Lost Illusions (Complete Edition). Honore de Balzac
of Sechard’s dinner, empty bottles and plates, were lying about on the packages.
The bedroom was lighted on the side of the yard by a window with leaded panes, and hung with the old-world tapestry that decorated house fronts in provincial towns on Corpus Christi Day. For furniture it boasted a vast four-post bedstead with canopy, valances and quilt of crimson serge, a couple of worm-eaten armchairs, two tapestry-covered chairs in walnut wood, an aged bureau, and a timepiece on the mantel-shelf. The Seigneur Rouzeau, Jerome-Nicolas’ master and predecessor, had furnished the homely old-world room; it was just as he had left it.
The sitting-room had been partly modernized by the late Mme. Sechard; the walls were adorned with a wainscot, fearful to behold, painted the color of powder blue. The panels were decorated with wall-paper—Oriental scenes in sepia tint—and for all furniture, half-a-dozen chairs with lyre-shaped backs and blue leather cushions were ranged round the room. The two clumsy arched windows that gave upon the Place du Murier were curtainless; there was neither clock nor candle sconce nor mirror above the mantel-shelf, for Mme. Sechard had died before she carried out her scheme of decoration; and the “bear,” unable to conceive the use of improvements that brought in no return in money, had left it at this point.
Hither, pede titubante, Jerome-Nicolas Sechard brought his son, and pointed to a sheet of paper lying on the table—a valuation of plant drawn up by the foreman under his direction.
“Read that, my boy,” said Jerome-Nicolas, rolling a drunken eye from the paper to his son, and back to the paper. “You will see what a jewel of a printing-house I am giving you.”
“‘Three wooden presses, held in position by iron tie-bars, cast-iron plates——‘”
“An improvement of my own,” put in Sechard senior.
“‘——Together with all the implements, ink-tables, balls, benches, et cetera, sixteen hundred francs!’ Why, father,” cried David, letting the sheet fall, “these presses of yours are old sabots not worth a hundred crowns; they are only fit for firewood.”
“Sabots?” cried old Sechard, “Sabots? There, take the inventory and let us go downstairs. You will soon see whether your paltry iron-work contrivances will work like these solid old tools, tried and trusty. You will not have the heart after that to slander honest old presses that go like mail coaches, and are good to last you your lifetime without needing repairs of any sort. Sabots! Yes, sabots that are like to hold salt enough to cook your eggs with—sabots that your father has plodded on with these twenty years; they have helped him to make you what you are.”
The father, without coming to grief on the way, lurched down the worn, knotty staircase that shook under his tread. In the passage he opened the door of the workshop, flew to the nearest press (artfully oiled and cleaned for the occasion) and pointed out the strong oaken cheeks, polished up by the apprentice.
“Isn’t it a love of a press?”
A wedding announcement lay in the press. The old “bear” folded down the frisket upon the tympan, and the tympan upon the form, ran in the carriage, worked the lever, drew out the carriage, and lifted the frisket and tympan, all with as much agility as the youngest of the tribe. The press, handled in this sort, creaked aloud in such fine style that you might have thought some bird had dashed itself against the window pane and flown away again.
“Where is the English press that could go at that pace?” the parent asked of his astonished son.
Old Sechard hurried to the second, and then to the third in order, repeating the manoeuvre with equal dexterity. The third presenting to his wine-troubled eye a patch overlooked by the apprentice, with a notable oath he rubbed it with the skirt of his overcoat, much as a horse-dealer polishes the coat of an animal that he is trying to sell.
“With those three presses, David, you can make your nine thousand francs a year without a foreman. As your future partner, I am opposed to your replacing these presses by your cursed cast-iron machinery, that wears out the type. You in Paris have been making such a to-do over that damned Englishman’s invention—a foreigner, an enemy of France who wants to help the ironfounders to a fortune. Oh! you wanted Stanhopes, did you? Thanks for your Stanhopes, that cost two thousand five hundred francs apiece, about twice as much as my three jewels put together, and maul your type to pieces, because there is no give in them. I haven’t book-learning like you, but you keep this well in mind, the life of the Stanhope is the death of the type. Those three presses will serve your turn well enough, the printing will be properly done, and folk here in Angouleme won’t ask any more of you. You may print with presses made of wood or iron or gold or silver, they will never pay you a farthing more.”
“‘Item,’” pursued David, “‘five thousand pounds weight of type from M. Vaflard’s foundry——‘” Didot’s apprentice could not help smiling at the name.
“Laugh away! After twelve years of wear, that type is as good as new. That is what I call a typefounder! M. Vaflard is an honest man, who uses hard metal; and, to my way of thinking, the best typefounder is the one you go to most seldom.”
“‘——Taken at ten thousand francs,’” continued David. “Ten thousand francs, father! Why, that is two francs a pound, and the Messrs. Didot only ask thirty-six sous for their Cicero! These nail-heads of yours will only fetch the price of old metal—fivepence a pound.”
“You call M. Gille’s italics, running-hand and round-hand, ‘nail-heads,’ do you? M. Gille, that used to be printer to the Emperor! And type that costs six francs a pound! masterpieces of engraving, bought only five years ago. Some of them are as bright yet as when they came from the foundry. Look here!”
Old Sechard pounced upon some packets of unused sorts, and held them out for David to see.
“I am not book-learned; I don’t know how to read or write; but, all the same, I know enough to see that M. Gille’s sloping letters are the fathers of your Messrs. Didot’s English running-hand. Here is the round-hand,” he went on, taking up an unused pica type.
David saw that there was no way of coming to terms with his father. It was a case of Yes or No—of taking or leaving it. The very ropes across the ceiling had gone down into the old “bear’s” inventory, and not the smallest item was omitted; jobbing chases, wetting-boards, paste-pots, rinsing-trough, and lye-brushes had all been put down and valued separately with miserly exactitude. The total amounted to thirty thousand francs, including the license and the goodwill. David asked himself whether or not this thing was feasible.
Old Sechard grew uneasy over his son’s silence; he would rather have had stormy argument than a wordless acceptance of the situation. Chaffering in these sorts of bargains means that a man can look after his interests. “A man who is ready to pay you anything you ask will pay nothing,” old Sechard was saying to himself. While he tried to follow his son’s train of thought, he went through the list of odds and ends of plant needed by a country business, drawing David now to a hot-press, now to a cutting-press, bragging of its usefulness and sound condition.
“Old tools are always the best tools,” said he. “In our line of business they ought to fetch more than the new, like goldbeaters’ tools.”
Hideous vignettes, representing Hymen and Cupids, skeletons raising the lids of their tombs to describe a V or an M, and huge borders of masks for theatrical posters became in turn objects of tremendous value through old Jerome-Nicolas’ vinous eloquence. Old custom, he told his son, was so deeply rooted in the district that he (David) would only waste his pains if he gave them the finest things in life. He himself had tried to sell them a better class of almanac than the Double Liegeois on grocers’ paper; and what came of it?—the original Double Liegeois sold better than the most sumptuous calendars. David would soon see the importance of these old-fashioned things when he found he could get more for them than for the most costly new-fangled articles.
“Aha! my boy, Paris is Paris, and the provinces are the provinces. If a man came in from L’Houmeau with an order for wedding cards, and you were to print them without a Cupid and garlands, he would not believe that he