第79章

"While they are setting up the paper,I will go round with you and introduce you to the managers of your theatres,and take you behind the scenes,"said Lousteau."And then we will go to the Panorama-Dramatique,and have a frolic in their dressing-rooms."Arm-in-arm,they went from theatre to theatre.Lucien was introduced to this one and that,and enthroned as a dramatic critic.Managers complimented him,actresses flung him side glances;for every one of them knew that this was the critic who,by a single article,had gained an engagement at the Gymnase,with twelve thousand francs a year,for Coralie,and another for Florine at the Panorama-Dramatique with eight thousand francs.Lucien was a man of importance.The little ovations raised Lucien in his own eyes,and taught him to know his power.At eleven o'clock the pair arrived at the Panorama-Dramatique;Lucien with a careless air that worked wonders.Nathan was there.

Nathan held out a hand,which Lucien squeezed.

"Ah!my masters,so you have a mind to floor me,have you?"said Nathan,looking from one to the other.

"Just you wait till to-morrow,my dear fellow,and you shall see how Lucien has taken you in hand.Upon my word,you will be pleased.Apiece of serious criticism like that is sure to do a book good."Lucien reddened with confusion.

"Is it severe?"inquired Nathan.

"It is serious,"said Lousteau.

"Then there is no harm done,"Nathan rejoined."Hector Merlin in the greenroom of the Vaudeville was saying that I had been cut up.""Let him talk,and wait,"cried Lucien,and took refuge in Coralie's dressing-room.Coralie,in her alluring costume,had just come off the stage.

Next morning,as Lucien and Coralie sat at breakfast,a carriage drove along the Rue de Vendome.The street was quiet enough,so that they could hear the light sound made by an elegant cabriolet;and there was that in the pace of the horse,and the manner of pulling up at the door,which tells unmistakably of a thoroughbred.Lucien went to the window,and there,in fact,beheld a splendid English horse,and no less a person than Dauriat flinging the reins to his man as he stepped down.

"'Tis the publisher,Coralie,"said Lucien.

"Let him wait,Berenice,"Coralie said at once.

Lucien smiled at her presence of mind,and kissed her with a great rush of tenderness.This mere girl had made his interests hers in a wonderful way;she was quick-witted where he was concerned.The apparition of the insolent publisher,the sudden and complete collapse of that prince of charlatans,was due to circumstances almost entirely forgotten,so utterly has the book trade changed during the last fifteen years.

From 1816to 1827,when newspaper reading-rooms were only just beginning to lend new books,the fiscal law pressed more heavily than ever upon periodical publications,and necessity created the invention of advertisements.Paragraphs and articles in the newspapers were the only means of advertisement known in those days;and French newspapers before the year 1822were so small,that the largest sheet of those times was not so large as the smallest daily paper of ours.Dauriat and Ladvocat,the first publishers to make a stand against the tyranny of journalists,were also the first to use the placards which caught the attention of Paris by strange type,striking colors,vignettes,and (at a later time)by lithograph illustrations,till a placard became a fairy-tale for the eyes,and not unfrequently a snare for the purse of the amateur.So much originality indeed was expended on placards in Paris,that one of that peculiar kind of maniacs,known as a collector,possesses a complete series.

At first the placard was confined to the shop-windows and stalls upon the Boulevards in Paris;afterwards it spread all over France,till it was supplanted to some extent by a return to advertisements in the newspapers.But the placard,nevertheless,which continues to strike the eye,after the advertisement and the book which is advertised are both forgotten,will always be among us;it took a new lease of life when walls were plastered with posters.

Newspaper advertising,the offspring of heavy stamp duties,a high rate of postage,and the heavy deposits of caution-money required by the government as security for good behavior,is within the reach of all who care to pay for it,and has turned the fourth page of every journal into a harvest field alike for the speculator and the Inland Revenue Department.The press restrictions were invented in the time of M.de Villele,who had a chance,if he had but known it,of destroying the power of journalism by allowing newspapers to multiply till no one took any notice of them;but he missed his opportunity,and a sort of privilege was created,as it were,by the almost insuperable difficulties put in the way of starting a new venture.So,in 1821,the periodical press might be said to have power of life and death over the creations of the brain and the publishing trade.A few lines among the items of news cost a fearful amount.Intrigues were multiplied in newspaper offices;and of a night when the columns were divided up,and this or that article was put in or left out to suit the space,the printing-room became a sort of battlefield;so much so,that the largest publishing firms had writers in their pay to insert short articles in which many ideas are put in little space.Obscure journalists of this stamp were only paid after the insertion of the items,and not unfrequently spent the night in the printing-office to make sure that their contributions were not omitted;sometimes putting in a long article,obtained heaven knows how,sometimes a few lines of a puff.