Lost Illusions | Page 4

ink-distributing roller were not as yet in general use in small provincial
printing establishments. Even at Angouleme, so closely connected
through its paper-mills with the art of typography in Paris, the only
machinery in use was the primitive wooden invention to which the
language owes a figure of speech--"the press groans" was no mere
rhetorical expression in those days. Leather ink-balls were still used in

old-fashioned printing houses; the pressman dabbed the ink by hand on
the characters, and the movable table on which the form of type was
placed in readiness for the sheet of paper, being made of marble,
literally deserved its name of "impression-stone." Modern machinery
has swept all this old-world mechanism into oblivion; the wooden press
which, with all its imperfections, turned out such beautiful work for the
Elzevirs, Plantin, Aldus, and Didot is so completely forgotten, that
something must be said as to the obsolete gear on which
Jerome-Nicolas Sechard set an almost superstitious affection, for it
plays a part in this chronicle of great small things.
Sechard had been in his time a journeyman pressman, a "bear" in
compositors' slang. The continued pacing to and fro of the pressman
from ink-table to press, from press to ink-table, no doubt suggested the
nickname. The "bears," however, make matters even by calling the
compositors monkeys, on account of the nimble industry displayed by
those gentlemen in picking out the type from the hundred and fifty-two
compartments of the cases.
In the disastrous year 1793, Sechard, being fifty years old and a
married man, escaped the great Requisition which swept the bulk of
French workmen into the army. The old pressman was the only hand
left in the printing-house; and when the master (otherwise the "gaffer")
died, leaving a widow, but no children, the business seemed to be on
the verge of extinction; for the solitary "bear" was quite incapable of
the feat of transformation into a "monkey," and in his quality of
pressman had never learned to read or write. Just then, however, a
Representative of the People being in a mighty hurry to publish the
Decrees of the Convention, bestowed a master printer's license on
Sechard, and requisitioned the establishment. Citizen Sechard accepted
the dangerous patent, bought the business of his master's widow with
his wife's savings, and took over the plant at half its value. But he was
not even at the beginning. He was bound to print the Decrees of the
Republic without mistakes and without delay.
In this strait Jerome-Nicolas Sechard had the luck to discover a noble
Marseillais who had no mind to emigrate and lose his lands, nor yet to
show himself openly and lose his head, and consequently was fain to
earn a living by some lawful industry. A bargain was struck. M. le
Comte de Maucombe, disguised in a provincial printer's jacket, set up,

read, and corrected the decrees which forbade citizens to harbor
aristocrats under pain of death; while the "bear," now a "gaffer,"
printed the copies and duly posted them, and the pair remained safe and
sound.
In 1795, when the squall of the Terror had passed over, Nicolas
Sechard was obliged to look out for another jack-of-all-trades to be
compositor, reader, and foreman in one; and an Abbe who declined the
oath succeeded the Comte de Maucombe as soon as the First Consul
restored public worship. The Abbe became a Bishop at the Restoration,
and in after days the Count and the Abbe met and sat together on the
same bench of the House of Peers.
In 1795 Jerome-Nicolas had not known how to read or write; in 1802
he had made no progress in either art; but by allowing a handsome
margin for "wear and tear" in his estimates, he managed to pay a
foreman's wages. The once easy-going journeyman was a terror to his
"bears" and "monkeys." Where poverty ceases, avarice begins. From
the day when Sechard first caught a glimpse of the possibility of
making a fortune, a growing covetousness developed and sharpened in
him a certain practical faculty for business--greedy, suspicious, and
keen-eyed. He carried on his craft in disdain of theory. In course of
time he had learned to estimate at a glance the cost of printing per page
or per sheet in every kind of type. He proved to unlettered customers
that large type costs more to move; or, if small type was under
discussion, that it was more difficult to handle. The setting-up of the
type was the one part of his craft of which he knew nothing; and so
great was his terror lest he should not charge enough, that he always
made a heavy profit. He never took his eyes off his compositors while
they were paid by the hour. If he knew that a paper manufacturer was