Writer 1879: Solitary Journey in France

Chapter 85 With an aunt, we still have to work hard!
(Although I didn't get the leader of the alliance or reach 1000 votes, everyone has really given me a lot of encouragement, so I'm posting 4 chapters today. Please continue to support me.)
It was five days later when I returned from Jersey.

At Maupassant's warm invitation and with his expense reimbursed, Lionel, Alice, and Petitto stayed for two days and then traveled by boat to the nearby islands of Guernsey and Alderney.

By the time Notre Dame Cathedral's towering bell towers reappear, the Seine's pollution crisis will have come to an end.

The clean water flowing down from upstream carried away all the filth, and the Seine regained its former clear color and cheerful flow.

The newspapers like Le Figaro have stopped focusing on whether the budget for Paris's sewer project has been received and are now arguing about the latest education bill.

Excrement, sewage, garbage, corpses, plague... all seemed to have been driven from the memories of Parisians.

The streets were bustling with pedestrians and carriages again, the markets were thriving once more, and the price of an egg dropped from 15 centimes back to 5 centimes.

Time flows on, the streets remain peaceful, and a few lives are nothing in France.

The tap water at 12 Anthem Street finally stopped smelling bad, and Petty was able to return to her beloved kitchen and start cooking the "British food" that Lionel had eaten this time.

So when Lionel saw the fish and chips on the table, he was somewhat helpless.

This food, which originated from the British working class, is not bad and is easy to make. Apart from being a bit monotonous and high in calories, it is quite acceptable.

Petit fully embraced the French people's extraordinary passion for cooking, refining fish and chips by adding a variety of spices, resulting in a final flavor...

Some are hard to describe.

However, Lionel calmly finished his meal, and then solemnly said to Petty, "Well done, don't do it again next time."

Petty pouted; this was the first time Young Master Sorel hadn't praised her new dish.

After dinner, Lionel returned to his study and began processing the recent letters.

First was the letter from Mrs. Rothschild, bearing the family crest and sealed with gold sealing wax.

From the slightly trembling handwriting and the barely concealed excitement in his voice, Lionel knew that "Letter from an Unknown Woman" would surely achieve unexpected success.

It must be said that Mrs. Rothschild was a sensitive and empathetic woman.

The woman in the novel who is infatuated with writer L is worlds apart from L herself in terms of noble birth, yet she still finds herself irresistibly drawn into the relationship.

As a member of the Rothschild family, she was at the center of wealth and power, enjoying a life of privilege that ordinary women could not imagine.

But she also understood the loneliness and pain of being an "accessory" more deeply than anyone else.

She was the daughter of an aristocratic family, the wife of a banker, and a renowned patron of the arts…

But beneath these labels, her identity as an independent individual, "Eleonore," has never truly been "seen."

The stranger in Lionel's story defended her last dignity as a "person" rather than an "accessory" in the most extreme way.

This radiant light of dignity, bursting forth from absolute humility and self-destruction, is more powerful than any flowery language or fierce resistance.

When Lionel began writing this novel, he had not yet met Madame Rothschild; but after its completion, it unexpectedly became a footnote to her life. In fact, it is also a footnote to many upper-class women of this era.

However, Lionel was pleasantly surprised by her commitment to fund his future novel, which is crucial for a rising literary talent.

Lionel thought for a moment, then took out stationery and a quill pen and wrote a polite reply to Mrs. Rothschild, thanking her for her praise of "Letter from an Unknown Woman".

However, he has not yet decided what to write for his first full-length novel.

In the 19th century, a novelist who did not have a sensational novel was often not considered truly "outstanding".

Maupassant rose to fame because of his short stories, and this light and convenient way of writing also brought him great creative freedom and a rich income. However, the lukewarm reception of "A Life" and "Bel-Ami" was a lingering pain in his heart.

Therefore, Lionel had to be careful with his first novel and avoid releasing a dud.

He then looked at the letter from Modern Life, written by its editor-in-chief, Emil Béjart.

He also praised "Letter from an Unknown Woman," but more from a literary perspective. He particularly admired the novel's opening, even saying:
This will revolutionize people's understanding of French novels, letting poets know that the secrets of the French language are also hidden within novels...

Lionel laughed when he saw this sentence.

French poetry of the second half of the 19th century is perhaps the most progressive form of modern poetry in the world, incorporating puns, punctuation, line breaks, misplaced rhymes, capitalization, and more.

The phonetic and rhythmic elements that every alphabetic language can involve have been innovatively applied in a revolutionary way, to the point that they are almost incomprehensible.

Stefan Mallarmé's "The Afternoon of a Faun" is a representative work of this kind—a poem that even a French Sorbonne student with a mastery of French could not fully understand.

However, the line "Years later, facing the woman in bed, the novelist 'L' will recall that distant afternoon when he read a letter from a stranger" subtly connects with the path of French poetry.

However, what followed was a bit "sensitive": Emil Bergera offered Lionel a fee of 15 sous per line.

This is quite generous for a young writer like Lionel who is just starting out.

But Lionel was furious: I wrote 13 sous for a joke for Le Bourgeois, and you, Mr. Charpentier, only wrote 2 sous for your Modern Life?
It would be better to submit this novel to Le Parisien!

Lionel took out his pen and paper again and wrote a reply to Emil Bergera in a calm, restrained but clear tone, proposing that he needed 30 sous (that is, 1 francs) per line for his writing.

He thought the price was very fair—although he was young, his work had already been published in major newspapers like Le Parisien and caused quite a stir, so he couldn't lower himself to be a novice.

Established writers typically receive royalties of 2 to 3 francs, so asking for 1 francs is reasonable.

He wasn't afraid of Emil Béjart's rejection, since with Mrs. Rothschild's sponsorship promise, he wouldn't have to worry about finding a place to publish.

But then Lionel was startled – when did he start to take accepting sponsorships for granted and use them as leverage in bargaining?
Young man, you still have to work hard yourself! How can you rely on your aunt?
He quickly pulled out another stack of papers and began to write down "My Uncle Jules," which he had dictated on the Saint-Michel, in order to send it to Le Petit Parisien.

Just then, there was a knock on the apartment door.

(End of this chapter)