taking to a patron. The one was out for a corporal’s stripes, the other wanted to join the ranks.

Handsome as a Greek god, Lucien took a cab, and at a quarter to seven he arrived at the door of the building which housed the Café Servel. The concierge invited him to climb four floors, giving him fairly complicated topographical instructions. Armed with this information, he found his way, not without difficulty, to an open door at the end of a long, dark corridor, and he recognized the sort of room typical of the Latin Quarter. Here, as in the rue de Cluny, in d’Arthez’s room, in that of Chrestien and everywhere else, the poverty of youth dogged his footsteps. But everywhere poverty bears the distinctive mark imprinted on it by the character of its victim. In this room it was sinister. A walnut bed with no curtains, and under it a rucked-up, shabby secondhand carpet; at the windows, curtains yellowed by the smoke from a chimney which did not draw and also by cigar-smoke; on the hearth a Carcel lamp which Florine had given to Lousteau, but even that had come from a pawnbroker’s shop; then a chest-of-drawers in discoloured mahogany, a table laden with papers, with two or three ruffled quill pens on it and no other books than those which had been brought in the evening before or on that very day: such was the furniture of this room, devoid of all articles of value, but presenting a tawdry collection of worn-out boots gaping in a corner, old socks full of holes; and in another corner cigar-stubs, dirty handkerchiefs, shirts which had run to two volumes and cravats which had reached their third edition. In short, it was a scribbler’s camping-site, furnished with nondescript objects, of the strangest bareness imaginable. On the bedside table with its heap of books read that morning gleamed the red globe of a Fumade tinder-box. On the mantelpiece sprawled a razor, a pair of pistols and a cigar-box. On a wall panel Lucien saw some crossed foils under a fencing-mask. This furnishing was completed by three chairs and two armchairs hardly worthy of the cheapest tenement-house in the street. This room, at once dirty and dreary, gave evidence of a life lacking both repose and dignity: it was a place for sleeping in,
for turning out scamped work; it was lived in of necessity, and one wanted nothing better than to get out of it. What a difference there was between this cynical disorderliness and the decent poverty in which d’Arthez lived!
Lucien did not listen to the admonition this memory conveyed, for Etienne cracked a joke in order to gloss over the nudity of vice.

‘This is my kennel: my show-place is in the rue de Bondy, in the new flat which our druggist has furnished for Florine; we have our house-warming this evening.’

Etienne Lousteau was wearing black trousers, well-polished boots and a coat which was buttoned up to the neck. His shirt – no doubt Florine provided him with a change of shirts – was concealed behind a velvet collar, and he was brushing his hat in order to give it a look of newness.

‘Let’s go,’ said Lucien.

‘Not yet. I’m waiting for a bookseller to give me some small change: there may be gambling. I haven’t a farthing. And besides, I need some gloves.’

At this instant the two new friends heard steps in the passage.

‘Here he comes,’ said Lousteau. ‘You’re going to see, my dear fellow, what garb Dame Providence assumes when she manifests herself to poets. Before gazing on the fashionable publisher Dauriat in all his glory, you shall have seen the book-dealer of the Quai des Augustins, the one who discounts bills, the literary scrap-merchant, the wily Norman who was once a greengrocer. – Come in, you old Tartar!’ cried Lousteau.

‘Here I come,’ said a man with a voice as quavering as that of a cracked bell.

‘With money?’

‘Money? There’s none left in the book-trade,’ replied a young man who, as he came in, looked at Lucien with an inquisitive air.

‘To start with, you owe me fifty francs,’ Lousteau went on. ‘Next, here are two copies of
Travels in Egypt,
which is supposed to be marvellous: it’s crammed with plates and will sell. Finot has been paid for the two articles I have to write on
it. Next item: two of the latest novels by Victor Ducange, regarded by the readers of the Marais quarter as a first-rate author. Next item: two copies of the second work of a beginner, Paul de Kock, who writes the same kind of stuff. Next item, two copies of
Yseult de Dôle
, a pretty little provincial work. A hundred francs in all, list price. So you owe me a hundred francs, my little Barbet.’

Barbet looked over the books, carefully examining the edges and the covers.

‘Oh! they’re in perfect condition!’ exclaimed Lousteau. ‘The leaves of
Travels in Egypt
aren’t cut, nor the Paul de Kock, nor the Ducange, nor the one on the mantelpiece,
Reflections on Symbolism.
I’ll throw that one in, the mythology in it is so boring. I’ll give it to you so that I needn’t watch thousands of mites swarming out of it.’

‘But,’ asked Lucien, ‘how will you write your reviews on them?’

Barbet gave Lucien a glance of profound astonishment and then looked back at Lousteau with a snigger. ‘It’s plain to see that this gentleman hasn’t the misfortune to be a man of letters.’

No indeed, Barbet. This gentleman is a poet who’s going to wipe the floor with Canalis, Béranger and Delavigne. He’ll go a long way – unless he jumps into the Seine, in which case he’ll still get as far as Saint-Cloud.’
¹

‘If I could offer a piece of advice to this gentleman,’ said Barbet, ‘it would be to give up verse and take to prose. There’s no sale now for poetry on the quays.’

Barbet wore a shabby frock-coat fastened by a single button, a greasy collar, a hat which he kept on, and shoes; his waistcoat, agape, showed a good, coarse shirt of stout linen. Yet his round face, drilled with two greedy eyes, was not unprepossessing; but in his glance was the vague anxiety of people in the habit of being asked for money – and who in fact have money. He seemed straightforward and easy to deal with, so much was his astuteness padded round with plumpness.
Having been first of all a shop assistant, he had, two years ago, taken over a wretched little stall on the quay; and from there he rushed to the journalists, authors and printers, buying up cheaply the complimentary copies of books sent to them and in this way earning from ten to twenty francs a day. Having saved up quite a lot of money, he scented out everyone’s needs, kept his eye open for profitable bargains; for the benefit of hard-up authors, he discounted, at a rate of fifteen or twenty per cent, the bills which publishers had drawn for them; the next day he would go to these publishers in order to buy, at prices haggled over on a cash basis, a certain number of books in good demand; then he paid them with their own bills in lieu of money. He had had some schooling, and his education induced him to steer clear of poetry and up-to-date novels. He went in for small ventures – works of utility which he could buy up for a thousand francs and exploit as suited him, such as
A History of France for Children, Book-keeping in twenty Lessons, Botany for Girls.
He had already let two or three profitable books slip out of his hands after sending for their authors a score of times without making up his mind to buy their manuscripts. When he was blamed for his lack of courage, he instanced the report of a sensational law-suit, the manuscript of which, pirated from the newspapers, had cost him nothing but brought him two or three thousand francs.

Barbet was the cautious type of publisher who pinches and scrapes, draws few bills, niggles over invoices and pares them down, goes off Heaven knows where peddling his books himself, but disposes of them and gets paid for them. He was the terror of the printers, who didn’t know how to cope with him: he demanded a discount on his payments and whittled down their charges, guessing that they were in urgent need of cash; then, for fear of them springing a trap on him, he gave no more orders to those he had fleeced.

‘Well now,’ said Lousteau. ‘Let’s get on with the business.’

‘Look here, old boy,’ said Barbet as one man to another. ‘There are six thousand volumes for sale in my shop. Now, as an old bookseller said, books aren’t bank-notes. The trade’s in a bad way.’

‘If you went to his shop, my dear Lucien,’ said Etienne, ‘this is what you’d find: an oak cash-desk, bought at some wine-merchant’s bankrupt sale, and a tallow candle, never snuffed so that it may burn longer. In the dubious glimmer it gives, you’d see sets of empty shelves and, guarding this nonexistent stock, a little boy in a blue jacket, blowing on his fingers, stamping his feet or flapping his arms like a coachman on his box. Look round and you’ll see no more books than I have here. No one could guess what sort of trade goes on there.’

‘Here’s a bill for a hundred francs payable in three months,’ said Barbet, unable to repress a smile as he pulled a stamped note of hand from his pocket. ‘I’ll take your books. Look, I can’t pay in cash any more, sale being so difficult. I imagined you needed my help, I hadn’t a penny, so I drew a bill to oblige you – and you know I don’t like signing bills.’

‘And what’s more,’ said Lousteau, ‘you expect esteem and gratitude from me?’

‘Paying drafts is no matter for sentiment,’ Barbet replied. ‘All the same, I don’t mind having your esteem.’

‘But I need gloves,’ said Lousteau, ‘and the shopkeepers won’t have the courage to accept your bill. Come now, here’s a superb engraving, here, in the top drawer of my chest. It’s worth eighty francs. It’s not out yet, but my article is, for I wrote an amusing one about it. It gave me a chance to get my teeth into Girodet’s
Hippocrates refusing gifts from Artaxerxes.
Why now, this beautiful plate will be just the thing for all doctors who want to turn down the extravagant gifts of our Parisian satraps! And also you’ll find about thirty drawing-room ballads below the engraving. Come on now, take the lot and give me forty francs.’

‘Forty francs!’ said the bookseller, squawking like a startled hen. ‘Twenty at most. – And it might well be a dead loss to me,’ he added.

‘Out with your twenty francs,’ said Lousteau.

‘My goodness, I don’t know if I have so much on me,’ said Barbet, rummaging in his pocket. ‘Here they are. You’re stripping me bare… but you always get the better of me.’

‘Come, let’s get away,’ said Lousteau, taking Lucien’s manuscript and drawing a pen-stroke under the string.

‘Have you anything more?’ asked Barbet.

‘Nothing, my little Shylock. But I’ll put a splendid bit of business in your way.’ – ‘And,’ he said in a whisper to Lucien, ‘you’ll go down three thousand francs on it. That’ll teach you not to be such a skinflint.’

‘But what about your review articles?’ asked Lucien as they drove away to the Palais-Royal.

‘Pooh! you’ve no idea how they’re dashed off. Take
Travels in Egypt
:
I opened the book and read a bit here and there without cutting the pages, and I discovered eleven mistakes in the French. I shall write a column to the effect that even if the author can interpret the duck-lingo carved on the Egyptian pebbles they call obelisks, he doesn’t know his own language – and I shall prove it to him. I shall say that instead of talking about natural history and antiquities he ought only to have concerned himself with the future of Egypt, the progress of civilization, the means of winning Egypt over to France which, after conquering it and then losing it again, could still establish a moral ascendancy over it. Then a few pages of patriotic twaddle, the whole interlarded with tirades on Marseilles, the Levant and our trading interests.’

‘But supposing he had done all that? What would you say then?’

‘Well, I’d say that instead of boring us with politics he should have given his attention to Art and described the country in its picturesque and territorial aspects. Thereupon, as a critic, I fall to lamentation. We’re snowed under with politics, I should say: it’s boring, we can’t get away from it. Then I should yearn for those charming travel books which explain all the difficulties of navigation, the thrill of winding through narrow straits, the delight of crossing the line, in short everything those who will never travel need to know. But, while commending them, one mocks at travellers who rhapsodize over a passing bird, a flying-fish, a haul of tunny, geographical points they have spotted and shallows they have recognized. One puts in a new claim for perfectly unintelligible
scientific facts, which are so fascinating like everything which is profound, mysterious and incomprehensible. The reader laughs – he gets his money’s worth. As regards novels, Florine is the greatest novel-reader in the world. She analyses them for me, and I knock off an article based on her opinion. When she’s been bored by what she calls “literary verbiage” I take the book into serious consideration and ask the publisher for another copy. He sends it along, delighted at the prospect of a favourable review.’

‘Great Heavens! But what about criticism, the sacred task of criticism?’ said Lucien, still imbued with the doctrines of the Cénacle.

‘My dear chap,’ said Lousteau. ‘Criticism’s a scrubbing-brush which you mustn’t use on flimsy materials – it would tear them to shreds. Now listen, let’s stop talking shop. You see this mark?’ he asked, pointing to the manuscript of
Les Marguerites.
‘I’ve inked a line in between the string and the paper. If Dauriat reads your manuscript, he certainly won’t be able to put the string back along the line. So your manuscript is as good as sealed. It’s not a bad dodge for the experiment you want to make. One more thing, just remember that you won’t get into that sweatshop by yourself and without a sponsor: you’d be like those young hopefuls who go round to ten publishers before they find one who’ll even offer them a chair…’

Lucien had already tested the truth of this. Lousteau paid the cab-driver three francs, which left Lucien gaping, for he was surprised to see such prodigality after witnessing such great indigence. Then the two friends entered the Wooden Galleries, where the supposedly up-to-date publishers then reigned in all their glory.