Lost Illusions

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘All very well, Madame,’ Cérizet replied, ‘For the two francs a day I earn here, don’t you think it’s good enough if I do five francs’ worth of setting? Why, if I hadn’t proofs to read in the evening for the Cointets, I should be living on air!’

  ‘You’ve soon learnt to be ungrateful, you’ll make your way all right,’ answered Eve, less heart-stricken at Cérizet’s reproaches than by his coarse tone of voice, his truculent attitude and his aggressive stare.

  ‘May be. But not while my boss is a woman. There’s too much pulling the devil by the tail.’

  Outraged by this affront to her womanly dignity, Eve froze Cérizet with a look and went up to her room. When David came in for his dinner, she asked him: ‘My dear, have you any confidence in that little rogue Cérizet?’

  ‘Cérizet?’ he replied. ‘Well, he was my printer’s devil. I trained him, made him my copy-holder, put him on casework. In fact I taught him everything he knows. You might as well ask a father if he trusts his own child.’

  Eve informed her husband that Cérizet was proof-reading for the Cointets.

  ‘Poor boy! he’s got to live,’ David answered with the humility of an employer who feels that he himself is to blame.

  ‘Yes. But, my dear, look at the difference between Kolb and Cérizet. Kolb travels fifty miles a day, keeps his expenses down to less than a franc, and brings home seven, eight or sometimes nine francs for the sheets he has sold, and only asks for his twenty sous over and above his expenses. Kolb would cut off his right hand rather than pull off a single sheet on the Cointet presses; not for thousands of francs would he look at the things you throw away in the yard, whereas Cérizet picks them up and studies them.’

  Great-hearted people find it difficult to believe in evil or ingratitude and need rude lessons before they recognize the lengths to which human baseness can go; and even when their education in this respect is complete they rise to an indulgence which marks the highest degree of contempt. David was content to exclaim: ‘Pooh, that’s merely the nosiness of a Paris street-arab.’

  ‘Very well, my dear, do me the pleasure of going down to the office, see how much composing your street-arab has done this last month and tell me if, during that month, he ought not to have finished our almanac.’

  After dinner, David recognized that the almanac should have been set up in a week. Then, learning that the Cointets were preparing a similar one, he came to his wife’s help. He suspended Kolb’s sale of the sheets of pictures and took over complete control of the office. He himself got one forme ready for Kolb to strike off with Marion while he struck off the other one with Cérizet and attended to the colour printing. Various colours are used and each colour has to be printed separately so that four different inks need four strikings-off. Thus, with four printings to one page, the Shepherds’ Almanac costs so much to set up that it is only produced in provincial workshops where labour is cheap and overheads are almost nil. Such a publication therefore, crude as it is, is not a paying concern for presses which turn out first-class work. And so, for the first time since old Séchard’s retirement, two presses could be seen working away in the old workshop. Although the almanac was a masterpiece of its kind, Eve was none the less obliged to sell it for two and a half centimes because the Cointets let the pedlars have theirs for three centimes. By having them hawked round she managed to cover expenses and make a profit on Kolb’s hand-to-hand sales; but her venture was a failure. Cérizet, seeing that he had awakened distrust in his beautiful mistress, bore a grudge against her in his heart of hearts and muttered under his breath: ‘You don’t trust me. I’ll get my own back!’ The Paris urchin is made like that.

  And so Cérizet accepted from Messrs Cointet a wage which was clearly too high for mere reading of proofs, which he fetched from their office every evening and returned the next morning. He had more and more talk with them every day, got on close terms with them and in the end glimpsed the possibility, which they held out to him as a bait, of being exempted from military service. Far from having to bribe him, the Cointets heard from his own mouth the first intimation that he was spying on David and trying to discover the secret process at which he was working.

  Eve’s anxiety increased when she saw how little faith she could put in Cérizet, and realizing she could not hope to find a second Kolb she decided to dismiss her sole compositor, whom her second sight as a loving wife showed her to be a traitor; but as this meant that the printing-office would have to close down she made a valiant decision: she sent a letter to Monsieur Métivier, who acted as Paris correspondent for David, the Cointets and almost all the paper-manufacturers in the Angoulême district, and requested him to insert the following advertisement in the Publishers’ Journal in Paris:

  For sale, a printing-office in running order, with stock and licence, situated in Angoulême. For terms of sale apply to Monsieur Métivier, rue Serpente, Paris.

  6. The two Cointets

  AFTER reading the number of the Journal in which this advertisement appeared, the Cointets said to one another: ‘That little woman has her head screwed on right. It’s time we took control of her printing-office by providing her with the wherewithal to live. Otherwise we might get real competition from David’s successor. It’s in our interest to keep a constant eye on that workshop.’

  With this thought in mind the Cointet brothers came for a talk with the Séchards. They asked to see Eve, and she felt the liveliest joy on seeing how quickly her ruse had worked, for they came straight out with the proposal that Monsieur Séchard should do some printing on their account: they were encumbered, they said, with orders, their presses could not cope with the jobs in hand, they had been looking for workmen even in Bordeaux and undertook to keep David’s three presses busy.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Eve said to the two brothers while Cérizet went to inform David of his rivals’ visit, ‘my husband knew some excellent, honest and hard-working journeymen at the Didot’s: no doubt he will choose his successor from the best of them… Is it not better to sell our business for a matter of twenty thousand francs, which will yield us a thousand francs’ income, than to lose a thousand francs a year by continuing it on the scale to which you have reduced us? Why were you jealous of our poor little Almanac venture, which in any case was one of our specialities?’

  ‘Well now, Madame, why didn’t you warn us in advance? We would not have trodden on your heels,’ one of the two brothers graciously replied – the one who was known as ‘tall Cointet’.

  ‘Come now, gentlemen, you only began your almanac after Cérizet had told you that I was producing mine.’ As she made this sharp retort she looked straight at tall Cointet and made him lower his gaze. This was a clear proof of Cérizet’s treachery.

  This particular Cointet, who was in charge of the paper-mill and the business side, was much more able commercially-speaking than his brother Jean. The latter ran the printing-works with much intelligence, but this function could be compared with that of a colonel, whereas Boniface was a general whom Jean acknowledged as his commander-in-chief. Boniface, a lean and wizened man with a face as yellow as a church taper though it was marked with red blotches, having tight lips and eyes like a cat’s, never lost his temper. He listened with sanctimonious calm to the grossest insults and his voice was always meek in reply. He went to Mass, confession and communion. Behind smug manners and an almost flabby demeanour he concealed the tenacity and ambition of a priest and the avidity of a tradesman thirsting for wealth and consideration. As early as 1820, tall Cointet coveted everything that the middle classes were finally to obtain from the Revolution of 1830. He was full of hatred for the aristocracy and indifferent as regards religion. In fact his piety was about as sincere as Bonaparte’s revolutionary zeal had been. He bowed his spine with marvellous flexibility before the nobility and the administrative authorities: in their presence he was lowly, humble and obsequious. In fine, we may depict this man by revealing a characteristic whose significance will be fully appreciated by people acc
ustomed to business dealings: he wore blue-tinted spectacles in order to mask his eyes, on the pretext of preserving his eyesight from the dazzling reflection of light in a city where earth and buildings are white and where high altitude intensifies the glare of the sun. Although he was only of slightly more than average height, he seemed tall because of his leanness, a spareness which showed that he was of a nature to accept an overwhelming burden of work and that he had a mind in a perpetual state of ferment. The finishing touch to his shifty cast of countenance was provided by a head of long, lank grey hair, cut in clerical style, and also by the kind of clothes he had worn for the last seven years: black trousers, black stockings, black waistcoat and a lévite (the Southern French word for a frock-coat) of chestnut-brown cloth. He was called ‘tall Cointet’ to distinguish him from his brother, ‘stout Cointet’, whose nickname expressed the contrast both of stature and capabilities between the two brothers, even though the one was as redoubtable as the other. In fact, Jean Cointet, a comfortably fat man with a Flemish type of face, though it was tanned by the Angoulême sun, small and stocky, as pot-bellied as Sancho Panza, with his broad shoulders and his perpetual smile, stood out in strong contrast to his elder brother. Jean not only differed from his senior in cast of countenance and brand of intelligence, but also professed almost liberal opinions: he belonged to the Left Centre, only went to Mass on Sunday and was on excellent terms with the Liberal tradespeople. Some business men in L’Houmeau maintained that the difference of outlook between them was merely a pretence. Tall Cointet cleverly exploited his brother’s show of guilelessness and used Jean as one might use a cudgel. Harsh words and brutal decisions were repugnant to Boniface’s benignity of manner and fell to Jean’s lot. He was in charge of the Tantrums Department, lost his temper and came out with outrageous proposals which made those of his brother seem more acceptable: thus, sooner or later, they achieved their common purpose.

  With her womanly intuition Eve was quick to divine the characters of this pair, and she remained on guard in the presence of such dangerous adversaries. David, already primed by his wife, listened to his enemies’ proposals with an air of profound distraction.

  ‘Settle the matter with my wife,’ he said to the two Cointets as he left the glazed office to return to his little laboratory. ‘She knows more about my printing business than I do. I’m busy with a concern which will prove more lucrative than this sorry concern, one through which I shall make good the losses I have suffered thanks to you.’

  ‘How will you manage that?’ asked stout Cointet with a laugh.

  Eve gave her husband a glance to recommend him to be prudent.

  ‘You’ll all be paying tribute to me, you and all other consumers of paper,’ David replied.

  ‘What then is the object of your research?’ asked Benoît-Boniface Cointet.

  After Boniface had let out this question in a mildly inquisitive manner, Eve again looked at her husband to urge him to make no reply or at most a non-committal one.

  ‘The object of my research is the manufacture of paper at fifty per cent below the present cost-price.’

  He went off without seeing the look which the two brothers exchanged. It conveyed the following dialogue: ‘This man was bound to be an inventor: you can’t have a head and shoulders like his and remain idle.’ – ‘Let’s get in on this.’ – ‘But how?’ asked Jean.

  Eve spoke out loud. ‘David’, she said, ‘is only doing with you what he does with me. When I get curious he no doubt remembers that my name is Eve and makes the same off-hand reply. After all, it’s only a project.’

  ‘If your husband can bring off this project he’ll certainly make his fortune more quickly than by printing. I’m no longer surprised to see him neglecting that set-up,’ Boniface continued, turning towards the deserted workshop where Kolb was rubbing his bread with a clove of garlic. ‘But it would not suit us to see this office in the hands of an active, bustling and ambitious competitor. And that’s why we might come to an understanding. If for example you agreed for a certain sum to hire your plant to one of our journeymen who would work for us in your name – it’s often been done in Paris – we would keep the fellow sufficiently occupied to pay you a very good rent and make small profits for himself…’

  ‘That depends on the sum,’ Eve Séchard replied. ‘How much do you offer?’ she asked, showing by the look she gave Boniface that she saw through his plan completely.

  ‘How much are you expecting to get?’ Jean Cointet quickly asked.

  ‘Three thousand francs for six months.’

  ‘But my dear lady, you were talking of selling your printing-office for twenty thousand francs,’ Boniface replied in dulcet tones. ‘The interest on twenty thousand francs is only twelve hundred francs at six per cent.’

  Eve was abashed for a moment and fully realized the value of circumspection in business negotiations.

  ‘You will be using our presses and our type,’ she rejoindered, ‘I have proved to you that I am still capable of putting them to profitable use. And we have rent to pay to Monsieur Séchard Senior, who doesn’t exactly shower gifts on us.’

  After two hours of haggling Eve obtained two thousand francs for the half-year, a thousand of them to be paid in advance. When all was settled, the two brothers informed her that they intended to lease the printing-office apparatus to Cérizet. Eve was unable to restrain a start of surprise.

  ‘Isn’t it better to employ someone who knows his way round the works?’ stout Cointet asked.

  Eve showed the two brothers out without replying, but she made up her mind that she would herself keep Cérizet under close observation.

  ‘There we are then! Our enemies are inside the citadel!’ David laughingly said to his wife when, as they sat down to dinner, she showed him the documents which had to be signed.

  ‘Well, after all,’ she said. ‘I can answer for the loyalty of Kolb and Marion. The pair of them will keep an eye on everything. Besides, we are getting an income of four thousand francs a year for a working plant which was costing us money, and I can see that it will take you a year to realize your expectations.’

  ‘You were cut out, as you told me on the Charente weir, to be the wife of a man with an inventive turn of mind!’ said Séchard, giving her hand a tender squeeze.

  David had now enough money to meet his household expenses for the winter. But he was under constant observation from Cérizet, and had become a dependant of tall Cointet without appreciating the fact.

  ‘They’re in our hands!’ the manager of the paper-mill had said to his brother the printer as they left the house. ‘The poor creatures will get into the habit of drawing the rent from their printing-press. They’ll reckon on it and pile up debts. In six months’ time we’ll refuse to renew the lease, and then we shall see what this genius is made of. We’ll offer to extricate him by going into partnership with him for the exploitation of his invention.’

  If any astute businessman could have seen tall Cointet as he uttered the words ‘by going into partnership’, he would have acknowledged that even the dangers attendant upon a contract of marriage are less than those one incurs in contracting a business alliance. The situation was already grave enough with these ruthless hunters tracking down their prey: would David and his wife, having only Kolb and Marion to help them, be able to counter the wiles of a Boniface Cointet?

  7. The first thunderbolt

  WHEN the time came for Madame Séchard’s confinement, the note for five hundred francs which Lucien had sent, together with a second payment from Cérizet, was enabling them to cover all their expenses. For the time being Eve’s jubilation, and that of her mother and David, who had all been fearing that Lucien had forgotten them, was as great as the joy they had felt on hearing of Lucien’s initial successes, for his entry into journalism had created even more of a stir in Angoulême than in Paris. And so, having been lulled into a false sense of security, David felt positively staggered when he received a devastating letter from his brother-
in-law which ran as follows:

  My dear David,

  I have negotiated with Métivier three bills under your signature, payable to me, and post-dated one, two and three months respectively. Between this transaction and suicide I have chosen the former, a terrible expedient which will no doubt cause you great embarrassment. I shall be explaining what straits I am in and I shall moreover try to return the money to you when the bills fall due.

  Burn this letter and say nothing about it to my sister and mother, for I confess I have counted on the heroism of which you have so often given proof.

  In despair,

  Your brother-in-law,

  LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRÉ.

  ‘Your poor brother,’ David told his wife, who by then was up and about again, ‘is in frightful difficulties. I have sent him three drafts for a thousand francs each, to be redeemed in one, two and three months. Make a note of it.’

  Then he took himself off to the fields in order to avoid giving the explanations his wife was about to ask of him. But Eve, talking over this ominous statement with her mother, and already disquieted by the silence her brother had maintained during the last six months, was filled with such forebodings of evil that, in order to dispel them, she resolved to take a step which despair alone could have dictated to her. The Baron de Rastignac’s son had come to spend a few days with his family and had spoken so disparagingly of Lucien that the news he brought from Paris, with the commentaries made on it as it passed from mouth to mouth, had come through to the journalist’s mother and sister.