In connection with this campaign, which he waged for a while alone,
there was also his elaboration of the arrangement, first accepted by
Charpentier, which consisted in fixing the percentage of the author's
royalty on the octavo, three-franc-fifty volume at one-tenth of the
published price. One of his discussions with Charpentier on the
subject was overheard in the Cafe of the Palais Royal by Jules
Sandeau's cousin, who happened to be playing a game of billiards
there. After the departure of Balzac and the publisher, the cousin
remarked that a paper had been forgotten; and, on reading it through,
with his partner in the game, saw a crowd of figures that were so many
hieroglyphics to them. When the paper was restored to the novelist by
Jules Sandeau, who lived in the same set of flats as Balzac, it
transpired that the figures were the calculation of the sum that the
writer might obtain on the decimal basis, if a hundred thousand copies
of any one of his works were sold.
Two of the novelist's most important books appeared in 1833, his
_Country Doctor_ and _Eugenie Grandet_. The former he disposed of to a
new publisher, Mame, who was to print it, at first, unsigned, his old
publisher Gosselin having pre-emption rights, that had not been
redeemed.
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