Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (27 page)

‘Both of those gentlemen are engaged,’ replied a busy assistant.

‘I will wait.’

The poet was left alone in the shop, where he examined the batches of books. Two hours went by while he looked at the titles, opened the volumes and read pages here and there. In the end he leaned his shoulder against a glazed door draped with short green curtains behind which, he suspected, was either Vidal or Porchon. He overheard the following conversation:

‘Will you take five hundred copies? If so I’ll let you have them at five francs each and give you sixteen per cent on sales.’

‘What price would that come to per volume?’

‘A reduction of sixteen sous.’

‘That would be four francs four sous,’ said Vidal – or was it Porchon? – to the man who was offering his books for sale.

‘Yes,’ replied the vendor.

‘On credit?’ asked the buyer.

‘You old humbug! And then I suppose you’d settle with me in eighteen months with bills postdated a year?’

‘No, I’d settle straight away,’ replied Vidal – or Porchon.

‘To fall due when? In nine months?’ asked the publisher or author who was evidently offering a book for sale.

‘No, my dear man: in a year,’ answered the wholesale bookseller. There was a moment’s silence.

‘You’re bleeding me white!’ cried the unknown.

‘But surely you don’t suppose we shall have got rid of five hundred copies of
Léonide
in twelve months,’ the bookseller replied to Victor Ducange’s publisher. ‘If books sold as the publishers liked we should be millionaires; but they sell as the public likes. Walter Scott’s novels bring us eighteen sous a volume, three francs sixty for the complete works, and
you want me to sell your rubbishy books for more than that? If you want me to push your novel make it worth my while. – Vidal!’

A stout man left the cash-desk and came forward with a pen behind his ear.

‘In the last trip you made,’ Porchon asked him, ‘how many of Ducange’s books did you place?’

‘I unloaded two hundred copies of
Le petit Vieillard de Calais.
But, in order to get them off my hands, I had to lower the price of two other works which were not bringing so much discount. They have turned into very pretty “nightingales”.’

Later Lucien was to learn that the term ‘nightingale’ was applied by booksellers to works which stay perched up on shelves in the remote recesses of their store-rooms.

‘Besides,’ continued Vidal, ‘you know that Picard is about to bring out some novels. We are promised twenty per cent discount on the retail price so that we may make a success of them.’

‘All right. One year,’ the publisher dolefully replied: he was dumbfounded by Vidal’s last confidential remark to Porchon.

‘It’s agreed?’ Porchon asked the publisher in a sharp tone.

‘Yes.’

The publisher left, and Lucien heard Porchon saying to Vidal. ‘We have orders for three hundred copies. We’ll put off the date for settlement with him, sell the
Léonide
volumes at five francs each, demand payment for them in six months, and…’

‘And,’ added Vidal, ‘that’s a profit of fifteen hundred francs.’

‘Well, I could see he’s getting into difficulties.’

‘He’ll be in the soup! He’s paying Ducange four thousand francs for two thousand copies.’

Lucien halted Vidal by planting himself squarely in the doorway of this cage.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said to the booksellers. ‘I have the honour of greeting you.’

The booksellers scarcely returned his salutation.

‘I am the author of a novel on the history of France, after the manner of Walter Scott, entitled
The Archer of Charles the Ninth,
and I have come to propose that you should buy it.’

Porchon laid his pen on his desk and threw a tepid glance at Lucien. As for Vidal, he gave the author a brutal stare and replied: ‘Monsieur, we are not publishing booksellers. When we produce books on our own account, that is an operation we only undertake with established authors. Besides that, we only purchase serious books, works of history and digests.’

‘But mine is a very serious book. It reveals the true significance of the conflict between the Catholics, who stood for absolutism, and the Protestants, who wanted to found a republic.’

‘Monsieur Vidal!’ an assistant shouted. Vidal slipped away.

‘I am not saying, Monsieur, that your book is not a masterpiece,’ replied Porchon with a very discourteous shrug, ‘but that we are only concerned with books which are already in print. Go and see the firms which buy manuscripts – Papa Doguereau, in the rue du Coq, near the Louvre. He is one of those who publish novels. If only you had told me earlier! you have just seen us talking to Pollet, a competitor of Doguereau and the publishers in the Wooden Galleries.’

‘Monsieur, I have also a volume of poetry…’

‘Monsieur Porchon!’ came a voice from outside.

‘Poetry!’ Porchon angrily exclaimed. ‘Who do you take us for?’ He laughed in his face and vanished into the back premises.

Lucien crossed the Pont-Neuf a prey to innumerable reflections. By what he had understood of this commercial jargon he was able to guess that to these publishers books were like cotton bonnets to haberdashers, a commodity to be bought cheap and sold dear.

‘I shouldn’t have gone there,’ he told himself; but he was none the less struck by the brutally materialistic aspect that literature could assume.

In the rue du Coq he espied a modest shop by which he had
already passed, and over which were painted, in yellow letters on a green background, the words DOGUEREAU, PUBLISHER.

He remembered having seen these words printed under the frontispiece of several novels he had read in Blosse’s reading-room. He went in, not without inner misgivings such as men of imagination feel when they know they have a struggle before them. In the shop he discovered an extraordinary old man, an eccentric figure typical of a publisher of Imperial times. Doguereau was wearing a black coat with big square tails, long outmoded by the swallow-tails now in fashion. He had a waistcoat of common material, chequered in various colours, from the pocket of which hung a steel chain and copper key which dangled over an ample pair of black breeches. His watch was about the size of an onion. This costume was completed by iron-grey milled stockings and shoes graced with silver buckles. The old man’s head was bare and adorned with greying hair, poetically sparse. Judging by his coat, breeches and shoes you would have taken Papa Doguereau, as Porchon had called him, for a professor of literature; judging by his waistcoat, watch and stockings, for a tradesman. His physiognomy did not belie this singular combination: he had the pedantic, dogmatic air and the wrinkled face of a teacher of rhetoric and the keen eyes, the wary mouth and the vague uneasiness of a publisher.

‘Monsieur Doguereau?’ asked Lucien.

‘I am he, Monsieur,’ said the publisher.

‘I have written a novel,’ said Lucien.

‘You’re very young,’ said the publisher.

‘But my age, Monsieur, has nothing to do with it.’

‘That’s true,’ said the publisher, taking the manuscript. ‘Ah, I do declare!
The Archer of Charles the Ninth.
A good title. Now, young man, tell me your subject briefly.’

‘Monsieur, it’s an historical work in the manner of Walter Scott which presents the conflict between Catholics and Protestants as a combat between two systems of government, involving a serious threat to the monarchy. I have taken sides with the Catholics.’

‘Why now, young man: quite an idea. Very well, I will read your work, I promise you. I should have preferred a novel in the manner of Mrs Radcliffe, but if you are a hard worker, if you have some sense of style, power of conception, ideas and artistry of setting, I ask nothing better than to be useful to you. What do we need after all? Good manuscripts.’

‘When may I return?’

‘I am leaving town this evening and shall be back the day after tomorrow. I shall have read your book, and if I like it we can talk business that very day.’

Then Lucien, finding him so amenable, had the fatal idea of trotting out the manuscript of his
Marguerites.

‘Monsieur, I have also written a collection of poems.’

‘Oh, so you’re a poet! I no longer want your novel,’ the old man said, holding out the manuscript. ‘Rhymesters come to grief when they write prose. There are no stop-gaps in prose. One simply must have something to say.’

‘But Walter Scott, Monsieur, also wrote verses.’

‘True,’ said Doguereau. He softened down, guessed the young man’s penury and kept the manuscript. ‘Where do you live? I will come and see you.’

Lucien gave the address without suspecting that the old man had any ulterior motive. He failed to recognize him for what he was – a publisher of the old school, a man belonging to the age when publishers liked to keep even a Voltaire or a Montesquieu under lock and key, starving in an attic.

‘My way back takes me right through the Latin quarter,’ said the old publisher after reading the address.

‘What a kind man!’ thought Lucien as he took his leave. ‘So I have found someone who is friendly to the young, a connoisseur who knows something. There’s a man for you! It’s just as I said to David: talent easily makes good in Paris.’

He returned home happy and light-hearted, dreaming of glory. Thinking no more of the sinister remarks which had just now fallen on his ears in the office of Vidal and Porchon, he could see himself with at least twelve hundred francs in pocket. Twelve hundred francs meant one year’s stay in Paris, a year during which he would get new works ready.
How many plans he built on this hope! How many pleasant dreams he indulged in as he foresaw a life given over to writing! He imagined himself living an orderly and settled existence: he only just managed not to go out and make some purchases. He could only curb his impatience by assiduous study in Blosse’s reading-room. Two days later, Old Doguereau, surprised that Lucien had given such care to style in his first work, delighted at the exaggeration in character-drawing which was accepted in a period when drama was being developed, impressed by the impetuosity of imagination with which a young author always plans his first book – Papa Doguereau was not hard to please! – he came to the lodging-house where his budding Walter Scott was living. He was resolved to pay one thousand francs for sole rights in
The Archer of Charles the Ninth,
and to bind Lucien by a contract for several other works. But when the old fox saw the building he had second thoughts. ‘A young man in such a lodging,’ he told himself, ‘has modest tastes; he’s in love with study and toil. I need only pay him eight hundred francs.’

The landlady, when asked for Monsieur Lucien de Rubempré, replied ‘Fourth floor!’ The publisher looked up and saw nothing but sky above the fourth storey. ‘This young man,’ he thought, ‘is a nice-looking boy, very handsome in fact. If he made too much money he would become a spendthrift and stop working. In our mutual interest, I will offer him six hundred francs – but in cash, not bills.’ He mounted the staircase and gave three knocks at Lucien’s door. Lucien came and opened it. The room was desperately bare. On the table were a bowl of milk and a small bread roll. The sight of genius in distress impressed the worthy Doguereau.

‘Let him persevere,’ he thought, ‘in this simple way of life, this frugality, these modest requirements.’ – ‘It gives me pleasure to see you,’ he said to Lucien. ‘This, Monsieur, is how Jean-Jacques lived, and you will be like him in many respects. In such lodgings the flame of genius burns and great works are written. This is how men of letters ought to live instead of carousing in coffee-houses and restaurants and wasting their time, their talent and our money.’

He sat down. ‘Young man, this isn’t a bad novel. I have been a teacher of rhetoric and know French history: there are excellent things in it. In short you have a future before you.’

‘Oh, Monsieur!’

‘Yes, it’s a fact. We can come to terms. I will buy your novel.’

Lucien felt his heart swelling and palpitating with joy. He was entering the world of literature; at last he was going to find himself in print.

‘I will buy it for four hundred francs,’ said Doguereau in honeyed tones, looking at Lucien with an air which seemed to indicate that he was carrying generosity to the straining-point.

‘Per volume?’ asked Lucien.

‘No, for the novel,’ said Doguereau, showing no astonishment at Lucien’s surprise. ‘But,’ he added, ‘cash down. You will undertake to write two novels per annum for six years. If your first novel is sold within six months I will pay you six hundred francs for the following ones. Thus, at two novels a year, you will earn a hundred francs a month, your living will be assured and you will be happy. Some of my authors only get two hundred francs for each of their novels. I pay two hundred francs for a translation from the English. In former times that would have been an extravagant price.’

‘Monsieur,’ said Lucien in icy tones. ‘We cannot come to terms. Please give me back my manuscript.’

‘Here it is,’ said the aged publisher. ‘You don’t understand business, Monsieur. When an editor publishes an author’s first novel he has to risk sixteen hundred francs for printing and paper. It’s easier to write a novel than to find such a sum. I have a hundred manuscripts in my drawers, but less than a hundred and sixty thousand francs in my till. Alas! I have not made such a sum during the twenty years I have been a publisher. You can see then that the trade of printing novels doesn’t bring in a fortune. Vidal and Porchon only take them from us on terms which daily become more onerous. You only invest your time, while I have to lay out two thousand francs. If things go wrong – for
habent sua fata libelli –
I lose two thousand francs; as for you, all you have to do is to launch an ode against the stupidity of the public.

‘After you have thought over what I have the honour of telling you, you will come and see me again. – You’ll come back to me’ – this the publisher repeated emphatically in response to a proudly defiant gesture from Lucien.