Works of Honore De Balzac, page 490
“In short,” continued Finot, “not to muddle our wits with metaphors, any one who has an article or two for me will always find Finot. — This gentleman,” turning to Lucien, “will be one of you. — I have arranged with him, Lousteau.”
Every one congratulated Finot on his advance and new prospects.
“So there you are, mounted on our shoulders,” said a contributor whom Lucien did not know. “You will be the Janus of Journal — — ”
“So long as he isn’t the Janot,” put in Vernou.
“Are you going to allow us to make attacks on our betes noires?”
“Any one you like.”
“Ah, yes!” said Lousteau; “but the paper must keep on its lines. M. Chatelet is very wroth; we shall not let him off for a week yet.”
“What has happened?” asked Lucien.
“He came here to ask for an explanation,” said Vernou. “The Imperial buck found old Giroudeau at home; and old Giroudeau told him, with all the coolness in the world, that Philippe Bridau wrote the article. Philippe asked the Baron to mention the time and the weapons, and there it ended. We are engaged at this moment in offering excuses to the Baron in to-morrow’s issue. Every phrase is a stab for him.”
“Keep your teeth in him and he will come round to me,” said Finot; “and it will look as if I were obliging him by appeasing you. He can say a word to the Ministry, and we can get something or other out of him — an assistant schoolmaster’s place, or a tobacconist’s license. It is a lucky thing for us that we flicked him on the raw. Does anybody here care to take a serious article on Nathan for my new paper?”
“Give it to Lucien,” said Lousteau. “Hector and Vernou will write articles in their papers at the same time.”
“Good-day, gentlemen; we shall meet each other face to face at Barbin’s,” said Finot, laughing.
Lucien received some congratulations on his admission to the mighty army of journalists, and Lousteau explained that they could be sure of him. “Lucien wants you all to sup in a body at the house of the fair Coralie.”
“Coralie is going on at the Gymnase,” said Lucien.
“Very well, gentlemen; it is understood that we push Coralie, eh? Put a few lines about her new engagement in your papers, and say something about her talent. Credit the management of the Gymnase with tack and discernment; will it do to say intelligence?”
“Yes, say intelligence,” said Merlin; “Frederic has something of Scribe’s.”
“Oh! Well, then, the manager of the Gymnase is the most perspicacious and far-sighted of men of business,” said Vernou.
“Look here! don’t write your articles on Nathan until we have come to an understanding; you shall hear why,” said Etienne Lousteau. “We ought to do something for our new comrade. Lucien here has two books to bring out — a volume of sonnets and a novel. The power of the paragraph should make him a great poet due in three months; and we will make use of his sonnets (Marguerites is the title) to run down odes, ballads, and reveries, and all the Romantic poetry.”
“It would be a droll thing if the sonnets were no good after all,” said Vernou. — ”What do you yourself think of your sonnets, Lucien?”
“Yes, what do you think of them?” asked one of the two whom Lucien did not know.
“They are all right, gentlemen; I give you my word,” said Lousteau.
“Very well, that will do for me,” said Vernou; “I will heave your book at the poets of the sacristy; I am tired of them.”
“If Dauriat declines to take the Marguerites this evening, we will attack him by pitching into Nathan.”
“But what will Nathan say?” cried Lucien.
His five colleagues burst out laughing.
“Oh! he will be delighted,” said Vernou. “You will see how we manage these things.”
“So he is one of us?” said one of the two journalists.
“Yes, yes, Frederic; no tricks. — We are all working for you, Lucien, you see; you must stand by us when your turn comes. We are all friends of Nathan’s, and we are attacking him. Now, let us divide Alexander’s empire. — Frederic, will you take the Francais and the Odeon?”
“If these gentlemen are willing,” returned the person addressed as Frederic. The others nodded assent, but Lucien saw a gleam of jealousy here and there.
“I am keeping the Opera, the Italiens, and the Opera-Comique,” put in Vernou.
“And how about me? Am I to have no theatres at all?” asked the second stranger.
“Oh well, Hector can let you have the Varietes, and Lucien can spare you the Porte Saint-Martin. — Let him have the Porte Saint-Martin, Lucien, he is wild about Fanny Beaupre; and you can take the Cirque-Olympique in exchange. I shall have Bobino and the Funambules and Madame Saqui. Now, what have we for to-morrow?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Gentlemen, be brilliant for my first number. The Baron du Chatelet and his cuttlefish bone will not last for a week, and the writer of Le Solitaire is worn out.”
“And ‘Sosthenes-Demosthenes’ is stale too,” said Vernou; “everybody has taken it up.”
“The fact is, we want a new set of ninepins,” said Frederic.
“Suppose that we take the virtuous representatives of the Right?” suggested Lousteau. “We might say that M. de Bonald has sweaty feet.”
“Let us begin a series of sketches of Ministerialist orators,” suggested Hector Merlin.
“You do that, youngster; you know them; they are your own party,” said Lousteau; “you could indulge any little private grudges of your own. Pitch into Beugnot and Syrieys de Mayrinhac and the rest. You might have the sketches ready in advance, and we shall have something to fall back upon.”
“How if we invented one or two cases of refusal of burial with aggravating circumstances?” asked Hector.
“Do not follow in the tracks of the big Constitutional papers; they have pigeon-holes full of ecclesiastical canards,” retorted Vernou.
“Canards?” repeated Lucien.
“That is our word for a scrap of fiction told for true, put in to enliven the column of morning news when it is flat. We owe the discovery to Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of the lightning conductor and the republic. That journalist completely deceived the Encyclopaedists by his transatlantic canards. Raynal gives two of them for facts in his Histoire philosophique des Indes.”
“I did not know that,” said Vernou. “What were the stories?”
“One was a tale about an Englishman and a negress who helped him to escape; he sold the woman for a slave after getting her with child himself to enhance her value. The other was the eloquent defence of a young woman brought before the authorities for bearing a child out of wedlock. Franklin owned to the fraud in Necker’s house when he came to Paris, much to the confusion of French philosophism. Behold how the New World twice set a bad example to the Old!”
“In journalism,” said Lousteau, “everything that is probable is true. That is an axiom.”
“Criminal procedure is based on the same rule,” said Vernou.
“Very well, we meet here at nine o’clock,” and with that they rose, and the sitting broke up with the most affecting demonstrations of intimacy and good-will.
“What have you done to Finot, Lucien, that he should make a special arrangement with you? You are the only one that he has bound to himself,” said Etienne Lousteau, as they came downstairs.
“I? Nothing. It was his own proposal,” said Lucien.
“As a matter of fact, if you should make your own terms with him, I should be delighted; we should, both of us, be the better for it.”
On the ground floor they found Finot. He stepped across to Lousteau and asked him into the so-called private office. Giroudeau immediately put a couple of stamped agreements before Lucien.
“Sign your agreement,” he said, “and the new editor will think the whole thing was arranged yesterday.”
Lucien, reading the document, overheard fragments of a tolerably warm dispute within as to the line of conduct and profits of the paper. Etienne Lousteau wanted his share of the blackmail levied by Giroudeau; and, in all probability, the matter was compromised, for the pair came out perfectly good friends.
“We will meet at Dauriat’s, Lucien, in the Wooden Galleries at eight o’clock,” said Etienne Lousteau.
A young man appeared, meanwhile, in search of employment, wearing the same nervous shy look with which Lucien himself had come to the office so short a while ago; and in his secret soul Lucien felt amused as he watched Giroudeau playing off the same tactics with which the old campaigner had previously foiled him. Self-interest opened his eyes to the necessity of the manoeuvres which raised well-nigh insurmountable barriers between beginners and the upper room where the elect were gathered together.
“Contributors don’t get very much as it is,” he said, addressing Giroudeau.
“If there were more of you, there would be so much less,” retorted the captain. “So there!”
The old campaigner swung his loaded cane, and went down coughing as usual. Out in the street he was amazed to see a handsome carriage waiting on the boulevard for Lucien.
“You are the army nowadays,” he said, “and we are the civilians.”
“Upon my word,” said Lucien, as he drove away with Coralie, “these young writers seem to me to be the best fellows alive. Here am I a journalist, sure of making six hundred francs a month if I work like a horse. But I shall find a publisher for my two books, and I will write others; for my friends will insure a success. And so, Coralie, ‘vogue le galere!’ as you say.”
“You will make your way, dear boy; but you must not be as good-natured as you are good-looking; it would be the ruin of you. Be ill-natured, that is the proper thing.”
Coralie and Lucien drove in the Bois de Boulogne, and again they met the Marquise d’Espard, Mme. de Bargeton and the Baron du Chatelet. Mme. de Bargeton gave Lucien a languishing glance which might be taken as a greeting. Camusot had ordered the best possible dinner; and Coralie, feeling that she was rid of her adorer, was more charming to the poor silk-mercer than she had ever been in the fourteen months during which their connection lasted; he had never seen her so kindly, so enchantingly lovely.
“Come,” he thought, “let us keep near her anyhow!”
In consequence, Camusot made secret overtures. He promised Coralie an income of six thousand livres; he would transfer the stock in the funds into her name (his wife knew nothing about the investment) if only she would consent to be his mistress still. He would shut his eyes to her lover.
“And betray such an angel?... Why, just look at him, you old fossil, and look at yourself!” and her eyes turned to her poet. Camusot had pressed Lucien to drink till the poet’s head was rather cloudy.
There was no help for it; Camusot made up his mind to wait till sheer want should give him this woman a second time.
“Then I can only be your friend,” he said, as he kissed her on the forehead.
Lucien went from Coralie and Camusot to the Wooden Galleries. What a change had been wrought in his mind by his initiation into Journalism! He mixed fearlessly now with the crowd which surged to and fro in the buildings; he even swaggered a little because he had a mistress; and he walked into Dauriat’s shop in an offhand manner because he was a journalist.
He found himself among distinguished men; gave a hand to Blondet and Nathan and Finot, and to all the coterie with whom he had been fraternizing for a week. He was a personage, he thought, and he flattered himself that he surpassed his comrades. That little flick of the wine did him admirable service; he was witty, he showed that he could “howl with the wolves.”
And yet, the tacit approval, the praises spoken and unspoken on which he had counted, were not forthcoming. He noticed the first stirrings of jealousy among a group, less curious, perhaps, than anxious to know the place which this newcomer might take, and the exact portion of the sum-total of profits which he would probably secure and swallow. Lucien only saw smiles on two faces — Finot, who regarded him as a mine to be exploited, and Lousteau, who considered that he had proprietary rights in the poet, looked glad to see him. Lousteau had begun already to assume the airs of an editor; he tapped sharply on the window-panes of Dauriat’s private office.
“One moment, my friend,” cried a voice within as the publisher’s face appeared above the green curtains.
The moment lasted an hour, and finally Lucien and Etienne were admitted into the sanctum.
“Well, have you thought over our friend’s proposal?” asked Etienne Lousteau, now an editor.
“To be sure,” said Dauriat, lolling like a sultan in his chair. “I have read the volume. And I submitted it to a man of taste, a good judge; for I don’t pretend to understand these things myself. I myself, my friend, buy reputations ready-made, as the Englishman bought his love affairs. — You are as great as a poet as you are handsome as a man, my boy,” pronounced Dauriat. “Upon my word and honor (I don’t tell you that as a publisher, mind), your sonnets are magnificent; no sign of effort about them, as is natural when a man writes with inspiration and verve. You know your craft, in fact, one of the good points of the new school. Your volume of Marguerites is a fine book, but there is no business in it, and it is not worth my while to meddle with anything but a very big affair. In conscience, I won’t take your sonnets. It would be impossible to push them; there is not enough in the thing to pay the expenses of a big success. You will not keep to poetry besides; this book of yours will be your first and last attempt of the kind. You are young; you bring me the everlasting volume of early verse which every man of letters writes when he leaves school, he thinks a lot of it at the time, and laughs at it later on. Lousteau, your friend, has a poem put away somewhere among his old socks, I’ll warrant. Haven’t you a poem that you thought a good deal of once, Lousteau?” inquired Dauriat, with a knowing glance at the other.
“How should I be writing prose otherwise, eh?” asked Lousteau.
“There, you see! He has never said a word to me about it, for our friend understands business and the trade,” continued Dauriat. “For me the question is not whether you are a great poet, I know that,” he added, stroking down Lucien’s pride; “you have a great deal, a very great deal of merit; if I were only just starting in business, I should make the mistake of publishing your book. But in the first place, my sleeping partners and those at the back of me are cutting off my supplies; I dropped twenty thousand francs over poetry last year, and that is enough for them; they will not hear of any more just now, and they are my masters. Nevertheless, that is not the question. I admit that you may be a great poet, but will you be a prolific writer? Will you hatch sonnets regularly? Will you run into ten volumes? Is there business in it? Of course not. You will be a delightful prose writer; you have too much sense to spoil your style with tagging rhymes together. You have a chance to make thirty thousand francs per annum by writing for the papers, and you will not exchange that chance for three thousand francs made with difficulty by your hemistiches and strophes and tomfoolery — — ”
“You know that he is on the paper, Dauriat?” put in Lousteau.
“Yes,” Dauriat answered. “Yes, I saw his article, and in his own interests I decline the Marguerites. Yes, sir, in six months’ time I shall have paid you more money for the articles that I shall ask you to write than for your poetry that will not sell.”
“And fame?” said Lucien.
Dauriat and Lousteau laughed.
“Oh dear!” said Lousteau, “there be illusions left.”
“Fame means ten years of sticking to work, and a hundred thousand francs lost or made in the publishing trade. If you find anybody mad enough to print your poetry for you, you will feel some respect for me in another twelvemonth, when you have had time to see the outcome of the transaction.”
“Have you the manuscript here?” Lucien asked coldly.
“Here it is, my friend,” said Dauriat. The publisher’s manner towards Lucien had sweetened singularly.
Lucien took up the roll without looking at the string, so sure he felt that Dauriat had read his Marguerites. He went out with Lousteau, seemingly neither disconcerted nor dissatisfied. Dauriat went with them into the shop, talking of his newspaper and Lousteau’s daily, while Lucien played with the manuscript of the Marguerites.
“Do you suppose that Dauriat has read your sonnets or sent them to any one else?” Etienne Lousteau snatched an opportunity to whisper.
“Yes,” said Lucien.
“Look at the string.” Lucien looked down at the blot of ink, and saw that the mark on the string still coincided; he turned white with rage.
“Which of the sonnets was it that you particularly liked?” he asked, turning to the publisher.
“They are all of them remarkable, my friend; but the sonnet on the Marguerite is delightful, the closing thought is fine, and exquisitely expressed. I felt sure from that sonnet that your prose work would command a success, and I spoke to Finot about you at once. Write articles for us, and we will pay you well for them. Fame is a very fine thing, you see, but don’t forget the practical and solid, and take every chance that turns up. When you have made money, you can write poetry.”
The poet dashed out of the shop to avoid an explosion. He was furious. Lousteau followed.
“Well, my boy, pray keep cool. Take men as they are — for means to an end. Do you wish for revenge?”
“At any price,” muttered the poet.
“Here is a copy of Nathan’s book. Dauriat has just given it to me. The second edition is coming out to-morrow; read the book again, and knock off an article demolishing it. Felicien Vernou cannot endure Nathan, for he thinks that Nathan’s success will injure his own forthcoming book. It is a craze with these little minds to fancy that there is not room for two successes under the sun; so he will see that your article finds a place in the big paper for which he writes.”
“But what is there to be said against the book; it is good work!” cried Lucien.
“Oh, I say! you must learn your trade,” said Lousteau, laughing. “Given that the book was a masterpiece, under the stroke of your pen it must turn to dull trash, dangerous and unwholesome stuff.”
