Lost Illusions | Page 7

of boys, "bears," and "monkeys." No wight had ever been
known to reach the further end without accident. A couple of
glass-windowed cages had been built out into the yard at the back; the
foreman sat in state in the one, the master printer in the other. Out in
the yard the walls were agreeably decorated by trellised vines, a
tempting bit of color, considering the owner's reputation. On the one
side of the space stood the kitchen, on the other the woodshed, and in a
ramshackle penthouse against the hall at the back, the paper was
trimmed and damped down. Here, too, the forms, or, in ordinary
language, the masses of set-up type, were washed. Inky streams issuing
thence blended with the ooze from the kitchen sink, and found their
way into the kennel in the street outside; till peasants coming into the
town of a market day believed that the Devil was taking a wash inside
the establishment.
As to the house above the printing office, it consisted of three rooms on
the first floor and a couple of attics in the roof. The first room did duty
as dining-room and lobby; it was exactly the same length as the passage
below, less the space taken up by the old-fashioned wooden staircase;
and was lighted by a narrow casement on the street and a bull's-eye
window looking into the yard. The chief characteristic of the apartment
was a cynic simplicity, due to money-making greed. The bare walls
were covered with plain whitewash, the dirty brick floor had never

been scoured, the furniture consisted of three rickety chairs, a round
table, and a sideboard stationed between the two doors of a bedroom
and a sitting-room. Windows and doors alike were dingy with
accumulated grime. Reams of blank paper or printed matter usually
encumbered the floor, and more frequently than not the remains 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