"Five per cent.—on a three-and-six-penny book."
"Very well. Thank you!" I said.
"I'll give you fifteen per cent, after the sale of five thousand copies," he added kindly.
O ironist!
I emerged from the web of the spider triumphant, an accepted author. Exactly ten days had elapsed since I had first parted with my manuscript. Once again life was plagiarizing fiction. I could not believe that this thing was true. I simply could not believe it. "Oh!" I reflected, incredulous, "Something's bound to happen. It can't really come off. The publisher might die, and then——"
Protected by heaven on account of his good deeds, the publisher felicitously survived; and after a delay of twelve months (twelve centuries—during which I imagined that the universe hung motionless and expectant in the void!) he accomplished his destiny by really and truly publishing my book.
The impossible had occurred. I was no longer a mere journalist; I was an author.
"After all, it's nothing!" I said, with that intense and unoriginal humanity which distinguishes all of us. And in a blinding flash I saw that an author was in essence the same thing as a grocer or a duke.
[IX]
My novel, under a new title, was published both in England and America. I actually collected forty-one reviews, of it, and there must have been many that escaped me. Of these forty-one, four were unfavourable, eleven mingled praise and blame in about equal proportions, and twenty-six were unmistakably favourable, a few of them being enthusiastic.