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EVE AND DAVID
EVE AND DAVID HONORE DE BALZAC Lucien had gone to Paris; and David Sechard with the courage and
intelligence of the ox which painters give the Evangelist for
accompanying symbol set himself to make the large fortune for which
he had wished that evening down by the Charente when he sat with Eve
by the weir and she gave him her hand and her heart. He wanted to
make the money quickly and less for himself than for Eve's sake and
Lucien's. He would place his wife amid the elegant and comfortable
surroundings that were hers by right and his strong arm should
sustain her brother's ambitions--this was the programme that he saw
before his eyes in letters of fire.
Journalism and politics the immense development of the book trade of
literature and of the sciences; the increase of public interest in
matters touching the various industries in the country; in fact the
whole social tendency of the epoch following the establishment of the
Restoration produced an enormous increase in the demand for paper. The
supply required was almost ten times as large as the quantity in which
the celebrated Ouvrard speculated at the outset of the Revolution.
Then Ouvrard could buy up first the entire stock of paper and then the
manufacturers; but in the year 1821 there were so many paper-mills in
France that no one could hope to repeat his success; and David had
neither audacity enough nor capital enough for such speculation.
Machinery for producing paper in any length was just coming into use
in England. It was one of the most urgent needs of the time
therefore that the paper trade should keep pace with the requirements
of the French system of civil government a system by which the right
of discussion was to be extended to every man and the whole fabric
based upon continual expression of individual opinion; a grave
misfortune for the nation that deliberates is but little wont to act.
So strange coincidence! while Lucien was drawn into the great
machinery of journalism where he was like to leave his honor and his
intelligence torn to shreds David Sechard at the back of his
printing-house foresaw all the practical consequences of the
increased activity of the periodical press. He saw the direction in
which the spirit of the age was tending and sought to find means to
the required end. He saw also that there was a fortune awaiting the
discoverer of cheap paper and the event has justified his
clearsightedness. Within the last fifteen years the Patent Office has
received more than a hundred applications from persons claiming to
have discovered cheap substances to be employed in the manufacture of
paper. David felt more than ever convinced that this would be no
brilliant triumph it is true but a useful and immensely profitable
discovery; and after his brother-in-law went to Paris he became more
and more absorbed in the problem which he had set himself to solve.
The expenses of his marriage and of Lucien's journey to Paris had
exhausted all his resources; he confronted the extreme of poverty at
the very outset of married life. He had kept one thousand francs for
the working expenses of the business and owed a like sum for which
he had given a bill to Postel the druggist. So here was a double
problem for this deep thinker; he must invent a method of making cheap
paper and that quickly; he must make the discovery in fact in order
to apply the proceeds to the needs of the household and of the
business. What words can describe the brain that can forget the cruel
preoccupations caused by hidden want by the daily needs of a family
and the daily drudgery of a printer's business which requires such
minute painstaking care; and soar with the enthusiasm and
intoxication of the man of science into the regions of the unknown in
quest of a secret which daily eludes the most subtle experiment? And
the inventor alas! as will shortly be seen has plenty of woes to
endure besides the ingratitude of the many; idle folk that can do
nothing themselves tell them "Such a one is a born inventor; he could
not do otherwise. He no more deserves credit for his invention than a
prince for being born to rule! He is simply exercising his natural
faculties and his work is its own reward" and the people believe
them.
Marriage brings profound mental and physical perturbations into a
girl's life; and if she marries under the ordinary conditions of lower
middle-class life she must moreover begin to study totally new
interests and initiate herself in the intricacies of business. With
marriage therefore she enters upon a phase of her existence when she
is necessarily on the watch before she can act. Unfortunately David's
love for his wife retarded this training; he dared not tell her the
real state of affairs on the day after their wedding nor for some
time afterwards. His father's avarice condemned him to the most
grinding poverty but he could not bring himself to spoil the
honeymoon by beginning his wife's commercial education and prosaic
apprenticeship to his laborious craft. So it came to pass that
housekeeping no less than working expenses ate up the thousand
francs his whole fortune. For four months David gave no thought to
the future and his wife remained in ignorance. The awakening was
terrible! Postel's bill fell due; there was no money to meet it and
Eve knew enough of the debt and its cause to give up her bridal
trinkets and silver.
That evening Eve tried to induce David to talk of their affairs for
she had noticed that he was giving less attention to the business and
more to the problem of which he had once spoken to her. Since the
first few weeks of married life in fact David spent most of his time
in the shed in the backyard in the little room where he was wont to
mould his ink-rollers. Three months after his return to Angouleme he
had replaced the old fashioned round ink-balls by rollers made of
strong glue and treacle and an ink-table on which the ink was evenly
distributed an improvement so obvious that Cointet Brothers no sooner
saw it than they adopted the plan themselves.
By the partition wall of this kitchen as it were David had set up a
little furnace with a copper pan ostensibly to save the cost of fuel
over the recasting of his rollers though the moulds had not been used
twice and hung there rusting upon the wall. Nor was this all; a solid
oak door had been put in by his orders and the walls were lined with
sheet-iron; he even replaced the dirty window sash by panes of ribbed
glass so that no one without could watch him at his work.
When Eve began to speak about the future he looked uneasily at her
and cut her short at the first word by saying "I know all that you
must think child when you see that the workshop is left to itself
and that I am dead as it were to all business interests; but see"
he continued bringing her to the window and pointing to the
mysterious shed "there lies our fortune. For some months yet we must
endure our lot but let us bear it patiently; leave me to solve the
problem of which I told you and all our troubles will be at an end."
David was so good his devotion was so thoroughly to be taken upon his
word that the poor wife with a wife's anxiety as to daily expenses
determined to spare her husband the household cares and to take the
burden upon herself. So she came down from the pretty blue-and-white
room where she sewed and talked contentedly with her mother took
possession of one of the two dens at the back of the printing-room
and set herself to learn the business routine of typography. Was it
not heroism in a wife who expected ere long to be a mother?
During the past few months David's workmen had left him one by one;
there was not enough work for them to do. Cointet Brothers on the
other hand were overwhelmed with orders; they were employing all the
workmen of the department; the alluring prospect of high wages even
brought them a few from Bordeaux more especially apprentices who
thought themselves sufficiently expert to cancel their articles and go
elsewhere. When Eve came to look into the affairs of Sechard's
printing works she discovered that he employed three persons in all.
First in order stood Cerizet an apprentice of Didot's whom David had
chosen to train. Most foremen have some one favorite among the great
numbers of workers under them and David had brought Cerizet to
Angouleme where he had been learning more of the business. Marion as
much attached to the house as a watch-dog was the second; and the
third was Kolb an Alsacien at one time a porter in the employ of the
Messrs. Didot. Kolb had been drawn for military service chance
brought him to Angouleme and David recognized the man's face at a
review just as his time was about to expire. Kolb came to see David
and was smitten forthwith by the charms of the portly Marion; she
possessed all the qualities which a man of his class looks for in a
wife--the robust health that bronzes the cheeks the strength of a man
(Marion could lift a form of type with ease) the scrupulous honesty
on which an Alsacien sets such store the faithful service which
bespeaks a sterling character and finally the thrift which had saved
a little sum of a thousand francs besides a stock of clothing and
linen neat and clean as country linen can be. Marion herself a big
stout woman of thirty-six felt sufficiently flattered by the
admiration of a cuirassier who stood five feet seven in his
stockings a well-built warrior strong as a bastion and not
unnaturally suggested that he should become a printer. So by the time
Kolb received his full discharge Marion and David between them had
transformed him into a tolerably creditable "bear" though their pupil
could neither read nor write.
Job printing as it is called was not so abundant at this season but
that Cerizet could manage it without help. Cerizet compositor
clicker and foreman realized in his person the "phenomenal
triplicity" of Kant; he set up type read proof took orders and made
out invoices; but the most part of the time he had nothing to do and
used to read novels in his den at the back of the workshop while he
waited for an order for a bill-head or a trade circular. Marion
trained by old Sechard prepared and wetted down the paper helped
Kolb with the printing hung the sheets to dry and cut them to size;
yet cooked the dinner none the less and did her marketing very early
of a morning.
Eve told Cerizet to draw out a balance-sheet for the last six months
and found that the gross receipts amounted to eight hundred francs. On
the other hand wages at the rate of three francs per day--two francs
to Cerizet and one to Kolb--reached a total of six hundred francs;
and as the goods supplied for the work printed and delivered amounted
to some hundred odd francs it was clear to Eve that David had been
carrying on business at a loss during the first half-year of their
married life. There was nothing to show for rent nothing for Marion's
wages nor for the interest on capital represented by the plant the
license and the ink; nothing finally by way of allowance for the
host of things included in the technical expression "wear and tear" a
word which owes its origin to the cloths and silks which are used to
moderate the force of the impression and to save wear to the type; a
square of stuff (the blanket) being placed between the platen and the
sheet of paper in the press.
Eve made a rough calculation of the resources of the printing office
and of the output and saw how little hope there was for a business
drained dry by the all-devouring activity of the brothers Cointet; for
by this time the Cointets were not only contract printers to the town
and the prefecture and printers to the Diocese by special appointment
--they were paper-makers and proprietors of a newspaper to boot. That
newspaper sold two years ago by the Sechards father and son for
twenty-two thousand francs was now bringing in eighteen thousand
francs per annum. Eve began to understand the motives lurking beneath
the apparent generosity of the brothers Cointet; they were leaving the
Sechard establishment just sufficient work to gain a pittance but not
enough to establish a rival house.
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Unpublished Work 
