The Shepherds’ Almanac

The Shepherds’ Almanac is a cheap, compact, image-based publication intended for people who cannot read. Its production at the Séchard printing shop turns it into more than a small commercial experiment: the almanac tests whether Eve Séchard can make a precarious provincial press productive, while exposing how competition and the control of skilled labor can overwhelm a carefully calculated plan.

Format and Intended Readers

The almanac communicates through signs, pictures, and colored engravings rather than relying on continuous written text. Its form makes that purpose tangible: a single sheet is folded sixty-four times to create an in-64 volume of 128 pages. The book sells for one sou, and its illustrations may be printed in red, black, or blue. The form and price suit an audience for whom images are the primary means of access to the information the almanac contains.

The publication also belongs to a large, established market. Several million copies are sold annually in France, and Old Séchard had once made substantial money printing it. Its paper is coarser than that of the Almanach liégeois and costs about four francs a ream. A ream contains five hundred sheets; once printed, its sheets can sell for twenty-five francs at one sou each. For Eve, the established demand and apparently favorable arithmetic offer a route to income using the materials and equipment left to the family.

Eve Séchard’s Production Plan

Eve takes charge of the printing business after recognizing how little work the Cointet Brothers leave the Séchard shop: enough to keep it alive, but not enough to make it a serious competitor. She first inventories its remaining assets and puts Kolb, Marion, and Cérizet to work cleaning and organizing the neglected workshop. With David Séchard’s advice, she then uses the leftover paper to print popular illustrated legends, including stories of the Wandering Jew, Robert the Devil, and the beautiful Maguelonne, as well as accounts of miracles. Eve colors the pictures; Cérizet composes the pages; Marion helps with the press; and Kolb sells the sheets as a peddler.

That first venture gives her a small but significant working capital. In two months, Kolb sells three thousand sheets across the countryside around Angoulême. They cost thirty francs to make and bring in three hundred francs at two sous apiece. Once the walls of cottages and taverns are covered with the legends, however, the market is exhausted, and Kolb cannot travel beyond the department. Eve therefore turns to the almanac, finding in the shop the collection of illustrations needed to print it. She commits the proceeds from the first venture to a much larger run: one hundred reams, or fifty thousand copies, with an anticipated benefit of two thousand francs.

David initially has little reason to doubt the plan. On entering the workshop, he hears a press working and sees Cérizet composing under Eve’s direction. He approves of her undertaking, offers advice on the different inks required by its illustrations, and even undertakes to recast rollers in his own secluded workshop. His practical support turns Eve’s initiative into a family project, at a time when the household is also anxious about David’s unfinished work and the prospect of Eve’s confinement.

The Press, the Rival, and the Delay

The almanac’s simple appearance conceals a labor-intensive process. Each color requires a separate impression: four inks mean four passes through the press for every sheet. The repeated work makes the product viable chiefly in provincial workshops, where wages and the cost of capital invested in printing equipment are very low. It is not a natural product for a shop devoted to producing fine books. At the Séchard premises, the scale of the effort is marked by the fact that, for the first time since Old Séchard’s retirement, two presses operate there at once. David and the workers divide the forms and supervise the separate colored impressions.

The Cointet Brothers are not merely distant competitors. They prepare an almanac of their own and use their superior resources to interfere with Eve’s timing. Cérizet, the shop’s sole compositor, has been taking so long that Eve fears the work will not be finished before January 1. The delay is not simply a failure of skill: the Cointets offer Cérizet paid work reading their proofs and encourage him to warn Eve that their rival almanac is coming. They also see that his knowledge of David’s secret work could help them. Cérizet, once David’s protégé, has become vulnerable to money and advancement, and his interest in the rival firm helps turn the almanac’s production into a breach of trust.

When David discovers that the composition should have taken eight days rather than the month Cérizet has spent on it, he intervenes directly. He stops Kolb’s sales of the illustrated sheets and redirects the workshop to the almanac, working alongside the others on the presses and colored impressions. The family gets the publication made, but the Cointets’ edition has changed the terms of the sale. Their almanac is offered to peddlers for three centimes, and Eve has to let hers go at two liards. She covers her costs through the peddling arrangement and makes money on the copies Kolb sells directly, but the projected success is lost: the almanac venture fails as a speculation.

Commercial and Narrative Significance

The almanac’s fate reveals the gap between a sound calculation and the ability to control the conditions of production. Eve can identify a market, make use of leftover paper and illustrations, and mobilize the shop’s limited labor. David can improve the process with his knowledge of inks and equipment. Yet neither their effort nor the product’s established demand protects them from a better-resourced rival, a delayed schedule, and the loss of trust in the one compositor on whom the undertaking depends.

The contrast between the almanac’s visual accessibility and its difficult manufacture is especially sharp. What appears to be a modest book for readers who cannot read requires repeated, carefully coordinated presswork; its low price depends on the economics of provincial labor and equipment. The failed run therefore measures the vulnerability of the Séchard business as much as the value of the object itself. The Shepherds’ Almanac gives Eve a concrete way to revive the printing shop, but its production also exposes how readily the Cointet Brothers can turn that shop’s limited means—and Cérizet’s position within it—to their own advantage.