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Werdet, when he was introduced to the writer of the Physiology of Marriage, had already tried his luck at publishing, but had been compelled to abandon the master's position and to enter as an employee into the house of a Madame Bechet, who was engaged in the same line of business.
In September the barometer rose, and he exclaimed joyfully in a letter to Laure: "The Reviews are at my feet and pay me more for my sheets. He! He! "The reading public have changed their opinion about the Country Doctor, so that Werdet is certain of selling his editions directly. Ha! Ha! "In short, I can meet my liabilities in November and December. Ho! Ho!" This tone changed in October.
Scarcely six months after, when Werdet was threatened with a bankruptcy which was likely to involve him a repetition in minor degree of Scott's entanglement with Constable he veered completely round, called Werdet a rotten plank, an empty head, an obstinate mule, and other names more expressive than polite, affirmed that he had always considered him a bit of a fool, and dropped all further connection with him.
Under the new regime the revising was impossible, and, as a result, that difficult perfection which he had so perseveringly sought was destined to be attained but rarely in the rest of his achievement. By the agreement which farmed out Balzac's future production, Werdet was implicitly sacrificed.
Part of the money brought was utilized to order a succulent dinner, which Werdet stayed and shared in the smoky refectory below. Both prisoner and visitor were very merry until the door opened and Eugene Sue, the popular novelist, entered, himself also a victim of the conscription law.
In quite another tone, the novelist discussed the proposed scheme, promised to use his influence on the young publisher's behalf, and gave him the Country Doctor for the price offered. Thenceforward, a familiar guest in the dwelling of the Rue Cassini, Werdet described it in detail, when composing his Portrait Intime.
After the termination of the affair, he thoroughly overhauled the parts of the book which had been so severely handled, made large alterations, and, since fun had also been poked at his pretensions to noble ancestry, he prefixed a curious introduction to the edition that Werdet was about to publish.
It was deprecated even by his devoted and admiring friends; though they knew that, as George Sand says, it was only caused by the naivete of an artist, to whom his work was all-important. His personal charm was so great, that Werdet, his enemy, says that in his presence those who loved him, forgot any real or fancied complaint against him, and only remembered the affection they felt for him.
Having so great a personal regard for his hero, and having besides his share of the observant faculty, Werdet, could have supplied us with biographical details of the last twelve years of the novelist's life much more interesting than those of Gozlan, Gautier, and Lemer.
He was essentially good-hearted, as every one who knew him testifies; but his extraordinary optimism and power of self-deception, combined with the charm of his personality and the overmastering influence he exercised, made him a most dangerous man to be connected with in business; and Werdet, like many another, suffered from his alliance with the improvident man of genius.
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