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diff --git a/old/balza10.txt b/old/balza10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6795758 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/balza10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10913 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Balzac +by Frederick Lawton + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.07/27/01*END* + + + + + + + + + + + +Prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com and John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz + + + + + +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 naïve +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 Café 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 naïve 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-à-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 /café-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 hr 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 naïve 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 +naïve 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 Etext of Balzac +by Frederick Lawton + diff --git a/old/balza10.zip b/old/balza10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..357e102 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/balza10.zip diff --git a/old/balza10h.htm b/old/balza10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3fcd176 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/balza10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,11711 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<title>New File</title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= +"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +<style type="text/css"> +<!-- +body {margin:10%; text-align:justify} +blockquote {font-size:14pt} +P {font-size:14pt} +--> +</style> +</head> +<body> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg Etext of Balzac<br> +by Frederick Lawton</h1> + +<pre> +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.07/27/01*END* + + +</pre> + +Prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com and John Bickers, +jbickers@ihug.co.nz + +<p>Balzac</p> + +<p>By Frederick Lawton</p> + +<p>DEDICATED,</p> + +<p>In remembrance of many pleasant and instructive hours spent in +his society, to the sculptor</p> + +<p>AUGUSTE RODIN,</p> + +<p>whose statue of Balzac, with its fine, synthetic portraiture, +first tempted the author to write this book.</p> + +<p>PASSY, PARIS, 1910.</p> + +<p>PREFACE</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Hamlet</i> or <i>Othello</i> 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 <i>Comedie Humaine</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Musee Balzac</i>, Monsieur de Royaumont who +has rendered him service on several occasions.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>BALZAC</p> + +<p>CHAPTER I</p> + +<p>INTRODUCTION</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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' <i>salons</i>--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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>salons</i>, +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 <i>Philippe-Auguste</i>, +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' <i>causeries</i> 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.</p> + +<p>With the re-establishment of peace, literary and toilet pre- +occupations began to assert their claims. The <i>Ourika</i> 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 <i>Ourika</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Petit Caporal</i>, +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 <i>Anglaises pour rire</i>, with Brunet +and Potier travestied as <i>grandes dames</i>, dancing a jig so +vigorously that they lost their skirts. The same species of +<i>revanche</i> 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 +<i>guinguettes</i>, or <i>bastringues</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>The political society of the Restoration was characterized by +a good deal of cynicism. Those who were affected by the change of +<i>regime</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Tour de faveur</i>, the latter being followed in 1820 +by Lebrun's <i>Marie Stuart</i>. Alfred de Vigny was preparing +his <i>Eloa</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Constitutionnel</i> 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 +<i>regime</i>, either prior to or contemporaneous with the work +of Balzac.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Debats</i>--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 <i>Presse</i> +strove to oust the <i>Constitutionnel</i> and <i>Siecle</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>Corresponding to the character of the <i>regime</i> 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 <i>Robert Macaire</i> sketches and the +<i>Mayeux</i> of Travies had large material supplied them in the +various types of citizen, greedy of pleasure and gold. The +<i>mot</i>: "Enrichissez-vous," attributed to Guizot, was the +axiom of the time, accepted as the <i>nec plus ultra</i> 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.</p> + +<p align="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>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 <i>Manon Lescaut</i> that +posterity was to prize. Throughout the eighteenth century, he was +chiefly regarded as a literary hack who had translated +Richardson's <i>Pamela</i> and done things of a similar kind to +earn his livelihood. Rousseau too was esteemed less for his +<i>Nouvelle Heloise</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Lesage was the writer who introduced into France with his +<i>Gil Blas</i> 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 <i>Rene</i>, Madame de +Stael's <i>Corinne</i>, Benjamin Constant's <i>Adolphe</i>, +George Sand's <i>Indiana</i>, and Sainte- Beuve's <i>Volupte</i>, +which contributed so much to create and establish the Romantic +School of fiction with its egoistic lyricism.</p> + +<p>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-- <i>Zayde</i> and the <i>Princesse de +Cleves</i>--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.</p> + +<p>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; <i>Gil Blas</i>, albeit +he comes from Santillana, is a Frenchman. Marivaux was wiser in +placing his <i>Vie de Marianne</i> and his <i>Paysan parvenu</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nouvelle Heloise</i>, 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 <i>Paysan perverti</i> and +<i>Monsieur Nicolas, ou Le Coeur humain devoile</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Chartreuse de Parme</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>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. <i>Pamela</i> and <i>Sir +Charles Grandison</i> he chanced upon in a library at Ajaccio; +and, after running them through, pronounced them to be horribly +stupid and boring. But <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>, on the contrary, +he highly esteemed. Already in 1821 he had studied it; and, when +composing his <i>Pierrette</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Vicar of +Wakefield</i>." 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 <i>dramatis</i> <i>personae</i> depending +on a single situation. Of such a kind, <i>Caleb Williams</i>, the +celebrated Godwin's masterpiece, is in our time the only work +known, and its interest is prodigious."</p> + +<p>Sterne, even more than Scott, was Balzac's favourite model. +Allusions to him abound in the <i>Comedie Humaine</i>. +<i>Tristram Shandy</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Revue Parisienne</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedie Humaine</i>. It formed the +connecting link between him and his epoch, and in most directions +it limited the horizon of his life.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER II</p> + +<p>BOYHOOD</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>[*] 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.</p> + +<p>This former capital of Touraine, which the novelist says +disparagingly in the <i>Cure of Tours</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>laboureur</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Melmoth Reconciled</i>, adding, "In remembrance of the +constant friendship that united our fathers and subsists between +the sons."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Louis</i> <i>Lambert</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><i>Louis Lambert</i> 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."</p> + +<p>And now for the <i>alter ego</i>. "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."</p> + +<p>That <i>Louis Lambert</i> 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 <i>Rene</i> and Sainte-Beuve's <i>Joseph +Delorme</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>vir nobilis</i>. "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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Treatise of the Will</i>. +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>His memory was probably less faithful in 1832, when striving +to reproduce the tenour of the lost <i>Treatise of the Will</i>. +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:--</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>[*] The name is spelt in the English way.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 naïve 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>[*] <i>An Episode under the Terror</i> was dedicated to +him.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Mariage de Figaro</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>A second period of eighteen months in the office of a notary, +Maitre Passez, completed his law apprenticeship. In the first +pages of <i>Colonel Chabert</i> 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 <i>Notary</i>, says:--</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Cesar Birotteau</i> and the +<i>Marriage Contract</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER III</p> + +<p>EXPERIMENTS IN LITERATURE AND BUSINESS</p> + +<p>It happened that Honore's enlistment in the army of +<i>litterateurs</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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:--</p> + +<p>"Here are some details about my way of living. I have taken a +servant.</p> + +<p>"A servant! What can you be thinking of!</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Myself!</p> + +<p>"Yes, Sir.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Why, sir, I don't see anything.</p> + +<p>"Tut, tut! hold your tongue, impudence!</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>In the introduction to <i>Facino Cane</i>, 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 <i>Arabian Nights</i> +entered the body and soul of those over whom he pronounced +certain words."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Honore's 'prentice attempts at producing a masterpiece +oscillated between the novel and the drama. Two stories, entitled +respectively <i>Coquecigrue</i> (an imaginary animal) and +<i>Stella</i>, were abandoned before they were begun. A comic +opera had the same fate. The <i>Two Philosophers</i>, 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, +<i>Cromwell</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Cromwell</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>[*] 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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--<i>The Heiress +of Birague</i>--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.</p> + +<p>[*] Son of Le Poitevin Saint-Alme.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Kenilworth</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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. <i>The Heiress +of Birague</i> was sold for eight hundred francs, +<i>Jean-Louis</i>, or the <i>Foundling Girl</i>, for thirteen +hundred; and a higher price still was obtained (whether the money +was actually received is uncertain) for the <i>Handsome Jew</i>, +afterwards republished under a fresh title, <i>The +Israelite</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Argow, the Pirate</i>, 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 <i>Heart of Midlothian</i>, Victor Hugo's <i>Bug- +Jargal</i>, and Pixerecourt's <i>Belveder</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>[*] 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.</p> + +<p>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:--</p> + +<p>"Louise, give me a glass of water."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Ma'am."</p> + +<p>"Ah, my poor Louise, I'm in a bad way; I am indeed!"</p> + +<p>"Nonsense, Ma'am!"</p> + +<p>"It's worse than other years."</p> + +<p>"Lud! . . . Ma'am!"</p> + +<p>"My head is splitting. . . . . Oh, Louise! The shutters are +slamming; it's enough to break all the panes in the +drawing-room."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Cromwell</i>, he spoke of having a lot of +theatrical pieces in hand, plus an historical novel, <i>Odette de +Champdivers</i>, 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 <i>sine</i> +<i>qua non</i>. Varnish wears off, but the underneath earthenware +remains."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Cromwell</i> had not even the merit of being +an embryon. As for my novels, they are not up to much."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Curate of the Ardennes</i>, which Laure +helped him to write.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Last Fairy</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Love-story at School</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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 "<i>cher petit pere</i>." +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>garde-manger</i> or pantry. It was full of jottings anent +people, places, and things that he had come across in the +preceding lustrum.</p> + +<p>[*] The initiator of this project was not Balzac, although his +early biographers, Madame Surville included, gave him the credit +for it.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Lost Illusions</i>, whose part-sequel <i>David +Sechard</i> 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 <i>Dilecta</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Miscellanies</i>, +Merimee's <i>Jacquerie</i>, Madame Roland's <i>Memoirs</i>, not +to speak of his own small <i>Critical and Anecdotal Dictionary of +Paris Signboards</i>, published under a pseudonym, or rather +anonymously, since it was signed <i>Le Batteur de Pave</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Dilecta</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Dilecta's</i> life.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Shagreen Skin</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER IV</p> + +<p>FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>The historical novel that Balzac had set himself to write was +the <i>Chouans</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>naivete</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>The <i>Chouans</i>, 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 <i>Chouans</i> makes us +regret that there was hardly any return to this kind of +composition in the author's after- work.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>[*] Some early biographers state that the novelist went to the +Rue Tournon after his bankruptcy. This is a mistake.</p> + +<p>However, he was now on the point of scoring a literary +success. In the same year as his <i>Chouans</i> appeared his +<i>Physiology of Marriage</i>, 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 +<i>Portrait Intime</i> 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: <i>Manual of the Business Man, by a former Notary's +Clerk</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>The verdict is exact only if the <i>Physiology</i> 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 <i>blase</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Physiology</i>. I dream of it, I am absorbed by +it."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Mode</i>, 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 +<i>Physiology</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>foyer</i>, amidst the real or feigned +admiration of his fellows.</p> + +<p>To revenge themselves for their mentor's superciliousness +towards them, the six other <i>lions</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Among the editors of journals who sought Balzac's +collaboration after the publication of the <i>Physiology</i> were +Buloz of the <i>Revue de Paris</i> and Victor Ratier of the +<i>Silhouette</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>pate de foie gras</i>, 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, <i>Treatise of Fashionable Life</i>, and +making an octavo volume of it, which the <i>Mode</i> 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."</p> + +<p>About the events of the 1830 Revolution the novelist was +apparently but little concerned. True, the change was one of +dynasty only, not of <i>regime</i>, 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 <i>litterateur</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>This conception of the classes and the masses which he +afterwards set forth more fully in his <i>Country Doctor</i> and +<i>Village Cure</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>The Duchess d'Abrantes--one of his early admirers--to whom he +dedicated his <i>Forsaken Woman</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>Balzac appears to have been introduced to the Duchess +d'Abrantes about the year 1830, when he was engaged in writing +his <i>Shagreen Skin,</i> 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 +<i>House of the Tennis-playing Cat</i>, and even to the <i>Sceaux +Ball</i> in the more proper qualities of the novel.</p> + +<p>The <i>Shagreen Skin</i> 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 +<i>Physiology</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Shagreen Skin</i> by Gosselin in 1832. "The <i>Philosophic +Tales</i> of Monsieur de Balzac," it announced, "have appeared +this week. The <i>Shagreen Skin</i> 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 <i>Mysteries of Udolpho</i> and the +<i>Shagreen Skin</i>, the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, 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!</p> + +<p>"The <i>Philosophic Tales</i> are the red-hot interpretation +of a civilization ruined by debauch and well-being, which +Monsieur de Balzac exposes in the pillory. The <i>Arabian +Nights</i> are the complete history of the luxurious East in its +days of happiness and perfumed dreams. <i>Candide</i> 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, <i>blase</i>, 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 <i>Shagreen +Skin</i>--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 <i>Shagreen Skin</i> is <i>Candide</i> 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 <i>Shagreen Skin</i>."</p> + +<p>On account of its sensationalism, the <i>Shagreen Skin</i> had +a success of curiosity equal, and, if anything, superior to that +of the <i>Physiology</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>During these early days of his popularity, a seat in the +Chamber of Deputies was his will o' the wisp. Aided by the +<i>Dilecta's</i> friends, he offered himself as a candidate in +two constituencies, Angouleme and Cambrai, after publishing his +pamphlet: <i>An Inquiry into the Policy of Two Ministries</i>. +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 <i>Gazette</i> +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 +<i>Eugenie Grandet</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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 <i>Revue de Paris</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>The book that cost him the greatest efforts during the year of +1832 was his <i>Louis Lambert</i>, 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 <i>Faust</i> and <i>Manfred</i>. 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 +<i>alter ego</i>--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 +<i>Dilecta</i>, 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 <i>Lambert</i> +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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>What he was now capable of in characterization treated +objectively he showed in his <i>Colonel Chabert</i> and the +<i>Cure of Tours</i>, both of which were published in the same +twelvemonth as <i>Louis Lambert</i>. 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 <i>Colonel Chabert</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Red +Inn</i> was related to him by a former army surgeon, a friend of +the man that was unjustly condemned and executed. An <i>Episode +under the Terror</i> was narrated by the hero himself. <i>A +Desert Attachment</i> was the outcome of a conversation with +Martin, the celebrated tamer of wild beasts. On the other hand, +<i>Master Cornelius</i> was written to correct the false +impression of Louis XI. which he considered Walter Scott had +given to his readers in <i>Quentin Durward</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Like other <i>litterateurs</i>, 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 <i>The +Three Cardinals</i>, <i>The Battle of Austerlitz</i> (afterwards +often alluded to simply as the <i>Battle</i>), and <i>The Marquis +of Carrabas</i>. 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 <i>Battle</i>, is incidentally +introduced in the <i>Country Doctor</i>, which was begun in +1832.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Now don't try to comfort me," he answered on one occasion. +"I'm a dead man."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I shall never make a name, sis."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense! with such books, any one could make a name."</p> + +<p>He raised his head; his features relaxed; the sombre tints +vanished from his face.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>By dint of talking he had come to accredit the thing, and +gleefully strode about the room, lifting and waving his arms.</p> + +<p>"Ah! Balzac is free! You shall see, my dear friends, and my +dear enemies, what his progress is."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>CHAPTER V</p> + +<p>LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1831, 1832</p> + +<p>One has little doubt in deciding that, of the two spurs which +goaded</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Henry Monnier, the caricaturist, used to relate that, meeting +him once on the Boulevard, the novelist tapped him on the +shoulder and said:</p> + +<p>"I have a sublime idea. In a month I shall have gained five +hundred thousand francs."</p> + +<p>"The deuce, you will," replied Monnier; "let's hear how."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Well, what next?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>And thereupon, the novelist, launched into transcendental +calculations, soaring with his enthusiasm into the clouds.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Then lend me five francs on strength of the affair."</p> + +<p>Noticing this sort of monomania, in an article which he wrote +in the short-lived <i>Diogenes</i>, during the month of August +1856, Amedee Roland said of Balzac:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 Café 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.</p> + +<p>Two of the novelist's most important books appeared in 1833, +his <i>Country Doctor</i> and <i>Eugenie Grandet</i>. 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 <i>Atala</i>, <i>Paul</i> <i>and +Virginia</i>, the <i>Vicar of Wakefield</i>, <i>Manon +Lescaut</i>, 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 +<i>Meditations</i> 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 <i>Country Doctor</i> has cost me ten times more labour than +<i>Louis Lambert</i>," 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 <i>Vicar of +Wakefield</i> and put the <i>Imitation of Jesus Christ</i> 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."</p> + +<p>What with his writing for the <i>Revue de Paris</i>, to which +he was contributing <i>Ferragus</i>, and the pains he gave +himself with the <i>Country Doctor</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding the advertisement produced him by the lawsuit, +the <i>Country Doctor</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Battle</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>It was just about the time the <i>Country Doctor</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"Salute me," he exclaimed joyfully: "I'm on the point of +becoming a genius!"</p> + +<p>And he commenced to explain his thought, which seemed to him +so vast and pregnant with consequence as to inspire him with +awe.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Peccadilloes!" replied his sister. "You are indulgent."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>To the members of his family he announced news from his world +of fiction just as if he were speaking of actual events.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>If, now and again, he was begged to save some wild young man +or unhappy woman among his creations, the answer was:</p> + +<p>"Don't bother me. Truth above all. Those people have no +backbone. What happens to them is inevitable. So much the worse +for them."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Eugenie +Grandet</i>."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>His ill-humor was, of course, of later growth. While +<i>Eugenie Grandet</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:--</p> + +<p>"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. . . ."</p> + +<p>And the shadow persists even in the love-scene.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The dedication of <i>Eugenie Grandet</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Scenes of Private Life</i>, +reproached him with losing, in the <i>Shagreen Skin</i>, 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 +<i>incognita</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>A third letter followed this one shortly afterwards, asking +the novelist to acknowledge its receipt in the <i>Quotidienne</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Eugenie Grandet</i>. "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."</p> + +<p>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:--</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>George Sand speaks much to the same effect in her +reminiscences. She believed in the legend.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>The Viscount Spoelberch de Lovenjoul is still more explicit in +his short book on Balzac and Madame Hanska, entitled <i>Roman +d'Amour</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>Madame de Berny was not among the credulous ones, nor yet so +resigned as the simple <i>bourgeoise</i> 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 <i>Woman of Thirty Years +Old</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Maria's</i> little daughter, two of whom +survived him.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Werdet, when he was introduced to the writer of the +<i>Physiology of Marriage</i>, 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 <i>Studies of Manners and +Morals in the Nineteenth Century</i>. 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 +<i>persona grata</i> with the novelist. Together, they went to +the Rue Cassini; and Barbier set forth Werdet's desire.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Proudly, young Werdet brought out his six notes of five +hundred francs each, and spread them on the table.</p> + +<p>"There is all my fortune," he said. "You can have it for any +book you please to write for me."</p> + +<p>At the sight of them Balzac burst out laughing.</p> + +<p>"How can you imagine, Monsieur, that I--I--de Balzac! who sold +my <i>Studies of Manners and Morals</i> not long ago to Madame +Bechet for thirty-six thousand francs--I, whose collaboration to +the <i>Revue de Paris</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Country</i> <i>Doctor</i> +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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>They left, and Barbier, to comfort his friend, prophesied +that, in spite of this reception, Balzac would enter into +<i>pourparlers</i> 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:--</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Country Doctor</i> for the price +offered.</p> + +<p>Thenceforward, a familiar guest in the dwelling of the Rue +Cassini, Werdet described it in detail, when composing his +<i>Portrait Intime</i>. It was part of a two-storied +<i>pavilion</i> (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.</p> + +<p>The <i>salon</i> 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 +<i>salon</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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: <i>An Unknown +Friend</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>The +Privilege</i>, <i>The History of a Fortunate Idea</i>, and the +<i>Catholic Priest</i>. Meanwhile, he did add considerably to his +<i>Droll Tales</i>, the first series of which appeared in the +same twelve months as <i>Eugenie Grandet</i>. 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 <i>Bertha +Repentant</i> and the <i>Succubus</i>, which, however, were +published only three years subsequently.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER VI</p> + +<p>LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1833, 1834</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Letters to the Stranger</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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--<i>The</i> <i>Tragedy of Philippe II.</i> and <i>The +History of the Succession of the Marquis of Carrabas</i>--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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Dictionary of Conversation +and Reading</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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--<i>we men of +letters</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Illustrious</i> <i>Gaudissart</i> --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 +<i>Seraphita</i> and <i>The Cabinet of Antiques</i> which the +<i>Revue de Paris</i> 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. <i>Seraphita</i>, 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 <i>Seraphita</i> in 1835 and +published it.</p> + +<p>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--<i>The</i> <i>Courtiers</i> and <i>Don +Philip and Don Charles</i>, the latter modelled on Schiller's +<i>Don Carlos</i>. The <i>Grande Mademoiselle</i> was a comic +history of Lauzun; and his <i>Prudhomme, Bigamist</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Sacs et +Parchemins</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>His opinion, however, did not prevent him, in 1842, from +accepting her help. An article had come out in her <i>Revue +Independante</i>, 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 <i>Autour de la +Table</i>.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Volupte</i>, Sainte-Beuve's just then published novel, which +he was soon to imitate and recreate in his <i>Lily in the +Valley</i>, 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 <i>Causeries du Lundi</i>, +shortly after Balzac's death, he meted out but faint praise.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Seraphita</i> was +carried on at the same time as his <i>Search</i> <i>for the +Absolute</i> and <i>Pere Goriot</i>.</p> + +<p>Both of these two novels were finished and published in 1834. +In the <i>Search for the Absolute</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"'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."</p> + +<p>The S<i>earch for the Absolute</i> may be classed with +<i>Eugenie Grandet</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>chasse-croise</i>, 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 <i>Revue de +Paris</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>One of these prolonged <i>claustrations</i>, 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 +<i>Conservatoire</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Boeuf Enrage</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>In <i>Pere Goriot</i>, the publication of which came close at +the heels of the <i>Search for the Absolute</i>, 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 <i>pension</i>, 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 <i>pension</i>, where Madame Vauquer, the +traipsing widow, lords it serenely, attentive only to her +profits.</p> + +<p>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 +naïve 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>tilleul</i>,[*] 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.</p> + +<p>[*] English linden, or lime-tree.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Treatise +of Modern Stimulants</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The <i>Tigers</i> or <i>Lions</i>, 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 <i>pique</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Letters to the</i> <i>Stranger</i>, +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:--</p> + +<p>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 <i>Quotidienne</i>, 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: <i>From an unknown +friend</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER VII</p> + +<p>LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1835, 1836</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>The Girl with the Golden Eyes</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Portrait Intime</i> of the novelist, was as certainly now and +again treacherous. An example of such discrepancy is furnished by +the information given concerning <i>Seraphita</i>, 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 <i>Revue de Paris</i> +published, after long delay, some further chapters of +<i>Seraphita</i>; and not until the end of November in this same +twelvemonth was the treaty signed which rendered Werdet possessor +of the book.</p> + +<p><i>Seraphita</i>, or <i>Seraphitus</i>--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, <i>Seraphita-Seraphitus</i> talks with assurance of the +essence of phenomena and the invisible world, but, forsooth, only +to initiate the shades that visit spiritualistic <i>seances</i>, +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.</p> + +<p><i>Seraphita</i> 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."</p> + +<p>The fundamental error of <i>Seraphita</i> 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.</p> + +<p>It had a great success when it came out in book form. People +were inquisitive to know the end of the story, which the <i>Revue +de Paris</i> 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 <i>vis-à-vis</i> 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 <i>Auberge des Adrets</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Seraphita</i> in April, he fled to Madame Carraud's +at Frapesle. In October he was at La Boulonniere, where he put +the last touches to <i>Pea-Blossom</i>, better known as the +<i>Marriage Contract</i>, 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 <i>Contes Drolatiques</i> were burned; there, the sale of an +article to the <i>Conservateur</i> for three thousand francs. In +September the barometer rose, and he exclaimed joyfully in a +letter to Laure:</p> + +<p>"The Reviews are at my feet and pay me more for my sheets. He! +He!</p> + +<p>"The reading public have changed their opinion about the +<i>Country Doctor</i>, so that Werdet is certain of selling his +editions directly. Ha! Ha!</p> + +<p>"In short, I can meet my liabilities in November and December. +Ho! Ho!"</p> + +<p>This tone changed in October. To his sister now he +lamented:</p> + +<p>"I am drinking the cup to the dregs. In vain I work fourteen +hours a day. I cannot suffice."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>[*] In Werdet's account this journey is placed between +September and November; but the <i>Letters to the Stranger</i> +prove that the date he gives is incorrect.</p> + +<p>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 <i>carissima</i>; 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 <i>(vide</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Italiens</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Atheist's Mass</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> and the <i>Revue +de Paris</i>, 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 <i>Chronique de Paris</i>, +formerly called the <i>Globe</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"How can I make up to-morrow's issue," he asked, "if each of +you arrives empty-handed?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you know that I reserve to myself nothing except the +article on foreign policy."</p> + +<p>"Yes, we all know," answered Karr, punning on the French word +<i>etrangere</i>, "that your policy is strange."</p> + +<p>(Not finishing the word <i>etrangere</i>, he said only +<i>etrange</i>.)</p> + +<p>"<i>Ere</i>," shouted Balzac, adding the termination.</p> + +<p>"<i>Ere</i>," 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?"</p> + +<p>"No, but it is here"--tapping his forehead--"I have only to +write it. In an hour it will be done."</p> + +<p>"With the corrections?" queried Karr slily.</p> + +<p>"Yes, with the corrections."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Guepes</i>, +Alphonse Karr subsequently recalled this improvized coronation of +the novelist.</p> + +<p>Edited and composed in such desultory fashion, the +<i>Chronicle's</i> 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 +<i>Chronicle</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Balzac's lawsuit with the <i>Revue de Paris</i>, the details +of which are given in the Viscount de Lovenjoul's <i>Last Chapter +of the History of Balzac's Works</i>, was brought about by the +novelist's quarrel, in 1835, with Buloz, the editor, because the +latter, while the <i>Lily in the Valley</i> was being printed, +communicated proofs of it to the <i>Revue Francaise</i> of Saint +Petersburg. Balzac at once severed his connection with the +<i>Revue de Paris</i>, 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 +<i>Lily in the Valley</i> in the <i>Revue de Paris</i>. 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 <i>Revue Francaise</i> 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 +<i>Seraphita</i> 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 <i>Lily in the Valley</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The <i>Lily in the Valley</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Pamela</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>At this moment, the affair of the <i>Chronique</i> 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 +<i>Indiana</i> who accompanied Balzac to Italy at this date.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Old Maid</i>, which he sold to +the <i>Presse</i> for eight thousand francs, was written in three +nights, <i>Facino Cane</i>, in one night, and the <i>Secret of +the Ruggieri</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"But when I did it," he added, "I was dead after a fortnight, +and it took me another fifteen days to revive."</p> + +<p>"Well!" replied Balzac, "I have only the coffin in view as a +rest; yet work is a fine shroud."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Presse</i>, the <i>Constitutionnel</i>, the +<i>Siecle</i>, the <i>Debats</i>, the <i>Messager</i>--had to be +composed hurriedly and without the corrections which were the +<i>sine qua non</i> 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 +<i>feuilletoniste</i>, 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 <i>Heiress of +Birague</i>, 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 <i>regime</i> 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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER VIII</p> + +<p>LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1837, 1838</p> + +<p>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 <i>Lost +Illusions</i>, and this appeared in the following spring. The +novelist was intending at the time to bring out a new edition of +the <i>Country Doctor</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:--</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"LE MAR."</p> + +<p>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 <i>soiree</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Facino +Cane</i>. 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.</p> + +<p><i>Facino Cane</i> 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.</p> + +<p>[*] Hospital founded by Saint Louis for three hundred noblemen +whose sight had been destroyed by the Saracens.</p> + +<p>In his reminiscences, Theophile Gautier mentions, apropos of +<i>Facino Cane</i>, 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 <i>Gold Bug</i>. When money was the theme, Balzac's +tongue was infinitely persuasive.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Facino Cane</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Seraphita</i> showing the path heavenward +to Wilfrid and Minna. At Venice, he began <i>Massimilla Doni</i>, +one of his philosophic novels, in which the love episode is +interwoven with mysticism and music, and Rossini's <i>Mose</i> is +analysed with skill. His best production of the year was <i>Cesar +Birotteau</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>The <i>Grandeur</i> (or <i>Rise</i>) <i>and Fall of Cesar +Birotteau</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>As was the case with <i>Eugenie Grandet</i>, 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 <i>Premiere Demoiselle</i>, refashioned +as the <i>School for Husbands and Wives</i>, treated the +unsavoury theme of an adulterous husband who keeps his mistress +in his own house; and the other, <i>Joseph Prudhomme</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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 +<i>paternoster</i>, and always says the same thing."</p> + +<p>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.[*]</p> + +<p>[*] This novel was never written, or at least completed. The +<i>Sister Marie des Anges</i>, so often spoken of in the +novelist's correspondence, may have been the one here alluded +to.</p> + +<p>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, <i>alias</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>[*] More land was subsequently bought.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jokingly, Leon Gozlan one day himself inscribed on a +convenient space:</p> + +<p>"Here, a picture by Raphael, of priceless value, such as was +never yet seen."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>And the owner of Les Jardies was inconsolable when his +visitors again expressed their inability to comply with his +request.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>[*] Madame Surville wrongly places the date of the journey in +1833.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Petit Caporal's</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>dolce far niente</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Diaries of Two Young Wives</i>. 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 <i>concetti</i>; 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>What Madame Hanska probably enjoyed most in his letters were +the <i>obiter dicta</i> which he was never tired of pronouncing +on his contemporaries. Scribe, whose <i>Camaraderie</i> 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 <i>Ruy Blas</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Maxims and Thoughts of Napoleon</i>, the preface +being also supplied by the novelist.</p> + +<p>Besides <i>Gambara</i>, a second study of the musical art, +containing a lyrically expressed analysis of <i>Robert le +Diable</i>, Balzac produced in 1837 and 1838 two longer works, +the <i>Employees</i> or the <i>Superior Woman</i> and the <i>Firm +of Nucingen</i>. The former, with its criticism of the +bureaucratic system, depicted a state of things which has +survived several changes of <i>regime</i> 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 <i>Presse</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>The <i>Firm of Nucingen</i> 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 +<i>regimes</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>tyr</i> " ine " <i>ried man</i> " +about"</p> + +<p>he concluded, punning on his nickname. Like his fellow +mortals, he was often most merry when he was most sad.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER IX</p> + +<p>LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1839, 1840</p> + +<p>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 <i>Gazette des +Ecoles</i> 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 +(<i>Scenes of the Hidden Life</i>, sequel to those of <i>Private +Life</i>).</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Memorial de Rouen</i> for the purpose of defending the +principle of literary property, he pleaded with all the force of +his talent, and composed a <i>Literary Code</i> and some <i>Notes +on Literary Ownership</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Most of the fiction published by Balzac in 1839--<i>A +Provincial Great Man in Paris</i>, the <i>Secrets of the Princess +de Cadignan</i>, and the <i>Village Cure</i>--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 +<i>Provincial Great Man in Paris</i>, which the author calls an +audacious and frightfully exact painting of the inner morals of +the French capital.</p> + +<p>It formed a sequel to a previously published short novel, the +<i>Two Poets</i>, and made part of a still larger series united +under the title <i>Lost Illusions</i>, the entire work being +completed in the Forties with <i>Splendour and Wretchedness of +Courtezans</i>, this last portion having also more than one +section. The first two volumes of the <i>Lost Illusions</i> +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 <i>Lost Illusions</i> 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.</p> + +<p>The further history of Lucien de Rubempre belongs to the +<i>Splendour and Wretchedness of Courtezans</i>. 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 +<i>Revue de Paris</i>, 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."[*]</p> + +<p>[*] A <i>nom de guerre</i> of Balzac in his apprenticeship +days.</p> + +<p>The preceding remarks might be applied in substance to the +<i>Village Cure</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>From what we know of his relations with Madame Visconti, we +may, however, suppose that his prejudice against the <i>perfide +Albion</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Le +Voleur</i>. 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 +<i>Siecle</i>, referring to an article on the question published +by the novelist in that paper.</p> + +<p>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 <i>roman feuilleton</i>; and the <i>Presse</i> and +<i>Siecle</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Revue Parisienne</i>, 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 <i>Guepes</i>, 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 <i>Z. Marcas</i>, and <i>A +Prince of Bohemia</i>, the former a resuscitation of the <i>Louis +Lambert</i> species of hero transformed into a politician. The +<i>Russian Letters</i>, 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 <i>Chartreuse de Parme</i> +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 <i>Chartreuse</i> 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 +<i>Chartreuse de Parme</i>.</p> + +<p>Between the judicious language employed in the letter and the +article of the <i>Revue Parisienne</i>, 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 <i>amour</i> <i>propre</i> 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."</p> + +<p>The cessation of the <i>Revue Parisienne</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>La Gina</i>, <i>Richard the Sponge-Heart</i>, +and his <i>School for Husbands and Wives</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>confrere</i> 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."</p> + +<p>The subject that, after much cogitation, Balzac chose for +Harel's stage was <i>Vautrin</i>--the Vautrin of <i>Pere +Goriot</i> and the <i>Lost Illusions</i>--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 <i>School for Husbands and +Wives</i> at the Theatre Francais, where it had been offered +after its rejection by the Renaissance.</p> + +<p>Balzac himself had no great opinion of his dramatic +arrangement of <i>Vautrin</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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. <i>Morituri te +salutant Caesar</i>." 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 <i>Debats</i> being +particularly acrimonious, and asserting that <i>Vautrin</i> was a +thoroughly immoral play.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Vautrin</i>."</p> + +<p>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 <i>School for Husbands and +Wives</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Presse</i>.</p> + +<p>One day, Gozlan met him in the Champs Elysees, just as he had +left Delphine's <i>salon</i>. 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 +<i>Marcas</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Another rather longer tale than this, belonging to the year +1840, was <i>Pierrette</i>, 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. +<i>Pierrette</i> first appeared as a serial in the <i>Siecle</i>. +In the final edition of the novelist's works it is classed under +the <i>Celibates</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>Of course, the agricultural projects entertained for a moment +after the interdiction of <i>Vautrin</i> 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 <i>Mercadet</i> or the +<i>Faiseur</i>,[*] 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.</p> + +<p>[*] English, <i>Jobber</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER X</p> + +<p>LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1841, 1842</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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 <i>café-au-lait</i> +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 +<i>maitre de ceans</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>In 1841, three books were published which merit attention on +the part of a student of his works. The first, <i>A Shady +Affair</i>, 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 <i>Chouans</i>, is more rapid and less cumbered +than in the earlier work. When the <i>Shady Affair</i> came out +in the <i>Commerce</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>History of the Girondins</i> 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 <i>Shady Affair</i> 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.</p> + +<p><i>Ursule Mirouet</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Dilecta</i>--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.</p> + +<p>The third of the three principal books of 1841 was the +<i>Diaries of Two Young Wives</i>, written, like the <i>Country +Doctor</i> and the <i>Village Cure</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>The novel in its earlier phases was being worked at together +with the <i>Sister Marie des Anges</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The <i>School of Great Men</i>,[*] 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.</p> + +<p>[*] More usually called: <i>The Resources of Quinola</i>.</p> + +<p>Before the first performance, Balzac was just as sanguine +about the result as he had been with <i>Vautrin</i>. It followed +several pieces, Felix Pyat's <i>Cedric the Norwegian</i>, Dumas' +<i>Lorenzino</i>, and Scribe's <i>Chaine</i>, which had been +coldly received. What if his <i>Quinola</i> 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 <i>Vautrin</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Lost Illusions</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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 hr 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Loire +Illustree</i> 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.[*]</p> + +<p>[*] See my <i>Life of Rodin</i> (Fisher Unwin, 1906) or my +later and smaller edition of the same sculptor's life (Grant +Richards, 1907).</p> + +<p>Of the novels that appeared in 1842, <i>Albert Savarus</i>, +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 <i>Louis +Lamber</i>t and <i>Z. Marcas</i>. 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 (<i>alias</i> Balzac) is of +medium height, neither fat nor slim; to conclude, he has +prelate's hands.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Between this relapse into lyricism and a much stronger work +came the amusing <i>Beginning in Life</i>, suggested by his +sister Laure's tale, <i>Un Voyage en Coucou</i>, 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: +<i>La Rabouilleuse</i>.</p> + +<p>Originally called the <i>Two Brothers</i>, and subsequently +<i>A Bachelor's Household</i>, 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 <i>parvenu</i>, 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 <i>grand seigneur</i>. The rascal will be glad to +see me dead. I quite reckon on it; otherwise he would not be my +son."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER XI</p> + +<p>LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1843, 1844</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>The love fervour of this prayer was a dominant note throughout +the twelvemonth; we notice after the visit that the familiar +<i>thou</i> prevails over the colder <i>you</i>; 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!!!</p> + +<p>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 <i>Burgraves</i>, 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 +<i>Burgraves</i> 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 +<i>Consuelo</i> 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.</p> + +<p>[*] Her literary pseudonym</p> + +<p>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 <i>Chouans</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>alter ego</i> 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 <i>Salon</i> he +saw hardly anything to please him besides a canvas by Meissonier +and Cogniet's <i>Tintoretto painting his Dead Daughter</i>. He +would have liked to see Boulanger's <i>Death of Messalina</i>, +but the <i>Salon</i> Committee had refused it.</p> + +<p>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 <i>air</i> in a manner no one +could equal. It intoxicated him to hear this tenor with +Tamburini, Lablache, and Madame Grisi; while Nourrit's song, +<i>Ce Rameau</i> q<i>ui donne la Puissance et l'Immortalite</i> +in <i>Robert le Diable</i> made his flesh creep. It yielded a +glimpse of life with all its dreams satisfied.</p> + +<p>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 <i>David</i> <i>Sechard</i>,* which was running as a serial +in the <i>Etat</i>, and his <i>Esther</i>,[*] appearing similarly +in the <i>Parisien</i>. June he spent at Lagny, where his +manuscripts were being printed, in order to correct the proofs +and get his money. But the <i>Etat</i> ceased issue while he was +there; and the <i>Parisien</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>[*] Part of the <i>Lost Illusions</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>raison d'etre</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>Sailing from Havre in the <i>Devonshire</i>, 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 +<i>tete-a-tete</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Bellina</i>, 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 <i>Double Mistake</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Midsummer Night's Dream</i> 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 <i>Night</i>, his +<i>Magdalene</i> and two <i>Virgins</i>, as also Raphael's +<i>Virgins</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>litterateur</i>. The <i>Presse</i> especially annoyed him by +copying from the <i>Independance Belge</i> 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.</p> + +<p>On the 26th of September, during the St. Petersburg visit, his +third finished theatrical piece, <i>Pamela Giraud</i>, 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.</p> + +<p><i>Pamela Giraud</i> 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, <i>Eugenie Grandet</i> and the <i>Search for +the Absolute</i>, the other, <i>Pere Goriot</i>, 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 <i>Monography of +the Press</i>. Neither of the two chief <i>dramatis personae</i> +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 <i>Vautrin</i>, is an anticlimax and +leaves an unsatisfactory impression.</p> + +<p>Why did Balzac write his <i>Monography of the Parisian +Press</i>? 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 <i>Provincial Great Man in Paris</i>, came +down heavily on the daring satirist in the <i>Debats</i> 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."</p> + +<p>In the <i>Monography</i>, men of letters, baptized by the +novelist <i>gendelettres</i>--one of the few words coined by +Balzac which have become naturalized--may be divided into several +categories. First, there are the <i>publicistes</i>, 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 <i>publicistes</i> 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 <i>Bonneau</i>. 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 <i>Premiers Paris</i>, alias, first +tenors. In writing <i>Premiers Paris</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Next to the <i>Premiers Paris</i> come the <i>Faits Paris</i>; +then the <i>Camarillists</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>In addition to its Politicians, the newspaper has its +<i>Attaches</i>. The <i>Attaches</i> 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 <i>Attaches</i>; otherwise +your <i>Attache</i> will be a mere detached <i>Attache</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Afterwards come the <i>gendelettre</i> pamphleteers. According +to the author of the <i>Monography</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Following on are the <i>gendelettre-vulgarisateurs</i>, 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 <i>monobible</i>;[*] and, as the bourgeoisie are +essentially lacking in intelligence, they are infatuated with +him. The <i>Monobible</i> 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 <i>gendelettre</i>, who reserves to himself the Council +of State, and as the sceptic <i>gendelettre</i>, who becomes +Master of Requests or Governor of the Marquisas Isles.</p> + +<p>[*] In Balzac's use of the word: A man who has written only +one book and boasts of it always.</p> + +<p>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, +<i>detache-attache</i>, 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 <i>gendelettre</i>, and +which, so admirably written, cleverly conducted, and signed with +so great a name, did not live six months.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Monography of the Press</i> to +constitute himself the dead author's apologist.</p> + +<p>Besides his continuation of Lucien de Rubempre's story in the +<i>Splendour and Wretchedness of Courtezans</i>, Balzac +published, in the year 1843, two complete novels, viz. +<i>Honorine</i>, and <i>The Muse of the County</i>, and a portion +of an historical study on Catherine de Medici. This last work, to +which the <i>Calvinist Martyr</i> 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 +<i>Catherine de Medici</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>With the <i>Muse of the County</i>, which the author declared +to be Constant's <i>Adolphe</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"In what?" asked Lousteau.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But she has happiness," replied Madame de la Baudraye +grandly.</p> + +<p>"No!" replied the husband, lighting his candle to go to bed; +"for she has a lover."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>entente cordiale</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>secretaire</i> and <i>commode</i> in ebony, with inlaid pearl, +that had apparently been manufactured at Florence in the +seventeenth century; these <i>objets d'art</i> 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 <i>Christ</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>We are fonder of him in the expansive moods when his +naïve wonder at his own performances carries him into +self-panegyric, which, not infrequently, we can endorse, though +with some discount. Thus, for instance, the <i>Bourgeois of +Paris</i> 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 <i>Wandering Jew</i> to a newspaper +for a hundred thousand francs, while the <i>Philosophy of +Conjugal Life</i>, a publication of his own in Hetzel's <i>Diable +a Paris</i>, fetched only eight hundred; and the <i>Peasants</i> +was paid for only at the rate of sixty centimes a line. His +<i>Modeste Mignon</i> which appeared in the <i>Debats</i>, sold +rather dearer, six thousand francs being given, and for the +<i>Bourgeois</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"If you were to see the Czar," Balzac said to her, "you would +fall in love with him and jump from your <i>bousingotism</i>[*] +to autocracy."</p> + +<p>[*] 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.</p> + +<p>Madame Dudevant waxed angry. It was not kind in a man who had +resisted her blandishments to make merry over her foibles.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The mention of obedience in a people irritated the hostess; +but on her seething he poured a drop of cold water by asking +jestingly:</p> + +<p>"Would you, in a great danger, wish your servants to +deliberate about what you had ordered them to do?"</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"You hear what he says?"</p> + +<p>"You are a dreadful satirist," retorted George Sand. "Go on +with your <i>Comedie Humaine</i>."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p><i>Modeste Mignon</i>, 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 <i>Albert +Savarus</i>. 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 <i>Eugenie Grandet</i>. 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 <i>Defence of +Poetry</i> in it, which merits our attention. The divine in man +says:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p><i>Beatrix</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER XII</p> + +<p>LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1845, 1846</p> + +<p>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, <i>A +Man of Business</i>, relating the tricks employed by the princes +of bohemianism to pay their debts and indulge their caprices +gratis, no finished work was published. The <i>Peasants</i>, +which the author never entirely got through, was taken up +repeatedly, and as often put aside from sheer inability to +proceed.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Balzac et ses Amies</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.'"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Saltimbanques</i> they had seen suggested to the novelist the +amusing nicknames which he henceforth adopted when writing to +Madame Hanska's family. Anna was dubbed <i>Zephirine</i>; her +betrothed, <i>Gringalet</i>; Eve, <i>Atala</i>; and himself, +<i>Bilboquet</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Dilecta</i>, 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 <i>Cousin Bette</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Presse's</i> +delay in printing the <i>Peasants</i>. As a matter of fact, the +readers of the <i>Presse</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Village +Cure</i> and the <i>Country Doctor</i>, the <i>Peasants</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Miserere</i> 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 <i>Saint Peter</i> being added to his +treasures.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The two works that issued from his new effort of creation were +<i>Cousin Bette</i> and <i>Cousin Pons</i>. These, with +<i>Pierrette</i>, made up his series of the <i>Poor</i> +<i>Relations</i>.</p> + +<p>The <i>Old Musician</i>, as he originally called <i>Pons</i>, +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 <i>Cesar Birotteau</i>, 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. <i>Cousin Pons</i> +was published in 1847. <i>Cousin Bette</i> came a year +earlier.</p> + +<p>Besides the two novels just mentioned, Balzac finished, during +this same period, the long series in which <i>Vautrin</i> is a +chief, if not the chief, character; and also a book variously +named the <i>Brothers of Consolation</i> and the <i>Reverse Side +of Contemporary History</i>. In the <i>Vautrin</i> 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 <i>Whither Bad Ways Lead</i> and two other volumes. A +concluding book, entitled <i>Vautrin's Last Incarnation</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>The <i>Reverse Side of Contemporary History</i> has similar +defects. It was commenced in the <i>Musee des Familles</i> in +1842, was continued in 1844, and was completed only in 1848 in +the <i>Spectateur Republicain</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>With <i>Cousin Bette</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Chevalier</i> <i>of Malta</i>, 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.'"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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. <i>Cousin Bette</i> yielded him thirteen thousand +francs, and <i>Cousin Pons</i> 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 +<i>salon</i>, both circular and sculptured, with paintings on the +arches, worthy of the destined aristocratic occupants.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Filleul de +tout le Monde</i>. 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 <i>Letters to the Stranger</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Artiste</i>. He says:</p> + +<p>[*] 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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Cousin Pons</i>. 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.'"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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. <i>Ergo</i>, he was +inoculated against its attacks.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER XIII</p> + +<p>LAST YEARS: MARRIAGE AND DEATH</p> + +<p>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 <i>Prudhomme en Bonne Fortune</i>, 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 <i>Mercadet</i>, which was +lying still in its unachieved state.</p> + +<p>Twelve months later, <i>Mercadet</i> 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, <i>Richard the Sponge-Heart</i>, 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 <i>Assommoir</i>. 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 <i>Life of Frederick +Lemaitre</i>, affirms that Balzac did terminate <i>Richard the +Sponge-Heart</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>In 1846, vague mention was made in the correspondence with +Madame Hanska of a military farce called the <i>Trainards</i> or +<i>Laggards</i>. However, nothing came of it. But in August 1847, +after the publication of <i>Cousin Pons</i>, 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 +<i>Reminiscences</i> 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 <i>Peter and Catherine (of Russia)</i>. +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."</p> + +<p>"We are," he continued, "in a Russian inn, with many people +running in and out, since troops are passing through the +place.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.'</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.'</p> + +<p>"The soldier stands up automatically, obeys, and, having +presented the paper, retires.</p> + +<p>"Then the officer sits down and flirts with the girl, who +accepts his compliments.</p> + +<p>"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.'</p> + +<p>"Just then, the man in the cloak draws near. The officer +recognizes him, turns pale, and bows down, uttering: 'Oh, pardon, +sire!'</p> + +<p>"'Stand up,' orders the master, meantime examining the +servant, who, on her side, looks without trembling at the +all-powerful Czar.</p> + +<p>"'You may withdraw,' the latter tells the officer. 'I will +keep this woman, and give her a palace.'</p> + +<p>"Thus met for the first time Peter I and she who became +Catherine of Russia."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Peter</i> <i>and Catherine</i>.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>feerie</i>, 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 +<i>trust</i> 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 +<i>Memoirs of a Hussar Colonel</i> is!"</p> + +<p>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 <i>Peter and Catherine</i>. This time +the manuscript was ready. It lay on the table, bearing on its +first page the title, <i>Gertrude, a Bourgeois Tragedy</i>. 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, <i>Gertrude</i>, +<i>tragedy</i>. "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 <i>persona grata</i> 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.</p> + +<p>The <i>Maratre</i>, or <i>Stepmother</i>, 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 <i>enfant terrible</i>--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 +<i>Stepmother</i> as a weak ending to a strong beginning. None +the less it shows progress on <i>Vautrin</i> and <i>Pamela +Giraud</i>.</p> + +<p>A few days after the Revolution, Theodore Cogniard, manager of +the Porte-Saint-Martin Theater, wrote to Balzac and proposed to +reproduce <i>Vautrin</i>. Balzac, in replying, referred to +Lemaitre's <i>toupet</i>, 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 <i>Journal des Debats</i>, and the +piece was at once withdrawn.</p> + +<p>The <i>Stepmother</i> 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 <i>Richard Sauvage</i>, 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 <i>Petty Bourgeois</i>, 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?"</p> + +<p>The manager, he said, had been pleased to accept in exchange +another comedy which would be soon performed. This comedy was the +resuscitated <i>Mercadet</i>, the title of which had been altered +to the <i>Speculator</i> in 1847, and the <i>Jobber</i> 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 <i>Jobber</i> 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 +<i>Jobber</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Content to wait till a more complaisant director should make +overtures to him, he filled in his leisure at Wierzchownia by +inventing the <i>King of Beggars</i>, 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 <i>Mercadet the Jobber</i>. 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, <i>Mercadet</i> 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 <i>Mercadet</i> on its repertory and inaugurated the event +by a special performance with Got as the <i>Jobber</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Jobber</i> 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 +<i>Jobber</i> 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 <i>Mercadet</i>, 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, <i>Mercadet</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Constitutionnel</i>, +in which had appeared his <i>Poor Relations</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>regime</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Jeune Fille Effrayee</i>, from the +last King of Poland's Gallery; two Canalettis, once the property +of Pope Clement XIII; <i>James II of England's Wife</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>elite</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Stranger</i> was a fancy born and bred +rather in the head than in the heart.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Country Doctor</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Stranger</i> saw herself involved in liabilities that +threatened to swallow up her own fortune, if she lent her +succour.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Mercadet</i>, and indulgently promised him, it should be +staged soon, the <i>Resources of Quinola</i> also.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The details of this narration given to the <i>Figaro</i> 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.</p> + +<p>[*] 20th of August 1883.</p> + +<p>In his <i>Choses Vues,</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>[*] 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.</p> + +<p>[+] 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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>Over the coffin, as it was laid under the ground near the +ashes of Charles Nodier and Casimir Delavigne, the author of +<i>Les Miserables</i> and <i>Les Feuilles</i> <i>d'Automne</i> +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, +<i>De mortuis nil nisi bonum</i>. "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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER XIV</p> + +<p>THE COMEDIE HUMAINE</p> + +<p>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: <i>Scenes of +Private Life</i>, and containing <i>The Vendetta</i>, +<i>Gobseck</i>, <i>The Sceaux Ball</i>, The House of the +Tennis-playing Cat, <i>A Double Family</i>, and <i>Peace in the +Household</i>. 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 <i>Scenes of Private Life</i> +had been augmented, and, in a second edition, filled four +volumes. The additions comprised <i>The Message</i>, <i>The +Bourse</i>, <i>The Adieu</i>, <i>The Cure of Tours</i>, and +several chapters of <i>The Woman of Thirty Years Old</i>, some of +which had previously come out as serials in the <i>Revue de +Paris</i> or the <i>Mode</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Needing, between 1834 and 1837, a more comprehensive title for +the rapidly increasing list of his works, he called them +<i>Studies of Manners and Morals in the Nineteenth Century</i>, +subdividing them into <i>Scenes of Private Life</i>, <i>Scenes of +Parisian Life</i>, and <i>Scenes of Provincial Life</i>. However, +some things he had written were classible conveniently neither +under the specific names nor under the generic one. These +outsiders he called <i>Tales and Philosophic Novels</i>, +subsequently shortening the title, between 1835 and 1840, to +<i>Philosophic Studies</i>. 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 <i>Social Studies</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>The expression <i>Comedie Humaine</i>, 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 <i>Divine Comedy</i> 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 <i>Girl with the Golden +Eyes</i>, 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 +<i>human</i>.[*]</p> + +<p>[*] 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 <i>Comedie Humaine</i> as a title.</p> + +<p>Madame Hanska was at once informed of the choice. "The +<i>Comedie Humaine</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>When Hetzel decided to publish a so-far complete edition of +the <i>Comedie</i>, 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 +<i>Study of Manners and</i> <i>Morals in the Nineteenth +Century</i>. 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:--</p> + +<p>"The <i>Comedie Humaine</i>," 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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>unity of +composition</i> 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 <i>jointing</i> 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 +<i>self for self</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>entourage</i> from its widest +circumference of country down to the narrowest one of home.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>trouvere</i>, 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. <i>Chance is the greatest +novelist in the world.</i> 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 <i>manners and +morals</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>The Human Comedy, as finally arranged and classified in 1845, +had three chief divisions: <i>Studies of Manners and Morals</i>, +<i>Philosophic Studies, Analytic Studies</i>; and the first of +these was subdivided into <i>Scenes of Private Life, Scenes of +Provincial Life, Scenes of Parisian Life, Scenes of Military +Life, Scenes of Political Life, Scenes of Country Life.</i></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Coming to the subdivisions, he explains that his <i>Scenes of +Private Life</i> deal with humanity's childhood and adolescence, +and the errors of these, in short, with the period of budding +passions; the <i>Scenes of Provincial Life</i>, with passions in +full development--calculation, interest, ambition, etc.; the +<i>Scenes of Parisian Life</i>, 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. <i>Pere Goriot</i> was +originally in the <i>Scenes of Parisian Life</i>, where it has a +certain <i>raison d'etre</i>. Ultimately, it found its way into +the <i>Scenes of Private Life</i>. And a greater alteration was +made by removing <i>Madame Firmiani</i> and the +<i>Woman</i>-<i>Study</i> from the <i>Philosophic Studies</i>, +and placing them also in the <i>Private Life</i> series.</p> + +<p>Be it granted that the plan of the <i>Comedy</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Brunetiere, whose chapter on the <i>Comedy</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Comedy</i>, it is impossible to find a bridge to pass +over.</p> + +<p>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 <i>The +Woman of Thirty Years Old</i>, 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 <i>We are seven</i>. Again, in the +<i>Lost Illusions</i>, 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 +<i>Comedy</i>, the number of <i>dramatis</i> <i>personae</i> 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 <i>Repertory of the Comedie +Humaine</i>.[*] 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 +<i>Who's Who</i>, a big volume of five hundred and sixty-three +pages, constituting a veritable curiosity of literature.</p> + +<p>[*] This work has been made available at Project Gutenberg by +Team Balzac. It is in two volumes.--Preparer's Note.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedy</i>, 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 <i>Forsaken Woman</i>, 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 <i>Lily in the Valley</i>, 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 <i>Duchess de +Langeais</i>, 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 <i>Albert</i> +<i>Savarus</i>, we have a confession of his political ambitions +and campaigns, we get in <i>Cesar Birotteau</i> and the <i>Petty +Bourgeois</i> his financial projects, which never brought him +anything; in <i>A Man of Business</i>--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 <i>Studies of Manners and Morals</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedy</i>--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 <i>Muse of the County</i>, +a Berrichon blue-stocking; Madame d'Agoult and Liszt became +Madame de Rochfide and the musician Conti in <i>Beatrix</i>; a +cousin of Madame Hanska, Thaddeus Wylezinski, who worshipped her +discreetly, is depicted under the traits of Thaddeus Paz, a +Polish exile in the <i>False Mistress</i>, who assumes a feigned +name to conceal his love; Lamartine furnished the conception of +the poet Canalis in <i>Modeste Mignon</i>, 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 <i>Cousin +Bette</i> and the <i>Firm of Nucingen</i>. 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 +<i>A Bachelor's Household</i>, Frederick Lemaitre, the actor's, +with Medal's in <i>Cousin Pons</i>, Emile de Girardin's with du +Tillet's in <i>Cesar Birotteau</i>. 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 <i>Cousin Bette</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedie Humaine</i> properly so called, +ten volumes of his early novels; six complete dramatic +pieces--one, the <i>School</i> <i>for Husbands and Wives</i> +recently published;[*] thirty <i>Contes Drolatiques</i>; and +three hundred and fourteen articles and opuscles, some of them +fairly long, since the <i>Reminiscences of a Pariah</i> has a +hundred and eighty-four pages octavo, the <i>Theory of +Walking</i> fifty, the <i>Code of Honest People</i> a hundred and +twelve, the <i>Impartial History of the Jesuits</i> eighty; these +exclusive of the <i>Revue Parisienne</i> 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.</p> + +<p>[*] Played for the first time March 13, 1910, at the Odeon +Theatre.</p> + +<p>In the miscellanies one meets with much that is curious, +amusing, and instructive, quite worthy to figure in the +<i>Comedy</i>--witty dialogues, light stories containing +deductions <i>a la</i> Sherlock Holmes or Edgar Allan Poe, plenty +of satire, sometimes acidulated as in his <i>Troubles and Trials +of an English Cat</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER XV</p> + +<p>VALUE OF THE WORK</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Even if we grant that the plan of the <i>Comedie Humaine</i> +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 <i>Comedy</i> 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.</p> + +<p>For this reason it is that, regarded as an aggregate, the +<i>Comedie Humaine</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Cure of Tours</i> we +read:--</p> + +<p>"No creature of the feminine gender was more capable than +Mademoiselle Sophie Gamard of formulating the elegiac nature of +an old maid."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>In one of the chapters of <i>Seraphita</i>, 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!"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Revue de Paris</i>, Monsieur Chaix d'Est-Ange, the +defendant's counsel, provoked roars of laughter by quoting +passages from the <i>Lily in the Valley</i>; and Jules Janin, in +his criticism of <i>A Provincial Great Man in Paris</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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:--</p> + +<p>"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 naïve 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?"</p> + +<p>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 <i>Contes Drolatiques</i> alone had +been in question, this lesser accusation might suffice. But there +are the <i>Lost Illusions</i>, the <i>Bachelor's Household</i>, +and <i>Cousin Bette</i>, 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 <i>Comedie +Humaine</i> 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 <i>Cure of Tours</i>, the <i>Country Doctor</i>, <i>Cesar +Birotteau, Cousin Pons</i>, the <i>Reverse</i> <i>Side of +Contemporary History</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.[*]</p> + +<p>[*] "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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>In his preface to the <i>Cabinet of Antiques</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>dramatis personae</i> and their +story; and the concordance between them is more a matter of art +than of science.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Little Fadette</i>, <i>The Devil's +Pool</i>, and <i>Francois le Champi</i>, it deals with human +experience in a mode differing widely from that which the author +of <i>Eugenie Grandet</i> considered conform to truth.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>vulgarisateur</i> comes forward +with his chalk and blackboard. Canalization is explained at +length in the <i>Village Cure</i>; will-making is discoursed upon +in <i>Ursule Mirouet</i>; promissory notes, bills of exchange, +and protests, not to speak of business accounts, cover pages in +the <i>Lost Illusions</i>; therapeutics takes the place of +narrative in the <i>Reverse Side of Contemporary History</i>; +physiology is lectured upon in the <i>Lily in the Valley;</i> +<i>Louis Lambert</i> aims at becoming a second and better edition +of the <i>Thoughts of Pascal</i>; and in <i>Seraphita</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Women occupy so preponderant a position in the <i>Comedy</i> +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 <i>Comedy</i> 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 +<i>salons</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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:--</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:--</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedie Humaine</i> +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 <i>litterateurs</i> 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 <i>Comedy</i>. There is no need +to repeat these or to add to their names. Occasionally, the +result was not bad, when, as with <i>Cesar Birotteau</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Employees</i> 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 +<i>Physiology of the Employee</i>, and drilled it into the other +story. Of these patchwork novels <i>The Woman of Thirty Years +Old</i> is the worst. Originally, it was six distinct short tales +which had appeared at divers dates. The first was entitled +<i>Early Mistakes</i>; the second, <i>Hidden Sufferings</i>; the +third, <i>At Thirty Years Old</i>; the fourth, <i>God's +Finger</i>; the fifth, <i>Two Meetings</i>; and the sixth and +last, <i>The Old Age of a Guilty Mother</i>. In 1835, the author +took it into his head to join them together under one title, +<i>The Same Story</i>, 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 <i>aliases</i> 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.</p> + +<p>In his chapter on the social importance of the <i>Comedie +Humaine</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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--<i>The</i> <i>Lily in the Valley</i> and <i>Seraphita</i> +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.</p> + +<p>In fine, with its beauties and its ugliness, its perfections +and its shortcomings, the <i>Comedy</i> 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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER XVI</p> + +<p>THE INFLUENCE</p> + +<p>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 <i>Astree</i>, 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 <i>Astree</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>a la +Balzac</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Seraphita</i>." +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 <i>chatelaine</i>. 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?"</p> + +<p>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 <i>Pere Goriot</i>, "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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedy</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Of the chief French novelists or <i>litterateurs</i> 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 <i>Volupte</i> and the author of the +<i>Comedie Humaine</i> 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 +<i>Marquis de Villemer</i> 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 <i>Mauprat</i> +and the earlier books, whether <i>La Petite Fadette</i> or +<i>Consuelo</i>, can be shown to be the result of a natural and +independent evolution.</p> + +<p>As regards Victor Hugo, on the contrary, there is plenty of +<i>prima facie</i> 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 <i>Miserables</i> 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 <i>Miserables</i> +inevitably recall those of <i>Vautrin's Last Incarnation</i>, +while, on the other hand, Hugo's salon <i>ultra</i> reappears in +the <i>Cabinet of Antiques</i>. And the analogies present +themselves continually. One might almost say that the whole of +the <i>Comedie Humaine</i> 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 <i>Miserables</i> metamorphosed +and enhanced what he took.</p> + +<p>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 <i>en +vedette</i>, 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 <i>dramatis +personae</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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' <i>Dame aux Camelias</i> 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 <i>Question +d'Argent</i>, composed a few years later, was a more direct +tribute to the modifying power of the <i>Comedie Humaine</i>. It +was Balzac's <i>Mercadet the Jobber</i> remodelled with a larger +stage science. Hypnotized subsequently by the <i>piece a +these</i> (and not to his advantage) Dumas went off at a tangent +whereas Augier, once engaged in the newer manner with his +<i>Gendre de Monsieur Poirier</i>, persisted in it with each of +his succeeding pieces, flattering his model by resurrection after +resurrection of the <i>Comedy's</i> principal actors, Bixiou and +Lousteau in Giboyer and Vernouillet, Balthazar Claes in the +Desronceretz of <i>Maitre Guerin</i>. Ludovic Halevy apparently +wished every one to perceive what he owed to the father of French +realism. Finding in the <i>Petty Bourgeois</i> 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 +<i>Corbeaux</i> 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 +<i>Comedy</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedie Humaine</i>, 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 <i>Comedy</i> 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 <i>Comedie +Humaine</i> 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 <i>Resources of Quinola</i> and <i>Mercadet</i>,--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 <i>Comedy</i> 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 <i>Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon</i> and <i>La +Cagnotte</i>, gave his audience, behind his puppets, the touch of +present reality, the sensation of existent follies.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre</i>, and Victor Cherbuliez, with +his <i>Comte Kostia</i>, endeavoured to perpetuate idealism or at +least to recreate it in other forms. And then there were +independents, like Flaubert who, with <i>Madame Bovary</i>, +passed realism by on his way to naturalism. Yet it is worth +remarking that Flaubert made a sort of <i>volte face</i> in 1869, +and wrote his <i>Education Sentimentale</i>, 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 <i>dramatis personae</i>. Moreover, the minor +characters of <i>Madame Bovary</i> may well owe something to the +<i>Comedy</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Monsieur de</i> <i>Camors</i>. De Maupassant's short stories, +exemplifying his severely objective treatment at his best, are +Balzac's purified of their lingering romanticism, and his +<i>Bel</i> <i>Ami</i> is a modernized Lucien de Rubempre. And, if +the resemblances are closer between works of the de Goncourts +less known, such as <i>Charles Demailly</i>, or <i>Manette +Salomon</i> and the <i>Lost Illusions</i>, <i>Peter Grassou</i>, +the <i>Muse of the County</i>, yet the means employed by the two +brothers to endow with life and form <i>Renee Mauperin</i> and +<i>Germinie Lacerteux</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>sui +generis</i>, 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 <i>Cousin Bette</i> may be judged by his +<i>Numa Roumestan</i> and <i>Froment Jeune et Rissler aine</i>. +There are close analogies also between the best of Balzac's +fiction and the sombre realism of the <i>Evangeliste</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedy</i>. Both novelists made a mistake in arrogating +to themselves the role of the <i>savant</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>An offshoot from the naturalistic school apparently, but +derived more truly from the <i>Comedie Humaine</i>, 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 <i>Bourgeois de Molinchart</i>. More recently the blossom has +revealed its pestilential rankness so plainly that no one can be +deceived as to its noxious effect.</p> + +<p>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 <i>History of +French Society during the Revolution and under the +Directoire</i>, applied this method with all the zeal of fresh +disciples, and with hardly enough discretion. Taine's <i>Origins +of Contemporary France</i> 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 +<i>Napoleon</i>, the second in his <i>Old Houses, Old Papers</i>, +the third in his <i>Joan of Arc</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedy</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>* * * * *</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The first made was produced at the Vaudeville in 1832, and was +based on the story of <i>Colonel Chabert</i>, which under another +title, <i>The Compromise</i>, had finished as a serial in the +March <i>Artiste</i> 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.</p> + +<p><i>Eugenie Grandet</i> 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 <i>Miser's +Daughter</i>, as the piece was called, had a great popularity, +and was several times revived.</p> + +<p>In 1835 also, was produced <i>Pere Goriot</i> 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.</p> + +<p>In 1836, <i>La Grande Breteche</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>In Antony Beraud's <i>Gars</i>, a play drawn from the +<i>Chouans</i> 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 +<i>Vive l'Empereur</i>. More than fifty years later, in 1894, the +same theatre gave a close rendering of the dramatic portions of +the <i>Chouans</i>, due to the collaboration of Berton and +Blavet, the tragic ending being preserved, with all the effects +properly belonging to it.</p> + +<p>Commonplace, like the <i>Gars</i>, were the arrangements of +the <i>Search for the Absolute</i>, in 1837, and <i>Cesar +Birotteau</i> in 1838. The former was staged under the bizarre +title, <i>A+Mx=O+X, or the Dream of a Savant</i>. 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.</p> + +<p><i>Cesar Birotteau</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Scribe borrowed largely from the <i>Comedie Humaine</i>. His +<i>Sheriff</i> libretto for Halevy's music at the Opera Comique +in 1839 was a transmogrification of <i>Master</i> +<i>Cornelius</i>. 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 +<i>Ingoldsby Legends</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>An English setting was likewise given by Scribe to his play of +<i>Helene</i>, suggested by Balzac's <i>Honorine</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Nearly as great was the actress's success at the same theatre +in 1849, when she played the principal role in Clairville's +<i>Madame Marneffe</i> a version of <i>Cousin</i> <i>Bette</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>In the year after the novelist's death, the applauded +representation of <i>Mercadet</i>, at the Gymnase, stimulated +other managers of theatres to go on exploiting his <i>Comedy</i>. +In September, the <i>Shagreen Skin</i>, arranged by Judicis, was +played at the Ambigu-Comique, with <i>tableaux</i> of almost +literal imitation, yet bringing to life again, in the denouement, +the chief <i>dramatis personae,</i> and making the whole drama a +dream.</p> + +<p>At the Comedie Francaise, in 1853, Barriere and de Beauplan +produced a five-act prose play drawn from the <i>Lily in the +Valley</i>. 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 <i>Sceaux Ball</i>. On it he based +an agreeable piece entitled <i>Noblesse Oblige</i>, with a +delicately interpreted love scene in it which met with +appreciative audiences at the Odeon.</p> + +<p>One more example, that of <i>Cousin Pons</i>, 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. <i>Cousin Pons</i> 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.</p> + +<p>CHAPTER XVII</p> + +<p>CONCLUSION: THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS</p> + +<p>It may be affirmed, without thereby disparaging the <i>Comedie +Humaine</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Man choosing a Sword</i>, +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 <i>Beaux Arts de la Presse</i>; +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 <i>Jocelyn</i>, speaking of what he had +observed, said:--</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Returning to the same subject in his hundred and sixth +lecture, eight years later, Lamartine continued:--</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Some lines of Gozlan's in his <i>Balzac in Slippers</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Histoire du Quarante et Unieme (Academy) +Fauteuil</i>, 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 <i>human comedy</i> 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 <i>History of the +Thirteen</i> 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 <i>Search for the +Absolute</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Comedie Humaine</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Lambert</i> or +<i>Seraphita</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>The title of the author of the <i>Comedy</i> 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 <i>Comedie Humaine</i>, such monomaniacs as Grandet, Claes, +and Hulot are destroyed not by their thought but their +desire.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Memoirs</i>, 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 <i>Echo des +Theatres</i> of the 25th of August 1846, and referable to the +year 1839.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedie Humaine</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Would you like," quoth he, "the day after to-morrow to have +in the <i>Siecle</i> and the <i>Debats</i> 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."</p> + +<p>The editor, unlike his <i>confreres</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"Edouard, will you earn a hundred and fifty francs +to-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"Won't I, if I get the chance!" answered the latter.</p> + +<p>"Then come and drink a cup of coffee."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Edouard hastened away to his task, while the novelist went and +ordered a second article in the rue de Navarin.</p> + +<p>The first article appeared two days later in the +<i>Siecle</i>, 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 <i>Presse</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Comedy</i> 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."</p> + +<p>It may be, after all, that the difference is one of those +verbal ones to which Locke draws attention in his <i>Essay on the +Human Understanding</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Inferno</i>, +unrelieved by the brighter glimpses and kindlier impulses that +still are found in our world of self-seeking and suffering.</p> + +<p>End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Balzac by Frederick +Lawton</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p> </p> + +<p> </p> + +<p> </p> + +<p> </p> + +<p> </p> + +<p> </p> +</body> +</html> + + diff --git a/old/balza10h.zip b/old/balza10h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3f90e0c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/balza10h.zip |