Two Poets | Page 6

his son's wits over a
sumptuous dinner, Jerome-Nicolas Sechard, after copious potations,
began with a "Now for business," a remark so singularly misplaced
between two hiccoughs, that David begged his parent to postpone
serious matters until the morrow. But the old "bear" was by no means
inclined to put off the long-expected battle; he was too well prepared to
turn his tipsiness to good account. He had dragged the chain these fifty
years, he would not wear it another hour; to-morrow his son should be
the "gaffer."
Perhaps a word or two about the business premises may be said here.
The printing-house had been established since the reign of Louis XIV.
in the angle made by the Rue de Beaulieu and the Place du Murier; it
had been devoted to its present purposes for a long time past. The
ground floor consisted of a single huge room lighted on the side next
the street by an old-fashioned casement, and by a large sash window
that gave upon the yard at the back. A passage at the side led to the
private office; but in the provinces the processes of typography excite
such a lively interest, that customers usually preferred to enter by way
of the glass door in the street front, though they at once descended three
steps, for the floor of the workshop lay below the level of the street.
The gaping newcomer always failed to note the perils of the passage
through the shop; and while staring at the sheets of paper strung in
groves across the ceiling, ran against the rows of cases, or knocked his
hat against the tie-bars that secured the presses in position. Or the
customer's eyes would follow the agile movements of a compositor,
picking out type from the hundred and fifty-two compartments of his
case, reading his copy, verifying the words in the composing-stick, and
leading the lines, till a ream of damp paper weighted with heavy slabs,
and set down in the middle of the gangway, tripped up the bemused
spectator, or he caught his hip against the angle of a bench, to the huge

delight 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