The proofs were recovered, but the night was lost. There were cries and gnashing of teeth. The end was fast approaching. However, the typesetters took courage and the workmen took the bit in their teeth. The office galloped. The compositors foamed at the mouth, the presses ravened, the binders were on springs, the apprentices danced with excitement, the proof-reader shook like an epileptic, and the foreman had convulsions. The office was a cage of palsied lunatics.
The work was again taken in hand, and M. de Balzac and the “Figaro” have kept their word.
“César Birotteau” will see the light of day on the 15th of December. We have it now, and we hold it tight. The office is armed, insured, and barricaded. Smoking is not permitted. There are lightning-rods on the roof, and mounted guards at the door.
Every precaution has been taken against accidents and the ardor of our subscribers.
At this moment “César Birotteau” is a work in two volumes, an immense tableau, an entire poem, composed, written, and corrected fifteen times by M. de Balzac in twenty days, and deciphered, disentangled, and reprinted fifteen times in the same period. It may be added that M. de Balzac kept forty other workmen busy with something else at another office.
We will not now consider the value of the work.
It may be everything, or but a masterpiece.
The names of Balzac’s characters are all taken from real life; for, like Dickens, his theory was that names which were invented gave no life to imaginary creations, and, as did the English novelist, he gathered many of them from the signboards in the street. His joy at the discovery of Matifat was almost as great as his delight in finding Cardot. He found the former in the Rue de la Perle, in the Marais. “I can see him now,” he said; “he will have the pallid face of a cat. But Cardot is different: he will be dry as a bone, hasty and ill-tempered.”
In 1840, Balzac proposed to write for the “Revue Parisienne”—a periodical which, it may be explained, appeared but three times, and whose three numbers Balzac wrote entirely—the story of a man of genius, who, used as a tool by others, died through the ingratitude of those whom he had raised to magnificent positions, and who had then abandoned him to poverty and want.
Such a character needed a name proportioned to his destiny; a name which explained and announced him as clearly as the cannon-ball announces the cannon; a name which would be peculiarly his own, and would reflect his face, his figure, his voice, his past, his future, his genius, his passions, his misfortunes, and his glory.