Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (62 page)

A
FTER
Lucien’s departure for Paris, David Séchard, sturdy and intelligent like the ox which painters represent as the Evangelist’s companion, set out to make the great and rapid fortune that he had wished for – less for himself than for Eve and Lucien – that evening on the banks of the Charente when, as he sat with Eve on the weir, she had given him her hand and heart. To raise his wife to the sphere of elegance and wealth in which she was entitled to live and to give strong-armed support to his brother’s ambition: such was the programme written in letters of fire in his mind’s eye. Newspapers and politics, the tremendous strides made in the production and marketing of books, the advance of science, the prevalent tendency to make every national interest a matter for public discussion, in fact the entire social movement which got under way once the Restoration regime seemed settled, was sure to demand almost a ten-fold increase in the supply of paper compared with the quantity on which the celebrated Ouvrard, guided by motives similar to David’s, had based his speculations in the early days of the Revolution. But by 1821 there were too many paper-mills in France for anyone to hope to acquire a monopoly in them, as Ouvrard had done by buying up all they produced and then the chief factories themselves. Moreover, David had neither the audacity nor the necessary capital for such speculations. At that moment, machines for making paper of unlimited length were being put into production in England. So it was vitally necessary to adapt paper-making to the needs of French civilization, which was threatening to extend discussion to all subjects and to take its stand on a never-ending manifestation of individual thought – a real misfortune, for the more a people deliberates the less active it becomes. And so, curiously enough, while Lucien was
getting caught in the cogwheels of the vast journalistic machine and running the risk of it tearing his honour and intelligence to shreds, David Séchard, in his distant printing-office, was surveying the expansion of the periodical press in its material consequences. He wanted to provide the means for the end towards which the spirit of the age was tending. For that matter, he was so perspicacious in seeking a fortune from the manufacture of cheap paper that the upshot was to justify his foresight. During the last fifteen years, the Patent Office has received over a thousand applications relating to alleged discoveries of new substances to be used in the manufacture of paper.

And so, after his brother-in-law’s departure for Paris, being more certain than ever of the usefulness of such a discovery, an unspectacular but immensely profitable one, David fell into such a state of constant mental preoccupation as the problem was bound to produce in one anxious to solve it. Since he had exhausted all his resources in order to get married and to meet the expenses of Lucien’s journey to Paris, he found himself reduced to utter poverty at the very beginning of his wedded life. He had kept back a thousand francs for the needs of his printing-office, and he owed a bill for a like sum to the apothecary Postel. Thus a double problem confronted this extremely thoughtful man: he had to invent a cheap paper, and that promptly; he also had to adapt the profits from the discovery to the needs of his household and his business. Now, what epithet can one apply to a brain capable of rising above the cruel anxieties whose cause was threefold – an indigence which had to be concealed, the sight of a starving family and the daily demands of a profession calling for meticulous accuracy – and all the while surveying the regions of the unknown with the fervour and enthusiasm of a scientist in pursuit of a secret which from day to day eludes the most subtle researches? Alas! As will be seen, inventors have many other ills to endure, not to mention the ingratitude of the masses who are told by idlers and incompetents: ‘He was born to be an inventor and couldn’t do anything else. There’s no more point in showing gratitude
for his discovery than one does to a man for being born a prince! He’s doing what he was meant to do I And besides, the work he does brings in its own reward!’

M
ARRIAGE
brings about profound physical and psychological disturbances in a young girl. Furthermore, if she marries a middle-class husband with a business to run, she has to give her mind to an entirely new range of interests and get a grounding in business matters. She must therefore spend some time taking things in before she can play an active part. Unfortunately, David’s love for his wife retarded her education, for until some days or even weeks after the wedding he did not dare to tell her how their finances stood. In spite of the dire straits to which his father’s avarice had brought him he had not the heart to spoil their honeymoon period by putting her through the dismal apprenticeship of his exacting profession or by teaching her the things a tradesman’s wife has to know. And so the thousand francs – all the money he had – were spent on household needs instead of workshop expenses. David’s apathy and his wife’s ignorance lasted four months, and then they had a rude awakening! When the bill of exchange which David had drawn on Postel fell due, there was no money left for the housekeeping, and Eve knew only too well how this debt had been incurred not to sacrifice her wedding jewellery and her silver to its settlement. The very evening when this draft was paid off, Eve tried to make David talk about the business, for she had noticed that he was neglecting the printing-office and applying himself to the project he had explained to her some months before.

Before he had been married two months David was spending most of his time in the shed at the bottom of the courtyard, in the small room which he used for moulding his rollers. Three months after his arrival in Angoulême David had replaced the old-fashioned ink-balls with a table and rollers
made of glue and molasses which gave a smooth and even distribution of ink. The value of this early improvement in typography was so incontestable that the Cointet brothers adopted it as soon as they saw it in action. Against the party wall of this kitchen-laboratory David had built a fireplace and boiler on the pretext that he would thus need less fuel for recasting his rollers; but the rusty moulds stood ranged along the wall and the rollers were never cast a second time. Not only had David provided this room with a stout oak door lined with sheet-iron on the inside; he had also replaced the dirty window-panes with fluted glass so that they would admit less light and prevent people outside from seeing what he was about.

At the first remark which Eve made to David on the subject of their future, he gave her a worried look and stopped her short with these words: ‘My dear, I know what your feelings must be when you see the workshop deserted and our business dwindling almost to nothing. But look,’ he continued as he led her to their bedroom window and pointed to his mysterious recess, ‘there our fortune lies… We must suffer for a few more months; but let’s suffer in patience. Leave me to solve the industrial problem you know about, and all our tribulations will come to an end.’

David was so good-hearted, his devotion was so much to be taken for granted, that his poor wife, though concerned like all wives with the daily budget, took it upon herself to spare her husband all domestic worries. So she quitted the pretty blue and white bedroom where she had been content to do needlework while chatting with her mother and went down to one of the two wooden cages situated at the end of the printing-office so that she might study the practical side of typography. This in itself was an act of heroism on the part of an already pregnant woman. During these first months David’s presses had been idle, and the workmen required until then had one by one deserted. Snowed under with work, the brothers Cointet not only employed such journeymen in the district as were enticed by the prospect of working full time at their presses, but a few also from Bordeaux; and from there it was easy to obtain apprentices who thought they were
clever enough to wriggle out of their articles. When she looked into the resources at their disposal Eve found that there were only three hands left: Cérizet, the apprentice David had brought with him from Paris, Marion, tethered to the firm like a watchdog, and Kolb, an Alsatian who had once been an odd-job man in the Didot firm. Having been called up for military service, Kolb happened to be stationed in Angoulême when David spotted him at a military review, just when his period of service was coming to an end. Kolb came to see David and fell in love with the bulky Marion, finding that she possessed all the qualities a man of his class looks for in a woman: the vigorous health which tans the cheeks, the masculine strength which enabled her to lift a type-forme with ease, the scrupulous honesty by which Alsatians lay great store, the devotion to one’s masters which is a sign of good character, and finally the thriftiness which had brought her a nest-egg consisting of one thousand francs, linen, clothes and personal effects of a truly provincial cleanliness. Marion was big and fat and thirty-six. She was flattered to receive attentions from a cuirassier who was five feet seven inches in height, well-built, and as strong as a fortress. He naturally conceived the idea of becoming a printer. As soon as the Alsatian had obtained his discharge from the army, Marion and David made quite an efficient ‘bear’ of him, although he could neither read nor write.

The composition of the ‘town work’, as it was called, was not too abundant during these three months for Cérizet not to have coped with it. Being at one and the same time compositor, page-setter and senior hand in the printing-office, Cérizet achieved what Kant calls the ‘phenomenal triplicity’: he set up and corrected his settings, entered the orders and drew up the bills; but more often than not having no work to do, he sat in his cage at the back of the office reading novels while waiting for orders to come in – a poster or an invitation card. Marion, whom Séchard senior had trained, cut the paper, damped it, helped Kolb to print it, laid it out and trimmed it. None the less she also cooked the meals after doing the marketing in the early morning.

When Eve asked Cérizet for the first six months’ accounts,
she discovered that receipts only came to eight hundred francs. Expenditure, at a rate of three francs a day for Cérizet and Kolb – the one drawing a daily wage of two francs, the other of one franc – amounted to six hundred francs. Now, since the cost of material needed for work done and delivered amounted to something over a hundred francs, it was clear to Eve that during the first six months of his wedded life David had failed to cover his rent, the interest on capital based on the value of his stock and his printer’s licence, Marion’s wages, ink and finally the profits a printer should make: an accumulation of items expressed in printers’ language by the word
stuffs,
an expression derived from the cloth and silk used to soften the pressure of the clamping-screws on the type by the insertion of a square of ‘stuff’ (the ‘blanket’) between the platen of the press and the paper which is being printed. Having roughly computed the means at their disposal and the results they yielded, Eve could easily guess how small were the resources offered by their presses which were almost brought to a standstill by the voracious activity of the brothers Cointet who were at once paper-manufacturers, newspaper proprietors and appointed printers to the Bishop, the Prefect and the municipal authorities. The newspaper which, two years before, Séchard father and son had sold for twenty-two thousand francs, was now bringing in eighteen thousand francs a year. Eve saw through the calculations concealed behind the apparent generosity of the brothers Cointet, who were leaving the Séchard press just enough work to subsist on but not enough for it to compete with them.

Taking over the business side, Eve began by drawing up an exact inventory of all the stock. She set Kolb, Marion and Cérizet to the task of tidying, cleaning and putting the workshop in order. Then, one evening when David was returning from a ramble in the fields, followed by an old woman who was carrying an enormous bundle wrapped in linen, Eve asked his advice as to how they could make use of the lumber left by old Séchard and promised him she would look after the business herself. At her husband’s suggestion she decided to use up all the remnants of paper she had found and sorted
out by printing, in double columns and on one single sheet, the illustrated folk-tales which peasants paste up on the walls of their cottages: the story of the Wandering Jew, Robert the Devil, the Fair Maguelonne and various legends of the saints. Eve turned Kolb into a pedlar. At first Cérizet wasted no time: from morning to night he set up these ingenuous broadsheets with their crude illustrations, and Marion pulled them off. Madame Chardon took charge of all domestic tasks while Eve coloured the engravings. In two months, thanks to Kolb’s activity and honesty, Madame Séchard sold three thousand sheets over an area of thirty miles round Angoulême. They cost her thirty francs to produce and brought in three hundred francs at a penny apiece.

But by the time every cottage and tavern wall was papered with these legends, they had to think of some other speculation, for the Alsatian was not allowed to travel outside the Department. After rummaging round the workshop Eve discovered a collection of figures required for the printing of a so-called Shepherds’ Almanac, in which objects are represented by signs, pictures and symbols in red, black and blue. Old Séchard, illiterate as he was, had formerly made a lot of money by printing this little book intended for equally illiterate people. An almanac of this kind costs only a penny and comprises a hundred and twenty-eight pages of very small format. Delighted at the success of her broadsheets – the sort of production which is a speciality with small provincial presses – Madame Séchard decided to print the Shepherds’ Almanac on a large scale by putting her profits into it. The paper used for the Shepherds’ Almanac, sold annually in France in its millions, is coarser than that used for the Liège Almanac and costs about four francs a ream. Madame Séchard resolved to use up a hundred reams on a first run: that would make fifty thousand almanacs to dispose of and two thousand francs’ profit to reap.