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Updated: June 22, 2025
Just as they sat down to table the printer appeared, to Lucien's surprise, with the first two proof-sheets. "We want to get on with it," Fendant said; "we are counting on your book; we want a success confoundedly badly." The breakfast, begun at noon, lasted till five o'clock. "Where shall we get cash for these things?" asked Lucien as they came away, somewhat heated and flushed with the wine.
He was prepared all along for something of the kind. So, all the chances being in favor of the publishers, they staked other people's money, not their own upon the gaming-table of business speculation. This was the case with Fendant and Cavalier.
Lucien knew nothing of all this, but Berenice and Coralie could not refuse to allow Hector Merlin to see his dying comrade, and Hector Merlin made him drink, drop by drop, the whole of the bitter draught brewed by the failure of Fendant and Cavalier, made bankrupts by his first ill-fated book.
"Two partners named Fendant and Cavalier; they are two good fellows, pretty straightforward in business. One of them used to be with Vidal and Porchon, the other is the cleverest hand on the Quai des Augustins. They only started in business last year, and have lost a little on translations of English novels; so now my gentlemen have a mind to exploit the native product.
On his way home along the Boulevards, he met Barbet. "Barbet!" he begged, holding out his hand. "Five hundred francs!" "No. Two hundred," returned the other. "Ah! then you have a heart." "Yes; but I am a man of business as well. I have lost a lot of money through you," he concluded, after giving the history of the failure of Fendant and Cavalier, "will you put me in the way of making some?"
Here was a little scrub of a bookseller putting the essence of the art and mystery of bill-discounting in these few words. "That will do, Barbet," said Lousteau. "Can you tell us of a bill-broker that will look at us?" "There is Daddy Chaboisseau, on the Quai Saint-Michel, you know. He tided Fendant over his last monthly settlement.
Lucien started, as if the bill-broker had thrust a red-hot skewer through his heart. Samanon was subjecting the bills and their dates to a close scrutiny. "And even then," he added, "I must see Fendant first. He ought to deposit some books with me. Lousteau, watching Lucien, saw him take up his bills, and dash out into the street. "He is the devil himself!" exclaimed the poet.
So Fendant and Cavalier thought of Lucien as a journalist, and of his book as a salable article, which would help them to tide over their monthly settlement. The partners occupied the ground floor of one of the great old-fashioned houses in the Rue Serpente; their private office had been contrived at the further end of a suite of large drawing-rooms, now converted into warehouses for books.
"Two partners named Fendant and Cavalier; they are two good fellows, pretty straightforward in business. One of them used to be with Vidal and Porchon, the other is the cleverest hand on the Quai des Augustins. They only started in business last year, and have lost a little on translations of English novels; so now my gentlemen have a mind to exploit the native product.
The stupidity of the Paris commercial world is conspicuous in these attempts to do the same thing twice, for success lies in contraries; and in Paris, of all places in the world, success spoils success. So beneath the title of Strelitz, or Russia a Hundred Years Ago, Fendant and Cavalier rashly added in big letters the words, "In the style of Scott."
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