ive credit for the time required to
play some seven or eight of the games of chance called "new
publications." At that time, as at present, the author's copyright was
paid for in bills at six, nine, and twelve months--a method of payment
determined by the custom of the trade, for booksellers settle accounts
between themselves by bills at even longer dates. Papermakers and
printers are paid in the same way, so that in practice the
publisher-bookseller has a dozen or a score of works on sale for a
twelvemonth before he pays for them. Even if only two or three of these
hit the public taste, the profitable speculations pay for the bad, and
the publisher pays his way by grafting, as it were, one book upon
another. But if all of them turn out badly; or if, for his misfortune,
the publisher-bookseller happens to bring out some really good literature
which stays on hand until the right public discovers and appreciates
it; or if it costs too much to discount the paper that he receives,
then, resignedly, he files his schedule, and becomes a bankrupt with
an untroubled mind. 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. Cavalier brought his
experience, Fendant his industry; the capital was a joint-stock
affair, and very accurately described by that word, for it consisted
in a few thousand francs scraped together with difficulty by the
mistresses of the pair. Out of this fund they allowed each other a
fairly handsome salary, and scrupulously spent it all in dinners to
journalists and authors, or at the theatre, where their business was
transacted, as they said. This questionably honest couple were both
supposed to be clever men of business, but Fendant was more slippery
than Cavalier. Cavalier, true to his name, traveled about, Fendant
looked after business in Paris. A partnership between two publishers
is always more or less of a duel, and so it was with Fendant and
Cavalier.

They had brought out plenty of romances already, such as the _Tour du
Nord_, _Le Marchand de Benares_, _La Fontaine du Sepulcre_, and _Tekeli_,
translations of the works of Galt, an English novelist who never
attained much popularity in France. The success of translations of
Scott had called the attention of the trade to English novels. The
race of publishe