“That would be a funny thing,” was Lucien’s comment.
“Funny” repeated Blondet. “He can’t help himself.”
“I am quite willing, my friends,” said Lucien, on whom the wine had begun to take effect. “But what am I to say?”
“Oh well, refute yourself in three good columns in Merlin’s paper. We have been enjoying the sight of Nathan’s wrath; we have just been telling him that he owes us no little gratitude for getting up a hot controversy that will sell his second edition in a week. In his eyes at this present moment you are a spy, a scoundrel, a caitiff wretch; the day after tomorrow you will be a genius, an uncommonly clever fellow, one of Plutarch’s men. Nathan will hug you and call you his best friend. Dauriat has been to see you; you have your three thousand francs; you have worked the trick! Now you want Nathan’s respect and esteem. Nobody ought to be let in except the publisher. We must not immolate anyone but an enemy. We should not talk like this if it were a question of some outsider, some inconvenient person who had made a name for himself without us and was not wanted; but Nathan is one of us. Blondet got someone to attack him in the Mercure for the pleasure of replying in the Débats. For which reason the first edition went off at once.”
“My friends, upon my word and honor, I cannot write two words in praise of that book—”
“You will have another hundred francs,” interrupted Merlin. “Nathan will have brought you in ten louis d’or, to say nothing of an article that you might put in Finot’s paper; you would get a hundred francs for writing that, and another hundred francs from Dauriat—total, twenty louis.”
“But what am I to say?”
“Here is your way out of the difficulty,” said Blondet, after some thought. “Say that the envy that fastens on all good work, like wasps on ripe fruit, has attempted to set its fangs in this production. The captious critic, trying his best to find fault, has been obliged to invent theories for that purpose, and has drawn a distinction between two kinds of literature—‘the literature of ideas and the literature of imagery,’ as he calls them. On the heads of that, youngster, say that to give expression to ideas through imagery is the highest form of art. Try to show that all poetry is summed up in that, and lament that there is so little poetry in French; quote foreign criticisms on the unimaginative precision of our style, and then extol M. de Canalis and Nathan for the services they have done France by infusing a less prosaic spirit into the language. Knock your previous argument to pieces by calling attention to the fact that we have made progress since the eighteenth century. (Discover the ‘progress,’ a beautiful word to mystify the bourgeois public.) Say that the new methods in literature concentrate all styles, comedy and tragedy, description, character-drawing and dialogues, in a series of pictures set in the brilliant frame of a plot which holds the reader’s interest. The Novel, which demands sentiment, style, and imagery, is the greatest creation of modern days; it is the successor of stage comedy grown obsolete with its restrictions. Facts and ideas are all within the province of fiction. The intellect of an incisive moralist, like La Bruyère, the power of treating character as Molière could treat it, the grand machinery of a Shakespeare, together with the portrayal of the most subtle shades of passion (the one treasury left untouched by our predecessors)—for all this the modern novel affords free scope. How far superior is all this to the cut-and-dried logic-chopping, the cold analysis to the eighteenth century!—‘The Novel,’ say sententiously, ‘is the Epic grown amusing.’ Instance Corinne, bring Mme. de Staël up to support your argument. The eighteenth century called all things in question; it is the task of the nineteenth to conclude and speak the last word; and the last word of the nineteenth century has been for realities—realities which live however and move. Passion, in short, an element unknown in Voltaire’s philosophy, has been brought into play. Here a diatribe against Voltaire, and as for Rousseau, his characters are polemics and systems masquerading. Julie and Claire are entelechies—informing spirit awaiting flesh and bones.
“You might slip off on a side issue at this, and say that we owe a new and original literature to the Peace and the Restoration of the Bourbons, for you are writing for a Right Centre paper.
“Scoff at Founders of Systems. And cry with a glow of fine enthusiasm, ‘Here are errors and misleading statements in abundance in our contemporary’s work, and to what end? To depreciate a fine work, to deceive the public, and to arrive at this conclusion—“A book that sells, does not sell.” ’ Proh pudor! (Mind you put Proh pudor! ’tis a harmless expletive that stimulates the reader’s interest.) Foresee the approaching decadence of criticism, in fact. Moral—‘There is but one kind of literature, the literature which aims to please. Nathan has started upon a new way; he understands his epoch and fulfils the requirements of his age—the demand for drama, the natural demand of a century in which the political stage has become a permanent puppet show. Have we not seen four dramas in a score of years—the Revolution, the Directory, the Empire, and the Restoration?’ With that, wallow in dithyramb and eulogy, and the second edition shall vanish like smoke. This is the way to do it. Next Saturday put a review in our magazine, and sign it ‘de Rubempré,’ out in full.
“In that final article say that ‘fine work always brings about abundant controversy. This week such and such
