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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Balzac, by Frederick Lawton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Balzac
+
+Author: Frederick Lawton
+
+Release Date: December 17, 2005 [EBook #3822]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BALZAC ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+                               BALZAC
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          FREDERICK LAWTON
+
+
+
+
+     DEDICATED,
+
+     In remembrance of many pleasant and instructive
+     hours spent in his society, to the sculptor
+
+                   AUGUSTE RODIN,
+
+     whose statue of Balzac, with its fine, synthetic
+     portraiture, first tempted the author to write
+     this book.
+
+     PASSY, PARIS, 1910.
+
+
+
+
+                              PREFACE
+
+
+
+Excusing himself for not undertaking to write a life of Balzac,
+Monsieur Brunetiere, in his study of the novelist published
+shortly before his death, refused somewhat disdainfully to admit
+that acquaintance with a celebrated man's biography has
+necessarily any value. "What do we know of the life of
+Shakespeare?" he says, "and of the circumstances in which _Hamlet_
+or _Othello_ was produced? If these circumstances were better
+known to us, is it to be believed and will it be seriously
+asserted that our admiration for one or the other play would be
+augmented?" In penning this quirk, the eminent critic would seem
+to have wilfully overlooked the fact that a writer's life may have
+much or may have little to do with his works. In the case of
+Shakespeare it was comparatively little--and yet we should be glad
+to learn more of this little. In the case of Balzac it was much.
+His novels are literally his life; and his life is quite as full
+as his books of all that makes the good novel at once profitable
+and agreeable to read. It is not too much to affirm that any one
+who is acquainted with what is known to-day of the strangely
+chequered career of the author of the _Comedie Humaine_ is in a
+better position to understand and appreciate the different parts
+which constitute it. Moreover, the steady rise of Balzac's
+reputation, during the last fifty years, has been in some degree
+owing to the various patient investigators who have gathered
+information about him whom Taine pronounced to be, with
+Shakespeare and Saint-Simon, the greatest storehouse of documents
+we possess concerning human nature.
+
+The following chapters are an attempt to put this information into
+sequence and shape, and to insert such notice of the novels as
+their relative importance requires. The author wishes here to
+thank certain French publishers who have facilitated his task by
+placing books for reference at his disposal, Messrs. Calmann-Levy,
+Armand Colin, and Hetzel, in particular, and also the Curator of
+the _Musee Balzac_, Monsieur de Royaumont who has rendered him
+service on several occasions.
+
+
+
+
+                               BALZAC
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER I
+
+                            INTRODUCTION
+
+The condition of French society in the early half of the nineteenth
+century--the period covered by Balzac's novels--may be compared to
+that of a people endeavouring to recover themselves after an
+earthquake. Everything had been overthrown, or at least loosened from
+its base--religion, laws, customs, traditions, castes. Nothing had
+withstood the shock. When the upheaval finally ceased, there were
+timid attempts to find out what had been spared and was susceptible of
+being raised from the ruins. Gradually the process of selection went
+on, portions of the ancient system of things being joined to the
+larger modern creation. The two did not work in very well together,
+however, and the edifice was far from stable.
+
+During the Consulate and First Empire, the Emperor's will, so sternly
+imposed, retarded any movement of natural reconstruction. Outside the
+military organization, things were stiff and starched and solemn. High
+and low were situated in circumstances that were different and
+strange. The new soldier aristocracy reeked of the camp and
+battle-field; the washer-woman, become a duchess, was ill at ease in
+the Imperial drawing-room; while those who had thriven and amassed
+wealth rapidly in trade were equally uncomfortable amidst the vulgar
+luxury with which they surrounded themselves. Even the common people,
+whether of capital or province, for whose benefit the Revolution had
+been made, were silent and afraid. Of the ladies' _salons_--once
+numerous and remarkable for their wit, good taste, and conversation--two
+or three only subsisted, those of Mesdames de Beaumont, Recamier and de
+Stael; and, since the last was regarded by Napoleon with an unfriendly
+eye, its guests must have felt constrained.
+
+At reunions, eating rather than talking was fashionable, and the
+eating lacked its intimacy and privacy of the past. The lighter side
+of life was seen more in restaurants, theatres, and fetes. It was
+modish to dine at Frascati's, to drink ices at the Pavillon de
+Hanovre, to go and admire the actors Talma, Picard, and Lemercier,
+whose stage performance was better than many of the pieces they
+interpreted. Fireworks could be enjoyed at the Tivoli Gardens; the
+great concerts were the rage for a while, as also the practice for a
+hostess to carry off her visitors after dinner for a promenade in the
+Bois de Boulogne.
+
+Literature was obstinately classical. After the daring flights of the
+previous century, writers contented themselves with marking time.
+Chenedolle, whose verse Madame de Stael said to be as lofty as
+Lebanon, and whose fame is lilliputian to-day, was, with Ducis, the
+representative of their advance-guard. In painting, with Fragonard,
+Greuze and Gros, there was a greater stir of genius, yet without
+anything corresponding in the sister art.
+
+On the contrary, in the practical aspects of life there was large
+activity, though Paris almost alone profited by it. Napoleon's
+reconstruction in the provinces was administrative chiefly. A complete
+programme was first started on in the capital, which the Emperor
+wished to exalt into the premier city of Europe. Gas-lighting,
+sewerage, paving and road improvements, quays, and bridges were his
+gifts to the city, whose general appearance, however, remained much
+the same. The Palais-Royal served still as a principal rendezvous. The
+busy streets were the Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Honore on the right
+bank, the Rue Saint-Jacques on the left; and the most important shops
+were to be found in the Rue de la Loi, at present the Rue de
+Richelieu.
+
+The fall of the Empire was less a restoration of the Monarchy than the
+definite disaggregation of the ancient aristocracy, which had been
+centralized round the court since the days of Richelieu. The Court of
+Louis XVIII. was no more like that of Louis XVI. than it was like the
+noisy one of Napoleon. Receiving only a few personal friends, the King
+allowed his drawing-rooms to remain deserted by the nobles that had
+returned from exile; and the two or three who were regular visitors
+were compelled to rub elbows with certain parvenus, magistrates,
+financiers, generals of the Empire whom it would not have been prudent
+to eliminate.
+
+In this initial stage of society-decentralization, the diminished band
+of the Boulevard Saint-Germain--descendants of the eighteenth-century
+dukes and marquises--tried to close up their ranks and to
+differentiate themselves from the plutocracy of the Chaussee d'Antin,
+who copied their manners, with an added magnificence of display which
+those they imitated could not afford. In the one camp the antique
+bronzes, gildings, and carvings of a bygone art were retained with
+pious veneration; in the other, pictures, carpets, Jacob chairs and
+sofas, mirrors, and time-pieces, and the gold and silver plate were
+all in lavish style, indicative of their owner's ampler means. One
+feature of the pre-Revolution era was revived in the feminine
+_salons_, which regained most, if not the whole, of their pristine
+renown. The Hotel de la Rochefoucauld of Madame Ancelot became a
+second Hotel de Rambouillet, where the classical Parseval-Grandmaison,
+who spent twenty years over his poem _Philippe-Auguste_, held
+armistice with the young champion of the Romantic school, Victor Hugo.
+The Princess de Vaudemont received her guests in Paris during the
+winter, and at Suresnes during the summer; and her friend the Duchess
+de Duras' _causeries_ were frequented by such men as Cuvier, Humboldt,
+Talleyrand, Mole, de Villele, Chateaubriand, and Villemain. Other
+circles existed in the houses of the Dukes Pasquier and de Broglie,
+the countess Merlin, and Madame de Mirbel.
+
+With the re-establishment of peace, literary and toilet pre-occupations
+began to assert their claims. The _Ourika_ of the Duchess de Duras took
+Paris by storm. Her heroine, the young Senegal negress, gave her name to
+dresses, hats, and bonnets. Everything was _Ourika_. The prettiest
+Parisian woman yearned to be black, and regretted not having been born
+in darkest Africa. Anglomania in men's clothes prevailed throughout the
+reign of Louis XVIII., yet mixed with other modes. "Behold an up-to-date
+dandy," says a writer of the epoch; "all extremes meet in him. You shall
+see him Prussian by the stomach, Russian by his waist, English in his
+coat-tails and collar, Cossack by the sack that serves him as trousers,
+and by his fur. Add to these things Bolivar hats and spurs, and the
+moustaches of a counter-skipper, and you have the most singular
+harlequin to be met with on the face of the globe."
+
+Among the masses there were changes just as striking. For the moment
+militarism had disappeared, to the people's unfeigned content, and the
+Garde Nationale, composed of pot-bellied tradesmen, alone recalled the
+bright uniforms of the Empire. To make up for the soldier excitements
+of the _Petit Caporal_, attractions of all kinds tempted the citizen
+to enjoy himself after his day's toil was finished--menagerie,
+mountebanks, Franconi circus, Robertson the conjurer in the Jardin des
+Capucines. At the other end of the city, in the Boulevard du Temple,
+were Belle Madeleine, the seller of Nanterre cakes, famous throughout
+Europe, the face contortionist Valsuani, Miette in his egg-dance,
+Curtius' waxworks. By each street corner were charlatans of one or
+another sort exchanging jests with the passers-by. It was the period
+when the Prudhomme type was created, so common in all the skits and
+caricatures of the day. One of the greatest pleasures of the citizen
+under the Restoration was to mock at the English. Revenge for Waterloo
+was found in written and spoken satires. Huge was the success of
+Sewrin's and Dumersan's _Anglaises pour rire_, with Brunet and Potier
+travestied as _grandes dames_, dancing a jig so vigorously that they
+lost their skirts. The same species of _revanche_ was indulged in when
+Lady Morgan, the novelist, came to France, seeking material for a
+popular book describing French customs. Henri Beyle (Stendhal) hoaxed
+her by acting as her cicerone and filling her note-books with absurd
+information, which she accepted in good faith and carried off as fact.
+On Sundays the most respectable families used to resort to the
+_guinguettes_, or _bastringues_, of the suburbs. Belleville had its
+celebrated Desnoyers establishment. At the Maine gate Mother Sagnet's
+was the meeting-place of budding artists and grisettes. At La
+Villette, Mother Radig, a former canteen woman, long enjoyed
+popularity among her patrons of both sexes. All these scenes are
+depicted in certain of Victor Ducange's novels, written between 1815
+and 1830, as also in the pencil sketches of the two artists Pigal and
+Marlet.
+
+The political society of the Restoration was characterized by a good
+deal of cynicism. Those who were affected by the change of _regime_,
+partisans and functionaries of the Empire, hastened in many cases to
+trim their sails to the turn of the tide. However, there was a
+relative liberty of the press which permitted the honest expression of
+party opinion, and polemics were keen. At the Sorbonne, Guizot,
+Cousin, and Villemain were the orators of the day. Frayssinous
+lectured at Saint-Sulpice, and de Lamennais, attacking young
+Liberalism, denounced its tenets in an essay which de Maistre called a
+heaving of the earth under a leaden sky.
+
+The country's material prosperity at the time was considerable, and
+reacted upon literature of every kind by furnishing a more leisured
+public. In 1816 Emile Deschamps preluded to the after-triumphs of the
+Romantic School with his play the _Tour de faveur_, the latter being
+followed in 1820 by Lebrun's _Marie Stuart_. Alfred de Vigny was
+preparing his _Eloa_; Nodier was delighting everybody by his talents
+as a philologian, novelist, poet, and chemist. Beranger was continuing
+his songs, and paying for his boldness with imprisonment. The King
+himself was a protector of letters, arts, and sciences. One of his
+first tasks was to reorganize the "Institut Royal," making it into
+four Academies. He founded the Geographical and Asiatic Societies,
+encouraged the introduction of steam navigation and traction into
+France, and patronized men of genius wherever he met with them.
+
+Yet the nation's fidelity to the White Flag was not very deep-rooted.
+Grateful though the population had been for the return of peace and
+prosperity, a lurking reminiscence of Napoleonic splendours combined
+with the bourgeois' Voltairian scepticism to rouse a widespread
+hostility to Government and Church, as soon as the spirit of the
+latter ventured to manifest again its inveterate intolerance.
+Beranger's songs, Paul-Louis Courier's pamphlets, and the articles of
+the _Constitutionnel_ fanned the re-awakened sentiments of revolt; and
+Charles the Tenth's ministers, less wisely restrained than those of
+Louis XVIII., and blind to the significance of the first barricades of
+1827, provoked the catastrophe of 1830. This second revolution
+inaugurated the reign of a bourgeois king. Louis-Philippe was hardly
+more than a delegate of the bourgeois class, who now reaped the full
+benefits of the great Revolution and entered into possession of its
+spoils. During Jacobin dictature and Napoleonic sway, the bourgeoisie
+had played a waiting role. At present they came to the front, proudly
+conscious of their merits; and an entire literature was destined to be
+devoted to them, an entire art to depict or satirize their manners.
+Scribe, Stendhal, Merimee, Henry Monnier, Daumier, and Gavarni were
+some of the men whose work illustrated the bourgeois _regime_, either
+prior to or contemporaneous with the work of Balzac.
+
+The eighteen years of the July Monarchy, which were those of Balzac's
+mature activity, contrasted sharply with those that immediately
+preceded. In spite of perceptible social progress, the constant war of
+political parties, in which the throne itself was attacked, alarmed
+lovers of order, and engendered feelings of pessimism. The power of
+journalism waxed great. Fighting with the pen was carried to a point
+of skill previously unattained. Grouped round the _Debats_--the
+ministerial organ--were Silvestre de Sacy, Saint-Marc Girardin, and
+Jules Janin as leaders, and John Lemoinne, Philarete Chasles, Barbey
+d'Aurevilly in the rank and file. Elsewhere Emile de Girardin's
+_Presse_ strove to oust the _Constitutionnel_ and _Siecle_, opposition
+papers, from public favour, and to establish a Conservative Liberalism
+that should receive the support of moderate minds. Doctrines many,
+political and social, were propounded in these eighteen years of
+compromise. Legitimists, Bonapartists, and Republicans were all three
+in opposition to the Government, each with a programme to tempt the
+petty burgess. Saint-Simonism too was abroad with its utopian ideals,
+attracting some of the loftier minds, but less appreciated by the
+masses than the teachings of other semi-secret societies having aims
+more material.
+
+Corresponding to the character of the _regime_ was the practical
+nature of the public works executed--the railway system with its
+transformation of trade, the fortification of the capital, the
+commencement of popular education, and the renovation of decayed or
+incompleted edifices. Unfortunately, the rapidity of the development
+and the rush of speculation prevented any co-ordinating method in the
+effort, so that the epoch was poor in its architectural achievement
+compared with what had been produced in the past. Even other branches
+of art were greatest in satire. Daumier's  _Robert Macaire_ sketches
+and the _Mayeux_ of Travies had large material supplied them in the
+various types of citizen, greedy of pleasure and gold. The _mot_:
+"Enrichissez-vous," attributed to Guizot, was the axiom of the time,
+accepted as the _nec plus ultra_ by the vast majority of people. It
+invaded all circles with its lowering expedience; and he who was to
+depict its effects most puissantly did not escape its thrall.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Balzac began to write, no French novelist had a reputation as
+such that might be considered great. Up to the epoch of the
+Restoration, the novel had been declared to be an inferior species of
+literature, and no author had dreamed of basing his claims to fame on
+fiction. Lesage had been and was still appreciated rather on the
+ground of his satire; and the Abbe Prevost, his slightly younger
+contemporary, received but little credit in his lifetime for the
+_Manon Lescaut_ that posterity was to prize. Throughout the eighteenth
+century, he was chiefly regarded as a literary hack who had translated
+Richardson's _Pamela_ and done things of a similar kind to earn his
+livelihood. Rousseau too was esteemed less for his _Nouvelle Heloise_
+than for his political disquisitions. No novelist since 1635 had ever
+been elected to the French Academy on account of his stories. Jules
+Sandeau was the first to break the tradition by his entrance among the
+Immortals in 1859, to be followed in 1862 by Octave Feuillet.
+
+Lesage was the writer who introduced into France with his _Gil Blas_
+what has been called the personal novel--in other words, that story of
+adventures of which the narrator is the hero, the aim of the story
+being to illustrate first and foremost the vicissitudes of life in
+general and those of a single person in particular. The subsequent
+introduction of letters into the personal novel, which allowed more
+than one character to assume the narrator's role, brought about a
+change which those who initiated it scarcely anticipated. Together
+with the larger interest, due to there being several narrators, came a
+tendency to introspection and analysis, diminishing the prominence of
+the facts and enhancing the effect produced by these facts on the
+thoughts and feelings of the characters. It was this development of
+the personal novel at the commencement of the nineteenth century,
+exhibited in Chateaubriand's _Rene_, Madame de Stael's _Corinne_,
+Benjamin Constant's _Adolphe_, George Sand's _Indiana_, and
+Sainte-Beuve's _Volupte_, which contributed so much to create and
+establish the Romantic School of fiction with its egoistic lyricism.
+
+The historical novel, which more commonly is looked upon as having
+been the principal agent in the change, gave, in sooth, only what
+modern fiction of every kind could no longer do without, namely, local
+colour. The so-styled historical novels of Madame de la Fayette
+--_Zayde_ and the _Princesse de Cleves_--in the seventeenth century, and
+those of Madame de Tencin and Madame de Fontaines in the eighteenth,
+were simply historic themes whereon the authors embroidered the
+inventions of their imaginations, without the slightest attention to
+accuracy or attempt at differentiating the men and minds of one age
+from those of another; nor was it till the days of Walter Scott that
+such care for local colour and truth of delineation was manifested by
+writers who essayed to put life into the bones of the past.
+
+Even Lesage, so exact in his description of all that is exterior,
+lacked this literary truthfulness. His Spain is a land of fancy; his
+Spaniards are not Spanish; _Gil Blas_, albeit he comes from
+Santillana, is a Frenchman. Marivaux was wiser in placing his _Vie de
+Marianne_ and his _Paysan parvenu_ in France. His people, though
+modelled on stage pattern, are of his own times and country; and, in
+so far as they reveal themselves, have resemblances to the characters
+of Richardson.
+
+To the Abbe Barthelemy, Voltaire, and Rousseau the novel was a
+convenient medium for the expression of certain ideas rather than a
+representation of life. The first strove to popularize a knowledge of
+Greek antiquity, the second to combat doctrines that he deemed
+fallacious, the third to reform society. However, Rousseau brought
+nature into his _Nouvelle Heloise_, and, by his accessories of pathos
+and philosophy, prepared the way for a bolder and completer treatment
+of life in fiction. Different from these was Restif de la Bretonne,
+who applied Rousseau's theories with less worthy aims in his _Paysan
+perverti_ and _Monsieur Nicolas, ou Le Coeur humain devoile_. If
+mention is made of him here, it is because he was a pioneer in the
+path of realism, which Balzac was to explore more thoroughly, and
+because the latter undoubtedly caught some of his grosser manner.
+
+The novelists and dramatists whom Balzac made earliest acquaintance
+with were probably those whose works were appearing and attracting
+notice during his school-days--Pigault-Lebrun, Ducray-Duminil, and
+that Guilbert de Pixerecourt who for a third of the nineteenth century
+was worshipped as the Corneille of melodrama. These men were favourite
+authors of the nascent democracy; and, in an age when reprints of
+older writers were much rarer than to-day, would be far more likely to
+appeal to a boy's taste than seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
+authors. At an after-period only, when he had definitely entered upon
+his maturer literary career, was he to take up the latter and use
+them, together with Rabelais, La Bruyere, Moliere, and Diderot, as his
+best, if not his constant, sources of inspiration. In the stories of
+the first of the three above-mentioned modern writers, the reader
+usually meets with some child of poor parentage, who, after most
+extraordinary and comic experiences, marries the child of a nobleman.
+In those of the second, the hero or heroine struggles with powerful
+enemies, is aided by powerful friends, and moves in an atmosphere of
+blood and mystery until vice is chastized and virtue finally rewarded.
+The two writers, however, differ more in their talent than in their
+methods, the first having an amount of originality which is almost
+entirely wanting to the second. With both, indeed, the main object is
+to impress and astonish, and the finer touches of Lesage and Prevost
+are seldom visible in either's work. As for Pixerecourt, whose fame
+lasted until the Romantic drama of the older Dumas, Alfred de Vigny,
+and Victor Hugo eclipsed it, he wrote over a hundred plays, each of
+which was performed some five hundred times, while two at least ran
+for more than a thousand nights.
+
+If it was natural that Balzac should familiarize himself in his
+adolescence with such writers of his own countrymen as every one
+discussed and very many praised, it was natural also he should extend
+his perusals to the translated works of contemporary novelists on the
+further side of the Channel, the more so as the reciprocal literary
+influence of the two countries was exceedingly strong at the time,
+stronger probably than to-day when attention is solicited on so many
+sides. To the novels of Monk Lewis, Maturin, Anne Radcliffe, and other
+exponents of the School of Terror, as likewise to the novels of
+Godwin, the chief of the School of Theory, he went for instruction in
+the profession that he was wishing to adopt. Mrs. Radcliffe's stories
+he thought admirable; those of Lewis he cited as hardly being equalled
+by Stendhal's _Chartreuse de Parme_; and Maturin--oddly as it strikes
+us now--he not only styled the most original modern author that the
+United Kingdom could boast of, but assigned him a place, beside
+Moliere and Goethe, as one of the greatest geniuses of Europe. And
+these eulogiums were not the immature judgements of youth, but the
+convictions of his riper age. As will be seen later, the influence
+remained with him. In all he wrote there enters some of the material,
+native and foreign, out of which Romanticism was made.
+
+To the true masters of English fiction his indebtedness was equally
+large, exception made perhaps for Fielding and Smollett; and one
+American author should be included in the acknowledgment. Goldsmith,
+Sterne, Walter Scott, and Fenimore Cooper were his delight. The first
+and last of Richardson's productions he read only when his own talent
+was formed. _Pamela_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_ he chanced upon in a
+library at Ajaccio; and, after running them through, pronounced them
+to be horribly stupid and boring. But _Clarissa Harlowe_, on the
+contrary, he highly esteemed. Already in 1821 he had studied it; and,
+when composing his _Pierrette_, towards the end of the thirties, he
+spoke of it as a magnificent poem, in a passage which brands the
+procedure of certain hypocrites, their oratorical precautions, and
+their involved conversations, wherein the mind obscures the light it
+throws and honeyed speech dilutes the venom of intentions. The phrase,
+says Monsieur Le Breton, in his well-reasoned book on Balzac, is that
+of a man who was conversant with the patient analysis, the
+conscientious and minute realism of this great painter of English
+life. In Monsieur Le Breton's opinion, Balzac's long-windedness is, in
+a measure, due to Richardson, who reacted upon him by his defects no
+less than by his excellencies.
+
+Throughout Balzac's correspondence, as throughout his novels, there
+are numerous remarks which are so many confessions of the hints he
+received in the course of his English readings. In one passage he
+exclaims: "The villager is an admirable nature. When he is stupid, he
+is just the animal; but, when he has good points, they are exquisite.
+Unfortunately, no one observes him. It needed a lucky hazard for
+Goldsmith to create his _Vicar of Wakefield_." Elsewhere he says:
+"Generally, in fiction, an author succeeds only by the number of his
+characters and the variety of his situations; and there are few
+examples of novels having but two or three _dramatis personae_
+depending on a single situation. Of such a kind, _Caleb Williams_, the
+celebrated Godwin's masterpiece, is in our time the only work known,
+and its interest is prodigious."
+
+Sterne, even more than Scott, was Balzac's favourite model. Allusions
+to him abound in the _Comedie Humaine_. _Tristram Shandy_ the novelist
+appears to have had at his fingers' ends. Not a few of Sterne's traits
+were also his own--the satirical humour, in which, however, the humour
+was less perfect than the satire, the microscopic eye for all the
+exterior details of life especially in people's faces and gestures and
+dress; and both had identical notions concerning the analogy between a
+man's name and his temperament and fate.
+
+Scott and Cooper being Balzac's elder contemporaries, it happened that
+their books were given to the French public in translation by one or
+the other of the novelist's earlier publishers, Mame and Gosselin. His
+taste for their fiction was no mere passing fancy. It was as
+pronounced as ever in 1840, at which date, writing in the _Revue
+Parisienne_, he declared that Cooper was the only writer of stories
+worthy to be placed by the side of Walter Scott, and that his hero
+Leather-stocking was sublime. "I don't know," said he, "if the fiction
+of Walter Scott furnishes a creation as grandiose as that of this hero
+of the savannas and forests. Cooper's descriptions are the school at
+which all literary landscapists should study: all the secrets of art
+are there. But Cooper is inferior to Walter Scott in his comic and
+minor characters, and in the construction of his plots. One is the
+historian of nature, the other of humanity." The article winds up with
+further praise of Scott, whom its author evidently regarded as his
+master.
+
+The part played by these models in Balzac's literary training was to
+afford him a clearer perception of the essential worth of the Romantic
+movement. Together with its extravagancies and lyricism, Romantic
+literature deliberately put into practice some important principles
+which certain forerunners of the eighteenth century had already
+unconsciously illustrated or timidly taught. It imposed Diderot's
+doctrine that there was beauty in all natural character. And its chief
+apostle, Hugo, with the examples of Ariosto, Cervantes, Rabelais and
+Shakespeare to back him, proved that what was in nature was or should
+be also in art, yet without, for that, seeking to free art from law
+and the necessity for choice.
+
+This spectacle of a vaster field to exploit, this possibility of
+artistically representing the common, familiar things of the world in
+their real significance, seized on the youthful mind of him who was to
+create the _Comedie Humaine_. It formed the connecting link between
+him and his epoch, and in most directions it limited the horizon of
+his life.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II
+
+                              BOYHOOD
+
+For all his aristocratic name, Honore de Balzac was not of noble
+birth. The nobiliary particule he did not add to his signature until
+the year 1830. In his birth certificate we read: "To-day, the 2nd of
+Prairial, Year VII. (21st of May 1799) of the French Republic, a male
+child was presented to me, Pierre-Jacques Duvivier, the undersigned
+Registrar, by the citizen Bernard-Francois Balzac, householder,
+dwelling in this commune, Rue de l'Armee de l'Italie, Chardonnet
+section, Number 25; who declared to me that the said child was called
+Honore Balzac, born yesterday at eleven o'clock in the morning at
+witness's residence, that the child is his son and that of the
+citizen, Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, his wife, they having been
+married in the commune of Paris, eighth arrondissement, Seine
+Department, on the 11th of Pluviose, Year V."
+
+The commune referred to in the birth certificate was Tours. There in
+the street now rechristened and renumbered and called the Rue
+Nationale, a commemorative plate at No. 29 bears the following
+inscription: "Honore de Balzac was born in this house on the 1st of
+Prairial, Year VII. (20th of May 1799); he died in Paris on the
+28th[*] of August 1850."
+
+  [*] The registered date of Balzac's death was the 18th of August. The
+      date on the commemorative plate is wrong. See also in a subsequent
+      chapter, M. de Lovenjoul's remark on the subject.
+
+This former capital of Touraine, which the novelist says disparagingly
+in the _Cure of Tours_ was in his time one of the least literary
+places in France, has had, at any rate, an honourable past. It was one
+of the sixty-four towns of Gaul that, under Vercingetorix, opposed the
+conquest of Caesar; and to it, in 1870, the French Government retired
+when the Germans marched on the capital. Its ancient industry in silk
+stuffs, established by Louis XI. in the fifteenth century, raised its
+population to eighty thousand. By revoking the Edict of Nantes, King
+"Sun" chased away three thousand of the wealthy, manufacturing
+families, who migrated to Holland; and Tours lost, with a quarter of
+its inhabitants, its weaving supremacy, which fell into the hands of
+Lyons. Situated on the Loire, in a rich but flat district, its
+surroundings are less interesting than its own architectural
+possessions, including a cathedral of mingled Gothic and later styles,
+a bit of the Norman-English Henry the Second's castle, and its three
+bridges. The fine central one, of fifteen arches and a quarter of a
+mile long, is a prolongation of the Rue Nationale, and has near it
+statues of Rabelais and Descartes.
+
+Balzac's father, who at the time of Honore's birth was fifty-three
+years of age, was not a native of Tours. He came from Nougayrie, a
+small hamlet close to Canezac in the Tarn Department and province of
+Languedoc. He was, therefore, a man of the south. On the registers he
+was inscribed as a son of Bernard-Thomas Balssa, _laboureur_, or
+peasant farmer; but he subsequently changed his name to Balzac. Recent
+investigations have disclosed the fact that--whether by his own
+initiative or that of his son--he was the first to employ the "de"
+before the family name, prefixing it in the announcements made of the
+marriage of his second daughter Laurence.
+
+Although of humble origin, the elder Balzac acquired both education
+and position. He embraced the legal profession, and was said by his
+son to have acted as secretary to the Grand Council under Louis XV.,
+by his daughter Laure to have been advocate to the Council under Louis
+XVI. There is no documentary proof that he held either of these
+offices; but he figured in the Royal almanacs of 1793 as a lawyer, and
+would seem to have served the Republican Government, although his
+children subsequently asserted that he had always been an unswerving
+Royalist. The family tradition was that he had become suspect to
+Robespierre through his efforts to save several unfortunates from the
+guillotine, and would himself have perished had not a friend succeeded
+in getting him sent on a mission to the frontier to organize the
+commissariat department there. Thenceforward attached to the War
+Office, he returned to Paris, and in 1797 married Laure Sallambier,
+the daughter of one of his hierarchic chiefs, she being thirty-two
+years his junior. The next year he went to Tours as administrator of
+the General Hospice, and remained there for seventeen years.
+
+The father of the novelist was a man out of the common. A contemporary
+of his, Le Poitevin Saint-Alme, relates that he united in himself the
+Roman, the Gaul, and the Goth, and possessed the attributes of these
+three races--boldness, patience, and health. He avowed himself a
+disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, considering a return to nature to
+be the main condition of happiness. He shunned doctors, advocated
+exercise, long walks, woollen garments for every season, and a more
+scientific propagation of his species. His daughter--afterwards Madame
+Surville--says of him in the short biography she wrote of her brother:
+"My father often railed at mankind, whom he accused of unceasingly
+contributing to their own misfortune. He could never meet an
+ill-formed fellow-creature without fulminating against parents and
+governments, who were less careful to improve the human race than that
+of animals."
+
+In addition to his notions on hygiene, he interested himself in the
+problems of sociology, anticipating Fourier and Saint-Simon, and
+writing numerous pamphlets on philanthropic and scientific questions.
+Large traces of his influence are found in his son's books. His hobby
+was health cultivation. Every man, he said, ought to strive for an
+equilibrium of the vital forces. In his own case there was an extra
+reason for his aiming at longevity. Being still unmarried at the age
+of forty-five, he had sunk most of his fortune in life annuities, one
+of which was a tontine; and, after his marriage, he encouraged his
+family to hope for his surviving all the competitors of his series,
+and thus being able to bequeath them a huge capital. This hope was not
+realized. His death occurred in 1829, when he was eighty-three, and
+the twelve thousand francs income accruing from his annuities
+disappeared.
+
+His memory was extraordinary. At seventy, happening to meet a friend
+of his childhood, whom he had not seen since he was fourteen, he
+unhesitatingly began speaking to him in the Provencal tongue, which he
+had ceased using for half a century. Equally great was his
+benevolence. On one occasion, hearing that his friend General de
+Pommereul was in monetary difficulties, he called at the General's
+house, and, finding only Madame de Pommereul, said to her, as he
+placed two heavy bags on the table: "I am told you are short of cash.
+These ten thousand crowns will be more useful to you than to me. I
+don't know what to do with them. You can give me them back when you
+have recovered what has been stolen from you." Having uttered these
+few brusk words, he turned and hurried away. Later we shall meet with
+a younger General de Pommereul, to whom the novelist dedicated his
+_Melmoth Reconciled_, adding, "In remembrance of the constant
+friendship that united our fathers and subsists between the sons."
+
+When young, the novelist's father must have been endowed with great
+physical strength. He used to relate that, during the time he was a
+clerk to a Procureur, he was requested one day to cut up a partridge
+at his master's table. With the first dig of the knife, he not only
+severed the partridge but the dish also, and drove his weapon into the
+wood of the table. Detail worth noticing, this feat procured him the
+respect of the Procureur's wife. The portrait sketched of him by his
+daughter Laure represents him, between sixty and seventy, as a fine
+old man, still vigorous, with courteous manners, speaking little and
+rarely of himself (in this very different from Honore), indulgent
+towards the young, whose society he was fond of, allowing to all the
+same liberty that he claimed for himself, upright and sound in
+judgment notwithstanding his eccentricities, of equable humour, and so
+mild in character that he made every one around him happy. Delighting
+in conversation, now grave, now curious, now prophetic, he was always
+eagerly listened to by his elder son, whose indebtedness to him cannot
+be doubted.
+
+Balzac's mother, who was married at eighteen, was a Parisian by birth.
+Her father was Director of the Paris Hospitals. At the Hotel-Dieu
+there is a Sallambier ward which perpetuates his memory. A small,
+active woman of nervous temperament, irritable and inclined to worry
+about trifles, she yet had abundant practical sense--a quality less
+developed in her husband. Her daughter tells us she was beautiful,
+that she had remarkable vivacity of mind, much firmness and decision,
+and boundless devotion to her family. Her affection, however, was
+expressed rather by action than in speech. She had great imagination,
+adds Madame Surville; and, says the novelist, "this imagination, which
+she has bequeathed me, bandies her ever from north to south and from
+south to north." Exceedingly pious, with a bias to mysticism, she
+possessed a library of books bearing on such doctrines, which were
+read by her son and afterwards utilized by him in his fiction.
+
+Honore was the second child of his parents. The first dying in infancy
+through the poorness of Madame Balzac's milk, he was sent to a house
+on the outskirts of the town and suckled by a foster-mother. His
+sister Laure, a year younger than himself, was submitted to the same
+treatment, and the two children remained away from home until they
+were four and three years old respectively. From her remembrance of
+him, when both were toddling mites, his sister speaks of him as a
+charming little boy, whose merry humour, shapely, smiling mouth, large
+brown eyes, at once bright and soft, high forehead and rich black hair
+caused him to be noticed a great deal in their daily outings.
+
+In 1804 came the first important event of his life, a visit to Paris
+to see his maternal grandparents. It was a wonderful change from his
+home surroundings in Tours, where a certain severity prevailed. Here
+he was spoiled to his heart's content; and his happiness was rendered
+complete by Mouche, the big watch-dog, with whom he was on the best of
+terms. One evening a magic-lantern exhibition was given in the
+grandson's honour. Noticing that Mouche was not among the spectators,
+he rose from his seat with an authoritative: "Wait." Then, going out,
+he shortly after came back, dragging in his canine friend, to whom he
+said: "Sit down there, Mouche, and look; it will cost you nothing.
+Granddad will pay for you!" A few months later his grandfather died,
+and the widow went to live with the Balzacs at Tours. This death made
+a deep impression on the child's mind, and for a while dwelt so
+constantly in his memory that, on one occasion, when Laure was being
+scolded by her mother for an offence which the culprit aggravated by a
+fit of involuntary tittering, he approached his sister and whispered
+in her ear, with a view to restoring her gravity: "Think of
+grandpapa's death."
+
+Distinguished in these juvenile years more by kindness than
+cleverness, he nevertheless manifested a certain inventiveness in
+improvizing baby comedies which had more appreciative audiences than
+some of his maturer stage productions. On the contrary, his conception
+of music and his own musical execution had no admirers beyond himself.
+For hours he would scrape the chords of a small, red violin, drawing
+from them most excruciating sounds, himself lost in ecstasy, and most
+amazed when he was begged to cease his concert, which was somewhat
+calculated to give his friend Mouche the colic.
+
+The boy's initial steps in the path of learning were taken under the
+care of a nursery governess, Mademoiselle Delahaye, whom he quitted to
+attend the principal day-school in the town, known as the Leguay
+Institution. When he was eight he entered the College school at
+Vendome, a quiet spot in Touraine, with something of the aspect of a
+university town. On the registers of the school may be read the
+following inscription: "No. 460, Honore Balzac, aged eight years and
+five months. Has had small-pox; without infirmities; sanguine
+temperament; easily excited and subject to feverishness. Entered the
+College on June 22nd 1807; left on the 22nd of August 1813."
+
+An old seventeenth-century foundation of the Oratorians, the school
+possessed at this period a renown almost equal to that of Oxford and
+Cambridge. In his _Louis Lambert_, Balzac gives us a description of
+the place. "The College," he says, "is situated in the middle of the
+town and on the little river Loir, which flows hard by the main
+school-buildings. It stands in a spacious enclosure carefully walled
+in, and comprises all the various establishments necessary in an
+institution of this kind--a chapel, a theatre, an infirmary, a bakery,
+gardens, watercourses. The College, being the most celebrated centre
+of education in France, is recruited from several provinces and even
+from our colonies, so that the distance at which families live does
+not permit of parents' seeing their children. As a rule, pupils do not
+spend the long holidays at home, and remain at the College
+continuously until their studies are terminated." As a matter of fact,
+Balzac passed his six years there without once returning to Tours,
+being entirely cut off from his family, save for such rare visits as
+were suffered from its members.
+
+The school life was semi-monastic, with a discipline of iron. "The
+leathern ferule played its terrible role with honour" among Minions,
+Smalls, Mediums, and Greats. There were, however, certain mitigations
+--long walks in the woods, cards, and amateur theatricals during
+vacation; gardening and pigeon-fancying; stilt-walking, sliding and
+clog-dancing; and, withal, the joys of a chapman's stall set up in the
+enclosure itself.
+
+_Louis Lambert_ is a slice of autobiography, attempting also a
+portrait of the novelist, psychologically as well as outwardly, while
+he was at Vendome. Although the author speaks of himself as distinct
+from his hero, they make up one and the same individual. Of himself he
+says: "I had a passion for books. My father, being desirous I should
+enter the Ecole Polytechnique, paid for me to take private lessons in
+mathematics. But my coach, being the librarian of the college, let me
+borrow books, without much troubling about what I chose, from the
+library, where during playtime he gave me my tuition. Either he was
+very little qualified to teach, or he must have been pre-occupied with
+some undertaking of his own; for he was only too willing I should read
+in the hours he ought to have devoted to me, himself working at
+something else. Thus, by virtue of a tacit agreement between us, I did
+not complain of learning nothing, and he kept secret my book-borrowing.
+This precocious passion led me to neglect my studies and instead to
+compose poems, which indeed were of no high promise, if judged by the
+following verse: 'O Inca! O roi infortune,' commencing an epopee on
+the Incas. The line became only too celebrated among my companions,
+and I was derisively nicknamed the poet. Mockery, however, did not
+cure me, and I continued my efforts in spite of the apologue of the
+Principal, Monsieur Mareschal, who one day related to me the
+misfortunes of a linnet that tried to fly before being fully fledged.
+He wished, no doubt, to turn me from my inveterate habit. As I
+continued to read, I was continually punished, and grew to be the
+least active, most idle, most contemplative pupil of the Smalls."
+
+And now for the _alter ego_. "Louis Lambert was slender and thin, not
+more than four feet and a half in height, but his weather-beaten face,
+his sun-browned hands seemed to indicate a muscular vigour which he
+had not in a normal state. So, two months after his entering the
+college, when his school life had robbed him of his well-nigh
+vegetable colour, we remarked that he became pale and white like a
+woman. His head was unusually big; his hair, beautifully black and
+naturally curly, lent an ineffable charm to his forehead, the size of
+which struck us as extraordinary, though, as may be imagined, we
+little recked of phrenology. The beauty of this prophetic forehead
+resided chiefly in the extremely pure cut of the two brows, under
+which shone his dark eyes--brows that appeared to be carved in
+alabaster. Their lines had the somewhat rare luck to be perfectly
+parallel in joining each other at the beginning of the features. These
+latter were irregular enough, but the irregularity disappeared when
+one saw his eyes, whose gaze possessed an astonishing variety of
+expression. Sometimes clear and terribly penetrating, sometimes
+angelically mild, this gaze grew dull and colourless, so to speak, in
+his contemplative moments. His eye then resembled a pane of glass no
+longer illuminated by the sun. The same was true of his strength,
+which was purely nervous, and also of his voice. Both were equally
+mobile and variable. The latter was alternately sweet and harmonious,
+and then at times painful, incorrect, and rugged. As for his ordinary
+strength, he was incapable of supporting the fatigue of any games
+whatever. He seemed obviously feeble and almost infirm; but once,
+during his first year at school, one of our bullies having jeered at
+this extreme delicacy that rendered him unfit for the rough games
+practised in the playground, Lambert with his two hands gripped the
+end of one of our tables containing twelve desks in two rows; then,
+stiffening himself against the master's chair and holding the table
+with his feet placed on the bottom cross-bar, he said: 'Let any ten of
+you try to move it.' I was there and witnessed this singular display
+of strength. It was impossible to drag the table from him. He appeared
+at certain moments to have the gift of summoning unusual powers, or of
+concentrating his whole force on a given point."
+
+That _Louis Lambert_ is an attempted revelation of Balzac's adolescent
+mind we have both Madame Surville's and Champfleury's additional
+testimony to prove. Discounting the exaggerations, due either to
+literary morbidity of the kind that produced Chateaubriand's _Rene_
+and Sainte-Beuve's _Joseph Delorme_, or to the natural vanity of which
+the novelist had so large a share, there yet remains a considerable
+substratum of truth in this record of twin, boyish existence, which
+affords a valuable secondary help towards understanding its author's
+character.
+
+The major punishment inflicted at Vendome was imprisonment in the
+dormitory. Referring to himself and his double, Balzac says: "We were
+freer in prison than anywhere. There we could talk for days together
+in the silence of the room, where each pupil had a cubicle six feet
+square, whose partitions were provided with bars across the top, and
+whose grated iron door was locked every evening and unlocked every
+morning under the surveillance of a Father, who assisted at our going
+to bed and getting up. The creak of the doors, turned with singular
+celerity by the dormitory porters, was one of the peculiarities of the
+school. In these alcoves we were sometimes shut up for months on end.
+The scholars thus caged fell under the stern eye of the Prefect, who
+came regularly, and even irregularly, to see whether we were talking
+instead of working at our tasks. But nutshells on the stairs or the
+fineness of our hearing nearly always warned us of his arrival, so
+that we were able to indulge safely in our favourite studies."
+
+One of the confinements was inflicted on Honore for his faulty Latin
+and impertinence. "Caius Gracchus was a noble heart," he translated
+with a free paraphrase of _vir nobilis_. "What would Madame de Stael
+say, if she happened to learn you had thus misconstrued the sense?"
+asked the master. (Madame de Stael was supposed to be Louis Lambert's
+patroness.) "She would say you are a stupid," muttered Honore. "Mister
+poet, you will go to prison for a week," retorted the master, who had
+overheard the comment.
+
+Among the long walks enjoyed by the pupils on Thursdays, when there
+were no lessons, was one to the famous castle of Rochambeau. In 1812,
+Balzac paid his first and impatiently anticipated visit to this spot.
+"When we arrived on the hill," he says, "whence the castle was
+visible, perched on its flank, and the winding valley with the
+glittering river threading its way through a meadow artistically laid
+out by Nature, Louis Lambert said to me: 'Why, I saw this last night
+in a dream.' He recognized the clump of trees under which we were, the
+arrangement of the foliage, the colour of the water, the turrets of
+the castle, in fine, all the details of the place. . . . I relate this
+event," he continues, "first because each man can find in his
+existence some phenomenon of sleeping or waking analogous to it; and
+next, because it is true and gives an idea of Lambert's prodigious
+intelligence. In fact, he deduced from the occurrence an entire
+system, possessing himself, like Cuvier, in another order of things,
+of a fragment of life to reconstruct a whole creation." And Lambert is
+made to develop a theory of the astral body and astral locomotion. The
+younger self announces also: "I shall be celebrated--an alchemist of
+thought."
+
+With such notions in his head at this early age, it was not surprising
+he should have begun, while in his tender teens, a metaphysical
+composition entitled _Treatise of the Will_. After working for six
+months on it, a day of misfortune arrived. The pieces of paper on
+which it had been written were hidden away from all eyes in a locked
+box, which gradually assumed the weird attraction of a Blue Beard's
+secret chamber to his mocking class-companions, so that at length
+their inquisitiveness drove them to essay capturing the said box by
+violence. Amidst the noise caused by the child-author's desperate
+defence of his treasure, Father Hagoult suddenly appeared; and, being
+apprized of what was inside the box, insisted on its being opened. The
+papers were at once confiscated, and were never given back. Their loss
+caused the boy a serious shock, which, combining with debility of
+longer standing, brought on a malady that necessitated his leaving the
+school. The Principal himself advised the removal. In 1813, between
+Easter and prize distribution, he wrote to Madame Balzac asking her to
+come immediately and fetch her son away. The lad, he explained, was
+prostrated by a kind of coma, which alarmed his teachers all the more
+as they were at a loss to account for it. To them Honore was simply an
+idler. It did not occur to them that his condition was owing to
+cerebral fatigue. Thin and sickly-looking at present, he had the air
+of a somnambulist, asleep with his eyes open, oblivious of the
+questions put to him, and unable to answer when asked: "What are you
+thinking of? Where are you?" His return home produced a painful
+impression. "So this is how the college authorities remit to us the
+nice children we entrust to them," exclaimed his grandmother. And it
+must be confessed that the good Fathers, engrossed by the training of
+their charges' souls, paid but little attention to the bodies.
+
+In the rooms where the pupils worked, the exhalations by which the air
+was constantly vitiated mingled with the smells left by the debris of
+lunches and teas and by other accumulated dirt. There were also
+cupboards and closets where each pupil used to keep his private booty
+--pigeons killed on fete days or dishes pilfered from the refectory.
+Swept only once a day, the place was always filthy, and was further
+rendered disagreeable by odours coming from the wash-house,
+dressing-room, pantries, etc. All this with the mud brought in from
+the outside playgrounds made the atmosphere insupportable. Moreover,
+the pupils' petty ailments and pains were almost entirely unheeded. In
+winter chaps and chilblains were Honore's unceasing lot. His woman's
+complexion, and especially the skin of his ears and lips, cracked
+under the least cold; his soft white hands reddened and swelled.
+Constant colds harassed him; and, until he was inured to the Vendome
+regimen, pain was his daily portion.
+
+A lively recollection of what he went through in these school-days
+persisted during his maturer years. Writing in 1844 to Monsieur
+Fontemoing, one of his few boy-companions that he maintained relations
+with, he said: "When David is ready to inaugurate his statue of Jean
+Bart in Dieppe, I shall perhaps be there to enjoy the spectacle; and
+then we will spend one or two days recalling to mind the cages, wooden
+breeches and other Vendomoiseries."
+
+His memory was probably less faithful in 1832, when striving to
+reproduce the tenour of the lost _Treatise of the Will_. At thirteen
+he could scarcely have had such definite notions of intuition and
+other operations of the mind; and there must be a fairly long
+antedating of reflection in attributing to Louis Lambert, even with
+the latter's two years seniority, thoughts like the following:--
+
+"Often amid calm and silence, when our inner faculties are lulled and
+we indulge in sweet repose, and darkness hovers round us, and we fall
+into a contemplation of other things, straight an idea darts forth,
+flashes through the infinite space created by our brain, and then,
+like a will-o'-the-wisp, vanishes never to return--an ephemeral
+apparition like that of such children as yield boundless joy and grief
+to bereaved parents; a species of still-born flower in the fields of
+thought. At times also the idea, instead of forcibly gushing and dying
+without consistence, dawns and poises in the fathomless limbo of the
+organs that give it birth; it tires us by its long parturition; then
+it develops and grows, is fertile, rich, and productive in the visible
+grace of youth and with all the qualities of longevity; it sustains
+the most inquiring glances, invites them, and never wearies them. Now
+and again ideas are generated in swarms, one evolves another; they
+interlace and entice, they abound and are dalliant; now and again,
+they arise pale and looming, and perish through want of strength or
+nourishment--the quickening substance is insufficient. And, last of
+all, on certain days they plunge into the abysses, lighting up their
+depths; they terrify us, and leave us in a soul despair. Our ideas
+have their complete system; they are a kingdom of nature, a sort of
+efflorescence of which a madman perhaps might give an iconography.
+Yes, all attests the existence of these delightful creations I may
+compare to flowers. Indeed, their production is no more surprising
+than that of perfumes and colour in the plant."
+
+Still, without being a Pascal, Balzac in the first half of his teens,
+was evidently not an ordinary child. There was a ferment of thought,
+as he said, reacting on itself and seeking to surprise the secrets of
+its own being. Fostered by the moral isolation in which he lived
+during these six years, his self-analysis grew unwholesome, there
+being little or nothing on the physical side to counterbalance it.
+Fortunately, the return to saner surroundings occurred before the evil
+was irremediable. Running wild for a few months in the open air, he
+recovered his natural vivacity and cheerfulness. Every day he went for
+a long ramble through one or another of the landscapes of Touraine,
+and on his way home enjoyed the magnificent sunsets lighting up the
+steeples of his native town and glinting on the river covered with
+craft, both large and small. To check his reveries, Madame Balzac
+forced him to amuse his two sisters Laure and Laurence and to fly the
+kite of his little brother Henry,[*] who had been born while he was at
+Vendome.
+
+  [*] The name is spelt in the English way.
+
+On Sundays and fete days he regularly accompanied his mother to the
+Cathedral of saint-Gatien, where he must have been an observant
+spectator if not consistently a devout listener. He prayed by fits and
+starts; and in the intervals studied closely and with an eye for
+effect the appearance of priestly persons and functions, with altar
+and stained-glass window in the background, and gathered materials for
+his Abbes Birotteau, Bonnet, and others. The period was one of
+compensation and adjustment. What he had been striving to assimilate
+had now the leisure to arrange itself in his brain, which was no
+longer overheated.
+
+As soon as his health was considered sufficiently strong, he began
+attending classes at the institution of a Monsieur Chretien, and
+supplemented them by private lessons received at home. His conviction
+that he would become a famous man was as strong as ever, and his naive
+assertion of it was frequent enough to provoke great teasing in the
+domestic circle. Far from being irritated, he laughed with those that
+laughed at him, his sisters saying: "Hail to the great Balzac!" On the
+part of his elders the bantering was intended to damp his exalted
+notions, which they regarded as ill-founded, judging him, as his
+Vendome professors, by the smallness of his Latin and Greek. His
+mother in particular had no faith in his prophecies nor yet in his
+occasional utterances of deeper things than his years warranted: "You
+certainly don't know what you are talking about," was her habitual
+snub. And, when Honore, not daring to argue further, took refuge in
+his sly, not to say supercilious, smile, she taxed him with
+overweeningness--an accusation that had some truth in it. She might
+well be excused for her scepticism, for the youth had also large
+ignorance in some of the commoner things of life, and, moreover,
+allowed himself to be taken in easily. Laure seems to have traded a
+good deal on his credulity for the sake of fun. One day she gave him a
+so-called cactus seedling, supposed to have come from the land of
+Judaea. Honore preserved it preciously in a pot for a fortnight, only
+to discover at length that this plant was a vulgar pumpkin.
+
+At the end of 1814, Monsieur Balzac came to reside in Paris, being
+placed at the head of the Commissariat of the First Military Division;
+and Honore's education was continued in the capital, for a while at
+the establishment of a Monsieur Lepitre, Rue Saint-Louis, and then at
+another kept by Messieurs Sganzer and Beuzelin, Rue de Thorigny, both
+being situated in the Marais Quarter, near his father's house. So far
+as the subjects of the curriculum were concerned, he was still a
+mediocre pupil. However, literature began to attract his attention and
+efforts, and one composition of his for an examination--the speech of
+Brutus's wife after the condemnation of her sons--treasured up by his
+sister Laure, is mentioned by her as exhibiting some of the energy and
+realistic presentment in which he was ultimately to excel.
+
+When he was seventeen, his father, seeing that there was no chance of
+his getting into the Ecole Polytechnique, decided to put him into the
+legal profession; and, for the purpose of preliminary training,
+induced a solicitor friend, Guillonnet de Merville,[*] to take him
+into his office in the place of a clerk--no other than Eugene Scribe,
+the future dramatist--who had just quitted law for literature. During
+the eighteen months passed here, Balzac went to lectures at the
+Sorbonne University, and was coached by private tutors. Among the
+College professors he heard were Villemain, Guizot, and Cousin. These
+great teachers converted his passion for reading into more serious
+habits of study; and, in order to profit more by their lessons, he
+often spent his leisure hours in the libraries of the city and sought
+out old books of value in the cases of the dealers along the Quays.
+
+  [*] _An Episode under the Terror_ was dedicated to him.
+
+The pocket-money required for such purchases was principally supplied
+by his grandmother, who permitted him to win from her at whist or
+boston in the evenings he remained at home. A friend of his
+grandmother's that lived in a neighbouring flat was likewise very kind
+to him. She was an old maiden lady who had been acquainted with
+Beaumarchais, and delighted to chat with her protege about the author
+of the _Mariage de Figaro_. Though now a young man, Honore was not
+tall; five feet two was his exact height. Retaining his childish love
+of laughter and fun of every kind, he showed at present greater
+facility in learning, with a faculty of memory that was prodigious.
+Having to go with his sisters to balls, he took lessons in dancing;
+but, happening to meet with an unlucky fall, and resenting the smiles
+and giggling his accident called forth among the girls, he renounced
+attempts at tripping on the light, fantastic toe, and devoted
+subsequent visits to the task of jotting down notes.
+
+A second period of eighteen months in the office of a notary, Maitre
+Passez, completed his law apprenticeship. In the first pages of
+_Colonel Chabert_ the novelist gives us a sketch of the interior where
+he acquired his knowledge of chicane. Our nostrils are familiarized
+with its stove-heated atmosphere, our eyes with the yellow-billed
+walls, the dirty floor, the greasy furniture, the bundles of papers,
+the chimney-piece covered with bottles and glasses and bits of bread
+and cheese; and our ears are assailed by the quips and jokes and puns
+of the clerks and office-boys who were his companions for a time. He
+lingers over his reminiscences, which, though pleasant from their
+connection with his lost youth, had none the less to do with men and
+things that settled the foundation of his maturer pessimism. An
+article of his in 1839, entitled the _Notary_, says:--
+
+"After five years passed in a notary's office, it is hard for a young
+man to conserve his candour. He has seen the hideous origins of all
+fortunes, the disputes of heirs over corpses not yet cold, the human
+heart in conflict with the Code. . . . A lawyer's office is a
+confessional where the various passions come to empty out their bag of
+bad ideas and to consult about their cases of conscience while seeking
+means of execution."
+
+While we have no conclusive evidence on the point, it is yet probable
+that, at least for a while, Balzac had, during these years of legal
+training, serious thoughts of adopting law as his career. Otherwise he
+would scarcely have troubled to gain such an extensive acquaintance
+with everything appertaining to its theory and practice--knowledge
+which he afterwards utilized in several of his books, notably in
+_Cesar Birotteau_ and the _Marriage Contract_. However, in 1819, he
+had definitely made up his mind to follow Scribe's example. At this
+date his father informed him that an opportunity offered itself for
+him to become a junior partner in a solicitor's practice, which might
+be ultimately purchased with money advanced him and the dowry that an
+advantageous marriage would bring. When the newly-fledged Bachelor of
+Laws declared that it was impossible for him to accept the proposal,
+and that he had determined to become a man of letters, trusting to his
+pen for a living, the elder Balzac's astonishment was unbounded. If
+any echoes of his son's recent cogitations and conversations on the
+subject had come to the father's ears, they had been deemed so much
+empty talk; and the friends who were consulted in the dilemma had
+nothing more encouraging to say. One of them pronounced that Honore
+was worth nothing better than to make a scrivener of or a clerk in
+some Government department. The poor fellow had a good handwriting
+--this, indeed, deteriorated later. Through his parents' influence, it
+was thought he might ultimately attain a moderate competency. Perhaps
+Laure, the favourite sister and early confidante of the novelist, may
+have used persuasion at this juncture with her father and mother. At
+any rate, as the issue of a great deal of lively discussion, the
+parents agreed to let Honore make a two years' experiment as a free
+lance in the ranks of the book-writing tribe. By the end of that time,
+they no doubt imagined he would be glad enough to re-enact the parable
+of the prodigal son and start in some safer trade.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER III
+
+               EXPERIMENTS IN LITERATURE AND BUSINESS
+
+It happened that Honore's enlistment in the army of _litterateurs_
+coincided with considerable changes in his parents' circumstances. His
+father had just been retired on a pension and had recently lost money
+in two investments. As there were a couple of daughters to be provided
+for, the family, for the sake of economy, quitted Paris and went to
+live at Villeparisis, six leagues distant from the capital, where a
+modest country-house had been bought. Honore, by dint of insistence,
+obtained permission to remain in Paris, where he would be freer to
+work and could more easily get into relations with publishers; and a
+meagrely furnished attic-study was rented for him at No. 9 Rue
+Lesdiguieres, a street near the Arsenal, still bearing the same name.
+A small monthly allowance was made him, just enough to keep him from
+starving; and an old woman, Mother Comin--the Iris-messenger, he
+facetiously called her--who had been in the family's service and was
+staying on in the city, undertook to pay him occasional visits and to
+report should he be in difficulties.
+
+The novelty of his semi-independence caused him at first to look with
+cheerful eye on his narrow surroundings. To his sister he wrote in
+April 1819:--
+
+"Here are some details about my way of living. I have taken a servant.
+
+"A servant! What can you be thinking of!
+
+"Yes; a servant. His name is as funny as that of Dr. Nacquart's
+domestic. The Doctor's is Tranquil; mine is Myself. He is a bad
+acquisition! . . . Myself is idle, clumsy, and improvident. When his
+master is hungry and thirsty, he has sometimes neither bread nor water
+to give him; he does not know how to protect himself against the wind,
+which blows through the door and window like Tulou through his flute,
+but less agreeably. As soon as I am awake, I ring for Myself, and he
+makes my bed. He sets to sweeping, and is not very deft in the
+exercise.
+
+"Myself!
+
+"Yes, Sir.
+
+"Just look at the cobweb where that big fly is buzzing loud enough to
+deafen me, and at those bits of fluff under the bed, and at that dust
+on the windows blinding me.
+
+"Why, sir, I don't see anything.
+
+"Tut, tut! hold your tongue, impudence!
+
+"And he does, singing while he sweeps and sweeping while he sings,
+laughs in talking and talks in laughing. He has arranged my linen in
+the cupboard by the chimney, after papering the receptacle white; and,
+with a three-penny blue paper and bordering, he has made a screen. The
+room he has painted from the book-case to the fireplace. On the whole,
+he is a good fellow."
+
+In the introduction to _Facino Cane_, which Balzac wrote some fifteen
+years later, there is a return of memory to this sojourn in the
+Lesdiguieres garret. "I lived frugally," he says; "I had accepted all
+the conditions of monastic life, so needful to the worker. When it was
+fine, the utmost I did was to go for a stroll on the Boulevard
+Bourdon. One hobby alone enticed me from my studious habits, and even
+that was study. I used to observe the manners of the Faubourg, its
+inhabitants, and their characters. Dressed as plainly as the workmen,
+indifferent to decorum, I aroused no mistrust, and could mix with them
+and watch their bargaining and quarrelling with each other as they
+went home from their toil. My faculty of observation had become
+intuitive; it penetrated the soul without neglecting the body, or
+rather it so well grasped exterior details that at once it pierced
+beyond. It gave me the power of living the life of the individual in
+whom it was exercised, enabling me to put myself in his skin, just at
+the dervish of the _Arabian Nights_ entered the body and soul of those
+over whom he pronounced certain words."
+
+The would-be man of letters pushed his hobby even to dogging people to
+their homes, and to registering in note-book or brain their
+conversations--records of joys, sorrows, and interests.
+
+"I could realize their existence," he affirms; "I felt their rags on
+my back. I walked with my feet in their worn-out shoes; it was the
+dreaming of a man awake. . . . To quit my own habits and become
+another by the intoxication of my moral faculties at will, such was my
+diversion. To what do I owe this gift? Is it second sight? Is it one
+of those possessions of the mind that lead to madness? I have never
+sought out the causes of this gift. I have it and use it--that is all
+I can say."
+
+Honore's 'prentice attempts at producing a masterpiece oscillated
+between the novel and the drama. Two stories, entitled respectively
+_Coquecigrue_ (an imaginary animal) and _Stella_, were abandoned
+before they were begun. A comic opera had the same fate. The _Two
+Philosophers_, a farce in which a couple of sham sages mocked at the
+world and quarrelled with each other, while secretly coveting the good
+things they affected to despise, appears to have been worked at, but
+uselessly. Next a tragedy, tackled with greater resolution, was
+composed and entirely finished. Curiously, the subject of it,
+_Cromwell_, was the same as that chosen by Victor Hugo, a few years
+later, to achieve the overthrow of classicism and the substitution of
+Romanticism in its stead.
+
+The drama was written in verse, a form of literary composition foreign
+to Balzac's talent. Even during the months he laboured at his task, he
+confessed to Laure, 'midst his sallies of joking, that what he was
+writing teemed with defective lines. He polished and repolished,
+however, hoping to overcome these drawbacks, upheld by his invincible
+self-confidence. The piece, as sketched out in his correspondence,
+made large alterations in English history. Its interest hinged chiefly
+on the dilemma created in Cromwell's mind by his two sons falling into
+the hands of a small Royalist force, and by Charles's ordering them to
+be given up without conditions to their father, although the King was
+a prisoner. Posed in the third act, the dilemma was solved in the
+fourth by Cromwell's decision to condemn the King, notwithstanding his
+generosity. At the close of the play, the Queen escaped from England,
+crying aloud for vengeance, which she intended to seek in all
+quarters. France would combat the English, would defeat and crush them
+in the end.
+
+"I mean my tragedy to be the breviary of peoples and kings," he
+proudly informed his sister. "It is impossible for you not to find the
+plan superb. How the interest grows from scene to scene! The incident
+of Cromwell's sons is most happily invented. Charles's magnanimity in
+restoring to Cromwell his sons is finer than that of Augustus
+pardoning Cinna." In blowing his own trumpet Balzac was early an
+adept.
+
+To stimulate his imagination and reflection, he transferred his daily
+walk from the Jardin des Plantes to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. "There
+I make," he explained, "studies of grief useful for my _Cromwell_.
+Real grief is so hard to depict; it requires so much simplicity." His
+garret had still its charm. "The time I spend in it will be sweet to
+look back upon," he said. "To live as I like, to work in my own way,
+to go to sleep conjuring up the future, which I imagine beautiful, to
+have Rousseau's Julie as a sweetheart, La Fontaine and Moliere as
+friends, Racine as a master, and Pere Lachaise as a promenade ground!
+Ah! if it could only last for ever!" His dreaming led him on to wider
+anticipations even than those of literary glory. "If I am to be a
+grand fellow (which, it's true, we don't yet know), I may add to my
+fame as a great author that of being a great citizen. This is a
+tempting ambition also."
+
+At the end of April 1820, he went to Villeparisis with his completed
+tragedy. Counting on a triumph, he had requested that some
+acquaintances should be invited to the house to hear it read aloud.
+Among those present was the gentleman who had advised his turning
+clerk in the Civil Service. The reading commenced, and, as it
+progressed, the youthful author noticed that his audience first showed
+signs of being bored, then of being bewildered, and lastly of being
+frankly dissatisfied and hostile. Laure was dumbfounded. The candid
+gentleman broke out into uncompromising, scathing condemnation; and
+those who were most indulgent were obliged to pronounce that the
+famous tragedy was a failure. Honore defended his production with
+energy; and, to settle the dispute, his father proposed it should be
+submitted to an old professor of the Ecole Polytechnique, whom he
+knew, and who should act as umpire. This course was adopted; and the
+Professor, after careful examination of the manuscript, opined that
+Honore would act wisely in preferring any other career to literature.
+
+The verdict was received with more calmness than might have been
+expected. Instead of twisting his own neck, as he had hinted he might,
+if unsuccessful, the young author quietly remarked that tragedies were
+not his forte and that he intended to devote himself to novels.
+
+As the price of their assent to his continuance in writing, Honore's
+parents stipulated that he should quit his garret and come home. The
+return was all the more advisable as Laure was about to be married to
+a Monsieur Surville, who was a civil engineer, and a gap was thus
+created in the home circle, which his presence could prevent from
+being so much felt.[*] His health besides had suffered during his
+fifteen months of self-imposed privations. In after-life he complained
+much to some of his friends--Auguste Fessart and Madame Hanska amongst
+others--of his parents' or rather his mother's hardness to him while
+he was in the Lesdiguieres Street lodgings, and asserted that, if more
+liberality had then been displayed, most of his subsequent misfortunes
+would have been avoided. This is by no means certain. His troubles and
+burdens would seem to have been caused far more by mistakes of
+judgment and improvidence than by any stress of circumstance.
+
+  [*] Laurence, the younger sister, was married in 1821, twelve months
+      after her sister. Her husband was Monsieur de Montzaigle. She
+      died before the close of the decade.
+
+For the next five years he remained with his father and mother,
+excepting the occasional visits paid to Touraine, L'Isle-Adam, or
+Bayeux, at which last place his sister Laure was settled for a while.
+In a letter to her there he banteringly spoke of his desire to enter
+the matrimonial state: "Look me out some widow who is a rich heiress,"
+he said; "you know what I require. Praise me up to her--twenty-two
+years of age, amiable, polite, with eyes of life and fire, the best
+husband Heaven has ever made. I will give you fifty per cent on the
+dowry and pin-money." He alluded to his mother's worrying disposition
+and susceptibility: "We are oddities, forsooth, in our blessed family.
+What a pity I cannot put us into novels." This he was to do later.
+
+Beforehand there was his Romantic cycle to be run through, in more
+than forty volumes, if Laure's statement could be believed. What she
+meant no doubt was sections of volumes or else tales; and even the
+composition of forty tales in five years would be a considerable
+performance. True, there were partnerships with Le Poitevin de
+l'Egreville,[*] Horace Raisson, Etienne Arago. And the material turned
+out was of the coarsest kind, generally second-hand, a hash-up of
+stories already published, imitations of Monk Lewis, Maturin, Mrs.
+Radcliffe, and French writers of the same school, with a little
+shuffling of characters and incidents. The preface to the novel that
+opened the series--_The Heiress of Birague_--speaks of an old trunk
+bequeathed by an uncle and filled with manuscripts, which the author
+had merely to edit. And the apology had more truth in it than he meant
+it to convey.
+
+  [*] Son of Le Poitevin Saint-Alme.
+
+Balzac was quite aware of the small merit of this hack-work. To Laure
+he confessed: "My novel is finished. I will send it to you on
+condition of your not lending it or boasting of it as a masterpiece."
+He could appreciate better achievement, and spoke of _Kenilworth_ as
+the finest thing in the world. His excuse was that he had no time to
+reflect upon what he wrote. He must write every day to gain the
+independence that he sought; and had none but this ignoble way, as he
+said, of securing it.
+
+Moreover, there was still the dreaded possibility of his having to
+embrace another profession than literature. The notary was dead and
+the business had been taken over by some one else, so that this danger
+no longer threatened him; but the candid friend was inquiring about a
+second sinecure. "What a terrible man!" exclaimed Honore.
+
+He indulged in a fit of premature discouragement, seeking for some one
+or something to cast a little brightness over what he deemed his dull
+existence. "I have none of the flowers of life," he lamented; "and yet
+I am in the season when they bloom! What is the good of fortune and
+joys when youth is past? Of what use the actor's garments if one does
+not play the role? The old man is one who has dined and looks at
+others eating. I am young and my plate is empty, and I am hungry,
+Laure. Will ever my two only, immense desires--to be celebrated and to
+be loved--be satisfied?" They were, but at a cost that was dearly
+paid.
+
+However great Balzac's potential genius, it was too little developed,
+too little exercised at this period for him to produce anything of
+real, permanent worth. The fiction in which he was destined to excel,
+the only fiction he was peculiarly fitted to write, demanded maturity
+of experience that he could hardly acquire before another decade had
+passed over his head. Yet the stories he reeled off had a certain
+market value. _The Heiress of Birague_ was sold for eight hundred
+francs, _Jean-Louis_, or the _Foundling Girl_, for thirteen hundred;
+and a higher price still was obtained (whether the money was actually
+received is uncertain) for the _Handsome Jew_, afterwards republished
+under a fresh title, _The Israelite_.
+
+Contemporary critics declined to acknowledge that, in these books and
+their congeners,[*] there were some traces of a master-hand. To-day
+the traces are perceptible, because criticism has a better opportunity
+of discovering them. Here and there, and especially in _Argow, the
+Pirate_, is to be noticed a beginning of the realism that was
+afterwards the novelist's excellence. The theme, that of a brigand
+purified by love, is, as Monsieur le Breton remarks in his study of
+Balzac, a romantic one in the manner of Byron, and has things in
+common with Walter Scott's _Heart of Midlothian_, Victor Hugo's
+_Bug-Jargal_, and Pixerecourt's _Belveder_. There is an atmosphere of
+imagination in it, the action is quick, and the characters are
+strongly though distortedly drawn. Moreover, a breath of healthy
+sentiment runs through the story, which is not always the case in the
+later and more celebrated novels. Balzac must have learnt much and
+acquired much that was useful to him during this puddling of his ore
+in the furnace of his early efforts; and, if in his maturer age he
+retained certain defects of the Romantic school, it was because a
+lurking sympathy with them in his nature prevented his shaking himself
+free of them, when he reformed his manner.
+
+  [*] Other youthful productions were The Centenarian, The Last Fairy,
+      Don Gigadas, The Excommunicated Man, Wann-Chlore, or Jane the
+      Pale, The Curate of the Ardennes, and Argow, the Pirate.
+
+The style of his letters at this same period was admirable, sparkling
+with wit and with a humour that unfortunately grew rarer, bitterer,
+and even coarser often, in his later career. Some of his rapidly
+sketched pictures were incidents of home life. This one represents his
+mother's fidgety disposition:--
+
+"Louise, give me a glass of water."
+
+"Yes, Ma'am."
+
+"Ah, my poor Louise, I'm in a bad way; I am indeed!"
+
+"Nonsense, Ma'am!"
+
+"It's worse than other years."
+
+"Lud! . . . Ma'am!"
+
+"My head is splitting. . . . . Oh, Louise! The shutters are slamming;
+it's enough to break all the panes in the drawing-room."
+
+Already, with the faculty of exaggeration which characterised him all
+his life, he anticipated gaining within the next twelvemonth no less
+than twenty thousand francs; forgetting the small result of his
+_Cromwell_, he spoke of having a lot of theatrical pieces in hand,
+plus an historical novel, _Odette de Champdivers_, and another dealing
+with the fortunes of the R'hoone family. R'hoone was an anagram of his
+own name Honore. Lord R'hoone was one of his pseudonyms. And "Lord
+R'hoone," he told Laure, "will soon be the rage, the most amiable,
+fertile author; and ladies will regard him as the apple of their eye.
+Then the little Honore will arrive in a coach with head held up, proud
+look, and fob well garnished. At his approach, amidst flattering
+murmurs from the admiring crowd, people will say: 'He is Madame
+Surville's brother.' Then men, women, and children, and unborn babes
+will leap as the hills. . . . And I shall be the ladies' man, in view
+of which event I am saving up my money. Since yesterday I have given
+up dowagers, and intend to fall back on thirty-year-old widows. Send
+all you can find to Lord R'hoone, Paris. This address will suffice. He
+is known at the city gates. N.B.--Send them, carriage paid, free of
+cracks and soldering. Let them be rich and amiable; as for beauty, it
+is not a _sine qua non_. Varnish wears off, but the underneath
+earthenware remains."
+
+Through all these displays of fireworks one fact stands out, that
+Balzac was in too great a hurry to reap fame and wealth--wealth
+especially. It was his hurry that inspired his constant complaint:
+"Ah! if only I had enough bread and cheese, I would soon make my mark
+and write books to last." This was not altogether true nor just to his
+parents. He had his bread and cheese and a home to eat it in, which
+authors have not always enjoyed who have gained immortality by their
+unaided pen. Although his family were anxious to see him independent,
+they did not oblige him to depend upon what he earned. Nothing at the
+moment prevented him from striving to produce something of good
+quality and spending the time necessary over it. He saw the better,
+but followed the worse.
+
+"My ideas," he wrote to Laure, "are changing so much that my execution
+will soon change also. . . . In a short time there will be the same
+difference between the me of to-day and the me of to-morrow as exists
+between the young man of twenty and the man of thirty! I am
+reflecting; my ideas are ripening. I recognize that Nature has treated
+me favourably in giving me my heart and my head. Believe in me, dear
+sister, for I need some one to believe in me. I do not despair of
+doing something one day. I see at present that _Cromwell_ had not even
+the merit of being an embryon. As for my novels, they are not up to
+much."
+
+How could they be when he supplied them, so to speak, machine-made!
+"Citizen Pollet" button-holed him in August 1822 and induced him to
+sign an agreement binding him to deliver a couple of these stories by
+the 1st of October. Six hundred francs were paid cash down, and the
+rest in deferred bills. The second of the couple was the _Curate of
+the Ardennes_, which Laure helped him to write.
+
+It surprises at first sight to read that the demand for this cheap
+fiction was so great in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
+The explanation is that, during the last years of the Empire, the
+article had scarcely been in the market at all, so that, in the
+Restoration period, which was one of peace and leisure, there was
+quite a rush for it. On the whole, Balzac did not manage to hit the
+public fancy with his work in this line. The further he went with it
+the less he liked it, and such bits of better stuff as he introduced
+in lieu of the blood and mystery rather lessened than increased the
+saleableness of his books. For the printing of the _Last Fairy_ he had
+to pay, himself; and he was obliged to own, after five years' catering
+for popular taste, he was no nearer emerging from obscurity than he
+had been at the commencement. It was discouraging and humiliating; he
+had started with such confidence and boasting. Now those who had
+spoken against his literary vocation seemed to be justified, and those
+who had been most inclined to believe in him were sceptical.
+
+However, there was still one woman who kept her faith in his capacity
+for soaring above the common pitch. She it was who, understanding him
+better than his own family, became a second mother to him. Attracted
+by him, in spite of his weaknesses of conceit, loudness, and
+vulgarity, she polished his behaviour, guided his perceptions,
+corrected his pretentiousness, influencing him through the sincerity
+and strength of her affection.
+
+Twenty-two years his senior, she was the daughter of a German harpist
+named Henner, in favour at the Court of Louis XVI., whom Marie-Antoinette
+had married to Mademoiselle Quelpee-Laborde, one of her own
+ladies-in-waiting. Both King and Queen stood as god-parents to the
+Henners' little girl, who, when grown up, was married to a Monsieur de
+Berny, of ancient, noble lineage, and bore him nine children. The date
+at which Balzac made her acquaintance has been variously stated.
+Basing themselves upon his _Love-story at School_, some writers have
+supposed he knew her when he was a boy, but there is no evidence to
+confirm this hypothesis. The first definite mention of her and her
+family occurs in a gossipy letter he wrote to Laure in 1822 from
+Villeparisis, where the de Berny family were settled: "I may tell
+you," he says, "that Mademoiselle de B. has narrowly escaped being
+broken into three pieces in a fall; that Mademoiselle E. is not so
+stupid as we imagined; that she has a talent for serious painting and
+even for caricature; that she is a musician to the tips of her toes;
+that Monsieur C. continues to swear; that Madame de B(erny) has become
+a bran, wheat, and fodder merchant, perceiving after forty years'
+reflection that money is everything."
+
+At this date, the relationship between him and Madame de Berny was one
+of ordinary friendship, yet with indications of warmer feelings on
+either side that his parents noticed and disapproved. With a view to
+discouraging the intimacy, they induced him to pay visits that took
+him from home for some time; but the object they aimed at was not
+attained. The intimacy ripened. Madame de Berny was his only
+confidante. His few male friends were too old or too young for his
+unbosomings. There was the Abbe de Villers whom he stayed with at
+Nogent, and there was Theodore Dablin, the retired ironmonger, whom he
+used to call his "_cher petit pere_." Besides these two elders, there
+was the young de Berny, who was considerably his junior. But to none
+of them could he talk unreservedly of his ambitions literary and
+political. For a man between twenty and thirty years of age, whose
+mind is seething with evolving thought, there is no more sympathetic
+and appreciative adviser than a woman some years his senior. Madame de
+Berny listened to his expression of Imperialistic opinions tinged with
+Liberalism, as she listened to his confession of hopes and
+disappointments; and, in turn, talked with persuasive accents of those
+pre-Revolution days which she had known as a child. She was able also
+to draw the curtain aside and show him something of the history of the
+revolution itself and of the Terror, during which she and her parents'
+family had been imprisoned. It was his first mingling with the
+grandeurs that were his delight. Through her narration, he was able to
+enter the old Court society and watch the intrigues of the personages
+who had been famous in it. Madame de Berny's mother was still living,
+and added her own reminiscences to those of her daughter. Later, by
+their agency he was introduced to some of the aristocratic partisans
+of the fallen dynasty--the Duke de Fitz-James and the Duchess de
+Castries. Under Madame de Berny's education, his Imperialism was
+transformed into Legitimism.
+
+How a matron of her age should have allowed the friendship of the
+commencement to develop into a liaison is one of those problems of
+sexual psychology easier to describe in Balzac's own language than to
+explain rationally. We know that she was not happy with her husband,
+and can surmise that she entered upon the role she played without
+clearly foreseeing its dangers. No doubt, her desire to form this
+genius in the rough carried her away from her moorings, which, indeed,
+had never been very strong, since she had already once before in her
+married life had a lover. Besides there was her temperament, sensual
+and sentimental; and with it the tradition of the eighteenth-century
+morals, indulgent to illicit amours.
+
+Most likely, the second phase of her relations with Balzac coincided
+with his temporary abandonment of authorship for business. It was in
+1825 that he resolved to embark on publishing,[*] partly urged by the
+mute reproaches of his parents and partly allured by the prospect of
+rapidly growing rich. He had likewise some intention of bringing out
+his own books, both those previously written and those in preparation.
+Of these latter there were a goodly number sketched out in a sort of
+note-book or album, which his sister Laure called his _garde-manger_
+or pantry. It was full of jottings anent people, places, and things
+that he had come across in the preceding lustrum.
+
+  [*] The initiator of this project was not Balzac, although his early
+      biographers, Madame Surville included, gave him the credit for it.
+
+The idea of taking up business was mooted to him first by a Monsieur
+d'Assonvillez, an acquaintance of Madame de Berny, whom he used to see
+and talk with when staying, as he occasionally did, at the small
+apartment rented by his father in Paris. Just then Urbain Canel, the
+celebrated publisher of Romantic books, was thinking of putting on the
+market compact editions of the old French classics, beginning with
+Moliere and La Fontaine; and Balzac, either already knowing him or
+being introduced to him by a mutual friend, was admitted to join in
+the undertaking. The money necessary for the partnership was lent to
+him by Monsieur d'Assonvillez, who, as a sharp business man, imposed
+conditions on the loan which secured him from loss in case of failure.
+The editions were to be library ones, illustrated by the artist
+Deveria (who about this time painted Balzac's portrait), and were to
+be published in parts. The price was high, twenty francs for each
+work; and additional drawbacks were the smallness of the type and the
+poorness of the engravings. No success attended the experiment; at the
+end of a twelvemonth not a score of copies had been sold. By common
+consent the firm, which had been increased to four partners, broke up
+their association, and Balzac was left sole proprietor of the concern,
+the assets of which consisted of a large quantity of wastepaper, and
+the liabilities amounted to a respectable number of thousand francs.
+
+Madame Surville attributes the fiasco to the professional jealousy of
+competitors, who discouraged the public from buying; but the cause of
+the discomfiture lay rather in the faulty manner in which the partners
+carried out their plan. Monsieur d'Assonvillez being still an
+interested adviser, Balzac now submitted to him a project for
+retrieving his losses by adding a printing to his publishing business.
+The stock and goodwill of a printer were to be bought, and a working
+type-setter, named Barbier, was to be associated as a second principal
+in the affair, on account of his practical experience. The project was
+approved, and the elder Balzac was persuaded to come forward with a
+capital of about thirty thousand francs, this sum being required to
+pay out the retiring printer, Monsieur Laurens, and obtain the new
+firm's patent. Madame de Berny had already lent Honore money to help
+him in the publishing scheme. At present, she induced her husband to
+intervene with the Government so that the printing licence might be
+granted without delay.
+
+The printing premises were situated at No. 17, Rue des Marais,
+Faubourg Saint-Germain, to-day Rue Visconti, near the Quai Malaquais.
+The street, which is a narrow one, subsists nearly the same as it was
+a century ago. Older associations, indeed, are attached to it. At No.
+19 died Jean Racine in 1699, and Adrienne Lecouvreur in 1730. No. 17
+was a new construction when Balzac went to it, having probably been
+built on the site where Nicolas Vauquelin des Yveteaux used to receive
+the far-famed Ninon in his gardens. On the impost, where formerly
+appeared the names Balzac and Barbier, now may be read "A. Herment,
+successeur de Garnier." The place is still devoted to like uses.
+
+In the _Lost Illusions_, whose part-sequel _David Sechard_ reproduces
+Balzac's life as a printer, there is a description of the ground
+floor: "a huge room, lighted on the street-side by an old stained-glass
+window and on the inner yard-side by a casement." The passage in
+Gothic style led to the office; and on the floor above were the living
+rooms, one of which was hung with blue calico, was furnished with
+taste, and was adorned with the owner's first novels, bound by
+Thouvenin. In this "den," during the two years that he was engaged in
+the printing trade, were received the daily visits of her he called
+his _Dilecta_.
+
+She could not give him the practical business qualities in which he
+was utterly lacking and for which his wonderful intuitions of
+commercial possibilities were no compensation; but she could smile at
+his enthusiasms and sympathize with his disappointments, which had
+their see-saw pretty regularly in the interval from the 1st of June
+1826 to the 3rd of February 1828. A very fair trade was done; and, in
+fact, some of the books he printed were important: Villemain's
+_Miscellanies_, Merimee's _Jacquerie_, Madame Roland's _Memoirs_, not
+to speak of his own small _Critical and Anecdotal Dictionary of Paris
+Signboards_, published under a pseudonym, or rather anonymously, since
+it was signed _Le Batteur de Pave_, the "Man in the Street." But the
+senior partner, he who should have financed the concern with all the
+more wariness as d'Assonvillez, the principal supplier of capital, had
+a mortgage upon the whole estate, allowed himself to be paid for his
+printing, more often than not, in bills for which no provision was
+forthcoming and in securities that were rotten. One debt of
+twenty-eight thousand francs was settled by the transfer of a lot of
+old unsaleable literature, which would have been dear at a halfpenny
+a volume. And then, when everything was in confusion--debtors
+recalcitrant and creditors pressing--what must he do but launch on
+another venture, buy the bankrupt stock of a type-founder, and start
+manufacturing. A fresh partner, Laurent, was admitted into the firm in
+December 1827, with a view to his exploiting the presumably auxiliary
+branch; and a prospectus was issued vaunting a process of
+type-founding, which Balzac was wrongly credited with having invented.
+Within two months after this spurt, and while a fine album was in
+preparation, which was to illustrate the firm's improved method,
+Barbier withdrew from the partnership. His desertion would have at
+once spelt disaster, if Madame de Berny had not boldly stepped into
+the vacant place, with a power of attorney conferred on her by her
+husband, and pledged her credit for nine thousand francs. During three
+months longer, the tottering house continued to hold up; and then,
+under the avalanche of writs and claims, it fell. A petition in
+bankruptcy was filed in April, and the estate was placed in the hands
+of an official receiver.
+
+On reaching this crisis so big with consequences, Balzac had recourse
+to his mother, who, though little disposed in the past to humour his
+bent, consented now to every sacrifice in order to save his credit.
+Her first step was to get her cousin Monsieur Sedillot to occupy
+himself with the liquidation, she authorizing him at the same time to
+make whatever arrangement he should judge best, and promising to
+accept it. She was most anxious to spare her husband, at present
+eighty-three years of age, the grief he must feel if informed of the
+full extent of the disaster. Alas! notwithstanding her precautions,
+the old man did learn the truth; and the shock hastened his end.
+Within twelve months after the bankruptcy he met with a slight
+accident, which, acting on his enfeebled constitution, was fatal to
+him.
+
+Balzac's liabilities, at the moment of the failure, were one hundred
+and thirteen thousand francs. The effect of the liquidation was to
+reduce the number of creditors, so that his indebtedness was
+restricted to members of his own family and to Madame de Berny. The
+latter's claims were partly met by her son's taking over the business
+with Laurent, the other partner. Being thus reconstituted, the firm
+subsequently prospered. To-day it still carries on its affairs under
+the control of a Monsieur Charles Tuleu, who succeeded Monsieur de
+Berny. Madame Surville would have us believe that, if her parents had
+only supported Honore more unreservedly at the commencement, he could
+have realized a fortune; but all the facts of her brother's life go to
+prove the contrary.
+
+Referring, a decade later, to these dark days, which loaded him with a
+burden of debt that he never shook off but increased by his natural
+inability to balance receipts and expenditure, he spoke of Madame de
+Berny's kindness, and declared that he had repaid the _Dilecta_ in
+1836 the last six thousand francs he owed her, together with their
+five per cent interest. As on many other occasions, Balzac imagined
+something which had not been done, though he apparently believed what
+he asserted. The following anecdote re-establishes the facts of the
+case.
+
+Monsieur Arthur Rhone, a friend of the de Berny family, who used to
+visit the son Alexander in the office of the Rue des Marais, often
+admired on the mantelpiece a fine bust of Flora, modelled by Marin.
+One day the printer said to him: "Do you know how much that bust cost
+me? . . . Fifteen thousand francs. I got it from Balzac, who owed me a
+great deal of money. Once when I was at his house in Passy, he
+exclaimed: 'Since I can't pay you, take what you like from here to
+reimburse yourself.'" This work of art, a Louis XVI. gilt-bronze time
+piece, with its two candelabra, once also in Balzac's possession, was
+part payment of the balance due to the de Berny family, and was
+surrendered only in the forties.
+
+The novelist, whose memory was so short in money matters, had a longer
+recollection of his moral obligations. In the letter above referred
+to, he confessed: "Without her (Madame de Berny) I should have died.
+She often divined that I had not eaten for several days (here he was
+probably piling on the agony). She provided for everything with
+angelic kindness. Her devotion was absolute." It ended only with the
+_Dilecta's_ life.
+
+In the _Shagreen Skin_, which embodies some of Balzac's youthful
+experiences, Raphael, the hero, was saved from committing suicide,
+after ruining himself, by an accident which forms the thread of the
+story. Possibly, during the bankruptcy proceedings, there may have
+been a fit of despair which urged the insolvent printer to end his own
+troubles in the Seine. If so, it was of short duration. A fortnight
+after he had quitted the Rue des Marais, the letter he wrote to
+General de Pommereul showed him planning out a fresh future.
+
+"At last has happened," he said in it, "what many persons were able to
+foresee, and what I myself feared in beginning and courageously
+supporting an establishment the magnitude of which was colossal (!!!).
+I have been precipitated, not without the previsions of my conscious
+mind, from my modest prosperity. . . . For the last month I have been
+engaged on an historical work of the highest interest; and I hope
+that, in default of a talent altogether problematic with me, my sketch
+of national customs will bring me luck. My first thought was for you;
+and I resolved to write and ask you to shelter me for two or three
+weeks. A camp-bed, a single mattress, a table, if only it is
+quadrupedal and not rickety, a chair and a roof are all that I
+require."
+
+The General replied: "Your room awaits you. Come quick." And he went.
+It was his definite entrance into literature, and his resumption of
+the search for wealth withal.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV
+
+                      FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME
+
+The historical novel that Balzac had set himself to write was the
+_Chouans_, this name being given to the Vendee Royalists who, under
+the leadership of the Chevalier de Nougarede, combated the Revolution
+and Napoleon. The scene being laid in Brittany, it was natural that,
+apart from health reasons, the author should wish to inspire his pen
+by a visit to the places he intended to describe.
+
+His hostess at Fougeres has left us a description of her guest: "He
+was a little, burly man, clad in ill-fitting garments that increased
+his bulk. His hands were magnificent. He wore a most ugly hat; but, as
+soon as he took it off, one remarked nothing else besides his
+head. . . . Beneath his ample forehead, on which seemed to shine the
+reflection of a lamp, there were brown, gold-spangled eyes which
+expressed their owner's meaning as clearly as his speech. He had a
+big, square nose, and a huge mouth, which was perpetually smiling in
+spite of his ugly teeth. He wore a moustache, and his long hair was
+brushed back. At the time he came to us he was rather thin, and
+appeared to be half-starved. He devoured his food, poor fellow! For
+the rest, there was so much confidence, so much benevolence, so much
+_naivete_, so much frankness in his demeanour, his gestures, his ways
+of speaking and behaving that it was impossible to know him and not
+love him. . . . His good humour was so exuberant as to be contagious.
+Notwithstanding the misfortunes he had just passed through, he had not
+been with us a quarter of an hour before he made the General and me
+laugh till tears came into our eyes."
+
+The _Chouans_, which his two or three months' sojourn at Fougeres
+enabled him to get on with rapidly, was completed after his return to
+Paris, and was published under his own name in 1829. Charles Vimont,
+who accepted and brought it out, paid him no more than a thousand
+francs. The book, although it was not badly written, and contained
+plenty of incident, very fair characterization, of the minor
+personages especially, and local colouring imitated from Walter Scott,
+made no great impression. For the ordinary reader it differed too
+little from the Romanticism with which he was familiar. Moreover, the
+action savoured too much of the melodramatic; and the character of
+Mademoiselle de Verneuil, and that of the Chouan chief, whom she had
+promised to deliver up to the emissaries of Fouche, were too nebulous
+to gain general sympathy, even with the heroine's tragic devotion.
+There is, however, a fine sketch of Brittany and of its spirit of
+revolt; the numerous figures of the background are vigorously
+executed, and nearly all the episodes of the drama are skilfully
+presented. A perusal of the _Chouans_ makes us regret that there was
+hardly any return to this kind of composition in the author's
+after-work.
+
+When embarking on his publishing enterprise, Balzac went to live in an
+apartment of the Rue Tournon, No. 2[*] close to the Luxembourg. He
+abandoned it for the Rue des Marais in 1826; and, this latter abode
+being given up in 1828, he removed on his return from Brittany to No.
+4, Rue Cassini, where he remained for some years. A friend of his,
+Latouche--soon to become an enemy--helped him to liven up the walls of
+his study with the famous blue calico that had adorned his room over
+the printing office. Certain busybodies spread the report that he was
+furnishing his new apartment extravagantly; and Laure, to whose ear
+the tattle had come, ventured to allude to it in a letter reproaching
+him with remissness in writing home and to her. The accusation of
+extravagance, which later he really merited, was at this moment a
+trifle previous, money being scarce and credit also. "Stamps and
+omnibus fares are expenses I cannot afford," he assured his sister;
+"and I abstain from going out in order to save my clothes."
+
+  [*] Some early biographers state that the novelist went to the Rue
+      Tournon after his bankruptcy. This is a mistake.
+
+However, he was now on the point of scoring a literary success. In the
+same year as his _Chouans_ appeared his _Physiology of Marriage_, a
+book of satire and caricature having a distinct stamp of his maturer
+manner. Werdet, for a number of years his publisher and friend,
+relates in his _Portrait Intime_ that Balzac, while still in the
+Lesdiguieres Street garret, had gone one day to Alphonse Levavasseur
+and offered, in return for a royalty and a cash installment of two
+hundred francs, to supply him with a book to be entitled: _Manual of
+the Business Man, by a former Notary's Clerk_. It was agreed that the
+manuscript should be handed in at the end of the month; and the two
+hundred francs were paid down. In vain the publisher waited for his
+Manual. Ultimately he hunted out his debtor; and the latter had to
+confess that the long-promised manuscript had never been written. In
+order to calm the creditor's indignation, Balzac read to him some
+fragments of another book which he was really engaged upon. After
+listening for a while, Levavasseur's countenance grew serene: "I will
+pay you two thousand francs for this production when finished,
+Monsieur," he said; "and we will cancel the old transaction. Come with
+me. I will give you the first thousand francs now. The rest you shall
+have as soon as I get the last corrected proofs." "Dear publisher,
+your speech is golden," cried Balzac; "I accept." Nevertheless, the
+proofs were not delivered until 1829. The book immediately became
+popular. "From the day of its appearance," comments Werdet,
+"literature counted another master and France another Moliere."
+
+The verdict is exact only if the _Physiology_ is regarded in
+conjunction with the novelist's after achievement in the domain of
+realistic fiction. Alone it would not rank so high. Flippant, cynical,
+immoral--these epithets, which were freely applied to it, all have
+their justification when one looks at the work from any other
+standpoint than that of its being a very amusing and clever exposition
+of sex relations governed by interest and passion. Both facts and
+philosophy are confined within an exceedingly narrow horizon, one in
+which the writer was most thoroughly at home, which explains why they
+bear the imprint of a mind already _blase_.
+
+From a letter Balzac sent to Levavasseur, while finishing the last
+pages of the manuscript, it appears that he commenced his task as a
+jest and completed it with more serious purpose: "I intended to dash
+off a pleasantry," he told him, "and you came one morning and asked me
+to do in three months what Brillat-Savarin took ten years to do. I
+haven't an idea which is not the _Physiology_. I dream of it, I am
+absorbed by it."
+
+The sale of the book was in a measure due to the sort of scandal it
+provoked. Ladies especially bought the volume to find out for
+themselves how far they had been maligned; and Levavasseur, who was
+pleased with his profits, introduced Balzac to Emile de Girardin, then
+chief editor of the _Mode_, to which paper he now began to contribute
+light articles, not to speak of other journals, which were only too
+glad to receive something from his pen. The extent to which the fair
+sex read the _Physiology_ and were affected by it is illustrated by a
+story that Werdet tells of a hoax perpetrated at Balzac's expense by a
+number of his society friends, who had cause to complain of his
+uppishness towards them, a treatment based not merely on the belief he
+entertained in his literary superiority, but on his pretensions to
+aristocratic descent. The story belongs more properly to the middle
+thirties, when he had been using the prefix "de" before his name
+already for some years, justifying himself on the ground that his
+father claimed issue from an old family that had resisted the Auvergne
+invasion and had begotten the d'Entragues stock. His father, moreover,
+so he said, had discovered documents in the Charter House establishing
+a concession of lands made by a de Balzac in the fifth century; and a
+copy of the transaction had been registered by the Paris Parliament.
+
+Between 1833 and 1836 one of the most celebrated Paris "sets" was that
+of the Opera "lions," seven young aristocratic sparks composing it,
+or, to be precise, six, together with the Chevalier d'Entragues de
+Balzac, as his friends jokingly dubbed him--he being an elder. It was
+the period of his first flush of prosperity, when he drove about in a
+hired carriage resplendent with the d'Entragues coat of arms, which
+cost him five hundred francs a month; had a majestic coachman in fine
+livery and a Tom Thumb groom; sported himself in gorgeous garments and
+strutted about in the Opera _foyer_, amidst the real or feigned
+admiration of his fellows.
+
+To revenge themselves for their mentor's superciliousness towards
+them, the six other _lions_ induced a dancer at the Opera to play the
+part of a supposed Duke's daughter smitten with the great man's
+writings and person, a role she undertook the more willingly as, being
+well acquainted with the former, she was anxious to prove to him that
+he was not so perspicacious as he deemed himself. An Opera ball was
+chosen for the adventure; and Balzac was duly baited and taken in tow
+by the lady, whose mask only half concealed her beauty. Thus began a
+flirtation, with subsequent clandestine meetings, allowing the fair
+unknown to fool him to the top of her bent. The author wanted to
+propose for her hand to the Duke her father; but, cleverly using her
+knowledge of his books, the sly jade showed him that he would have no
+chance of being accepted. At last she hinted she would like to visit
+him in his author's sanctum; and the delighted novelist went to most
+lavish expense in fitting up a boudoir to receive her. The visit was
+presumably a secret one. Protected by a young man employed at the
+Opera, to whom she was engaged, and who accompanied her in the
+disguise of a negro, she went to the Rue des Batailles one evening and
+graciously listened to the enraptured conversation of her victim till
+towards midnight, when her mother, who was in the plot, came to fetch
+her. The novelist's fury and humiliation were extreme on his learning
+how neatly he had been tricked, and it was some time before he
+ventured to reappear in his accustomed haunts. As narrated by Werdet,
+the story is a good deal embellished, and some of the details that he
+gives were probably invented; but the main outline he vouches to be
+true.
+
+Among the editors of journals who sought Balzac's collaboration after
+the publication of the _Physiology_ were Buloz of the _Revue de Paris_
+and Victor Ratier of the _Silhouette_. To the latter of them, in 1831,
+he wrote from La Grenadiere, where he had gone to recruit, a letter
+revealing a curiously mixed state of mind in this dawning period of
+fame. He would seem to have been under a presentiment of the long
+years of struggle and incessant toil he was about to be involved in,
+and to have felt a shrinking of his physical nature from them.
+
+"Oh! if you knew what Touraine is like," he exclaimed. "Here one
+forgets everything else. I forgive the inhabitants for being stupid.
+They are so happy. Now, you know that people who enjoy much are
+naturally stupid. Touraine admirably explains the lazzarone. I have
+come to regard glory, the Chamber, politics, the future, literature,
+as veritable poison-balls to kill wandering, homeless dogs, and I say
+to myself: 'Virtue, happiness, life, are summed up in six hundred
+francs income on the bank of the Loire. . . .' My house is situated
+half-way up the hill, near a delightful river bordered with flowers,
+whence I behold landscapes a thousand times more beautiful than all
+those with which rascally travellers bore their readers. Touraine
+appears to me like a _pate de foie gras_, in which one plunges up to
+the chin; and its wine is delicious. Instead of intoxicating, it makes
+you piggy and happy. . . . Just fancy, I have been on the most poetic
+trip possible in France--from here to the heart of Brittany by water,
+passing between the most ravishing scenery in the world. I felt my
+thoughts go with the stream, which, near the sea, becomes immense. Oh,
+to lead the life of a Mohican, to run about the rocks, to swim in the
+sea, to breathe in the fresh air and sun! Oh, I have realized the
+savage! Oh, I have excellently understood the corsair, the adventurer
+--their lives of opposition; and I reflected: 'Life is courage, good
+rifles, the art of steering in the open ocean, and the hatred of man
+--of the Englishman, for example.' (Here Balzac is of his time.) Coming
+back hither, the ex-corsair has turned dealer in ideas. Just imagine,
+now, a man so vagabond beginning on an article entitled, _Treatise of
+Fashionable Life_, and making an octavo volume of it, which the _Mode_
+is going to print, and some publisher reprint. . . . Egad! At the
+present moment literature is a vile trade. It leads to nothing, and I
+itch to go a-wandering and risk my existence in some living
+drama. . . . Since I have seen the real splendours of this spot, I
+have grown very philosophic, and, putting my foot on an ant-hill, I
+exclaim, like the immortal Bonaparte: 'That, or men, what is it all in
+presence of Saturn or Venus, or the Pole Star?' And methinks that the
+ocean, a brig, and an English vessel to engulf, is better than a
+writing-desk, a pen, and the Rue Saint-Denis."
+
+About the events of the 1830 Revolution the novelist was apparently
+but little concerned. True, the change was one of dynasty only, not of
+_regime_, albeit Louis-Philippe posed rather as a plebiscitary
+monarch. Balzac's clericalism and royalism, which ultimately became so
+crystallized, were at this date in a position of unstable equilibrium.
+At one moment his criticisms have an air of condemning the monarchic
+principle, at another they point to his being a pillar of the ancient
+system of things. On this occasion he was twitted by Madame Zulma
+Carraud, his sister's friend, with whom his relations grew more
+intimate as his celebrity augmented; and he defended himself by a
+confession of faith which forecast his endeavours--less persistent
+than his desires--to add the statesman's laurels to those of the
+_litterateur_. His doctrine, following the Machiavellian tradition,
+was that the genius of government consists in operating the fusion of
+men and things--a method which demonstrated Napoleon and Louis XVIII.
+alike to be men of talent. Both of them restrained all the various
+parties in France--the one by force, the other by ruse, because the
+one rode horseback, the other in a carriage. . . . France, he
+continued, ought to be a constitutional monarchy, with an hereditary
+Royal Family, a House of Lords extraordinarily powerful and
+representing property, etc., with all possible guarantees of heredity
+and privilege; then she should have a second, elective assembly to
+represent every interest of the intermediary mass separating high
+social positions from what was called the people. The bulk of the laws
+and their spirit should tend to enlighten the people as much as
+possible--the people that had nothing--workmen, proletaries, etc.--so
+as to bring the greatest number of men to that condition of well-being
+which distinguished the intermediary mass; but the people should be
+left under the most puissant yoke, in such a way that the individual
+units might find light, aid, and protection, and that no idea, no
+form, no transaction might render them turbulent. The richer classes
+must enjoy the widest liberty practicable, since they had a stake in
+the country. To the Government he wished the utmost force possible,
+its interests being the same as those of the rich and the bourgeois,
+viz. to render the lowest class happy and to aggrandize the middle
+class, in which resided the veritable puissance of States. If rich
+people and the hereditary fortunes of the Upper Chamber, corrupted by
+their manners and customs, engendered certain abuses, these were
+inseparable from all society, and must be accepted with the advantages
+they yielded.
+
+This conception of the classes and the masses which he afterwards set
+forth more fully in his _Country Doctor_ and _Village Cure_, partly
+explains why all his best work, besides being impregnated with
+fatalism, has such a constant outlook on the past. It was a dogma with
+him rather than a philosophy, and was clung to more from taste than
+from reasonable conviction. He believed in aristocratic prerogative,
+because he believed in himself, and ranked himself as high as, or
+rather higher than, the noble. This was at the bottom of his doctrine;
+but he was glad all the same to have his claim supported by such
+outward signs of the inward grace as were afforded by vague genealogy
+and the homage of the great. Duchesses were his predilection when they
+were forthcoming; failing them, countesses were esteemed.
+
+The Duchess d'Abrantes--one of his early admirers--to whom he
+dedicated his _Forsaken Woman_, was herself a colleague in letters;
+and he was able to render her some service through his relations with
+publishers. Their correspondence shows them to have been on very
+friendly terms. In one of his letters to her, he insisted on his
+inability to submit to any yoke, and rebutted her insinuation that he
+permitted himself to be led--possibly the Duchess's hint referred to
+Madame de Berny. "My character," he said, "is the most singular one I
+have ever come across. I study myself as I might another person. I
+comprise in my five feet two every incoherence, every contrast
+possible; and those who think me vain, prodigal, headstrong,
+frivolous, inconsistent, foppish, careless, idle, unstable, giddy,
+wavering, talkative, tactless, ill-bred, impolite, crotchety,
+humoursome, will be just as right as those who might affirm me to be
+thrifty, modest, plucky, tenacious, energetic, hardworking, constant,
+taciturn, cute, polite, merry. Nothing astonishes me more than myself.
+I am inclined to conclude I am the plaything of circumstances. Does
+this kaleidoscope result from the fact that, into the soul of those
+who claim to paint all the affections and the human heart, chance
+casts each and every of these same affections in order that by the
+strength of their imagination they may feel what they depict? And can
+it be that observation is only a sort of memory proper to aid this
+mobile imagination? I begin to be of this opinion."
+
+Balzac appears to have been introduced to the Duchess d'Abrantes about
+the year 1830, when he was engaged in writing his _Shagreen Skin_,
+which, out of the numerous pieces of fiction produced within this and
+the next twelve months, added most to his notoriety, though inferior
+to such stories as the _House of the Tennis-playing Cat_, and even to
+the _Sceaux Ball_ in the more proper qualities of the novel.
+
+The _Shagreen Skin_ is the adventure of a young man who, after sowing
+his wild oats and losing his last crown at the gaming table, goes to
+end his troubles in the river, but is prevented from carrying out his
+intention by being fortuitously presented with a piece of shagreen
+skin, which has the marvellous property of gratifying its possessor's
+every wish, yet, meanwhile, shrinks with each gratification, and in
+the same proportion curtails its possessor's life. On this warp of
+fairy tale, the author weaves a woof of romance and reality most oddly
+blended. The imitations of predecessors are numerous. The style is
+turgid, the thought is shallow, the sentiment is exaggerated. But very
+little of the sober characterization soon to be manifested in other
+books is displayed in this one. The best that can be said is that the
+thing has the same cleverness as the _Physiology_, with here and there
+indications--and clear ones--of the novelist's later power. He himself
+grossly overestimated it, as, indeed, he overestimated not a few of
+his poorer productions--maybe because they cost him greater toil than
+his masterpieces, which generally, after long, unconscious gestation,
+issued rapidly and painless from him.
+
+An amusing expression of this self-praise has come down to us in the
+puff he composed on the occasion of a reprint of the _Shagreen Skin_
+by Gosselin in 1832. "The _Philosophic Tales_ of Monsieur de Balzac,"
+it announced, "have appeared this week. The _Shagreen Skin_ is judged
+as the admirable novels of Anne Radcliffe were judged. Such things
+escape annalists and commentators. The eager reader lays hold of these
+books. They bring sleeplessness into the mansions of the rich and into
+the garret of the poet; they animate the village. In winter they give
+a livelier reflection to the sparkling log, great privileges to the
+story-teller. It is nature, in sooth, who creates story-tellers.
+Vainly are you a learned, grave writer, if you have not been born a
+story-teller, and you will never obtain the popularity of the
+_Mysteries of Udolpho_ and the _Shagreen Skin_, the _Arabian Nights_,
+and Monsieur de Balzac. I have somewhere read that God created Adam,
+the nomenclator, saying to him: You are the story-teller. And what a
+story-teller! What verve and wit! What indefatigable perseverance in
+painting everything, daring everything, branding everything! How the
+world is dissected by this man! What an annalist! What passion and
+what coolness!
+
+"The _Philosophic Tales_ are the red-hot interpretation of a
+civilization ruined by debauch and well-being, which Monsieur de
+Balzac exposes in the pillory. The _Arabian Nights_ are the complete
+history of the luxurious East in its days of happiness and perfumed
+dreams. _Candide_ is the epitome of an epoch in which there were
+bastilles, a stag-park, and an absolute king. By thus taking at the
+first bound a place beside these formidable or graceful tale-tellers,
+Monsieur de Balzac proves one thing that remained to be proved; to
+wit, that the drama, which was no longer possible to-day on the stage,
+was still possible in the story--that our society, so dangerously
+sceptical, _blase_, and scornful, could yet be moved by the galvanic
+shocks of this poetry of the senses--full of life and colour, in flesh
+and blood, drunk with wine and lust--in which Monsieur de Balzac
+revels with such delight. Thus, the surprise was great, when, thanks
+to this story-teller, we still found among us something resembling
+poetry--feasts, intoxication, the light o' love giving her caresses
+amidst an orgie, the brimming punch-bowl crowned with blue flames, the
+yellow-gloved politician, scented adultery, the girl indulging in
+pleasure and love and dreaming aloud, poverty clean and neat,
+surrounded with respectability and happy hazard--we have seen all this
+in Balzac. The Opera with its lemans, the pink boudoir and its flossy
+hangings, the feast and its surfeits; we have even seen Moliere's
+doctor reappear, such need has this man of sarcasm and grotesqueness.
+The further you advance in the _Shagreen Skin_--vices, lost virtues,
+poverties, boredom, deep silence, dry-as-dust science, angular,
+witless scepticism, laughable egotism, puerile vanities, venal loves,
+Jewish second-hand dealers, etc.--the more astonished and pained you
+will be to recognize that the nineteenth century in which you live is
+so made up. The _Shagreen Skin_ is _Candide_ with Beranger's notes; it
+is poverty, luxury, faith, mockery; it is the heartless breast, the
+brainless cranium of the nineteenth century--the century so bedizened
+and scented, so revolutionary, so ill-read, so little worth, the
+century of brilliant phantasmagorias, of which in fifty years' time
+nothing will be seizable except Monsieur de Balzac's _Shagreen Skin_."
+
+On account of its sensationalism, the _Shagreen Skin_ had a success of
+curiosity equal, and, if anything, superior to that of the
+_Physiology_. The author, however, had to defend himself against the
+charge of copying foreign literature--Hoffman's tales in particular.
+One of his correspondents, the Duchess de Castries, who subsequently
+flattered him and flirted with him, wrote to him incognito, taking
+exception to certain statements he had made in each of his two popular
+works. Replying to her, he for the first time spoke of his desire to
+develop his fiction into a vast series of volumes destined to make
+known to posterity the life of his century.
+
+Great schemes were always to be Balzac's day-dreaming, one chasing the
+other in his fancy. They filled his thoughts, and in his heart were
+his constant aim, far more than to be loved, for all he asserted of
+this last desire. If literature was the one means he resorted to in
+his efforts to attain them, this was because every other means
+deceived his expectation, and not because he deliberately preferred it
+to all others. He owned the fact without reservation. In the case of a
+man whose literary achievement was so high, such slighting of letters
+has its significance, and is curious. Taken in conjunction with other
+evidence furnished by his letters, it proves that genius, though
+sometimes clearly the pure, simple moving of a spirit that cannot be
+resisted, is also--and perhaps as often--a calculating partnership,
+and that the work of art is a compromise. Would Balzac have written
+better if his motive had been single? It is not certain.
+
+During these early days of his popularity, a seat in the Chamber of
+Deputies was his will o' the wisp. Aided by the _Dilecta's_ friends,
+he offered himself as a candidate in two constituencies, Angouleme and
+Cambrai, after publishing his pamphlet: _An Inquiry into the Policy of
+Two Ministries_. With a view to shining in the future Parliament, he
+sharpened his witticisms, rounded his periods, polished his style,
+exercised himself in opposing short phrases to others of Ciceronian
+length, endeavouring the while to put poetry and observation into a
+new subject. At least these things were in his mind, as his
+communication to Berthoud of the Cambrai _Gazette_ testified. His
+intention was to become an orator, he said. Had he been elected, he
+might have become the rival of Thiers. They were about the same age.
+Then France might have had two "little bourgeois" instead of one,
+unless one of the two had knocked the other out. But whether
+conquering or conquered, Balzac the politician would have swallowed up
+Balzac the novelist, and _Eugenie Grandet_ would never have been
+written. Why he failed at the polls is not clear. Probably he did not
+possess enough suppleness to please his party. To tell the truth, we
+do not learn definitely to which party he belonged. He was quite
+capable of constituting one by himself.
+
+These preoccupations hindered him somewhat in carrying out his
+engagements with publishers and editors, so that he did not always get
+the money he counted on. Yet he worked hard. His habit, at this time,
+was to go to bed at six in the evening and sleep till twelve, and
+after, to rise and write for nearly twelve hours at a stretch,
+imbibing coffee as a stimulant through these spells of composition.
+What recreation he took in Paris was at the theatre or at the houses
+of his noble acquaintances, where he went to gossip of an afternoon.
+It was exhausting to lead such an existence; and even the transient
+fillips given by the coffee were paid for in attacks of indigestion
+and in abscesses which threw him into fits of discouragement. When
+suffering from these, he poured out his soul to his sister or Madame
+Carraud, complaining in his epistles that his destiny compelled him to
+run after fame and deprived him of his chance to meet with the ideal
+woman. Madame de Berny, with all her devotion, did not satisfy him
+now. "Despairing of ever being loved and understood by the woman of my
+dreams," he tragically cried, "having met with her only in my heart, I
+am plunging again into the tempestuous sphere of political passions
+and the stormy, withering atmosphere of literary glory." But the "she"
+of his dreams, he added, must be wealthy. He could not conceive of
+marriage and love in a cottage. It must be admitted that from his
+sources of affection as from his sources of ambition there was a gush
+which was rather muddy.
+
+Altogether, the year of 1832 was an irritating one for Balzac. A rich
+match he had hoped to make fell through. A second attempt of his to
+enter the Chamber of Deputies ended in defeat. His books, after their
+first season or two of favour, were selling but poorly in France,
+although pirated editions were issued and had a large circulation
+abroad. Impatiently he meditated plans for doubling and tripling his
+revenue. He would emigrate--he would recommence publishing--he would
+turn playwright. Amid these three solicitations he moved in a circle
+without reaching a conclusion. And fortune, while he was hesitating,
+did not come to his door. In default of her visit, not all the
+flattering epistles he received from ladies in Russia and Germany
+--three and four a day, he asserted--were an adequate compensation. A
+journey undertaken for the benefit of his health to Sache, Angouleme,
+and Aix forced him to borrow from his mother again, instead of paying
+back the capital he owed her. His unfinished manuscripts he had taken
+with him, but he found it difficult to get on with them: "I was going
+to start work this morning with courage," he wrote to her, "when your
+letter came to upset me completely. Do you think it possible for me to
+have artistic thoughts when I see all at once the tableau of my
+miseries displayed before me as you display them? Do you think I
+should toil thus, if I did not feel it?"
+
+The novelist's relations with his mother force the attention of any
+one that studies his life. Their two natures were contrary; there were
+often conflicts between them. As a child, he seems not to have
+comprehended the affection underlying the maternal severity, and to
+have entertained a dread of the latter which never entirely left him.
+According to his friend Fessart, he used to confess he always
+experienced a nervous trembling whenever he heard his mother speak;
+and the effect was in some sort the numbing of his faculties when he
+was in her presence. Her generous abnegation at the time of his
+bankruptcy was a revelation to him; his gratitude for it was sincere;
+and from that date onwards, during a number of years, his letters to
+her evinced it, yet not consistently; the old distrust recurs, and
+also a growing tendency to utilize her as a servant in his concerns.
+Having once dipped in her purse, he did not hesitate to hold out his
+hand, on each occasion that his needs, real or fancied, prompted him,
+being confident of requiting her in the future. His refrain was ever
+the same: "Sooner or later, politics, journalism, a marriage, or a big
+piece of business luck will make me a Croesus. We must suffer a little
+longer." And he finished by exhausting her last penny of capital, and
+reduced her to depend on an allowance he gave her, irregularly--an
+allowance which, when he died, had to be continued to her from the
+purse of another. Madame Balzac was sacrificed to his improvidence and
+stupendous egotism; nor can the tenderness of his language--more
+frequently than not called forth by some fresh immolation of her
+comfort to his interests--disguise this unpleasing side of his
+character and action. While he was recouping his strength and spirits,
+on the 1832 holiday, she was in Paris negotiating with Pichot of the
+_Revue de Paris_, with Gosselin and other publishers, arranging for
+proofs, and also for an advance of cash. Even his epistolary good-byes
+were odd mixtures of business with sentiment. After casting himself
+--through the post--on her bosom and embracing her with effusion, he
+terminated by: "Pay everything as you say. On my side, I will gain
+money by force, and we will balance the expenses by the receipts."
+
+The book that cost him the greatest efforts during the year of 1832
+was his _Louis Lambert_, already mentioned in the second chapter.
+Writing about it to his family from Angouleme he explained that he was
+attempting in it to vie with Goethe and Byron, with _Faust_ and
+_Manfred_. It was to be a conclusive reply to his enemies, and would
+make his superiority manifest. Some day or other it would lead science
+into new paths. Meantime it would produce a deep impression and
+astonish the Swedenborgians. Whether the members of this sect were
+astonished, history does not record. Those who were most so were the
+novelist's friends, and Madame de Berny among the number. But their
+wonder was not a eulogium. First of all, the hero--his _alter ego_--is
+a very poor replica of Pascal; and the exalting of Lambert's
+intelligence, which was mere self-praise, jarred on them the more, as
+they truly loved him. The _Dilecta_, whom he had asked to pass her
+frank opinion on it, did not hesitate to tell him some hard truths:
+"Goethe and Byron," she said, "have admirably painted the desires of a
+superior mind; when reading them, one aggrandizes them by all the
+space they have perceived; one admires the scope of their view; one
+would fain give them one's soul to help theirs to cover the distance
+that separates them from the goal they aspire to reach. But, if an
+author comes and tells me he has attained this goal, I no longer see
+in him, however great he may be, more than a presumptuous man; his
+vanity shocks me, and I diminish him by all the height to which he has
+tried to raise himself. . . . I would therefore beg you, dearest, to
+cut out of your _Lambert_ everything that might suggest these singular
+ideas; for instance: 'The admirable combat of thought arrived at its
+greatest force, at its vastest expression' . . . 'The moral world,
+whose limits he had thrown back for himself,' cannot be tolerated.
+Write, dearest, in such a manner that the whole crowd may perceive you
+from everywhere, by the height at which you will have placed yourself;
+but do not cry out for people to admire you; for, on all sides, the
+largest magnifying-glasses would be directed towards you; and what
+becomes of the most delicious object seen by the microscope!"
+
+The lesson was a severe one. Though it did not cure Balzac of his
+author's vanity--nothing could cure him of that--it did, for a while
+at least, direct his endeavours towards fiction of a more objective
+kind.
+
+What he was now capable of in characterization treated objectively he
+showed in his _Colonel Chabert_ and the _Cure of Tours_, both of which
+were published in the same twelvemonth as _Louis Lambert_. These
+stories are exceedingly simple in construction. The Cure is a priest
+whose joys and ambitions are modest and innocent. Having reached the
+age when indulgence in ease and comfort is excusable, he finds himself
+suddenly deprived of them through unwittingly offending his landlady.
+She, an old maid, as inwardly shrewish as outwardly pious, utilizes
+the Abbe Birotteau and another clergyman, who both lodge with her, to
+attract the good society folk of Tours to her evening receptions.
+After due experience of these gatherings, the Abbe plays truant,
+finding it more agreeable to spend his leisure with friends elsewhere.
+His absence causes the landlady's guests to grow remiss and finally to
+desert her; so, to revenge herself, the slighted dame, proceeding by
+petty pin-pricks, makes the Abbe's life a burden to him, and,
+ultimately enlisting the brother clergyman in her schemes of
+annoyance, works on his jealousy with such cleverness that their
+victim's career is blasted and blighted. Dependent on the development
+of the characters, the plot is adroitly and naturally elaborated.
+Nowhere is there any forcing of the note; and, in alternate flow,
+humour and pathos, of a saner sort than in some of the author's
+previous work, run and ripple throughout. With deeper pathos the
+novelist tells in _Colonel Chabert_ the virtues of a man of obscure
+origin, whose nobleness meets with but scanty recognition, since it
+conducts him to the almshouse in his old age. So vivid is the sober
+realism of this fine story that the public believed the relation to be
+plain, unvarnished facts, and were astonished at the writer's daring
+to reveal them in all their detail.
+
+Balzac's autumn trip was prolonged as far as Annecy and Geneva. He had
+intended going on to Italy in company with the Duke de Fitz-James. The
+latter journey, however, was ultimately abandoned, as he did not
+succeed in raising the thousand crowns it required. Travelling on the
+top of a coach, he had rather a serious accident when going to Aix. He
+was climbing up to the front seat just as the horses set off, and,
+having missed his footing, fell with all his weight against the iron
+step. The strap, which he clutched in his fall, saved him from coming
+to the ground; but the impact of his eighty-four kilograms caused the
+sharp iron to enter the flesh of his leg pretty deeply. This wound
+took some time to heal, and the annoyance it cause him was aggravated
+by an additional malady in his stomach which he tried to deal with by
+consulting a mysterious quack in Paris, sending him through his
+mother, two pieces of flannel that he had been wearing next his skin.
+The doctor was to examine No. 1 flannel, and by it to determine the
+seat and the cause of the affection, as well as the treatment to be
+followed; then he was to examine No. 2, and to give certain
+instructions as to its further use. Balzac asked his mother to touch
+the flannels only with paper, so as not to interfere with their
+effluvia. This belief of his in magnetism of an occult kind was an
+inheritance. His mother, it has already been said, was a mystic. Her
+books of this doctrine comprised more than a hundred volumes of
+Saint-Martin, Swedenborg, Madame Guyon, Jacob Boehm, and others. All
+these writers he was familiar with. Throughout his life, the influence
+of their teaching and his mother's firm belief remained with him. On
+his conduct and practice their effect was harmless; but in his literary
+work they were a disturbance, and, wherever they intruded, detracted
+from its quality.
+
+Happily, he was beginning to be tempted more and more by the artistic
+side of things in his daily experience. Of the lesser novels composed
+before the end of 1832, several were directly inspired by incidents
+brought to his knowledge. The _Red Inn_ was related to him by a former
+army surgeon, a friend of the man that was unjustly condemned and
+executed. An _Episode under the Terror_ was narrated by the hero
+himself. _A Desert Attachment_ was the outcome of a conversation with
+Martin, the celebrated tamer of wild beasts. On the other hand,
+_Master Cornelius_ was written to correct the false impression of
+Louis XI. which he considered Walter Scott had given to his readers in
+_Quentin Durward_, this making him very angry. His curiosity
+concerning facts and realities of every description led him to seek an
+interview with Samson the executioner. Calling one day to see the
+Director of Prisons, he found himself in presence of a pale,
+melancholy-looking man of noble countenance, whose manners, language,
+and apparent education were those of one polished and cultured. It was
+Samson. Entering into conversation with this strange personage, the
+novelist listened to the particulars of his life. Samson was a
+royalist. On the morrow of Louis XVI.'s execution he had suffered the
+utmost remorse, and had paid for what was probably the only expiatory
+mass said on that day for the repose of the King's soul.
+
+Like other _litterateurs_, Balzac took up many subjects which he did
+not go on with. He had this peculiarity besides, that he often
+asserted some book to be completed which was either not begun at all
+or was in a most unfinished condition. While on the Angouleme and Aix
+excursion, he spoke especially of _The Three Cardinals_, _The Battle
+of Austerlitz_ (afterwards often alluded to simply as the _Battle_),
+and _The Marquis of Carrabas_. Not one of these was ever written. They
+were abandoned perhaps on account of other work, or else because the
+execution was less easy than the conception. Napoleon, who would have
+been a central figure in the _Battle_, is incidentally introduced in
+the _Country Doctor_, which was begun in 1832.
+
+Probably, also, to this same date should be assigned the bizarre and
+even comical expression of hopes and fears for the future which Balzac
+confided to his sister Laure. In order to force himself to take
+exercise, he used to correct his proofs either at the printer's or at
+her house. Sometimes the weather, to the influence of which he was
+very susceptible, sometimes his money-tightness, or his fatigue from
+protracted work would cause him to arrive with lack-lustre eyes,
+sallow complexion, glum expression and irritable temper. Laure essayed
+to console and brighten him.
+
+"Now don't try to comfort me," he answered on one occasion. "I'm a
+dead man."
+
+And the dead man began to drawl out his tale of woe, gradually rousing
+up as he talked, and, at last, speaking excitedly. But the dolent
+accents returned as he opened his proofs and read them.
+
+"I shall never make a name, sis."
+
+"Nonsense! with such books, any one could make a name."
+
+He raised his head; his features relaxed; the sombre tints vanished
+from his face.
+
+"You are right, by Jove! . . . these books must live. . . . Besides,
+there is Chance. It can protect a Balzac as well as it can a fool.
+Indeed, one has only to invent this chance. Let some one of my
+millionaire friends (and I have a few), or a banker not knowing what
+to do with his money, come and say to me: 'I am aware of your immense
+talent and your anxieties; you need such and such a sum to be free;
+accept it without scruple; you will pay it back some day or other;
+your pen is worth my millions!' That's all I require, my dear sister."
+
+Laure, being accustomed to the appearance of these illusions which
+brought back his cheerfulness, never exhibited any surprise at such
+soaring notes. Having created the fable, her imaginative brother
+continued:
+
+"Those people spend such sums on whims. . . . A handsome deed is a
+whim, like any other, and gives joy perpetually. It is something to
+say: 'I have saved a Balzac.' Humanity has good impulses of the sort;
+and there are people who, without being English, are capable of like
+eccentricities. 'Either a millionaire or a banker,' he cried, thumping
+on his chest, 'one of them I will have.'"
+
+By dint of talking he had come to accredit the thing, and gleefully
+strode about the room, lifting and waving his arms.
+
+"Ah! Balzac is free! You shall see, my dear friends, and my dear
+enemies, what his progress is."
+
+In fancy, he entered the Academy! From there it was only a step to the
+House of Peers. He beheld himself admitted thither. Why shouldn't he
+be a member of the Upper Chamber? This and that person had been
+created a peer. Then he was appointed a minister. There was nothing
+extraordinary about it. Presidents existed. Were not people who had
+boxed the compass of ideas the fittest to govern their fellows? A
+programme, a policy was evolved and carried out; and, as everything
+was going on smoothly, he had time to think of the millionaire friend
+or banker who had assisted him. The generous Maecenas should be
+rewarded. He understood the novelist, had lent him money on the
+security of his talent, had enabled him to obtain his well-deserved
+honours. The benefactor should now have his share in the honour, a
+share in the immortality.
+
+After a peregrination of this magnitude and dreams to match, he
+alighted from his Pegasus, and spoke as an ordinary mortal--he had
+enjoyed himself, and his fit of the dumps was exorcised. Putting the
+last touch to his proof-correcting, he left the house with his face
+wreathed in smiles.
+
+"Good-bye," he said to his sister, at the door; "I am off home to see
+if the banker is there, waiting for me. If he isn't, I shall find some
+work to do all the same; and work is my real money-lender."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER V
+
+               LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1831, 1832
+
+One has little doubt in deciding that, of the two spurs which goaded
+Balzac's labours, his desire for wealth acted more persistently and
+energetically than his desire for glory. In his conversations, in his
+correspondence, money was the eternal theme; in his novels it is
+almost always the hinge on which the interest, whether of character,
+plot, or passion, depends. Money was his obsession, day and night;
+and, in his dormant visions, it must have loomed largely.
+
+Henry Monnier, the caricaturist, used to relate that, meeting him once
+on the Boulevard, the novelist tapped him on the shoulder and said:
+
+"I have a sublime idea. In a month I shall have gained five hundred
+thousand francs."
+
+"The deuce, you will," replied Monnier; "let's hear how."
+
+"Listen, then," returned his interlocutor. "I will rent a shop on the
+Boulevard des Italiens. All Paris is bound to pass by. That's so,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. Well, what next?"
+
+"Next, I will establish a store for colonial produce; and, over the
+window, I will have printed, in letters of gold: 'Honore de Balzac,
+Grocer.' This will create a scandal; everybody will want to see me
+serving the customers, with the classical counter-skipper's smock on.
+I shall gain my five hundred thousand francs; it's certain. Just
+follow my argument. Every day these many people pass along the
+Boulevard, and will not fail to enter the shop. Suppose that each
+person spends only a sou, since half of it will be profit to me I
+shall gain so much a day; consequently, so much a week; so much a
+month."
+
+And thereupon, the novelist, launched into transcendental
+calculations, soaring with his enthusiasm into the clouds.
+
+It was the same Henry Monnier who, meeting him another time on the
+Place de la Bourse, and having had to listen to another of such
+mirific demonstrations about a scheme from which both were to derive
+millions, answered drily:
+
+"Then lend me five francs on strength of the affair."
+
+Noticing this sort of monomania, in an article which he wrote in the
+short-lived _Diogenes_, during the month of August 1856, Amedee Roland
+said of Balzac:
+
+"His ambition was to vie in luxury with Alexandre Dumas and Lamartine,
+who, before the Revolution of 1848, were the most prodigal and
+extravagant authors in the five continents. For anything like a chance
+of finding his elusive millions, he would have gone to China. Indeed,
+on one occasion, he took it into his head he would start, together
+with his friend, Laurent Jan, and go to see the great Mogul,
+maintaining that the latter would give him tons of gold in exchange
+for a ring he possessed, which came, so he asserted, right down from
+Mahomet. It was three o'clock in the morning when he knocked at
+Laurent Jan's door to inform his sleeping friend of his project; and
+the latter had the greatest difficulty in dissuading him from setting
+off forthwith in a post-chaise for India, of course, at the expense of
+the monarch in question."
+
+In justice, however, to Balzac, it should be stated that not a few of
+his suggestions were sensible enough, and contained ideas which, if
+properly put into execution, could have yielded profitable results. As
+a matter of fact, some were subsequently exploited by people who
+listened to them, or heard of them. A scheme of his for making paper
+by an improved process, which he tried to realize in 1833, and which
+he induced his mother, his sister's husband, and other friends to
+support with their capital, anticipated the employment of esparto
+grass and wood, which since has been adopted successfully by others
+and has yielded large fortunes to them. The scheme was perhaps
+premature in Balzac's day, not to speak of his small business
+capacity, which was in an inverse ration to his inventiveness.
+
+From one of his conceptions, at least, there issued an important
+benefit to the entire literary profession. Already, in the previous
+century, Beaumarchais had attempted to establish a society of authors,
+whose aim should be to protect the rights of men of letters. His
+efforts then met with no response. Balzac revived the proposal, and
+coupled with it others tending to improve the material and style of
+printing of books. He had to contend with the hostility of certain
+publishers and the indifference of many authors. But his endeavours
+were ultimately understood and appreciated; and, not long afterwards,
+in 1838, the Societe des Gens de Lettres was founded.
+
+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. Referring to it in a letter to Mame, towards the end of
+1832, he said: "I have long been desirous of the popular glory which
+consists in selling numerous thousands of a small volume like _Atala_,
+_Paul and Virginia_, the _Vicar of Wakefield_, _Manon Lescaut_, etc.
+The book should go into all hands, those of the child, the girl, the
+old man, and even the devotee. Then once, when the book is known, it
+will have a large sale, like the _Meditations_ of Lamartine, for
+instance, sixty thousand copies. My book is conceived in this spirit;
+it is something which the porter and the grand lady can both read. I
+have taken the Gospel and the Catechism, two books that sell well, and
+so I have made mine. I have laid the scene in a village, and the whole
+of the story will be readable, which is rare with me." How high his
+hopes of its quality and saleableness were (the two things were oddly
+mixed up in his mind), he imparted to Zulma Carraud. "The _Country
+Doctor_ has cost me ten times more labour than _Louis Lambert_," he
+informed her. "There is not a sentence or an idea in it that has not
+been revised, re-read, corrected again and again. It's terrible. But
+when one wishes to attain the simple beauty of the Gospel, surpass the
+_Vicar of Wakefield_ and put the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_ into
+action, one must spare no effort. Emile de Girardin and our good
+Borget (his co-tenant at the time) wager the sale will be four hundred
+thousand copies. Emile intends to bring out a franc edition, so that
+it may be sold like a Prayer Book."
+
+What with his writing for the _Revue de Paris_, to which he was
+contributing _Ferragus_, and the pains he gave himself with the
+_Country Doctor_, he was unable to deliver the latter work to Mame at
+the date stipulated, and the publisher brought a lawsuit against him,
+the first of a series of legal disputes he was destined to wage with
+publishing firms and magazine editors during his agitated life.
+
+Notwithstanding the advertisement produced him by the lawsuit, the
+_Country Doctor_ fell flat in the market. Most of the newspapers spoke
+contemptuously of it. One reason given was its loose construction,
+there being no plot, and the two love stories being thrust in towards
+the end to explain the doctor's altruism and the vicarious paternity
+of the Commandant Genestas.
+
+This officer, who is stationed not far from the village close to the
+Grande-Chartreuse, pays a few days' visit to a Doctor Benassis there,
+under pretext of consulting him professionally. While on the visit he
+is initiated into the transformation that has been wrought by the
+doctor in the habits of the people and their homes and surroundings--a
+regeneration accomplished quietly and gradually, vanquishing hostility
+and lethargy and converting the peasant's distrust into love. The
+placing of the Commandant's adopted child under the doctor's care, and
+Benassis' death, which occurs shortly after, form rather a lame
+conclusion to the love stories, which are mysteriously withheld to
+tempt the reader to go on with his perusal. For all its dogmatism in
+religion and politics, its long arguments in defence of the author's
+favourite opinions, and its defective construction, the novel, if one
+can call it a novel, is one of Balzac's best creations. The pictures
+of country scenes are presented with close fidelity to nature and also
+with real artistic arrangement. There are, moreover, delineations of
+rustic character that are truer to life than many of the more
+celebrated ones in the rest of the novelist's fiction; and, in the
+episode entitled the Napoleon of the people,--the narration of an old
+soldier of the First Empire,--there is a topical realism that makes
+one regret the never-achieved _Battle_. Add to these excellences the
+writer's having put into his work, for the nonce, a sincere aspiration
+towards the idea; and, despite flaws, the whole can be pronounced
+admirable.
+
+It was just about the time the _Country Doctor_ was published that he
+began to dwell upon the advantages he might secure by connecting the
+characters in his novels and forming them into a representative
+society. Excited by the perspective this plan offered if all its
+possibilities were realized, he hurried to his sister's house in the
+Faubourg Poissonniere.
+
+"Salute me," he exclaimed joyfully: "I'm on the point of becoming a
+genius!"
+
+And he commenced to explain his thought, which seemed to him so vast
+and pregnant with consequence as to inspire him with awe.
+
+"How fine it will be if I can manage the thing," he continued,
+striding up and down the drawing-room, too restless to stay in one
+place. "I shan't mind now being treated as a mere teller of tales, and
+can go on hewing the stones of my edifice, enjoying, beforehand, the
+amazement of my short-sighted critics, when they contemplate the
+structure complete."
+
+At length, Honore sat down and more tranquilly discussed the fortunes
+of the individuals already born from his brain, or, as yet in process
+of birth. He judged them and determined their fate.
+
+"Such a one," he said, "is a rascal, and will never do any good. Such
+another is industrious, and a good fellow; he will get rich, and his
+character will make him happy. These have been guilty of many
+peccadilloes; but they are so intelligent and have such a thorough
+knowledge of their fellows that they are sure to raise themselves to
+the highest ranks of society."
+
+"Peccadilloes!" replied his sister. "You are indulgent."
+
+"They can't change, my dear. They are fathomers of abysses; but they
+will be able to guide others. The wisest persons are not always the
+best pilots. It's not my fault. I haven't invented human nature. I
+observe it, in past and present; and I try to depict it as it is.
+Impostures in this kind persuade no one."
+
+To the members of his family he announced news from his world of
+fiction just as if he were speaking of actual events.
+
+"Do you know who Felix de Vandenesse is marrying?" he asked. "A
+Mademoiselle de Grandville. The match is an excellent one. The
+Grandvilles are rich, in spite of what Mademoiselle de Belleville has
+cost the family."
+
+If, now and again, he was begged to save some wild young man or
+unhappy woman among his creations, the answer was:
+
+"Don't bother me. Truth above all. Those people have no backbone. What
+happens to them is inevitable. So much the worse for them."
+
+This absorption in the domain of fancy was so complete at times as to
+cause him to confuse it with the outside world. It is related that
+Jules Sandeau, returning once from a journey, spoke to him of his
+sister's illness. Balzac listened to him abstractedly for a while, and
+then interrupted him: "All that, my friend, is very well," he said to
+the astonished Jules, "but let us come back to reality; let us speak
+of _Eugenie Grandet_."
+
+It was the second great book of 1833; and, on the whole, exhibits the
+novelist at his best. Eulogiums came from friends and enemies alike.
+The critics were unanimous, too unanimous, indeed, for the author, who
+detected in their chorus of praise a reiterated condemnation of much
+of his previous production. At last, it even annoyed him to hear his
+name invariably mentioned in connection with this single novel. "Those
+who call me the father of Eugenie Grandet seek to belittle me," he
+cried. "I grant it is a masterpiece, but a small one. They forbear to
+cite the great ones."
+
+His ill-humor was, of course, of later growth. While _Eugenie Grandet_
+was being written, between July and November of 1833, Balzac was quite
+content to estimate it at its higher value. During the period of its
+composition, he had fallen, perhaps for the first time in his life,
+sincerely in love with the woman he ultimately married; and it is
+appropriate to notice here the synchronism of the event with his
+high-water mark in fiction. As he confessed to Zulma Carraud, love was
+his life, his essence; he wrote best when under its influence. There
+were, be it granted, other contributory causes to make this rapidly
+written story what we find it to be. The place, the date, the people,
+the incidents were all close to his own life. Saumur and Tours are
+neighbouring towns; and 'tis affirmed that the original of the goodman
+Grandet, a certain Jean Niveleau, had a daughter, whom he refused to
+give in marriage to Honore. Maybe tradition has embroidered a little
+on the facts, but there would seem to be much in the narration that
+belongs to the writer's personal experience. His sister found fault
+with his attributing so many millions to the miser. "But, stupid, the
+thing is true," he replied. "Do you want me to improve on truth? If
+you only knew what it is to knead ideas, and to give them form and
+colour, you wouldn't be so quick to criticize."
+
+As is usual, when the interest is chiefly characterization, Balzac
+does not give us a complicated plot. We have in Grandet a self-made
+man, who has amassed riches by trade and speculation, and lives with
+his wife and daughter in a gloomy old house, with only one servant as
+miserly as the master. Eugenie's hand is sought by several suitors,
+and in particular by the son of the banker des Grassins and the son of
+the notary Cruchot, these two families waging a diplomatic warfare on
+behalf of their respective candidates. Into this midst suddenly comes
+the fashionable nephew Charles Grandet, whose father has, unknown to
+him, just committed suicide to escape bankruptcy. Eugenie falls in
+love with her cousin, and he, apparently, with her; but the old man,
+unsoftened by his brother's death, using it even as a further means of
+speculation, gets rid of the unfortunate lover by gingerly helping him
+to go abroad. Years pass, and Eugenie's mother dies, while she herself
+withers, under the miser's avaricious tyranny. At length, old Grandet
+pays his debt to nature, and Eugenie is left with the millions. Until
+now she had waited for the wandering lover's return; but he, engaging
+in the slave-trade, has lost all the generous impulses of his youth,
+and comes back only to deny his early affection and marry the
+ill-favoured daughter of a Marquis. Eugenie takes a noble revenge for
+this desertion by paying her dead uncle's debts, which Charles had
+repudiated, and she marries the notary's son, who leaves her a widow
+soon after.
+
+Everything in the tale is absolutely natural, extraordinary in its
+naturalness; and the reactions of its various persons upon each other
+are traced with fine perception. There is not much of the outward
+expression of love--in this Balzac did not excel--but there is a good
+deal of its hidden tragedy. Moreover, the miser's ruling passion is
+exhibited in traits that suggest still more than they openly display;
+and all the action and circumstance are in the subdued tone proper to
+provincial existence. The introductory words prepare the reader's mind
+for what follows:--
+
+"In certain country towns there are houses whose aspect inspires a
+melancholy equal to that evoked by the gloomiest cloisters, the most
+monotonous moorland, or the saddest ruins. . . . Perhaps, in these
+houses there are at once the silence of the cloister, the barrenness
+of the moorland, and the bones of ruins. Life and movement are so
+tranquil in them that a stranger might believe them uninhabited if he
+did not suddenly see the pale, cold gaze of a motionless person whose
+half-monastic face leans over the casement at the noise of an unknown
+step. . . ."
+
+And the shadow persists even in the love-scene.
+
+"Charles said to Eugenie, drawing her to the old bench, where they sat
+down under the walnut trees: 'In five days, Eugenie, we must bid each
+other adieu, for ever perhaps; but, at least, for a long while. My
+stock and ten thousand francs sent me by two of my friends are a very
+small beginning. I cannot think of my return for several years. My
+dear cousin, don't place my life and yours in the balance. I may
+perish. Perhaps you may make a rich marriage.'--'You love me,' she
+said.--'Oh yes, dearly,' he replied, with a depth of accent revealing
+a corresponding depth of sentiment.--'I will wait, Charles. Heavens!
+my father is at his window,' she said, pushing away her cousin, who
+was approaching to kiss her. She escaped beneath the archway; Charles
+followed her there. On seeing him, she withdrew to the foot of the
+staircase and opened the self-closing door; then hardly knowing where
+she was going, Eugenie found herself near Nanon's den, in the darkest
+part of the passage. There, Charles, who had accompanied her, took her
+hand, drew her to his heart, seized her round the waist, and pressed
+her to himself. Eugenie no longer protested. She received and gave the
+purest, sweetest, but also the entirest of all kisses."
+
+The foregoing and others, equally well drawn, are figures in the
+background. Standing out in front of them, and in lurid relief, is the
+central figure of the miser, represented with the same mobility of
+temperament noticeable in George Eliot's creations--a thing
+exceptional in Balzac's work. Grandet, as long as his wife lives is
+reclaimable--just reclaimable. Subsequently, he is an automaton
+responsive only to the sight and touch of his gold.
+
+The dedication of _Eugenie Grandet_ is to Maria; and Maria, portrayed
+under the features and character of the heroine, was, we learn, an
+agreeable girl, of middle-class origins, who, in the year of 1833,
+attached herself to Balzac and bore him a child.
+
+This liaison was running its ephemeral course just at the time when
+accident made him acquainted with his future wife. On the 28th of
+February 1832, his publisher Gosselin handed him a letter with a
+foreign postmark. His correspondent, a lady, who had read, she said,
+and admired his _Scenes of Private Life_, reproached him with losing,
+in the _Shagreen Skin_, the delicacy of sentiment contained in these
+earlier novels, and begged him to forsake his ironic, sceptical manner
+and revert to the higher manifestations of his talent. There was no
+signature to this communication; and the writer, who subscribed
+herself "The Stranger," begged him to abstain from any attempt to
+discover who she was, as there were paramount reasons why she should
+remain anonymous. Balzac's curiosity was keenly aroused by so much
+mystery, and he tried, but in vain, to get hold of some clue that
+might conduct him to the retreat of the _incognita_. After a lapse of
+seven months, a second epistle arrived, more romantic in tone than the
+first; and containing, among obscure allusions to the lady's
+surroundings and personality, the following declaration: "You no doubt
+love and are loved; the union of angels must be your lot. Your souls
+must have unknown felicities. The Stranger loves you both, and desires
+to be your friend. . . . She likewise knows how to love, but that is
+all. . . . Ah! you understand me."
+
+A third letter followed this one shortly afterwards, asking the
+novelist to acknowledge its receipt in the _Quotidienne_ journal,
+which he did, expressing in the advertisement his regret at not being
+able to address a direct reply. At last, in the spring of 1833, the
+fair correspondent made herself known. She was a Countess Evelina
+Hanska, wife of a Polish nobleman living at Wierzchownia in the
+Ukraine. She further allowed it to be understood that she was young,
+handsome, immensely rich, and not over happy with her husband. This
+information sufficed to set Balzac's imagination agog. At once, he
+enshrined the dame in the temple of his ideal, poured out his heart to
+her, and told her of his struggles and ambitions, meanwhile fashioning
+a realm of the future in which he and she were to be the two reigning
+monarchs.
+
+Madame Hanska was also a Pole. She belonged to the noble Rzewuska
+stock and was born in the castle of Pohrebyszcze between 1804 and
+1806. Owing to family reverses, her parents, who had several other
+children to provide for, were glad to meet with a husband for her in
+the Count Hanski, who was twenty-five years her senior. The marriage
+took place between 1818 and 1822, and four children, three boys and a
+girl, were its issue; but, the boys all dying in infancy, the young
+mother was left with her little daughter Anna to bring up, and with
+the desires of a rich, cultured woman, who did not find in her
+home-circle the wherewithal to satisfy them.
+
+Of her own charms she had spoken truly. Daffinger's miniature of her,
+painted when she was thirty, represents her as abundantly endowed by
+nature; and Gigoux' pastel of 1852, which is less faithful and shows
+her considerably older, still gives substantially the portrait that
+Barbey d'Aurevilly sketched of her after Balzac's death: "She was of
+imposing and noble beauty, somewhat massive," says this writer. "But
+she knew how to maintain, despite her embonpoint, a very great charm,
+which was enhanced by her delightful foreign accent. She had splendid
+shoulders, the finest arms in the world, and a complexion of radiant
+brilliancy. Her soft black eyes, her full red lips, her framing mass
+of curled hair, her finely chiselled forehead, and the sinuous grace
+of her gait gave her an air of abandon and dignity together, a haughty
+yet sensuous expression which was very captivating."
+
+Fascinated by Balzac's masterly delineation of her sex, and longing to
+learn more about the man who had appealed to her so powerfully, she
+contrived a journey to Switzerland in 1833, in which her husband and
+child accompanied her. Switzerland was a land easier for a noble
+Russian subject to obtain permission to visit. Neufchatel was the
+place of sojourn chosen, since there was the home of Anna's Swiss
+governess, Mademoiselle Henriette Borel, who had played an
+intermediary's role in the beginning of the adventure.
+
+As soon as he had news of the party's arrival, Balzac posted off,
+concealing from every one the reason for his sudden departure. It had
+been agreed that the meeting should be on the chief promenade; and
+there, on a bench, with one of the novelist's books on her lap, Madame
+Hanska sat with her husband, when he came up and accosted her. One
+account states that the Countess having, in her excitement, allowed a
+scarf to drop and hide the book, he passed her by more than once, not
+daring to speak till she took up the scarf. The same account adds that
+the lady, remarking the little, stout man staring at her, prayed he
+might not be the one she was expecting. But no written confession of
+the Countess's exists to prove that such a thought damped her
+enthusiasm.
+
+Balzac's impression was recorded in a letter to his sister. "I am
+happy, very happy," he wrote. "She is twenty-seven, possesses most
+beautiful black hair, the smooth and deliciously fine skin of
+brunettes, a lovely little hand, is naive and imprudent to the point
+of embracing me before every one. I say nothing about her colossal
+wealth. What is it in comparison with beauty. I am intoxicated with
+love." The one drawback to the meeting was Monsieur Hanski. "Alas!"
+adds the writer, "he did not quit us during five days for a single
+second. He went from his wife's skirt to my waistcoat. And Neufchatel
+is a small town, where a woman, an illustrious foreigner, cannot take
+a step without being seen. Constraint doesn't suit me."
+
+Evidently, during the Neufchatel intercourse, some sort of
+understanding must have been reached, based on the rather unkind
+anticipation of the Count Hanski's death. At that time, the
+gentleman's health was precarious. He survived, however until 1841,
+meanwhile more or less cognizant of his wife's attachment and offering
+no opposition. He even deemed himself honoured by Balzac's friendship.
+How rapid the progress of the novelist's passion was for the new idol
+may be judged by the letter he despatched to Geneva, two or three
+months later, in December, whilst he was correcting the proofs of
+_Eugenie Grandet_. "I think I shall be at Geneva on the 13th," he
+wrote. "The desire to see you makes me invent things that ordinarily
+don't come into my head. I correct more quickly. It's not only courage
+you give me to support the difficulties of life; you give me also
+talent, at any rate, facility. . . . My Eve, my darling, my kind,
+divine Eve! What a grief it is to me not to have been able to tell you
+every evening all that I have done, said, and thought."
+
+The visit to Geneva was paid, and lasted six weeks, the novelist
+quitting Switzerland only on the 8th of February 1834. From this date
+onward, a regular correspondence was kept up between them,
+compensating for their seeing each other rarely. The project of
+marriage, more tenaciously pursued by Balzac than by his Eve, was yet
+no hindrance to his fleeting fancies for other women. These interim
+amours have a good deal preoccupied his various biographers, partly
+because of the undoubted use he made of them in his novels, and partly
+also because of the trouble he gave himself to establish among circles
+outside his own immediate entourage the legend of his being a sort of
+Sir Galahad, leading a perfectly chaste life and caring only for his
+literary labours. Says Theophile Gautier:--
+
+"He used to preach to us a strange literary hygiene. We ought to shut
+ourselves up for two or three years, drink water, eat soaked lupines
+like Protogenes, go to bed at six o'clock in the evening, and work
+till morning . . . and especially to live in the most absolute
+chastity. He insisted much on this last recommendation, very rigorous
+for a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. According
+to him, real chastity developed the powers of the mind to the highest
+degree, and gave to those that practised it unknown faculties. We
+timidly objected that the greatest geniuses had indulged in the love
+passion, and we quoted illustrious names. Balzac shook his head and
+replied: 'They would have done much more but for the women.' The only
+concession he would make us, regretfully, was to see the loved one for
+half-an-hour a year. Love letters he allowed. They formed a writer's
+style."
+
+George Sand speaks much to the same effect in her reminiscences. She
+believed in the legend.
+
+"Moderate in every other respect," she says, "he had the purest of
+morals, having always dreaded wildness as the enemy of talent; and he
+nearly always cherished women solely in his heart and in his head,
+even in his youth. He pursued chastity on principle; and his relations
+with the fair sex were those merely of curiosity. When he found a
+curiosity equal to his own, he exploited this mine with the cynicism
+of a father-confessor. But, when he met with health of mind and body,
+he was as happy as a child to speak of real love and to rise into the
+lofty regions of sentiment."
+
+Unfortunately for the preceding testimony, a flat contradiction is
+given to it not only by the recorded facts of the novelist's life, but
+by his sister, who knew better than George Sand and Gautier that
+Balzac's profession of sublimer sentiments did not exclude a more
+mundane feeling and practice. Commenting on George Sand's generous
+panegyric of her brother, she adds: "It is an error to speak of his
+extreme moderation. He does not deserve this praise. Outside of his
+work, which was first and foremost, he loved and tasted all the
+pleasures of this world. I think he would have been the most conceited
+of all men, if he had not been the most discreet. Confident in
+himself, he never committed the least indiscretion in his relations
+with others, and kept their secrets, though unable to keep his own."
+
+The Viscount Spoelberch de Lovenjoul is still more explicit in his
+short book on Balzac and Madame Hanska, entitled _Roman d'Amour_.
+Speaking of the novelist's various liaisons and love escapades, which
+were covered up with such solicitude from the eyes of the world, he
+remarks that Balzac, while vaunting himself, in argument, of having
+remained chaste for a number of years, owned to his sister that the
+truth was quite different. The novelist did his utmost, continues
+Monsieur de Lovenjoul, to foster the tradition of his hermit-like
+conduct; and to all the jealous women with whom he entertained
+friendly relations he asserted that his morals were as spotless as
+those of a cenobite. Ever and everywhere he abused the credulity of
+those who flattered themselves they were his only love.
+
+Madame de Berny was not among the credulous ones, nor yet so resigned
+as the simple _bourgeoise_ Maria, who, to quote Balzac's own words,
+"fell like a flower from heaven, exacted neither correspondence nor
+attentions, and said: 'Love me a year and I will love you all my
+life.'" Though forced to accept the transformation of her relations
+with her young lover into a purely platonic friendship, she made
+occasional protests against being supplanted by younger rivals--the
+imperious Madame de Castries among the number. The birth and growth of
+his affection for Madame Hanska she appears to have felt and resented
+to a greater degree than his previous infidelities to her. Not even
+its maintenance, for the time being, on the plane of pure sentiment,
+dispelled her jealous thoughts. Being apprized of Balzac's dedication
+of a portion of the _Woman of Thirty Years Old_ to his Eve, she
+insisted on his expunging the offending name, while the sheets were in
+the press. Whether her fretting over his transferred allegiance
+hastened her end it is impossible to say with any certainty; yet one
+cannot help being struck by the fact that the serious phase of the
+malady that killed her almost coincided with the beginning of their
+separation.
+
+Madame Hanska, although she started with a supposition of his loving
+another, became exacting also, in proportion as her admirer's
+professions of loyalty conferred the right upon her. Rumours reached
+her now and again, and sometimes precise information, of her place
+being usurped by another. And, later, as will be again mentioned, a
+breach occurred between them which was nearly final. By his various
+mistresses, Balzac had four children, including _Maria's_ little
+daughter, two of whom survived him.
+
+All this notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to assume that he was
+a deliberate woman-hunter, and wasted his energies in licentiousness.
+His immense industry and productiveness are enough to prove that such
+lapses were more the natural outcome of his having so constant a bevy
+of lady worshippers about him, and occurred as opportunity offered
+only. On the other hand, it must be admitted that woman's counsels,
+woman's encouragements, woman's caresses and help were very necessary
+to him; and he drew largely on the capacities, material and moral, of
+the Marthas and Maries that crossed his orbit, attracting him or
+themselves attracted.
+
+The twelvemonth which was marked by the achievement of his most
+perfect novel also brought him into regular business relations with
+Werdet, destined to be one of his biographers, who now became his
+chief publisher and remained so during several years. Incorrect in
+many details which lay outside his own ken, and which he had gleaned
+from hearsay or books hastily written, Werdet's own book, a familiar
+portrait of Balzac, is nevertheless a valuable document. If the author
+was unable to fathom the whole of the genius and character of the man
+he described, he yet sincerely appreciated them; and not even the
+soreness he could not help feeling when ultimately thrown aside,
+destroyed his deep-rooted worship of him whom he regarded as one of
+the highest glories of French literature.
+
+Werdet, when he was introduced to the writer of the _Physiology of
+Marriage_, had already tried his luck at publishing, but had been
+compelled to abandon the master's position and to enter as an employee
+into the house of a Madame Bechet, who was engaged in the same line of
+business. Having read and liked some of Balzac's earlier works, he
+persuaded the firm to entrust him with the task of negotiating a
+purchase of the exclusive rights of the novelist's _Studies of Manners
+and Morals in the Nineteenth Century_. The negotiation was carried
+through in 1832, and a sum of thirty-six thousand francs was paid to
+Balzac. This was the writer's real beginning of money-making. Twelve
+months after, Werdet resolved to start once more on his own account.
+He had only a few thousand francs capital. His idea was to risk them
+in buying one of Balzac's books; and then, if successful, gradually to
+acquire a publishing monopoly in the great man's productions.
+Distrusting his own powers of persuasion, he enlisted the good offices
+of Barbier, the late partner of the Rue des Marais printing-house, who
+was a _persona grata_ with the novelist. Together, they went to the
+Rue Cassini; and Barbier set forth Werdet's desire.
+
+"Very good," replied the great man. "But you are aware, Monsieur, that
+those who now publish my works require large capital, since I often
+need considerable advances."
+
+Proudly, young Werdet brought out his six notes of five hundred francs
+each, and spread them on the table.
+
+"There is all my fortune," he said. "You can have it for any book you
+please to write for me."
+
+At the sight of them Balzac burst out laughing.
+
+"How can you imagine, Monsieur, that I--I--de Balzac! who sold my
+_Studies of Manners and Morals_ not long ago to Madame Bechet for
+thirty-six thousand francs--I, whose collaboration to the _Revue de
+Paris_ is ordinarily remunerated by Buloz at five hundred francs per
+sheet, should forget myself to the point of handing you a novel from
+my pen for a thousand crowns? You cannot have reflected on your offer,
+Monsieur; and I should be entitled to look upon your step as
+unbecoming in the highest degree, were it not that your frankness in a
+measure justifies you."
+
+Barbier tried to plead for his friend, and mentioned that, in
+consideration of Werdet's share in the transaction with Madame Bechet,
+a second edition of the _Country Doctor_ might be granted him for the
+three thousand francs. But Balzac, retorting that whatever service had
+been rendered was not to himself but by himself, dismissed his
+visitors with the words:
+
+"We have spent an hour, gentlemen, in useless talk. You have made me
+lose two hundred francs. For me, time is money. I must work. Good-day."
+
+They left, and Barbier, to comfort his friend, prophesied that, in
+spite of this reception, Balzac would enter into _pourparlers_ with
+him, and that Werdet had only to wait, and news would be received from
+the Rue Cassini shortly. He was not mistaken. Three days elapsed and
+then Werdet had the following note sent him:--
+
+"SIR,--You called upon me the other day when my head was preoccupied
+with some writing that I wanted to finish, and I consequently did not
+very well comprehend what was your drift. To-day, my head is freer. Do
+me the pleasure to call on me at four o'clock, and we can talk the
+matter over."
+
+Werdet waited nearly a week before he paid the requested visit. In
+quite another tone, the novelist discussed the proposed scheme,
+promised to use his influence on the young publisher's behalf, and
+gave him the _Country Doctor_ for the price offered.
+
+Thenceforward, a familiar guest in the dwelling of the Rue Cassini,
+Werdet described it in detail, when composing his _Portrait Intime_.
+It was part of a two-storied _pavilion_ (as the French call a
+moderate-sized house) standing to the left in a courtyard and garden,
+with another similar building on the right. From the ground-floor a
+flight of steps led up to a glass-covered gallery joining the two
+buildings and serving as an antechamber to each. Its sides were hung
+in white and blue-striped glazed calico; and a long, blue-upholstered
+divan, a blue and brown carpet, and some fine china vases filled with
+flowers, adorned it. From the gallery the visitor proceeded into a
+pretty drawing-room, fifteen feet square, lighted on the east by a
+small casement that looked over the yard of a neighbouring house.
+Opposite the drawing-room door was a black marble mantelpiece.
+
+The _salon_ gave access to the bedroom and the dining-room, the latter
+being connected with the kitchen underneath by a narrow staircase. A
+secret door in the _salon_ opened into the bathroom with its walls of
+white stucco, its bath of white marble, and its red, opaque
+window-panes diffusing a rose-coloured tint through the air. Two
+easy-chairs in red morocco stood near the bath.
+
+The bedroom, having two windows, one towards the south and the
+observatory, the other overlooking a garden of flowers and trees, was
+very bright and cheery. The furniture, with its shades of white, pink,
+and gold, was rich and handsome. A secret door existed also in this
+chamber, hidden behind muslin hangings; it led down the same narrow
+staircase already mentioned to the kitchen, and thence out into the
+yard. Nanon, Balzac's cook, less discreet than Auguste, the
+valet-de-chambre, had tales to tell Werdet about certain lady visitors
+who arrived by means of this private staircase into the daintily
+arranged bedroom.
+
+The study, of oblong shape, about eighteen feet by twelve, had
+likewise two windows affording a view only over the yard of the next
+house, which, being lofty, made the room dark, even in the sunniest
+weather. Here the furniture was simple, the principal piece being an
+exceedingly fine ebony bookcase, with mirrored panels. It contained a
+large collection of rare books, all bound in red morocco and set off
+with the escutcheon of the d'Entragues family. Among them were nearly
+all the authors who had written on mysticism, occult science, and
+religion. Opposite the bookcase, between the windows, was a carved
+ebony cabinet filled with red morocco box-cases, and on the top of the
+cabinet stood a plaster statuette representing Napoleon I. Across the
+sword-sheath was stuck a tiny paper with these words written by the
+novelist: "What he could not achieve with the sword I will accomplish
+with the pen. Honore de Balzac."
+
+On the mantelpiece decorated with a mirror, there was an alarum in
+unpolished bronze, together with two vases in brown porcelain. And on
+either side of the mirror hung all sorts of woman's trifles; here, a
+crumpled glove, there a small satin shoe; and, further, a little rusty
+iron key. Questioned as to the significance of this last article, the
+owner called it his talisman. There was also a diminutive framed
+picture exhibiting beneath the glass a fragment of brown silk, with an
+arrow-pierced heart embroidered on it, and the English words: _An
+Unknown Friend_. In front of a modest writing-table covered with green
+baize was a large Voltaire arm-chair upholstered in red morocco; and
+about the room were a few other ebony chairs covered in brown cloth.
+
+Within his sanctum Balzac worked clad in a white Dominican gown with
+hood, the summer material being dimity and cashmere; he was shod with
+embroidered slippers, and his waist was girt with a rich Venetian-gold
+chain, on which were suspended a paper-knife, a pair of scissors, and
+a gold penknife, all of them beautifully carved. Whatever the season,
+thick window-curtains shut out the rays of light that might have
+penetrated into the study, which was illuminated only by two
+moderate-sized candelabra of unpolished bronze, each holding a couple
+of continually burning candles.
+
+The installation of these various household necessaries and luxuries
+was progressive and was associated closely with the heyday period of
+his celebrity. It was during 1833 that the metamorphosis was mainly
+effected, for Werdet relates that, in the month of November, he found
+Balzac, one afternoon, superintending the laying down of some rich
+Aubusson carpets in his house. Money must have been plentiful just
+then. Learning accidentally on this occasion that his publisher had no
+carpet in his drawing-room, the novelist surprised him the same
+evening by sending some men with one that he had bought for him. This
+present Werdet suitably acknowledged a short time after; and,
+throughout the period of their intimacy, there were a good few
+compliments of the kind exchanged, which appear to have cost the man
+of business dearer than the man of letters.
+
+To tell the truth, Balzac had a knack of presuming that something he
+intended doing was already done. One notorious example was the white
+horse he asserted, in presence of a number of guests assembled in
+Madame de Girardin's drawing-room, had been given by him to Jules
+Sandeau. The animal in question, he said, he had bought from a
+well-known dealer; the celebrated trainer Baucher had tested it and
+declared it to be the most perfect animal ever ridden. For nearly
+half-an-hour the speaker expatiated on the points of this wonderful
+steed, and thoroughly convinced his audience of the gift having been
+already bestowed. A few evenings later, Jules Sandeau met Balzac at
+the same house, and the subject was of course reverted to by their
+mutual friends. As the novelist asked him whether he liked the horse,
+Jules, not to be outvied, answered with an enumeration of its
+qualities. But he never saw the animal for all that.
+
+Another instance equally amusing was furnished at a dinner given in
+honour of Balzac by Henri de Latouche, who had not then broken with
+him. At dessert, the host sketched the plan of a novel he intended to
+write, and Balzac, who had been drinking champagne, warmly applauded;
+"The thing," he said, "is capital. Even summarily related, it is
+charming. What will it be when the talent, style, and wit of the
+author have enhanced it!" Next evening, at Madame de Girardin's, he
+reproduced, with his native fire and power of description, the
+narration he had heard the night before--reproduced it as his own
+--persuaded it was his own. Every one was enthusiastic, and
+complimented him. But the matter was bruited abroad. Latouche
+recognized in Balzac's proposed new novel the creation he had
+himself unfolded; and wrote a sharp protest which, for once, forced
+its recipient to distinguish fact from fiction, and what was his
+share, what another's, in the output of ideas. Yet he might be
+excused for some of his frequent fits of forgetfulness, since he
+sowed his own conceptions and discoveries broadcast, and often
+encountered them again in the possession of lesser minds who had
+utilized them before he could put them into execution.
+
+In the year of 1833, the novelist's correspondence alludes to several
+books which, like others previously spoken of, were never published,
+and probably never written. Among these are _The Privilege_, _The
+History of a Fortunate Idea_, and the _Catholic Priest_. Meanwhile, he
+did add considerably to his _Droll Tales_, the first series of which
+appeared in the same twelve months as _Eugenie Grandet_. These stories
+--in the style of Boccaccio, and of some of Chaucer's writing--broad,
+racy, and somewhat licentious, albeit containing nothing radically
+obscene, were meant to illustrate the history of the French language
+and French manners from olden to modern days. Only part of the project
+was realized. They are told with wit and humour that are nowhere
+present to the same degree in the rest of the novelist's work, and in
+their colouring, as Taine justly remarks, recall Jordaens' painting
+with its vivid carnation tints. At this time the author was occupied
+with _Bertha Repentant_ and the _Succubus_, which, however, were
+published only three years subsequently.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI
+
+               LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1833, 1834
+
+If Balzac's intimates, careful of his future, had besought him to jot
+down in a diary the detailed doings of his every-day life, with a
+confession of his thoughts, feelings, and opinions, in fine an
+unmasking of himself, he would surely have urged the material
+impossibility of his fulfilling such a task, over and above the
+labours of Hercules to which his ambition and his necessities bound
+him. And yet he performed the miracle unsolicited.
+
+From the day when he quitted Neufchatel to the day when he arrived at
+Wierzchownia, on his crowning visit in 1848, he never ceased
+chronicling, in a virtually uninterrupted series of letters to Madame
+Hanska, closely following each other during most of this long period,
+a faithful account of his existence--exception made for its love
+episodes--which, having fortunately been preserved, constitutes an
+almost complete autobiography of his mature years. When the end of the
+correspondence shall have been given to the public, three volumes, at
+least, will have been taken up with the record--a record which taxed
+his time and strength, indeed overtaxed them, causing him to encroach
+unduly on his already too short hours of sleep. The motive must have
+been a powerful one that could induce him to make so large a
+sacrifice. Whether it was love alone, as he protested again and again,
+or love mixed with gratified pride, or both joined to the hope of
+enjoying the vast fortune that loomed through the mists of the far-off
+Ukraine, the phenomenon remains the same. Certainly some great force
+was behind the pen that untiringly wrote in every vein and mood these
+astonishing _Letters to the Stranger_.
+
+In those up to the year 1834 that were, properly speaking, private,
+the tone rises to a pitch of lover-passion that could hardly fail to
+alarm, even whilst they flattered the one to whom his devotion was
+addressed. Although Balzac's brief sojourns in Madame Hanska's
+vicinity had resulted in no breach of the marriage law, there was too
+much implied in his assumption of their betrothal to please the
+husband, if any of these lover's oaths should fall under his notice.
+And this was what just did happen before many months had gone by. In
+consequence of some accident which is not explained, the Count had
+cognizance of two epistles that reached his wife while both were
+staying at Vienna; and, for some time, it seemed as though the
+intercourse would be definitely severed. A humble apology was sent to
+the Count, the letters being passed off as a joke; and the
+interpretation was, fortunately for Balzac, accepted. Madame Hanska
+was offended as well as her husband, or, at any rate, she affected to
+be. It appears some negligence had been committed by the novelist in
+forwarding the incriminating epistles. However, being cleared in her
+husband's eyes, she yielded her forgiveness.
+
+Balzac's policy, after this mishap, was to keep on the best terms
+possible with Monsieur Hanski, who, to use the Frenchman's English
+expression, suffered from chronic blue devils. After leaving his new
+friends at Geneva, the novelist procured the Count an autograph letter
+from Rossini, this great composer being a favourite at Wierzchownia.
+To his new lady-love he sent an effusion of his own in verse, having
+small poetic merit, but pretty sentiment.
+
+During the Geneva intercourse, he did his best to familiarize Eve with
+all the names and characters of the people he knew, since his
+interests were to be hers, or, at any rate, so he flattered himself.
+She learnt to distinguish the people who were for him from those who
+were against him. Of these latter there were a goodly number, some
+made enemies by his own fault, through over-susceptibility or
+unconscious arrogance. Both causes were responsible for the quarrel
+occurring about this time between him and Emile de Girardin, which was
+never entirely healed, in spite of the persevering efforts of Emile's
+wife, better known as Madame Delphine Gay. "I have bidden good-bye to
+the Gays' molehill," he informed Madame Hanska. It was pretty much the
+same with his estrangement from the Duke de Fitz-James, which,
+however, was followed by a speedy reconciliation, for the Duke was
+offering, a few months later, to support him again in a political
+election. The unsatisfactory state of his health, and some family
+troubles, decided him to defer his candidature to the end of the
+decade, by which date he hoped to have written two works--_The Tragedy
+of Philippe II._ and _The History of the Succession of the Marquis of
+Carrabas_--which should implant his conception of absolute monarchic
+power so strongly in the minds of his fellow-citizens that they would
+be glad to send him to Parliament as their representative. Other
+political articles and pamphlets of his, he asserted, would enable him
+by 1839 to dominate European questions.
+
+Werdet has a great deal to say about his idol's over-weening exaction
+of homage, leading him to be himself guilty of acts of rudeness
+towards others, thus alienating their sympathies. The publisher
+relates one scene that he witnessed at the offices of William Duckett,
+proprietor of the _Dictionary of Conversation and Reading_. The office
+door was suddenly opened and Balzac stalked in with his hat on his
+head. "Is Duckett in?" he curtly asked, addressing in common the chief
+editor, his sub, and an attendant. There was a conspiracy of silence.
+Evidently, this was not the novelist's first visit, and his style was
+known. Again the question was put in the same language and manner, and
+again no one replied. Advancing now a step, and speaking to the chief
+editor, he repeated his question for a third time. Monglave, who was
+an irritable gentleman, being accosted personally, answered briefly:
+"Put your question to the sub-editor." There was a wheel-about, and
+another peremptory inquiry, to which the sub, imitating his chief,
+replied with "Ask the attendant." At present boiling with rage, Balzac
+turned to the porter and thundered: "Is Duckett in?" "Monsieur
+Balzac," returned the attendant, "these gentlemen have forbidden me to
+tell you." Threatening to report the affair to Duckett, the novelist
+withdrew, pursued by the mocking laughter of the chief editor and the
+sub; but, on second thoughts, he deemed it more prudent to let the
+matter drop.
+
+Another example of this peculiar assumption of superiority occurred
+not long after at a dinner given by Werdet in honour of a young
+author, Jules Bergounioux, whose novels were being much read. Among
+the guests were Gustave Planche, Jules Sandeau, and Balzac. During the
+meal the conversation, after many assaults of wit and mirth, fell on
+the necessity of defending writers against the piracy and mutilation
+of their books in foreign countries, more especially in Belgium. All
+expressed their opinion energetically, young Bergounioux like the
+rest, he happening to class himself with his fellows in the words--_we
+men of letters_. At the conclusion of his little speech, Balzac
+uttered a guffaw: "You, sir, a man of letters! What pretension! What
+presumption! You! compare yourself to us! Really, sir, you forget that
+you have the honour to be sitting here with the marshals of modern
+literature."
+
+This exhibition and others similar were natural to the man. He could
+not help them. It was impossible for him not to be continually
+proclaiming his own greatness. "Don't tax me with littleness," he said
+in one of his letters to Delphine Gay, in which he justified his
+breaking with her husband. "I think myself too great to be offended by
+any one."
+
+The domestic troubles alluded to above, which were worrying Balzac in
+1834, had partly to do with his brother Henry, a sort of ne'er-do-well,
+who had been out to the Indies and had returned with an undesirable
+wife, and prospects--or rather the lack of them--that made him a
+burden to the other members of the family. Madame Balzac, too, was
+unwell at Chantilly; and her illnesses always affected Honore, who,
+at such moments, reproached himself for not being able to do more on
+her behalf. Not that his year's budget was a poor one. The seventy
+thousand francs at which he estimated his probable earnings for the
+twelvemonth were not on this occasion so very much beyond the truth,
+if his author's percentages were included. Werdet--the illustrious
+Werdet, who, he said, somewhat resembled the _Illustrious Gaudissart_
+--bought an edition of his philosophic novels for fifteen thousand
+francs; and, besides two principal books to be mentioned further on,
+both of which appeared before the close of the year, there were parts
+of _Seraphita_ and _The Cabinet of Antiques_ which the _Revue de
+Paris_ was publishing as serials. His notorious quarrel and lawsuit
+with this Review was yet to come. But there was storm in the air even
+now. _Seraphita_, the subject inspired by Madame Hanska and dedicated
+to her, was but little to the taste of Buloz the editor; and he
+declared to Balzac, who was making him wait for copy, that it was
+hardly worth while taking so long and making so much fuss over a novel
+which neither the public nor he, the editor, could understand. Happily
+the dear Werdet was at hand to arrange the difficulty. Though in the
+same case as Buloz, and failing altogether to comprehend the subject
+or its treatment, he took over _Seraphita_ in 1835 and published it.
+
+Next to politics, as a means of gaining name and fame more quickly,
+Balzac esteemed play-writing. The esteem was purely commercial. In his
+heart of hearts he rather despised this species of composition,
+entertaining the notion that it was something to be done quickly, if
+at all, and utilizable to please the groundlings. Yet, because he saw
+that there was money in it, he turned his hand to it, time after time,
+and, for long, had to abandon it as constantly. In 1834 he formed a
+partnership with Jules Sandeau and Emmanuel Arago, with the idea of
+risking less in case of failure. In addition to the tragedy already
+spoken of, he tried two others--_The Courtiers_ and _Don Philip and
+Don Charles_, the latter modelled on Schiller's _Don Carlos_. The
+_Grande Mademoiselle_ was a comic history of Lauzun; and his
+_Prudhomme, Bigamist_, was a farce, in which a dummy placed in a bed
+seemed to him capable, with a night's working on it, of bringing down
+the house. Vaguely he felt, and vaguely he confessed to his sister,
+what he had seen and confessed thirteen years earlier, that the drama
+was not his forte. But, anchored in the conviction that he ought
+finally to succeed in everything he undertook, he returned to the
+attempt with magnificent pluck and perseverance.
+
+His colleague for the nonce, Sandeau, he considered to be a protege of
+his; and used him a while as a kind of secretary. In this year
+especially he showed much solicitude about him. There was nothing to
+excite his jealousy in the author of _Sacs et Parchemins_, who was not
+elected to the Academy until nearly the end of the decade in which
+Balzac died. On the contrary, his pity was aroused by Sandeau's
+precarious position and by the recent separation between Madame
+Dudevant and this first of her lovers, who did his best to commit
+suicide by swallowing a dose of acetate of morphia. Luckily the dose
+was so large that Sandeau's stomach refused to digest it. George Sand
+herself Balzac admired but did not care for at this time. He would
+talk to her amiably when he met her at the Opera; but, if she invited
+him to dinner, he invented an excuse, if possible, for not going.
+"Don't speak to me," he would say, "of this writer of the neuter
+gender. Nature ought to have given her more breeches and less style."
+
+His opinion, however, did not prevent him, in 1842, from accepting her
+help. An article had come out in her _Revue Independante_, without her
+knowledge, attacking him violently. She wrote to apologize; and Balzac
+called on her, to explain, as he informed Madame Hanska, how injustice
+serves the cause of talent. She told him then that she should like to
+write a thorough study of him and his books; and he made as though he
+would dissuade her, saying that she would only get herself in bad
+odour with his critics. Still she persisted, and he accordingly asked
+her to compose a preface for an ensuing publication of his whole
+works, the preface to be a defence of him against those who were his
+enemies. Whether this notice was written before the novelist's death
+is uncertain. At any rate, it was not printed until 1875, when it
+appeared in her volume _Autour de la Table_.
+
+It was difficult for Balzac to be fair towards those men of letters
+among his contemporaries who excelled in his own domain; yet his
+judgment, when unwarped, was fine, keen, and, in many instances,
+endowed with prophetic sight. For instance, in placing Alfred de
+Musset as a poet above Victor Hugo or Lamartine, he daringly
+contradicted the opinions of his own day, and anticipated a criticism
+which is at present becoming respectable if not fashionable. On the
+other hand, his estimate of _Volupte_, Sainte-Beuve's just then
+published novel, which he was soon to imitate and recreate in his
+_Lily in the Valley_, was manifestly prejudiced. He called it a book
+badly written in most of its parts, weak, loosely constructed,
+diffuse, in which there were some good things, in short a puritanical
+book, the chief character of it, Madame Couaen not being woman enough.
+His opinion, which he imparted to Madame Hanska, he apparently took no
+trouble to conceal, for Sainte-Beuve was evidently aware of it when he
+treated Balzac very sharply in an article of this same year of 1834.
+From that date, the celebrated lecturer looked with coldness and
+disfavour on the novelist, and even in his final pronouncement of the
+_Causeries du Lundi_, shortly after Balzac's death, he meted out but
+faint praise.
+
+Something has been said in a previous chapter of the novelist's belief
+in certain occult powers of the mind, with which the newly discovered
+action of magnetism seemed to him to be connected. At first, his ideas
+on the subject were a good deal mixed. When, in 1832, a terrible
+epidemic of cholera was spreading its ravages, he wrote to Doctor
+Chapelain, suggesting that somnambulism--he would have called it
+hypnotism to-day--should be employed to seek out the causes of the
+malady, and a test applied to prove whether its virtues were real or
+chimerical. In 1834, he had come to pin his faith to the healing
+powers of magnetism. "When you or Monsieur Hanski or Anna are ill," he
+wrote to Eve, "let me know. Don't laugh at me. At Issoudun, facts
+recently demonstrated to me that I possess very large magnetic
+potency, and that, either through a somnambulist" (he meant a
+hypnotist) "or through myself, I can cure persons dear to me." To all
+his friends he reiterated the same advice--magnetic treatment, which
+he declared his mother capable of exercising as well as himself.
+Madame Balzac's initiation into the science was due to the Prince of
+Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst, Bishop of Sardica, who, in his
+several visits to Paris between 1821 and 1829, wrought wonderful cures
+by the simple imposition of hands. As the lady used to suffer from a
+swelling in the bowels whenever she ate raw fruit, the Bishop, hearing
+of it, came one day to see her, and applied his method, which cured
+her. Balzac, being a witness of the miracle, became an ardent
+investigator in this new branch--or rather old branch revived--of
+therapeutics. Thenceforward, his predilection for theories of the
+occult went hand in hand with his equally strong taste for the
+analytic observation of visible phenomena; and not infrequently he
+indulged in their simultaneous literary expression. The composing of
+_Seraphita_ was carried on at the same time as his _Search for the
+Absolute_ and _Pere Goriot_.
+
+Both of these two novels were finished and published in 1834. In the
+_Search for the Absolute_, we have Balthazar Claes, a man of wealth
+and leisure, living in the ancient town of Douai, and married to a
+wife who adores him and who has borne him children. Claes' hobby is
+scientific research; his aim, the discovery of the origin of things
+which he believes can be given him by his crucible. In his family
+mansion, of antique Flemish style, which is admirably described by the
+novelist at great length, he pursues his tireless experiments; and,
+with less justification than Bernard Palissy, encroaches by degrees on
+the capital of his fortune, which melts away in his furnace and
+alembics. During the first period of his essays, his wife tries to
+have confidence in his final success, herself studies all sorts of
+learned treatises, in order to be able to converse with him suitably
+and to encourage him in his work; but, at last, unable to delude her
+own mind any longer, she weeps with her children over the approaching
+destruction of their home, and the grief wears her out and kills her.
+Luckily the daughter, Marguerite, is made of sterner stuff than her
+mother. And, with her brother, she toils to pay her father's debts and
+to keep the home together. At the end, Claes himself dies, still
+absorbed in his chimera, and his last words are an endeavour to
+formulate the marvellous revelation which his disordered brain
+persuades him he has now received.
+
+"'Eureka!' he cried with a shrill voice, and fell back on his bed with
+a thud. In passing away, he uttered a frightful groan, and his
+convulsed eyes, until the doctors closed them, spoke his regret not to
+have been able to bequeath to science the key of a mystery whose veil
+had been tardily torn aside under the gaunt fingers of Death."
+
+The _Search for the Absolute_ may be classed with _Eugenie Grandet_ in
+the category of the novelist's best creations. Though Claes is, as
+much as Grandet, and perhaps more, an abnormal being, his sacrifice of
+every duty of life to the pursuit of the irrealizable is common enough
+in humanity. By reason of the novelist's intense delineation, his
+figure shows out in monstrous proportions; but these are skilfully
+relieved by the happier fates of the children. The lengthy
+descriptions of the opening chapter he defended against his sister
+Laure's strictures, asserting that they had ramifications with the
+subject which escaped her. His presentment, too, of Marguerite he said
+was not forced, as she thought. Marguerite was a Flemish woman, and
+Flemish women followed one idea out and, with phlegm, went
+unswervingly towards their goal. The labour the book had cost him he
+owned to Madame Hanska. Two members of the Academy of Sciences taught
+him chemistry, so that he might be exact in his representation of
+Claes' experiments; and he read Berzelius into the bargain. Moreover,
+he had revised and modified the proofs of the novel no fewer than a
+dozen times.
+
+As Werdet tells, the real work of composition, with Balzac, hardly
+commenced until he had a set of galley proofs. What he sent first to
+the printer, scribbled with his crow's-quill, was a mere sketch; and
+the sketch itself was a sort of Chinese puzzle, largely composed of
+scratched-out and interpolated sentences; passages and chapters being
+moved about in a curious _chasse-croise_, which the type-setters
+deciphered and arranged as they best could. Margins and inter-columnal
+spaces they found covered with interpolations; a long trailing line
+indicated the way here and the way there to the destination of the
+inserted passages. A cobweb was regular in comparison to the task
+which the printers had to tackle in the hope of finding beginning,
+middle, and end. In the various presses where his books were set up,
+the employees would never work longer than an hour on end at his
+manuscript. And the indemnity he had to pay for corrections reached
+sometimes the figure of forty francs per sixteen pages. Numerous were
+the difficulties caused on this score with publishers, editors, and
+printers. Balzac justified himself by quoting the examples of
+Chateaubriand, Ingres, and Meyerbeer in their various arts. To Buloz,
+of the _Revue de Paris_, who expostulated, he impatiently replied: "I
+will give up fifty francs per sheet to have my hands free. So say no
+more about the matter." It is true that Buloz paid him 250 francs per
+sheet for his contributions.
+
+Indeed, the novelist's own method of work was a reversal of the
+natural alternation of regular periods of activity and repose. He not
+only, as he told all his correspondents with wearisome iteration,
+burned the midnight oil, but would keep up these eighteen or twenty
+hours' daily labour for weeks altogether, until some novel that he was
+engaged on was finished. During these spells of composing he would see
+no one, read no letters, but write on and on, eating sparingly,
+sipping his coffee, and refreshing his jaded anatomy by taking a bath,
+in which he would lie for a whole hour, plunged in meditation. After
+his voluntary seclusions, he suddenly reappeared in his usual haunts,
+active and feverish as ever, note-book ready to hand, in which he
+jotted down his thoughts, discoveries, and observations for future
+use. On its pages were primitively outlined the features of most of
+the women of his fiction.
+
+One of these prolonged _claustrations_, in October 1834--the day was
+Sunday--he interrupted by a call, most unexpected, on Werdet. His face
+was sallow and gaunt with vigil. He had been stopped in the
+description of a spot, he explained, by the uncertainty of his
+recollections, and must go into the city in order to refresh them. So
+he invited Werdet to accompany him in playing truant for the day. The
+morning was spent in the slums, where he gathered the information
+required; and the afternoon they whiled away in listening to a concert
+at the _Conservatoire_. Here he was welcomed by the fashionables of
+both sexes, notwithstanding his shabby costume, which he had donned in
+view of his morning's occupation. On quitting the concert room, he
+carried Werdet off to dine with him at Very's, the most expensive and
+aristocratic restaurant in Paris. The place was full of guests; and
+those who were in proximity to the table where the two newcomers sat
+down were astounded to see the following menu ordered and practically
+consumed by one man, since Werdet, being on diet, took only a soup and
+a little chicken: A hundred oysters; twelve chops; a young duck; a
+pair of roast partridges; a sole; hors d'oeuvre; sweets; fruit (more
+than a dozen pears being swallowed); choice wines; coffee; liqueurs.
+Never since Rabelais' or perhaps Louis XIV.'s time, had such a
+Gargantuan appetite been witnessed. Balzac was recouping himself for
+his fasting.
+
+When the repast, lengthened out by a flow of humorous conversation,
+was at length terminated, the nineteenth-century Johnson asked his
+Boswell if he had any available cash, as he himself had none. Werdet
+confessing only to forty francs, the novelist borrowed a five-franc
+piece from him and thundered out his request for the bill. To the
+waiter who presented it he handed the coin, at the same time returning
+the bill with a few words scribbled at the foot. "Tell the cashier,"
+he cried, "that I am Monsieur Honore de Balzac." And he stalked out
+with Werdet, whilst all the diners present stared admiringly after the
+great man.
+
+But the evening was not yet finished. In the garden of the Palais-Royal,
+then more frequented by society than to-day, they met Jules Sandeau
+and Emile Regnault. And, as they were near a gambling-saloon, Balzac,
+who had an infallible system for breaking the bank, proposed to Jules
+that he should go and try his luck. A twenty-franc piece was wheedled
+out of Werdet for the experiment, which proved a fiasco. Next, the
+novelist, to convince his companions of the accuracy of his theory,
+which he further detailed, went and borrowed forty francs from his
+heraldic engraver, and sent Sandeau and Regnault into the saloon
+again. Alas! fate was once more unkind. They returned minus their
+money. To console themselves, they went to the Funambules Theatre, to
+see Debureau act in the _Boeuf Enrage_, and Balzac laughed so loud
+that he and his party had to leave the theatre. On the morrow Werdet
+was called upon to pay the restaurant-keeper sixty-two francs, and to
+reimburse the engraver the forty francs loan, which sums, together
+with what he had himself advanced, ran Balzac's debit for the day up
+to one hundred and twenty-seven francs.
+
+In _Pere Goriot_, the publication of which came close at the heels of
+the _Search for the Absolute_, Balzac traces the gradual
+impoverishment of a fond father by his two daughters, married, the one
+to a nobleman, the other to a banker, and whose husbands, when they
+have received the marriage dowry, give their father-in-law, who is a
+plebeian, the cold shoulder, and forbid their wives to see him unless
+in secret. Goriot's daughters, losing in their grand surroundings the
+little filial affection they ever had, exploit the old man's worship
+of them shamelessly. If they visit him in the boarding-house to which
+he has retired, after selling his home to endow them more richly, it
+is solely to get from him for their pleasures the portion of his
+wealth he has retained for his own wants. And he never refuses them,
+but sells and sells, until, at last, he is reduced to lodge in the
+garret of the boarding-house and eat almost the refuse of the table.
+Around this tragic central figure are grouped the commensals of the
+Vauquer _pension_, Rastignac, the young law-student, with shallow
+purse and aristocratic connections; Bianchon, the future great-gun in
+medicine, at present walking the hospitals and attending lectures and
+practising dissections; Victorine Taillefer, the rejected daughter of
+a guilty millionaire; Mademoiselle Michonneau, the soured spinster,
+who ferrets out the identity of her fellow-boarder Vautrin, and
+betrays to justice this cynical outlaw installed so quietly, and, to
+all appearance, safely, in the _pension_, where Madame Vauquer, the
+traipsing widow, lords it serenely, attentive only to her profits.
+
+Of these subsidiary characters, two, Vautrin and Rastignac, furnish a
+second interest in the story parallel to that of Goriot and his
+daughters, and constituting a foil. Under the influence of Paris
+surroundings and experience, Rastignac passes from his naive illusions
+to a state of worldly wisdom, which he reaches all the more speedily
+as Vautrin is at his elbow, commenting with Mephistophelian shrewdness
+on his fellow-men and the society they form. Himself a man of
+education, who has sunk from high to low and is branded with the
+convict's mark, Vautrin is yet capable of affection of a certain kind;
+but, in the mind and heart of the youth he would fain advantage, he is
+capable only of inculcating the law of tooth and claw. "A rapid
+fortune is the problem that fifty thousand young men are at present
+trying to solve who find themselves in your position," he says to
+Rastignac. "You are a single one among this number. Judge of the
+efforts you have to make and of the desperateness of the struggle. You
+must devour each other like spiders in a pot, seeing there are not
+fifty thousand good places. Do you know how one gets on here? By the
+brilliance of genius or the adroitness of corruption one must enter
+the mass of men like a cannon-ball, or slip into it like the plague.
+Honesty is of no use." Having a tempter about him of Vautrin's
+calibre, strong, undauntable, as humorous as Dickens' Jingle, but
+infinitely more unscrupulous and dangerous, Rastignac is gained over,
+in spite of his first repulsion. The nursing and burying of Pere
+Goriot are his last acts of charity accorded to the claims of his
+higher nature, and even these are sullied by his relations with one of
+Goriot's daughters. Standing on the cemetery heights, and looking down
+towards the Seine and the Vendome column, he flings a defiance to the
+society spread beneath him, the society he despises but still wishes
+to conquer.
+
+In this novel many social grades are gathered together, and the
+reciprocal actions of their representative members are rendered with
+effective contrast and a good deal of dramatic quickness. The chief
+theme, though so painful, is developed with less strain and monotony
+than in some other of the novelist's works by reason of a larger
+application, conscious or unconscious, of Shakespeare's practice of
+intermingling the humorous with the tragic. Even the comic is not
+entirely absent, Madame Vauquer especially supplying interludes. The
+novelist himself chuckled as he put into her mouth a mispronunciation
+of the word _tilleul_,[*] and explained to Madame Hanska, whose
+foreign accent in speaking French suggested it, that he chose the fat
+landlady so that Eve should not be jealous.
+
+  [*] English linden, or lime-tree.
+
+Balzac's too great absorption in his writing forced him more than once
+in this year to go into the country and recuperate his health. During
+the earlier months he spent a short time with the Carrauds at
+Frapesle, which was a favourite sojourn of his, and, later on, at
+Sache, a pleasant retreat in his native Touraine. His iron
+constitution was not able always to resist the demands continually
+made upon it; and his abuse of coffee only aggravated the evil. To
+Laure he acknowledged, while at Sache, that this beverage refused to
+excite his brain for any time longer than a fortnight; and even the
+fortnight was paid for by horrible cramps in the stomach, followed by
+fits of depression, which he suffered when suddenly deprived of his
+beloved drink. In his _Treatise of Modern Stimulants_ he describes its
+peculiar operation upon himself. "This coffee," he says, "falls into
+your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas
+begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the
+battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive full
+gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a
+magnificent, deploying charge; the artillery of logic hurry up with
+their train and ammunition; the shafts of wit start up like
+sharp-shooters. Similes arise; the paper is covered with ink; for the
+struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just
+as a battle with powder."
+
+When he tells us how Doctor Minoret, Ursule Mirouet's guardian, used
+to regale his friends with a cup of Moka mixed with Bourbon coffee,
+and roasted Martinique, which the Doctor insisted on personally
+preparing in a silver coffee-pot, it is his own custom that he is
+detailing. His Bourbon he bought only in the Rue Mont Blanc (now the
+Chaussee d'Antin), the Martinique, in the Rue des Vieilles Audriettes,
+the Moka at a grocer's in the Rue de l'Universite. It was half a day's
+journey to fetch them.
+
+The _Tigers_ or _Lions_, of the Loge Infernale at the Opera, have
+already been spoken of. It was in this year that Balzac, as belonging
+to the Club, gave a dinner to its members, the chief guest being
+Rossini. Nodier, Sandeau, Bohain, and the witty Lautour-Mezeray were
+also present. He doubtless wore on the occasion his coat of broadcloth
+blue, made by his tailor-friend Buisson, with its gold buttons
+engraved by Gosselin, his jeweller and goldsmith. On his waistcoat of
+white English _pique_ twined and glittered the thousand links of the
+slender chain of Venice gold. Black trousers, with footstraps, showing
+his calves to advantage, patent-leather boots, and his wonderful
+stick, which inspired Madame Delphine Gay to write a book, completed
+the equipment.
+
+This stick was certainly in existence in 1834, being mentioned in the
+correspondence with Madame Hanska during that year. Werdet, however,
+connects its origin with the novelist's imprisonment, two years later,
+in the Hotel de Bazancourt, popularly known as the Hotel des Haricots,
+which was used for confining those citizens who did not comply with
+Louis-Philippe's law enrolling them in the National Guard and ordering
+them to take their turn in night-patrol of the city. Balzac was
+incurably recalcitrant. Nothing would induce him to encase himself in
+the uniform and serve; and, whenever the soldiers came for him, he
+bribed them to let him alone. Finally, these bribes failed of their
+effect, and an arrest-warrant was issued against him. In his ordinary
+correspondence two experiences of his being in durance vile at the
+Hotel des Haricots are mentioned, one in March 1835, another in August
+1836. The latter of these is differently dated in the _Letters to the
+Stranger_, the end of April being given, unless, indeed, there were
+two confinements close together, which is hardly probable. What is
+most likely is, that Werdet has confused two things, the story of the
+lock of hair, properly belonging to 1836, and the making of the stick,
+which belongs to 1834. Here is his narration:--
+
+The publisher one day received a note requesting him to go at once to
+the prison and to take with him some money. He went with two hundred
+francs, and found Balzac, in his Dominican's dress, installed in a
+small cell on the third story, busily engaged in arranging papers.
+Part of the money brought was utilized to order a succulent dinner,
+which Werdet stayed and shared in the smoky refectory below. Both
+prisoner and visitor were very merry until the door opened and Eugene
+Sue, the popular novelist, entered, himself also a victim of the
+conscription law. Invited to join in the meal, Sue declined, saying
+that his valet and his servant were shortly to bring him his dinner.
+This repulse damped Balzac's spirits until the arrival of a third
+victim, the Count de Lostange, chief editor of the _Quotidienne_, who
+sat down willingly to table. Then Balzac forgot Sue's rudeness, and
+the mirth was resumed. Notwithstanding the efforts of the novelist's
+influential friends, the Count de Lobau, who was responsible for the
+arrest, showed himself inexorable, and a second day was spent in
+captivity, which Werdet came again towards evening to enliven. A whole
+pile of perfumed epistles sent by feminine sympathizers was lying on
+the table, and the publisher had to open them and read them aloud to
+his companion. When a third day's confinement was decided on by the
+authorities, Werdet arranged to celebrate it by a dinner that should
+merit being put on record. He therefore secured the presence of some
+intimates of the novelist, among them being Gustave Planche and
+Alphonse Karr; and at 5 P.M., eight people were assembled in the cell,
+with Auguste, Balzac's valet, to serve them. The restaurant-keeper
+Chevet's menu of exquisite dishes was suitably moistened with
+excellent champagne sent by a Countess, and, when the feast was in
+full progress, Balzac took a scented parcel from among his presents
+and asked permission to open it. The authorization being granted, he
+undid the parcel, and disclosed a mass of long, fair, silky hair
+threaded into a gold ring that was set with an emerald. On the gift
+was an inscription in English: _From an unknown friend_. A great
+discussion ensued. One irreverent speaker opined that the thing was a
+hoax, and that the hair had come from a wig-maker's; but his blasphemy
+was shouted down. Another proposed that Balzac should cut off his own
+long, flat locks (it was in 1834 that he began to let them grow) and
+should send them addressed to the Unknown Fair One. Poste Restante.
+But this suggestion, too, was not approved. The locks were proclaimed
+to be national property, and to be cut off only by the passing of a
+special law. Next, the ring was discussed; and here it was that
+Balzac, struck with a brilliant idea, announced his intention of
+ordering Gosselin, the goldsmith, to manufacture a marvellous hollow
+stick-knob in which a lock of the blond hair should be inserted, and
+all over the top of the knob were to be fixed diamonds, sapphires,
+emeralds, topazes, rubies, chosen out of the many he had had given him
+by his rich lady-enthusiasts. On the morrow, he was released, after
+spending, during the few days he had been locked up, five hundred and
+seventy francs in refreshment for himself and visitors.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VII
+
+               LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1835, 1836
+
+The Rue des Batailles, whither Balzac removed his household goods in
+1834, was one of those old landmarks of Paris which have disappeared
+in the opening up and beautifying of the city. Commencing at the
+fortifications, it penetrated inwards along the waste ground of the
+Trocadero, and crossed the Rue Chaillot at a point which has since
+become the Place d'Iena. Its direction from there was very nearly the
+same as that of the present Avenue d'Iena. No. 12, where Balzac had
+his flat, probably occupied the site whereon now stands the mansion of
+Prince Roland Bonaparte. From its windows a good view was obtained of
+the Seine, the Champ de Mars, the Ecole Militaire, and the Dome of the
+Invalides.
+
+As a matter of fact, the house of the Rue des Batailles was for a time
+a supplementary dwelling rented by the novelist, so Werdet says, as a
+hiding-place from the myrmidons of the law. The flat in the Rue
+Cassini was retained, and its furniture also; and an arrangement was
+made with the landlord by which a notice-board hung continually on the
+door, with the words: "This apartment to let." In reality the tenant
+often sojourned there still, and his cook stayed on the premises to
+look after them, and serve her master with meals, whenever he wished
+to work in his old study without being disturbed. At the Rue des
+Batailles he lived under the pseudonym of Widow Brunet, so that
+temporarily the sergeant-major of the National Guard was outwitted.
+
+The second flat, when he took it, was composed of five small rooms;
+but an army of workmen was summoned; and what with the pulling down of
+partitions and their reconstruction on a more commodious plan, the
+place was metamorphosed into four luxuriously furnished chambers, the
+study being fitted up as a sort of boudoir. One of its walls was a
+graceful curve against which rested a large, real Turkish divan in
+white cashmere, its drapery being caught and held with lozenge-shaped
+bows of black and flame-coloured silk. The opposite wall formed a
+straight line broken only by a white marble chimney-piece pinked out
+in gold. The entire room was hung in red stuff as a background, and
+this was covered with fluted Indian muslin, having a top and bottom
+beading of flame-coloured stuff ornamented with elegant black
+arabesques. Under the muslin the red assumed a rose tint, which later
+was repeated in the window curtains of muslin lined with taffety, and
+fringed in black and red. Six silver sconces, each supporting two
+candles, projected from the wall above the divan, to light those
+sitting or lying there. From the dazzlingly white ceiling was
+suspended an unpolished silver-gilt lustre; and the cornice round it
+was in gold. The carpets of curious designs were like Eastern shawls;
+the furniture was lavishly upholstered. The time-piece and candelabra
+were of white marble incrusted with gold; and cashmere covered the
+single table, while several flower-stands filled up the corners, with
+their roses and other blooms. This study, which Balzac himself has
+left us a description of in his novel _The Girl with the Golden Eyes_,
+was soon abandoned as a workroom for another more simple and austere,
+up under the roof. The latter, however, he likewise began, being
+tormented by the desire of change, to adorn almost as fantastically.
+
+Throughout the time that Werdet continued to be Balzac's publisher,
+and up to the end of 1836, when their active business relations
+ceased, it is difficult to be quite accurate in speaking of their
+relations and the things spoken of by both in which they were mutually
+concerned. There is frequent discordance in their narration of the
+same event, and one is often embarrassed in trying to reconcile them.
+On the one hand, it is certain that Balzac was not always exact in his
+statements; on the other, Werdet's memory, in the seventies, when he
+wrote his _Portrait Intime_ of the novelist, was as certainly now and
+again treacherous. An example of such discrepancy is furnished by the
+information given concerning _Seraphita_, which Werdet says he bought
+from Buloz at the end of 1834, and for which he had to wait till
+December 1835. He even makes it a reproach that the novelist, after
+being extracted from a dilemma, should have dealt with him so
+cavalierly. Now, from documents published by the Viscount de
+Lovenjoul, there must be a mistake in Werdet's dates. During the year
+of 1835, the _Revue de Paris_ published, after long delay, some
+further chapters of _Seraphita_; and not until the end of November in
+this same twelvemonth was the treaty signed which rendered Werdet
+possessor of the book.
+
+_Seraphita_, or _Seraphitus_--the name is designedly spelt both ways
+in different parts of the book--is an attempt on the novelist's part
+to represent in fiction the dual sex of the soul. The scene is laid in
+the fiords of Norway. There, in a village, we meet with a person of
+mysterious nature who is loved simultaneously by a man and a woman,
+and who is regarded by each as being of the opposite sex. By whiles
+this hermaphrodite seems to respond to the affection of each admirer,
+and by whiles to withdraw on to a higher plane of existence whither
+their mortality hinders them from following. To the old pastor of the
+village, _Seraphita-Seraphitus_ talks with assurance of the essence of
+phenomena and the invisible world, but, forsooth, only to initiate the
+shades that visit spiritualistic _seances_, and to say what is either
+obscure verbiage, or a hash-up of philosophies often digested without
+much sustenance derived from them. In the end, this dual personage
+vanishes from our mundane atmosphere, translated bodily to heaven; and
+leaves his or her lovers to repair their loss--just like a forlorn
+widow or widower--by making a match based on rules of conduct laid
+down by the departed one.
+
+_Seraphita_ was Balzac's pocket Catholicism. He had another
+Catholicism, entirely orthodox, for the use of the public at large.
+Esoterically understood, his novel teaches a doctrine of mysticism,
+intuitionalism, and materialism combined. Plotinus, the Manicheans,
+and Swendenborg are borrowed from without reserve. Ordinary reason is
+despised. He believes himself for the nonce inspired, like the Pope
+when launching bulls. "The pleasure," he writes, "of swimming in a
+lake of pure water, amidst rocks, woods, and flowers, alone and fanned
+by the warm zephyr, would give the ignorant but a weak image of the
+happiness I felt when my soul was flooded with the rays of I know not
+what light, when I listened to the terrible and confused voices of
+inspiration, when from a secret source the images streamed into my
+palpitating brain." On the contrary, he holds--and this does not
+square well with the preceding--that the soul is an ethereal fluid
+similar to electricity; that the brain is the matrass or bottle into
+which the animal transports, according to the strength of the
+apparatus, as much as the various organisms can absorb of this fluid,
+which issues thence transformed into will; that our sentiments are
+movements of the fluid, which proceeds from us by jerks when we are
+angry, and which weighs on our nerves when we are in expectation; that
+the current of this king of liquids, according to the pressure of
+thought and feeling, spreads in waves or diminishes and thins, then
+collects again, to gush forth in flashes. He believes also that our
+ideas are complete, organized beings (the theosophic notion) which
+live in the invisible world and influence our destinies; that,
+concentrated in a powerful brain, they can master the brains of other
+people, and traverse immense distances in the twinkling of an eye. In
+short, he anticipates not a little of the science of the present day,
+yet mixing up the true and false in his guesses by the very exuberance
+of his fancy. At the close, he gives us his vision of the universe:
+"They heard the divers parts of the Infinite forming a living melody;
+and, at each pause, when the accord made itself felt like a huge
+respiration, the worlds, drawn by this unanimous movement, inclined
+themselves towards the immense being who, from his impenetrable
+centre, sent everything forth and brought it back to himself. The
+light engendered melody, the melody engendered light; the colours were
+light and melody, the movement was number endowed with speech; in
+fine, all was at once sonorous, diaphanous, mobile; so that, all
+things interpenetrating each other, distance was without obstacles,
+and might be traversed by the angels throughout the depths of the
+infinite. There was the fete. Myriads of angels all hastened in like
+flight, without confusion, all similar, yet all dissimilar, simple as
+the field-rose, vast as worlds. They were neither seen to come nor go.
+On a sudden, they studded the infinite with their presence, just as
+the stars shine in the indiscernible ether."
+
+The fundamental error of _Seraphita_ is its hybridity, not to speak of
+its pretentious psychology. It is neither flesh nor fowl; and,
+exception made for some fine passages, more at the beginning than in
+the rest of the book, it jars and irks, and amazes, but does not
+captivate or persuade.
+
+It had a great success when it came out in book form. People were
+inquisitive to know the end of the story, which the _Revue de Paris_
+had not given; and their eagerness had been further whetted by a
+cleverly graduated series of puffs put into the newspapers. In the
+first day of sale, the whole edition was cleared out of Werdet's
+warehouse, a thing that had never happened before with any of the same
+author's works. Balzac, who had been duly informed of the good news,
+hastened to the office, and led the publisher off proudly to dine with
+him at Very's, and to finish up the evening at the Porte-Saint-Martin
+Theatre, with ices afterwards at Tortoni's. The whole affair was
+carried out in grand style. The novelist had on his war-paint, and was
+accompanied by a lady, young, pretty, whose name is not revealed to
+us. Werdet's _vis-a-vis_ was Madame Louise Lemercier, a benevolent
+blue-stocking of that day, who was a Providence to needy men of
+letters. When dinner was over, Balzac's elegant equipage, with its
+mighty coachman and its diminutive groom, yclept Millet-seed, who
+unfortunately died soon after in the hospital, conveyed them to the
+play, in which Frederick Lemaitre and Serres held chief roles. Balzac
+was the hero of the evening. His jewelled stick, and his pretty
+companion monopolized the attention of the spectators, who somewhat
+neglected the amusement offered by the _Auberge des Adrets_ on the
+stage. At the conclusion of the piece, the four passed out of the
+theatre through a double line of people eager to pay the homage that
+notoriety can always command.
+
+In the year 1835 the novelist's restlessness and inability to remain
+long in one spot were evinced in a very marked manner. Only by
+repeated changes of scene was he able to carry on his work at all.
+After wearing himself out in a fruitless attempt to complete
+_Seraphita_ in April, he fled to Madame Carraud's at Frapesle. In
+October he was at La Boulonniere, where he put the last touches to
+_Pea-Blossom_, better known as the _Marriage Contract_, which came out
+before the end of December. His fits of depression alternated with
+spurts of cheerfulness nearly every week, according as he had some
+loss or gain to register; here, a fire at the printer's, where some of
+his _Contes Drolatiques_ were burned; there, the sale of an article to
+the _Conservateur_ for three thousand francs. In September the
+barometer rose, and he exclaimed joyfully in a letter to Laure:
+
+"The Reviews are at my feet and pay me more for my sheets. He! He!
+
+"The reading public have changed their opinion about the _Country
+Doctor_, so that Werdet is certain of selling his editions directly.
+Ha! Ha!
+
+"In short, I can meet my liabilities in November and December. Ho!
+Ho!"
+
+This tone changed in October. To his sister now he lamented:
+
+"I am drinking the cup to the dregs. In vain I work fourteen hours a
+day. I cannot suffice."
+
+He had held practically the same language to Werdet in May,[*] when he
+announced to him his intention of starting for Austria, where Madame
+Hanska was staying. His brain, he said, was empty; his imagination
+dried up; cup after cup of coffee produced no effect, nor yet baths
+--these last being the supreme remedy.
+
+  [*] In Werdet's account this journey is placed between September and
+      November; but the _Letters to the Stranger_ prove that the date
+      he gives is incorrect.
+
+Werdet did his best to thwart the trip; but Balzac would not be
+gainsaid. He affirmed he should return with rejuvenated faculties,
+after seeing his _carissima_; and ultimately he persuaded his
+publisher to advance him two thousand francs for his travelling
+expenses. Profuse in his gratitude, he wrote from his hotel in Vienna
+--the Hotel de la Poire, situated in the Langstrasse--that, in the
+society of the cherished one, he had regained his imagination and
+verve. Werdet, he continued, was his Archibald Constable (_vide_
+Walter Scott); their fortunes were thenceforward indissoluble; and the
+day was approaching when they would meet in their carriages in the
+Bois de Boulogne and turn their detractors green with envy. This
+flattery was the jam enveloping the information that he had drawn on
+his publisher for another fifteen hundred francs; there was also a
+promise made that he would come back with his pockets full of
+manuscripts. Instead of the manuscripts, he brought back some Viennese
+curiosities. He had done no work while with Madame Hanska, but he had
+seen Munich, and had enjoyed himself immensely, being idolized by the
+aristocracy of the Austrian capital. "And what an aristocracy!" he
+remarked to Werdet; "quite different from ours, my dear fellow; quite
+another world. There the nobility are a real nobility. They are all
+old families, not an adulterated nobility like in France."
+
+The Vienna visit, which cost him, in total, some five thousand francs
+--a foolish expense in his involved circumstances--was the cause of
+his silver plate having to be pawned while he was away, in order that
+certain payments of interest that he owed might be made at the end of
+the month. Since he was always plunging into fresh extravagance of one
+kind or another, his liabilities had a fatal tendency to grow; and at
+present even more than before, since he was puffed up by the lionizing
+he had enjoyed abroad. It was hardly to be expected that a man should
+study economy who saw himself already appointed to the Secretaryship
+for Foreign Affairs. "This is the only department which would suit
+me," he said to Werdet. "I have now my free entry to the house of the
+Count d'Appony, Ambassador of Austria, and to that of Rothschild,
+Consul of the same Power. What glory for you, Master Werdet, to have
+been my publisher. I will make your fortune then."
+
+His display and luxury manifested themselves in greater sumptuousness
+of furniture, more servants in livery, a box at the Opera for himself,
+and another at the _Italiens_. And the two secretaries must not be
+forgotten--one was not sufficient--the Count de Belloy and the Count
+de Grammont. Sandeau was not grand enough for the post. The reason
+given by Balzac to Madame Hanska was Jules' idleness, nonchalance, and
+sentimentality. As a matter of fact, Sandeau did not care to play
+always second fiddle, and to write tragedies or comedies for which
+Balzac wished to get all the credit. Moreover, he was not a
+Legitimist. The novelist had tried to convert him to his own doctrine
+of autocratic government and had signally failed. These sprigs of
+nobility he felt himself more in sympathy with.
+
+About this time his epistles to "The Stranger" were full of himself
+and his Herculean labours, and Madame Hanska hinted pretty plainly
+that the quantity of the latter did not necessarily imply their
+quality. Such expression of opinion notwithstanding, he boasted of
+conceiving, composing, and printing the _Atheist's Mass_, a short
+novel, it is true, in one night only. His portrait by Louis Boulanger,
+which was painted during the year of 1835, had been ordered rather
+with a view to advertizing him at the ensuing Salon, although he
+asserted it was because he wanted to correct a false impression given
+of him by Danton's caricature in the earlier months of the year. The
+likeness produced by Boulanger he esteemed a good one, rendering his
+Coligny, Peter the Great persistence, which, together with an intrepid
+faith in the future, he said was the basis of his character. The
+future hovered as a perpetual mirage in all his introspections,
+sometimes with tints of dawn, at other times half-threatening. "I am
+the Wandering Jew of thought," was his cry to Eve from the Hotel des
+Haricots, "always up and walking without repose, without the joys of
+the heart, without anything besides what is yielded me by a
+remembrance at once rich and poor, without anything that I can snatch
+from the future. I hold out my hand to it. It casts me not a mite, but
+a smile which means to say: to-morrow."
+
+When he embarked on the hazardous venture of starting a newspaper of
+his own, the motive was chiefly a desire to exercise a larger
+political influence. Yet he had additional incentives. The Reviews to
+which he had contributed in the past had yielded him almost as much
+annoyance as profit; and, since the two most important ones, the
+_Revue des Deux Mondes_ and the _Revue de Paris_, both under the same
+editorship, were closed against him, he believed he needed an organ in
+which to defend himself from the rising virulence of hostile
+criticism. A press campaign in his favour could be better and more
+cheaply waged in a paper under his entire control. His plan was not to
+create a journal, but to revive one. In 1835 the _Chronique de Paris_,
+formerly called the _Globe_, was on its last legs, albeit it had been
+ably edited by William Duckett; and the proprietor, Bethune the
+publisher, was only too glad to listen to Balzac's overtures. By dint
+of puffing the new enterprise, a company was formed with a nominal
+capital of a hundred thousand francs; Duckett was paid out in bills
+drawn on the receipts to accrue, since the novelist had no ready money
+of his own; and a start was made under the new management. The staff
+was a strong one. Jules Sandeau was dramatic critic; Emile Regnault
+supplied the light literature; Gustave Planche was art critic;
+Alphonse Karr wrote satirical articles; Theophile Gautier, Charles de
+Bernard, and Raymond Brucker contributed fiction; and Balzac, together
+with his functions of chief editor, gave the leading article.
+
+In its reorganized form, the Review came out Sundays and Thursdays and
+once a week Saturdays. The collaborators met at Werdet's house to
+discuss and compare notes. Generally, they brought with them more
+conversation than copy, and Balzac would begin to scold.
+
+"How can I make up to-morrow's issue," he asked, "if each of you
+arrives empty-handed?"
+
+"Oh! being a great man and a genius," was the reply, "you have merely
+to say: 'Let there be a Chronicle,' and there will be a Chronicle."
+
+"But you know that I reserve to myself nothing except the article on
+foreign policy."
+
+"Yes, we all know," answered Karr, punning on the French word
+_etrangere_, "that your policy is strange."
+
+(Not finishing the word _etrangere_, he said only _etrange_.)
+
+"_Ere_," shouted Balzac, adding the termination.
+
+"_Ere_," Alphonse yelled back. "You reserve to yourself a policy which
+is foreign to all governments present and past and future. And, as you
+scold me, Mr. Editor, is your own article ready?"
+
+"No, but it is here"--tapping his forehead--"I have only to write it.
+In an hour it will be done."
+
+"With the corrections?" queried Karr slily.
+
+"Yes, with the corrections."
+
+"Ah! well, prove that to us; and we'll all go on dry bread and water
+until a statue is raised to you. I am hungry."
+
+Although Balzac's colleagues had a real respect and admiration for his
+talent, they chaffed him unmercifully for his vanity. One Saturday,
+Alphonse Karr, as a joke, crowned him with flowers; and Balzac, in all
+good faith, complacently accepted the honour. Around him, the laughter
+broke out fast and furious; and, at length, he joined in with volleys
+that shook the room, while his face waxed purple beneath his
+explosions. In his _Guepes_, Alphonse Karr subsequently recalled this
+improvized coronation of the novelist.
+
+Edited and composed in such desultory fashion, the _Chronicle's_
+prosperity was short-lived, in spite of the lustre it temporarily
+acquired from Balzac's name, and the publication in it of some of his
+fiction. Before long its financial position was so bad that the chief
+editor, as a forlorn hope, tried to induce a young Russian nobleman,
+who was an eager reader of his books, to enter the concern with a
+large amount of fresh capital. To bait him, a magnificent dinner was
+given in the Rue Cassini flat, amidst a display of all its tenant's
+gold and silver plate, liberated from the pawnbroker's for the
+occasion by a timely advance of two thousand francs from Werdet. The
+feast was an entire success, and an appointment was fixed for the next
+day at the Russian's hotel. Alas! when the envoy went, he received,
+sandwiched in the guest's thanks for the royal entertainment of the
+preceding evening, an announcement of the said guest's immediate
+departure for Russia and the intimation that, as the nobleman was not
+returning to Paris for some time, it would be impossible for him to
+accept the offer of a sleeping-partnership in the Review. Three months
+later the _Chronicle_ was resold to Bethune for a small sum; and the
+publisher disposed of it to a third person, who, however, did not
+succeed in keeping it alive. Balzac's loss by his experiment was about
+twenty thousand francs.
+
+And this loss was not the only disagreeable part of the business.
+There were the bills signed to Duckett. They being protested in 1837,
+Duckett sued the novelist and obtained judgment against him. At this
+moment, Balzac, tracked by his creditors, had taken temporary refuge
+with some friends, the Count Visconti and his English wife, who lived
+in the Champs Elysees. Here he remained incognito. One day a man,
+wearing the uniform of a transport company, called at the mansion and
+informed the servant that he had brought six thousand francs for
+Monsieur de Balzac. Suiting the action to his words, he dumped down on
+to the floor a heavy bag that chinked as it struck the hall tiles.
+"Monsieur de Balzac does not live here," was the servant's reply.
+"Then is the master of the house in?" asked the man. "No, but the
+mistress is." "Then tell her I have six thousand francs for Monsieur
+de Balzac." The servant vanished and soon the lady of the mansion
+appeared and offered to sign the receipt herself. To this the man
+demurred. He must either see Monsieur de Balzac or must take the money
+away again. There was a hurried confabulation between hostess and
+guest, the upshot of which was that Balzac, falling into the snare,
+came to the man, thinking that some generous friend had sent him the
+money; and he was immediately served with an arrest-warrant for debt.
+"I am caught," he cried; "but I will pillory Duckett for this. He
+shall go down to posterity with infamy attached to his name." To get
+the novelist out of the mess, Madame Visconti paid the debt for which
+the warrant had been made out; and thus spared him, for the nonce, a
+sojourn in the debtors' prison at Clichy.
+
+Balzac's lawsuit with the _Revue de Paris_, the details of which are
+given in the Viscount de Lovenjoul's _Last Chapter of the History of
+Balzac's Works_, was brought about by the novelist's quarrel, in 1835,
+with Buloz, the editor, because the latter, while the _Lily in the
+Valley_ was being printed, communicated proofs of it to the _Revue
+Francaise_ of Saint Petersburg. Balzac at once severed his connection
+with the _Revue de Paris_, and took away his novel, on the ground that
+the editor was not justified in selling it abroad without his--the
+author's--permission, and especially was not justified in
+communicating premature proofs, which, owing to his practice of
+modifying the text while correcting it, could in no way represent his
+finished work. After an attempt made by mutual friends to settle the
+matter amicably, Buloz entered an action against Balzac to compel him
+to continue the publication of the _Lily in the Valley_ in the _Revue
+de Paris_. Three parts had been given. It was the end which the Review
+demanded, and ten thousand francs damages for the delay. The case was
+heard in May 1836, after months of bitter controversy, in which both
+sides had their ardent supporters. The most was made by the
+plaintiff's barrister of Balzac's previous disputes with other
+editors, who had had to complain of his tardiness in completing
+articles or stories. A letter was also put in, signed by Alexandre
+Dumas, Eugene Sue, Frederic Soulie, and others, stating that it was
+usual for authors to allow the communication of their productions to
+the _Revue Francaise_ of Saint Petersburg, with a view to combating
+Belgian and German piracies. And Jules Janin, who during the Thirties
+was a zealous opponent of Balzac, cast his weight of evidence in
+favour of the Review. The _Seraphita_ episode was dragged in, too,
+with testimony to show that, even after Werdet had bought the right to
+publish the novel in book form, Balzac again negotiated for its
+continuation as a serial in the Review, and had, moreover, supplied
+some other chapters, yet without coming to the end. In fact, the suit
+was a complicated one to decide. Ultimately, the Court gave its
+verdict against Balzac on the chief point at issue. He lost the
+conclusion of the _Lily in the Valley_, and recovered only a small sum
+of money that had been advanced to the novelist for copy not supplied,
+and besides had to pay all the expenses of his action.
+
+What galled Balzac particularly during the speeches of the plaintiff's
+barrister, was to hear the style of his novel pulled to pieces in
+language of mingled sarcasm and clever criticism that delighted the
+audience and the papers. After the termination of the affair, he
+thoroughly overhauled the parts of the book which had been so severely
+handled, made large alterations, and, since fun had also been poked at
+his pretensions to noble ancestry, he prefixed a curious introduction
+to the edition that Werdet was about to publish. In the course of it
+he declared: "If some persons, deceived by caricatures, false
+portraits, penny-a-liners, and lies, credit me with a colossal
+fortune, palaces, and above all, with frequent favours from women
+. . . I here declare to them that I am a poor artist, absorbed in art,
+working at a long history of society, which will be either good or
+bad, but at which I work by necessity, without shame, just as Rossini
+has made operas or Du Ryer translations and volumes; that I live very
+much alone, that I have a few firm friends; that my name is on my
+birth-certificate, etc., just as that of Monsieur de Fitz-James is on
+his; that, if it is of old Gaulish stock, this is not my fault; but
+that de Balzac is my patronymic, an advantage which many aristocratic
+families have not who called themselves Odet before they were called
+Chatillon, Duplessis, and who are, none the less, great families."
+
+To the foregoing he joined a long account of his birth and his
+presumed title to ancient lineage, and inserted into the bargain a
+panegyric of Werdet as a man of activity, intelligence, and probity,
+with whom his relations would be unbroken, since by this same
+declaration he constituted him henceforward his sole publisher. That
+was in July 1836. Scarcely six months after, when Werdet was
+threatened with a bankruptcy which was likely to involve him--a
+repetition in minor degree of Scott's entanglement with Constable--he
+veered completely round, called Werdet a rotten plank, an empty head,
+an obstinate mule, and other names more expressive than polite,
+affirmed that he had always considered him a bit of a fool, and
+dropped all further connection with him. Werdet, it is true, was no
+business genius, but he was really attached to Balzac, and had yielded
+to the great man's importunities as long as his purse would support
+the strain.
+
+The _Lily in the Valley_ was published by Werdet in the week after the
+lawsuit was finished, and was well received by the public. Its
+success, however, was more considerable abroad than in France. The
+author complained of the smallness of the numbers sold in France
+compared with those of foreign editions; but Werdet's figures indicate
+a very fair sale, and are larger than those given by Balzac, who in
+this instance at least was not so accurate as his publisher.
+
+The novel deals with the struggle in the heart of a Madame de
+Mortsauf, torn between her affection for Felix de Vandenesse and her
+determination to remain outwardly faithful in conduct towards her
+husband. With his invariable enthusiasm for subjects that pleased him
+in his own work, Balzac believed and affirmed that this secret combat
+waged in a valley of the Indre was as important as the most famous
+military battle ever fought. Possibly the amount of early personal
+biography in the book--yet a good deal romanced--led him to this
+conviction. Possibly, too, the richness with which he adorned its
+style helped to foster the opinion he held, which critics have not
+ratified. Not even Lamartine, his eulogist, found much to say in
+favour of the story. To the first part alone he gave his approval,
+likening it to the Song of Solomon. The rest he thought vulgar, and
+hinted that the heroine degenerates into a sort of hermaphrodite
+character. Brunetiere's estimate, given in a parenthesis, is not much
+more favourable. And Taine, when dipping into the book for examples of
+Balzac's style, neutralizes his praise of one portion by his
+depreciation of another.
+
+Apart from the question of the novel's style, which is turgid because
+the lyric note intrudes, the most legitimate objection to the book is
+the sentimentalism which pervades it throughout, and palls on the
+reader before he reaches the conclusion. Like Richardson in his
+_Pamela_, but far to a greater extent than Richardson, Balzac has
+placed the struggle on the physical plane. Madame de Mortsauf permits
+de Vandenesse to make love to her, to caress her, and she accords him
+everything with the single exception of that which would confer on her
+husband the right to divorce her. The interest of the book therefore
+is largely a material one. The moral issue is thrown into the
+background. And de Vandenesse, moreover, is not a person that inspires
+us with respect or even pity. He consoles himself with Lady Dudley,
+while swearing high allegiance to his Henriette.
+
+In sooth, the swain's position resembled the novelist's own. Honore
+was also inditing oaths of fidelity to his "dear star," his
+"earth-angel" in far-away Russia, while worshipping at shrines more
+accessible. Lady Dudley may well have been, for all his denial, the
+Countess Visconti, of whom Madame Hanska was jealous and on good
+grounds, or else the Duchess de Castries, to whom he said that, in
+writing the book, he had caught himself shedding tears. His
+reminiscences of Madame de Berny aided him in composing the figure of
+the heroine, whose death-bed scene was soon to become sober reality.
+Madame de Berny died in July, having had a last pleasure in perusing
+the story that immortalized her affection for the novelist. Balzac had
+been intending to pay her a farewell visit; but he was then in the
+midst of embarrassments of all kinds, and the journey was postponed
+until it was too late.
+
+At this moment, the affair of the _Chronique_ was being liquidated;
+and then Madame Bechet, his late publisher, was dunning him for some
+arrears of copy that he owed her. His brother Henry, too, going from
+bad to worse, was in a position that necessitated Madame de Balzac's
+giving up the remnants of her capital; and, to crown all, a son of
+Laurence, the dead sister, quitting an unhappy home, was living as a
+vagabond on the streets of Paris, whence he had to be rescued. Since,
+to these worries and griefs, there was added certain disquieting news
+from Eve, whose aunt, from reading some of his books, supposed him to
+be a gambler and debauchee and was trying to turn her niece against
+him, it was not astonishing that he should have been completely
+unnerved. While at Sache, where he had come to stay with some friends,
+the de Margonnes, in order to terminate the work he was obliged to do
+for Madame Bechet, he had an attack of apoplexy; and, on recovering
+from it, was glad to seize an opportunity offered him of a journey to
+Italy to escape for a while from the scene of his toiling and moiling
+and to have a radical change. His good genius on this occasion was the
+Count Visconti, who, having some legal business of a litigious nature
+to settle at Turin and not being able to attend to it personally,
+asked him to go instead. On this trip he was accompanied by Madame
+Marbouty, a woman of letters, better known under her pseudonym, Claire
+Brunne, whose acquaintance he had made some years back at Angouleme.
+Madame Marbouty's exterior had much in common with that of George
+Sand, and the resemblance between the two women gave rise to the
+report that it was the authoress of _Indiana_ who accompanied Balzac
+to Italy at this date.
+
+The journey back to Paris was effected through Switzerland, which
+enabled him to see Geneva again, though under less agreeable auspices
+than those of 1833. His prospects on returning to France were no
+better than when he left. Indeed, they were worse, for Werdet's bad
+circumstances forced him to pledge himself in several quarters in
+order to raise some ready money for his immediate wants; and, being
+pledged, he was bound to produce at high pressure. His _Old Maid_,
+which he sold to the _Presse_ for eight thousand francs, was written
+in three nights, _Facino Cane_, in one night, and the _Secret of the
+Ruggieri_, in one night also. Rossini, happening to meet him during
+this spell of drudgery, condoled with him and remarked that he himself
+had gone through the mill.
+
+"But when I did it," he added, "I was dead after a fortnight, and it
+took me another fifteen days to revive."
+
+"Well!" replied Balzac, "I have only the coffin in view as a rest; yet
+work is a fine shroud."
+
+Casting round for a means to free himself from a position that had
+grown intolerable, he was induced to lend himself to a scheme
+suggested by Chateaubriand's example. Chateaubriand, having fallen
+into financial straits, sold his pen to a syndicate, in return for an
+annual stipend. Balzac did something of the same kind. Victor Bohain,
+who played an intermediary role in the affair, discovered
+Chateaubriand's capitalist; and a company was formed which paid the
+novelist fifty thousand francs down to relieve his most pressing
+needs; and further engaged to allow him fifteen hundred francs a month
+for the first year, three thousand francs a month for the second year,
+and, afterwards, four thousand francs a month up to the fifteenth
+year, when the agreement was to come to an end. In return for these
+sums, Balzac promised to furnish a fixed number of volumes per year,
+half profits in which were to be his, after all publishing expenses
+were paid. The arrangement was signed on the 19th of November 1836;
+and this date, in so far as the general quality of his writing is
+concerned, marks a beginning of decadence. Thenceforward his fiction,
+published mostly in political dailies first of all--the _Presse_, the
+_Constitutionnel_, the _Siecle_, the _Debats_, the _Messager_--had to
+be composed hurriedly and without the corrections which were the _sine
+qua non_ of Balzac's excellence; and consequently it contained many
+imperfections inherent in such kinds of literary work. There was irony
+in the situation. Hitherto, he had despised the daily press and the
+journalists that supplied it with matter, chiefly, it must be
+confessed, because of the slatings he had received through these
+organs of information; and he had revenged himself for the attacks by
+pillorying the journalistic profession in his novels. Lousteau, Finot,
+Blondet, and other members of the press appear in his pages as
+unprincipled men, only too willing to sell themselves to the highest
+bidder. Of course, such retaliation carried with it injustice; and men
+of high principle, like Jules Janin, resented this prejudiced
+condemnation of a class for no better reason than its having black
+sheep, which existed in every circle, trade and profession. Now, Janin
+had an easy task in convicting of inconsistency an accuser who, since
+it suited his purpose, was fain to belong to the press brotherhood.
+The real derogation, however, was not in Balzac's turning
+_feuilletoniste_, but in his slipping into the manner and his adopting
+the artifices that he blamed so unsparingly in Eugene Sue and
+Alexandre Dumas. Not to speak of his falling off in accurate
+observation, he inserted more and more padding in his fiction; the
+aridly didactic encroached upon the artist's creation; and, to make
+the arid portions go down with his readers, he spiced them with
+exciting episodes and all the stage tricks common in the serial story.
+To tell the truth, he had never quite shaken off his juvenile manner
+of the _Heiress of Birague_, which reasserted itself so much the more
+easily as his essentially vulgar temperament was ready to crop out on
+the slightest encouragement afforded to it. During his best period he
+had a mentor at his elbow in Charles Lemesle, who always read what he
+wrote before it went to the printer; and Balzac, though vain, was too
+intelligent not to avail himself of this friend's pruning. Under the
+new _regime_ the revising was impossible, and, as a result, that
+difficult perfection which he had so perseveringly sought was destined
+to be attained but rarely in the rest of his achievement.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII
+
+               LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1837, 1838
+
+By the agreement which farmed out Balzac's future production, Werdet
+was implicitly sacrificed. The final breach did not occur until the
+middle of 1837, but no fresh book was given him after the November of
+1836. There was one unpublished manuscript that he then had in his
+possession--the first part of _Lost Illusions_, and this appeared in
+the following spring. The novelist was intending at the time to bring
+out a new edition of the _Country Doctor_, of which Werdet held the
+rights. His idea was to present it for the Montyon prize of the
+Academy, and, if successful, to devote the money to raising a statue
+at Chinon in memory of Rabelais. Lemesle was one Sunday at Werdet's
+place, engaged in revising the book, when Balzac arrived in an excited
+state of mind, and sprang on the astonished publisher the demand that
+their respective positions should be legally specified in writing, and
+a clean sweep made which should leave him perfectly free. Previously
+their business relations had been carried on by verbal understandings,
+which, as a matter of fact, did not bind the novelist overmuch, since
+he never sold either a first or a subsequent edition of any of his
+novels for more than a comparatively short period--usually a year--at
+the end of which he recovered his entire liberty, whether the edition
+were exhausted or not. Werdet acquiesced, though grievously offended
+and disappointed; but asked that certain accounts outstanding from the
+year before should be settled on the same occasion. The promise was
+given, and everything was put straight, except the reimbursement of
+the money Werdet had advanced. Instead of acquitting this debt, the
+ingenious author endeavoured to squeeze a little more cash out of his
+long-suffering publisher. For once, Werdet lost his temper, and sent
+the great man off with a flea in his ear. It would almost look as if
+Balzac had provoked the quarrel, since, on the very evening after the
+tiff, he returned to Werdet's and offered to redeem all existing
+copyrights that the publisher held for the price of sixty-three
+thousand francs. His proposal was accepted, and Bethune, who was
+acting on behalf of the novelist's syndicate, paid over the amount.
+
+The transaction was the best possible for Werdet, who was too poor to
+continue playing Maecenas to his Horace. Against such incurable
+improvidence, and such little regard for strict equity in money
+dealings, nothing but the impersonality of a syndicate could stand.
+Nevertheless, one cannot help regretting that the intercourse of the
+two men should have ceased. Having so great a personal regard for his
+hero, and having besides his share of the observant faculty, Werdet,
+could have supplied us with biographical details of the last twelve
+years of the novelist's life much more interesting than those of
+Gozlan, Gautier, and Lemer. His naive narrations, which are well
+composed and have humour, carry with them a conviction of their
+sincerity, whatever the errors of chronology.
+
+Werdet's prosperity finished with Balzac as it had commenced with him.
+He was ultimately compelled to file his petition in bankruptcy, and,
+abandoning business on his own account, to take up travelling for
+other firms. His creditors were not tender towards the novelist, and
+used to the utmost the lien they had upon the few unterminated
+engagements that involved him in the liquidation. A letter addressed
+by Balzac to the Marquis de Belloy, his former secretary, testifies to
+the annoyance the creditors caused him:--
+
+
+"MY DEAR CARDINAL" (he wrote, calling the Marquis by a nickname),
+--"Your old Mar" (a familiar appellation applied to Balzac by his
+friends) "would like to know if you are at Poissy, as it is
+possible he may come and request you to hide him. There is a
+warrant out against him on Werdet's account, and his counsellors
+recommend him to take flight, seeing that the conflict between him
+and the officers of the Commercial Tribunal is begun. If you are
+still at Poissy, a room, concealment, bread and water, together
+with salad, and a pound of mutton, a bottle of ink, and a bed,
+such are the needs of him who is condemned to the hardest of hard
+literary labour, and who is yours.
+
+"LE MAR."
+
+
+The last occasion on which Werdet forgathered with his favourite
+author was at his house in the Rue de Seine, where, in February 1837,
+he gave a dinner. Some young members of the fair sex were present; and
+Balzac, whether to produce a greater impression upon these or because
+he had been making some society calls, arrived nearly an hour late.
+Nothing very special occurred during the evening, but the _soiree_ had
+its conclusion disturbed by a thunderbolt. On rising to depart, Balzac
+sought his wonderful stick--an inseparable companion--which was
+nowhere to be found. Every nook was explored without result. The great
+man yielded to a veritable fit of despair. A suspicion crossed his
+mind: "Enough of this trick, gentlemen," he cried to the male guests.
+"For Heaven's sake, restore me my stick. I implore you!" and he tore
+at his long hair in vexation. But the guests assured him they were as
+ignorant as himself of the stick's whereabouts. Werdet then said he
+would take a cab and inquire at all the places the novelist had
+visited in the course of the afternoon. Two hours later he came back,
+announcing that his jaunt had been useless. At this news, Balzac
+fainted outright. The loss of his talisman was overwhelming. When he
+was brought round again, Werdet suggested what ought to have been
+suggested in the first instance, namely, that they should proceed to
+the livery stables and see whether the stick had been left in the
+carriage which the novelist had used while on his peregrinations. The
+proposal was jumped at. He went thither, accompanied by Werdet, and
+had the ineffable joy of discovering the missing bauble quietly
+reposing in a corner of the vehicle.
+
+During the year of 1836, he had had the unique experience of
+corresponding for some months continuously with an unknown lady, who
+called herself Louise, and to whom, in remembrance of their epistolary
+intercourse, he dedicated his short tale _Facino Cane_. Whether he
+really had the opportunity of learning who she was--as he asserted
+--and refrained from availing himself of it through deference to her
+wishes, is doubtful. Some, if not all, of the letters he received from
+"Louise" were written in English; and at least one water-colour
+painting was sent him which had been executed by the lady's own hand.
+From the tone of his own epistles, which grew warmer onwards till the
+end, one may conjecture that the dame was a second Madame Hanska,
+smitten with the novelist's person through reading his works; and
+Balzac, whose heart was made of inflammable stuff and whose brain was
+always castle-building, indulged for a time the hope of meeting with
+another ideal princess to espouse. Like the Orientals, he was quite
+capable of nourishing sentiments of devotion towards as many beautiful
+and fortuned women as showed themselves amenable. The sudden cessation
+of Louise's letters, towards the end of 1836, freed him from the risk
+of Eve's learning of these divided attentions; and it may be presumed
+that the latter divinity was kept in ignorance of his worshipping
+elsewhere.
+
+_Facino Cane_ was a blind old violinist who encountered Balzac, if
+there is any truth in the story, one evening at a restaurant where he
+was playing for the members of a wedding-party. Something in the old
+man's dignified aspect moved the novelist deeply, and, accosting him,
+Balzac drew forth gradually the narration of his life. Facino was, in
+reality, a Venetian nobleman, at present reduced to dire poverty and
+obliged to dwell in the Hospice of the Quinze-Vingts.[*] In his youth
+he had been imprisoned within the Doge's Palace, and, while there, had
+accidentally come upon the secret treasures it contained. After his
+escape from confinement, his dream had been to meet with some one who
+would help him to gain possession of this wealth, without taking
+advantage of his blindness. And now he confided his plan to Balzac
+with undiminished faith in the possibility of its accomplishment. The
+pathos of the old man's situation is created with sober touches. Among
+the novelist's minor tales, this is one of the simplest and best.
+
+  [*] Hospital founded by Saint Louis for three hundred noblemen whose
+      sight had been destroyed by the Saracens.
+
+In his reminiscences, Theophile Gautier mentions, apropos of _Facino
+Cane_, that Balzac himself was persuaded he knew the exact spot, near
+the Pointe-a-Pitre, where Toussaint Louverture, the black dictator of
+Santo Domingo, had his booty buried by negroes of that island, whom he
+then shot. To Sandeau and Gautier the novelist explained, with such
+eloquence and precision, his scheme for obtaining the interred wealth
+that they were wrought up to the point of declaring themselves ready
+to set out, armed with pick-axe and spade, and to put into action
+Edgar Allen Poe's yarn of the _Gold Bug_. When money was the theme,
+Balzac's tongue was infinitely persuasive.
+
+One is tempted to wonder whether his returning to Italy in the spring
+of 1837, and his visit to Venice, after Florence and Milan, were not
+an indirect consequence of his _Facino Cane_ story. It is certain that
+he regarded the ancient land of the Caesars as a possible El Dorado;
+and, curiously enough, he came back this time, if not with Sindbad's
+diamonds, yet with some prospect of becoming a Silver King. Throughout
+the remainder of the twelvemonth, a plan, connected with this
+prospect, was simmering in his head, a plan which, we shall see, was
+less chimerical than most of those that he concocted.
+
+While he was at Milan, the Italian sculptor Puttinati modelled his
+bust, which pleased him so much that he gave him a order for a group
+representing _Seraphita_ showing the path heavenward to Wilfrid and
+Minna. At Venice, he began _Massimilla Doni_, one of his philosophic
+novels, in which the love episode is interwoven with mysticism and
+music, and Rossini's _Mose_ is analysed with skill. His best
+production of the year was _Cesar Birotteau_. The subject he had borne
+in his mind for a long while, but had feared to start on it on account
+of the difficulty of treating it imaginatively. At last, tempted by an
+offer of twenty thousand francs if he would complete it by a fixed
+date, he sat down to the task and wrote the novel in three weeks.
+
+The _Grandeur_ (or _Rise_) _and Fall of Cesar Birotteau_, to give the
+book its fuller title, has neither plot nor progress of love-passion.
+Its value--which is great--is almost entirely dependent on a number of
+little things that make up an imposing whole. The subject is a
+commonplace one. Birotteau, who is a dealer in perfumes, and has
+invented a Sultana cosmetic and a Carminative Water, has reached a
+position of influence and substance. Urged by his wife's desire to
+shine in society, he allows himself to be inveigled into an
+expenditure that compromises his fortune and reduces him to
+insolvency. Although retaining the esteem of his fellow-citizens, who
+are convinced of his integrity, Cesar is stricken to the heart, less
+by the loss of his money than by his failure to meet his engagements.
+In vain, his wife and daughter hire themselves out in order to aid in
+remedying the disaster for which they are largely responsible. In
+vain, friends rally round him, until, little by little, the debts are
+paid, the perfumer is rehabilitated, and is honoured even by the King.
+On the very evening when, in the society of his family and friends and
+his daughter's betrothed, he regains the feeling of independence and
+freedom, death overtakes him. Joy succeeding to the strain is too much
+for him.
+
+In the background of the novel is a tableau of the Restoration epoch
+which is admirable; and the intricacies of finance and law, which form
+so considerable a part of the story, are handled with an ease and
+fancy that no other writer of fiction has quite equalled. We have a
+romance of ledgers and day-books, in a business atmosphere that
+amazingly well reveals the bent and moral worth of the various
+characters. Cesarine, Villerault, Popinot have traits which one smiles
+to recognize. And Birotteau's development both of qualities and
+foibles is free from caricature, yet pleases much.
+
+As was the case with _Eugenie Grandet_, Balzac does not seem to have
+cared for this masterpiece. The rapidity with which he composed it,
+and the fatigue he had undergone, caused him to regard it with some
+irritation. He did not realize that it was all elaborated in his brain
+before he put in on paper. Probably also he spoke of it under the
+disappointment he experienced from his continued failures in
+play-writing. Twice, during the twelvemonth, he tackled pieces which
+he described to Madame Hanska. One of them, the _Premiere Demoiselle_,
+refashioned as the _School for Husbands and Wives_, treated the
+unsavoury theme of an adulterous husband who keeps his mistress in his
+own house; and the other, _Joseph Prudhomme_, much better in
+conception, dealt with the not uncommon incident of a girl's making a
+respectable marriage after a first betrayal, and her bringing up in
+secret the child born out of wedlock. Certain situations arising from
+the plot were both original and affecting. But in neither undertaking
+did he manage to go on to the end. Heine, whom he consulted in his
+difficulties, advised him to abandon further efforts in writing for
+the stage. "You had better remain in your galleys," he said. "Those
+who are used to Brest cannot accustom themselves to Toulon."
+
+The advice was not palatable to a man of his temperament. He wanted
+all domains to open before him; and poured out his soul in
+lamentations, even while exhausting himself in fresh attempts. Now
+that Madame de Berny was dead, his Eve was the chief recipient of
+these jeremiads. "Are you not tired of hearing me vary my song in all
+moods?" he asked her. "Does not this unceasing egotism of a man
+struggling in a narrow circle bore you? Tell me, for, by your letter,
+you appear to me inclined to throw me over as a sorry pauper that
+knows only his _paternoster_, and always says the same thing."
+
+To him, as to ambitious men in every century, reflection came now and
+again, whispering what folly it was to spend life in the sole pursuit
+of glory. Just now the whisperings must have been more insistent, for
+he had thoughts of going to live in some sylvan retreat on the banks
+of the Cher or the Loire, right away from Paris. A visit to Sache,
+after an illness, afforded him the excuse for searching; and, as he
+still proposed to write--for his pleasure,--it was congruent he should
+meditate a sort of Heloise and Abelard idyll--two lovers drawn to the
+cloister, and telling in epistles to each other the history of their
+vocation.[*]
+
+  [*] This novel was never written, or at least completed. The
+      _Sister Marie des Anges_, so often spoken of in the
+      novelist's correspondence, may have been the one here
+      alluded to.
+
+As a preliminary step towards carrying his determination into
+execution, he dismissed his servants, with the exception of Auguste,
+finally got rid of his lease in the Rue Cassini, whence he had removed
+his furniture in the preceding year; and then, feeling still a
+sneaking kindness for the city in which he had triumphed, he
+compromised by retreating to Sevres, there to study the ways and means
+of dwelling secure from pestering military summonses addressed to
+Monsieur de Balzac, _alias_ Madame Widow Brunet, Man of Letters,
+Chasseur in the First Legion, and also, if not secure from, at least
+not so accessible to the calls of dunning creditors. The flat in the
+Rue de Chaillot, however, was retained till the year 1839; and, from
+time to time, he made short stays in it. But, in case any of his
+friends wished to see him during these sojourns, they needed to know
+the pass-words, which were not infrequently changed. On arriving at
+the outside door, the visitor must announce, for instance, that the
+seasons of plums had arrived. Then, if he could further announce that
+he was bringing lace from Belgium, he would be permitted to enter.
+But, before it was lawful for him to cross the threshold of the
+novelist's sanctum, he must be prepared to state that Madame Bertrand
+was in good health.
+
+At Sevres, Balzac soon hit upon a site that pleased his fancy. It was
+a plot of land on a steep slope, about forty perches in area.[*] This
+he bought by using his credit, and forthwith busied himself with
+builder's estimates, since he intended to have his hermitage
+inhabitable some time in the following spring.
+
+  [*] More land was subsequently bought.
+
+Meanwhile his project of retiring--to a distance of twenty minutes
+--from Paris society did not hinder him from occasionally putting in an
+appearance at one or another of the aristocratic houses where he had
+his entries, among them that of Madame de Castries, whom he continued
+to see, although she confined her worship to his talent, and merely
+patronized the man. Either from sheer mischievousness, or to revenge
+herself for some real or fancied slight--perhaps, indeed, to mock at
+his talk of refinement--she perpetrated upon him the practical joke of
+getting her Irish governess, a Miss Patrickson, to send him notes in
+English, signed Lady Neville, in one of which an appointment was made
+to meet him at the Opera. He went to the rendezvous; but no one was
+there waiting for him. This drew from him a sharp letter of reproach;
+and Miss Patrickson, who was, in her private life, a humble admirer of
+the great man, and had on one or two occasions translated some of his
+fiction, was so smitten with remorse for her trick that she revealed
+to him the name of the one who had invented it.
+
+Les Jardies, where Balzac had decided to take up his residence, was
+built on the further side of the hill of Saint Cloud, facing the
+south, and with Ville d'Avray to the west. In front, there was the
+rising ground of the forest of Versailles; to the east, the outlook
+was down on Sevres and, beyond it, on Paris, with the city's smoky
+atmosphere fringing the uplands of Meudon and Bellevue. In the
+direction of these last places, a glimpse was obtainable of the plains
+of Montrouge and the road leading away to Tours. In summer weather
+especially, the landscape here presented charming contrasts, being a
+wealth of woodland and verdure in a miniature Switzerland.
+
+The architecture of the would-be hermit's house was rather primitive.
+Three rooms, one over another, composed the main building. The ground
+floor served as drawing-room; above it was the anchoret's bedroom; and
+the top story was used as a study. Sixty feet away, rose a second
+building containing kitchens, stables, and servants' rooms. The whole
+stood in its own grounds, fenced in with walls, half of which, being
+situated on the steepest portion of the declivity, persisted in
+tumbling. One curious feature of the house was its outside staircase.
+Wags pretended that the owner had forgotten it in his plans, and been
+obliged to add it as an after-thought. The truth was that an inside
+staircase would have compelled him to build with less simplicity.
+"Since the staircase wants to be master in my dwelling, I will turn it
+out of doors," he said. And this was done, the said staircase being a
+sort of broad ladder.
+
+Had the novelist stayed long enough in this rural retreat, he would
+have beautified the interior in accordance with his fanciful tastes.
+Friends who were invited out there were astonished to see scrawled in
+chalk on the walls:
+
+"Here, a covering of Paros marble; here, a ceiling painted by Eugene
+Delacroix; here, a mosaic flooring formed of rare wood from the isles;
+here, a chimney-piece in cipolin marble."
+
+Jokingly, Leon Gozlan one day himself inscribed on a convenient space:
+
+"Here, a picture by Raphael, of priceless value, such as was never yet
+seen."
+
+Of course, in the early days of his rusticating, he was enthusiastic
+about his Italian-looking brick cottage, with its covered platform or
+gallery running round the first floor and supported on slender
+pillars, Its value, he was sure, would double when he had created the
+garden of Eden round about it, planted with poplars, birches, vines,
+evergreens, magnolias and sweet peas. His humour-barometer went up to
+"set fair." For the moment, no pessimism clouded his sky. Here he
+would abide, here he would work or muse until the long-expected and at
+last approaching fortune should deign to enter beneath his roof; and
+then--well then, he believed he should have had enough of ambition's
+spoils, and should be content under the shadow of his vine, and watch
+from afar--just twenty minutes or half-an-hour at most--the march of
+events without seeking to mingle in them.
+
+The original cost of the homestead was about forty thousand francs.
+Other expenses were incurred before the whole of the building and
+installation was completed, which made the total cost very
+considerably larger; and, as hardly any of the amount had been paid
+cash down, Balzac's liabilities, which were heavy enough without this
+extra charge, very soon introduced a disturbing element into his
+Arcadian existence. Within the twelvemonth, a distraint was levied
+upon him for non-payment of moneys that were owing. Lemer, one of his
+biographers, narrates that, paying a visit to Les Jardies at this
+date, for the purpose of soliciting the novelist's collaboration in an
+international album, he not only received a promise of help but an
+invitation for himself and a companion to remain and dine off a leg of
+mutton. As the two visitors declined, Balzac said: "Ah! you think,
+perhaps, I am an ordinary host who invites his guests gratis. On the
+contrary, I intend to make you pay for your meal. Aha! You shall aid
+me afterwards to flit. To-morrow, the bailiffs are coming to seize my
+furniture; and I don't mean them to find anything to carry away. So,
+to-night, I am going to put everything in my gardener's cottage. The
+gardener will transport all the bigger articles of furniture; but, for
+the books, manuscripts, and valuables, I shall be glad to have the
+co-operation of men of letters like you."
+
+And the owner of Les Jardies was inconsolable when his visitors again
+expressed their inability to comply with his request.
+
+Himself a guest once more of the Carrauds at Frapesle in February
+1838, he took advantage of his proximity to Nohant to go and see
+George Sand; and spent two or three days with her. On his arrival, he
+surprised her clad in her dressing-gown, and smoking a cigar after
+dinner, beside the fire, in a huge, solitary room. Beneath the gown,
+she had on some red trousers, which allowed her smart stockings and
+yellow slippers to be seen. Since he used to meet her in the house of
+the Rue Cassini, she had grown stout, and now had a double chin; but
+her hair was still unbleached, and her bistre complexion preserved its
+tinge as of old. Working hard, she went to bed at six in the morning,
+and got up at noon. During the time he was at Nohant, Balzac adopted
+her habits. They talked from five in the evening all through the night
+and till five o'clock in the morning; and he learnt to know her more
+truly in these hours of familiar converse than in the four years of
+her liaison with Jules Sandeau. He summed her up as a tomboy, an
+artist, a mind great, generous, devoted and chaste (this last term
+would need explanation); her characteristic traits were those of a
+man, not a woman. She had, so he opined, neither force of conception,
+nor gift of constructing plots, nor faculty of reaching the true, nor
+the art of the pathetic. The French language she used she did not
+thoroughly know, but she had style. Of her glory she made little
+account, and despised the public. Her fate was to be duped--and duped
+she had been by Bocage, by de Lamennais, by Liszt, by Madame d'Agoult.
+Together they discussed the future revolution in manners and morals,
+and the influence their books might have in bringing it about. She
+suggested to him some subjects that he might develop, and taught him
+--up to then opposed to the weed--how to smoke latakia tobacco in a
+hookah pipe. Imagining the hookah to be something Russian, he asked
+Madame Hanska, to whom he related all this, to purchase him one,
+telling her that he would have his wonderful stick-knob, with its
+jewels, adapted to it, since he no longer bore the stick about with
+him as a fetish.
+
+From Frapesle he returned with the plan matured which he had been
+preparing since his excursion to Italy. When at Genoa, in the previous
+year, a merchant had talked to him of the existence of huge hills of
+refuse metal left in the island of Sardinia by the Romans, who had
+worked silver mines there. Aware how defective the Roman methods of
+extraction were, Balzac thought there might be profit in treating this
+slag by some process that would cause it to yield whatever precious
+metal it contained; and he requested the merchant to procure him some
+specimens of the slag, and to forward them to Paris for examination,
+promising, if the tests were satisfactory, to include the Genoese in
+the company which he was sure of being able to float for the
+exploitation of the concern. Although the merchant did not forward the
+specimens, Balzac consulted some specialists in Paris, Monsieur
+Carraud amongst others, who all concurred in pronouncing the
+enterprise feasible. Finally, the novelist decided to proceed to the
+spot and investigate the matter personally. If success awaited him, he
+would gain enough to pay off all his debts; and these he estimated to
+be about two hundred thousand francs--a Falstaffian exaggeration, of
+course, but the real figures were large. At present, he had no ready
+money at all; and had to borrow from his mother, a cousin, and other
+friends, in order to get his travelling expenses.
+
+Experience proved that he was correct in his theory. The slag yielded
+ten per cent of lead by a first treatment, and the lead ten per cent
+of pure silver. Unfortunately, the Genoese merchant had availed
+himself of Balzac's hint, and had sold the scheme to a Marseilles
+firm, who were already applying for the monopoly to the rulers of the
+island, when, in the spring if 1838,[*] he started on his journey
+thither; and, before he could do anything, they had obtained the
+concession. Once more, he had imprudently thrown out an idea, and lost
+his claim on it.
+
+  [*] Madame Surville wrongly places the date of the journey in 1833.
+
+On his way south he saw much that was new and novel to him. Passing
+through Corsica, he went over the house where the Emperor Napoleon was
+born; and, according to his habit of seeking information, he ferreted
+out several things that contradicted received history. The _Petit
+Caporal's_ father he discovered to have been a fairly rich landowner,
+not a sheriff's officer, as tradition said. Moreover, when the Emperor
+arrived at Ajaccio from Egypt, instead of being acclaimed and having a
+triumphal reception from his countrymen, he was outlawed, a price put
+upon his head, and he escaped only through the devotion of a peasant
+who hid him in the mountains.
+
+Corsica he considered one of the finest places in the world, with
+mountains like those of Switzerland, and needing only the latter
+country's lakes. Completely undeveloped, and practically unexplored,
+it was inhabited by people that cultivated the _dolce far niente_ to
+the utmost. Its population of eight thousand vegetated rather than
+lived, ignorant of everything beyond the simplest necessities of
+existence. The women disliked strangers, and the men did nothing but
+walk about all day, clad in their threadbare velvet coats, smoking to
+beguile the hours.
+
+His account of Sardinia is equally curious. It was a wilderness, he
+says, with savannas of palm-trees, inhabited by savages. On horseback,
+he traversed a virgin forest, obliged to bend over his horse's neck to
+avoid the huge branches of holm-oaks and cork-trees, and laurels and
+heather that were thirty feet high. In one canton he found people
+naked, except for a waist-cloth, and living on coarse bread made from
+acorns mixed with clay. Their mud hovels had no chimney, the fire
+being lighted on the ground in the middle. There was no agriculture in
+the island, and the only work done by the men was tending their flocks
+of goats and other animals.
+
+A tour through Genoa, Florence, and Milan made up the rest of this
+interesting trip, which lasted from March till June. Disappointed in
+the object for which he left home, it furnished him with leisure to
+gather fresh subjects for his pen, and even to begin one--the _Diaries
+of Two Young Wives_. What he wished to describe in this book was
+stated in the following remarks to Madame Hanska: "I have never seen a
+novel in which happy love, satisfied love, is depicted. Rousseau puts
+too much rhetoric in his attempt, and Richardson too much preaching.
+The poets have too many flourishes; the novelists are too much the
+slaves of facts. Petrarch is too exclusively occupied with his images
+of speech and his _concetti_; he sees the poetry more than the woman.
+Pope has given perhaps too many regrets to Heloise; he wanted her to
+be better than nature; and the better is an enemy to the good. In
+fine, God, who created love with humanity, has alone understood it;
+for none of his creatures has described, so as to please me, the
+elegies, fantasies, and poems of this divine passion of which each
+speaks and which so few have really known."
+
+Did Balzac himself ever know it? By his own confession, never in his
+youth. In the years of his adolescence there is no sign of such a
+feeling having agitated his breast, where ambition reigned to the
+exclusion of everything else. If, then, he thought of marriage, its
+prosaic, advantageous side only appears to have entered into count;
+and the liaison, which stood him in lieu of it, stirred, beyond sense,
+nothing but sentiments of common gratitude. In riper age, his
+attachment to Madame Hanska was a bizarre medley of flattered vanity,
+artistic appreciation of beauty, and cold calculation. His epistles
+reek with each and all of these; and his eternal complaints of
+financial embarrassment not infrequently read like the expressions of
+a pauper's whining.
+
+That they ultimately wearied out the recipient of them is evident from
+the remonstrances he drew upon himself. Eve blamed his lightness of
+character, the facility with which he let himself be tempted, his
+tendency to waste in travelling the funds he would have done more
+wisely to employ in reducing his obligations or avoiding them. At such
+moments he defended himself sharply, his tone savouring less of the
+boudoir than the forum. Any and every excuse was pressed into service;
+everything and everybody were responsible but himself. Even his mother
+he accused of causing his indebtedness--his mother who had ruined
+herself for him, and from whose remaining pittance he took in this
+self-same year the wherewithal to go to Sardinia, although earning
+many thousands of francs annually. The truth is that Balzac exploited
+all the women that loved him, himself incapable of loving any one of
+them with that entire devotion which, if roused, is unique in a man's
+life; and, as he was ignorant of it, so he has never described it
+adequately, faithfully. In one or two instances, he obtains a glimpse
+of it--as Moses obtained a vision of the promised land--from afar;
+when he tries to get nearer, he presents us with mere sensualism.
+
+What Madame Hanska probably enjoyed most in his letters were the
+_obiter dicta_ which he was never tired of pronouncing on his
+contemporaries. Scribe, whose _Camaraderie_ he had been to see, he
+summed up as a man who was conversant in his trade but had no
+veritable art, who possessed talent but not the higher dramatic
+genius, and who, moreover, was altogether lacking in style. Victor
+Hugo's _Ruy Blas_ was to him an infamy in verse, and the rest of this
+author's pieces miserable melodramas. Theophile Gautier's poetry was
+decadent, his style sparkling with great wit; yet the man was wanting
+in force of ideas. When, however, he added that Gautier would do
+nothing that would last because he was engaged in journalism, he spoke
+with all his hatred of a profession that refused him the honour he
+deemed his due. Eugene Sue, also, he looked upon with jaundiced eyes,
+as being a rival whose material success amazed him--a rival, indeed,
+whom no less a critic than Sainte-Beuve erroneously declared to be his
+equal. Sue, he informed Madame Hanska, was a man of narrow bourgeois
+mind, perceiving merely certain insignificant details of the vulgar
+evils of French contemporary society. To Balzac, besides, it was
+blasphemy in Sue that he spoke slightingly of the century which to
+this Legitimist was the grandest epoch in French history, slightingly
+of Louis XIV., who, in the said Legitimist's opinion, was France's
+premier king.
+
+The latter half of 1838 was spent at Les Jardies, where the novelist
+was busy either with his pen or in improving the interior and exterior
+of the property. A scheme for cultivating a pine-apple orchard in his
+grounds kept him from fretting over the sorry termination of his
+Sardinian dream. He intended to set five thousand plants, and sell the
+fruit at five francs a piece, instead of twenty which was the ordinary
+price. After deducting the expenses of the undertaking, he reckoned he
+could gain twenty thousand francs a year out of his pine-apples. If
+they had been willing to grow in the open air, he would undoubtedly
+have gone from theory into practice. But, as this difficulty presented
+itself in the initial stage, he threw up incontinently his
+market-gardening; and, since he was in urgent want of cash, he bethought
+himself that, lying by him, he had a collection of Napoleon's sayings,
+which he had been making for the past seven years, cutting them out of
+books that dealt with the Emperor's life. The number was just then
+five hundred. For a sum of five thousand francs he disposed of the
+fruits of his industry to a retired hosier named Gandy, who published
+them subsequently under the title _Maxims and Thoughts of Napoleon_,
+the preface being also supplied by the novelist.
+
+Besides _Gambara_, a second study of the musical art, containing a
+lyrically expressed analysis of _Robert le Diable_, Balzac produced in
+1837 and 1838 two longer works, the _Employees_ or the _Superior
+Woman_ and the _Firm of Nucingen_. The former, with its criticism of
+the bureaucratic system, depicted a state of things which has survived
+several changes of _regime_ in France, in spite of much in it that
+contradicts common sense. Rabourdin, the head clerk in a government
+department, seeks to simplify the useless machinery that clogs rather
+than advances the administration of the country. Having a practical
+mind, he believes that a hundred functionaries at twelve thousand
+francs a year would do the same work better than a thousand employees
+at twelve hundred francs, and cost no more. As in other of the
+novelist's books that preached reform, there are parts in this one
+where the main thread of the story disappears like a river in a
+canyon; and readers of the _Presse_, in which it came out as a serial,
+railed at the author, called his contribution stupid, and threatened
+to cease subscribing if it were not withdrawn. Yet, perused in volume
+form, it reveals comedy in abundance. The portraits are limned with
+master hand; and Celestine Rabourdin, the wife of the head clerk, has,
+together with her grace and taste, the gift of amusing by the skill
+with which she bamboozles the dissolute des Lupeaulx.
+
+The _Firm of Nucingen_ is a scathing satire of the world of
+stock-jobbing, where the money of the small investor is robbed with
+impunity under cover of legality. Balzac's Jewish banker, who thrives
+on others' ruin is a type that exists to-day, as then, without any
+adequate effort made by law to suppress him. Less happy in indicating
+a remedy than in branding an evil, the novelist naively held that
+France had only to adopt his doctrine of absolute rule for the
+suppression to become a fact. An unprejudiced reading of history
+should have informed him that _regimes_ have always so far existed for
+the benefit of their creators, and that, although constitutional
+monarchies and republics have not yet found out a system capable of
+defending the interests of all individual citizens, and perhaps never
+will, absolute monarchy has shown to satiety its inability to defend
+the interests of more than a few.
+
+In perusing such a book as the foregoing, one is led to ask why it was
+so inoperative on the life of the country. One reason perhaps is that
+Balzac wrote from his head rather than from his heart. Whatever may
+be, in other respects, the superiority of the Realistic over the
+Romantic school of fiction, it is inferior in this, viz., that its
+emotiveness tends to the negation, not to the affirmation, of action.
+One cannot but recollect to the novelist's disadvantage, as applying
+to this reference, the following statement he made to Madame Hanska
+for another purpose: "I have never in my life confused the thoughts of
+my heart with those of my head, and, excepting a few lines written
+only for you to read (for instance, Madame de Chaulieu's jealous
+letter), I have never expressed in my books anything of my heart. It
+would have been the most infamous sacrilege." Unconsciously insincere,
+like the majority of people in their justificative confessions, Balzac
+often allowed his heart to intrude where it had no business to be
+present. Nevertheless in his realist pictures he exercised himself
+with all the cold delight of the anatomist, and with none of the warm
+emotion that might have become communicative. This Brunetiere
+implicitly admits when he says that most of Balzac's novels are, so to
+speak, inquiries,--collections of documents.
+
+The year 1838 closed questioningly for the hermit at Les Jardies. The
+yoke of his treaty with the publishing syndicate was hardly twelve
+moons old; and, however, it galled his neck to the extent of his
+cogitating how he might pay off the earnest money he had received, and
+be his own man again. And how was he to do it unless by increasing his
+earnings? All his actual revenue was swallowed up by his debts and
+habits of living. Ah! if only he could become a successful dramatic
+author! Alone, he did not for the moment feel equal to trying. But
+there was the possibility of collaboration. His late secretary, the
+Marquis de Belloy, had recently seemed disposed to come and help him
+again. But de Belloy desired some acknowledgment in coin; and Balzac,
+on the contrary, judged that the honour of collaborating with a
+novelist of his celebrity ought to be sufficient wage.
+
+"My dear de Belloy," (he wrote back)--"Not a halfpenny; much work,
+your six hours a day, in three shifts, that's what awaits you at
+Sevres, if you are in the mind to come and realize things which are
+not vague plans but definite arrangements, and the relative result of
+which will depend on the brilliant wit that you have had the fatal
+imprudence to cast to the winds. I am at the grindstone, and forswear
+any one that will not tackle it. I have put my neck in the big collar
+because the other one was irksome. Your devoted
+Mar _ tyr
+"  _ ine
+"  _ ried man
+"  _ about"
+
+he concluded, punning on his nickname. Like his fellow mortals, he was
+often most merry when he was most sad.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX
+
+               LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1839, 1840
+
+Sometimes, notwithstanding his affected indifference, Balzac was
+provoked by the pleasantries, the fleerings and floutings of satirists
+and caricaturists, who, finding so many weak points in his armour--so
+much that was ridiculous in his exaggerations, might be excused for
+choosing him as a quarry for their wit, if not for the wit's
+grossness. In 1839, the _Gazette des Ecoles_ inserted in one of its
+numbers a lithograph exhibiting the novelist in the debtors' prison at
+Clichy, clad in his monk's gown, and sitting at a table on which there
+were bottles of wine and a champagne glass. In his left hand he
+grasped a pipe that he was smoking, and his right arm was round a
+young woman's waist. Beneath the lithograph was the inscription: "The
+Reverend Father Dom Seraphitus, Mysticus Goriot, of the Regular Order
+of Clichy Friars, taken in by all those he has himself taken in,
+receives amidst his forced solitude the consolations of Sancta
+Seraphita (_Scenes of the Hidden Life_, sequel to those of _Private
+Life_)."
+
+The last sentence being open to the interpretation that the subject of
+the caricature was a dishonest man, a complaint was lodged with the
+Procureur-General against the proprietor of the paper, and was
+supported by the newly-constituted Men of Letters Society.
+
+This Society, of which Balzac may be considered almost the founder,
+came into existence during his journey to Italy in the preceding year.
+On his return, he at once became a member; and, for a while, took a
+prominent part in all its deliberations, being elected on the
+committee, as also Victor Hugo, with whom thenceforward his relations
+were, at least outwardly, most cordial. In the first lawsuit engaged
+by the Society against the _Memorial de Rouen_ for the purpose of
+defending the principle of literary property, he pleaded with all the
+force of his talent, and composed a _Literary Code_ and some _Notes on
+Literary Ownership_ containing not a few excellent suggestions. His,
+too, was the initiative for the drawing up of a petition to the King,
+with a view to the establishment of literary prizes to be bestowed on
+well-deserving authors every ten years. The King, or rather his
+advisers, rewarded this zeal but ill. At one of the committee meetings
+Balzac was prevented from attending by a three days' confinement in a
+dirty lock-up at Sevres, the cause being the old one which had partly
+driven him from Paris--his unwillingness to go, as he humorously put
+it, into the vineyards of his village, and, dressed in uniform, to see
+that truants from Paris were not eating the grapes.
+
+His rural retreat, indeed, was scarcely the safe asylum he had fondly
+hoped it would be. Allusion has already been made to one defect--that
+of the walls which, unlike those of Jericho, did not wait for the
+trumpeters' blast before they fell down. They had an incurable
+preference for tumbling down of themselves. Constructed on a subsoil
+of sandy nature, their foundations yielded at every spell of rain. In
+vain, architect after architect was applied to, and one mode or
+another was recommended of relaying and buttressing. At the next
+downpour, the servant would disturb his master with the news: "The
+walls have toppled over again, sir, into the neighbours' gardens." And
+the neighbours' gardens were planted with all kinds of edible
+vegetables, which were crushed and pounded out of shape and
+succulence, so that the owner of Les Jardies had claims for damage
+continually sent in, until, in sheer despair, pledging his credit more
+deeply, he purchased the land beyond, content, at length, that his
+walls should be able to carry on their freaks in his own demesne,
+without let or hindrance or objection from any one. It is said that
+the land on which Les Jardies stood was so much on the incline that
+Frederick Lemaitre, who once ventured over there, was compelled to
+take a couple of stones and place them at each step under his feet in
+order to approach the house. This was, no doubt, one of the actor's
+jokes. It is probable that, in selecting the site, Balzac had in his
+thought the facility the place would afford for reconnoitering when
+any one came to his doors. The domestics were directed to keep a sharp
+look-out; and, as soon as a figure was seen approaching that appeared
+to be a creditor or of the State functionary tribe, the blinds of the
+abode were lowered, the dog Turk was dungeoned, and every trace of
+there being inhabitants vanished. After ringing uselessly, the
+unwelcome visitor generally retreated under the impression that the
+place was deserted. Then, when the last echo of his steps had died
+away in the distance, the blinds were drawn up again, Turk, barking
+with joy, was released from his captivity, and, like the castle of the
+Sleeping Beauty, Les Jardies re-awoke to its normal activity. How ever
+the tiers of planted beds perched one above the other--a modern
+example of the hanging gardens of Babylon--were made to resist the
+solicitations of the walls was a puzzle to Balzac's familiars. As for
+trees, only one, a walnut, managed, by dint of perpetual acrobatism,
+to conserve a stable equilibrium.
+
+Most of the fiction published by Balzac in 1839--_A Provincial Great
+Man in Paris_, the _Secrets of the Princess de Cadignan_, and the
+_Village Cure_--was written with great verve, and may be classed in
+the list of his important work. The second of the three just
+mentioned, which is the shortest, gives us the story of a woman who,
+after losing her fourteenth lover, succeeds in getting a fifteenth,
+d'Arthez, to believe her virtuous and a sort of saint maligned by
+envy. There is cleverness and to spare in the way the wiles of this
+sly jade are related, and falsehood shown as a fine art in the service
+of passional love. Balzac was thoroughly at home in treating such a
+theme. Both d'Arthez and the Princess are prominent characters in
+certain others of his books. The former appears in the _Provincial
+Great Man in Paris_, which the author calls an audacious and
+frightfully exact painting of the inner morals of the French capital.
+
+It formed a sequel to a previously published short novel, the _Two
+Poets_, and made part of a still larger series united under the title
+_Lost Illusions_, the entire work being completed in the Forties with
+_Splendour and Wretchedness of Courtezans_, this last portion having
+also more than one section. The first two volumes of the _Lost
+Illusions_ narrate the early experiences of Lucien de Rubempre, a
+young poet of Angouleme, whose family, with some claims to gentility,
+has fallen into narrow circumstances, the widowed mother being obliged
+to earn money as a midwife, and the daughter as a laundry-woman. The
+latter's marriage with David Sechard, a printer, alters the situation
+of the family for the better; and Lucien is enabled to occupy himself
+in the printing-house, while pursuing his poetical efforts. Though his
+literary talent, for the time being, has no value in cash, it procures
+him the friendship of Madame de Bargeton, a grand dame of Angouleme;
+or, more properly speaking, it is the pretext and justification; for
+Lucien really owes the lady's favour to his Apollo-like beauty.
+Subsequently the poet, desirous of shining in Paris, quits his native
+place with a sum of money scraped together by his sister and
+brother-in-law, and goes to the capital, accompanied by Madame de
+Bargeton. His liaison there with the lady is but of short duration.
+In compensation, however, he becomes acquainted with a new literary
+world, into which he enters with his meagre stock of poems, plus a
+novel; and, after a number of adventures, turns journalist, a
+metamorphosis that supplies the author with an opportunity to rage
+furiously against all those of that ilk. The rest of the first part of
+the _Lost Illusions_ is taken up with the amours of Lucien and an
+actress named Coralie, who gives the poet her heart and person, yet he
+sharing the second with the rich Camuzot. Coralie really loves Lucien,
+even though playing afresh the role of Manon to his des Grieux; but
+Lucien, less constant in affection, and finding how difficult it is to
+secure wealth and position, abases his pen to vile uses, and would
+gladly abandon his mistress for a profitable marriage. At length a
+duel, in which he is dangerously wounded, lays him on a sick-bed, and
+Coralie, who has sacrificed her situation on the stage to her love for
+him, and is herself ill, rises to nurse him back to health, and dies
+under the strain.
+
+The further history of Lucien de Rubempre belongs to the _Splendour
+and Wretchedness of Courtezans_. Both the beginning and the middle and
+the end exhibit the strong and the weak points of the novelist. The
+defects were dwelt upon in the _Revue de Paris_, soon after the book's
+first part came out, in probably the longest critical article devoted
+to any single one of Balzac's writings. By the irony of events, Jules
+Janin, who was the author of it, praised, some dozen years later,
+where now he cursed. There was exaggeration in his panegyric,
+pronounced in 1850 under the impulse dictating generosity to the
+memory of a dead foe; and there was exaggeration also in his polemic
+indited under the smart of Balzac's gibes against the press. However,
+the closing words of the article, save for the tone, can hardly be
+gainsaid: "Never," asserted Janin, "has Monsieur de Balzac's talent
+been more diffuse, never has his invention been more languishing,
+never has his style been more incorrect, even if we include the days
+when the illustrious novelist had nothing to fear from serious
+criticism, days when he was too unknown to be noticed by the small
+newspapers, days when Monsieur Honore de Balzac was as yet only
+Monsieur Horace de Saint-Aubin."[*]
+
+  [*] A _nom de guerre_ of Balzac in his apprenticeship days.
+
+The preceding remarks might be applied in substance to the _Village
+Cure_, which is one of the most incoherent of the novelist's
+productions. "I have no time to finish the book; just the part that
+concerns the Cure will be wanting," he explained to a correspondent. A
+good deal else was lacking when it was published, the whole resembling
+a patchwork of odds and ends of the crudest and least harmonious
+design. Its central figure is Veronique, the wife of a Limoges banker
+named Grasselin, and greatly her senior, to whom she has been married
+by her parents before she has had the time to know anything of love
+and its behests. Led by her goodness of heart to patronize a youth in
+her husband's employ, she falls in love with him, as he with her, and,
+through weakness, becomes his mistress. A murder, of which the young
+Tascheron is accused, and, as the issue proves, quite justly,
+interrupts this culpable idyll; and the assassin is condemned and
+executed, without revealing the secret of his liaison, and without
+Madame Grasselin's interfering to save him, otherwise than vaguely,
+through the Cure of the district. None the less, she is aware that the
+act has been committed indirectly through the young man's love for
+her. Smitten with remorse, after the execution, she quits Limoges,
+and, removing into the country, endeavours there by a life of charity
+and devotion to religion to redeem her lapse from her wifely duty.
+Then, finally, she dies in presence of the Archbishop, of Bianchon the
+great doctor, and of the Procureur-General and other witnesses, whom
+she has sent for to listen to her confession of moral complicity, the
+death scene being narrated with much theatrical emphasis. On to this
+melodramatic subject, wilfully rendered obscure, and really
+incomprehensible, the novelist did his best to tack various
+illustrations of Catholic repentance. He intended the book to be the
+glorification of Catholicism, the refutation of Protestantism, the
+embodiment of virtues private and social in people who bowed
+themselves to his ideal of faith; the story he used simply as a thread
+to connect these things together. Consequently, the action is
+intermittent, being checked by irrelevant episodes, and by long
+tirades on agriculture, sociology, and on other theories set forth by
+the writer with much zeal but also with much acrimony. Catholicism is
+asserted to be the only Church which has shown humanity its way of
+safety; Tascheron's sister, who returns from America, is made to
+relate that in a certain place where Catholic influence prevailed, the
+Protestants were very soon chased away. To this religion of such
+charming mansuetude whenever it has the upper hand, a Protestant
+engineer named Gerard is converted by puerile arguments which in any
+other domain than the theological would seem to be the divagations of
+a lunatic; and the Cure Bonnet proclaims the necessity of passive
+obedience by the masses to the Church's rule in matters civil as well
+as ecclesiastic. To add spice to this farrago of absurdity, Balzac
+spits out his hatred of the English, albeit he is compelled to
+acknowledge their common sense. As he confessed to the Marquis de
+Custine, it was his delight to abuse England, and its inhabitants,
+whether men or women.
+
+From what we know of his relations with Madame Visconti, we may,
+however, suppose that his prejudice against the _perfide Albion_ was
+not very deep-rooted. Indeed in his sentiments, as in his conduct,
+consistency was conspicuous by its absence. We find this would-be
+Legitimist, absolutist, ultra-orthodox worshipper of every old-time
+privilege and doctrine, yet continually saying and doing things that
+savour more of the democratic than the aristocratic. Towards the
+disintegration of monarchic attachments, his fiction contributed at
+least as much as that of George Sand; and even his comic resistance to
+the compulsory service required of him in the National Guard showed
+how little he was inclined to accept for himself those doctrines of
+authority which he would fain impose on others.
+
+Such incongruity between his theory and practice may have struck the
+members of the Academie Francaise, who manifested their disapproval of
+his candidature so unmistakably in 1839 that he withdrew in favour of
+Victor Hugo. This forced concession perhaps tinged the portrait he
+sketched of Hugo for Madame Hanska about the same time. "Victor Hugo,"
+he said, "is an exceedingly witty man; he has as much wit as poetry in
+him. His conversation is most delightful, with some resemblance to
+that of Humboldt, but superior and allowing more dialogue. He is full
+of bourgeois ideas. He execrates Racine, and treats him as a sorry
+sort of man. On this point he is quite mad. His wife he has thrown
+over for J----; and gives for such conduct reasons of signal meanness
+(she bore him too many children; notice that J---- has borne him
+none). In fine, there is more good than bad in him. Although the good
+traits are an outcome of pride, and although in everything he is a
+deeply calculating man, he is amiable on the whole, and, besides, is a
+great poet. Much of his force, value, and quality he has lost by the
+life he leads, having overdone his devotion to Venus."
+
+Calling Hugo a great poet meant little in Balzac's mouth. Of poetry he
+made but small account, probably because he succeeded so ill in it
+himself. When poets appear in his stories, they are rarely estimable
+characters. For Lucien de Rubempre he has only little sympathy. The
+three specimens of Lucien's verse given in the novel he procured from
+his acquaintances. The sonnet to Marguerite was composed by Madame de
+Girardin; the one to Camellia, by Lassailly, and that to Tulipe, by
+Theophile Gautier.
+
+A movement of disinterested generosity displayed by him in the same
+year was his fight, in conjunction with the artist Gavarni, on behalf
+of Sebastien Benoit Peytel. Peytel was a notary living at Belley, who,
+on the 20th of August 1839, was condemned to death by the Ain Assizes
+on a charge of murdering his wife and man-servant. Balzac had known
+him some time before in Paris, when both were on the staff of the
+theatrical journal _Le Voleur_. The Court of Cassation was appealed to
+in vain and the sentence was carried out at Bourg on the 28th of
+October. As long as there seemed the slightest chance of preventing
+the execution, Balzac continued his efforts to save the notary, though
+blamed by his family and friends for his interference, which they set
+down as quixotic. Presumably Peytel had committed the crime in a fit
+of jealous passion, to punish his wife's adultery. A curious drawing
+by Balzac exists in the first volume of his general correspondence, in
+which Gavarni is represented mocking the headsman; and, accompanying
+the design, is an autograph letter to Dutacq, managing director of the
+_Siecle_, referring to an article on the question published by the
+novelist in that paper.
+
+The time and money he gave to this lost cause were all the more
+meritorious as his own concerns demanded greater attention than ever.
+A new departure had occurred in journalism. The appearance of certain
+cheaper newspapers necessitated a change in the _roman feuilleton_;
+and the _Presse_ and _Siecle_, which had inaugurated the reform, and
+to both of which Balzac contributed fiction, laid down the principle
+that they would print only short tales complete in three or four
+numbers. This was hard on the novelist. For him to compress a story
+within artificial limits determined by an editor was a task even more
+difficult than to write a play.
+
+It must have been the desire to escape from such servitude which
+induced him to launch into another adventure with a journal of his
+own. The _Revue Parisienne_, which he founded in July 1840, was not a
+newspaper but a magazine, intended to supply the public, at a
+reasonable price, with tales, novels, poetry, and articles of
+criticism both literary and political, and to give the same public for
+their money more than three times as much matter as they would get in
+other reviews. The success of Alphonse Karr's monthly _Guepes_, which
+was reported to be selling extraordinarily, encouraged him to believe
+that his own fame, wider spread in 1839 than in 1836, and greater,
+would suffice to assure a similar result. Author and editor combined,
+he made the three numbers of his review, which were all he was able to
+bring out, at any rate the equal of the older established monthlies.
+In the three appeared his _Z. Marcas_, and _A Prince of Bohemia_, the
+former a resuscitation of the _Louis Lambert_ species of hero
+transformed into a politician. The _Russian Letters_, likewise
+political, furnish a very exact and comprehensive sketch of the
+general state of mind in Europe at the commencement of the Forties.
+One article of criticism praised to the skies Stendhal's _Chartreuse
+de Parme_ published in the previous year. A letter he had addressed to
+Stendhal in April 1839 was more moderate in its tone, though
+eulogistic with its well-turned compliment: "I make a fresco, and you
+have made Italian statues." He blamed the writer in his letter for
+situating the plot of the _Chartreuse_ in Parma. "Neither state or
+town," he told him, "should have been named. It should have been left
+to the imagination to discover the Prince of Modena and his minister.
+Hoffman never failed to obey this law without exception in the rules
+of the novel. If everything be left undefined as regards reality, then
+everything becomes real." In short, notwithstanding parts that were
+too long drawn out, he found the whole a fine piece of work; and, if a
+modern Machiavelli were to write a novel, it would be, he said, the
+_Chartreuse de Parme_.
+
+Between the judicious language employed in the letter and the article
+of the _Revue Parisienne_, the difference was so enormous that Beyle
+himself remarked: "This astonishing notice, such as never one writer
+had from another, I read, let me own it, amid bursts of laughter.
+Whenever I came to fresh flights of eulogy--and I met with them in
+every paragraph--I could not help thinking how my friends would look
+when they saw them." "The reason for this augmented enthusiasm must be
+sought," says Sainte-Beuve, "in the fact that Stendhal lent or gave
+Balzac a sum of five thousand francs in the interval, and thus
+received back a service of _amour propre_ for the service rendered in
+cash. Since the proof of this gift or loan was found in Beyle's
+papers, at his death, Sainte-Beuve's explanation seems well grounded;
+and yet, for Balzac's credit, one could have wished his praise more
+spontaneous."
+
+The cessation of the _Revue Parisienne_ forced its founder again to
+enter the ranks of paid contributors to the daily press, and to comply
+with its exigencies. Yet not entirely. His qualities and his defects
+alike led him frequently to break from restraint and to follow his own
+bent, maugre the complaints of readers, maugre editors' entreaties;
+and, even in the final phase of his production, there were some
+masterpieces supporting comparison with those of his best period.
+
+At the end of the Thirties, he was again, like Bruce's spider,
+renewing his efforts to climb on to the stage. He had three pieces in
+hand, _La Gina_, _Richard the Sponge-Heart_, and his _School for
+Husbands and Wives_, already mentioned. The last he had now managed to
+carry through to its conclusion; and, in February 1839 there seemed to
+be some prospect of his getting it played. Pereme, an influential
+acquaintance of his in the theatrical world, had persuaded the
+Renaissance theatre to accept it on approval, but was less fortunate
+with regard to the fifteen thousand francs which Balzac had asked for
+on account. The roles were discussed and partially distributed. Henry
+Monnier and Frederick Lemaitre were to be chief actors on the men's
+side, Mesdames Theodore and Albert on the women's. On the 25th of the
+month, the author presented himself with his manuscript before the
+reading committee; and, to his intense annoyance and dismay, was
+compelled to put it back into his pocket. Either the committee feared
+the expense which the representation would have entailed, or else the
+elder Dumas, who was one of their most successful suppliers of dramas,
+and had recently fallen out with them, must have made up the quarrel
+just before Balzac's comedy was read. Whatever the reason was, the
+rejection of the piece grievously affected the novelist, who, besides
+losing a great deal of valuable time, had spent money to no purpose in
+having his comedy printed.
+
+It must be acknowledged that, in dramatic composition, whatever Balzac
+had so far done by himself was done grudgingly, and, when possible,
+shifted on to other shoulders. Gozlan relates that Lassailly, who went
+to Les Jardies and lived there for some little time as a paid
+secretary, would be rung up at night, when his employer usually
+worked--rung up not once nor twice, but several times, to hear himself
+asked whether, in his waking or his dreaming, he had hatched any good
+plan; and poor Lassailly would have sorrowfully to avow that his brain
+had conceived nothing of any importance in the way of drama.
+
+How Harel, the managing director of the Porte-Saint-Martin, was
+brought to give in the same twelve-month to the rejected of the
+Renaissance a firm promise that anything he liked to do for that
+theatre should be acted is an impenetrable mystery. But then Harel
+himself was an oddity, and he may have felt bowels of compassion for a
+_confrere_ so original. The story goes that once he tried to borrow
+thirty thousand francs from King Louis-Philippe. "Ah! Monsieur Harel,"
+replied the monarch, smiling, "I was thinking of applying to you for a
+similar sum."
+
+The subject that, after much cogitation, Balzac chose for Harel's
+stage was _Vautrin_--the Vautrin of _Pere Goriot_ and the _Lost
+Illusions_--back at his old trade of acting Providence to a presumably
+fatherless and friendless young man, whose fortunes he sought to
+advance by means similar to those that had brought Lucien de Rubempre
+(we are anticipating a little) to so miserable an end. In the
+concluding act of the play, the young man discovers that he has a
+family, and a father who is a noble; and he marries the girl he loves.
+But Vautrin is arrested, and, although he has been the instrument of
+his protege's happiness, he is led off to prison once more. The theme,
+as treated, was a somewhat hackneyed one, and was further spoiled by
+ill-managed contrasts of the serious and comic, of which in any form
+the French stage was not tolerant. Objection has been made on the same
+score to the _School for Husbands and Wives_ at the Theatre Francais,
+where it had been offered after its rejection by the Renaissance.
+
+Balzac himself had no great opinion of his dramatic arrangement of
+_Vautrin_. He had done wrong, he said, to put a romantic character on
+the stage. After the play was finished, he re-wrote nearly the whole
+of it; and, from what Theophile Gautier relates about the way in which
+it was primitively composed, we can well believe that the revision was
+necessary. When the treaty with Harel was signed, Balzac installed
+himself in the small apartment which he rented at his tailor's, No.
+104 Rue de Richelieu, and sent for Gautier. "I am going to read to
+Harel to-morrow," he announced, "a grand five-act drama." "Ah!"
+replied Gautier; "so I suppose you want us to hear it and to give you
+our opinion." "The play is not yet written," answered Balzac coolly.
+"You shall do one act; Ourliac, a second; Laurent Jan, a third; de
+Belloy, a fourth; and I, the fifth. There are not so many lines in one
+act. With all of us working together, we shall be able to complete it
+by to-morrow." Objections were timidly put forward as to the
+hotch-potch that was likely to result from so improvized a method of
+work; but the hasty playwright overruled them all. It need hardly be
+said that the five acts were not ready on the morrow, nor for some time
+after. In fact, Laurent Jan was the only collaborator who gave any
+considerable help. To him, in acknowledgment, Balzac dedicated the
+piece, which was performed on the 14th of March 1840.
+
+Knowing what a number of enemies he had among the Parisian journalists
+and critics, whom he had satirized with increased causticity in his
+latest fiction, the author endeavoured to pack the theatre with his
+friends, but there was a large leakage in the sale of tickets; and, on
+the eventful evening, the seats were occupied by a majority of persons
+hostile to him. He must have had an inkling of this; for, when sending
+a ticket to Lamartine, he said to him: "You will see a memorable
+failure. I have done wrong, I believe, to appeal to the public.
+_Morituri te salutant Caesar_." The first portion of the performance
+was received, on the whole, favourably, though there was no
+enthusiasm; but, when Frederick Lemaitre, who was entrusted with the
+role of Vautrin, came on to the stage, in the fourth act, dressed as a
+Mexican general, and wearing his forelock of hair in a way that
+appeared to imitate a like peculiarity in the King, there was an
+outcry among the audience; and Louis-Philippe's son, who was present,
+was informed by complaisant courtiers that the travesty was intended
+as an insult to his father. The next day, Harel was advertized that
+the authorities forbade any other presentation of the piece; and, on
+the 16th, the Press, following the Government's lead, were practically
+unanimous in anathematizing the unhappy dramatist, the _Debats_ being
+particularly acrimonious, and asserting that _Vautrin_ was a
+thoroughly immoral play.
+
+Balzac's friends, Victor Hugo included, did what they could to get the
+interdiction raised; but the Minister was inflexible. All that he
+would consent to was an indemnity of five thousand francs offered
+through Cave, the Under-Secretary for Fine Arts. This, Balzac
+indignantly refused. One might have expected such continued ill-luck
+to prostrate its victim, at least momentarily. Gozlan went out to Les
+Jardies for the purpose of cheering the hermit up. He found him calm
+and collected. "You see that strip of land bordering the garden over
+there?" the latter said, looking out of the window. "Yes." "I am about
+to establish there a dairy, with an installation of the best kind, the
+cows of which will bring me in three thousand francs a year." Gozlan
+stared. "And you see the other strip down yonder farther than the
+wall?" "Yes." "Well, I intend to plant that with rare vegetables of
+the sort that used to be supplied to the King's table. That will bring
+me in another three thousand francs a year." Gozlan waited for what
+would come next. "And you see the plot right facing the southern sun?"
+"Yes." "Ah! there I shall plant a vineyard, which will furnish
+exquisite grapes that I can sell for wine-making in quantities
+sufficient to bring me in twelve thousand francs a year. This means a
+revenue of eighteen thousand francs annually. And then, the walnut-tree
+you see there--I can utilize it to the tune of two thousand francs a
+year." "How?" "Ah! that is my secret. So we get a total of twenty
+thousand francs a year, which I shall gain by the refusal of my
+_Vautrin_."
+
+This was brave talk on the part of the obstacle-breaker, as he loved
+to call himself. 'Twas also the bravest temper he could assume in face
+of the outside world. To Madame Hanska he revealed more the cankering
+disappointment, just as he had a twelvemonth previously, after the
+mishap of the _School for Husbands and Wives_. He had fresh thoughts
+of leaving France, which being, for the nonce, a bear-garden, he said,
+he detested, and of going away to America, perhaps to Brazil, where he
+should soon grow rich. He even told her she might next hear from him
+at Havre or Marseilles, just as he was on the point of embarking for
+the other side of the Atlantic. He had been reading Fenimore Cooper
+again; and the descriptions given by this painter of Nature always
+aroused his roaming instincts. He envied especially Cooper's power and
+skill in reproducing the details of a landscape. Once, in a
+pastry-cook's shop that he had entered with Gozlan to devour a plate of
+macaroni, he brandished a book of Cooper's, which he had been carrying
+under his arm, while he recounted his fruitless efforts to get experts
+in botany to tell him how to describe the differences between certain
+grasses that he wanted to distinguish appropriately in his fiction. An
+English girl who had served him in the shop listened open-mouthed to
+the great man, whose name had been uttered by Gozlan; and, when the
+moment came for settling, marked her appreciation of what she had
+heard and seen by charging him nothing for the macaroni. Balzac, not
+to be outdone in generosity, made her a gift of his copy of Cooper,
+expressing his regret that he had not one of his own novels with him
+that he might have offered her instead.
+
+No account of this macaroni feast figures in his almost daily letters
+at this time despatched to Madame Hanska. To her, if he mentioned his
+diet, its meagreness was emphasized rather. Being in one of his
+chronic hard-up crises, he excused himself for the intervals that had
+occurred between some of his previous epistles on the ground of having
+no ready money for the postage--the rates for Russia, it is true, were
+high; and he spoke of buying a bit of dry bread on the boulevards, or
+of intending to beg from Rothschild; then flourished his big debt at
+the end, quoting fantastic sums, variable as the barometer, which
+would oblige him sooner or later, notwithstanding his constant
+devotion to the Countess, whom he loved more than he loved God, to
+barter himself away to some agreeable young woman who should be
+willing to bestow her person upon him, plus a couple of hundred
+thousand francs. Once or twice there was really a question of his
+making a match through the good offices of his mother, of whom he none
+the less said fretfully that she did not think much about him. But, on
+each occasion, the negotiations fell through--why we do not learn.
+Such information, maybe, he reserved for the various dames in Paris
+whose houses he still frequented. Madame de Girardin had managed to
+get him back; and some sort of relations had been re-established
+between him and her husband, mostly business, since Monsieur de
+Girardin continued to be editor of the _Presse_.
+
+One day, Gozlan met him in the Champs Elysees, just as he had left
+Delphine's _salon_. He looked chilly and anxious. The chill he
+attributed to the unheated drawing-room that he had quitted; but it
+was due mostly to his condition of mind, then much exercised by
+something of prime importance to him, the finding of a name for a
+story which he had written but could not christen, in spite of
+protracted meditation. It was a man's name he wanted--a name unusual,
+striking, suggestive of the extraordinary nature of the person he had
+created. "Why not try the names you see in the street?" said Gozlan
+incautiously. "The very thing," answered Balzac, whose face grew
+radiant. "Come along with me. We will seek together." Realizing too
+late into what an adventure he had allowed himself to be entangled,
+Gozlan tried in vain to escape. Protests were of no use. Balzac
+dragged him off; and, with noses in the air and absorbed gaze, the two
+men promenaded along the Rue Saint-Honore and a number of other
+streets, knocking up against the people they met and provoking a good
+deal of profane language from these latter, who regarded them as a
+couple of imbeciles. At length, Gozlan, like Columbus' sailors, having
+more than enough of the tramp, refused to play follow-my-leader any
+longer; and only after a long palaver was he dragged up one last
+narrow street dubbed variously the Rue du Bouloi, du Coq Heron, and de
+la Jussienne throughout its course. Here, suddenly, Balzac stopped
+dead, and pointed to the word _Marcas_, inscribed over a door. "That's
+what I've been looking for," he cried. "It exactly suits my man. The
+person that owns the name ought to be some one out of the common,--an
+artist, a worker in gold, or something of the kind." Inquiry proved
+that the real Marcas was a modest tailor. However, his name was
+selected, and the initial Z was tacked on to it for the book, Z being
+by the novelist's interpretation a letter of mystic import.
+
+Another rather longer tale than this, belonging to the year 1840, was
+_Pierrette_, which the author dedicated to Madame Hanska's daughter
+Anna, characterizing it as a pearl "sweated through suffering," and
+telling her that there was nothing in it improper--he used the English
+word. The story is a painful one, and is scarcely suitable for a young
+girl's perusal, the heroine, a simple Breton maid, being the victim of
+an avaricious Provins family, the Rogrons, who under cover of the law,
+inflict on her such terrible ill-treatment that she ultimately dies
+from it. _Pierrette_ first appeared as a serial in the _Siecle_. In
+the final edition of the novelist's works it is classed under the
+_Celibates_; and, apropos of this heading, may be mentioned the fact
+that Balzac reproved celibacy as a state injurious to society, and
+held the opinion, dear to the hearts of certain Parliamentarians of
+to-day, that the unmarried should be taxed for the benefit of those
+having large families.
+
+Of course, the agricultural projects entertained for a moment after
+the interdiction of _Vautrin_ soon faded from Balzac's mind, which was
+still harping on the necessity of his conquering the suffrages of the
+public in his character of dramatist. He now set himself to write a
+play called _Mercadet_ or the _Faiseur_,[*] the latter word implying
+by its meaning the tragi-comedy of a penniless financier--the
+novelist's own experience was there to guide him--who invents a
+thousand and one stratagems for keeping his creditors at bay, and for
+creating the illusion of a wealth which he had not; who deceives
+himself as well as others; who is neither entirely a rogue nor
+entirely honest; but who, after all, reaches relative tranquillity and
+competency more through accident than purpose. The piece was not
+performed in its author's life-time; but friends were acquainted with
+it already in 1840, when Gautier and the rest of the inner circle were
+summoned to Les Jardies to hear the hermit read it, differing
+considerably then from the arrangement that was ultimately played.
+Balzac read it well, with all the inflections peculiar to each
+character and suitable to every change of circumstance. He had in him,
+says Gautier, the stuff of a great actor, possessing a full, sonorous,
+metallic voice of rich, powerful timbre, and kept his audience under
+the spell from the beginning to the end of the recitation. If Vedel
+and Desmousseaux, the administrators of the Comedie Francais heard him
+interpret his own pieces, they might be excused for having, as he
+asserted they had, a high opinion of his dramatic talent.
+
+  [*] English, _Jobber_.
+
+The greatest honour done to Les Jardies during the hermit's residence
+there was a visit of Victor Hugo, who came to talk over the affairs of
+the Men of Letters Society. During lunch, the conversation naturally
+turned on literature, and the host waxed bitter against the stupidity
+of kings that neglected letters, and against Louis-Philippe in
+particular, who had recently put a stop to the evening gatherings
+--chimney-gatherings they were called--held by the Duke of Orleans for
+the purpose of honouring the arts. In the afternoon the guests were
+shown round the domain, and expected to admire its beauties. Hugo was
+extremely sober in his praises until they came to the famous
+walnut-tree. Encouraged by the notice accorded to his favourite, the
+master of Les Jardies repeated to Hugo what he had already affirmed to
+Gozlan, to wit, that the tree was worth fifteen hundred francs to him
+(to Gozlan he had said two thousand). "In walnuts, I suppose?"
+retorted the chief guest quizzingly. "No," replied Balzac, chuckling,
+"not in walnuts." And he proceeded to explain that, by an old custom,
+the inhabitants of the neighbourhood had been accustomed to make the
+shadow of the walnut-tree a "temple of all the gods," and that he had
+only to exploit the offerings, in the same way as a guano island is
+exploited to-day, for the fifteen hundred francs to be added to his
+revenues.
+
+A few months later, in December, Les Jardies, with its walnut-tree and
+other advantages, was abandoned in hasty flight; and the hermit took
+refuge in the Passy quarter of Paris. On the house and property a
+distraint had been levied for moneys due which had not been paid. In
+total, his desire to abide under his own vine and under his own
+fig-tree had cost him a sum that he estimated between one hundred
+thousand and one hundred and twenty thousand francs. Deduction made for
+his Falstaffian speech, the amount was probably about eighty thousand.
+This might have been gradually saved and the interest meantime given
+regularly, if he had been willing to live well within his income. With
+his system of spending not only what he earned but hoped to earn each
+year, perpetual insolvency was inevitable.
+
+At Les Jardies he had small creditors as well as great, fear of whom
+haunted him to the extent of curtailing his walks abroad. Leon Gozlan
+relates that, going over to Ville d'Avray early one morning, he found
+Balzac taking a constitutional round the asphalt of his house. "Come
+and have a stroll in the woods," said the visitor. "I am afraid,"
+answered Balzac. "Of what or whom?" "Of the keeper." Not understanding
+why the novelist, who would not explain, should be in dread of this
+humble functionary, and imagining that much study and labour had made
+his friend a little mad, Gozlan took no denial, and, button-holing
+Balzac, lugged him off into the leafy avenues. And there, sure enough,
+after a while, they saw the bugbear, who, as soon as he perceived the
+two pedestrians, bore down on them with plodding but vigorous step.
+The shorter of the two turned pale, but tried to put on an air of
+dignified indifference. Soon the official ran in under their lee,
+passed alongside with slackened pace, and clarioned into the
+novelist's ear: "Monsieur de Balzac, this is beginning to get
+musical." The owner of Les Jardies quailed in his shoes. He owed the
+man thirty francs.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER X
+
+               LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1841, 1842
+
+The abode that Balzac chose, on coming back to live within the city
+walls, was not far from the Rue de Chaillot which had been his address
+before he removed to Sevres. It was situated in what is now called the
+Rue Raynouard, but then bore the name of the Rue Basse. In reality,
+the street is low only at one end, to which it descends from some high
+land that forms the Passy and Trocadero quarter, and, for some
+distance, overhangs the Seine. The whole of the street is narrow and
+winding, and still has an old-time provincial aspect, though the
+modern building has begun to make its appearance in it, replacing the
+ancient mansions surrounded by gardens with ever-encroaching blocks of
+flats.
+
+Balzac's new house was at Number 19 (at present Number 47). It stood
+--and the house still stands--in a back garden, on a lower level than
+the road, from which it was masked by houses fronting the causeway.
+Any one approaching it from the side of the Rue Basse would enter the
+common vestibule of one of these houses, go down some stone steps, and
+would then find himself in a courtyard, opposite a fairly good-sized,
+apparently one-storied cottage, with the tree adorned garden to the
+right of him. Once inside the cottage, however, he would notice that
+it was built on the extreme upper edge of a precipitous slope, and
+that on the farther side the structure had lower stories, with an
+issue through them into a lane at the rear leading to the Seine banks
+and the lower portion of the Rue Basse. Whoever, therefore, inhabited
+the cottage could quit it fore or aft, an advantage which must have
+weighed with the incoming tenant, tracked as he was by creditors, and
+hiding himself here under the name of Madame de Brugnol.
+
+The insistence of these claimants on his purse was such that, acting
+on the advice of his solicitor, Gavault, in the course of the year
+1841, he executed a fictitious sale of Les Jardies for the sum of
+seventeen thousand five hundred francs, his hope being to preserve his
+hermitage for the days of wealth and ease to come. Meanwhile, he took
+his mother to live with him. After giving him and her other son,
+Henry, all she possessed, and the latter being now in the colonies,
+where he ultimately died in poverty, she was dependent on what Honore
+could pay her each month. The living-together arrangement was not very
+successful. Madame Balzac's nervous, fretful temperament had not been
+improved by age and trouble; and her elder son found it hard to bear
+with her complainings, excusable and even justifiable though they
+might be. It is not pleasant to read the passages in his letters to
+Madame Hanska, in which he reiterates the old charge of his
+misfortunes being all due to his mother. In some of them he goes so
+far as to say that she was a monster and a monstrosity, that she was
+hastening the death of his sister Laure--Laure outlived them both
+--after hastening those of his sister Laurence and his grandmother, that
+she hated him before he was born, that she had a dreadful countenance,
+that the doctor affirmed her to be not mad but malicious, that his
+father had stated in 1822 he--Honore--would never have a worse enemy
+than his mother. Had his mother been all this and more, it would have
+been ungenerous and unfilial to blacken her reputation to a stranger.
+And, being false, it was odious. Madame Balzac's partiality towards
+the second son--heavily enough punished--did not prevent her from
+loving the elder, though their characters (hers and his) were not made
+to comprehend each other; and her lack of enthusiasm in the days of
+his literary apprenticeship was natural enough in a parent who
+understood only too well the impractical, improvident mind he
+possessed, and feared its consequences. The fact was that Balzac ill
+supported remonstrances from his own family, and especially from his
+mother, and, when irritated by them, forgot every benefit he had
+received from her.
+
+This peculiarity of temperament rendered his feelings toward many of
+his friends exceedingly variable. One day he was lauding them to the
+skies, another depreciating them to a cipher. Even his sister, Laure,
+in spite of her loyalty to him, did not escape attacks from his fickle
+humour. Like her mother, she never thoroughly penetrated the nature of
+this wayward, excitable, compass-boxing brother of hers, whose gaze
+was so much in the clouds and whose feet so often in the mire. But she
+defended him to others; and, as far as her purse and her husband's
+could possibly afford, she gave him money when he was hard up--and
+when he was not!--money which he was never in a hurry to pay back. Yet
+her, too, he maligned to "The Stranger," because she now and again
+ventured on expostulations.
+
+Madame Balzac made two stays in the Passy cottage, neither of them
+very long. After leaving the first time, she asked her son to pay her
+a somewhat larger sum per month, which would allow her to live
+decently elsewhere. Considering that he had borrowed from her a couple
+of thousand pounds--over fifty thousand francs--and that the sum he
+had paid her irregularly was not five per cent interest on the money,
+this request was not unreasonable. Yet he refused to accede to it on
+the ground of being in financial straits; and offered her a home with
+him once more, but in language that spoke of strained relations
+between them, as well as of a personal discouragement that was real.
+
+"The life I lead," he wrote, "suits no one; it wearies relatives and
+friends alike. All leave my melancholy home. . . . It is impossible
+for me to work amidst the petty tiffs aroused by surroundings of
+discord; and my activity has waned during the past year. . . . You
+were in a tolerable situation. I had a trustworthy person who spared
+you all household worries. You were not obliged to trouble about
+domestic matters; you were in peace and silence. You insisted on
+interfering with me when you should have forgotten I existed, and
+should have let me have my entire liberty, without which I can do
+nothing. This is not your fault; it is in the nature of women. To-day,
+everything is changed. If you like to come back, you will have a
+little of the weight that will fall on me and that hitherto affected
+you only because you wished it."
+
+The conclusion of the letter, in which he assured her of his love,
+could not counterbalance the harshness of its contents. Madame Balzac,
+be it granted, was cantankerous; but how many sons who have never
+sponged on their mothers have supported them cheerfully, gladly, for
+long years out of meagre resources, and have borne with a smile the
+natural peevishness of old age, not to say its egoisms!
+
+At this period, Balzac's acquaintance with the grand dames of Paris
+was considerably diminished. Madame de Castries he seems to have
+broken with altogether. Madame Visconti, who lived a good deal at
+Versailles, he saw but seldom. In lieu of these, he regularly visited
+George Sand, who was at present settled in a small flat of the Rue
+Pigalle in Paris, and was there enjoying the society of Chopin. With a
+connoisseur's envy, the novelist describes to Eve the interior, the
+elegantly furnished dining-room in carved oak, the _cafe-au-lait_
+upholstered drawing-room, with its superb Chinese vases of fragrant
+flowers, its cabinet of curiosities, its Delacroix pictures, its
+rosewood piano, and the portrait of the authoress by Calamatta. What
+struck him as much as anything was the bedroom in brown, with the bed
+on the floor in Turkish fashion. He was careful to assure his
+correspondent that, Chopin being the _maitre de ceans_, she had no
+need to be jealous. But jealous she was, though not of George Sand. As
+Paris was a resort for rich Russians, Madame Hanska's cousins among
+the number, she had frequent reports of Balzac's doings, distorted by
+society gossip, the true and the untrue being fantastically mixed; and
+it was no small task to disabuse her mind and persuade her that his
+conduct was blameless. Indeed, at bottom she remained sceptical.
+
+In 1841, three books were published which merit attention on the part
+of a student of his works. The first, _A Shady Affair_, has the right
+to be styled an historical novel. Dealing with the Napoleonic epoch,
+its interest gathers chiefly round the person of the brave peasant
+Michu, whose devotion to the Legitimist house of Cinq-Cygne brings
+him, an innocent victim, to the scaffold. The character of Laurence de
+Cinq-Cygne, a girl of the Flora MacDonald type, and the characters
+also of the two cousins de Simeuse, who both loved her and conspired
+with her, and whose pardon she gained only to lose these faithful
+knights dying on a field of battle, are drawn with great power and
+naturalness. And the plot, in which, together with other police spies,
+the same Corentin reappears that was the evil genius of the _Chouans_,
+is more rapid and less cumbered than in the earlier work. When the
+_Shady Affair_ came out in the _Commerce_ journal, Balzac was accused
+of having identified a certain Monsieur Clement de Ris with his Malin
+de Gondreville, who plays an evil role in the story--that of an
+unscrupulous, political turncoat, Revolutionary to begin with, Senator
+under the Empire, and Peer under the Restoration. The novelist
+defended himself against the imputation; but the resemblances between
+the fictitious and the real personage were, all the same, too close to
+be quite accidental.
+
+Something, however, more important than the question of likeness or
+portraiture in the book, is that it gives us Balzac's conception of
+what the historical novel should be. His contemporary Dumas, and his
+predecessor Walter Scott--the latter in a less degree than Dumas--did
+not weave a romance on to a warp of history, but romanced the history
+itself. What he tried to do was to keep the historical action exact
+and accurate, and to throw its romantic elements into relief without
+dislocating them. His opinion was that history might so be written as
+to be a sort of novel, which, perhaps, will account for his answer to
+Lamartine, who, in 1847, asked him if he could explain how it was that
+the _History of the Girondins_ had obtained a greater success than the
+most popular novels of the same date. "Gad!" he replied, "the reason
+is that you wrote this fine book as a novelist, not as an historian."
+The _Shady Affair_ recreates for us the Napoleonic atmosphere, silent
+and heavy, yet electrically charged with grudge, hatred, and ambition,
+all ready to burst out at one or another point. Underhand plotting was
+the order of the day; there was a language of the eye rather than of
+the tongue, since no one was sure that in his own family there might
+not be eavesdroppers listening to betray him.
+
+_Ursule Mirouet_ is a very different kind of story. We have here the
+old Doctor Minoret, who after making a fortune in Paris, returns to
+spend the last few years of his life in Nemours, his native town.
+Having lost wife and child by death, he brings back with him a baby
+niece, who is an orphan, and to whom he devotes himself with tender
+care. In Nemours there are other less estimable branches of the
+Minoret stock, cousins of the Doctor's, whose hopes of inheriting his
+fortune are damped by the presence of little Ursule. Chief of these
+relatives is the burly postmaster, Minoret Levrault, whose son Desire
+is destined to the law and is sent by his parents to study in Paris.
+Although a disciple of Voltaire, and scouting all religious practice
+for himself, the Doctor is friendly with the Cure, and allows his
+niece to be brought up to Church. At the time the story opens an
+unexpected event astonishes the town. The Doctor has become converted,
+and goes to Mass. The cause of the change is a wonderful experience of
+clairvoyance he meets with in the capital, whither he has been
+summoned by a colleague with whom he had quarrelled years before over
+the new-fangled doctrines of Mesmerism. What necessary connection
+there is between clairvoyance and Catholicism, or indeed any
+particular form of religion, the novelist does not attempt to prove.
+It suffices for the sceptical old Doctor to be told by a hypnotized
+woman in Paris what Ursule is doing at Nemours, and the conversion is
+wrought. Soon after, Doctor Minoret dies, bequeathing his fortune in
+just and appropriated shares to his various relatives, Ursule
+included. She is at the time a fine young woman, beloved by a young
+gentleman of the place. The rest of the novel tells how the big
+postmaster contrives to destroy the part of the will favourable to
+Ursule and to steal certain moneys that belong to her; how Minoret's
+ghost appears in dreams and signs to confound the guilty man and his
+guilty wife, who are at last induced to confess their ill deeds, the
+repentance being hastened by the death of their son Desire; and, in
+fine, how Ursule marries Monsieur de Portenduere and is happy.
+
+In its general construction, the book holds well together, and the
+characters in the main are depicted without exaggeration, while the
+traits of individuality are ingeniously marked. The Doctor and Ursule
+are less firmly and informingly delineated. As usual, when Balzac
+shows us the figure of a virtuous girl in an ordinary domestic circle,
+he represents her with passive rather than active qualities. She has
+no strong likes or dislikes, no particular mental bias, and possesses
+but small attractiveness. In fact, the novelist seems at a loss to
+imagine. In the case of Ursule, we see that she cultivates flowers,
+but we do not feel that she is fond of them. As for the Doctor, he
+would have or might have been less a puppet, had the author himself
+judged with wiser reserve the mysterious forces that exist in the
+world of sub-consciousness.
+
+His belief in these forces being alloyed with much superstition, he
+was always consulting fortune-tellers, even those that divined by
+cards. One of them, a certain Balthazar, who was subsequently
+convicted and imprisoned for dishonesty, told him that his past life
+had been one series of struggles and victories, a reading too
+agreeable to be doubted; and that he would soon have tranquillity, a
+prophecy which unhappily was not fulfilled. Concerning the prospects
+of a union with Madame Hanska, the cartomancer was mute, though he
+described the lady in language sufficiently clever for his client to
+acknowledge the likeness. His clairvoyance was exceedingly limited;
+otherwise he would have warned his client of the approaching death of
+Count Hanski, this event taking place towards the close of the year.
+
+Occupied with her own affairs, which were complicated by her husband's
+illness, and perhaps also resenting the falling off in the number of
+her distant worshipper's epistles, caused by an indisposition in the
+spring and a visit to Brittany to recuperate, she wrote only once or
+twice during 1841; and, as chance would have it, these letters were
+lost, so that, for nearly twelve months, he had no news from her.
+Pathetically he announced that his sister was planning to marry him to
+a Mademoiselle Bonnard, god-daughter to King Louis-Philippe; but still
+no answer came. On the 1st of November, as he related to his Eve
+afterwards, he lost one of the two shirt-studs which Madame de Berny
+had given him, and which he wore alternately with another pair
+presented to him by Madame Hanska. Beginning on the morrow, he put on
+thenceforth only the pair that Eve had given him; and this trifling
+occurrence affected him so much that all his familiars noticed it. He
+looked upon the loss as a sign from Heaven. Poor Madame de Berny! Now
+that the stud from her had disappeared, he had no further tenderness
+for her memory. Instead of recalling her kindness to him, he preferred
+to speak, in connection with what he styled his horrible youth, of the
+years which she--the _Dilecta_--had tarnished. Too opportune to be
+sincere, this condemnation of his first liaison cannot but be regarded
+as an incense of flattery offered to the coy goddess of his later
+vows.
+
+The third of the three principal books of 1841 was the _Diaries of Two
+Young Wives_, written, like the _Country Doctor_ and the _Village
+Cure_, in a decidedly didactic tone. We have two girl friends, Renee
+de Maucombe and Louise de Chaulieu, reared in a convent school, who
+marry, each with an ideal of wedlock that differs. The former, a
+doctor in stays, as her school companion calls her, seeks in marriage
+a calm domestic happiness, the duties and joy of motherhood, and has a
+husband worthy but commonplace, to whom she gives herself at first
+without much positive attachment on her side. The latter makes of love
+a passion, and marries a Spanish exile, plain-looking but virile, whom
+she bends to her will. The two wives exchange their impressions during
+their early years of matrimony, and we see the happiness of the one
+develop while that of the other diminishes. The Spaniard dies and
+Louise de Chaulieu takes a second husband, a poor poet, whom she
+adores as much as her Spaniard had adored her. Carrying him off to
+Ville-d'Avray, she creates there a snug Paradise, where she fondles
+him as if he were a toy, until at length her feverish jealousy brings
+on her own illness and death.
+
+The novel in its earlier phases was being worked at together with the
+_Sister Marie des Anges_, which was promised to Werdet but never
+completed, and seems to have had some connection with it. Possibly, in
+his primitive plan, the author intended to set in contrast the spouse
+and the nun: and certainly, in the original draft, there was only one
+bride.
+
+In 1842, at the Odeon Theatre, was performed a dramatic piece from the
+novelist's pen, which by some critics has been considered his best
+play. There are even critics who hold that Balzac was a born
+dramatist, as he was a born novelist, basing their opinion on his
+possession of qualities common to dramatist and novelist. His force of
+characterization, his handling of plot, his sense of passion were all
+sufficient to procure him success on the stage, which explains why
+pieces adapted from his novels by other playwrights invariably caught
+the public fancy. But, in order to develop character, plot, and
+passion in his fiction, he employed interminable detail and slow
+action; and his effects were obtained rather by constant pressure
+throughout than by sudden impact. The brevity and condensation
+required by the drama were foreign to his genius; he could not help
+trying to put too much into his stage pieces, and the unity of subject
+was compromised.
+
+The _School of Great Men_,[*] as he preferred to call his play at the
+Odeon, carries the spectator back to the Spain of Philippe II.
+Fontanares, a clever man of science but poor, and without influence,
+has discovered the means of navigating by steam. His valet Quinola, a
+genius in his way, resolves to aid his master, who, being in love, has
+all the greater claim on his pity; and he contrives to present the
+King with a petition in favour of Fontanares, and to obtain a ship for
+an experiment to be made. But now professional jealousies combine with
+love rivalries to thwart the inventor; and when, at last, the ship is
+made to move by its own machinery, the honour of the success is
+attributed to another. To avenge his wrongs, and the loss of his
+betrothed, who is given to his rival and dies, he blows up the steamer
+in presence of an assembled multitude, and quits his native land with
+a courtezan who has conceived a liking for him and will provide him
+with money to recommence his enterprise elsewhere.
+
+  [*] More usually called: _The Resources of Quinola_.
+
+Before the first performance, Balzac was just as sanguine about the
+result as he had been with _Vautrin_. It followed several pieces,
+Felix Pyat's _Cedric the Norwegian_, Dumas' _Lorenzino_, and Scribe's
+_Chaine_, which had been coldly received. What if his _Quinola_ should
+be the great attraction of the season! And his mind was filled visions
+of overflowing houses and showers of gold. Alas! if the
+representations went beyond the single one of _Vautrin_, they did not
+exceed twenty; and his share of profits was insignificant. The play is
+not dull to read, with its flavour of Moliere's comedies, and the
+keenness of Balzac's observation. But its colour and poesy do not
+compensate for the diffuseness of the plot and the undramatic
+conclusion.
+
+Instead of acknowledging the defects of his composition, the unlucky
+dramatist was wroth with his public. For a while he caressed the
+thought of going to St. Petersburg, taking out letters of
+naturalization, and opening a theatre in the Russian capital with a
+view to establishing the pre-eminence of French literature--embodied
+in his own writings. It must be owned that he was beginning to imagine
+himself persecuted. Victor Hugo, he said, had changed towards him and
+was creating a conspiracy of silence round about him, so that no one
+should speak any more of his works. And he liked better being attacked
+than ignored. Later, he asserted that Hugo, after accepting the
+dedication of the _Lost Illusions_ to himself, had induced Edouard
+Thierry to write an abusive article against him. "He is a great
+writer," said the novelist in telling this, "but he is a mean
+trickster."
+
+By the death of Count Hanski, the one insuperable obstacle to his
+union with Eve had been removed; and now, in his letters to her, there
+was a sudden outburst of love protestations. He wanted the widow to
+marry him at once, or, at the outside limit, as soon as propriety
+would permit. Madame Hanska replied that there was her daughter Anna,
+only just in her teens, who would require her mother's entire attention
+and care for some years to come; and there were, besides, matters
+concerning the inheritance, which would hardly be settled within any
+shorter period. Balzac was dismayed. He could not understand the
+delay, the prudence, the hesitation. Not to speak of his affection,
+his pride was offended. He overwhelmed his Eve with reproaches. Women,
+he informed her, loved fools, as a rule, because fools were ever ready
+to sit at their feet. Recurring in subsequent letters to a quieter
+manner, he strove to shake her resolution by hints at his exhausted
+strength, his difficulty of composition,--this was nothing new--his
+lessened alertness of thought and his weaker invention. Cleverly he
+juxtaposed with these a description of his study, in the little Passy
+house, hung with red velvet, on which black silk cords stood out in
+agreeable contrast; on one wall was Eve's portrait, and opposite it
+was a painting of the Wierzchownia mansion. Here he toiled
+unceasingly, creating, always creating. God only created during six
+days, he added, while he--the inference was left to be drawn. Feeling
+how requisite it was he should put himself right, in every respect,
+with the lady of his choice, he made a fresh confession of his
+religious faith. His Catholicism, he told her, was outwardly of the
+Bossuet and Bonald type, but was esoterically mystical, Saint-Johnian,
+which form alone preserved the real Christian tradition. Somewhat
+encouraged by vague inquiries from Madame Hanska as to the income
+required by a household for living in Paris, he entered into
+particulars with gusto; and, stating that he had eighty thousand
+francs worth of furniture, he discussed the best manner of arranging
+an existence with eight hundred thousand francs capital. With three
+hundred thousand francs, a country residence and small estate might be
+bought and the means of inhabiting there provided. Another hundred
+thousand would buy a house in Paris to spend each winter; and the
+residue of four hundred thousand, if invested in French Rentes, would
+purchase an additional income of fifteen thousand francs for town
+expenses. These latter he subdivided into three thousand francs for
+carriage hire; five thousand for cooking; two thousand five hundred
+for dress and amusement; and two thousand five hundred for general
+charges; the remaining two thousand would go in sundries. Madame de
+Berny, he said, spent only eight hundred francs on her wardrobe, and
+kept her household with nine hundred francs. Once launched into
+detail, he went far. The Countess learnt that he had still the same
+carpets, covering seven rooms, that he had bought for fifteen hundred
+francs in the Rue Cassini. They had worn well and were economical. The
+red velvet in his study had cost him two francs fifty a yard; but then
+he would take it away to another house, instead of giving it to the
+landlord. Living was slightly dearer in Passy, he concluded. A mutton
+chop cost seven sous there, instead of the five charged in the city.
+These last details were thrown in by a habit he had grown into of
+defending himself against the strictures passed by Madame Hanska on
+his expenditure.
+
+They were frequent--such strictures--because Balzac was always
+repeating to her that he was penniless; and she, comparing this talk
+with other statements about his gaining large sums yearly, argued that
+the penury must be his own fault. True, there was the debt. But the
+debt grew instead of diminishing. So, apparently, he was not starving
+himself to pay it back. The fact was that Balzac did not tell the
+truth either about his assets or his liabilities. He neither earned as
+much as he affirmed, nor owed as much. According to some of his early
+biographers, his average income was not more than twelve thousand
+francs a year. But these figures cannot include lump sums he received
+at irregular intervals, nor yet all the royalties due to him on
+continued sales of his books. Taking one year with another, he
+probably made, throughout the greater portion of his literary career,
+between twenty and twenty-five thousand francs annually. What must
+have increased his embarrassments, in the later Thirties and early
+Forties, was his hobby for buying pictures and articles of vertu;
+this, with his knack of dropping money in speculations and imprudent
+ventures, rendered it impossible for him to live within his means.
+
+It is curious to notice how his impecuniosity reduced him to regard
+every goal of his ambition as having merely a cash value. Speaking of
+his election to the Academie Francaise, which he reckoned to be near,
+he explained to Eve that it would mean six thousand francs a year to
+him, since he would be a member of the Dictionary committee; and then
+there was the Perpetual Secretaryship, which, falling to him
+naturally, would raise his emoluments to more than double that amount.
+Emboldened by these calculations--a trifle previous--he confided to
+Eve his desire to start on a trip to Naples, Rome, Constantinople, and
+Alexandria, unless she should veto the proposal. In that case, his
+desire would be hers. Four thousand francs was what the journey would
+cost. Would she authorize him to spend so much? At present she was the
+arbitress of his actions. As the trip was abandoned, we are obliged to
+suppose that Eve was not favourable to it.
+
+Mention has already been made of the novelist's initiative in the
+beginnings of the Men of Letters Society, and of his scheme for a
+petition to the King. In its details, what he wished to see adopted
+was on the same lines as those followed now by the Nobel Prize
+distribution--at any rate as regards literature. His idea was to
+secure a small independence for prize-takers in tragedy, comedy,
+opera, fiction, Christian philosophy, linguistic or archaeological
+research, and epic poetry, by awarding them a capital of a hundred
+thousand francs, and even two hundred thousand to poets, and to open
+thus an easier way to position and fame. Finding that his programme
+was not acceptable to the more influential members of the Society, he
+resigned his seat on the committee, and ceased his active connection
+with the Society itself, continuing, however, to interest himself in
+is prosperity.
+
+Later, his bust by David was placed in the Society's Committee Room,
+where it may be seen at present presiding silently over the meetings.
+Both the bust and the famous daguerreotype of him belong to the
+commencement of the Forties. The sculptor Etex had asked him to sit
+for a bust; but David had the preference, being a friend. His profile
+of the novelist, sketched in view of a medallion, an engraving of
+which appeared in 1843 in the _Loire Illustree_ for August, was deemed
+by Madame Surville to be the only real likeness of her brother. Not
+until 1889 did the Men of Letters Society decide to honour Balzac by a
+statue to be erected amidst the life of the capital which he had so
+well described. And even then they allowed certain elements of
+prejudice and passion to dominate their counsels, with the result that
+a magnificent full-length figure of the novelist executed by the first
+sculptor in France was rejected; the committee's plighted word was
+violated; and in lieu was accepted and placed in one of the streets of
+Paris a sorry likeness hastily modelled by a man who, though a good
+sculptor, had one foot in the grave, and who had not, besides, the
+conception of what was required.[*]
+
+  [*] See my _Life of Rodin_ (Fisher Unwin, 1906) or my later and
+      smaller edition of the same sculptor's life (Grant Richards,
+      1907).
+
+Of the novels that appeared in 1842, _Albert Savarus_, the first
+published, is worthy of attention chiefly as being a continuation of
+its author's personal experiences. The hero is the same ideal
+personification already seen in _Louis Lambert_ and _Z. Marcas_. A
+barrister, he suddenly settles in a provincial town, bringing with him
+a past history that no one can penetrate and every one would like to
+know. When interviewed in his private consulting-room, he presents
+himself in a black merino dressing-gown girt about with a red cord, in
+red slippers, a red flannel waistcoat, a red skull-cap. The likeness
+is once again Balzac's own--adorned by fancy: a superb head, black
+hair sparsely sprinkled with white, hair like that of Saint Peter and
+Saint Paul as shown in our pictures, with thick glossy curls, hair of
+bristly stiffness; a white round neck, as that of a woman; a splendid
+forehead with the puissant furrow in the middle that great plans and
+thoughts and deep meditations engrave on the brow of genius; an olive
+complexion streaked with red; a square nose; eyes of fire; gaunt
+cheeks with two long wrinkles, full of suffering; a mouth with
+sardonic smile, and a small, thin, abnormally short chin; crow's feet
+at the temples; sunken eyes (he repeats himself a little) rolling
+beneath their beetling arches and resembling two burning globes; but,
+despite all these signs of violent passions, a calm, profoundly
+resigned mien; a voice of thrilling softness, . . . the true voice of
+the orator, now pure and cunning, now insinuating, but thunderous when
+required, lending itself to sarcasm and then waxing incisive. Monsieur
+Albert Savarus (_alias_ Balzac) is of medium height, neither fat nor
+slim; to conclude, he has prelate's hands.
+
+The mystery of Savarus' earlier life, revealed as the story goes on,
+is his meeting in Switzerland with Francesca, the wife of a rich
+Italian, whom he eventually wins to love him and to promise marriage
+when she is free and he has acquired wealth and fame. All the details
+of the prologue are those of Balzac's first relations with Madame
+Hanska. The development of the novel, in which Philomene de Watteville
+falls in love with Savarus, surprises his secret attachment to
+Francesca, intercepts his letters to her, and ruins his hopes, is less
+cleverly told. Savarus' retirement to a Carthusian monastery and
+fate's punishment of Philomene, who is mutilated and disfigured in a
+railway accident, form the denouement, which is strained to the
+improbable. The background of the story, with its glimpses of the
+manners and foibles of provincial society, is the most valuable
+portion of the book.
+
+Between this relapse into lyricism and a much stronger work came the
+amusing _Beginning in Life_, suggested by his sister Laure's tale, _Un
+Voyage en Coucou_, and giving the adventures of the young Oscar
+Husson, a sort of Verdant Green, whose pretentious foolishness leads
+him into scrapes of every kind, until, having made himself the
+laughing-stock of all around him, and compromised many, he enlists and
+goes to the wars, whence he returns maimed for life. A comic character
+in the sketch is the bohemian artist Leon de Lora, nicknamed
+Mistigris, with his puns and proverbs that were the rage in the early
+Forties. A character of more serious calibre is Joseph Bridau, the
+talented painter. He and his scamp of a brother, Philippe, are the
+twin prominent figures in the novel above alluded to: _La
+Rabouilleuse_.
+
+Originally called the _Two Brothers_, and subsequently _A Bachelor's
+Household_, this slice of intensely realistic fiction exhibits the art
+of the author at its highest vigour. Philippe Bridau, the mother's
+favourite of the two boys, enters the army, sees Waterloo, and, after,
+leads the life of an adventurer, with its ups and downs of fortune.
+His widowed mother's indulgence, his own innate selfishness, and the
+hardening influence of war combine to render him a villain of the
+Richard III type, absolutely heartless and conscienceless. He robs his
+own family, fixes himself leech-like on that of an uncle, marries the
+latter's widow for her money, when he has killed her lover in a duel,
+drives his wife into vice, lets her die on a pallet, and refuses to
+pay a visit to the deathbed of his mother, whose grey hairs he had
+brought down with sorrow to the grave. Like Shakespeare's ideal
+villain, he has the philosophy, the humour of his egotism. "I am an
+old camel, familiar with genuflections," he exclaims. "What harm have
+I done?" he asks, speaking of his robbery of his relative, the old
+Madame Descoings. "I have merely cleaned the old lady's mattress." And
+he is equally indifferent to what destiny reserves for him. "I am a
+_parvenu_, my dear fellow; I don't intend to let my swaddling-clothes
+be seen. My son will be luckier than I; he will be a _grand seigneur_.
+The rascal will be glad to see me dead. I quite reckon on it;
+otherwise he would not be my son."
+
+Most of the other figures are of equal truth to life, and are
+presented so as to increase the effect of the complete picture:
+Jean-Jacques Rouget, the stupid infatuated uncle, who espouses the
+intriguing Flore Brazier; and Flore herself, whose petty vices are
+crushed by those of her second husband; Maxime Gilet, the bully of
+Issoudun, whose surface bravado is checked and mated by the cooler
+scoundrelism of Philippe; Agathe, the foolish mother, whose eyes are
+blind to the devotion of her son Joseph; and Girondeau, the old
+dragoon, companion to Philippe who casts him off as soon as prosperity
+smiles and he has no further need for him. And the narrow-horizoned,
+curiously interlaced existences of the county-town add the mass of
+their colour-value, sombre but rich. One could have wished in the book
+a little more counterbalancing brightness, and less trivial detail;
+but neither the defect of the one nor the excess of the other takes
+from the novel the right to be considered a masterpiece.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI
+
+               LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1843, 1844
+
+The great event of the year 1843 was Balzac's visit in the summer to
+Saint Petersburg, where Madame Hanska had been staying since the
+preceding autumn. He had hoped to go there in the January,
+commissioned to exploit an important invention for cheaper
+shipbuilding, in which his brother-in-law, Monsieur Surville, was
+concerned. Like each of his previous schemes for quickly becoming
+rich, this invention turned out to be a soap-bubble, bursting as soon
+as trial was made of it. What was left intact, however, was his
+determination to go to the banks of the Neva; and, throughout the
+spring, successive letters announced preparations for departure. The
+real motive of his journey was to try to persuade his lady-love to fix
+the date of their marriage. Her period of mourning was over, and no
+objection could be made now on the ground of propriety. Such
+sentimental arguments as Madame Hanska might still put forward, he
+trusted to be able to overcome by his presence.
+
+In order that she might be the more anxious to see him, he talked
+again of abandoning literature, and sailing for America. This time the
+West Indies were his El Dorado. He did not say how the shy millions
+were to be coaxed into his purse there, unless he wished her to
+understand he intended to export spices, since he added: "If I had
+been a grocer for the last ten years, I should have become a
+millionaire." Forsooth, these details were mere bluff. His inmost
+thought was that Eve would prevent his going across the Atlantic now,
+as Madame de Berny had prevented him--so he said--in 1829. Moreover,
+there was Balthazar's prediction that he was to be happy with her for
+long years. The fortune-teller's sanctum he attended more frequently
+than church. Going one day to the house of a magnetizer, a Monsieur
+Dupotet, living in the Rue du Bac, he gave his hand to a hypnotized
+woman, who placed it on her stomach and immediately loosed it again
+with a scared look: "What is that head?" she cried. "It is a world; it
+frightens me." "She had not looked at my heart," commented Balzac
+proudly. "She has been dazzled by the head. Yet since I was born, my
+life has been dominated by my heart--a secret which I conceal with
+care." All this he related quite seriously to Eve. Probably, Madame de
+Girardin, who accompanied him on this pilgrimage, could have told
+Madame Hanska more.
+
+Writing on his birthday, he inserted the prayer he had offered up to
+his patron-saint for the accomplishment of his desires, its burden
+indicating how near he believed himself to the longed-for goal: "O
+great Saint Honore, thou to whom is dedicated a street in Paris at
+once so beautiful and so ugly, ordain that the ship may not blow up;
+ordain that I may be no more a bachelor, by decree of the Mayor or the
+Counsul of France; for thou knowest that I have been spiritually
+married for nigh on eleven years. These last fifteen years, I have
+lived a martyr's life. God sent me an angel in 1833. May this angel
+never quit me again till death! I have lived by my writing. Let me
+live a little by love! Take care of her rather than of me; for I would
+fain give her all, even my portion in heaven; and especially let us
+soon be happy. Ave, Eva."
+
+The love fervour of this prayer was a dominant note throughout the
+twelvemonth; we notice after the visit that the familiar _thou_
+prevails over the colder _you_; and the letters, both in number and
+length, very largely exceed those he had written up to the end of
+1842. Funnily, he expresses admiration of himself for this work of
+supererogation, informing Eve, on one occasion, that the sixteen
+leaves he had recently sent her were worth sixteen hundred francs,
+even two thousand, counting extra leaves enclosed to Mademoiselle
+Henriette Borel, the governess, for whom he was negotiating an
+entrance into a nunnery. Love-letters estimated at five francs a
+page!!!
+
+Let us grant that the epistles at present contained more gossip than
+ever, so that the recipient of them had her share of amusement. She
+was wonderfully well kept up in Paris happenings in society, including
+the stage and art galleries. She learnt that Madame d'Agoult--Daniel
+Stern[*]--had become Emile de Girardin's mistress, on losing Liszt,
+who had fallen into the toils of the Princess de Belgiojoso, the
+latter lady achieving her conquest after luring in succession Lord
+Normanby from his wife, Mignet from Madame Aubernon, and Alfred de
+Musset from George Sand. Going to see Victor Hugo's _Burgraves_, he
+reported that it was nothing to speak of as history, altogether poor
+as invention, but nevertheless poetic, with a poetry that carried away
+the spectator. It was Titian painting on a mud wall. He chiefly
+remarked the absence of feeling, which, in Victor Hugo, was more and
+more noticeable. The author of the _Burgraves_ lacked the true. As he
+did not publish these opinions, he was able to go on dining with the
+poet and to praise the beauty of his fourteen-year-old daughter. On
+George Sand's _Consuelo_ he pronounced a severer judgment still,
+calling it the emptiest, most improbable, most childish thing
+conceivable--boredom in sixteen parts. And yet he had conceived
+certain improbable plots himself.
+
+  [*] Her literary pseudonym
+
+Like Charles Lamb, who left his office earlier in the afternoon to
+make up for arriving late in the morning, he counterbalanced these
+heavy-handed slatings of his friends by extolling his own performance
+past and present. Being engaged in revising the _Chouans_ for a fresh
+edition, he was struck by qualities in it that he had hitherto held
+too lightly. It was all Scott and all Fenimore Cooper, he said, with a
+fire and wit, into the bargain, that neither of these writers ever
+possessed. The passion in it was sublime! Its landscapes and scenes of
+war were depicted with a perfection and happiness that surprised him.
+As a piece of self-praise there is probably nothing surpassing this in
+the annals of literature. In a competition, Balzac's blasts of vanity
+would beat the Archangel Michael's last trump for loudness.
+
+Horace Vernet, he asserted, would never be a great painter. He was a
+colourist; he knew how to design and compose, had technical skill,
+and, now and again, found sentiment, but did not understand how to
+combine these talents in his pictures. He was clever, but had no
+genius. His _alter ego_ was Delaroche, to whom he gave his daughter in
+marriage. Of the other painters, Boulanger, Delacroix, Ingres,
+Decamps, Jules Dupre were his favourites--true artists, he deemed
+them. At the _Salon_ he saw hardly anything to please him besides a
+canvas by Meissonier and Cogniet's _Tintoretto painting his Dead
+Daughter_. He would have liked to see Boulanger's _Death of
+Messalina_, but the _Salon_ Committee had refused it.
+
+In music his preferences were as eclectic as in pictures. Liszt, whom
+he thought ridiculous as a man, he considered superb as a musician
+--the Paganini of the piano, yet inferior to Chopin, since he had not
+the genius of composition. And, in singing, Rubini was his idol
+--Rubini who triumphed in the role of Othello, giving the suspicion
+_air_ in a manner no one could equal. It intoxicated him to hear this
+tenor with Tamburini, Lablache, and Madame Grisi; while Nourrit's
+song, _Ce Rameau qui donne la Puissance et l'Immortalite_ in _Robert
+le Diable_ made his flesh creep. It yielded a glimpse of life with all
+its dreams satisfied.
+
+Originally intending to start for St. Petersburg early in June, Balzac
+was not able to leave Paris until a month later. As usual, filthy
+lucre had to do with his tarrying. In spite of a loan of 11,500 francs
+from lawyer Gavault--his guardian, the novelist called him--who for
+the privilege of the great man's friendship had been endeavouring
+during the two years past to introduce a little order into his
+affairs, he had not available cash enough for a trip so far, and
+stayed on, hoping to finish his _David Sechard_,* which was running as
+a serial in the _Etat_, and his _Esther_,[*] appearing similarly in
+the _Parisien_. June he spent at Lagny, where his manuscripts were
+being printed, in order to correct the proofs and get his money. But
+the _Etat_ ceased issue while he was there; and the _Parisien_, being
+in parlous condition, refused likewise to pay up, so that he had to go
+off with a thinner-lined pocket than he had expected. Otherwise, he
+was in a fitting state of grace to meet his fair tyrant, whose
+envelope lectures had brought him into fear of her and at least
+outward obedience.
+
+  [*] Part of the _Lost Illusions_.
+
+The torrents of coffee by the aid of which he had forced his last
+pen-work through, had been reduced to minimum doses; the occasional
+mustard foot-baths that cured his cerebral inflammations were replaced
+by entire ablutions every other day; he liked hot baths well enough;
+but, in the spells of composition, they were often indefinitely
+adjourned, so that this season of purification had its _raison
+d'etre_. And now, with his gaze turned to the east, he wondered how
+long he was going to remain there. His reply to a person who asked him
+to pledge himself for some novels on his return reads much as though
+he were counting on an offer to fix his residence in the empire of the
+czars. "I don't know whether I shall come back," he said. "France
+bores me. I am infatuated with Russia. I am in love with absolute
+power. I am going to see if it is as fine as I believe it to be. De
+Maistre stayed a long time at St. Petersburg. Perhaps I shall stay
+also." This he naturally repeated to Madame Hanska. Not that it was
+new to her. A similar hint had been given in January, when he capped
+his declaration, "I abhor the English; I execrate the Austrians; the
+Italians are nothing," with "I would sooner be a Russian than any
+other subject." The comic side of this fury is that Madame Hanska was
+a Pole, her late husband too; and neither she nor her family were
+reconciled to the Russian yoke. To make his renunciation more
+complete, he humbly spoke his dread she might turn from him with the
+"get away" said to a dog. No! She had no intention of dismissing him.
+His outpourings of devotion caressed her woman's pride, even if she
+did not accept them as gospel truth. And however tedious she found his
+vamping song of sixpence, his sittings in the parlour counting out his
+mirage-money, she put up with them in consideration of her privilege.
+
+Sailing from Havre in the _Devonshire_, an English boat, Balzac
+arrived at St. Petersburg towards the end of July. He lodged in a
+private house not far from Eve's Koutaizoff mansion; but passed the
+three months of his sojourn almost entirely in her society. It was the
+first opportunity he had had of getting to know her intimately, their
+previous meetings being surrounded with too many restrictions to allow
+of familiar intercourse. No detailed record has come down to us of
+these days of _tete-a-tete_ existence. All we learn from subsequent
+allusions is that, together with a good deal of billing and cooing,
+more sustained on the novelist's side, there were some lovers' tiffs,
+followed by reconciliations. Apparently the friction was mainly caused
+by Eve's evasiveness on the subject of their marriage.
+
+It would seem as though there were an attack on her aloofness in the
+long criticism he sent her from his lodgings on Madame d'Arnim's
+_Bellina_, a French translation of which had been published not long
+before he left Paris. After some general remarks on the circumstance
+of a girl's fancying herself in love with a great man living at a
+distance, he waxed wroth over what he styled Bellina's head-love, and
+over head-love in general. To this monster, Merimee, in his _Double
+Mistake_, had given a thrust but a thrust that made it bleed only. The
+cleverer Madame d'Arnim had poisoned it with opium. "In order for the
+literary expression of love to become a work of art and to be
+sublime," he continued, "the love that depicts should itself be
+complete; it should occur in its triple form, head, heart, and body;
+should be a love at once sensual and divine, manifested with wit and
+poetry. Who says love says suffering; suffering from separation;
+suffering from disagreement. Love in itself is a sublime and pathetic
+drama. When happy, it is silent. Now, the cause of the tedium of
+Madame d'Arnim's book," he added, "is easily discoverable by a soul
+that loves. Goethe did not love Bellina. Put a big stone in Goethe's
+place--the Sphinx no power has ever been able to wrest from its desert
+sand--and Bellina's letters are understandable. Unlike Pygmalion's
+fable, the more Bellina writes, the more petrified Goethe becomes, the
+more glacial his letters. True, if Bellina had perceived that her
+sheets were falling upon granite, and if she had abandoned herself to
+rage or despair, she would have composed a poem. But, as she did not
+love Goethe, as Goethe was a pretext for her letters, she went on with
+her girl's journal; and we have read some (not intended for print)
+much more charming, not in units, but in tens."
+
+In the rest of the criticism, Balzac swirls round his guns and directs
+his fire on Goethe's replies to Bellina. The latter's epistles were
+accompanied with presents of braces and slippers and flannel
+waistcoats, which were much more appreciated by the poet than her
+theories on music. Not so did he, Balzac, treat his Lina, his Louloup
+--such was the inference suggested. Every one of her, i.e. Eve's
+sayings was treasured up, after being duly pondered upon. Such
+adulation must have been delicious to Madame Hanska; and yet she sent
+her sighing swain back into his loneliness, with his bonds riveted
+tighter, his promises to break with all rivals more solemn, and a
+disappointment, over his deferred hopes, that brought on an illness
+after his return.
+
+The journey back was made by land through Riga, Taurogen, and Berlin.
+In the Prussian capital, Von Humboldt came to see him with a message
+from the King and Queen; and Shakespeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream_
+was seen on the stage, without pleasure being derived from it. To its
+poesy the novelist was little open. Instead of pushing on straight to
+France, he bent his course southwards to Dresden, where he visited the
+Pinakothek. The Saxon town pleased him more than Berlin, both by its
+structural picturesqueness and surroundings. The palace, begun by
+Augustus, he esteemed the most curious masterpiece of rococo
+architecture. The Gallery he thought over-rated; but he none the less
+admired Correggio's _Night_, his _Magdalene_ and two _Virgins_, as
+also Raphael's _Virgins_, and the Dutch pictures. His highest
+enthusiasm was aroused by the theatre, decorated by the three French
+artists Desplechin, Sechan, and Dieterle. He reached Passy on the 3rd
+of November, having crowded into the preceding week visits to Maintz,
+Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, and several places in Belgium.
+
+The form assumed by his malady was arachnitis, an inflammation of the
+network of nerves enveloping the brain. For the time being, Nacquart,
+his doctor, conjured it away, as he had done in the case of other
+seizures from which the patient had suffered. He had known Balzac
+since boyhood and was well acquainted with his constitution.
+Unfortunately he could not change the novelist's abnormal manner of
+living and working. And the mischief was in them.
+
+Balzac's three months' absence from Paris had caused profane tongues
+to wag considerably. Notwithstanding his reticence concerning Countess
+Hanska, a legend had gathered round about their relations to each
+other. More than one paper reported that he had been off on an
+expedition, wife, and fortune-hunting--which was true; and one daily,
+at least, spoke of his having been engaged by the Czar as a kind of
+court _litterateur_. The _Presse_ especially annoyed him by copying
+from the _Independance Belge_ a story of his having been surprised by
+the Belgian police dining in an hotel with an Italian forger, whose
+grand behaviour and abundance of false bank-notes had completely
+captivated him. The forger was certainly arrested in the hotel where
+he had put up, but the dinner and the chumming were inventions; at any
+rate, Balzac affirmed they were, uttering furious anathemas against
+the scorpion Girardin, who had allowed so illustrious a name to be
+taken in vain.
+
+On the 26th of September, during the St. Petersburg visit, his third
+finished theatrical piece, _Pamela Giraud_, was produced at the Gaite
+Theatre. Differing essentially from his previous efforts, this play is
+an ordinary melodramatic comedy. Pamela, like Richardson's heroine, is
+an honest girl, who, occupied in the humble trade of flower-selling,
+loves a young man, Jules Rousseau, that she believes to belong to her
+own modest rank, whereas, in reality, he is the son of a big
+financier. Involved in a Bonapartist conspiracy, which has just been
+discovered, Jules comes one night to her room and tries to persuade
+her to fly with him. She refuses; and, while he is with her, the
+police enter and arrest him. To save him she consents, though opposed
+by her parents, to say in Court that her lover had spent the night of
+the conspiracy with her; and Jules is acquitted through this false
+confession of her being his mistress. Once the happy result obtained,
+Jules and his family forget her. The lawyer, however, smitten by her
+beauty and virtue, proposes to marry her, and is about to carry his
+intention into effect when, remarking that she is pining for the
+ungrateful Jules, he contrives to bring him to Pamela's feet again,
+and the marriage is celebrated.
+
+_Pamela Giraud_ was written in 1838, but no theatre had been willing
+to stage it in its original form. Ultimately two professional
+playwrights, Bayard and Jaime, who had already dramatized, the one,
+_Eugenie Grandet_ and the _Search for the Absolute_, the other, _Pere
+Goriot_, pruned the over-plentifulness of its matter and strengthened
+the relief of various parts; and, in the amended guise, it was
+performed. Balzac resented the modifications, which explains his
+equanimity on hearing, as he travelled homewards, that the piece had
+fallen flat. He considered that, presented as he wrote it, the chances
+of success would have been greater. He was wrong, and those critics as
+well who attributed the failure to enmities arising out of a recent
+publication of his, entitled the _Monography of the Press_. Neither of
+the two chief _dramatis personae_ was capable of properly interesting
+a theatrical audience. The character of Jules is contemptible from
+beginning to end, and that of Pamela ceases to attract after the
+trial. The conclusion of this play, as that of _Vautrin_, is an
+anticlimax and leaves an unsatisfactory impression.
+
+Why did Balzac write his _Monography of the Parisian Press_? Not
+altogether from a pure motive, one must own. There is too much gall in
+his language, too much satire in the thought. He was sufficiently
+acquainted with the inner ring of journalistic life to be able to say
+truly what were its blemishes; and, without doubt, at the time when he
+composed the chief of his novels, these had a prejudicial effect on
+literature as on other phases of activity. But his pamphlet, besides
+its indiscriminate condemnations, erred in adopting a style which
+rendered the turning of the tables only too easy. And Jules Janin,
+whom he had already indisposed by sketching a seeming portrait of him
+in the _Provincial Great Man in Paris_, came down heavily on the
+daring satirist in the _Debats_ of the 20th of February 1843. The
+retort, so he informed Madame Hanska, made him laugh immoderately.
+Perhaps; but the laugh must have been somewhat forced--what the French
+call "yellow."
+
+In the _Monography_, men of letters, baptized by the novelist
+_gendelettres_--one of the few words coined by Balzac which have
+become naturalized--may be divided into several categories. First,
+there are the _publicistes_, occupied in scratching the pimples of the
+body politic. From these pimples they extract a book which is a
+mystification. Not far removed from the _publicistes_ are the chief
+managing editors and proprietors general, big wigs who sometimes
+become prefects, receivers general, or theatrical directors. The type
+of this class is glory's porter, speculation's trumpeter, the
+electorate's _Bonneau_. He is set in motion by a ballet-dancer, a
+cantatrice, an actress; in short, he is a brigand-captain, with other
+brigands under him. And of the latter:--There are the _Premiers
+Paris_, alias, first tenors. In writing _Premiers Paris_, it is
+impossible for a man to avoid mental warp and rapid deterioration. In
+such writing, style would be a misfortune. One must know how to speak
+jesuitically; and, in order to advance, one must be clever in getting
+one's ideas to walk on crutches. Those who engage in the trade confess
+themselves corrupt; like diplomatists, they have as a pension the
+Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, a few librarianships, even
+archiveships.
+
+Next to the _Premiers Paris_ come the _Faits Paris_; then the
+_Camarillists_, other banditti commissioned to distort Parliamentary
+speeches; then the newspaper Politicians, who have not two ideas in
+their heads. If appointed under-officials, they would be unable to
+administer the sweeping of the streets. Consequently, the more
+incapable a man is, the better he is qualified to become the Grand
+Lama of a newspaper. Indeed, nothing is more explicable than politics.
+It is a game at ninepins.
+
+In addition to its Politicians, the newspaper has its _Attaches_. The
+_Attaches_ of the Republican party are watched very closely. One day
+two Republicans meet, and the first says to the second: "You have sold
+yourself; people find you are getting fatter." Whence it follows that
+any paper knowing its trade will have only exceedingly thin
+_Attaches_; otherwise your _Attache_ will be a mere detached
+_Attache_, that is to say, a sort of paid spy, who is mostly a
+professor of rhetoric or philosophy. He will dine at all tables, with
+mission to attack political leaders; he runs in and out of newspaper
+offices, like a dog seeking his master; and, when he has bitten
+sharply, he becomes the professor of a fantastic science, the private
+secretary of some cabinet, or else consul-general.
+
+Afterwards come the _gendelettre_ pamphleteers. According to the
+author of the _Monography_, the pamphlet is the brochure masterpiece;
+and he himself is its most illustrious exponent. The Abbe de Lamennais
+does not know how to speak to the proletariat. He is not Spartacus
+enough, not Marat enough, not Calvin enough; he does not understand
+how to storm the positions of the ignoble bourgeoisie at present in
+power.
+
+Following on are the _gendelettre-vulgarisateurs_, who have invented
+Germany. The type of this class is appointed professor in the College
+de France. He marches at the head of the Nothingologues; he is the
+almighty king of the Sorbonne. Such people are the skin parasites of
+France. The Nothingologue is ordinarily _monobible_;[*] and, as the
+bourgeoisie are essentially lacking in intelligence, they are
+infatuated with him. The _Monobible_ becomes a director of canals,
+railways, the defender of negroes, or else the advocate of slavery; in
+a word, the Nothingologue is an important man, quite as the convinced
+_gendelettre_, who reserves to himself the Council of State, and as
+the sceptic _gendelettre_, who becomes Master of Requests or Governor
+of the Marquisas Isles.
+
+  [*] In Balzac's use of the word: A man who has written only one book
+      and boasts of it always.
+
+Replying to this diatribe, with its medley of shrewdness and
+exaggeration, Janin pointed out that it insulted Quinet, professor at
+the College de France; Sainte-Beuve, the poet, novelist, and critic,
+the historian of Port-Royal; Philarete Chasles, professor of Foreign
+Literature; Loeve Weimars, Consul at Bagdad; not to speak of Planche,
+Berlioz, Michel and Chevalier; and that it came amiss from a man who
+had lived and still lived on newspapers; who himself had been the
+chief managing editor, tenor, Jack-of-all-trades, canard-seller,
+camarillist, politician, premier-Paris, fait-Paris, _detache-attache_,
+pamphleteer, translator, critic, euphuist, bravo, incense-bearer,
+guerillero, angler, humbug, and even, what was more serious, the
+banker of a paper of which he was the only, unique, and perpetual
+_gendelettre_, and which, so admirably written, cleverly conducted,
+and signed with so great a name, did not live six months.
+
+Within a very few years, Janin was to bury the hatchet of polemics
+beside Balzac's grave, and, forgetting the soreness generated in him
+by the _Monography of the Press_ to constitute himself the dead
+author's apologist.
+
+Besides his continuation of Lucien de Rubempre's story in the
+_Splendour and Wretchedness of Courtezans_, Balzac published, in the
+year 1843, two complete novels, viz. _Honorine_, and _The Muse of the
+County_, and a portion of an historical study on Catherine de Medici.
+This last work, to which the _Calvinist Martyr_ belongs, was
+undertaken with the idea of composing, as he said, a retrospective
+history of France treated clairvoyantly, and, as the fragment shows,
+with his peculiar bias towards despotism. In the experiment made with
+_Catherine de Medici_, he started out thinking to justify and
+rehabilitate her memory. Instead, he found himself obliged to exhibit
+her committing the worst actions imaginable; and, his conclusions not
+concording with his premises, he abandoned further incursions into the
+past. History is a dangerous ground for a doctrinaire to investigate.
+
+The former of the two novels is mainly psychological. The wife of a
+Count Octave, having quitted her husband for another, has repented of
+her fault and separated from her lover, but, through shamefastness,
+will not return to her husband. She seeks to gain a livelihood by
+flower-making; and her husband, who still loves her and is full of
+forgiveness, helps her secretly to obtain orders. At length, by the
+good offices of a secretary and the latter's uncle, a priest, he
+pleads with his wife more efficaciously, and induces her to return to
+him, yet without her pardoning herself; and she dies in giving birth
+to a child, dies because she wishes, rather from wounded pride, it
+would appear, than on account of her husband, to whose affection she
+is strangely insensible. The heroine is not particularly interesting
+with her morbidness and hysterical posing; she probably stands for one
+of Balzac's principles, and his principles are the most tedious thing
+about him.
+
+With the _Muse of the County_, which the author declared to be
+Constant's _Adolphe_ treated realistically, we are back in the truer
+Balzacian manner. Dinah de la Baudraye--a Sancerre Catherine de
+Vivonne--married to an apology for a man, is human flesh and blood;
+and her love for the journalist Etienne Lousteau is natural, though
+culpable. Indeed, her subsequent devotion to this shallow egotist is
+not without greatness. Here the novelist, as much by his wit as by his
+denouement, gives perhaps the best practical condemnation of adultery.
+
+"Bah!" says the little de la Baudraye, "do you call it vengeance,
+because the Duke of Bracciano will kill his wife for putting him into
+a cage and showing herself to him in her lover's arms. Our tribunals
+and society are much more cruel."
+
+"In what?" asked Lousteau.
+
+"In letting the woman live with a slender allowance. Every one turns
+away from her. She has neither dress nor consideration, two things
+which are everything to a woman."
+
+"But she has happiness," replied Madame de la Baudraye grandly.
+
+"No!" replied the husband, lighting his candle to go to bed; "for she
+has a lover."
+
+Dinah's punishment is of this kind. Persuaded at length to go back to
+the house of her husband, who had been made a peer of France and
+accepts Lousteau's children with her, she lives to see her former
+lover and father of her children sink so low that she must despise
+him, while still occasionally tempted to yield to his caresses.
+
+When Alexandre Dumas, the younger, was received into the French
+Academy in 1875, the Count d'Haussonville, who welcomed him, asserted
+that the elder Dumas, like Balzac, Beranger, de Lamennais and others,
+had preferred to remain an outsider. In the case of Balzac, the Count
+was mistaken. The so-called preference was Hobson's choice. He stayed
+outside only because he could not get in. Between 1839 and 1849, he
+made several attempts to secure the promise of a number of votes
+sufficient to elect him. Having stood aside at the earlier date in
+favour of Victor Hugo, who was admitted in 1841, he thought he might
+count on a reciprocal service from the poet. And, on Bonald's death in
+the same year, he asked him, during the visit to Les Jardies, to use
+his influence with his colleagues in the Academy. "Hugo promised but
+little," says Gozlan; and Balzac had to wait for a better opportunity.
+This happened at the end of 1843, when Campenon died, and a vacancy
+occurred which he might reasonably claim to fill. Encouraged at
+present by Hugo and Charles Nodier, he began the round of visits
+required by Academy etiquette; but soon discovered that the members
+whose votes he solicited did not consider him rich enough. He
+therefore withdrew from the list of candidates, writing to Nodier
+that, if he could not succeed in entering the Academy while in
+honourable poverty, he would never present himself at the moment when
+prosperity should have bestowed her favours on him.
+
+And, so far as personal solicitation was concerned, he never did.
+Though not abandoning his desire of belonging to the Forty, and
+esteeming rightly that the value of his work entitled him to a place
+among them, he felt after this rebuff that, if a fresh proposal were
+made, it should come from the other side. He might have done more to
+provoke it had not Madame Hanska been against his taking any further
+action in the matter, however indirect. Maybe she realized better than
+he did the uselessness of his candidature. The enemies he had in the
+Academy and its entourage were too powerful for his claims to be
+considered. Many years afterwards, Victor Hugo related that the
+novelist put himself forward for the vacancy left by Ballanche's death
+at the end of 1847, and apropos added the following anecdote.
+
+"I was driving," he said, "down the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, when
+in front of the Church I perceived Monsieur de Balzac, who beckoned to
+me to stop. I was going to get out of the carriage, but he prevented
+me, and said: 'I was just coming to see you. You know I am on the list
+for the Academy.' 'Really!' 'Yes. What do you think of my chances?'
+'You are too late, I fear. You will get only my vote.' 'It is your
+vote especially I want.' 'Are you quite in earnest?' 'Quite.' Balzac
+quitted me. The election was virtually decided. For political motives.
+The candidature of Monsieur Vatout had a majority of supporters. I
+tried to canvass for Balzac, but met with no success. It vexed me to
+think that a man of Balzac's calibre should have only one vote, and I
+reflected that if I could obtain a second one, I might create some
+change of opinion. How was I to gain it? On the election day I was
+sitting beside the excellent Pongerville, one of the best of men. I
+asked him point blank, 'For whom are you voting?' 'For Vatout, as you
+know.' 'I know it so little that I ask you to vote for Balzac.'
+'Impossible!' 'Why?' 'Because my bulletin is ready. See.' 'Oh! that
+makes no matter.' And on two bits of paper I wrote in my best hand:
+'Balzac.' 'Well!' quoth Pongerville; 'well! you will see.' The
+apparitor who was collecting the votes approached us. I handed him one
+of the bulletins I had prepared. Pongerville, in his turn, stretched
+out his hand to put Vatout's name in the urn; but, with a friendly tap
+on his fingers, I caused his paper to flutter to the floor. He looked,
+appeared irresolute for a moment; and, as I presented him with the
+second bulletin, on which Balzac's name was inscribed, he smiled, took
+it, and gave it with good grace. And that is how Honore de Balzac had
+two votes in his favour at the Academy."
+
+This story is inexact chronologically. Balzac was not a candidate in
+1847-48, when Monsieur Vatout was chosen, but at two later elections,
+those of the 11th and 18th of January 1849. In each of these he
+obtained two votes; and since the second election was to fill the
+chair of Monsieur Vatout, who died after occupying it during a
+twelvemonth, it would seem that Victor Hugo, deceived by his memory,
+confused the two events. As for the conversation with Balzac, it
+probably refers to the candidature which the novelist did begin in
+1844; and either Hugo's age in 1877, when he told the story, or his
+capacity for embellishing was responsible for the interview being
+tacked on to the election incident of 1849.
+
+The Pongerville mentioned by Hugo was the same in whose album, in
+1844, Balzac wrote a couple of complimentary verses. He happened to
+come across the album at his sister's, and, after inserting his
+poetry, took the book to Pongerville's house without finding him at
+home. He had certainly reckoned, at the close of the preceding year,
+on having this Academician's vote, as well as Dupaty's, Hugo's, and
+Nodier's. Pongerville may have deemed his own tardy support a
+sufficient reward for the verses.
+
+Although Balzac's monetary embarrassments were fated to persist as
+long as he lived, the causes being so much in the man, their burden
+was somewhat less felt in and from the year 1844. This better state of
+things was proved by his looking round for a more commodious
+residence. The Passy cottage, picturesque as it was, accorded but ill
+with his designs of marrying so grand a dame; and even for his work
+was not very suitable, being close to the flats of the Rue Basse,
+where families lived with children that disturbed his meditations. He
+would have liked to free Les Jardies from its mortgage and keep the
+place as a summer resort, while renting a snug mansion in the city
+during the winter; but the two abodes were hardly within his means,
+unless Eve would loosen her purse-strings. "I will not sell it," he
+informed her, referring to his "Folly"; "it was built with my blood
+and brains. I will stick to it--if I cannot dispose of it
+advantageously," he finished up with, inconsequently. And still she
+made no sign; or, rather she proffered no cash. Business advice she
+gave in plenty. About each of the Paris houses suggested she had some
+objections to make, so that, after fixing successively on a residence
+belonging to Madame Delannoy (one of his creditor friends) in the Rue
+Neuve-des Mathurins, on the old mansion opposite his Passy abode once
+possessed by the Princesse de Lamballe, on the property in the Rue
+Ponthieu, and on a plot of land in the Allee des Veuves where he
+thought they could build, the end of the year arrived without any
+definite solution being reached. The two "louloups," as he called
+himself and Eve, filled their correspondence with calculations and
+figures, the Paris "louloup" expressing his conviction that figures
+were the foundation of their happiness.
+
+If he did not die too soon, she might consider she would marry a
+million in giving him her hand, he said. Slily, he now and again
+quoted his worth in the estimation of a rival feminine authority. For
+example, Madame de Girardin was about to write an article on the great
+conversationalists of the day, and had mentioned that she held him to
+be one of the most charming. However, when he raised his rate of
+exchange in this way, he was always prudent enough to follow up with
+concessions. His intimacy with the Englishwoman, Madame Visconti, who
+was Eve's bugbear, he broke off completely--at least he swore he had
+done so and offered to send his beloved tyrant the cold letter in
+which his whilom friend and benefactress bade him good-bye. To let Eve
+see it would not be gallant on his part, he confessed; but what could
+he deny her, if she persisted. He was her Paris agent, even her Paris
+errand-boy, at one time negotiating the entrance of the governess,
+Mademoiselle Borel, into the Saint-Thomas-de-Velleneuve nunnery; at
+another, purchasing gloves, millinery, and other articles of dress.
+Yet she never considered him submissive enough, notwithstanding his
+pretty flattery.
+
+"Why shouldn't you have a poet?" he asked, thinking of himself, "as
+other people have a dog, a monkey, a parrot--the more so as I have in
+me something of these three creatures: I always repeat the same
+phrase, I imitate society, I am faithful." And again in a burst of
+lyricism, he exclaimed: "Adieu, loved friend, to whom I belong like
+the sound to the bell, the dog to his master, the artist to his ideal,
+prayer to God, pleasure to cause, colour to the painter, life to the
+sun. Love me, for I need your affection, so vivifying, so coloured, so
+agreeable, so celestial, so ideally good, of such sweet dominance, and
+so constantly vibrating." With comparisons of this sort he was lavish.
+"I am like Monsieur de Talleyrand," he told her in another letter.
+"Either I show a stolid, tin face and do not speak a word, or else I
+chatter like a magpie." Adopting the expression first invented by
+Guizot, he characterized their mutual relations as an _entente
+cordiale_, impatient, none the less, for the realization of his fancy,
+which was to see his idol enter a tabernacle prepared to receive her
+on the return from a delightful honeymoon. Meanwhile, he was amassing
+furniture and bric-a-brac, just as the bird bits of straw; and he
+implored her not to scold him. In the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, he had
+ferreted out two Dresden vases, which he bought, resolving to deprive
+himself for a time of his grapes at forty sous a pound, in order to
+retrieve the money.
+
+The retrieval indeed was not easy, since his passion for collecting
+curios led him far, and he generally succumbed to the temptation of
+something ancient and rare. In the previous autumn he had bought, for
+thirteen hundred and fifty francs, a _secretaire_ and _commode_ in
+ebony, with inlaid pearl, that had apparently been manufactured at
+Florence in the seventeenth century; these _objets d'art_ he estimated
+at values ranging up to forty or fifty thousand francs. A description
+of them appeared in the press, and rich amateurs inquired whether he
+were willing to sell; but, either because he asked too much or really
+did not want to part with them, they were kept, as also his _Christ_
+by Bouchardon or Girardon, which he obtained for two hundred francs
+and valued at several thousands. If he had no cash for his purchases
+--and this frequently happened--he placed one of his already acquired
+treasures (possibly unpaid for, too) in the establishment of his
+"respectable relative," as he styled the pawnbroker, and thus secured
+the coveted object.
+
+In his intercourse with his own family, Madame Hanska was a
+continuously troubling factor. The prospect of his alliance with this
+foreign aristocrat had less charm for Madame Balzac and Laure than for
+Honore. They probably perceived the chimera he was pursuing, and could
+not be expected to show enthusiasm. This attitude on their side and a
+certain hauteur on his, partly caused by offended dignity, widened the
+breach between him and them. "I have now no family," he told "The
+Stranger," "and am glad that the coldness should be established before
+I am completely happy; for later the reason of it would have been
+attributed to you, or to what would have been termed my uppishness.
+The isolation, which you wish, will be likewise my dearest desire. My
+sister," he proceeded, "has suppressed for ever the literary question
+betwixt us, with her blue-stocking whims. I cannot talk to her of my
+affairs, nor yet of my mother's. She asserts that her husband is a
+greater man than I am." Madame de Berny, he added, had foreseen his
+mother's and sister's transformation when she told him he was a flower
+that had sprung up on a dunghill! If Madame de Berny told him this, it
+was no doubt in a fit of anger against them for endeavouring to sever
+the liaison, an endeavour they were perfectly justified in. These
+portions of Balzac's confidences, which reflect upon his character
+seriously, and besmirch him more than those against whom they were
+spoken, cannot be overlooked in a biography. They have to be included
+in our judgment of him, and, in a measure, concern the tragic close of
+his love romance.
+
+We are fonder of him in the expansive moods when his naive wonder at
+his own performances carries him into self-panegyric, which, not
+infrequently, we can endorse, though with some discount. Thus, for
+instance, the _Bourgeois of Paris_ he declared to be one of those
+masterpieces that leave everything else behind. "It is grand, it is
+terrifying in verve, in philosophy, in novelty, in painting, in
+style." And yet there was Eugene Sue selling the _Wandering Jew_ to a
+newspaper for a hundred thousand francs, while the _Philosophy of
+Conjugal Life_, a publication of his own in Hetzel's _Diable a Paris_,
+fetched only eight hundred; and the _Peasants_ was paid for only at
+the rate of sixty centimes a line. His _Modeste Mignon_ which appeared
+in the _Debats_, sold rather dearer, six thousand francs being given,
+and for the _Bourgeois_, nine thousand. The explanation of Sue's
+getting more than he he imagined to be because Sue lived in grander
+style than himself with flunkeys to open the door and overawe the
+publishers who flocked to the successful writer, whereas he, living in
+a cottage, had to cool his heels in an office ante-chamber, and was
+exploited on account of his neediness. There was some truth in what he
+said; but he did not sufficiently realize that Sue wrote, for the
+market, exciting tales that everybody rushed to read. His own books
+were, of course, most of them infinitely superior; but they appealed
+to a much smaller public. All the same, he was loth to resign himself
+to the depreciation Sue's bargains effected in his own. Feverishly he
+strove to demonstrate by his painfully gained successes that they were
+masterpieces, as he said, by the side of Sue's chimney-fronts, and as
+far above them as Raphael was above Dubufe. Moliere, Lesage, Voltaire,
+Walter Scott--these were the only names he acknowledged as rivals to
+his own. Sue was nothing but a spangled and satined Paul de Kock.
+
+We can grant him that, in fiction, his proper manner was as far in
+advance of his epoch as, in politics, his doctrine was behind it.
+George Sand was a medium in both, although she dwelt always a little
+too much in the clouds. At a dinner with her towards the end of
+January, the antagonism of their principles manifested itself over his
+recent visit to Russia.
+
+"If you were to see the Czar," Balzac said to her, "you would fall in
+love with him and jump from your _bousingotism_[*] to autocracy."
+
+  [*] A word used to characterise the dress and manners of the
+      Romanticists, who were fond of Robespierre waistcoats, long
+      hair, and other peculiarities intended to distinguish them from
+      ordinary mortals.
+
+Madame Dudevant waxed angry. It was not kind in a man who had resisted
+her blandishments to make merry over her foibles.
+
+The Russians, he gravely told her, were extremely amiable, easy to get
+on with, exceedingly literary, since everything was done on paper, and
+Russia was the only country in which people knew how to obey.
+
+The mention of obedience in a people irritated the hostess; but on her
+seething he poured a drop of cold water by asking jestingly:
+
+"Would you, in a great danger, wish your servants to deliberate about
+what you had ordered them to do?"
+
+The
+Sandist-Philosophico-Republico-Communico-Pierre-Lerouxico-Geranico-Deisto
+train (the epithets are Balzac's) stopped dead at the question. Then
+Marliani, one of the guests, remarked that argument was impossible with
+poets. Balzac bowed, and added:
+
+"You hear what he says?"
+
+"You are a dreadful satirist," retorted George Sand. "Go on with your
+_Comedie Humaine_."
+
+It was not necessary to give the recommendation. He was for ever going
+on; and the further he went, the further his horizons receded. The
+embracing lines were rather indiscriminate. He came to think himself
+capable of reducing every domain to his scale. Men's ambitions,
+however, are part of their motive power; and, had his been less
+sweeping, the qualities of his work might have diminished with the
+defects. "Four men," he cried in one of his vauntings, "have had an
+immense life, Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell, and--I mean to be the
+fourth! The first lived with the life of Europe; he inoculated himself
+with armies! The second espoused the globe! The third incarnated in
+himself a people! As for me! I shall have borne a whole society in my
+head! It is just as well to live thus as every evening to say,
+'Spades, hearts, trumps;' or to wonder why Madame such a one has done
+such and such a thing."
+
+_Modeste Mignon_, which was published in 1844 with the extra
+attraction of some of Auber's music in it is one of Balzac's brighter
+and lighter books, and reproduces part of his own last love-story more
+objectively treated than in _Albert Savarus_. Its plot was suggested
+to him by a short tale which Madame Hanska composed, intending to
+submit it for his approval, but which she threw in the fire,
+afterwards sending him, in one of her epistles, an outline of what she
+had done. Since he utilized her invention, he paid her back by
+selecting as his point of departure the adventure of a well-educated
+girl of literary tastes, who, through reading the verses of the
+celebrated Canalis, at once a poet and a statesman, fell in love with
+him and expressed her (literary) admiration in a letter, though she
+had never seen him. There were other such cases in the first half of
+the nineteenth century besides that of the Polish Countess and the
+author of _Eugenie Grandet_. Disdaining to reply to a correspondent
+who did not appear to be a person with whom he could take liberties,
+Canalis delegated the task to his friend and secretary, La Briere, who
+answered under cover of the great man's name and ultimately found out
+and, incognito, beheld the lady. She was beautiful and he lost his
+heart to her. When later the subterfuge was discovered, Canalis,
+interested now, wanted to marry the lady, she being presumably rich.
+Through pique, Modeste, for a while, listened to his suit and smiled
+on him, albeit, in verity, she was touched by La Briere's sincere
+affection. The circumstances leading to the unmasking of Canalis'
+selfish character and to Modeste's marriage with La Briere are handled
+in a less Balzacian way than the introductory chapters, which,
+however, are more than usually tortuous. But the whole story is
+pleasing; and, in the discursive paragraphs, there is less dogmatism
+and a more delicate sense of contrasts than the novelist is wont to
+exhibit when astride a hobby-horse. The following passage has an aroma
+of Shelley's _Defence of Poetry_ in it, which merits our attention.
+The divine in man says:
+
+"In order to live, thou shalt bend thyself towards earth; in order to
+think thou shalt raise thyself heavenwards. We want the life of the
+soul as much as that of the body; whence there are two utilities. Thus
+it is certain that a book will not serve as foot-gear; an epic, from
+the utilitarian point of view, is not worth an economical soup from
+the kitchen of a Benevolent Society; and a self-acting boiler, rising
+a couple of inches on itself, procures calico a few pence a yard
+cheaper; but this machine and the improvements of industry do not
+breathe life into a nation, and will not tell the future that it has
+existed; whereas Egyptian art, Mexican art, Grecian art, Roman art,
+with their masterpieces accused of uselessness, have attested the
+existence of these peoples in the vast expanse of time, there where
+huge intermediary nations, destitute of great men, have disappeared
+without leaving their visiting cards on the globe. All works of genius
+are the epitome of a civilization, and presuppose an immense utility.
+Forsooth, a pair of boots will not outvie a stage-play in your eyes,
+and you will not prefer a windmill to the Church of Saint Ouen. So, a
+people is animated with the same sentiment as a man; and man's
+favourite idea is to survive himself mentally as he reproduces himself
+physically. The survival of a people is the work of its men of
+genius."
+
+_Beatrix_, the other completed novel of the year, is a drawn-out,
+ill-composed work, which is not redeemed sufficiently by its minute
+description of Breton manners and its portrait of George Sand in
+Felicite des Touches. Six years separated the publication of the first
+part of the book from that of the conclusion, and, in the interval,
+the unity of plan suffered. Balzac devoted a good deal of labour to
+its execution. In all the conjugal ruses employed by Sabine de
+Grandlieu to detach Calyste, her husband, from Beatrix, he displays
+his peculiar talent, but the ultimate effect is poor.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XII
+
+               LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1845, 1846
+
+Though fertile in incidents, the year of 1845 was, from a literary
+point of view, more barren than any in Balzac's past career,
+exception, of course, made for the time lost during his printing-house
+adventure. Beyond his short, witty sketch, _A Man of Business_,
+relating the tricks employed by the princes of bohemianism to pay
+their debts and indulge their caprices gratis, no finished work was
+published. The _Peasants_, which the author never entirely got
+through, was taken up repeatedly, and as often put aside from sheer
+inability to proceed.
+
+The deadlock in which he found himself had been preparing since his
+visit to Saint Petersburg. Whether the intimacy created there between
+Madame Hanska and himself was that of two lovers in the chaster sense,
+or, as Monsieur Gabriel Ferry assets, in his _Balzac et ses Amies_,
+that of a closer union, it had haunted him during his subsequent
+twelvemonth's loneliness. And when Eve, who had come to spend the
+winter at Dresden, discouraged, from fear of her society friends'
+backbiting, the idea of his going there to see her, he grew incapable
+of concentrating his mind on his books; and, even in his letters to
+her, chafed and was irritable, scolding her for not stamping her
+envelopes, and recommending her to acquire habits of order and
+economy! confessing the while that, to escape from his melancholy, he
+had been playing lansquenet, dining out, going to the theatres, and
+leading a nonchalant life.
+
+The tone was a bold one to assume, but clever. His tyrant, already
+repenting the pledges given, had been hinting it would be better not
+to carry them out. Her own relatives were quite as much against the
+match as Balzac's, she reminded him, while narrating all the malicious
+tittle-tattle that mutual acquaintances were constantly telling her.
+She defended him, she said. "A mistake!" retorted Balzac. "When, in
+your presence, any one attacks me, your best plan is to mock the
+slanderers by outdoing them. When some one sneeringly remarked to
+Dumas that his father was a nigger, he answered: 'My grandfather was a
+monkey.'"
+
+His scolding for once did good. Eve did not like his "wounding prose,"
+but she talked no more of breaking with him. On the contrary, she
+relented as far as to remove the embargo on his going to Dresden; so
+in May he went. And, what was more, she came in August to Paris;
+incognito, since the visit was without the Czar's permission, she and
+her daughter Anna travelling from the frontier under the names of
+Balzac's sister and niece.
+
+In the novelist's correspondence, there is a curious letter written on
+the 2nd of August to Madame Emile de Girardin. In it the writer
+excuses himself for not calling on her, being obliged to remain at
+home on account of the disquieting condition of a lady friend of his
+who had hurt herself and was under medical treatment. The inference is
+that the lady in question was staying in his house; and a note written
+to Madame Hanska, on the 4th of September, with its allusion to the
+Passy garden in which they had walked so much together, makes it
+sufficiently plain that she was the August guest. Although no proofs
+have yet come to light which we can accept as irrefutable, there seems
+to be ground for the supposition put forward that a premature
+confinement was the illness, carefully concealed from every one.
+
+If the supposition be correct, it explains the convalescent's being
+joined by Balzac again in September at Baden-Baden, where the
+arrangements were made for Eve and himself to meet in October at
+Chalon-sur-Saone and to travel together to Italy. It was during this
+second stay in Germany that the play of the _Saltimbanques_ they had
+seen suggested to the novelist the amusing nicknames which he
+henceforth adopted when writing to Madame Hanska's family. Anna was
+dubbed _Zephirine_; her betrothed, _Gringalet_; Eve, _Atala_; and
+himself, _Bilboquet_. Georges, the betrothed, who was a Pole bearing
+the title of Count Mniszech, was a young man of scientific tastes and
+considerable learning, for whom Balzac conceived a great liking, and
+whom he helped in his entomological researches.
+
+The ramble southwards was probably the most pleasurable experience in
+the novelist's life, being an anticipated honeymoon. From Chalon they
+journeyed along the banks of the Rhone, visiting no fewer than
+twenty-three towns on the way. At Naples they parted, and the
+prospective bridegroom turned Paris-wards, going via Pisa, Civita
+Vecchia, and Marseilles; in this last city he comforted himself for the
+separation by hunting out further adornments for the home he was still
+busily striving to find in the capital.
+
+At Marseilles lived a poet-friend of his named Mery, whom he had
+enlisted as a collaborator in his teeming dramatic schemes. Him he
+commissioned to bargain for certain articles of vertu which Lazard,
+the famous dealer in antiquities, quoted too dear--eight hundred
+francs for a mirror, and five hundred for a statuette. "Let Lazard see
+that you will give a thousand francs for the two things," he advised
+Mery; "but don't offer more than nine. Glance stoically at the
+articles when passing by, and joke the dealer. Then send acquaintances
+to offer a little less than you. After a fortnight's haggling, Lazard
+will let you have them one fine morning." For getting the better of
+these sly shopkeepers, Balzac had a good many devices up his sleeve.
+
+Back in Passy, he was seized again by the same restlessness as in the
+spring, thwarting his efforts to settle down to his desk. The utmost
+he could accomplish was to wander about, note-book in hand, collecting
+material for later use. Happening in December to be near the Assize
+Courts, he went in to listen to the trial of Madame Colomes, a niece
+of Marshal Sebastiani, who was accused of forging bills. He was struck
+by her strong resemblance to the dead _Dilecta_, and also by her
+attachment, herself being forty-five years of age, to a young man of
+twenty. The latter, after wasting in riotous living the money she had
+procured him by her forgeries, fled and left her to bear the brunt of
+her shame. The most repugnant detail of this unfortunate woman's case
+Balzac utilized not long afterwards in his _Cousin Bette_.
+
+Perhaps it was less his ennui than the curiosity for new sensations
+which caused him to accept Gautier's invitation to pass an evening
+with Baudelaire and one or two others, at the Hotel Pimodan, for the
+purpose of eating hashish. He experienced none of the extraordinary
+phenomena usually attributed to the consumption of this drug, his
+explanation being that the dose was too weak, or his brain too strong.
+However, he owned to having heard celestial voices and to having seen
+divine paintings while he descended Lauzun's staircase, in a promenade
+that seemed to have lasted twenty years. He does not appear to have
+repeated the intoxication. Yet, on receiving another unkind epistle
+from Eve, shortly afterwards, he mentioned the possibility of arming
+himself against his sea of troubles through the drug's lethal
+properties.
+
+In anything that had to do with the function of the brain, he was as
+interested as if medicine had been his profession. A book of Dr.
+Moreau's on madness, which he read during these months of mental
+relaxation, drew from him an acknowledgment wherein he foreshadowed
+his intention of studying anatomy and myology. "I believe," he said,
+"we shall do no good until we have determined the action exercised by
+the physical organs of thought in the production of madness. The
+organs are the containing sheaths of some fluid or other as yet
+inappreciable. I hold this for proved. Well! there are a certain
+number of organs which are vitiated by their lack, by their
+constitution, others which are vitiated by an excess of afflux.
+People, who, like Cuvier and Voltaire, have exercised their organs
+early, have rendered them so powerful that no excess can affect them;
+whereas those who keep to certain portions of the ideal encephalos,
+which we represent as the laboratory of thought--the poets, who leave
+deduction and analysis inactive and exploit the heart and imagination
+exclusively--may become mad. In short, there would be a fine
+experiment to make. I have thought of it for twenty years. This would
+be to reconstitute the brain of an idiot, to demonstrate whether a
+thinking apparatus can be created by developing its rudiments. Only by
+building up a brain shall we know how one is demolished."
+
+The beginning of the new year did not bring back his former zeal for
+labour. Much of his time he frittered away in adding to his
+collections. Here he picked up a portrait of Queen Marie Leczinska by
+a pupil of Coypel, there, a Flemish lustre for which he paid four
+hundred and fifty francs. Eve reproached him with his idleness,
+presumably because he was too frequently at the house of Madame de
+Girardin. To calm her he penned a few remarks anent that lady not
+exactly complimentary. "Madame de Girardin," he said, "who is charming
+among a few friends, is a less agreeable hostess when she holds a
+large reception. She belies her origin only by her talent; but, when
+she is outside her talent, she becomes once more her mother's
+daughter, that is to say 'bourgeoise' and 'Gay' thoroughbred." To the
+soiree which drew from him this jibe, he had been invited to meet
+Sheridan's granddaughter--an English bore, he styled her--who looked
+him up and down through an eye-glass as if he were an actor. His
+relations with Emile, Delphine's husband, continued to be marked by
+breezes. Before starting for Rome on the 17th of March, he sent him a
+few sharp lines complaining of the _Presse's_ delay in printing the
+_Peasants_. As a matter of fact, the readers of the _Presse_ were not
+pleased with the story; and the editor had been obliged to request the
+author to modify the unpublished part. Balzac complied, but felt sore.
+
+The earlier chapters of this novel appeared in 1844; the last ones did
+not come out until five years after the novelist's death. The plot of
+the book turns on the struggle waged by the peasants and petty
+bourgeois of Soulanges against a new but estimable landlord, General
+Montcornet, whose estate they are determined to have by hook or by
+crook in their own hands, not hesitating, at least some of them, to
+assassinate the honest agent who strives to protect his employer's
+property against their depredations. All these country folk Balzac has
+portrayed with effects depending on the painter's and sculptor's art
+as much nearly as on the writer's; and the inmates and visitors of the
+village-inn and coffee-house are individualized with an anatomical
+intensity fringing on the brutal. Like the _Village Cure_ and the
+_Country Doctor_, the _Peasants_ is a novel with a purpose and a
+warning. The author preaches against the dividing up of the land; and
+advocates agriculture on a large scale by a reversion to the old
+estates with their castles and forests. As adjuvants to these he
+pleads for the development of Catholicism, a wider influence of the
+clergy both in education and private life. His picture of peasant
+avarice has been repeated by later writers, Guy de Maupassant and
+Zola. True in many particulars, it is traced by a prejudiced mind, and
+cannot be accepted as thoroughly representative.
+
+At Rome he found Madame Hanska, and stayed with her there till May.
+Instead of describing the Eternal City to his sister, he referred her
+to de Lamennais' accounts, himself being fully occupied with his
+companion and sight-seeing. He was duly received by the Pope, and
+obtained a small crown chaplet for his mother, together with His
+Holiness' blessing. Saint Peter's surpassed his expectations, and the
+choir's _Miserere_ so delighted him that he went to hear it a second
+time in lieu of that of the Sixtine Chapel. The journey back through
+Genoa, the Grisons, and Bale was a pretext for continuing his
+bric-a-brac purchases, Holbein's _Saint Peter_ being added to his
+treasures.
+
+Reaching Paris at last, he now took up his pen with his old ardour.
+Fresh pledges for the future had been given him by Eve. These served
+to lure him onward; and behind him were the creditors who had lent him
+money for his trip, and were wanting some of it restored. At this
+period Madame Hanska's funds and his own were partly associated. Some
+of her capital and some of his own, probably the sum accruing from the
+sale of Les Jardies, at present definitive, had been invested in North
+Railway Shares. Besides, not a few of his paintings and antique pieces
+of furniture had been paid for with advances from her strong-box.
+
+The two works that issued from his new effort of creation were _Cousin
+Bette_ and _Cousin Pons_. These, with _Pierrette_, made up his series
+of the _Poor Relations_.
+
+The _Old Musician_, as he originally called _Pons_, was meant to give
+us the case of a man overwhelmed with humiliations and insults, yet
+preserving his generosity and pardoning everybody and everything,
+avenging himself only through kindness. Composed, like _Cesar
+Birotteau_, very rapidly, it bears evidence of the author's haste.
+There is no proper love interest in the book, the lack being supplied
+by the friendship between Pons and the old German musician, Schmucke.
+A number of subordinate biographies are interwoven with the principal
+story--those of the banker Brunner, the Auvergnat Remonencq, the
+Cibots, who were Pons' porters and caterers, Doctor Poulain and Lawyer
+Fraisier. We have plots within plots, wheels within wheels, in this
+strange, pathetic life of the musician, whose collecting hobby and
+expert's skill in finding out rarities Balzac dwells on with all the
+greater detail as he was indulging at that time his own bent in this
+direction with peculiar zest and success. But the complexity and
+crowding are foils one is glad to have against the sordid treachery of
+the Cibot household, as, too, against the woes of Pons and Schmucke.
+Perhaps nowhere in his achievement has the novelist got deeper down to
+the rockbed of genuine humanity than in this work. _Cousin Pons_ was
+published in 1847. _Cousin Bette_ came a year earlier.
+
+Besides the two novels just mentioned, Balzac finished, during this
+same period, the long series in which _Vautrin_ is a chief, if not the
+chief, character; and also a book variously named the _Brothers of
+Consolation_ and the _Reverse Side of Contemporary History_. In the
+_Vautrin_ sequels he took up again the fortunes of Lucien de Rubempre,
+who, after returning in disgrace to his family, loses courage and is
+on the point of drowning himself when he meets with an Abbe Carlos
+Herrera; the latter changes the young man's suicidal intentions by
+promising to procure him wealth, rank, and honours. Herrera is no
+other than Vautrin, who, having escaped from prison, is at the head of
+a formidable association of convicts. Carefully hiding his identity
+from Lucien, he persuades him to accept monetary help; and gradually
+Lucien contrives to enter aristocratic society, becomes the favourite
+of the Duchess of Serizy, and will be received as the betrothed of the
+nobly born Clotilde de Grandlieu, provided he can show that he
+possesses sufficient landed property. It so happens that his mistress
+Esther, a Jewess of great beauty, who is as fond of him as Coralie
+was, kills herself on learning that she must give him up. And Esther
+being in reality an heiress whose father, Gobseck, has just died,
+Vautrin forges a will by which the fortune is bequeathed to Lucien.
+Unluckily for the ex-convict's plans, some police spies have been on
+the track of his proceedings, and an untimely arrest of him and his
+protege casts them into prison. These adventures are told in _Whither
+Bad Ways Lead_ and two other volumes. A concluding book, entitled
+_Vautrin's Last Incarnation_, relates the outlaw's duel with justice
+in his confinement, the suicide of his disciple, and his own pardon at
+the price of entering into the Government's secret police. The later
+portions of this drawn-out piece of fiction are written in the
+melodramatic style, and the characterization is distinctly inferior.
+The author loses himself in the various imbroglios, and the actors
+degenerate into creatures of romance, lacking consistency.
+
+The _Reverse Side of Contemporary History_ has similar defects. It was
+commenced in the _Musee des Familles_ in 1842, was continued in 1844,
+and was completed only in 1848 in the _Spectateur Republicain_. We
+meet at first with a certain Godefroi who reaches middle age without
+obtaining any permanent satisfaction out of his life, and who thinks
+of burying himself in some quiet quarter of Paris where he can dwell
+unknowing and unknown. An accident introduces him to a kind of lay
+community whose presiding spirit is a Madame de la Chanterie, and
+whose members are a priest and three old gentlemen. These people are
+devoting what remains to them of their existence to alleviating pain
+and distress. Godefroi is admitted into the association, and, during
+his novice expedition, has a curious experience which leads to the
+disclosure of Madame de la Chanterie's past. This is narrated in the
+second half of the book. We get the whole of that lady's tragic
+history, an unjust trial of which she was the victim, the Nemesis
+which punished the bad judge in his daughter's frightful malady and
+his poverty, and the heaping of coals of fire on his head by the woman
+who had suffered so direly through him. On arriving at the end of the
+story we cannot recognize it as the one we were made acquainted with
+at the outset. The tangle of episode and explanation--the latter
+confusing more than it explains--which intervenes in the middle,
+issues in a coarser thread that persists till the close. And yet the
+start was a fair one.
+
+With _Cousin Bette_, we are back among the monstrosities. Bette is the
+poor relation who, unlike Pons, revenges herself for her humiliations
+and the insults bestowed on her. She aids in the pecuniary and moral
+ruin of the Hulot family, acts in cold blood, and attains her object
+before she dies. She is not the only perverted nature delineated.
+There is the Baron Hulot, whose odious licentiousness brings him to a
+veritable cretinism. There is Crevel, a grotesque, contemptible dupe;
+there are the Marneffes, sinks of corruption; and, with these, other
+minor characters--the vindictive Brazilian who wreaks his wrath on
+Madame Marneffe and on Crevel by his mysterious death-causing gift.
+The ideally virtuous Adeline Hulot also the novelist belittles, making
+her offer herself to Crevel to save her husband from the consequences
+of his degrading passions. Nearly all the book is harrowing, and even
+the atmosphere of the bohemian circles, where conversation is one
+sparkle of satire, is heavily tainted with vice.
+
+George Sand protested against Madame Hulot's portrait as unnatural;
+and, herself being the contrary of prudish in sexual relations, the
+opinion cannot be called prejudiced. Balzac defended his treatment,
+while admitting there was force in what she said. Arguing with her on
+their respective methods, he replied: "You seek to paint man as he
+ought to be. I take him as he is. Believe me, we are both right. Both
+ways lead to the same goal. I am fond of exceptional beings. I am one
+myself. Moreover, I need them to give relief to my common characters;
+and I never sacrifice them without necessity. But these common
+characters interest me more than they interest you. I aggrandize them;
+I idealize them in an inverse direction, in their ugliness or their
+stupidity. I give to their deformity terrifying or grotesque
+proportions. You could not do this. You are wise not to look at people
+and things that would cause you nightmare. Idealize in that which is
+pretty and beautiful. This is woman's task."
+
+In spite of sheriff's summonses and stormy discussions with those to
+whom he still had indebtedness, and in spite, too, of a tropical
+summer, the would-be bride-groom toiled cheerfully on through 1846.
+His Passy cottage was becoming, with the continually augmented
+collection, quite a museum, and Bertall, the artist-caricaturist, was
+in ecstasies over a china service estimated by its owner at some
+thousands of francs. His good humour rendered him his former
+conversational brilliancy, which had been somewhat damped during the
+past twelvemonth, and, at one of Delphine Gay's dinners, where he met
+Hugo and Lamartine, he replied to Jove's heavy artillery with a raking
+fire from his own quick-firing guns. Lamartine was enchanted. Balzac
+must go to the Chamber was his verdict. But Balzac, at present, was
+content to correspond with his Eve and to occupy himself with the
+restoration of the pictures she was helping him to buy. One of these,
+the _Chevalier of Malta_, he had acquired on Gringalet's
+recommendation when in Rome. It had been bistered over by the dealer
+with a view to hiding a scratch, and there was also the dirt of age
+upon it. Requisitioning a clever craftsman in picture-restoring, he
+submitted the treasure to him. "It's a masterpiece," pronounced the
+expert: "but what will it be worth when the dirt is off?" Three days
+later the restorer came back with his drugs and implements. And,
+first, he rubbed a corner with some cotton dipped in one of his
+mixtures, which frothed the painting white. Then for an hour he
+scrubbed the surface progressively until he had a lot of little cotton
+balls all black. Afterwards, he began again, for the dirt was in
+layers, and, at the conclusion of the scrubbing and brushing, the
+chevalier emerged as life-like and fresh as when painted by the pupil
+of Raphael--Albert Durer or another--three hundred years before. The
+scratch was easily repaired, and Balzac was beside himself with joy.
+Relating to Georges Mniszech this happy result, which enriched his
+gallery containing already more than half-a-dozen old masters of great
+value, he said: "When connoisseurs and dilletanti come to visit my
+collection I shall say to them, 'I owe this head to a young professor
+of entomology; he is a charming young man, full of wit and feeling,
+who, for the moment, is buried in bliss, science, and the steppes of
+the Ukraine. He is so versed in paintings that he is a boon to his
+friends. Oh! I assure you he out-experts all the experts of Paris put
+together. What is his name?--Gringalet!--No, really!--As truly as I am
+called Bilboquet.'"
+
+The bliss referred to was Georges' approaching marriage with Eve's
+daughter Anna, which was celebrated very unostentatiously at Wiesbaden
+in October, owing to the recent death of the Count's father. Balzac
+went to the wedding, and stayed with the family for four days. He had
+already spent a short time with them in August, on the occasion of the
+old Count Mniszech's death, and, on his return journey, had been
+accompanied by Madame Hanska as far as Strasburg, where she made him
+such a definite statement regarding their marriage as amounted to an
+official engagement. It was between the two visits that he
+commissioned Georges to buy Atala a Voltaire-armchair for her greater
+ease and comfort.
+
+While at the wedding, he was able to tell Eve that he had at last come
+upon a house which was everything that could be desired for them two
+selves. It was the smaller remaining portion of the splendid mansion
+and grounds built for the famous financier, Beaujon, by the architect
+Girardin in the eighteenth century. The original property, situated
+near the Arc de Triomphe, was nicknamed by contemporaries Beaujon's
+Folly. At the owner's death, the mansion and grounds were sold, and
+subsequently the Rues Chateaubriand, Lord Byron, and Fortunee were cut
+through the place. The abode chosen by the novelist bordered on the
+Rue Fortunee. From its staircase there was an entrance into a private
+chapel, which the financier had had constructed in his old age for his
+soul's edification, and in which he was finally buried. The outside of
+the house in Balzac's time was modest in appearance. Alone, a cupola,
+seen above the containing walls, suggested memories of bygone glory.
+Inside, there were still very substantial pieces of luxury and
+artistic decoration that needed only touching up to be practically
+what they had been of yore. Balzac detailed all this to his betrothed,
+and his selection was approved. No sooner was he in Paris again than
+the bargain was settled, and orders were given for the necessary
+repairs and renovation to be executed.
+
+The end of 1846 seemed to smile on these projects of a speedy
+installation in conformity with his desires. Though the North Railway
+Shares had declined considerably, he was earning a good deal of money.
+_Cousin Bette_ yielded him thirteen thousand francs, and _Cousin Pons_
+was sold for nine--modest prices indeed; but the total, with other
+sources of revenue, gave him for the twelvemonth an income of about
+fifty thousand francs. In the Beaujon mansion the workmen soon
+accomplished prodigies, transforming its dilapidated rooms into
+ship-shape and elegance. Bilboquet issued special instructions for
+apartments to be fitted up for Gringalet and Zephirine--a bedchamber
+and small _salon_, both circular and sculptured, with paintings on the
+arches, worthy of the destined aristocratic occupants.
+
+Urged on by the sight of these preparations, he threw himself with
+almost frenzy into fresh literary labour. Dr. Nacquart warned him
+against the consequences of such brain debauch, as he termed it,
+prophesying that harm would ensue. And the doctor was right. Balzac
+was soon to pay for his excesses. Just now there was much in the
+political firmament that caused the novelist anxiously to wish that
+his own fortunes and those of Eve were indissolubly united. "Make
+haste!" was his constant cry to her.
+
+"I see," he said, "Italy and Germany ready to move. Peace hangs only
+by a thread--the life of Louis-Philippe, who is growing old; and, if
+war comes, Heaven knows what would happen to us. . . . For a young and
+ambitious sovereign who would not want, like Louis-Philippe, above all
+to die quietly in his bed, how favourable the moment would be to
+regain the left bank of the Rhine. The populations are harassed by
+petty, imbecile royalties. England is at loggerheads with Ireland, who
+seeks to ruin her or separate from her. All Italy is preparing to
+shake off the yoke of Austria. Germany desires her unity, or perhaps
+more liberty merely. Anyway, we are on the eve of great catastrophes.
+In France, it is our interest to wait, our cavalry and navy not being
+strong enough to enable us to triumph on land and sea; but, when these
+two are improved and our defence-works completed, France will be
+redoubtable. One must admit, that, by the manner Louis-Philippe is
+administering and governing, he is making her the first Power in the
+world. Just think! Nothing is factitious with us. Our army is a fine
+one; we have money; everything is strong and real at present. When the
+port of Algiers is terminated, we shall have a second Toulon in front
+of Gibraltar; we are advancing in the domination of the Mediterranean.
+Spain and Belgium are with us. This man has made progress. If he were
+ambitious and wished to chant the Marseillaise, he would demolish
+three empires to his advantage."
+
+The foregoing outlook on the future neglected certain signs of the
+times equally necessary to be taken into account with others that were
+perceived. In politics especially, the humourist's detachment is
+essential to correct perspective, and of humour Balzac had but small
+share. As compensation, pleasantry was not wanting in this Duc de
+Bilboquet, peer of France and other places--as he subscribed himself
+to his dear Gringalet.
+
+In February 1847, for the second time, Madame Hanska came to Paris
+incognito. The Beaujon house was nearly ready, and as mistress of it
+that was to be, her instructions were required for the garnishing. The
+happy Bilboquet conducted her to the Opera, the Italiens, the
+Conservatoire, and also to the Varietes where they saw Bouffe and
+Hyacinthe play in the laughable _Filleul de tout le Monde_. It was
+intended that she should stay till April, and that then he should take
+her back to Germany, leaving her there to pursue her journey to
+Wierzchownia, whither he was to proceed later. The novelist's so far
+published correspondence has large gaps in the year 1847, with an
+entire lack of letters to Eve--yet such exist--so that we do not learn
+whether the intermediate programme was executed. Until the third
+volume of the _Letters to the Stranger_ is published, it will be
+impossible to fill in accurately the history of the months between
+February and October, in which, however, events of importance
+occurred. One of these was Balzac's burning all Madame Hanska's
+epistles to him. Why? Apparently on account of a quarrel. And the
+quarrel? Was it caused by her finding out that, in 1846, he had a
+liaison with a lady resulting in the birth of a six months' child,
+which did not survive? Monsieur de Lovenjoul, who is the authority for
+this last information, mentions that the harassment Balzac suffered
+from the affair was largely responsible for the rapid progress of the
+heart-disease that finally killed him.
+
+During the month of April[*] he was occupied in removing his furniture
+from the Passy cottage to his new residence. Theophile Gautier, who
+paid him a visit there not long after the installation, gave a sketch
+of what he saw in an article that appeared in the _Artiste_. He says:
+
+  [*] On the house in Passy; the dates indicating the period of the
+      novelist's residence there are incorrect. It is to be hoped that
+      the error, which has been pointed out to the Curator, will be
+      rectified.
+
+"When one entered this dwelling, which, indeed, was not easy, since
+the occupant kept himself close there, a thousand tokens of luxury and
+comfort were noticeable which were but little in agreement with the
+poverty that he pleaded. One day, however, he received us, and we saw
+a dining-room wainscoted in old oak, with table, chimney-piece,
+sideboards, dressers, and chairs, all in wood so carved as to have
+caused envy to Cornejo Duque and Verbruggen, if they had been present;
+a drawing-room upholstered in buttercup damask, and with doors,
+cornices, skirting-board, and embrasures in ebony; a library arranged
+in bookcases inlaid with tortoise-shell and brass in Boule style; a
+bathroom in yellow and black marble, with stucco bass-reliefs; a dome
+boudoir, whose ancient paintings had been restored by Edmond Hedouin;
+a gallery lighted from above, which we recognized later in the
+collection of _Cousin Pons_. There were what-nots laden with all sorts
+of curiosities, Dresden and Sevres china, cornet-shaped vases of
+frosted celadon, and, on the carpeted staircase, large porcelain
+bowls, and a magnificent lantern suspended by a red silk cord. 'Why!
+you have emptied one of Aboulcasem's siloes,' we laughingly remarked
+to Balzac, as we gazed at all these splendours. 'We were quite right
+in asserting that you were a millionaire.' 'I am poorer than ever I
+was,' he replied, with a humble, sly air. 'Nothing of this is mine. I
+have furnished the house for a friend that I am expecting. I am only
+the keeper and porter.'"
+
+Within three short years from this date, the charge fell on her--the
+friend. She became the porteress of the abode which the other had
+prepared with such lavish attention and expenditure, to serve him only
+as a pall.
+
+In 1875, the widow and her son-in-law, Count Mniszech, resolved to
+modify the Hotel Beaujon and the adjoining buildings, with the
+intention of perpetuating the novelist's memory. The rotunda of the
+private chapel they planned to convert into a kind of circular atrium,
+with a fountain in the middle and a trellised gallery running round
+it, decorated with busts, statues, and other works of art. Changes
+likewise were to be effected in the courtyard, to which the pillars of
+the chapel nave had been removed; and a statue of the late owner was
+to be erected there, close to a tree, the seed of which had been
+planted on the occasion of his marriage. The facade of the house on
+the Rue Fortunee, now the Rue Balzac, was also to be embellished, and
+the central pavilion made to represent the novelist's apotheosis, with
+a monumental bass-relief and a niche. Only a small portion of these
+alterations was completed. On Madame de Balzac's death, in 1882, the
+property was bought by the Baroness Salomon de Rothschild; and, before
+the end of the century, it was demolished and the ground it covered
+was incorporated into the Baroness's own gardens. All that now marks
+the site is the small dome forming the corner of the Rue Balzac and
+the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore.
+
+Whatever menaces of rupture between the lovers may have darkened their
+horizon in the spring and summer of 1847 had vanished before the
+autumn. At the end of September, Balzac went by invitation to
+Wierzchownia, and remained its guest for over four months. The sight
+of Russia's huge oak forests, of which the Mniszech family possessed
+some twenty thousand acres, suggested to him another of the grandiose
+schemes for gaining a large fortune that he was for ever elaborating
+in his brain. His project was to establish an exportation to France of
+oak timber, either by sea or rail; which, with every expense figured
+out, might yield, so he calculated, a profit of a million two hundred
+thousand francs for a part area, and would still leave the estate well
+wooded after thinning out the trees. The thing was a gold-mine for him
+and his family if a banker could be induced to take it up. Alas! his
+brother-in-law was obliged to pour cold water on the project, proving
+to him that the expenses, contrary to what he had estimated, would far
+exceed the receipts. The weak point in the affair, however, was one
+that cheaper transport following on increased railway communication
+could remedy. Balzac's only mistake was in imagining that this could
+be provided immediately. The visitor to Wierzchownia was not wrong in
+thinking that Russia's natural productions must sooner or later be one
+of the chief supplies of the European market. A better knowledge of
+the country, acquired during his stay, enabled him to perceive that
+internal reorganization was needed before the country's immense wealth
+could be exploited to the same degree as was possible in a country
+like France. In the Forties, Russia presented curious contrasts--great
+magnificence, and yet entire want of the commonest conveniences.
+Madame Hanska's estate was the only one boasting of a Carcel lamp and
+a hospital. There were ten-foot mirrors, and no paper on the walls.
+Still, he had not to complain of his apartments in pink stucco, with
+fine carpets on the floor, and furniture that was comfortable. It
+astonished him to find that the whole of the Wierzchownia castle--as
+big as the Louvre--was heated by means of straw, which was burnt in
+stoves, the weekly consumption being as much as could be seen in the
+Saint-Laurent market at Paris. But, then, everything was huge. One of
+the Mniszech estates extended over a surface as large as the Seine and
+Marne Department, and was watered by no fewer than three rivers, the
+Dnieper being one of them. And the cholera was colossal also--a
+conscientious cholera, carrying off its forty to fifty victims a day
+in Kiew alone, and a total of nine thousand at Savataf. To reassure
+his relatives, Balzac added that this plague paid most of its calls at
+the houses of rich uncles, to which category he did not belong, and
+passed by people who had debts. _Ergo_, he was inoculated against its
+attacks.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII
+
+                   LAST YEARS: MARRIAGE AND DEATH
+
+It is time something was said now about Balzac's last dramatic
+compositions. Since the Gaite fiasco, in 1843, no other theatre had
+been brought up to the point of producing a further piece from his
+pen, although several negotiations were opened respecting plays
+supposed to be well in hand. In 1844, there was his comedy _Prudhomme
+en Bonne Fortune_, which the Gymnase had some thoughts of staging.
+Poirson, the manager, whom the author met one day in an omnibus, was
+enchanted with the idea, and proposed help even on most advantageous
+terms. The rehearsals were fixed for March, and the first performance
+for May; but, for some reason that we do not learn, the execution of
+the project was abandoned. Probably it was the burden of unfinished
+novels and a lurking desire to go on with _Mercadet_, which was lying
+still in its unachieved state.
+
+Twelve months later, _Mercadet_ appears to have received the last
+touches, and to be awaiting only an opportunity for its
+representation. But Frederick Lemaitre, who was to assume the chief
+role, had previous engagements that monopolized him; so Balzac,
+meanwhile, turned again to a subject he had often toyed with, _Richard
+the Sponge-Heart_, the name recalling that of Richard the Lion-Heart,
+without there being the least analogy between the Norman king and the
+hero of the play. In each preceding attempt, the author had stopped
+short at the end of the first act, and, on recommencing, had produced
+a different version. The hero was a joiner, living in the Faubourg
+Saint-Antoine, whose habitual drunkenness had procured him his
+nickname. Had it been developed, the piece would no doubt have been a
+popular drama, on the lines subsequently followed by Zola's
+_Assommoir_. There was talk of performing it at the Varietes in 1845;
+the year, however, slipped away, and it was not forthcoming. Dining
+with Gautier in December, at the house of Madame de Girardin, Balzac
+agreed with Theophile to go on with the drama in collaboration as soon
+as the theatres should have worked off some of their stock. Evidently,
+this was not done. However, Monsieur Henri Lecomte, in his _Life of
+Frederick Lemaitre_, affirms that Balzac did terminate _Richard the
+Sponge-Heart_, and that it was handed to Frederick to study. Then,
+some months afterwards, being in want of money, he asked the actor to
+take it to the publisher, Paulin, and obtain an advance of a thousand
+francs on it. If Paulin had it, he must either have mislaid or
+destroyed it, for, from this date, all traces of it were lost; and,
+to-day, a few fragments alone remain in Monsieur de Lovenjoul's
+collection.
+
+In 1846, vague mention was made in the correspondence with Madame
+Hanska of a military farce called the _Trainards_ or _Laggards_.
+However, nothing came of it. But in August 1847, after the publication
+of _Cousin Pons_, the novelist paid a visit to Monsieur Hostein,
+manager of the Theatre Historique, which had been inaugurated in the
+preceding February. On this stage, which was subsequently transformed
+into the Theatre Lyrique, and later demolished to make room for the
+Boulevard of the Prince Eugene, several pieces of Alexandre Dumas had
+just been played in succession; and Balzac said to himself that he
+would have a better chance of meeting with appreciative audiences in
+these new premises. Monsieur Hostein relates in his _Reminiscences_
+that the novelist, calling on him one day at his Bougival
+country-residence, went out and sat with him by the river-side, and
+there explained that he wished to write a great historic drama entitled
+_Peter and Catherine (of Russia)_. Asked for an outline of it, Balzac
+tapped his forehead and said: "It is all there. I have only to write.
+The first tableau can be rehearsed the day after to-morrow."
+
+"We are," he continued, "in a Russian inn, with many people running in
+and out, since troops are passing through the place.
+
+"One of the servants is a lively girl. Pay attention to her. She is
+not beautiful, but attractive! And the visitors notice her, and joke
+with her. She smiles at every one; but those who go too far in gesture
+or language soon discover they have made a mistake.
+
+"All at once, a soldier enters, bolder than the rest. He gets the girl
+to sit down with him, and wants to clink glasses with her. On the
+innkeeper's objecting, he rises in a rage, thumps the table with his
+fist, and cries: 'Let no one oppose my will, or I will set fire to the
+inn.'
+
+"The innkeeper orders the girl to obey, for the troops are everywhere,
+and the peasant is alarmed. Sitting down again, the soldier drinks
+with the girl, tells her she shall be happy with him, and promises her
+a finer home than she has.
+
+"But while they are talking, a door opens at the back, and an officer
+appears. Those present rise with respect, except the girl and her
+companion. Approaching them, the officer lays his hand heavily on the
+soldier's arm, and says: 'Stand up, fellow. Go to the counter, and
+write your name and that of your regiment, and hold yourself at my
+orders.'
+
+"The soldier stands up automatically, obeys, and, having presented the
+paper, retires.
+
+"Then the officer sits down and flirts with the girl, who accepts his
+compliments.
+
+"But now a stranger shows himself at the door. He is clad in a big
+cloak. At the sight of him, men and women fall on their knees, except
+the officer, who is too agreeably occupied to notice the new arrival.
+In a moment of enthusiasm, he says to the girl: 'You are divine. I
+will take you with me. You shall have a fine house, where it is warm.'
+
+"Just then, the man in the cloak draws near. The officer recognizes
+him, turns pale, and bows down, uttering: 'Oh, pardon, sire!'
+
+"'Stand up,' orders the master, meantime examining the servant, who,
+on her side, looks without trembling at the all-powerful Czar.
+
+"'You may withdraw,' the latter tells the officer. 'I will keep this
+woman, and give her a palace.'
+
+"Thus met for the first time Peter I and she who became Catherine of
+Russia."
+
+Having given this prologue, Balzac went on to speak of the staging of
+his play, which he promised to arrange in accordance with what he knew
+of the country's scenery and customs, Russia being, from an artistic
+point of view, admirable to exhibit theatrically. Monsieur Hostein was
+quite gained over by the prospect of something so novel; and Balzac,
+paying him a second call, some few days later, pledged himself to
+start for Kiew and Moscow very shortly, and, from there, to go to
+Wierzchownia and finish his drama. The journey to Russia was made; and
+Balzac, in due course, returned, but he did not bring with him the
+denouement of _Peter and Catherine_.
+
+Not that his mind was less preoccupied with the drama. On the
+contrary, Champfleury, who went to see him in the Rue Fortunee, soon
+after his arrival in Paris, found him more bent on writing for the
+stage than ever. One idea of his now was to create a _feerie_, or sort
+of pantomime, sparkling throughout with wit. Another was to form an
+association for dramatic authors of standing (himself naturally
+included), not to defend their interests, but to get them to work in
+common, and to keep thus the various Paris theatres provided with
+their work. It was a _trust_ scheme before the era of trusts. If the
+thing were managed, they might renew the miracles of those
+indefatigable and marvellous Spanish playwrights--Calderon, who
+composed between twelve and fifteen hundred pieces, Lope de Vega, who
+composed more than two thousand. However, he feared that many of his
+colleagues might not care to fall in with his suggestions. "They are
+idlers, donkeys," he added. "There is only one worker among them, and
+that is Scribe. But what a piece of literature his _Memoirs of a
+Hussar Colonel_ is!"
+
+Another visitor to the Rue Fortunee in February 1848 was Monsieur
+Hostein, to whom the novelist had offered for the spring a piece that
+should replace _Peter and Catherine_. This time the manuscript was
+ready. It lay on the table, bearing on its first page the title,
+_Gertrude, a Bourgeois Tragedy_. The piece was a five-act one, in
+prose. A couple of days later, actors and actresses were assembled in
+Balzac's drawing-room. Madame Dorval pursed her lips at the words,
+_Gertrude, tragedy_. "Don't interrupt," cried the author, laughing.
+However, after the reading of the second act they had to interrupt.
+The play was overloaded with detail. A good deal of pruning was
+effected, together with a change in title, before the first
+performance on the 25th of May; and more excisions might have been
+made with advantage. Alterations less beneficial were those introduced
+into the cast, Madame Dorval being eliminated in favour of Madame
+Lacressonniere. This lady was a much poorer actress, but was a
+_persona grata_ with Monsieur Hostein. Both public and critics
+accorded Balzac's new effort a very fair reception, notwithstanding
+the mediocrity of the acting and the peculiar circumstances under
+which it was produced, just as the Revolution storm was breaking out.
+
+The _Maratre_, or _Stepmother_, as the piece was called when staged,
+presents the home of a Count de Grandchamp, who, after being a general
+under the First Empire, has turned manufacturer under the restoration.
+He has a grown-up daughter, Pauline, and a second wife named Gertrude,
+the latter still a young, handsome woman, with a ten-year-old son, the
+little Napoleon. Though they are outwardly on good terms, the
+stepmother and stepdaughter nevertheless hate each other. They are in
+love with the same man, Ferdinand, the manager of the general's works.
+On this hatred the entire interest of the play turns. Ferdinand really
+loves Pauline; but he has formerly been engaged to Gertrude, who
+jilted him to marry the general, and this fact somewhat embarrasses
+him in his wooing. Moreover, his father was an officer under the
+Revolution Government, and, if the general should learn that, it would
+ruin his chances of obtaining the old gentleman's consent. The plot
+arising out of these relations is, at first, cleverly dealt with by
+the author, who involves matters further by a second suitor for
+Pauline, to whom Gertrude tries to marry her, in order that she
+herself may regain Ferdinand's affection. In the second act, a
+word-duel is fought between the two women, during a whist-party, each
+seeking to surprise the opponent's true sentiments towards Ferdinand.
+This scene is exceedingly original; and, subsequently, a bold
+employment is made by the author of the _enfant terrible_--the young
+Napoleon--for the purpose of helping on the unravelling of the plot.
+The concluding portion of the piece and its sombre tragedy--the deaths
+of Pauline and Ferdinand--is heavier in dialogue and cumbrous in
+construction, with its officers of justice who supply a useless
+episode. One might sum up the _Stepmother_ as a weak ending to a
+strong beginning. None the less it shows progress on _Vautrin_ and
+_Pamela Giraud_.
+
+A few days after the Revolution, Theodore Cogniard, manager of the
+Porte-Saint-Martin Theater, wrote to Balzac and proposed to reproduce
+_Vautrin_. Balzac, in replying, referred to Lemaitre's _toupet_, and
+explained that, when disguising Vautrin as a Mexican general, he had
+in his mind General Murat. He told Cogniard he was willing to allow
+the revival, if care were taken against there being any caricature of
+the now disposed monarch. The manager agreed, but the performances did
+not come off, apparently on account of the disturbed state of the
+city. In 1850, an unauthorized revival was put on the stage of the
+Gaite, while Balzac was at Dresden. Being informed of it, the novelist
+protested in a letter to the _Journal des Debats_, and the piece was
+at once withdrawn.
+
+The _Stepmother_ was Balzac's last dramatic composition played during
+his lifetime. This was partly his own fault. In the short epoch of the
+Second Republic, when neither the Comedie Francaise nor the Odeon, the
+two national homes of the drama, were thriving, it was to the
+directors' interest to seek out men of talent; and he had overtures
+from both theatres. Mauzin of the Odeon even promised him, as he had
+promised Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, a premium of six thousand
+francs and a percentage of receipts on any sum over a thousand francs.
+Balzac consented to write a tragedy entitled _Richard Sauvage_, and
+got as far as--a monologue. With Lockroy of the Theatre Francais also
+he made an arrangement for a comedy. There had been talk at first,
+both inside and outside the Francais, of a satirical piece called the
+_Petty Bourgeois_, but having nothing except the name in common with
+his unfinished novel similarly yclept. His motive for not proceeding
+with it he set forth to the journalist Hippolyte Rolle, in a letter
+published in his correspondence. "Is it on the morrow of a battle," he
+wrote, "when the bourgeoisie have so generously shed their blood on
+behalf of threatened civilization, and when they are in mourning, that
+one can drag them before the footlights?"
+
+The manager, he said, had been pleased to accept in exchange another
+comedy which would be soon performed. This comedy was the resuscitated
+_Mercadet_, the title of which had been altered to the _Speculator_ in
+1847, and the _Jobber_ in 1848. Under the last appellation, it was
+read by the Comedie Committee in August, and unanimously approved.
+However, between this date and December, Balzac had taken his
+departure to Wierzchownia, where he seemed likely to remain for a
+while; and, in his absence, the members of the Committee repented of
+their bargain. Another solemn sitting was held in December, and an
+amended resolution was passed, accepting the _Jobber_ on condition
+that certain corrections were made in it. On being apprized of the
+proviso, Balzac immediately cancelled his treaty with Lockroy, and
+entered into negotiations with Hostein, who professed himself only too
+happy to place the Theatre Historique at the author's disposal. Alas!
+the same difficulties and worse cropped up here. Hostein wrote that
+his public was a boulevard one, much fonder of melodrama than comedy,
+and that, if the _Jobber_ were to succeed, it must be completely
+modified. Naturally, Balzac refused. He had not withdrawn it from the
+first theatre in Paris, which demanded only trifling alterations, to
+permit it to be cut up by a theatre of less importance.
+
+Content to wait till a more complaisant director should make overtures
+to him, he filled in his leisure at Wierzchownia by inventing the
+_King of Beggars_, which he announced to his friend Laurent Jan as an
+up-to-date play flattering the all-powerful plebs; and he likewise
+sketched a tragedy in which Madame Dorval was to have the chief role.
+This was in April, 1849, and, a few weeks later, Madame Dorval was
+dead. Only on the 23rd of August 1851, a year after his own death, did
+his executors meet with a director, Monsieur Montigny of the Gymnase,
+who undertook to stage _Mercadet the Jobber_. Less intransigent than
+Balzac, the executors allowed its five acts to be reduced to three,
+and a considerable amount of suppression and remodelling to be
+operated by a professional playwright, Adolphe Dennery. Performed with
+these concessions to theatrical requirements and popular taste, and
+with Geoffroy in the chief role, failing Lemaitre and Regnier,
+_Mercadet_ pleased the public greatly, too greatly for some bull and
+bear habitues of the Bourse, who feared that their pockets might
+suffer. Owing to their complaints, the Minister for the Interior
+temporarily suspended the representations, basing his interdiction on
+the ground that expressions struck out by the Censor had been inserted
+again by the actors. Prudently, Monsieur Montigny ordered a few more
+excisions, and the prohibition was raised. Seventeen years elapsed
+before the Comedie Francaise at last placed _Mercadet_ on its
+repertory and inaugurated the event by a special performance with Got
+as the _Jobber_.
+
+The hero of the piece is a financier who has very little cash, but
+innumerable projects for gaining money. These involve methods which
+are not always straight-forward; yet, since he believes in the success
+of what he advocates, he is not absolutely unprincipled, though he
+does not mind to some extent gulling the gullible. His chief aim is to
+trick his creditors--themselves, as it happens, not worthy of much
+pity; and, himself kind-hearted, loving his wife and daughter, and not
+a libertine, he appeals to the sympathies of the reader or the
+audience. Most of the amusement of the play--and it is very amusing
+--is derived from the metamorphoses adopted by the _Jobber_ in dealing
+with each sort of creditor. Moreover, the love-passages between Julie,
+the daughter, and a poor clerk who thinks her an heiress, are so
+managed as to strengthen the comic side of certain situations. The
+unexpected arrival of a rich uncle from America releases the _Jobber_
+ultimately from the tangle into which he has twisted himself. It is
+the least original part of the comedy; but was suggested, like the
+rest of the play, by Balzac's own circumstances. Was he not always
+expecting a windfall; and was not Eve a kind of rich--relative? To add
+one more detail concerning _Mercadet_, it was revived at the Comedie
+Francaise in 1879, and again in 1890, there being as many as 107
+performances. Its indisputable qualities have caused some writers to
+conclude that, if Balzac had lived longer, he would have become as
+great a dramatist as he was a novelist. This is very doubtful.
+Notwithstanding its long incubation of nearly a decade, and the
+advantage it possessed in embodying so much personal experience,
+_Mercadet_ was still weak in construction and was largely wanting in
+dramatic compression. And, at fifty years of age, with failing powers,
+Balzac would have found the task increasingly hard to acquire an art
+for which, by his own confession, he had no born aptitude.
+
+The temporary government which was set up, in consequence of the
+February Revolution of 1848, conceived the curious idea of summoning
+the members of the Men of Letters Society to a meeting in the Palais
+Mazarin, for the purpose of eliciting from them an expression of
+opinion on the situation of literature and the best way to protect it.
+Balzac, who had newly arrived from Wierzchownia, went to the meeting
+and was chosen chairman. But no sooner was the discussion opened than
+it degenerated into dispute and tumult; the place became a bear-garden,
+and, after vainly endeavouring to restore order, he took up his hat
+and left the room.
+
+When the general elections were held, for the forming of a Constituent
+Assembly, he stood as a candidate, and published a long declaration of
+his opinions in the _Constitutionnel_, in which had appeared his _Poor
+Relations_. The candidature had no success; it could scarcely be
+expected to have any. His political style was not one to catch the
+popular vote; and his sympathies were too visibly autocratic to
+commend themselves at such a moment. What deceived him was that, at
+first, there appeared to be a chance for the establishment of a strong
+central power well disposed towards sage reforms of a social,
+administrative, and financial character, with men like Lamartine to
+elaborate them; and to a government of this kind he could have given
+his support. When he realized that the trend of events was towards a
+Republic of Utopian experiment which he regarded as doomed to failure
+and disaster, he quietly dropped out of the struggle, and, leaving
+Paris once more in September, retraced his steps to Wierzchownia.
+
+The political disturbances of the previous six months had been
+prejudicial both to his invested capital and to his income accruing
+from work. It was difficult to sell fiction advantageously when people
+were more interested in facts; nor did he care much to continue his
+efforts under a _regime_ that he looked upon as a usurpation. Until
+the speedy overthrow which he confidently reckoned upon, he said to
+himself that he would do better to occupy himself with the question of
+his marriage. The hope was at present a forlorn one, but it was worth
+risking. He started with the intention of coming back, like the
+Spartan, either on his shield or under it.
+
+Short of available cash, as always, he borrowed five thousand francs
+from his publisher, Souverain, for the expenses of his journey and
+pocket-money, and placed his mother in charge of his Beaujon mansion,
+with procuration to buy the complement of his domestic articles.
+
+The warm welcome he received on reaching Madame Hanska's residence
+made him so sanguine that he wrote to Froment-Meurice, his jeweller in
+Paris, asking that the cornaline cup might be sent him which had been
+on order for the past two years. The jeweller was evidently not
+anxious to oblige such a bad payer. This cup, the novelist said, was
+to be flanked by two figures, Faith and Hope, the former holding a
+scroll, with Neuchatel and the date 1833 on it, the latter, another
+scroll, with a kneeling Cupid--the whole resting on a ground covered
+with cacti and various thorny plants besides, in silver gilt.
+
+The blasts of winter in a rigorous climate laid him by with bronchitis
+in November. He suffered at the same time great difficulty in
+breathing; and the doctors diagnosed certain symptoms of heart trouble
+that caused them to consider his case a grave one. This malady
+relegated all matrimonial projects for the moment into the background.
+Madame Hanska did not hide that she regretted having put so much of
+her money into the purchase and furnishing of a house that they hardly
+seemed likely to inhabit together. Adding up what it had cost them
+both, they estimated the total at three hundred and fifty thousand
+francs. Into these figures the price of pictures entered for a large
+amount. The most recent were Greuze's _Jeune Fille Effrayee_, from the
+last King of Poland's Gallery; two Canalettis, once the property of
+Pope Clement XIII; _James II of England's Wife_, by Netscher; the same
+king's portrait, by Lely, in addition to a Van Dyck, two Van Huysums,
+and three canvases by Rotari, a Venetian painter of the eighteenth
+century.
+
+The winter was not propitious to Madame Hanska either. Two fires on
+her estate did enormous damage, and her money losses were important.
+Balzac, though tenacious of his plan, talked constantly of going back
+to his loneliness, yet stayed on still; and Eve, who either would not
+or could not screw up her courage, invented fresh reasons for
+procrastinating. One of these was the Emperor's refusal to sanction
+the marriage unless Madame Hanska's landed property were transferred
+to her daughter's husband. A scolding letter from the novelist's
+mother, accusing Honore of remissness towards his nieces and family,
+was by chance read to the Wierzchownia hostess, and this further
+complicated a situation already sufficiently involved. Balzac's bile
+was stirred. He relived his feelings in a long reply to Laure. It
+seemed after all he would return to Paris under his shield. "I had a
+marriage which made my fortune," he told her. "Everything is now upset
+for a bagatelle. Know that it is with marriages as with cream; a
+changed atmosphere, a bad odour, spoils them both. Bad marriages are
+easily arranged; good ones only with infinite precaution. . . . I can
+tell you, Laure," he continued, "it is something, when one wishes, to
+be able in Paris to open one's drawing-room and gather in it an
+_elite_ of society who will find there a woman as polished and
+imposing as a queen, illustrious by her birth, allied to the greatest
+families, witty, educated, and beautiful. One has thus a fine means of
+domination. With a household thus established, people are compelled to
+reckon; and many persons of high position will envy it, especially
+since your dear brother will bring to it only glory and a clever
+conduct."
+
+Here we have the secret of Balzac's persistence, and ample proof also
+of what has already been asserted, to wit, that his affection for the
+_Stranger_ was a fancy born and bred rather in the head than in the
+heart.
+
+It was perhaps to take the edge off this quip quarrelsome that the
+following amusing lines were addressed in the next month to his
+nieces, giving them particulars about animal and vegetables foods in
+Russia. "The country," he said, "has no veal--I mean eatable veal, for
+cows produce calves here as well as elsewhere; but these calves are of
+Republican leanness. Beef, such as one gets in Paris, is a myth; one
+remembers it only in dreams. In reality, one has meat twenty years
+old, which is stringy and which serves to bulk out the packets of hemp
+intended for exportation. One consoles one's self with excellent tea
+and exquisite milk. As for the vegetables, they are execrable. Carrots
+are like turnips, and turnips are like nothing. On the other hand,
+there are gruels galore. You make them with millet, buckwheat, oats,
+barley; you can make them even with tree-bark. So, my nieces, take
+pity on this country, so rich in corn, but so poor in vegetables. Oh!
+how Valentine would laugh to see the apples, pears, and plums! She
+wouldn't give over at the end of a year. Good-bye, my dear girls, and
+accept the Republic patiently; for you have real beef, veal, and
+vegetables, and a kind uncle happy and fed on gruel."
+
+Ill again with his heart in the April of 1849, Balzac had the good
+luck to be attended by a pupil of the famous Doctor Franck, the latter
+being the original of his _Country Doctor_. This disciple, and his son
+to a less extent, were men of a newer and more enlightened school; and
+the elder man, by bold experiments, reduced his patient's
+arterio-sclerosis to the point of what seemed to be convalescence. But
+the treatment was tedious and lasted on into the summer, so that the
+novelist was left weak and delicate at the end. In such a condition he
+was less than ever fit to carry on his wooing.
+
+To give himself a countenance, he spoke again of departure, fixing the
+date for the month of October. Madame Hanska was apparently willing to
+let him go. She had played the hostess generously during nearly a
+twelvemonth to this invalid, and it seemed to her enough. Not that she
+intended to sever the engagement. She wished merely to wait and see
+how matters turned out. Meantime, he could watch over their common
+property, now augmented by the acquisition of an extra plot of land at
+the side, which could be resold later at a large profit. But a
+resumption of the old burden was more than Balzac could face. In
+September he was prostrated by what Dr. Knothe called an intermittent
+brain fever, which continued for more than a month. His constitution
+pulled him through, with the aid of good nursing; and then, realizing
+that her tergiversations had been partly responsible for the attack,
+Eve, at last, in conversations between them that followed his
+recovery, let him understand that she relented and was willing to
+accompany him back to Paris as his wife, if the Emperor would permit
+of such a transfer of the estate to Count Mniszech as might enable her
+to receive a share of its revenues.
+
+The victory was won, yet at a heavy cost. For a man so worn down by
+illness Russia was not the place to recruit in. Its biting winds
+throughout the winter of 1849 and 1850 withered what little vitality
+Balzac had still remaining, and at Kiew, where he had gone with Madame
+Hanska on business, he was again laid up with fever.
+
+All the different formalities required by Russian law having been
+finally complied with, the wedding was celebrated on the 14th of
+March, in the Church of Saint Barbara at Beriditchef, some few hours
+distant from Wierzchownia. At once the bridegroom despatched the news
+to his family and friends. His joy was such that he fancied he had
+never known happiness before. "I have had no flowery spring," said his
+letter to Madame Carraud. "But I shall have the most brilliant of
+summers, the mildest of autumns. . . . I am almost crazy with
+delight."
+
+More than a month elapsed ere the newly married couple were able to
+set out on their journey to the French capital, and, even then, they
+had to travel along roads studded with quagmires into which their
+carriage frequently sank up to the axle. Sometimes fifteen or sixteen
+men and a crick were necessary to extricate them. Though on their
+honeymoon, they found the repetition of these incidents monotonous,
+and were so tired when they reached Dresden that they stayed there to
+recover themselves. From this town Balzac sent a few lines to his
+mother and sister mentioning the approximate date of their reaching
+home; and instructions were given that everything should be in order,
+flowers on the table, and a meal prepared. He did not want his mother
+to be at the house to receive them, deeming it more proper that his
+wife should call on her first, either at Laure's, or at Suresnes where
+she was living. They got into Paris on the 22nd or 23rd of May.
+
+Monsieur de Lovenjoul relates that the two travellers drove up to the
+Beaujon mansion a little before midnight. Weary with the journey, they
+stepped out of the cab and rang the bell, rang more than once, for no
+one came to open the door. Through the windows they could see the
+lamps lighted and signs of their being expected. But where was the
+valet, Francois Munck, who had been left in charge by the novelist's
+mother? Apparently, he had deserted his post. Balzac kept on ringing,
+shouting at intervals, and thumping the gate. Still there was silence
+inside. The one or two people passing at this late hour stopped out of
+curiosity, and began in their turn to call and knock; while the
+cabman, tired of waiting, put down the luggage on the footpath.
+
+Madame de Balzac grew impatient. It was cold standing in the night-air.
+Her husband, nonplussed and exceedingly annoyed, did not know what to
+say to the bystanders. One of the latter offered to fetch a locksmith,
+named Grimault, who lived in a street close by. The suggestion was
+gladly agreed to, since there seemed nothing else to be done. However,
+until such time as the locksmith should come, they continued battering
+at the gate and throwing tiny pebbles at the windows; and the master,
+thus shut out from his own dwelling, hallooed to the invisible valet:
+"I am Monsieur de Balzac." It was useless. The door refused to open.
+Around Madame de Balzac, now seated on one of the trunks, other
+passers-by had gathered and listened to the novelist's excited
+comments on his predicament. The occurrence was certainly
+extraordinary.
+
+At length, the locksmith was brought and the gate was forced. The
+whole party, hosts and impromptu guests, hurried through the narrow
+courtyard, entered the house without further hindrance, and were met
+by a strange spectacle. The valet had been seized with a sudden fit of
+madness and had smashed the crockery, scattered the food about, spilt
+a bottle of wine on the carpet, upset the furniture, and ruined the
+flowers. Having performed these exploits, he was wandering aimlessly
+to and fro with demented gestures, and in this state they discovered
+him. After securing and fastening him up in a small room, the visitors
+helped to place the luggage in the yard and then retired, with profuse
+thanks from the novelist, who being thoroughly unnerved by this
+untoward incident, was obliged to go straight to bed. The next day,
+Francois was taken to an asylum at his master's expense, as is proved
+by a receipt still existing in which Balzac is dubbed a Count. Perhaps
+the title was a piece of flattery on the doctor's part, or the
+novelist may have imagined that his marrying a Countess conferred on
+him letters of nobility.
+
+Anyway, this assumed lordship was poor compensation for the immense
+disappointment of his marriage in every other respect. From the moment
+he and his wife took possession of their fine Beaujon residence,
+whatever bonds of friendship and tenderness had previously existed
+between them were irremediably snapped asunder. Peculiarities of
+character and temperament in each, which, as long as they were lovers,
+had been but slightly felt, now came into close contact, clashed, and
+were proved to be incompatible. Moreover, there were disagreeable
+revelations on either side. The husband learnt that his wife's
+available income was very much inferior to what he had supposed or
+been led to believe, and the wife learnt that her husband's debts, far
+from being paid, as he had asserted, subsisted and were more numerous
+and larger than he had ever in sober truth admitted. So, instead of
+coming to Paris to be the queen of a literary circle, the _Stranger_
+saw herself involved in liabilities that threatened to swallow up her
+own fortune, if she lent her succour.
+
+Reproaches and disputes began in the week following their instalment.
+The disillusioned Eve withdrew to her own apartments in anger; and
+Balzac, whose bronchitis and congestion of the liver had grown worse,
+remained an invalid in his. They had intended spending only a
+fortnight or so in Paris, and then travelling south to the Pyrenees
+and Biarritz; but this programme was perforce abandoned. All through
+the month of June the patient was under medical treatment, able to go
+out only in a carriage, and, even so, in disobedience to the doctor's
+orders. One of these visits was to the door of the Comedie Francaise,
+where Arsene Houssaye, the Director, came to speak to him about
+_Mercadet_, and indulgently promised him, it should be staged soon,
+the _Resources of Quinola_ also.
+
+On the 20th of June, he wrote, through his wife, to Theophile Gautier,
+telling him that his bronchitis was better and that the doctor was
+proceeding to treat him for his heart-hypertrophy, which was now the
+chief obstacle to his recovery. At the end of the letter he signed his
+name, adding: "I can neither read nor write." They were the last words
+of his correspondence. From that date his heart-disease undermined him
+rapidly; and the few friends whom he received augured ill from what
+they remarked. Not that he lost hope himself. Although suffering
+acutely at intervals from difficulty in breathing, and from the oedema
+of his lower limbs, which slowly crept upwards, he spoke with the same
+confidence as always of his future creations that he meditated. His
+brain was the one organ unattacked. From Dr. Nacquart he inquired
+every day how soon he might get to work again.
+
+The month of July and the first half of August passed thus, the dropsy
+gaining still on him in spite of all that Nacquart and other medical
+men could do to combat it. To every one but the patient himself, it
+was evident that he was dying. Houssaye, who came to see him on the
+16th of August, found Dr. Nacquart in the room. He relates that
+Balzac, addressing the latter, said: "Doctor, I want you to tell me
+the truth. . . . I see I am worse than I believed. . . . I am growing
+weaker. In vain I force myself to eat. Everything disgusts me. How
+long do you think I can live?"--The doctor did not reply.--"Come,
+doctor," continued the sick man, "do you take me for a child? I can't
+die as if I were nobody. . . . A man like me owes a will and testament
+to the public."--"My dear patient, how much time do you require for
+what you have to do?" asked Nacquart.--"Six months," replied Balzac;
+and he gazed anxiously at his interlocutor.--"Six months, six months,"
+repeated the doctor, shaking his head.--"Ah!" cried Balzac dolorously;
+"I see you don't allow me six months. . . . You will give me six weeks
+at least. . . . Six weeks with the fever, is an eternity. Hours are
+days; and then the nights are not lost."--The doctor shook his head
+again. Balzac raised himself, almost indignant.--"What, doctor! Am I,
+then, a dead man? Thank God! I still feel strength to fight. But I
+feel also courage to submit. I am ready for the sacrifice. If your
+science does not deceive you, don't deceive me. What can I hope for
+yet? . . . Six days? . . . I can in that time indicate in broad
+outlines what remains to be done. My friends will see to details. I
+shall be able to cast a glance at my fifty volumes, tearing out the
+bad pages, accentuating the best ones. Human will can do miracles. I
+can give immortal life to the world I have created. I will rest on the
+seventh day."--Since beginning to speak, Balzac had aged ten years,
+and finally his voice failed him.--"My dear patient," said the doctor,
+trying to smile, "who can answer for an hour in this life? There are
+persons now in good health who will die before you. But you have asked
+me for the truth; you spoke of your will and testament to the
+public."--"Well?"--"Well! this testament must be made to-day. Indeed,
+you have another testament to make. You mustn't wait till to-morrow."
+--Balzac looked up.--"I have, then, no more than six hours," he
+exclaimed with dread.
+
+The details of this narration given to the _Figaro_ many years after
+the event[*] do not read much like history. A more probable account
+tells that Balzac, after one of his fits of gasping, asked Nacquart to
+say whether he would get better or not. The doctor hesitated, then
+answered: "You are courageous. I will not hide the truth from you.
+There is no hope." The sick man's face contracted and his fingers
+clutched the sheet. "How long have I to live?" he questioned after a
+pause. "You will hardly last the night," replied Nacquart. There was a
+fresh silence, broken only by the novelist's murmuring as if to
+himself: "If only I had Bianchon, he would save me." Bianchon, one of
+his fictitious personages, had become for the nonce a living reality.
+It was Balzac who had taken the place of his medical hero in the
+kingdom of shadows. Anxious to soften the effect of his sentence,
+Nacquart inquired if his patient had a message or recommendation to
+give. "No, I have none," was the answer. However, just before the
+doctor's departure, he asked for a pencil, and tried to trace a few
+lines, but was too week; and, letting the pencil drop from his
+fingers, he fell into a slumber.
+
+  [*] 20th of August 1883.
+
+In his _Choses Vues_, Victor Hugo informs us that, on the afternoon of
+the 18th, his wife had been to the Hotel Beaujon and heard from the
+servants that the master of the house was dying. After dinner he went
+himself, and reached the Hotel about nine. Received at first in the
+drawing-room, lighted dimly by a candle placed on a richly carved oval
+table that stood in the centre of the room, he saw there an old woman,
+but not, as he asserts, the brother-in-law, Monsieur Surville. No
+member of Balzac's own family was present in the house that evening.
+Even the wife remained in her apartments. The old woman told Hugo that
+gangrene had set in, and that tapping now produced no effect on the
+dropsy. As the visitor ascended the splendid, red-carpeted staircase,
+cumbered with statues, vases, and paintings, he was incommoded by a
+pestilential odour that assailed his nostrils. Death had begun the
+decomposition of the sick man's body even before it was a corpse. At
+the door of the chamber Hugo caught the sound of hoarse, stertorous
+breathing. He entered, and saw on the mahogany bed an almost
+unrecognizable form bolstered up on a mass of cushions. Balzac's
+unshaven face was of blackish-violet hue; his grey hair had been cut
+short; his open eyes were glazed; the profile resembled that of the
+first Napoleon. It was useless to speak to him unconscious of any
+one's presence.
+
+Hugo turned and hastened from the spot thinking sadly of his previous
+visit a month before, when, in the same room, the invalid had joked
+with him on his opinions, reproaching him for his demagogy. "How could
+you renounce, with such serenity, your title as a peer of France?" he
+had asked. He had spoken also of the Beaujon residence, the gallery
+over the little chapel in the corner of the street, the key that
+permitted access to the chapel from the staircase; and, when the poet
+left him, he had accompanied him to the head of the stairs, calling
+out to Madame de Balzac to show Hugo his pictures.
+
+Death took him the same evening.[*] During the last hours of his life
+Giraud had sketched his portrait for a pastel;[+] and, on the morning
+of the 19th, a man named Marminia was sent to secure a mould of his
+features. This latter design had to be abandoned. An impression of the
+hands alone was obtainable. Decomposition had set in so rapidly that
+the face was distorted beyond recognition. A lead coffin was hastily
+brought to cover up the ghastly spectacle of nature in a hurry.
+
+  [*] De Lovenjoul says that Balzac died on the 17th, not the 18th.
+      This discrepancy is most curious, the latter date figuring as
+      the official one, as well as being given by Hugo and others.
+
+  [+] De Lovenjoul says that the sketch was made after death. But,
+      if the mask was not possible, it is difficult to understand
+      how a pencil likeness could have been drawn.
+
+Two days later, on the 21st of August, the interment took place at
+Pere Lachaise cemetery. The procession started from the Church of
+Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, to which the coffin had been transported
+beforehand. There was no pomp in either service or ceremony. A
+two-horse hearse and four bearers--Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Francis
+Wey, and Baroche, the Minister for the Interior made up the funeral
+accessories. But an immense concourse of people followed the body to
+the grave. The Institute, the University, the various learned
+societies were all represented by eminent men, and a certain number of
+foreigners, English, German, and Russian, were present also. Baroche
+attended rather from duty than appreciation. On the way to the
+cemetery, he hummed and hawed, and remarked to Hugo: "Monsieur Balzac
+was a somewhat distinguished man, I believe?" Scandalized, Hugo looked
+at the politician and answered shortly: "He was a genius, sir." It is
+said that Baroche revenged himself for the rebuff by whispering to an
+acquaintance near him: "This Monsieur Hugo is madder still than is
+supposed."
+
+Over the coffin, as it was laid under the ground near the ashes of
+Charles Nodier and Casimir Delavigne, the author of _Les Miserables_
+and _Les Feuilles d'Automne_ pronounced an oration which was a
+generous tribute to the talent of his great rival. On such an occasion
+there was no room for the reservations of criticism. It was the moment
+to apply the maxim, _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_. "The name of Balzac,"
+he said, "will mingle with the luminous track projected by our epoch
+into the future. . . . Monsieur de Balzac was the first among the
+great, one of the highest among the best. All his volumes form but a
+single book, wherein our contemporary civilization is seen to move
+with a certain terrible weirdness and reality--a marvellous book which
+the maker of it entitled a comedy and which he might have entitled a
+history. It assumes all forms and all styles; it goes beyond Tacitus
+and reaches Suetonius; it traverses Beaumarchais and attains even
+Rabelais; it is both observation and imagination, it lavishes the
+true, the intimate, the bourgeois, the trivial, the material, and,
+through every reality suddenly rent asunder, it allows the most
+sombre, tragic ideal to be seen. Unconsciously, and willy nilly, the
+author of this strange work belongs to the race of revolutionary
+writers. Balzac goes straight to the point. He grapples with modern
+society; and from everywhere he wrests something--here, illusion;
+there, hopes; a cry; a mask. He investigates vice, he dissects
+passion, he fathoms man--the soul, the heart, the entrails, the brain,
+the abyss each has within him. And by right of his free, vigorous
+nature--a privilege of the intellects of our time, who see the end of
+humanity better and understand Providence--Balzac smilingly and
+serenely issues from such studies, which produced melancholy in
+Moliere and misanthropy in Rousseau. The work he has bequeathed us is
+built with granite strength. Great men forge their own pedestal; the
+future charges itself with the statue. . . . His life was short but
+full, fuller of works than of days. Alas! this puissant, untired
+labourer, this philosopher, this thinker, this poet, this genius lived
+among us the life of all great men. To-day, he is at rest. He has
+entered simultaneously into glory and the tomb. Henceforth, he will
+shine above the clouds that surround us, among the stars of the
+fatherland."
+
+To the credit of Balzac's widow it should be said that, although not
+legally obliged, she accepted her late husband's succession, heavy as
+it was with liabilities, the full extent of which was communicated to
+her only after the funeral. The novelist's mother, having renounced
+her claim on the capital lent by her at various times to her son,
+received an annuity of three thousand francs, which was punctually
+paid until the old lady's demise in 1854. Buisson the tailor, Dablin,
+Madame Delannoy, and the rest of the creditors, one after the other,
+were reimbursed the sums they had also advanced, the profits on
+unexhausted copyright aiding largely in the liberation of the estate.
+Before Eve's own death, every centime of debt was cleared off.
+
+In the romance of Balzac's life it will be always arduous, if not
+infeasible, to estimate exactly Madame Hanska's role, unless, by some
+miracle, her own letters to the novelist could arise phoenix-like from
+their ashes. The liaison that she is said to have formed soon after
+her husband's death with Jean Gigoux, the artist, who painted her
+portrait in 1852, may be regarded either as a retaliation for Honore's
+infidelities, which she was undoubtedly cognizant of, or else as the
+rebound of a sensual nature after the years spent in the too
+idealistic realm of sentiment. And, whichever of these explanations is
+correct, the irony of the conclusion is the same.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIV
+
+                        THE COMEDIE HUMAINE
+
+The idea of joining his separate books together and forming them into
+a coherent whole was one that matured slowly in Balzac's mind. Its
+genesis is to be found in his first collection of short novels
+published in 1830 under the titles: _Scenes of Private Life_, and
+containing _The Vendetta_, _Gobseck_, _The Sceaux Ball_, _The House of
+the Tennis-playing Cat_, _A Double Family_, and _Peace in the
+Household_. Between these stories there was no real connexion except
+that certain characters in one casually reappeared or were alluded to
+in another. By 1832, the _Scenes of Private Life_ had been augmented,
+and, in a second edition, filled four volumes. The additions comprised
+_The Message_, _The Bourse_, _The Adieu_, _The Cure of Tours_, and
+several chapters of _The Woman of Thirty Years Old_, some of which had
+previously come out as serials in the _Revue de Paris_ or the _Mode_.
+
+It has already been related how the novelist all at once realized what
+a gain his literary production might have in adopting a plan and
+building up a social history of his epoch. And, in fact, this
+conception did stimulate his activity for some time, serving too, as
+long as it was uncrystallized, to concentrate his visions upon
+objective realities.
+
+Needing, between 1834 and 1837, a more comprehensive title for the
+rapidly increasing list of his works, he called them _Studies of
+Manners and Morals in the Nineteenth Century_, subdividing them into
+_Scenes of Private Life_, _Scenes of Parisian Life_, and _Scenes of
+Provincial Life_. However, some things he had written were classible
+conveniently neither under the specific names nor under the generic
+one. These outsiders he called _Tales and Philosophic Novels_,
+subsequently shortening the title, between 1835 and 1840, to
+_Philosophic Studies_. The question was what wider description could
+be chosen which might embrace also this last category. Writing to
+Madame Hanska in 1837, he used the expression _Social Studies_,
+telling her that there would be nearly fifty volumes of them. Either
+she, or he himself, must, on reflection, have judged the title
+unsatisfactory, for no edition of his works ever bore this name. Most
+likely the thought occurred to him that such an appellation was more
+suitable to a strictly scientific treatise than to fiction.
+
+The expression _Comedie Humaine_, which he ultimately adopted, is said
+to have been suggested to him by his whilom secretary, the Count
+Auguste de Belloy, after the latter's visit to Italy, during which
+Dante's _Divine Comedy_ had been read and appreciated. But already,
+some years prior to this journey, the novelist would seem to have had
+the Italian poet's masterpiece before his mind. In his _Girl with the
+Golden Eyes_, he had spoken of Paris as a hell which, perhaps, one day
+would have its Dante. De Belloy's share in the matter was probably an
+extra persuasion added to Balzac's own leaning, or the Count may have
+been the one to substitute the word _human_.[*]
+
+  [*] A communication has been made to me, while writing this book,
+      by Monsieur Hetzel, the publisher, tending to show that his
+      father, who was also known in the literary world, had a large
+      share in the choice of the _Comedie Humaine_ as a title.
+
+Madame Hanska was at once informed of the choice. "The _Comedie
+Humaine_, such is the title of my history of society depicted in
+action," he told her in September 1841. And when, between 1841 and
+1842, Hetzel, together with Dubochet and Turne, brought out sixteen
+octavo volumes of his works illustrated, they each carried his name,
+while a preface set forth the reasons which had led the author to
+choose it. Thereafter, every succeeding edition was similarly styled,
+including Houssiaux' series in 1855, and the series of Calmann-Levy,
+known as the definitive one, between 1869 and 1876.
+
+Against the appellation itself no objection can reasonably be made.
+Balzac's fiction takes in a world--an underworld might appropriately
+be said--of Dantesque proportions. As soon as it was fully fledged, it
+started with a large ambition. "My work," he said to Zulma Carraud in
+1834, "is to represent all social effects without anything being
+omitted from it, whether situation of life, physiognomy, character of
+man or woman, manner of living, profession, zone of social existence,
+region of French idiosyncrasy, childhood, maturity, old age, politics,
+jurisdiction, war." And in the Forties the same intention was stated
+as clearly. "I have undertaken the history of the whole of society.
+Often have I summed up my plan in this simple sentence: A generation
+is a drama in which four or five thousand people are the chief actors.
+This drama is my book."
+
+When Hetzel decided to publish a so-far complete edition of the
+_Comedie_, he induced the novelist to insert a preface composed for
+the occasion. Balzac wished at first to use an old preface that he had
+written in conjunction with Felix Davin, and placed, under the
+latter's signature, at the beginning of the _Study of Manners and
+Morals in the Nineteenth Century_. Hetzel objected to this, and urged
+that so important an undertaking ought to be preceded by an author's
+apology. His advice was accepted, and the preface was developed into a
+veritable doctrine and defence. Here are some of its essential
+passages:--
+
+"The _Comedie Humaine_," says Balzac, "first dawned on my brain like a
+dream--one of those impossible projects, it seemed, that are caressed
+and allowed to fly away; a chimera which smiles, shows its woman's
+face, and forthwith unfolds its wings, mounting again into a fancied
+heaven. But the chimera, as many chimeras do, changed into reality. It
+had its commands and its tyranny to which I was obliged to yield.
+
+"It was born from a comparison between humanity and animality. It
+would be an error to believe that the great quarrel which in recent
+times has arisen between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire is
+concerned with a scientific innovation. The _unity of composition_
+involved in it had already, under other terms, occupied the greatest
+minds of the two preceding centuries. On reading over again the
+extraordinary works of such mystic writers as Swedenborg,
+Saint-Martin, etc., who have studied the relations of science with the
+infinite, and the writings of the finest geniuses in natural history,
+such as Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles Bonnet, etc., one finds in the
+monads of Leibnitz, in the organic molecules of Buffon, in the
+vegetative force of Needham, in the _jointing_ of similar parts of
+Charles Bonnet--who was bold enough to write in 1760: 'The animal
+vegetates like the plant;' one finds, I say, the rudiments of the
+beautiful law of _self for self_ on which the unity of composition
+reposes. There is only one animal. The Creator has made use only of
+one and the same pattern for all organized beings. The animal is a
+principle which acquires its exterior form, or, to speak more exactly,
+the differences of its form, in the surroundings in which it is called
+upon to develop. The various zoologic species result from these
+differences. The proclamation and upholding of this system, in
+harmony, moreover, with the ideas we have of the Divine power, will be
+the eternal honour of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who was the vanquisher
+of Cuvier on this point of high science, and whose triumph was
+acknowledged in the last article written by the great Goethe."
+
+Continuing his exposition, the novelist says all men resemble each
+other, but in the same manner as a horse resembles a bird. They are
+also divided into species. These species differ according to social
+surroundings. A peasant, a tradesman, an artist, a great lord are as
+distinct from each other as a wolf is from a sheep. Besides, there is
+another thing peculiar to man, viz. that male and female are not
+alike, whereas among the rest of the animals, the female is similar to
+the male. The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy to be the
+spouse of a prince, and often a prince's wife is not worth an
+artist's. Then, again, there is this difference. The lower animals are
+strictly dependent on circumstances, each species feeding and housing
+itself in a uniform manner. Man has not such uniformity. In Paris, he
+is not the same as in a provincial town; in the provinces, not the
+same as in rural surroundings. When studying him, there are many
+things to be considered--habitat, furniture, food, clothes, language.
+In fine, the subject taken up by a novelist who wishes to treat it
+properly, comprises man as an integral portion of a social species,
+woman as not peculiarly belonging to any, and _entourage_ from its
+widest circumference of country down to the narrowest one of home.
+
+"But," he goes on, "how is it possible to render the drama of life
+interesting, with the three or four thousand varying characters
+presented by a society? How please at the same time the philosopher,
+and the masses who demand poetry and philosophy under striking images?
+If I conceived the importance and poetry of this history of the human
+heart, I saw no means of execution; for, down to our epoch, the most
+celebrated narrators had spent their talent in creating one or two
+typical characters, in depicting one phase of life. With this thought,
+I read the works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott, the modern _trouvere_,
+was then giving a gigantic vogue to a kind of composition unjustly
+called secondary. Is it not really harder to compete with the registry
+of births, marriages, and deaths by means of Daphnis and Chloe,
+Roland, Amadis, Panurge, Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa,
+Lovelace, Robinson Crusoe, Ossian, Julie d'Etanges, My Uncle Toby,
+Werther, Rene, Corinne, Adolphe, Gil Blas, Paul and Virginia, Jeanie
+Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe, Manfred, Mignon, than to arrange facts
+almost similar among all nations, to seek for the spirit of laws
+fallen into decay, to draw up theories which lead people astray, or,
+as certain metaphysicians, to explain what exists? First of all,
+nearly all these characters, whose existence becomes longer, more
+genuine than that of the generations amid which they are made to be
+born, live only on condition of being a vast image of the present.
+Conceived in the womb of the century, the whole human heart moves
+beneath their outward covering; it often conceals a whole philosophy.
+Walter Scott, therefore, raised to the philosophic value of history
+the novel--that literature which from century to century adorns with
+immortal diamonds the poetic crown of the countries where letters are
+cultivated. He put into it the spirit of ancient times; he blended in
+it at once drama, dialogue, portraiture, landscape, description; he
+brought into it the marvellous and the true, those elements of the
+epopee; he made poetry mingle in it with the humblest sorts of
+language. But having less invented a system than found out his manner
+in the ardour of work, or by the logic of this work, he had not
+thought of linking his compositions to each other so as to co-ordinate
+a complete history, each chapter of which would have been a novel and
+each novel an epoch. Perceiving this want of connection, which, indeed
+does not render the Scotchman less great, I saw both the system that
+was favourable to the execution of my work, and the possibility of
+carrying it out. Although, so to speak, dazzled by the surprising
+fecundity of Walter Scott, always equal to himself and always
+original, I did not despair, for I found the reason of such talent in
+the variety of human nature. _Chance is the greatest novelist in the
+world._ To be fertile, one has only to study it. French society was to
+be the historian. I was to be only the secretary. By drawing up an
+inventory of virtues and vices, by assembling the principal facts of
+passions, by painting characters, by choosing the principal events of
+society, by composing types through the union of several homogeneous
+characters, perhaps I should succeed in writing the history forgotten
+by so many historians, that of _manners and morals_. With much
+patience and courage, I should realize, with regard to France in the
+nineteenth century, the book we all regret which Rome, Athens, Tyre,
+Memphis, Persia, India have not unfortunately left about their
+civilizations, and which like the Abbe Barthelemy, the courageous and
+patient Monteil had essayed for the Middle Ages, but in a form not
+very attractive."
+
+One may well believe the novelist when he explains that "it was no
+small task to depict the two or three thousand prominent figures of an
+epoch," representing typical phases in all existences, which, says he,
+"is one of the accuracies I have most sought for. I have tried to give
+a notion also of the different parts of our beautiful land. My work
+has its geography, as it has its genealogy and its families, its
+places and things, its persons and its facts, as it has its blazonry,
+its nobles and its commoners, its artisans and its peasants, its
+politicians and its dandies, its army, in fine, its epitome of life
+--all this in its settings and galleries."
+
+The Human Comedy, as finally arranged and classified in 1845, had
+three chief divisions: _Studies of Manners and Morals_, _Philosophic
+Studies_, _Analytic Studies_; and the first of these was subdivided
+into _Scenes of Private Life_, _Scenes of Provincial Life_, _Scenes of
+Parisian Life_, _Scenes of Military Life_, _Scenes of Political Life_,
+_Scenes of Country Life_.
+
+Even if we include the unwritten books, the diminution from first to
+second and from second to third is considerable. In the novelist's
+mind, this difference was intentional. According to his conception,
+the first large series represented the broad base of effects, upon
+which was superposed the second plane of causes, less numerous and
+more concentrated. In the latter, he strove to answer the why and
+wherefore of sentiments; in the former, to exhibit their action in
+varying modes. In the former, therefore, he represented individuals;
+in the latter, his individuals became types. All this he detailed to
+Madame Hanska, insisting on the statement that everywhere he gave life
+to the type by individualizing it, and significance to the individuals
+by rendering them typical. At the top of the cone he treated, in his
+analytical studies, of the principles whence causes and effects
+proceed. The manners and morals at the base, he said, were the
+spectacle; the causes above were the side-scenes; and the principles
+at the top were the author.
+
+Coming to the subdivisions, he explains that his _Scenes of Private
+Life_ deal with humanity's childhood and adolescence, and the errors
+of these, in short, with the period of budding passions; the _Scenes
+of Provincial Life_, with passions in full development--calculation,
+interest, ambition, etc.; the _Scenes of Parisian Life_, with the
+peculiar tastes, vices and temptations of capitals, that is to say,
+with passion unbridled. The interpretation assigned to these
+categories is a fanciful one. Passions are born and bred and produce
+their full effect in every place and phase of life. They may assume
+varying forms in divers surroundings, but such variation has no
+analogy with change of age. Only by forcing the moral of his stories
+was the author able to give them these secondary significations.
+Indeed, he was often in straits to decide in which category he ought
+to class one and another novel. _Pere Goriot_ was originally in the
+_Scenes of Parisian Life_, where it has a certain _raison d'etre_.
+Ultimately, it found its way into the _Scenes of Private Life_. And a
+greater alteration was made by removing _Madame Firmiani_ and the
+_Woman-Study_ from the _Philosophic Studies_, and placing them also in
+the _Private Life_ series.
+
+Be it granted that the plan of the _Comedy_ was grandiose in its
+scope; it was none the less doomed in its execution to suffer for its
+ambitiousness, since an attempt was made to subordinate imagination to
+science in a domain where the rights of imagination were paramount.
+
+That which Balzac has best rendered in it is the struggle for life on
+the social plane; and that which forms its most legitimate claim to be
+deemed in some measure a whole is the general reference to this in all
+the so-called parts. Before the Revolution, the action of the law was
+narrower, being chiefly limited to members of one class. With the fall
+of ancient privilege the sphere of competition was opened to the
+entire nation; and, instead of nobles contending with nobles,
+churchmen with churchmen, tradesmen with tradesmen, there was an
+interpenetration of combatants over all the field of battle, or
+rather, the several smaller fields of battle became one large one.
+Balzac's fiction reproduces the later phase in minute detail, and,
+mostly, with a treatment suited to the subject.
+
+Brunetiere, whose chapter on the _Comedy_ is written more gropingly
+than the rest of his study of the novelist, makes use of an ingenious
+comparison with intent to persuade that the stories had from the very
+first a predestined organic union, with ramifications which the author
+saw but obscurely and which were joined together more closely--as also
+more consciously--during the lapse of years. "Thus," he says,
+"brothers and sisters, in the time of their infancy or childhood, have
+nothing in common except a certain family resemblance--and this not
+always. But, as they advance in age, the features that individualized
+them become attenuated, they return to the type of their progenitors,
+and one perceives that they are children of the same father and
+mother. Balzac's novels," he concludes, "have a connection of this
+kind. In his head, they were, so to speak, contemporary."
+
+The simile is not a happy one. It does not help to reconcile us to an
+artificial approximation of books that are heterogeneous, unequal in
+value, and, frequently, composed under influences far removed from the
+after-thought that was given to them by a putative father. Balzac was
+not well inspired in relating his novels to each other logically. Such
+natural relationship as they possess is that of issuing from the same
+brain, though acting under varying conditions and in different states
+of development; and it is true that, if the story of this brain is
+known, and its experiences understood, a certain classification might
+be made--perhaps more than one--of its creations, on account of common
+traits, resemblances of subject or treatment, which could serve to
+link them together loosely. But, between this arrangement and the
+artificial hierarchy of the _Comedy_, it is impossible to find a bridge
+to pass over.
+
+One of the real links betwixt the novels is the reappearance of the
+same people in many of them, which thing is not in itself displeasing.
+It has the advantage of allowing the author to display his men and
+women in changed circumstances, to cast side-lights upon them, and to
+reveal them more completely. However, here and there, we pay for the
+privilege in meeting with bores whose further acquaintance we would
+fain have been spared. And then, also, we are likely enough to come
+across a hero or heroine as a child, after learning all about his or
+her maturer life; to accompany people to the grave and see them
+buried, and yet, in a later book, to be introduced to them as alive as
+ever they were. This is disconcerting. Usually, Balzac remembers his
+characters well enough to be consistent in other respects when he
+makes them speak and act, or lets us into his confidence about them.
+Still, he is guilty of a few lapses of memory. In _The Woman of Thirty
+Years Old_, Madame d'Aiglemont has two children in the early chapters;
+subsequently, one is drowned, and, instead of one remaining, we learn
+there are three--a new reading of Wordsworth's _We are seven_. Again,
+in the _Lost Illusions_, Esther Gobseck has blond hair in one
+description of her, and black in another. We are reduced to supposing
+she had dyed it. Mistakes of the kind have been made by others writers
+of fiction who have worked quickly. In the _Comedy_, the number of
+_dramatis personae_ is exceedingly large. Balzac laughingly remarked
+one day that they needed a biographical dictionary to render their
+identity clear; and he added that perhaps somebody would be tempted to
+do the work at a later date. He guessed rightly. In 1893, Messrs.
+Cerfbeer and Cristophe undertook the task and carried it through in a
+book that they call the _Repertory of the Comedie Humaine_.[*] All the
+fictitious personages or petty folk that live in the novelist's pages
+are duly docketed, and their births, marriages, deaths, and stage
+appearances recorded in this _Who's Who_, a big volume of five hundred
+and sixty-three pages, constituting a veritable curiosity of
+literature.
+
+  [*] This work has been made available at Project Gutenberg by Team
+      Balzac. It is in two volumes.--Preparer's Note.
+
+Much has been said in the preceding chapters of the large use Balzac
+made of his own life, his adventures, his experiences, in composing
+the integral portions of his _Comedy_, so that its contents, for any
+one who can interpret, becomes a valuable autobiography. And the
+lesser as well as the greater novels supply facts. In the _Forsaken
+Woman_, Madame de Beauseant, who has been jilted by the Marquis of
+Ajuda-Pinto, permits herself to be wooed by Gaston de Nueil, a man far
+younger than herself. After ten years, he, in turn, quits her to marry
+the person his mother has chosen for him; but, unable to bear the
+combined burden of his remorse and yearning regret, he commits
+suicide. This tale, like the _Lily in the Valley_, is a adaptation of
+Balzac's liaison with Madame de Berny. It was written in the very year
+he severed the material ties that bound them. The only distinction
+between his case and that of Gaston de Nueil was that he had no desire
+to kill himself, and was content to be no more than a friend, since he
+was the freer to flirt with Madame de Castries. And when the latter
+lady kept him on tenter-hooks, tormenting him, tempting him, but never
+yielding to him, he revenged himself by writing the _Duchess de
+Langeais_, attributing to the foolish old general his own hopes,
+fears, and disappointments at the hands of the coquettish, capricious
+duchess. "I alone," he said in a letter, "know the horrible that is in
+this narrative." And, if, in _Albert Savarus_, we have a confession of
+his political ambitions and campaigns, we get in _Cesar Birotteau_ and
+the _Petty Bourgeois_ his financial projects, which never brought him
+anything; in _A Man of Business_--as well as elsewhere--his continual
+money embarrassments. How deeply he felt them, he often lets us gather
+from his fiction. "I have been to a capitalist," he wrote in one of
+his epistles to Madame Hanska, "a capitalist to whom are due
+indemnities agreed on between us for works promised and not executed;
+and I offered him a certain number of copies of the _Studies of
+Manners and Morals_. I proposed five thousand francs with deferred
+payment, instead of three thousand francs cash. He refused everything,
+even my signature and a bill, telling me my fortune was in my talent
+and that I might die any time. This scene is one of the most infamous
+I have known. Some day I will reproduce it."
+
+And he did, with many things else that happened to him in his dealings
+with his fellows. There is biography too, as well as autobiography in
+the _Comedy_--this notwithstanding his disclaimers. Exact portraiture
+he avoided for obvious reasons, but intentional portraiture he
+indulged in largely; and life and character were sufficiently near the
+truth for shrewd contemporaries to recognize the originals. To add one
+or two examples to the number already given. Claire Brunne (Madame
+Marbouty) seems to have suggested his _Muse of the County_, a
+Berrichon blue-stocking; Madame d'Agoult and Liszt became Madame de
+Rochfide and the musician Conti in _Beatrix_; a cousin of Madame
+Hanska, Thaddeus Wylezinski, who worshipped her discreetly, is
+depicted under the traits of Thaddeus Paz, a Polish exile in the
+_False Mistress_, who assumes a feigned name to conceal his love;
+Lamartine furnished the conception of the poet Canalis in _Modeste
+Mignon_, the resemblance being at first so striking that the novelist
+afterwards toned it away a little; and Monnier, the caricaturist,
+certainly supplied the essential elements in Bixiou, who is so well
+drawn in _Cousin Bette_ and the _Firm of Nucingen_. The Baron Nucingen
+himself has some of the features of the James de Rothschild whom
+Balzac knew; and Rastignac embodied the author's impression of Thiers
+in the statesman's earlier years. One might go further and couple
+Delacroix the painter's name with that of Joseph Bridau in _A
+Bachelor's Household_, Frederick Lemaitre, the actor's, with Medal's
+in _Cousin Pons_, Emile de Girardin's with du Tillet's in _Cesar
+Birotteau_. At last, however, owing to the mingling of one personality
+with another, identification is increasingly difficult, unless the
+novelist comes to our assistance, as in the story _Cousin Bette_,
+where he confesses Lisbeth the old maid, to be made up out of three
+persons, Madame Valmore, Madame Hanska's aunt, and his own mother.
+
+Summing up Balzac's entire literary production, which in Monsieur de
+Lovenjoul's catalogue occupies no fewer than fourteen pages, we find
+that it comprises, besides the ninety-six different works of the
+_Comedie Humaine_ properly so called, ten volumes of his early novels;
+six complete dramatic pieces--one, the _School for Husbands and Wives_
+recently published;[*] thirty _Contes Drolatiques_; and three hundred
+and fourteen articles and opuscles, some of them fairly long, since
+the _Reminiscences of a Pariah_ has a hundred and eighty-four pages
+octavo, the _Theory of Walking_ fifty, the _Code of Honest People_ a
+hundred and twelve, the _Impartial History of the Jesuits_ eighty;
+these exclusive of the _Revue Parisienne_ with its two hundred and
+twenty pages, which, as we have seen, was written entirely by himself.
+When we remember that the whole of this, with the exception of the
+early novels and six of the opuscles, was produced in twenty years, we
+can better appreciate the man's industry, which, as Monsieur Le Breton
+calculates, yielded an average of some two thousand pages, or four to
+five volumes a year.
+
+  [*] Played for the first time March 13, 1910, at the Odeon Theatre.
+
+In the miscellanies one meets with much that is curious, amusing, and
+instructive, quite worthy to figure in the _Comedy_--witty dialogues,
+light stories containing deductions _a la_ Sherlock Holmes or Edgar
+Allan Poe, plenty of satire, sometimes acidulated as in his _Troubles
+and Trials of an English Cat_, and theories about everything,
+indicative of extensive reading, large assimilation and quick
+reasoning. The miscellanies really stand to the novels in the relation
+of a sort of prolegomenon. They serve for its better understanding,
+and are agreeable even for independent study.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XV
+
+                         VALUE OF THE WORK
+
+The aim of an author whose writings are intended to please must be
+ethical as well as aesthetic, if he respects himself and his readers.
+He wishes the pleasure he can give to do good, not harm. The good he
+feels capable of producing may be limited to the physical or may
+extend beyond to the moral; but it will be found in his work in so far
+as the latter is truly artistic.
+
+Balzac's prefaces and correspondence are so many proofs that he
+rejected the pretensions of literature or any other art to absolute
+independence. The doctrine of art for art's sake alone would have had
+no meaning to him. However much his striving to confer on his novels
+organic unity, and however much the writing against time deteriorated
+his practice, they did not prevent him from recognizing the ethical
+claim. What he realized less was the necessity of submitting treatment
+to the same government of law.
+
+Even if we grant that the plan of the _Comedie Humaine_ existed in the
+novelist's mind from the commencement, obscurely at first, more
+clearly afterwards, the plan itself was not artistic in the sense that
+an image in the architect's mind is artistic when he designs on paper
+the edifice he purposes to construct, or in the painter's mind when he
+chooses the subject and details of his picture, or in the sculptor's
+mind when he arranges his group of statuary, or in the musician's mind
+when he conjures up his opera or oratorio. Balzac's plan was one of
+numbers or logic merely. The block of his _Comedy_ was composed on the
+dictionary principle of leaving nothing out which could be put in; and
+his genius, great as it was, wrestled achingly and in vain with a task
+from which selection was practically banished and which was a piling
+of Pelion on Ossa.
+
+For this reason it is that, regarded as an aggregate, the _Comedie
+Humaine_ can be admired only as one may admire a forceful mass of
+things, when it is looked at from afar, through an atmosphere that
+softens outlines, hides or transforms detail, adds irreality. In such
+an ambience certain novels that by themselves would shock, gain a sort
+of appropriateness, and others that are trivial or dull serve as
+foils. But, at the same time, we know that the effect is partly
+illusion.
+
+In a writer's entire production the constant factor is usually his
+style, while subject and treatment vary. Balzac, however, is an
+exception in this respect as in most others. He attains terse vigour
+in not a few of his books, but in not a few also he disfigures page
+after page with loose, sprawling ruggedness, not to say pretentious
+obscurity. His opinion of himself as a stylist was high, higher no
+doubt than that he held of George Sand, to whom he accorded eminence
+mainly on this ground. Of the French language he said that he had
+enriched it by his alms. Finding it poor but proud, he had made it a
+millionaire. And the assertion was put forward with the same
+seriousness that he displayed when declaring that there were three men
+only of his time who really knew their mother-tongue--Victor Hugo,
+Theophile Gautier, and himself. That his conversancy with French
+extended from Froissart downwards, through Rabelais' succulent jargon
+as well as Moliere's racy idiom, is patent in nearly all he wrote; and
+that he was capable of using this vocabulary aptly is sufficiently
+shown in the best and simplest of his works. But it is not so clear
+that he added anything to the original stock. Such words as he coined
+under the impetus of his exuberance are mostly found in his letters
+and have not been taken into favour.
+
+A demur must likewise be entered against his style's possessing the
+qualities that constitute a charm apart from the matter expressed. Too
+many tendencies wrought in him uncurbed for his ideas to clothe
+themselves constantly in a suitable and harmonious dress. Generally
+when his personality intruded itself in the narrative, it was quite
+impossible for him to speak unless affectedly, with a mixture of odd
+figures of speech and similes that hurtled in phrases of heavy
+construction. Taine has collected a few of these. In the _Cure of
+Tours_ we read:--
+
+"No creature of the feminine gender was more capable than Mademoiselle
+Sophie Gamard of formulating the elegiac nature of an old maid."
+
+Elsewhere, he speaks of the "fluid projections of looks that serve to
+touch the suave skin of a woman;" of the "atmosphere of Paris in which
+seethes a simoon that swells the heart;" of the "coefficient reason of
+events;" of "pecuniary mnemonics;" of "sentences flung out through the
+capillary tubes of the great female confabulation;" of "devouring
+ideas distilled through a bald forehead;" of a "lover's enwrapping his
+mistress in the wadding of his attentions;" of "abortions in which the
+spawn of genius cumbers an arid strand;" of the "philosophic moors of
+incredulity;" of a "town troubled in its public and private
+intestines."
+
+In one of the chapters of _Seraphita_, he says: "Wilfred arrived at
+Seraphita's house to relate his life, to paint the grandeur of his
+soul by the greatness of his faults; but, when he found himself in the
+zone embraced by those eyes whose azure scintillations met with no
+horizon in front, and offered none behind, he became calm again and
+submissive as the lion who, bounding on his prey in an African plain,
+receives, on the wing of the winds, a message of love, and stops. An
+abyss opened into which fell the words of his delirium!"
+
+And the same Wilfred "trusted to his perspicacity to discover the
+parcels of truth rolled by the old servant in the torrent of his
+divagations."
+
+During the years of Balzac's greatest literary activity, which were
+also those of his bitterest polemics, his opponents made much capital
+out of the caprices of his pen. In the lawsuit against the _Revue de
+Paris_, Monsieur Chaix d'Est-Ange, the defendant's counsel, provoked
+roars of laughter by quoting passages from the _Lily in the Valley_;
+and Jules Janin, in his criticism of _A Provincial Great Man in
+Paris_, grew equally merry over the verbal conceits abounding in the
+portraits of persons. And yet the very volumes that furnish the
+largest number of ill-begotten sentences contain many passages of
+sustained dignity, sober strength, and proportioned beauty.
+
+Normally, Balzac's style, in spite of its mannerisms, its use and
+abuse of metaphor, its laboured evolution and expression of the idea,
+and its length and heaviness of period, adapts itself to the matter,
+and alters with kaleidoscopic celerity, according as there is
+description, analysis, or dramatization. Thus blending with the
+subject, it loses a good deal of its proper virtue, which explains why
+it does not afford the pleasure of form enjoyed in such writers as
+George Sand, Flaubert, Renan, and Anatole France. The pleasure his
+word-conjuring can yield is chiefly of the sensuous order. The
+following passage is, as Taine says, botany turned into imagination
+and passion:--
+
+"Have you felt in the meadows, in the month of May, the perfume which
+communicates to every living being the thrill of fecundation, which,
+when you are in a boat, makes you dip your hands in the rippling water
+and let your hair fly in the wind, while your thoughts grow green like
+the boughs of the forest? A tiny herb, the sweet-smelling anthoxanthum
+is the principal of this veiled harmony. Thus, no one can stay in its
+proximity unaffected by it. Put into a nosegay its glittering blades
+streaked like a green-and-white netted dress; inexhaustible effluvia
+will stir in the bottom of your heart the budding roses that modesty
+crushes there. Within the depths of the scooped-out neck of porcelain,
+suppose a wide margin composed of the white tufts peculiar to the
+sedum of vines in Touraine; a vague image of desirable forms turned
+like those of a submissive slave. From this setting issue spirals of
+white-belled convolvulus, twigs of pink rest-harrow mingled with a few
+ferns, and a few young oak-shoots having magnificently coloured
+leaves; all advance bowing themselves, humble as weeping willows,
+timid and suppliant as prayers. Above, see the slender-flowered
+fibrils, unceasingly swayed, of the purply amourette, which sheds in
+profusion its yellowy anthers; the snowy pyramids of the field and
+water glyceria; the green locks of the barren bromus; the tapered
+plumes of the agrosits, called wind-ears; violet-hued hopes with which
+first dreams are crowned, and which stand out on the grey ground of
+flax where the light radiates round these blossoming herbs. But
+already, higher up, a few Bengal roses scattered among the airy lace
+of the daucus, the feathers of the marsh-flax, the marabouts of the
+meadow-sweet, the umbellae of the white chervil, the blond hair of the
+seeding clematis, the neat saltiers of the milk-white cross-wort, the
+corymbs of the yarrow, the spreading stems of the pink-and-black
+flowered fumitory, the tendrils of the vine, the sinuous sprays of
+honeysuckle; in fine, all that is most dishevelled and ragged in these
+naive creatures; flames and triple darts, lanceolated, denticulated
+leaves, stems tormented like vague desires twisted at the bottom of
+the soul; from the womb of this prolix torrent of love that overflows,
+shoots up a magnificent red double-poppy with its glands ready to
+open, displaying the spikes of its fire above the starred jasmine and
+dominating the incessant rain of pollen, a fair cloud that sparkles in
+the air, reflecting the light in its myriad glistening atoms. What
+woman, thrilled by the love-scent lurking in the anthoxanthum, will
+not understand this wealth of submissive ideas, this white tenderness
+troubled by untamed stirrings and this red desire of love demanding a
+happiness refused in those struggles a hundred times recommenced, of
+restrained, eternal passion. Was not all that is offered to God
+offered to love in this poesy of luminous flowers incessantly humming
+its melodies to the heart, caressing hidden pleasures there, unavowed
+hopes, illusions that blaze and vanish like gossamer threads on a
+sultry night?"
+
+This last quotation was probably in Sainte-Beuve's mind when he spoke
+of the efflorescence by which Balzac gave to everything the sentiment
+of life and made the page itself thrill. Elsewhere he found the
+efflorescence degenerate into something exciting and dissolvent,
+enervating, rose-tinted, and veined with every hue, deliciously
+corruptive, Byzantine, suggestive of debauch, abandoning itself to the
+fluidity of each movement. Sainte-Beuve was not an altogether
+unprejudiced critic of the novelist; but his impeachment can hardly be
+refuted, although Brunetiere would fain persuade us that the only
+thing which may be reasonably inveighed against in Balzac's style is
+its indelicacy or rather native non-delicacy. If the _Contes
+Drolatiques_ alone had been in question, this lesser accusation might
+suffice. But there are the _Lost Illusions_, the _Bachelor's
+Household_, and _Cousin Bette_, not to mention other novels, in which
+the scenes of vice are dwelt upon with visible complacency and a
+glamour is created and thrown over them by the writer's imagination,
+in such a way that the effect is nauseous in proportion as it is
+pleasurable. The artistic representation of vice and crime is
+justifiable only in so far as the mind contemplating it is carried out
+and beyond into the sphere of sane emotion. True, by considerable
+portions of the _Comedie Humaine_ only sane emotions are roused; but
+these portions are, more often than not, those wherefrom the author's
+peculiar genius is absent. It is in less conspicuous works, or those
+like the _Cure of Tours_, the _Country Doctor_, _Cesar Birotteau_,
+_Cousin Pons_, the _Reverse Side of Contemporary History_ that the
+eternal conflict of good and evil is so exhibited as to evoke healthy
+pity, sympathy, admiration, and their equally healthy contraries, and
+also a wider comprehension of life.
+
+It is difficult to separate the subject-matter of a novel from its
+treatment. Yet a word should be said of Balzac's widening the limits
+of admission. His widening was two-fold. It boldly took the naked
+reality of latest date, the men and women of his time in the full
+glare of passion and action, unsoftened by the veil that hides and in
+some measure transforms when they have passed into history; and it
+included in this reality the little, the commonplace, the trivial.
+This innovator in fiction aimed, as Crabbe and Wordsworth had aimed in
+poetry, at interesting the reader in themes which were ordinarily
+deemed to be void of interest. The thing deserved trying. His
+predecessors, and even his contemporaries, had neglected it. An
+experimenter in this direction, he now and then forgot that the proper
+subject-matter of the novel is man--man either individual or
+collective--and spent himself in fruitless endeavours to endow the
+abstract with reality.
+
+When he opined, somewhat rashly, that George Sand had no force of
+conception, no power of constructing a plot, no faculty of attaining
+the true, no art of the pathetic, he doubtless wished the influence to
+be drawn that he was not lacking in them himself.
+
+As regards the first, his claim can be admitted without reserve. Force
+of conception is dominant throughout his fiction. It is that which
+gained his novels their earliest acceptance. Whether they were
+approved or disapproved in other respects, their strong originality
+imposed itself on the attention of friends and enemies alike. One felt
+then, and one feels now, though more than half a century has elapsed
+since they were produced, that, whatever factitious accretions clung
+to them, they came into the world with substance and form new-fashioned;
+no mere servile perpetuation of an effete type, but a fresh departure
+in the annals of art.
+
+Especially is this seen in his characterization. His men and women are
+most of them put on foot with the energy of movement in them and an
+idiosyncrasy of speech and action that has not been surpassed. As
+already stated, they generally are not portraits, although his memory
+was of that peculiar concave visuality which allowed him to cast its
+images forth solidly into space. What he did was to remodel these
+images with proportions differing from those of the reality,
+magnifying or diminishing them pretty much as Swift with his
+Brobdingnagians and Lilliputians; and, having got the body of his
+personage recomposed, with mental and moral qualities and defects
+corresponding to every one of its details--for Balzac was a firm
+believer in the corporal being an exact reflection of the spiritual
+--he set his mechanisms in motion.[*]
+
+  [*] "A round waist," he says, "is a sign of force; but women so
+      built are imperious, self-willed, more voluptuous than tender.
+      On the contrary, flat-waisted women are devoted, full of
+      finesse, inclined to melancholy." Elsewhere, he informs us that
+      "most women who ride horseback well are not tender." "Hands
+      like those of a Greek statue announce a mind of illogical
+      domination; eyebrows that meet indicate a jealous tendency. In
+      all great men the neck is short, and it is rare that a tall
+      man possesses eminent faculties."
+
+To call his men and women mechanisms, while yet acknowledging their
+intense vitality, may seem a contradiction; but nothing less than this
+antinomy is adequate to indicate the fatality of Balzac's creatures.
+None of them ever appear to be free agents. Planet-like they revolve
+in an orbit, or meteor-like they rush headlong, and their course in
+the one or the other case is guessable from the beginning. Not that
+change or development is precluded. The conjuror provides for large
+transformation; but the law of such transformation is one of iron
+necessity, and, when he brings in at the end his interferences of
+Providence, they shock us as an inconsequence. However, though bound
+by their weird, his people are extraordinarily various in their aspect
+and doings. It is rare that he repeats his characters, albeit many of
+them touch each other at certain points. The exceptions are caused by
+his sometimes altering his manner of characterization and proceeding
+from the inside first. This variation goes to the extent of
+distinguishing influences of the soil as well as of social grade and
+temperament. His northerners speak and act otherwise than those of the
+south or west, and, in the main, are true to life, despite the
+author's perceptible satire when depicting provincials.
+
+Parallel to his vigorous creation of character is the force with which
+he builds up their environment. Here his realism is intense. Indeed,
+occasionally one is tempted to credit Balzac with a greater love of
+things than of men, yet not the things of nature as much as things
+made by men. His portrayal of landscape may be fine prose, but
+contains no pure feeling of poetry in it, while, in the town, in the
+house, in the street, wherever the human mind and hand have left their
+imprints, his language grows warm, his fancy swoops and grasps the
+significance of detail; these dumb survivals of the past become
+eloquent to his ears; his eyes discover in them a reflecting retina
+which, obedient to his command, resuscitates former contacts, a world
+buried and now found again. When attempting the historical novel, in
+which his persons are typical rather than individual, he still
+preserves this exactitude of local colouring. His descriptions of
+places, in fact, in all his books are almost photographs, and, where
+change has been slow, still serve to guide the curious traveller.
+
+In his preface to the _Cabinet of Antiques_, he explains how he
+dealt with his raw material. A young man has been prosecuted before
+the Assize Court, and had been condemned and branded. This case he
+connected with the story of an ancient family fallen from its high
+estate and dwelling in provincial surroundings. The story had
+dramatic elements in it, but less intensely dramatic than those of
+the young man's case. "This way of proceeding," he says, "should be
+that of an historian of manners and morals. His task consists in
+blending analogous facts in a single picture. Is he not rather bound
+to give the spirit than the letter of the happenings? He synthesizes
+them. Often it is necessary to pick out several similar characters
+in order to succeed in making up one, just as odd people are met with
+who are so ridiculous that two distinct persons may be created out of
+them. . . . . Literature uses a means employed in painting, which, to
+obtain a fine figure, adapts the hands of one model, the foot of
+another, the chest of a third, the shoulders of a fourth."
+
+The foregoing quotation raises the question of the significance of the
+term truth as applied to fiction. Evidently, it cannot have the same
+meaning as when applied to history or biography. In the latter, the
+writer invents neither circumstances nor actions, nor the persons
+engaged in them, but seeks to know the whole of the first two exactly
+as they occurred, and to interpret, as nearly to life as may be, the
+third. However, if he be a philosopher, he will perhaps try to show
+the intimate relations existing between these same persons and the
+events in which they were concerned; and, in doing so, he will step
+out of his proper role and assume one which is less easy for him than
+for the novelist to play, since the writer of fiction composes both
+his _dramatis personae_ and their story; and the concordance between
+them is more a matter of art than of science.
+
+Still it is possible that neither a novelist's characters nor their
+environment shall be in entire agreement with all observable facts.
+There may be arrangements, eliminations, additions, which, though
+pleasing to the reader, may remove the mimic world to a plane above
+that of the so-called real one. Thus removed, Balzac judged George
+Sand's production to be. And we must confess that, even in _Little
+Fadette_, _The Devil's Pool_, and _Francois le Champi_, it deals with
+human experience in a mode differing widely from that which the author
+of _Eugenie Grandet_ considered conform to truth.
+
+As regards the methods of these two rivals, the claim to superior
+truth cannot be settled in Balzac's favour by merely pointing to his
+realism. Realism tried by the norm of truth is relative. What it
+represents of the accidental in life may be much less than what it
+omits of the essential or potential, for these two words are often
+interchangeable. In the same object, different people usually see
+different aspects, qualities, attributes. Is one spectacle necessarily
+true and another false? It is certain that George Sand, in her stories
+of peasant life, largely uses the artist's liberty of leaving out a
+great deal that Balzac would have put in when treating a like subject.
+It is certain that from some themes and details that Balzac delighted
+in describing she deliberately turned away, and it is certain also
+that she introduced into her fiction not a little of the Utopian world
+that has haunted man in his later development without there being
+actuality or the least chance of realization to lend it substance. But
+Balzac's fiction has, too, its pocket Utopias, less attractive and
+less invigorating than Madame Dudevant's, and in his most realistic
+portrayals there are not infrequently dream-scapes of the fancy. The
+truth that we can most readily perceive in his work is one which,
+after all, embraces the ideally potential in man as well as his most
+material manifestations. It is small compared with the mass of what he
+wrote; but, where found, it is supreme.
+
+In constructing plot Balzac is unequal and often inferior. Here it is
+that his romanticist origins reappear rankly like weeds, giving us
+factitious melodrama that accords ill with his sober harvest of
+actuality. And his melodrama has not the merit of being various. It
+nearly always contains the same band of rogues, disguised under
+different names, conspiring to ruin innocent victims by the old tricks
+of their trade.
+
+Then, again, many of his novels have no understandable progression
+from the commencement, through the middle, to the conclusion. This is
+not because he was incapable of involving his characters in the
+consequences of their actions, but because things that he esteemed of
+greater importance interfered with the story's logical development. We
+have episodes encroaching on the main design, or what was originally
+intended to be the main design, which is disaggregated before the end
+is arrived at. As a matter of fact, quite a number of his plots are
+swamped by what he forces into them with the zeal of an
+encyclopaedist. Philosophy, history, geography, law, medicine, trade,
+industry, agriculture enter by their own right. The novelist yields up
+his wand, and the pedagogue or _vulgarisateur_ comes forward with his
+chalk and blackboard. Canalization is explained at length in the
+_Village Cure_; will-making is discoursed upon in _Ursule Mirouet_;
+promissory notes, bills of exchange, and protests, not to speak of
+business accounts, cover pages in the _Lost Illusions_; therapeutics
+takes the place of narrative in the _Reverse Side of Contemporary
+History_; physiology is lectured upon in the _Lily in the Valley_;
+_Louis Lambert_ aims at becoming a second and better edition of the
+_Thoughts of Pascal_; and in _Seraphita_ we have sermons as long and
+tedious as those of an Elizabethan divine. The result is that even
+novels containing the presentment of love in its most passional phases
+lose their right to the name. At best they can be called only
+disparate chapters of fiction; at worst, they are merely raw material.
+
+As for his achievement in the pathetic, it is almost nil. At least, if
+by pathos we mean that which touches the heart's tenderest strings.
+Harrow us, he can; play upon many of our emotions, he is able to at
+will. But, at bottom, he had too little sympathy with his fellows to
+find in their mistakes, or sins, or sufferings, the wherewithal to
+bring out of us our most generous tears. Those he wept once or twice
+himself when writing were drawn from him by a reflex self-pity that is
+easily evoked. In genuine pathos, Hugo is vastly his superior.
+
+Women occupy so preponderant a position in the _Comedy_ that one is
+forced to ask one's self whether these numerous heroines are
+reproduced with the same fidelity to nature as are his men. At any
+rate, they are not all treated in the same manner. In his descriptions
+of grand ladies the satiric intention is rarely absent. Why, it is
+difficult to say, unless it was that he was unable to avoid the error
+of introducing the pique of the plebeian suitor, and that the satire
+was an effort to establish the balance in his favour. "When I used to
+go into high society," he told Madame Hanska, "I suffered in every
+part of me through which suffering could enter. It is only
+misunderstood souls and those that are poor who know how to observe,
+because everything jars on them, and observation results from
+suffering." In his inmost thought he had no high opinion of women.
+Notwithstanding his flattery of Madame Hanska, he was a firm upholder
+of the old doctrine of male supremacy; and, at certain moments, he
+slipped his opinion out, content afterwards to let Eve or another
+suppose that his hard words were not spoken in earnest. One of his
+would-be witticisms at the expense of the fair sex was: "The most
+Jesuitical Jesuit among the Jesuits is a thousand times less
+Jesuitical than the least Jesuitical woman." The form only of the
+accusation was new. How often before and since the misogynist has
+asserted that women have no conscience. Be it granted that Balzac's
+grand dames often have very little, and some of his other women also.
+They are creatures of instinct and passion susceptible only of being
+influenced through their feelings. Yet, as regards the former,
+Sainte-Beuve assures us that their portraits in the _Comedy_ resemble
+the originals. He says: "Who especially has more delightfully hit off
+the duchesses and viscountesses of the Restoration period!" Brunetiere
+accepts this testimony of a contemporary who himself frequented the
+_salons_ of the great. Some later critics, on the contrary, hold that
+the novelist has given us stage-dames with heavy graces and a bizarre
+free-and-easiness as being the nearest equivalent to aristocratic
+nonchalance. One thing is certain, namely, that Balzac was personally
+acquainted rather with that side of aristocratic society which was not
+the better. It was the side bordering on licentiousness, where manners
+as well as morals are easily tainted and vulgarity can creep in.
+Again, he creates his women with a theory, and, in art, theories are
+apt to become prejudices. According to his appreciation Walter Scott's
+heroines are monotonous; they lack relief, he said, and they lack it
+because they are Protestants. The Catholic woman has repentance, the
+Protestant woman, virtue only. Many of Balzac's women repent, and many
+of those that repent either backslide or come very near to it. His
+altogether virtuous women are childish without being children, and
+some are bold into the bargain. In fine, his gamut of feminine
+psychology seems to be limited, very limited. Women of the finest mind
+he neither comprehended nor cared to understand. They were outside his
+range.
+
+But what he missed in the whole representation of the fair sex he made
+up for by what he invented, as indeed, too, in his representation of
+the sterner sex; and Jules Janin's account of the matter is not far
+from the truth:--
+
+"He is at once the inventor, the architect, the upholsterer, the
+milliner, the professor of languages, the chambermaid, the perfumer,
+the barber, the music-teacher, and the usurer. He renders his society
+all that it is. He it is who lulls it to sleep on a bed expressly
+arranged for sleep and adultery; he, who bows all women beneath the
+same misfortune; he, who buys on credit the horses, jewels, and
+clothes of all these handsome sons without stomach, without money,
+without heart. He is the first who has found the livid veneer, the
+pale complexion of distinguished company which causes all his heroes
+to be recognized. He has arranged in his fertile brain all the
+adorable crimes, the masked treasons, the ingenious rapes mental and
+physical which are the ordinary warp of his plots. The jargon spoken
+by this peculiar world, and which he alone can interpret, is none the
+less a mother-tongue rediscovered by Monsieur de Balzac, which partly
+explains the ephemeral success of this novelist, who still reigns in
+London and Saint Petersburg as the most faithful reproduction of the
+manners and actions of our century."
+
+Janin's animus blinded him to the rest, and it is just the rest of the
+qualities which converted the ephemeral success into the permanent.
+Taine's estimate is more discursive. He is further removed from
+polemics. He says:--
+
+"Monsieur de Balzac has of private life a very deep and fine sentiment
+which goes even to minuteness of detail and of superstition. He knows
+how to move you and make you palpitate from the first, simply in
+depicting a garden-walk, a dining-room, a piece of furniture. He
+divines the mysteries of provincial life; sometimes he makes them.
+Most often he does not recognize and therefore isolates the pudic and
+hidden side of life, together with the poetry it contains. He has a
+multitude of rapid remarks about old maids and old women, ugly girls,
+sickly women, sacrificed and devoted mistresses, old bachelors,
+misers. One wonders where, with his petulant imagination, he can have
+picked it all up. It is true that Monsieur de Balzac does not proceed
+with sureness, and that in his numerous productions, some of which
+appear to us almost admirable, at any rate touching and delicious or
+piquant and finely comic in observation, there is a dreadful pell-mell.
+What a throng of volumes, what a flight of tales, novels of all sorts,
+droll, philosophic, and theosophic. There is something to be enjoyed
+in each, no doubt, but what prolixity! In the elaboration of a
+subject, as in the detail of style, Monsieur de Balzac has a facile,
+unequal, risky pen. He starts off quickly, sets himself in a gallop,
+and then, all at once, he stumbles to the ground, rising only to fall
+again. Most of his openings are delightful; but his conclusions
+degenerate or become excessive. At a certain moment, he loses
+self-control. His observing coolness escapes; something in his brain
+explodes, and carries everything far, far away. Hazard and accident
+have a good share in Monsieur de Balzac's best production. He has his
+own manner, but vacillating, fidgety, often seeking to regain
+self-possession."
+
+How much one could wish that, instead of producing more, Balzac should
+have produced less. With a man of his native power and perseverance,
+what greater perfection there might have been! Certainly, no defect is
+more patent in the _Comedie Humaine_ than the trail of hasty
+workmanship, the mark of being at so much a line. Strangely, the speed
+with which he wrote furnished him with a cause for boasting. More
+properly, it ought to have filled him with humiliation. Many
+_litterateurs_ are compelled to drive and overdrive their pens. But,
+if they have the love of letters innate in them, it will go against
+the grain to send into the world their sentences without having had
+leisure to polish each and all. Examples have already been given of
+the short time spent over several books of the _Comedy_. There is no
+need to repeat these or to add to their names. Occasionally, the
+result was not bad, when, as with _Cesar Birotteau_, the subject had
+been long in the novelist's head. This, however, was the exception.
+The fifty-five sheets once composed in a single week, and the six
+thousand lines once reeled off in ten days, were probably invented as
+well as set on paper within the periods stated. No doubt, much was
+altered in the galley proofs; but the alterations would be made with
+the same celerity, so that they risked being no improvement either in
+style or matter. Balzac, indeed, was aware of the imperfections
+arising from such a method; and he not infrequently strove to correct
+them in subsequent editions. The task might perhaps have been carried
+out fully, if the bulk of his new novels had not been continually
+growing faster than he could follow it with his revision.
+
+The commercial compromises that he consented to were still more
+injurious to the artistic finish of some of his later pieces of
+fiction. For instance, when the _Employees_ was about to come out in a
+volume, after its publication as a serial the length was judged to be
+insufficient by the man of business. He wanted more for his money.
+What did Balzac do? He searched through his drawers, pitched upon a
+manuscript entitled _Physiology of the Employee_, and drilled it into
+the other story. Of these patchwork novels _The Woman of Thirty Years
+Old_ is the worst. Originally, it was six distinct short tales which
+had appeared at divers dates. The first was entitled _Early Mistakes_;
+the second, _Hidden Sufferings_; the third, _At Thirty Years Old_; the
+fourth, _God's Finger_; the fifth, _Two Meetings_; and the sixth and
+last, _The Old Age of a Guilty Mother_. In 1835, the author took it
+into his head to join them together under one title, _The Same Story_,
+although the names of the characters differed in each chapter, so that
+the chief heroine had no fewer than six appellations. Not till 1842
+did he remedy this primary incoherence, yet without the removal of the
+_aliases_ doing anything towards bestowing consistency on the several
+personages thus connected in Siamese-twin fashion. To-day, any one who
+endeavors to read the novel through will proceed from astonishment to
+bewilderment, and thence to amazement. Nowhere else does Balzac come
+nearer to that peculiar vanity which fancies that every licence is
+permissible to talent.
+
+In his chapter on the social importance of the _Comedie Humaine_,
+Brunetiere tries to persuade us that, before Balzac's time, novelists
+in general gave a false presentation of the heroes by making love the
+unique preoccupation of life. And he seems to include dramatists in
+his accusation, declaring that love as a passion, the love which
+Shakespeare and Racine speak of, is a thing exceeding rare, and that
+humanity is more usually preoccupied with everything and anything
+besides love; love, he says, has never been the great affair of life
+except with a few idle people. Monsieur Brunetiere's erudition was
+immense, and the nights as well as the days he spent in acquiring his
+formidable knowledge may in his case have prevented more than a
+passing thought being given to the solicitation of love. If the
+eminent critic had been as skilled in psychology as he was in
+literature, he would have been more disposed to recognize that, amidst
+all the toils and cares of life, love, in some phase, is after all the
+mainspring, and that, if it were eliminated from man's nature, the
+most puissant factor of his activity would disappear. Love is part of
+the huge sub-conscious in man; and the novelist, in making the events
+of his fiction turn upon it, does no more than follow nature.
+
+However, it is not exact that all novelists and dramatists, or even
+the majority of them, before Balzac's time made love the sole
+preoccupation of their heroes. What they did rather--in so far as
+their writing was true--was to give a visible relief to it which in
+real life is impossible, since it belongs to the invisible, inner
+experience. Nor is it exact that Balzac consistently assigns a
+secondary place in his novels to love. He does so in his best novels,
+but not in some that he thought his best--_The Lily in the Valley_ and
+_Seraphita_ for example. The relegation of love to the background in
+these novels which happen to be his masterpieces was caused by
+something mentioned in a preceding chapter, to wit, that Balzac never
+thoroughly felt or understood love as a great and noble passion. And
+love, with him, being so oddly mixed up with calculation, it was to be
+expected he should succeed best in books in which the dominant
+interest was some other passion--an exceptional one. If money plays,
+on the contrary, such an intrusive role in his novels, its
+introduction was less from voluntary, reasoned choice than from
+obsession. He deals with this subject sometimes splendidly, but, at
+other times, he wearies. Had money filled a smaller part of his work,
+the work would not have been lost.
+
+In fine, with its beauties and its ugliness, its perfections and its
+shortcomings, the _Comedy_ is the illumination cast by a master-mind
+upon the goings-out and comings-in of his contemporaries, the creation
+of a more universal and representative history of social life than had
+been previously written. Having considerable ethical value, it is
+worth still more on account of the ways it opens towards the fiction
+of the future.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVI
+
+                           THE INFLUENCE
+
+
+
+
+Balzac's influence during his lifetime was, with but few exceptions,
+exercised outside his own, novelist's profession. The sphere in which
+it made itself chiefly felt was that of the cultured reading public,
+and the public was, first and foremost, a foreign one. History
+repeated itself. To Honore d'Urfe, the author of the _Astree_, in the
+sixteenth century, while living in Piedmont, a letter came announcing
+that twenty-nine princesses and nineteen lords of Germany had adopted
+the names and characters of his heroes and heroines in the _Astree_,
+and had founded an academy of true lovers. Almost the same thing
+occurred to the nineteenth-century Honore de Balzac. For a while,
+certain people in Venetian society assumed the titles and roles of his
+chief personages, playing the parts, in some instances, out to their
+utmost conclusion.
+
+Sainte-Beuve, who, in 1850, drew attention to this curious historical
+analogy, went on to mention that, in Hungary, Poland, and Russia,
+Balzac's novels created a fashion. The strange, rich furniture that
+was assembled and arranged, according to the novelist's fancy, out of
+the artistic productions of many countries and epochs, became an
+after-reality. Numerous wealthy persons prided themselves on
+possessing what the author had merely imagined. The interior of their
+houses was adorned _a la Balzac_.
+
+One evening at Vienna, says his sister, he entered a concert-room,
+where, as soon as his presence was perceived and bruited about, all
+the audience rose in his honour; and, at the end of the entertainment,
+a student seized his hand and kissed it, exclaiming: "I bless the hand
+that wrote _Seraphita_." Balzac himself relates that, once travelling
+in Russia, he and his friends, as night was coming on, went and asked
+for hospitality at a castle. On their entrance, the lady of the house
+and some other members of the fair sex vied with each other in
+eagerness to serve the guests. One of the younger ladies hurried to
+the kitchen for refreshment. In the meantime, the novelist's identity
+was revealed to the _chatelaine_. A lively conversation was
+immediately engaged in, and, when the impromptu Abigail returned with
+the refreshment, the first words she heard were: "Well, Monsieur
+Balzac, so you think--" Full of surprise and joy she started, dropped
+the tray she had in her hands, and everything was broken. "Glory I
+have known and seen," adds the narrator; "wasn't that glory?"
+
+It was more. It was power wielded for good or evil, like that of every
+other great man, be he statesman, or priest, or artist. The conviction
+of possessing this power caused Balzac to complain with sincere
+indignation of those who charged him with being an immoral writer.
+"The reproach of immorality," he said in his preface to the second
+edition of _Pere Goriot_, "which has ever been launched at the
+courageous author, is the last that remains to be made, when nothing
+else can be urged against a poet. If you are true in your portrayal,
+if, by dint of working night and day you succeed in writing the most
+difficult language in the world, the epithet immoral is cast in your
+face. Socrates was immoral, Jesus Christ was immoral. Both were
+persecuted in the name of the societies they overthrew or reformed.
+When the world wishes to destroy any one, it taxes him with
+immorality."
+
+This argument is beside the question. It does not settle whether the
+apologist's influence upon the men and women of his generation and
+beyond--an influence which, in his lifetime, was incontestable, and
+may be deemed potent still, to judge by the extent to which his books
+are read--was and is good or bad. Balzac's personality is here only
+indirectly involved. His individual character might have been better
+or worse without the conclusion to be drawn being affected. Good men's
+influence is not always good, nor bad men's influence always bad.
+Intention may be inoperative, and effect may be involuntary.
+
+Balzac claimed the right to speak of all conduct, to represent all
+conduct in his fiction; and we shall see, farther on, that he imposed
+his claim upon those who followed him in literature. But, if he
+anticipated reality--and this is acknowledged--if he led society to
+imitate his fiction, if his exceptional representations tended, with
+him and after him, to become general or more frequent in one or
+another class of society, he must be considered morally responsible
+for the result. It has already been remarked, in the preceding
+chapter, that there are two ways of reproducing reality in literature
+and art, one of them favouring, not through didacticism but through
+emotion, the creation in the mind of a state of healthy feeling,
+thought, and effort; the other, that sort of fascination with which
+the serpent attracts its victims. It is certain that Balzac did not
+adequately take this into account, certain also that in parts of his
+_Comedy_, the secret, unconscious sympathy of the author with some of
+his sicklier heroes and heroines could not and did not have that
+dynamic moral action which he vainly desired.
+
+Of the chief French novelists or _litterateurs_ who were his
+contemporaries, critics are inclined to esteem his influence most
+evident on George Sand and Victor Hugo. Brunetiere, indeed, begins
+with Sainte-Beuve. But the similarities discoverable between the
+author of _Volupte_ and the author of the _Comedie Humaine_ were
+present in Sainte-Beuve's work at a period when Balzac was only just
+issuing from obscurity, and appear, moreover, to be due to
+temperament. In the case of George Sand, the inference is based partly
+on the praise she meted out to Balzac in her reminiscences. Brunetiere
+specifies the _Marquis de Villemer_ as the one proved example of
+imitation. But this novel was written in 1861, eleven years after
+Balzac's death; and, in so far as it differs from _Mauprat_ and the
+earlier books, whether _La Petite Fadette_ or _Consuelo_, can be shown
+to be the result of a natural and independent evolution.
+
+As regards Victor Hugo, on the contrary, there is plenty of _prima
+facie_ evidence that he largely utilized Balzac's material and method;
+and there is evidence also that Balzac utilized, though in a less
+degree, the subjects developed by Hugo. The reciprocal borrowing is
+easy to explain, both men, in spite of their fundamental
+peculiarities, having much in them that was common--imagination
+difficult to control, fondness for exaggeration, language prone to be
+verbose and turgid, research of devices to astonish the reader. Hugo's
+_Miserables_ is a monument of his fiction that owes much to Balzacian
+architecture. The realism of the latter author is converted without
+difficulty into the former's romanticism, or, rather, the alloy of
+romanticism is so considerable in Balzac's work that there is little
+conversion to make. Ferragus and Vautrin are prototypes of Valjean,
+just as Valjean's Cosette exploited by Madame Thenardier is an
+adaptation of Ferragus' daughter or Doctor Minoret's Ursula. The
+prison manners and slang of the _Miserables_ inevitably recall those
+of _Vautrin's Last Incarnation_, while, on the other hand, Hugo's
+salon _ultra_ reappears in the _Cabinet of Antiques_. And the
+analogies present themselves continually. One might almost say that
+the whole of the _Comedie Humaine_ suggested things to its future
+panegyrist, who wrote his greatest novel in the years consecutive to
+Balzac's death. Of course, Hugo's borrowings, being those of a man of
+genius, were not made use of servilely. Like Shakespeare and Moliere,
+the author of the _Miserables_ metamorphosed and enhanced what he
+took.
+
+Balzac's major influence on literature began as soon as he was dead.
+And the men he reacted on soonest were the dramatists; not through his
+own plays, which figured so small in his achievement, or, if through
+them at all, then only as they applied the same principles as his
+novels. The stage, being ever _en vedette_, is best situated to
+interpret the signs of the times, and is likewise more open to the
+solicitations of novelty, more ready to try new methods. A noticeable
+defect of the French drama, in the first half of the nineteenth
+century, was the pronounced artificiality of its characters and plots.
+Whatever the kind of play exhibited, the same stereotyped noble
+fathers, ingenuous maidens, coquettes, and Lotharios strutted on the
+boards. Whatever else changed, these did not. Only their costumes
+differed. Moreover, the adventures in which the _dramatis personae_
+displayed themselves contained always the same sort of tricks for
+bringing about the denouement. Even the language had its own style,
+outside which nothing was appropriate. All this was classicism in its
+most degenerate form, an art from which original inspiration was
+banished to the profit of a much inferior species of skill. Be it
+granted that the drama, more than any other kind of literature, is
+liable to the encroachment and dominance of such artificiality on
+account of its foreshortening in perspective. Be it granted, also,
+that sometimes a new movement will intensify an old habit. The
+Romanticists, though reformers in other respects, did little or
+nothing to render the stage more real. Their lyricism, in front of the
+footlights, needed buskins and frippery, or, at any rate, fostered
+them, as the pieces of Hugo and de Vigny proved.
+
+The younger Dumas, Emile Augier, Halevy and Becque--with a crescendo
+that in the last of the four is somewhat harsh--diverged from the
+traditional path, and in their plays put men and women whose motives
+and conduct were nearer to the humanity of their audience. The
+departure from old lines in these dramatists is patent; and, after
+discounting the part that may have been temperamental or contingent on
+some other cause, there remains the larger share to attribute to
+Balzac's influence. Dumas' _Dame aux Camelias_ originally staged in
+1852, was a timid start in the new direction. The theme, that of the
+courtezan in love, was a favourite one with the classical school, and
+much of the ancient style and tone pervades it; yet its atmosphere is
+a modern one, the expression of its sentiment is modern too, and the
+accessories are supplied with an eye to material and moral exactitude.
+The same author's _Question d'Argent_, composed a few years later, was
+a more direct tribute to the modifying power of the _Comedie Humaine_.
+It was Balzac's _Mercadet the Jobber_ remodelled with a larger stage
+science. Hypnotized subsequently by the _piece a these_ (and not to
+his advantage) Dumas went off at a tangent whereas Augier, once
+engaged in the newer manner with his _Gendre de Monsieur Poirier_,
+persisted in it with each of his succeeding pieces, flattering his
+model by resurrection after resurrection of the _Comedy's_ principal
+actors, Bixiou and Lousteau in Giboyer and Vernouillet, Balthazar
+Claes in the Desronceretz of _Maitre Guerin_. Ludovic Halevy
+apparently wished every one to perceive what he owed to the father of
+French realism. Finding in the _Petty Bourgeois_ a Madame Cardinal
+whose comic personality and peculiar moral squint suited one of his
+plays, he adopted her entirely, name and all, altering only what her
+more recent surroundings required. Henri Becque digested Balzac rather
+than imitated him. One feels in reading his _Corbeaux_ that it is a
+disciple's own work. The master's virtues and some of the disciple's
+faults are everywhere present, both in the subject and in the
+treatment. We have the same world of money and business that shows so
+big throughout the _Comedy_, an unfaithful partner and lawyer
+introducing ruin into the house of the widow and orphan. The practice
+of legal ruse and robbery--in these things Balzac had rung the changes
+again and again. What Becque added were sharpness of contrast,
+dramatic concentration, bitterer satire, and likewise greater art.
+
+If one may hazard a guess at the reasons that convinced the older
+school of playwrights of their error, there are two by which they must
+have been struck--the artistic possibilities of the real suggested by
+the _Comedie Humaine_, and the prescience--one might say the intuition
+--it exhibited of things that were destined to reveal themselves more
+prominently in the latter half of the nineteenth century. And in this
+respect Balzac in no wise contributed to what he foresaw and, so to
+speak, prophesied--the growing stress of the struggle for life in
+domains political, social, financial, industrial, the coming of
+uncrowned kings greater in puissance than monarchs of yore, the reign
+of not one despot but many, the generalization of intrigue, the
+replacement of ancient disorders by others of equal or increased
+virulence and harder to remedy, hundred-headed hydras to combat, most
+difficult of herculean tasks. The reflection of all this in the
+_Comedy_ was calculated to impress at its hour, and the hour arrived.
+Men looked at the counterfeit presentment and wondered why no one had
+recognized these things sooner. From that moment, the reputation of
+the _Comedie Humaine_ was made. Perhaps, after all, in such
+connection, the one or two of Balzac's plays that went so resolutely
+off the old lines--the _Resources of Quinola_ and _Mercadet_,--may
+have served, in remembrance, despite their insignificance beside the
+novels, which were the true drama, to awaken the attention of
+professional dramatists, especially as one after another story of the
+_Comedy_ was dramatized. But it was the fund of observation and the
+leaven of satire which startled, aroused, and ultimately set the stage
+agog. Not even the lighter forms of composition were left unaffected.
+Labiche, in the vaudeville style, with his _Voyage de Monsieur
+Perrichon_ and _La Cagnotte_, gave his audience, behind his puppets,
+the touch of present reality, the sensation of existent follies.
+
+The relative slowness with which the novels of Balzac's younger
+contemporaries and his successors were penetrated with realism was
+partly due to the lasting effect of George Sand's idealistic fiction.
+As we have seen, Balzac himself was reacted upon by it to some extent;
+but he yielded against his will, and the result in his case was a
+bastard one. She whom he called his brother George survived him for
+more than twenty years, and continued to the last to add to her
+reputation, so that naturally the impetus she lent to the idealistic
+movement was long before it was spent, if indeed one may say that the
+impetus has altogether been lost. Adepts like Octave Feuillet, with
+his _Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre_, and Victor Cherbuliez, with his
+_Comte Kostia_, endeavoured to perpetuate idealism or at least to
+recreate it in other forms. And then there were independents, like
+Flaubert who, with _Madame Bovary_, passed realism by on his way to
+naturalism. Yet it is worth remarking that Flaubert made a sort of
+_volte face_ in 1869, and wrote his _Education Sentimentale_, in
+which, under the pressure of simple circumstance, the hero descends
+gradually from the soaring of youth's hopes and ambitions to the dull,
+dun monotony of mature life, with nothing left him save the iron
+circle of his environment. Here the disillusionment is that of all
+Balzac's chief _dramatis personae_. Moreover, the minor characters of
+_Madame Bovary_ may well owe something to the _Comedy_. These doctors,
+chemists, cures, prefectoral councillors and country squires would
+possibly never have been depicted but for their having already existed
+for twenty years in the predecessor's gallery of portraits.
+
+There is no need to call the de Goncourts and Guy de Maupassant
+imitators because they bear a strong stamp of Balzac's influence. They
+have greater art, a finer style, and, above all, more pathos than the
+earlier master was capable of. But they are true disciples, as
+likewise Feuillet in his later manner with _Monsieur de Camors_. De
+Maupassant's short stories, exemplifying his severely objective
+treatment at his best, are Balzac's purified of their lingering
+romanticism, and his _Bel Ami_ is a modernized Lucien de Rubempre.
+And, if the resemblances are closer between works of the de Goncourts
+less known, such as _Charles Demailly_, or _Manette Salomon_ and the
+_Lost Illusions_, _Peter Grassou_, the _Muse of the County_, yet the
+means employed by the two brothers to endow with life and form _Renee
+Mauperin_ and _Germinie Lacerteux_, fixing a background, stamping the
+outlines, filling in details, adding particularities, all this was
+Balzacian method, insufficient forsooth, in the domain of psychology,
+but furnishing idiosyncrasy in plentiful variations.
+
+When we come to Alphonse Daudet, time enough has elapsed for realism
+to evolve into naturalism so-called. Naturalism is realism stark-naked
+--the dissecting-room, and a good deal besides, which Monsieur Zola
+illustrated well but not wisely. Daudet, fortunately for his
+reputation, was a naturalist _sui generis_, with a delicate artistic
+perception altogether lacking to the author of the Rougon-Macquart
+series. He was also an independent, but willing to take lessons in his
+trade. And how much he learnt from _Cousin Bette_ may be judged by his
+_Numa Roumestan_ and _Froment Jeune et Rissler aine_. There are close
+analogies also between the best of Balzac's fiction and the sombre
+realism of the _Evangeliste_, based on tragic facts that had come
+under Daudet's personal notice. Of the two realisms Daudet's is
+certainly the more genuine, with its lambent humour that glints on
+even the saddest of his pictures.
+
+In neither the naturalistic school of fiction, nor the psychological,
+in so far as the latter is represented by Bourget, has Balzac's
+influence been a gain. Bourget has borrowed Balzac's furniture, his
+pompous didacticism, his occasional indecency--in fine, all that is
+least essential in the elder's assets, without learning how to breathe
+objective life into one of his characters. Zola borrowed more, but
+mainly the unwholesome parts, truncating these further to suit his
+theory of the novel as a slice of life seen through a temperament, and
+travestying in the Rougon-Macquart scheme, with its burden of heredity
+and physiological blemish, Balzac's cumbrous and plausible doctrine of
+the _Comedy_. Both novelists made a mistake in arrogating to
+themselves the role of the _savant_. Neither of them seemed to
+understand that there are limits imposed on each profession by the
+mode of its operation. For Zola the novel was not only an observation
+working upon the voluntary acts of life, it was an experiment--like
+that of the astrologers whom Moses met in Egypt--producing phenomena
+artificially, and allowing a law of necessity to be deduced from the
+result. And for Balzac the novel was something of the same kind--a
+synthesis of every human activity framed by one who, as he proudly
+claimed, had observed and analysed society in all its phases from top
+to bottom, legislations, religions, histories, and present time. What
+Balzac did in fiction and what he thought he did are separated by a
+gulf which could only have been bridged over by the long and painful
+study of a man surviving for centuries. His scientific knowledge was
+superficial in nearly every branch. It was his divination which was
+great. And divination is not omniscience.
+
+An offshoot from the naturalistic school apparently, but derived more
+truly from the _Comedie Humaine_, is that decadent, pornographic art,
+of which Balzac would have been ashamed, had he lived to see the
+vegetation that grew up from the seeds he had sown without knowing
+what they would bring forth. In Zola's novels the plant was already
+full grown; its earlier appearance as the slender blade was
+Champfleury's vulgar satire, the _Bourgeois de Molinchart_. More
+recently the blossom has revealed its pestilential rankness so plainly
+that no one can be deceived as to its noxious effect.
+
+Where Balzac's influence is likeliest to remain potent for good is in
+the domain of history. He was not altogether an initiator here, having
+learnt from Walter Scott in the one as in the other capacity; but he
+developed and focussed what he had received; he added to it, and made
+it a factor in the historical science. After him historians began to
+assign a more important place in their narrations and chronicles to
+the manners and interests of the people, patiently seeking to assemble
+and situate everything that could relate them exactly to the great
+political and other public events which would be nothing but names
+without them. The de Goncourts, in their _History of French Society
+during the Revolution and under the Directoire_, applied this method
+with all the zeal of fresh disciples, and with hardly enough
+discretion. Taine's _Origins of Contemporary France_ abdicates none of
+the older historian's role, but its background is Balzacian. Among the
+later writers who have taken up the historian's pen, Masson, Lenotre,
+and Anatole France, illustrate the newer principles, each with a
+difference, but all excellently, the first in his _Napoleon_, the
+second in his _Old Houses, Old Papers_, the third in his _Joan of
+Arc_.
+
+It can scarcely be disputed that an entrance of realism into French
+literature would have occurred in the second half of the nineteenth
+century, had there been no Balzac. Some other novelists or writers,
+themselves reacted upon by the scientific spirit, would have set the
+example in their own way, if not with the achievement of the author of
+the _Comedy_. On the other hand, it is certain that Balzac, had he put
+his hand to another treatment of fiction, would nevertheless have
+created a school. His tremendous force would have channelled into the
+future, whatever the nature of its current. As Sainte-Beuve well says,
+he wrote what he wrote with his blood and muscles, not merely with his
+thought, and such work backed by genius was sure to tell,
+notwithstanding its defects, the latter even to some extent aiding.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having partly a bibliographic value, and partly confirming the
+statements above as to Balzac's influence, the following details
+concerning theatrical adaptations of some of his novels may serve as a
+supplement to this chapter.
+
+The first made was produced at the Vaudeville in 1832, and was based
+on the story of _Colonel Chabert_, which under another title, _The
+Compromise_, had finished as a serial in the March _Artiste_ of the
+same year. In Balzac's tale--the one of the novels that contains most
+real pathos--the Colonel, who is a Count of the Empire, is left for
+dead on the battlefield of Eylau, with wounds that disfigure him
+dreadfully. Rescued, and sojourning for a long while in German
+hospitals, he ultimately returns to France, but only to find his wife,
+who believes him dead, married to another nobleman. Treated as an
+imposter by everybody save a former non-commissioned officer of his
+regiment, he falls into poverty and wretchedness, and dies in a
+hospice, whilst his wife continues to live rich and honoured. Jacques
+Arago and Louis Lurine, who composed the play, altered the denouement.
+The husband is pensioned off by his wife, who, however, suffers for
+her hard-heartedness, being afterwards deserted by her second husband.
+A second version of the same subject was produced twenty years later
+at the Beaumarchais Theatre by Faulquemont, and, in 1888, a third at
+Brussels.
+
+_Eugenie Grandet_ was staged as a comedy, at the Gymnase in 1835, by
+Bayard and Paulin, who dealt with the plot very freely. Eugenie,
+happening to lay hold of the letter telling of her uncle's intention
+to commit suicide, begs her father to send money enough to Paris to
+prevent the catastrophe. On her father's refusing, she steals one of
+the old man's strong-boxes and gives it to the son of a local notary,
+who hurries to the capital with it and reaches there in time to save
+Charles' father from ruin and death. As Charles has also fled with his
+uncle's mare on the same errand, the miser thinks he is the thief, and
+obtains a warrant for his arrest. But Eugenie avows everything except
+the name of her accomplice. Explanations occur, now that Guillaume
+Grandet is saved; Charles comes out of prison and marries Eugenie,
+whose dowry is the money that has served so good a purpose. With
+Bouffe in the chief role, the _Miser's Daughter_, as the piece was
+called, had a great popularity, and was several times revived.
+
+In 1835 also, was produced _Pere Goriot_ at the Varietes, there being
+three collaborators in the dramatizing, Theaulon, de Comberousse, and
+Jaime. Their adaptation possessed the same characters as the novel,
+but the roles are considerably modified. Victorine Taillefer becomes
+Goriot's illegitimate daughter, who is provided for by her father, yet
+brought up without ever seeing him and without the least inkling of
+her relationship to him. But Vautrin has discovered that a sum of five
+hundred thousand francs is deposited on her behalf with a notary; and
+he goes to Grenoble, where she is living, brings her back with him to
+Paris, and presents her to Goriot as a poor girl, his intention being
+to ask her in marriage at the proper moment. The retired tradesman
+takes her in, and she remains with him when his other daughters marry,
+and during the time they pass in ungratefully stripping him of his
+fortune. At last his sons-in-law, to salve their consciences, offer to
+place him in an almshouse. Goriot indignantly refuses, and tells them
+he has another daughter whom he has made rich, and that he will go and
+live with her. Now is Vautrin's opportunity. He informs Goriot who
+Victorine is, and, since she had given her affections to the young
+Rastignac, he, like a good fellow, renounces his own matrimonial
+project and assists the old father in marrying the lovers happily. The
+part of Goriot was acted by Vernet, who did entire justice to Balzac's
+great creation. Simultaneously at the Vaudeville, another and poorer
+version of the novel was given; and, in 1891, at the Theatre Libre,
+Tabarand experimented a third piece, this last being a faithful
+reproduction of the novel. Antoine scored a big success in the part of
+Goriot, rendering the death-bed scene with remarkable power and skill.
+
+In 1836, _La Grande Breteche_, with its vengeful husband who walls up
+his wife's lover alive, tempted Scribe and another playwright,
+Melesville. In their arrangement, there is a virtuous wife whose
+husband is a bigamist. On learning the truth, she consents to receive
+the visit of Lara, an admirer of hers, whom she loves; and, when the
+Bluebeard, Valdini, surprises his victim and proceeds to the
+immurement, his first wife slips in most conveniently and whisks him
+off, leaving Valentine free to marry Lara.
+
+It is curious to notice how, in almost every instance, the first
+adapting dramatists transformed Balzac's tragedies into comedies,
+softening the stern facts of life and its injustices, and meting out
+the juster rewards and punishments which the novelist's realism
+forbade.
+
+In Antony Beraud's _Gars_, a play drawn from the _Chouans_ and
+performed at the Ambigu-Comique in 1837, the hero and heroine, instead
+of dying, are saved by a political amnesty decreed by Napoleon; and
+the curtain falls to the cry of _Vive l'Empereur_. More than fifty
+years later, in 1894, the same theatre gave a close rendering of the
+dramatic portions of the _Chouans_, due to the collaboration of Berton
+and Blavet, the tragic ending being preserved, with all the effects
+properly belonging to it.
+
+Commonplace, like the _Gars_, were the arrangements of the _Search for
+the Absolute_, in 1837, and _Cesar Birotteau_ in 1838. The former was
+staged under the bizarre title, _A+Mx=O+X, or the Dream of a Savant_.
+The authors, Bayard and Bieville, concealed their identity under an
+algebraic X as well; and their piece, which made Balthazar Claes a
+Parisian chemist and a candidate to a vacant chair in the College de
+France, failed to attract at the Gymnase, in spite of Bouffe's talent
+and the redemption of Balthazar.
+
+_Cesar Birotteau_ was performed at the Pantheon Theatre, which was
+demolished in 1846. The love-story of Popinot and Cesarine, which is
+so briefly sketched in the novel, assumed chief importance in Cormon's
+adaptation, and, of course, Cesar does not die.
+
+Scribe borrowed largely from the _Comedie Humaine_. His _Sheriff_
+libretto for Halevy's music at the Opera Comique in 1839 was a
+transmogrification of _Master Cornelius_. Balzac's Cornelius is Louis
+XI's money-lender, who lives with his sister in an old mansion, next
+to a house with the King's natural daughter, Marie de Sassenage,
+occupies with her husband, the Comte de Sainte-Vallier. The old
+money-lender, perceiving that his gold is disappearing, has had four of
+his apprentices hanged on suspicion. The like fate now threatens Marie's
+lover, Georges d'Estouteville, who in order to see her more safely,
+has persuaded Cornelius to let him stay in his dwelling one night.
+Marie appeals to the King to spare her lover's life, and Louis, on
+investigating the matter, discovers that Cornelius is a somnambulist,
+and has been robbing himself and burying his gold. On being told of
+this, the old money-lender has no peace of mind, fearing the King will
+take all his treasure, and ultimately cuts his own throat. In Scribe's
+parody, for a parody the piece virtually is, the scene is laid in
+England. John Turnel, the Sheriff of London, is the somnambulist, and
+he suspects his own daughter and his cook of stealing his money. But,
+differing from Cornelius, he accepts the situation when the truth is
+revealed to him under circumstances that make him as ridiculous as the
+spectre of Tappington in the _Ingoldsby Legends_; and, as a comic
+opera generally ends happily, he consents to the marriage of his
+daughter, Camilla, and of Keat, the cook, with their respective
+swains.
+
+An English setting was likewise given by Scribe to his play of
+_Helene_, suggested by Balzac's _Honorine_, which was staged at the
+Gymnase in 1846. Helene is a young orphan who draws and paints for her
+living, and has the good fortune to have all her canvases bought at
+advantageous prices by a rich dealer named Crosby. But suddenly she
+learns that the dealer is acting in behalf of a certain Lord
+Clavering, and, fearing some underhand designs, she refuses to keep
+the money that has been paid her. Smitten by her disinterestedness as
+well as by her beauty, Lord Clavering would gladly marry her, but is
+bound by his word plighted to Lord Dunbar's daughter. However, the
+latter elopes with another nobleman, and Clavering marries Helene.
+This pretty theme, developed by the actress Rose Cheri, made a huge
+hit.
+
+Nearly as great was the actress's success at the same theatre in 1849,
+when she played the principal role in Clairville's _Madame Marneffe_ a
+version of _Cousin Bette_, but very much modified, since Bette is
+eliminated altogether, and Valerie Marneffe, instead of being a
+depraved creature, is merely a clever woman of the world, who avenges
+her father's ruin on the Baron Hulot and Crevel, they being mainly
+responsible for it. When Balzac was at Wierzchownia, on his last
+visit, he wrote to his mother asking her to go to the theatrical
+agent's in order to receive his third of the receipts produced by the
+piece. These author's royalties must have helped his purse
+considerably.
+
+In the year after the novelist's death, the applauded representation
+of _Mercadet_, at the Gymnase, stimulated other managers of theatres
+to go on exploiting his _Comedy_. In September, the _Shagreen Skin_,
+arranged by Judicis, was played at the Ambigu-Comique, with _tableaux_
+of almost literal imitation, yet bringing to life again, in the
+denouement, the chief _dramatis personae_, and making the whole drama
+a dream.
+
+At the Comedie Francaise, in 1853, Barriere and de Beauplan produced a
+five-act prose play drawn from the _Lily in the Valley_. The novel was
+an awkward one to dramatize, there being very few elements in it
+capable of yielding situations for the stage. So the result was poor.
+A better thing was made in 1859 by de Keraniou out of the _Sceaux
+Ball_. On it he based an agreeable piece entitled _Noblesse Oblige_,
+with a delicately interpreted love scene in it which met with
+appreciative audiences at the Odeon.
+
+One more example, that of _Cousin Pons_, may be given to close the
+list of these adaptation, which are fully treated in Edmond Bire's
+interesting book dealing with certain aspects of Balzac's life and
+work. _Cousin Pons_ was staged at the Cluny Theatre in 1873. Alphonse
+de Launay, the author of the play, keeps to his text fairly well; but
+he adds a love episode which thrusts the friendship of the two
+musicians into the second place. Moreover, after the death of Pons,
+Schmucke lives to inherit his fortune and the Camusots are checkmated.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII
+
+               CONCLUSION: THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS
+
+It may be affirmed, without thereby disparaging the _Comedie Humaine_,
+that Balzac's personality is even more interesting than his work; and
+this is a sufficient excuse for returning to it in a last chapter and
+trying, at the risk of repetition, to make its presentment completer
+by way of supplement and summary.
+
+The interest does not arise alone from the contrasts of his foibles,
+which, forsooth, are nearly always comic--when they are not tragic. We
+are just as much attracted by the contrasts of his qualities, and by
+the interplay of the former with the latter--the victories and
+defeats, the glimpses of immense possibility, the struggles between
+temperament and environment, all these having a fullness of display
+rarely found in human nature.
+
+Besides the portraits in painting or sculpture executed of the
+novelist by Deveria, Boulanger, David d'Angers, and others, some
+mention of which has already been made, there was one begun by
+Meissonier, who unfortunately did not finish it. Monsieur Jules
+Claretie states that the canvas on which it was drawn was subsequently
+covered by the artist's _Man choosing a Sword_, to-day in the Van
+Prael collection at Brussels. About Boulanger's picture Theophile
+Gautier has a good deal to tell us in his article of 1837, published
+in the _Beaux Arts de la Presse_; and it scarcely agrees with Balzac's
+condemnation of the portrait as a daub, when he saw the canvas some
+years later in Russia. Remarking on the difficulty of rendering the
+novelist's physiognomy, on account of its mobility and strange aspect,
+Gautier gives it as his opinion that Boulanger succeeded perfectly in
+seizing the complex expression which seemed to escape all efforts of
+the brush. The description is a long one; and any one desirous of
+comparing with each other the impressions received by Balzac's
+contemporaries who came into close contact with him would do well to
+read it after this description by Lamartine. In the tenth of his
+lectures on Literature during the year 1856, the author of _Jocelyn_,
+speaking of what he had observed, said:--
+
+"His exterior was as uncultivated as his genius. It was the shape of
+an element: big head, hair scattered over his collar and cheeks like a
+mane that scissors never trimmed, lips thick, eyes soft but of flame;
+costume clashing with every elegance; clothes too small for his
+colossal body; waistcoat unbuttoned; linen coarse; blue stockings;
+shoes that made holes in the carpet; an appearance as of a schoolboy
+on holiday, who has grown during the year and whose stature has burst
+his garments. Such was the man that by himself wrote a whole library
+about his century, the Walter Scott of France, not the Walter Scott of
+landscape and adventure, but what is much more prodigious, the Walter
+Scott of characters, the Dante of the infinite circles of human life,
+the Moliere of read comedy, less perfect but more fertile than the
+Moliere of played comedy. Why does not his style equal his conception?
+France would then have two Molieres, and the greater would not be he
+who lived first."
+
+Returning to the same subject in his hundred and sixth lecture, eight
+years later, Lamartine continued:--
+
+"He bore his genius so simply that he did not feel it. He was not
+tall, and, however, the lighting up of his face and the mobility of
+his body prevented his small stature from being noticed; but this
+height swayed like his thought. Between the ground and him there
+appeared to be a certain margin; now, he stooped down to pick up a
+sheaf of ideas; now, he stood on tiptoe to follow the soaring
+of his thought into the infinite. He was big, thick-set,
+square-shouldered-and-hipped. His neck, chest, body, thighs, and limbs
+were mighty. There was much of the ampleness of Mirabeau, but no
+heaviness; there was so much soul that this carried that lightly. The
+weight seemed to give him force and not to take it from him. His short
+arms gesticulated with ease; he talked as an orator speaks. His voice
+resounded with the somewhat savage energy of his lungs, but it had
+neither roughness nor irony nor anger. His legs, on which he waddled a
+little, carried his bust smartly; his hands, plump and broad,
+expressed his whole thought by their waving movements. Such was the
+man in his stalwart frame. But, in front of the face, one forgot the
+framework. The speaking countenance, from which it was impossible to
+detach one's gaze, both charmed and fascinated the beholder. His hair
+floated over the forehead in large locks; his black eyes pierced like
+arrows blunted by benevolence; they entered yours confidently as if
+they were friends; his cheeks were full, rosy, and strongly coloured;
+the nose was well modelled, yet a trifle long; his lips, gracefully
+limned, ample and raised at the corners; his teeth, unequal, broken,
+and blackened by cigar-smoke; his head often inclining towards the
+neck, then proudly raised during speech. But the dominating trait of
+his face, even more than intelligence, was communicative kindness. He
+charmed your mind when he spoke, and, when not speaking, he charmed
+your heart. No passion of hatred or envy could have been expressed by
+this physiognomy; it would have been impossible for him not to be
+kind. Yet it was not a kindness of indifference or nonchalance, as in
+the epicurean face of a La Fontaine; it was a loving kindness,
+intelligent with regard to itself and others, which inspired gratitude
+and the outpouring of the heart, and defied a person not to love him.
+A gay childishness was the characteristic of this figure, a soul on
+holiday when he laid down his pen to forget himself with his friends.
+. . . But, when I saw him some years later, what gravity did that
+which was serious not inspire in him? what repulsion did his
+conscience not evince towards evil? What difficult virtues did his
+apparent joviality not conceal?"
+
+This tribute of an intimate, as generous as that of Hugo and perhaps
+more sincere, may pass without comment in so far as it concerns the
+outer man. On the moral side its exactitude may be questioned, both
+for what it omits and what it asserts. The omissions are considerable.
+The assertions deal too exclusively with that conduct which people
+generally exhibit in their most amicable relations with each other.
+Balzac's kindness of heart came out in not a few experiences of his
+life; but deeper than these ephemeral bursts of generosity were
+selfishnesses that were enormous and persistent. The impulsive energy,
+the huge boyishness, the appetites physical and mental that age never
+trained nor chastened were phenomena that all his friends noted,
+though the manifestations differed.
+
+Some lines of Gozlan's in his _Balzac in Slippers_, form a good sequel
+to Werdet's account of the Gargantuan dinner. "Balzac drank nothing
+but water," says Gozlan, but this must have been on Fridays; "and ate
+but little meat. On the other hand, he consumed great quantities of
+fruit. . . . His lips palpitated, his eyes lit up with happiness, at
+the sight of a pyramid of pears or fine peaches. Not one remained to
+go and relate the rout of the others. He devoured them all. He was
+superb in vegetable Pantagruelism, with his cravat taken off, his
+shirt unbuttoned at the neck, his fruit-knife in hand, laughing,
+drinking water, carving into the pulp of a doyenne pear. I should like
+to add--and talking. But Balzac talked only little. He let others
+talk, laughed at intervals, silently, in the savage manner of
+Leather-stocking, or else, he burst out like a bomb, if the sentence
+pleased him. It needed to be pretty broad, and was never too broad. He
+melted with pleasure, especially at a silly pun inspired by his wines,
+which were delicious."
+
+Another portrait drawn of the novelist by a contemporary, interpreting
+the inner man, but less flattering to the great delineator of
+character, is not free from satire and narrowness; but some of the
+traits it outlines are closely and accurately observed. In his
+_Histoire du Quarante et Unieme (Academy) Fauteuil_, Arsene Houssaye
+wrote: "Monsieur de Balzac--that haughty rebel who would fain have
+been a founder, that refined Rabelais who discovered a woman where
+Rabelais had discovered only a bottle--Monsieur de Balzac dreamed of
+the gigantic, yet without being an architect of Cyclopean times.
+Consequently, when he tried to build his temple of Solomon, he had
+neither marble nor gold enough to his hand. For his _human comedy_ he
+often lacked actors, and had to resign himself frequently to making
+the understudies play. It is the fashion to-day to raise Balzac to the
+level of the dominating geniuses of the world, such as Homer, Saint
+Augustine, Shakespeare and Moliere; but for the mind that has accurate
+vision, how many rocks are overturned on this Enceladus, what
+staircases are forgotten in his Tower of Babel, as in his Jardies
+house! Balzac was half a woman, as George Sand was half a man. He had
+a woman's curiosities, he had also her contradictions. Balzac believed
+himself religious; but his church was the witches' sabbath, and his
+priest was not Saint Paul but Swedenborg, if not Mesmer; his Gospel
+was the conjuror's book, perhaps that of Pope Honorius--Honorius de
+Balzac. He believed himself a politician, and endeavoured to continue
+de Maistre; he fancied he was glorifying authority, whereas he
+realized the perpetual apotheosis of force; his heroes were named
+indifferently Moses or Attila, Charlemagne or Tamerlane, Ricci, the
+General of the Jesuits, or Robespierre, the profaner of the sanctuary,
+Napoleon or Vautrin. The _History of the Thirteen_ will remain as the
+grandiose and monstrous defence of personal force defying the social.
+But will it not remain also, by the side of Hegel's philosophy, as an
+eloquent codicil to those testaments of individual sovereignty signed
+by Aristophanes, Montaigne, and Voltaire? He believed himself a
+spiritualist, and, sublime sawbones, he studied only in the medical
+amphitheatre. He entered a drawing-room only through the kitchen and
+the dressing-room. He was always ignorant of that fine saying of
+Hemsterhuys: 'This world is not a machine but a poem.' He believed
+himself a painter of manners, and he invented the manners. His women
+who are so vividly alive, Madame de Langeais or La Torpille, have
+never been intimate with any other company than that of Monsieur de
+Balzac. As other great artists, he created his world, a strange world
+which has consoled and welcomed all the outcasts of the real world, an
+impossible world which has more than once painted the actual one in
+its likeness. What charming women of the provinces have since
+developed into a Eugenie Grandet, a Madame de Mortsauf, a Madame
+Claes! . . . What was wanting to Balzac in the hell of life, whose
+every spiral he descended, was virginity in love and ingenuousness in
+poetry. He always lost himself in the difficult places of style; and
+himself wept over the lack. When he wrote the _Search for the
+Absolute_, he was in quest of the ideal; but the ideal is that which
+one had inside one's self, just as love is. The studies of the chemist
+and alchemist, of the doctor and jurist, do not light the flame of
+Prometheus."
+
+The quotations do not exhaust the list of portraits emanating from
+Balzac's fellows, but they adequately illustrate the varying views,
+which were many. Indeed, like the sculptor who produces several
+studies of the same model and shows a different interpretation each
+time, critics have presented us, in more than one instance, with
+descriptions of the novelist, at an earlier and a later date, that
+contain important discrepancies.
+
+Balzac was an enigma because he was not always the same personality to
+himself. Both his energies and his desires carried him outside the
+limits in which a man's individuality is usually manifested. Despite
+Monsieur Houssaye, one may even sympathize, though incredulous, with
+admirers that would have him to be a universal genius, unfortunately
+thwarted by fate--one who else might have opened up all the avenues of
+knowledge that humanity can ever penetrate. This persuasion was
+undoubtedly his own; and it partly explains his Faustus curiosities
+leading him now and again into illegitimate and unwholesome
+experiments, of which we get some glimpse in his books and
+correspondence.
+
+That he could have succeeded in other careers, the medical one, for
+example, the painter's or sculptor's perhaps, or the mechanical
+inventor's, seems likely; but his impulsiveness, his exuberance, and
+his poor financial ability would have been hindrances in directions
+where success depends largely on exact calculation, method, and
+detail. In political life, his brilliance would assuredly have
+sufficed to procure him prominence in opposition. As a minister he
+would have inevitably fallen a victim to the inconsistencies of his
+own attitude--inconsistencies due to the fact that his judgments were
+intuitional and instinctive, with prejudices reacting on them, too
+numerous and too strong to allow him to weigh things fairly and
+deliberately. Moreover, his mind was too much engrossed by the sole
+picturesqueness of phenomena to delve deep enough beneath them for
+their essential relations. This is why it happens that his arguments
+are often worse than his convictions, the latter being inherited, in
+general, and at least having the residuary wisdom of tradition
+together with the additional force of his common sense. Thus, on the
+eve of giving the ignorant man a power equal to that of the
+intelligent one, and of handing over the supreme decision in the vital
+concerns of a country to unsafeguarded majorities less qualified for
+the task than ancient oligarchy or autocracy. But he had nothing of
+worth to suggest, no alternative save the return to abuses of the
+grossest kind which experience had proved to lead to revolution.
+
+His ponderous declaration: "I write by the light of two eternal
+truths, religion and the monarchy," was a sort of cheap-jack
+recommendation of the so-called philosophy in his _Comedie Humaine_.
+His Catholic orthodoxy, if orthodoxy it were, savoured more of
+politics than religion. He did not wish the old ecclesiastical
+organization and faith of France to be changed, because he saw in it a
+useful police agency for restraining the masses. As for his Royalism,
+which had a smack of Frondism in it, he stuck to it because it
+accorded with his conservative, eclectic tastes, and not because he
+had worked it out as the best theory of government. Such dissertations
+as appear in his writings, on either the one or the other subject,
+have nothing more original about them than can be found in the most
+ordinary election speech or pulpit discourse.
+
+And in the realm of pure speculative thought he was not great. Beyond
+the limits of the visible, his intuition failed him; so that he
+floundered helplessly when not upheld by the doctrines of others,
+which, since he did not understand them, he adapted to his purpose but
+awkwardly. Whether there were latent faculties in him that might have
+developed with training, it is impossible to affirm or deny; however,
+we may be forgiven the doubt. From a mind so forceful, the native
+perception, though uncultured, should have issued in something better
+than _Lambert_ or _Seraphita_. Still, there is this to be said, that a
+man whose eyes were so constantly bent on facts, whose gaze was always
+spying out details which escaped the common observation, was embracing
+a plane parallel, if inferior to that which was covered by a Plato.
+
+The title of the author of the _Comedy_ to be called a philosopher can
+be defended only on the ground of his adding a new domain to the rule
+of science. He was not the discoverer of the law of cause and effect.
+Nor was he the one in his own country who did the most towards
+demonstrating the interdependence of the various branches of
+knowledge, this honour being reserved to Comte. But the transference
+of the minute causalities of life into fiction was systematized by
+him. He made the thing an artistic method, using it with the same
+power, though not the same chasteness, as George Eliot after him. His
+employment was not very logical--how could it be when the guiding mind
+was in chronic fermentation? He gives us this contradiction that human
+thought is at once the grandeur and destruction of life--an opinion
+imbued with ecclesiasticism, confusing thought with passion. It is
+passion alone which disintegrates; and, in the _Comedie Humaine_, such
+monomaniacs as Grandet, Claes, and Hulot are destroyed not by their
+thought but their desire.
+
+Balzac's pessimism is not philosophic. In him it was not the despair
+of an intellect that had worn itself out in vainly seeking for the
+solution of the riddle of the universe, vainly striving after a theory
+that should reconcile nature's brute law with the human demand for
+justice and immanent goodness. By original temperament an optimist, he
+changed and grew pessimistic with the untoward happenings of his
+agitated career, and under the fostering of his native self-esteem.
+Possibly too, as Le Breton asserts, a secondary cause was his having
+imbibed the pretentious doctrines of the Romantic school, the disdains
+of the young artistic bloods of 1830, who held their clan composed the
+loftier, super-human race, the only one that counted. Berlioz carried
+this folly of pride to its highest pitch. In his _Memoirs_, he
+declared that the public (of course excluding himself) were an
+infamous tag-rag-and-bob-tail. The people of Paris, he protested, were
+more stupid and a hundred times more ferocious, in their caperings and
+revolutionary grimaces, than the baboons and orang-outangs of Borneo.
+Balzac at times adopted and expressed similar opinions. Gozlan relates
+that one day the owner of Les Jardies said to him in the attic of his
+hermitage: "Come, let us spit upon Paris." The novelist imagined that
+talents of the kind he possessed ought to be admitted to every honour;
+and his hatred of the Revolution and Republicanism was more because he
+believed they were inimical to art--and his art--than because they had
+cast down a throne. His bitterness was to some extent excusable, for
+he was exploited much during his lifetime, and had, even to the end,
+to bend his neck to the yoke. But he also belonged to the class of
+exploiters by his mental constitution. Could he have had his way, all
+the men of letters around him would have been in his pay, writing for
+their bare living and contributing to his fame. In this connection
+there is an anecdote narrated by Baudelaire, in the _Echo des
+Theatres_ of the 25th of August 1846, and referable to the year 1839.
+
+The Jardies hermit had a bill of twelve hundred francs to meet; and
+for this reason he was sad as he walked up and down the double passage
+of the Opera--he, the hardest commercial and literary head of the
+nineteenth century; he, the poetic brain upholstered with figures like
+a financier's office; he, the man of mythologic failures, of
+hyperbolic and phantasmagoric enterprises, the lanterns of which he
+always forgot to light; he, the great pursuer of dreams for ever in
+quest of the absolute; he, the funniest, most attractive as well as
+the vainest character of the _Comedie Humaine_; he, the original, as
+unbearable in private life as he was delightful in his writings; the
+big baby swollen with genius and conceit, who had so many qualities
+and so many failings that one feared to attack the latter for fear of
+injuring the former, and thus spoiling this incorrigible and fatal
+monstrosity.
+
+At length, however, his forehead grew serene and he went towards the
+Rue de Richelieu with sublime and cadenced step. There he entered the
+den of a rich man (Curmer), who received him with due honour.
+
+"Would you like," quoth he, "the day after to-morrow to have in the
+_Siecle_ and the _Debats_ two smart articles on the French depicted by
+themselves, the articles to be signed by me? I must have fifteen
+hundred francs. The affair is a grand one for you."
+
+The editor, unlike his _confreres_, found the proposal reasonable, and
+the bargain was concluded on the spot, with the stipulation that the
+money should be paid on the delivery of the first article. Leaving the
+office, the visitor returned to the passage of the Opera; and there he
+met a diminutive young man of shrewish, witty countenance (Edouard
+Ourliac), known among the journalists for his clownish verve.
+
+"Edouard, will you earn a hundred and fifty francs to-morrow?"
+
+"Won't I, if I get the chance!" answered the latter.
+
+"Then come and drink a cup of coffee."
+
+"To-morrow," explained his principal, "I must have three big columns
+on the French depicted by themselves, and I must have them early, for
+I have to copy and sign them."
+
+Edouard hastened away to his task, while the novelist went and ordered
+a second article in the rue de Navarin.
+
+The first article appeared two days later in the _Siecle_, and was
+signed, strangely enough, neither by the little man nor by the great
+man, but by a third person known in Bohemia for his tom-cat and
+opera-comique amours (Gerard de Nerval). The second friend was big,
+idle, and lymphatic. Moreover, he had no ideas; he knew only how to
+thread words together like pearls; and, as it takes longer to heap up
+three long columns of words than to make a volume of ideas, his article
+appeared only several days later in the _Presse_.
+
+The twelve-hundred-francs debt was paid. Each one was perfectly
+satisfied, except the editor, who was not quite. And this was how a
+man of genius discharged his liabilities.
+
+Balzac's individuality is one of those that inevitably raise the
+question as to how far genius and creative imagination are made up of
+will-power, how far what is produced by great talent is sub-conscious
+inspiration virtually independent of effort. Although Shelley confines
+his assertions on the subject to poetry, he nevertheless seems to
+imply that creation of any kind has little to do with the will. "The
+mind in creation," he says, "is as a fading coal, which some invisible
+influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness;
+this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades
+and changes as it is developed, and the ocnsciuso portions of our
+natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could
+this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is
+impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but, when
+composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline." The case
+of Balzac suggests that the sort of genius Shelley had in his thought
+is the exception rather than the rule. The author of the _Comedy_
+himself asserts that great talents do not exist without great will.
+"You have ideas in your brain?" he says. "Just so. I also. . . . What
+is the use of that which one has in one's soul if no use is made of
+it?" . . . "To conceive is to enjoy; it is to smoke enchanted
+cigarettes; but, without the execution, everything goes away in dream
+and smoke." . . . "Constant work is the law of art as it is that of
+life; for art is creation idealized. Consequently, great artists and
+poets do not wait for orders or customers; they bring forth to-day,
+to-morrow, continually."
+
+It may be, after all, that the difference is one of those verbal ones
+to which Locke draws attention in his _Essay on the Human
+Understanding_. Will-power is partly an inheritance and partly an
+acquisition. And acquired qualities are always less puissantly
+exercised, less effective in the results obtained. Even in poetry it
+would appear that, without will to unlock the door, fine faculties
+that are dormant may never make their existence known. Balzac gives us
+an example of a native will that was for ever rushing through his
+being and arousing to activity first one and then another of his
+native powers. And, if the total accomplishment was not conform to the
+tremendous liberation of force, it was because there was circumstance
+harder than will and the intershock of energies that ran counter to
+each other.
+
+In fine, alas! there is something absent from the man which would have
+both beautified himself and added a saner beauty to his work--the
+pursuit of those finer ideals which mean consistent devotion to duty
+and broad sympathy with human nature, irrespective of nation, colour,
+and position, in its yearnings and in its fate. Fascinated by material
+aims, worshipping the Napoleonic epopee to the extent of framing his
+conduct by it, measuring the happiness of existence rather by its
+honours and furniture than by its moral attainments, he missed the
+first poetry of love as he missed the last wisdom of age. This
+limitation of the man makes itself sorely felt in his writings, where
+we, more often than not, tread a Dane's _Inferno_, unrelieved by the
+brighter glimpses and kindlier impulses that still are found in our
+world of self-seeking and suffering.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Balzac, by Frederick Lawton
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