THE COLLECTED NOVELS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT. Guy de Maupassant
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and the position of a deputy served as levers. Making use of every cordiality as a weapon, he had always worked under the smiling mask of a good fellow; but he only employed men whom he had sounded, tried, and proved; whom he knew to be crafty, bold, and supple. Duroy, appointed chief of the reporting staff, seemed to him a valuable fellow.
This duty had been filled up till then by the chief sub-editor, Monsieur Boisrenard, an old journalist, as correct, punctual, and scrupulous as a clerk. In course of thirty years he had been sub-editor of eleven different papers, without in any way modifying his way of thinking or acting. He passed from one office to another as one changes one’s restaurant, scarcely noticing that the cookery was not quite the same. Political and religious opinions were foreign to him. He was devoted to his paper, whatever it might be, well up in his work, and valuable from his experience. He worked like a blind man who sees nothing, like a deaf man who hears nothing, and like a dumb man who never speaks of anything. He had, however, a strong instinct of professional loyalty, and would not stoop to aught he did not think honest and right from the special point of view of his business.
Monsieur Walter, who thoroughly appreciated him, had however, often wished for another man to whom to entrust the “Echoes,” which he held to be the very marrow of the paper. It is through them that rumors are set afloat and the public and the funds influenced. It is necessary to know how to slip the all-important matter, rather hinted at than said right out, in between the description of two fashionable entertainments, without appearing to intend it. It is necessary to imply a thing by judicious reservations; let what is desired be guessed at; contradict in such a fashion as to confirm, or affirm in such a way that no one shall believe the statement. It is necessary that in the “Echoes” everyone shall find every day at least one line of interest, in order that every one may read them. Every one must be thought of, all classes, all professions, Paris and the provinces, the army and the art world, the clergy and the university, the bar and the world of gallantry. The man who has the conduct of them, and who commands an army of reporters, must be always on the alert and always on his guard; mistrustful, farseeing, cunning, alert, and supple; armed with every kind of cunning, and gifted with an infallible knack of spotting false news at the first glance, of judging which is good to announce and good to hide, of divining what will catch the public, and of putting it forward in such a way as to double its effect.
Monsieur Boisrenard, who had in his favor the skill acquired by long habit, nevertheless lacked mastery and dash; he lacked, above all, the native cunning needed to put forth day by day the secret ideas of the manager. Duroy could do it to perfection, and was an admirable addition to the staff. The wire-pullers and real editors of the Vie Francaise were half a dozen deputies, interested in all the speculations brought out or backed up by the manager. They were known in the Chamber as “Walter’s gang,” and envied because they gained money with him and through him. Forestier, the political editor, was only the man of straw of these men of business, the worker-out of ideas suggested by them. They prompted his leaders, which he always wrote at home, so as to do so in quiet, he said. But in order to give the paper a literary and truly Parisian smack, the services of two celebrated writers in different styles had been secured — Jacques Rival, a descriptive writer, and Norbert de Varenne, a poet and story-writer. To these had been added, at a cheap rate, theatrical, musical and art critics, a law reporter, and a sporting reporter, from the mercenary tribe of all-round pressmen. Two ladies, “Pink Domino” and “Lily Fingers,” sent in fashion articles, and dealt with questions of dress, etiquette, and society.
Duroy was in all the joy of his appointment as chief of the “Echoes” when he received a printed card on which he read: “Monsieur and Madame Walter request the pleasure of Monsieur Geo. Duroy’s company at dinner, on Thursday, January 20.” This new mark of favor following on the other filled him with such joy that he kissed the invitation as he would have done a love letter. Then he went in search of the cashier to deal with the important question of money. A chief of the reporting staff on a Paris paper generally has his budget out of which he pays his reporters for the intelligence, important or trifling, brought in by them, as gardeners bring in their fruits to a dealer. Twelve hundred francs a month were allotted at the outset to Duroy, who proposed to himself to retain a considerable share of it. The cashier, on his pressing instances, ended by advancing him four hundred francs. He had at first the intention of sending Madame de Marelle the two hundred and eighty francs he owed her, but he almost immediately reflected that he would only have a hundred and twenty left, a sum utterly insufficient to carry on his new duties in suitable fashion, and so put off this resolution to a future day.
During a couple of days he was engaged in settling down, for he had inherited a special table and a set of pigeon holes in the large room serving for the whole of the staff. He occupied one end of the room, while Boisrenard, whose head, black as a crow’s, despite his age, was always bent over a sheet of paper, had the other. The long table in the middle belonged to the staff. Generally it served them to sit on, either with their legs dangling over the edges, or squatted like tailors in the center. Sometimes five or six would be sitting on it in that fashion, perseveringly playing cup and ball. Duroy had ended by having a taste for this amusement, and was beginning to get expert at it, under the guidance, and thanks to the advice of Saint-Potin. Forestier, grown worse, had lent him his fine cup and ball in West Indian wood, the last he had bought, and which he found rather too heavy for him, and Duroy swung with vigorous arm the big black ball at the end of its string, counting quickly to himself: “One — two — three — four — five — six.” It happened precisely that for the first time he spiked the ball twenty times running, the very day that he was to dine at Madame Walter’s. “A good day,” he thought, “I am successful in everything.” For skill at cup and ball really conferred a kind of superiority in the office of the Vie Francaise.
He left the office early to have time to dress, and was going up the Rue de Londres when he saw, trotting along in front of him, a little woman whose figure recalled that of Madame de Marelle. He felt his cheeks flush, and his heart began to beat. He crossed the road to get a view of her. She stopped, in order to cross over, too. He had made a mistake, and breathed again. He had often asked how he ought to behave if he met her face to face. Should he bow, or should he seem not to have seen her. “I should not see her,” he thought.
It was cold; the gutters were frozen, and the pavement dry and gray in the gaslight. When he got home he thought: “I must change my lodgings; this is no longer good enough for me.” He felt nervous and lively, capable of anything; and he said aloud, as he walked from his bed to the window: “It is fortune at last — it is fortune! I must write to father.” From time to time he wrote to his father, and the letter always brought happiness to the little Norman inn by the roadside, at the summit of the slope overlooking Rouen and the broad valley of the Seine. From time to time, too, he received a blue envelope, addressed in a large, shaky hand, and read the same unvarying lines at the beginning of the paternal epistle. “My Dear Son: This leaves your mother and myself in good health. There is not much news here. I must tell you, however,” etc. In his heart he retained a feeling of interest for the village matters, for the news of the neighbours, and the condition of the crops.
He repeated to himself, as he tied his white tie before his little looking-glass: “I must write to father tomorrow. Wouldn’t the old fellow be staggered if he could see me this evening in the house I am going to? By Jove! I am going to have such a dinner as he never tasted.” And he suddenly saw the dark kitchen behind the empty café; the copper stewpans casting their yellow reflections on the wall; the cat on the hearth, with her nose to the fire, in sphinxlike attitude; the wooden table, greasy with time and spilt liquids, a soup tureen smoking upon it, and a lighted candle between two plates. He saw them, too — his father and mother, two slow-moving peasants, eating their soup. He knew the smallest wrinkles on their old faces, the slightest movements of their arms and heads. He knew even what they talked about every evening as they sat at supper. He thought, too: “I must really go and see them;” but his toilet being ended, he blew out his light and went downstairs.
As he passed along the outer boulevard girls accosted him from time to time. He replied, as he pulled away his arm: “Go to the devil!” with a violent disdain, as though they had insulted him. What did they take him for? Could not these hussies tell what a man was? The sensation of his dress coat, put on in order to go to dinner with