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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Honoré de Balzac, by Théophile Gautier
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Honoré de Balzac
-
-Author: Théophile Gautier
-
-Translator: David Desmond
-
-Release Date: October 29, 2016 [EBook #53398]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HONORÉ DE BALZAC ***
-
-
-
-
-Translated and produced by David Desmond (balzac@dlrd.net)
-
-
-
-
-HONORÉ DE BALZAC
-BY
-THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
-
-REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION
-
-PARIS
-POULET-MALASSIS ET DE BROISE
-BOOKSELLERS-PUBLISHERS
-9, rue des Beaux-Arts
-1859
-
-Translated by David Desmond
-
-I
-
-Around 1835, I lived in two small rooms in the Impasse
-du Doyenné, not far from the current location of the
-Pavillon Mollien. Although it was located in the center of
-Paris facing the Tuilleries and just a few steps from the
-Louvre, the location was deserted and wild, and it
-required a certain persistence for me to be found.
-However, one morning a young man with a distinguished
-look and a cordial and spiritual air approached my front
-door and excused himself while making his introduction;
-he was Jules Sandeau: he had come to recruit me on
-behalf of Balzac for La Chronique de Paris, a weekly journal
-that one will certainly remember, but which had not been
-as financially successful as it deserved. Balzac, Sandeau
-told me, had read Mademoiselle de Maupin, then very
-recently published, and he had very much admired its
-style; thus he wished to request my collaboration on the
-journal that he sponsored and directed. A date was set for
-us to get together, and from that date forward there was
-between us a friendship that only death could break.
-
-If I have told this story, it is not because it is flattering for
-me, but because it honors Balzac, who, already famous,
-sought out a young, obscure writer to collaborate in a
-spirit of of camaraderie and complete equality. At that
-time, it's true, Balzac was not yet the author of La Comédie
-Humaine, but he had completed, besides several novellas,
-La Physiologie du Mariage, La Peau de Chagrin, Louis Lambert,
-Seraphita, Eugénie Grandet, l'Histoire des Treize, Le Médecin de
-Campagne, Père Goriot, that is to say, in ordinary times,
-enough to solidify five or six reputations. His nascent
-glory, strengthened each month with new rays, shined
-with all of the splendors of the aurora; certainly he shined
-brightly like his contemporaries Lamartine, Victor Hugo,
-de Vigny, de Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Alexandre Dumas,
-Mérimée, George Sand, and many others; but at no time
-in his life did Balzac carry himself as the Grand Lama of
-literature, and he was always good company; he had
-pride, but he was entirely free of vanity.
-
-He lived at that time at the end of the Jardin du
-Luxembourg, near the Observatoire, on a little
-frequented road given the name of Cassini, without
-doubt because of its astronomical neighbor. On the
-garden wall which occupied almost the entire side, and at
-the end of which was found the house in which Balzac
-lived, one read: Labsolu, brick merchant. That strange sign,
-which is still there, if I am not wrong, is very striking; La
-Recherche de l'Absolu can have no other inspiration. This
-fateful name probably suggested to the author the idea of
-Balthasar Claës in the pursuit of his impossible dream.
-
-When I saw him for the first time, Balzac, one year older
-than the century, was around thirty-six, and his face was
-one of those that one would never forget. In his
-presence, one is reminded of Shakespeare's lines about
-Julius Caesar: "Before him, nature stands up boldly and
-says to the world, 'This is a man!'"
-
-My  heart beat strongly because never had I approached
-without trembling a master of thought, and all the
-speeches I had prepared on the way stayed in my throat,
-allowing nothing to pass other than a stupid phrase like
-this: "The temperature is nice today." Heinrich Heine,
-when he went to visit Goethe, could find nothing to say
-except that the plums that have fallen from the trees on
-the route from Iéna to Weimar are excellent for thirst,
-which made the Jupiter of German poetry laugh gently.
-Balzac, seeing  my embarrassment, soon put me at my
-ease, and during breakfast I became calm enough to
-examine him in detail.
-
-He wore, in the form of a dressing gown, a robe of white
-cashmere or flannel held at the waist by a cord, in which,
-some time later, he was painted by Louis Boulanger.
-What whim had pushed him to choose, ahead of any
-other, this costume that he never took off? Could it be
-that it symbolized in his eyes the cloistered life to which
-his labors condemned him, and, Benedictine of the novel,
-he had thus taken the robe? This robe always suited him
-marvelously. He boasted, showing me the intact sleeves,
-to have never sullied its purity with the least stain of ink,
-"because," he said, "the true writer should always be neat
-while at his work."
-
-His robe,  thrown back, revealed the neck of an athlete or
-a bull, round as a section of a column, without apparent
-muscles, and of a satiny whiteness which contrasted with
-the deeper hue of his face. At this time, Balzac, in the
-prime of his life, gave the impression of a robust health,
-little in harmony with the romantic pallors then in
-fashion.  The pure Tourainian blood left his cheeks a
-bright purple and warmly colored his lips, thick and
-sinuous, easy to laugh; a light mustache and a small beard
-just below his lower lip accentuated the contours of his
-mouth, without concealing them; the nose, square at the
-end, divided into two lobes, pierced by very open
-nostrils, of a character entirely original and unique;
-Balzac, in posing for his bust, told the sculptor, David
-d'Angers, "Be careful about my nose, my nose is a
-world!" The forehead was beautiful, vast, noble, much
-whiter than the face, with no creases other than a
-perpendicular furrow along the ridge of the nose; there
-was a very pronounced ridge above the eyebrows; the
-hair, abundant, long, strong and black, stood up in back
-like a lion's mane. As for the eyes, there have never
-existed anything comparable. They had a life, a light, an
-inconceivable magnetism. Despite the nightly vigils, their
-whites were pure, limpid, bluish, like that of a child or a
-virgin, and encased two black diamonds that shined at
-times with rich reflections of gold: they were eyes to
-make eagles avert their gaze, to penetrate walls and
-hearts, to strike down a furious wild beast, the eyes of the
-sovereign, the seer, the conqueror.
-
-Mme. Emile de Girardin, in her novel entitled La Canne
-de M. de Balzac, speaks of these shining eyes:
-
-"Tancred then perceived at the front of the club,
-turquoise, gold, marvelous carvings; and behind all of
-that two large black eyes more brilliant than the stones."
-
-Those extraordinary eyes, once one had met their gaze,
-made it difficult to notice other features that might have
-been trivial or irregular.
-
-The habitual expression of the face was a sort of
-powerful hilarity, a Rabelaisian and monkish joy — the
-robe no doubt contributing to the birth of this idea —
-which made you think of Brother Jean des
-Entommeures, but it was enlarged and elevated by a
-mind of the first order.
-
-According to his habit, Balzac had risen at midnight, and
-had written until my arrival. His features betrayed no
-fatigue, aside from a slight darkening beneath the eyelids,
-and during the entire breakfast he demonstrated a wild
-gaiety. Little by little the conversation drifted toward
-literature, and he complained of the enormous difficulties
-of the French language. Style preoccupied him a great
-deal, and he sincerely believed that he had none at all. It
-is true that he was then generally thought to be lacking
-this quality. The school of Victor Hugo, in love with the
-sixteenth century and the Middle Ages, specialized in
-patterns, in rhythms, in structure, rich in words, breaking
-prose with the gymnastics of verse, and modeling itself
-on a master confident in his methods, would do nothing
-other than that which was well written, that is to say
-worked and toned beyond measure, and found the
-portrayal of modern manners to be useless, conventional,
-and lacking in lyricism. Balzac, despite the popularity that
-he had begun to enjoy among the public, was not
-admitted among the gods of Romanticism, and he knew
-it. While devouring his books, people did not pause to
-regard their serious side, and even for his admirers, he
-remained for a long time the most productive of our
-novelists and nothing else; this surprises today, but I can
-vouch for the truth of my assertion. He tortured himself
-in trying to achieve a style, and, in his anxiety to make
-corrections, he consulted people who were a hundred
-times his inferiors. Before signing his name to anything,
-he had written under different pseudonyms (Horace de
-Saint-Aubin, L. de Viellerglé, etc.) one hundred volumes
-just "to free his hand." However he already possessed a
-style of his own without being conscious of it.
-
-But let me return to our breakfast. While talking, Balzac
-played with his knife or his fork, and I noted that his
-hands were of a rare beauty, the true hands of a prelate,
-white, with fingers both slender and plump, and nails that
-were pink and shiny; he was proud of them and smiled
-with pleasure as I looked at them. He considered his
-hands to be evidence of breeding and aristocratic birth.
-Lord Byron, in a note, says with evident satisfaction, that
-Ali Pacha complimented him on the smallness of his ears,
-and inferred from them that he was a true gentleman. A
-similar remark upon his hands would have equally
-flattered Balzac, even more than the praise of one his
-books. He had a sort of prejudice against those whose
-extremities lacked finesse. The meal was rather fine, a
-paté de foie gras was part of it, but this was a deviation
-from his habitual frugality, as he remarked while
-laughing, and that for "this solemn occasion" he had
-borrowed his silver plates from his library!
-
-I retired after having promised some articles for La
-Chronique de Paris, where Le Tour en Belgique, La Morte
-Amoureuse, La Chaine d'Or, and other literary works had
-appeared. Charles de Bernard, who had also been called
-by Balzac, contributed La Femme de Quarante Ans, La Rose
-Jaune, and some new work since collected into volumes.
-Balzac, as one knows, had invented the woman of thirty
-years; his imitator added ten years to that already
-venerable age and his heroine obtained no less success.
-
-Before going further, let's pause for a moment and give
-some details of Balzac's life prior to my acquaintance
-with him. My authorities will be Madame de Surville, his
-sister, and himself.
-
-Balzac was born in Tours, May 16, 1799, on the day of
-the celebration of Saint Honoré who gave him his name,
-which sounded good and augured well. Little Honoré was
-not a child prodigy; he did not announce prematurely that
-he would write La Comédie Humaine. He was a fresh, rosy,
-healthy boy, fond of play, with gentle, sparkling eyes, but
-in no way distinguished from other boys of his age, at
-least upon casual observation. At seven, upon leaving a
-day school in Tours, he attended a secondary school in
-Vendôme run by the Oratoriens, where he was thought
-to be a very mediocre student.
-
-The  first part of Louis Lambert contains curious
-information regarding this period of Balzac's life.
-Dividing his own personality, he describes himself as an
-old classmate of Louis Lambert, sometimes speaking in
-his name, and sometimes lending his own sentiments to
-this person who is imaginary, yet very real, since he is a
-sort of lens into the writer's very soul.
-
-"Situated in the middle of the town, upon the little river
-Loire that bathes its walls, the college forms a vast
-enclosure containing the establishments necessary for an
-institution of this kind: a chapel, a theater, an infirmary, a
-bakery, some streams of water. This college, the most
-celebrated seat of instruction of the central provinces, is
-populated by those provinces and by our colonies. The
-distance does not allow parents to come here often to see
-their children; the rules forbid vacations away from the
-institution. Once they have entered, the pupils do not
-leave the college until the end of their studies. With the
-exception of walks taken outside under the supervision of
-the Fathers, everything had been planned to give to this
-house all of the advantages of monastic discipline. In my
-time, the corrector was still a living memory, and the
-leather strap played with honor its terrible role."
-
-It is in this way that Balzac described this formidable
-college, which left in his imagination such persistent
-memories.
-
-It would be intriguing to compare the novella titled
-William Wilson, in which Edgar Allen Poe describes, with
-the strange exaggerations of childhood, the old building
-from the time of Queen Elizabeth where his hero was
-raised with a companion who was no less strange than
-Louis Lambert; but this is not the place to make this
-comparison, thus I must content myself only to point it
-out.
-
-Balzac suffered prodigiously in this college, where his
-tendency to daydream was assaulted every instant by
-some inflexible rule. He neglected his studies; but,
-benefitting from the tacit complicity of a tutor of
-mathematics, who was at the same time a librarian and
-occupied in studies that were outside of the realm of
-ordinary experience, he did not take his lessons and
-borrowed all of the books he wished. He passed all of his
-time in secret reading. Soon he became the most
-punished student in the class. Extra work and detentions
-occupied his recreation time.
-
-For certain schoolchildren, punishments inspire a sort of
-stoic rebellion, and they oppose the exasperated
-professors with the same disdainful impassivity that
-captive savage warriors display toward the enemy who
-tortures them. Isolation, starvation, and the leather strap
-will not elicit the least complaint; there are thus between
-the master and the student some horrible conflicts,
-unknown to the parents, in which the steadfastness of the
-martyrs and the skills of the executioner are found
-equally. Some nervous teachers cannot bear the
-expressions full of hate, scorn, and threat with which a
-child of eight or ten years defies them.
-
-Let us consider here some characteristic details that,
-under the name of Louis Lambert, also describe Balzac.
-"Accustomed to the open air, the independence of an
-education left to chance, the tender care of an old man
-who cherished him, and thinking while being warmed by
-the rays of the sun, it was very difficult for him to
-conform to the rules of the college, to march in line, to
-live within the four walls of a room in which twenty-four
-young boys were silent, seated on a wooden bench, each
-before his desk. His senses possessed a perfection which
-gave them an exquisite fragility, and they all suffered
-from this communal life; the exhalations that left the air
-corrupted, mixed with the odor of a class that was always
-dirty and encumbered by the remains of our lunches and
-our snacks, affected his sense of smell, that sense which,
-connected more directly than the others to the cerebral
-system, should cause by its derangements some
-unavoidable shocks to the organ of thought; apart from
-these atmospheric corruptions, he found in our study
-halls some spots where each would put his booty,
-pigeons killed for the feast days or plates stolen from the
-refectory. Finally our rooms contained an immense stone
-on which two buckets of water rested where on a rotating
-basis we went each morning to wash our face and hands,
-in the presence of the master. Washed only once each day
-before our awakening, our premises were always dirty.
-Then, despite the number of windows and the height of
-the door, the air was always fouled by the emanations of
-the wash house, the garbage dump, by the thousand
-activities of every schoolboy, without counting our eighty
-bodies when assembled. This kind of a collective
-humidity, when combined with the dirt that we would
-carry back from our travels, resulted in an unbearable
-stench. The deprivation of air that was pure and scented
-with the countryside in which he had until then lived, the
-change in his routines, and the discipline all saddened
-Lambert. His head always leaning on his left hand and his
-arm supported by his desk, he passed his study time by
-looking at the foliage of the trees or the clouds in the sky.
-He seemed to be studying his lessons; but seeing his pen
-immovably fixed and his page remaining blank, the
-professor would cry out to him: 'You are doing nothing,
-Lambert.'"
-
-To this vivid and truthful description of the miseries of
-life at school, let me add an extract in which Balzac
-characterizes himself as a duality under the double
-sobriquet Pythagoras and the Poet, one carried by the
-half of himself personified in Louis Lambert and the other
-by the half of himself that was his true identity, and
-which explains admirably why he was seen by his teachers
-as being an incapable child:
-
-"Our independence, our illicit occupations, our apparent
-indolence, the torpor in which we remained, our constant
-punishments, our repugnance toward homework and
-chores, won us the reputation of being useless and
-incorrigible boys: our masters despised us, and we
-similarly fell into the most terrible discredit among our
-classmates, from whom we concealed our contraband
-studies for fear of their mockeries. This double low
-regard, unjust on the part of the Fathers, was a natural
-sentiment on the part of our classmates; we didn't know
-how to play ball, run, or walk on stilts on those days of
-amnesty when by chance we obtained a moment of
-freedom; we didn't take part in any of the amusements
-then in style at the school; strangers to the pleasures of
-our comrades, we remained alone, seated sadly under a
-tree in the courtyard. The Poet and Pythagoras were an
-exception, living a life separate from that of the
-community. The penetrating instinct, the fragile self-regard
-of schoolboys, gave them a greater sensitivity with
-regard to minds that were higher or lower than their own;
-from there, for some, was hatred of our mute aristocracy;
-for others, scorn for our uselessness. We held these
-sentiments between us without our full knowledge, and
-it's possible that I didn't understand them until today. We
-lived therefore exactly like two rats skulking in the corner
-of the room that held our desks, bound there equally
-during the hours of study and during those of
-recreation."
-
-The result of these hidden labors, of these meditations
-which used up study time, was the famous Traité de la
-Volonté about which he spoke many times in La Comédie
-Humaine. Balzac always regretted the loss of this first
-work that he describes in Louis Lambert, and he speaks
-with an emotion that time has not diminished of the
-confiscation of the box that held the precious
-manuscript; some jealous schoolmates tried to snatch the
-box that two friends fiercely defended: "Suddenly,
-attracted by the noise of the battle, Father Haugoult
-roughly intervened and quieted the dispute. This terrible
-Haugoult ordered us to give the box to him; Lambert
-handed him the key, the teacher took the papers and
-flipped through them; then he said while confiscating
-them: 'So this is the foolishness for which you neglect
-your work!' Large tears fell from Lambert's eyes, caused
-as much by the consciousness of  his offended sense of
-moral superiority as by the gratuitous insult and the
-betrayal that overwhelmed him. Father Haugoult
-probably sold the Traité de la Volonté to a grocer of
-Vendôme without knowing the importance of the
-scientific treasures whose seeds were left to die in
-ignorant hands."
-
-After this passage he adds, "It was in memory of the
-catastrophe that had happened to Louis's book that in the
-work with which these studies begin I used for a piece of
-fiction the title truly invented by Lambert, and that I
-ave the name (Pauline) of a woman who was dear to him to
-a young girl who was full of devotion."
-
-In effect, if I open La Peau de Chagrin, I find in the
-confession of Raphael the following words: "You alone
-admired my Théorie de la Volonté, that long work for which
-I learned the Oriental languages, anatomy, physiology,
-and to which I dedicated the greatest part of my time,
-work which, if I am not mistaken, will complete the
-studies of Mesmer, of Lavater, of Gall, of Bichat, by
-opening a new path to the human science; there stops my
-beautiful life, this sacrifice of all of those days, this
-silkworm's work, unknown to the world, and whose only
-compensation could be in the work itself; since the end
-of childhood until the day that I finished my Theorié, I
-have observed, learned, written, read without rest, and
-my life has seemed like a long chore; a gentle lover of
-Oriental idleness, enthralled with my dreams, sensual, I
-have always worked, denying myself the delights of
-Parisian life; a gourmand, I have been temperate; fond of
-hikes and journeys on the water, hoping to visit foreign
-countries, still finding a child's pleasure in skipping stones
-on the water, I stayed constantly seated with pen in hand;
-talkative, I went to listen in silence to the public courses
-at the library and the museum; I slept in my solitary bunk
-like a devotee of the order of Saint Benedict, and women
-were however my only fantasy, a fantasy that I caressed
-but which always escaped me!"
-
-If Balzac regretted the Traité de la Volonté, he was less
-sensitive to the loss of his epic poem on the Incas, which
-began thusly:
-
-    Oh Inca, oh ill-fated and unhappy king!
-
-This unfortunate inspiration earned him, for all of the
-remaining time that he stayed at the school, the derisory
-nickname of poet. Balzac, it must be confessed, never had
-a gift for poetry, at least for meter; his complex thoughts
-rebelled against rhythm.
-
-From these intense meditations, from these truly
-prodigious intellectual efforts of a child of twelve or
-fourteen years, there resulted a bizarre malady, a nervous
-fever, a sort of coma entirely inexplicable for the
-professors, who were not in on the secret of the readings
-and the works of young Honoré, who appeared to be so
-lazy and stupid. No one at the school suspected this
-precocious excess of intelligence, no one knew that in the
-cell in which he caused himself to be put daily so as to be
-at liberty, this student who was thought to be lazy had
-absorbed an entire library of serious books that were
-beyond the typical understanding of his age.
-
-Let me here tie together several curious lines related to
-the reading ability attributed to Louis Lambert, that is to
-say, Balzac:
-
-"In three years, Louis had assimilated the substance of
-the books in his uncle's library that deserved to be read.
-His absorption of ideas by reading had become a curious
-phenomenon: his eye took in seven or eight lines at a
-time, and his mind appreciated their meaning at an equal
-speed. Often a single word in a phrase sufficed for him to
-appreciate its substance. His memory was prodigious. He
-remembered with the same fidelity the thoughts acquired
-by reading as those which reflection or conversation had
-suggested to him. Ultimately he retained all of those
-memories: those of places, of names, of words, of things,
-of figures; not only did he recall objects at will, but he
-remembered them again lit and colored as they were at
-the moment that he first perceived them. This power
-applied equally to the most imperceptible elements of
-understanding. He remembered not only the placement
-of thoughts in the book from which he had derived
-them, but even the disposition of his soul at those distant
-times."
-
-Balzac retained this marvelous gift of his youth
-throughout his life, even in larger measure as the years
-passed, and it is through this that his immense work can
-be explained, truly the work of Hercules.
-
-The anxious teachers wrote to Balzac's parents to come
-for him as soon as possible. His mother hurried to him
-and picked him up to take him back to Tours. The
-astonishment of the family was great when they saw the
-thin and sickly child that the school had returned to them
-in place of the cherub it had received, and it was
-distressing for Honoré's grandmother. Not only had he
-lost his beautiful colors and his youthful sturdiness, but,
-struck by a congestion of ideas, he appeared to be an
-imbecile. His manner was that of an ecstatic, of a
-somnambulist who sleeps with his eyes open: lost in a
-profound reverie, he did not hear that which was said to
-him, or his mind, returning from afar, arrived too late to
-respond. But the open air, rest, the nurturing
-environment of the family, the recreations they forced
-him to take and the vigorous juices of adolescence soon
-triumphed over this sickly state. The tumult caused in
-that young brain by the whirring of ideas diminished.
-Little by little, the muddled readings became organized;
-abstractions came to be blended into real images,
-observations made silently on life; while walking and
-playing, he studied the pretty landscapes of the Loire, the
-provincial types, the cathedral of Saint-Gatien and the
-characteristic physiognomies of the priests and canons;
-many of the images which later served in the grand fresco
-of the Comédie were sketched during this period of fruitful
-inaction. However, the intelligence of Balzac was not
-perceived or understood any more in his family than at
-school. Even if something clever escaped his lips, his
-mother, despite being a superior woman, would say to
-him: "Without a doubt, Honoré, you don't understand
-what you are saying." And Balzac would laugh, without
-further explanation, that wonderful laugh that he had.
-Balzac's father, who shared qualities at that time with
-Montaigne, Rabelais, and Uncle Toby, by his philosophy,
-his originality, and his goodness (it's Madame de Surville
-who is speaking), had a little better opinion of his son,
-believing due to certain genetic theories that he held that
-a child created by himself could not be stupid:
-nevertheless, he had no suspicion of the great man that
-he would become in the future.
-
-Balzac's family having returned to Paris, he was entered
-into the boarding school of Monsieur Lepitre, Rue Saint-Louis,
-and Messieurs Sganzer and Beuzelin, Rue
-Thoringy in the Marais. There as at the school in
-Vendôme, his genius did not reveal itself, and he
-remained in the midst of the troop of ordinary students.
-No prefect exclaimed to him: "You will be Marcellus!" or
-"Thus you shall go to the stars!"
-
-His classes finished, Balzac gave himself that second
-education which is the true one; he studied, perfected
-himself, attended the courses of the Sorbonne, and
-studied law while working with an attorney and a notary.
-This time, apparently lost, since Balzac became neither an
-attorney, nor a notary, nor a lawyer, nor a judge, gave him
-a personal acquaintance with the personnel of the
-Bazoche and led him to later write what I might call the
-litigations of La Comédie Humaine in the style of a man
-marvelously versed in that profession.
-
-The examinations passed, the great question of which
-career to select presented itself. His family wanted to
-make a notary of Balzac; but the future great writer, who,
-even though no one believed in his genius, had a
-consciousness of it himself, refused in a most respectful
-manner, although they had organized a position on the
-most favorable terms. His father gave him two years to
-prove himself, and as the family had returned to the
-provinces, Madame Balzac installed Honoré in a garret,
-allowing him a stipend sufficient for only his most
-pressing needs, hoping that a little hardship would make
-him wiser.
-
-This garret was perched on the Rue de Lesdiguières,
-number nine, near the Arsenal, whose library offered its
-resources to the young laborer. Without a doubt, to pass
-from an abundant and luxurious house to a miserable
-hovel would be difficult at any age other than 21, which
-was the age of Balzac; but if the dream of every child is
-to have boots, that of every young man is to have a
-room, a room all to himself, whose key he carries in his
-pocket, although he can stand upright only at its center: a
-room, it's the trappings of virility, it's independence,
-personality, love!
-
-Behold then master Honoré perched near the sky, seated
-before his table, and trying to create a work that would
-justify the indulgence of his father and disprove the
-unfavorable predictions of his friends. It is a remarkable
-thing that Balzac debuted with a tragedy, with a Cromwell!
-Around that same time, Victor Hugo also put the last
-touches on his Cromwell, whose preface became the
-manifesto of all young dramatists.
-
-II
-
-In attentively rereading La Comédie Humaine when one has
-known Balzac personally, one finds there scattered
-curious details with regard to his character and his life,
-particularly in his first works, where he has not yet
-separated out his own personality, and, due to a lack of
-subjects, observes and dissects himself. I have said that
-he began his rude apprenticeship for the literary life in a
-garret on the Rue Lesdiguières, near the Arsenal. The
-novel Facino Cane, published in Paris in March, 1836, and
-dedicated to Louise, contains some precious information
-regarding the life that this young aspirant for glory led in
-his aerial nest.
-
-"I lived then in a street which without doubt you do not
-know, the Rue Lesdiguières: it begins at the Rue Saint-Antoine,
-opposite a fountain, near the Place de la Bastille,
-and leads into the Rue de la Cerisaie. The love of science
-had thrown me into an attic where I wrote all night, and I
-passed the day in a neighboring library, that of Monsieur;
-I lived frugally, I had accepted all of the conditions of the
-monastic life, so necessary for laborers. When the
-weather was fine, I allowed myself a walk on the
-Boulevard Bourbon. One sole passion enticed me from
-my studious habits; but wasn't this also studying? I went
-to observe the manners of the neighborhood, its
-inhabitants and their characters. As ill clad as the
-workers, indifferent to decorum, I did not put them on
-their guard against me: I could mingle in their groups, see
-them conclude their deals, and hear them argue about the
-time that they would stop working. For me, observation
-had already become intuitive, it penetrated the soul
-without neglecting the body; in other words it so
-thoroughly grasped exterior that it transcended it
-immediately; it gave me the ability to live the life of the
-individual on which I was focused and permitted me to
-substitute myself for him, like the dervish of the Thousand
-and One Nights seized the body and the soul of persons
-over whom he pronounced certain words.
-
-"When, between eleven o'clock and midnight, I met a
-workman and his wife returning from the Ambigu-Comique,
-I amused myself by following them from the
-Boulevard Pont-aux-Choux to the Boulevard
-Beaumarchais. These good people would at first speak of
-the play that they had just seen; next they would address
-their personal affairs; the mother would pull the child by
-the hand without listening to either his complaints or his
-questions. The married couple would count up the
-money that would be paid to them the next day. They
-would spend it in twenty different ways. They would then
-move on to household matters, complaints over the
-excessive price of potatoes or the length of the winter
-and the rise in the cost of butter, energetic discussions on
-how much was owed to the baker, and finally onto
-discussions where each of them became irritated and
-demonstrated his character with picturesque words. In
-listening to these people, I could connect with their life, I
-felt their rags upon my back, I walked with my feet in
-their tattered shoes; their desires, their needs, all
-passed into my soul, and my soul passed into theirs; it
-was the dream of an awakened man. I became
-exasperated with them against the workshop foremen
-who tyrannized them or against the unfair practice that
-made them return many times without providing them
-with their pay. To abandon habits, to become another
-through this intoxication of the moral faculties and to
-play this game at will, such was my entertainment. To
-what do I owe this gift? Is it an extrasensory perception?
-Is it one of those qualities whose abuse would lead to
-madness? I have never sought the sources of this power;
-I possess it and I use it, that is all."
-
-I have transcribed these lines, which are doubly
-interesting because they illuminate a little-known side of
-Balzac's life, and because they show that he was
-conscious of this powerful faculty of intuition that he
-already possessed at such a high level and without which
-the realization of his work would have been impossible.
-Balzac, like Vishnu, the Indian god, possessed the gift of
-metamorphosis, that is to say the ability to incarnate
-himself into different bodies and live in them as long as
-he wished; however, the number of the metamorphoses
-of Vishnu is fixed at ten: those of Balzac are countless,
-and furthermore he could produce them at will. Although
-it may seem extravagant to say this in the heart of the
-nineteenth century, Balzac was a seer. His merits as an
-observer, his acuteness as a physiologist, his genius as a
-writer, do not suffice to explain the infinite variety of the
-two or three thousand types which play a more or less
-important role in La Comédie Humaine. He did not copy
-them, he lived them in an ideal manner, he wore their
-clothes, he took on their habits, he immersed himself in
-their surroundings, he was them for as long as necessary.
-From there come these authentic, logical characters,
-never contradicting themselves and never forgetting
-themselves, endowed with an intimate and profound
-existence, who, to use one of his expressions, took on the
-challenge of life in civil society. Truly red blood circulated
-in their veins in place of the ink that infused the creations
-of ordinary writers.
-
-Balzac did not possess this ability for any time except the
-present. He could transport his thought into a marquis,
-into a financier, into a middle-class person, into a man of
-the people, into a woman of the world, into a courtesan,
-but the shadows of the past did not obey his call: he
-never knew, like Goethe, how to evoke from the depths
-of antiquity the beautiful Hélène and make her dwell in
-the Gothic manor of Faust. With two or three
-exceptions, all of his work is modern; he has assimilated
-the living, he has not resurrected the dead. Even history
-seduced him little, as one can see from the preface to La
-Comédie Humaine: "In reading the dry and off-putting
-catalogues of facts called histories, who has not recognized
-that the writers have forgotten in every era, in Egypt, in
-Persia, in Greece, in Rome, to give us the history of
-manners? The piece by Petronius on the private life of
-the Romans irritates rather than satisfies our curiosity."
-
-This void left by the historians of vanished societies,
-Balzac proposed to fill for our own, and God knows that
-he carefully followed the program that he had planned.
-
-"Society was going to be the historian, I should not be
-but the secretary; in constructing the inventory of vices
-and of virtues, in assembling the principal features of the
-passions, in depicting the characters, in choosing the
-principal events of the society, in composing types by the
-blending of traits of several homogeneous characters,
-perhaps I could succeed in writing the history forgotten
-by so many historians, that of manners. With a great deal
-of patience and courage, I might be able to complete, on
-nineteenth century France, the book that we all regret
-that Rome, Athens, Tyre, Memphis, Persia, India, have
-unfortunately not left us on their civilization, and that like
-the abbot Bartholomew, the courageous and patient
-Monteil had attempted regarding the Middle Ages,
-although in a form that was not appealing."
-
-But let us return to the garret on the Rue Lesdiguières.
-Balzac had not conceived the plan of the work that
-would immortalize him; he was still seeking it with
-anxiety, bated breath, and hard labor, trying everything
-and succeeding in nothing; however he already possessed
-that obstinacy in his work to which Minerva, as surly as
-she might be, must one day or another yield; he outlined
-comic operas, made plans for comedies, dramas and
-romances whose titles Madame de Surville has preserved:
-Stella, Coqsigrue, Les Deux Philosophes, without counting the
-terrible Cromwell, whose verses had caused him so much
-pain and yet were not worth much more than that which
-began his epic poem, Incas.
-
-Imagine to yourself young Honoré, his legs wrapped in a
-patched coat, his upper body protected by an old shawl
-of his mother, his headdress a sort of Dantesque cap and
-his hair of a cut that only Madame de Balzac knew, his
-coffee pot to his left, his inkwell to his right, working
-with a heaving chest and bowed forehead, like an ox at
-the plow, the field still stony and not cleared by those
-thoughts which would later trace for him such productive
-furrows. The lamp shines like a star in the front of the
-dark house, the snow falls in silence on the loosened tiles,
-the wind blows through the door and window "like
-Tulou on his Flute, but less agreeably."
-
-If some dawdling passerby had raised his eyes toward
-that little, obstinately flickering glow, he certainly would
-not have suspected that it was the dawning of one of the
-greatest glories of our age.
-
-Would you like to see a sketch of the place, transposed,
-it's true, but very exact, drawn by the author in La Peau de
-Chagrin, that work which contains so much of himself?
-
-"… A room which looks down upon the yards of the
-neighboring houses, from the windows of which extend
-long poles hung with washing; nothing was more horrible
-than that garret with those yellow, grimy walls, which
-soaked in the misery and called out to its scholar. The
-roof slanted in a uniform fashion, and the loosened tiles
-permitted a view of the sky; there was room for a bed, a
-table, a few chairs, and under the sharp angle of the roof
-I could position my piano … I lived in this aerial
-sepulcher for almost three years, working night and day,
-without rest, with so much pleasure that my studies
-seemed to be the most beautiful focus, the happiest
-solution to human life. The calm and silence necessary to
-the scholar have some elements of the sweetness and
-intoxication of love … Study lends a sort of magic to
-everything that surrounds us. The meager desk upon
-which I wrote and the brown leather that covered it, my
-piano, my bed, my armchair, the peculiar wallpaper, my
-furniture, all of these things came to life and became for
-me humble friends, silent partners in my future. How
-many times have I not shared my soul while gazing upon
-them? Often, while letting my eyes wander on a crooked
-molding, I would encounter new developments, a striking
-proof of my system that I believed was able to convey
-nearly untranslatable thoughts."
-
-In this same passage, he makes an allusion to his work: "I
-had undertaken two great works; a comedy that was in
-only a few days to give me fame, a fortune and entry into
-that world in which I wanted to reappear while exercising
-the kingly rights of a man of genius. You have all seen in
-this masterpiece the first error of a young man just out of
-college, the nonsense of a child. Your jibes destroyed the
-nascent illusions, which since then have not been
-awakened …"
-
-One recognizes here the ill-fated Cromwell, which, read in
-front of the family and the assembled friends, was a
-complete fiasco.
-
-Honoré appealed this sentence before an arbiter whom
-he accepted as competent, an honorable old man, a
-former professor at the École Polytechnique. The
-judgment was that the author should do "anything at all,
-except literature."
-
-What a loss for letters, what a void in the human spirit if
-the young man had bowed before the experience of the
-old man and listened to his counsel, which, certainly, was
-most wise, because there was not the least spark of
-genius nor even of talent in this rhetorical tragedy!
-Happily Balzac, under the pseudonym of Louis Lambert,
-had not composed for nothing at the college of Vendôme
-the Traité de la Volonté.
-
-He submitted to the sentence, but only for tragedy;
-he understood that he should give up trying to walk in
-the footsteps of Corneille and Racine, whom he so
-admired without being in their debt, for never were
-geniuses more contrary to that of himself. The novel
-offered him a more suitable model, and he wrote at this
-time a great number of volumes which he did not sign
-and which he always disavowed. The Balzac that we
-know and that we admire was still in limbo and struggled
-in vain to extricate himself. Those who had judged him
-capable of being nothing but a copyist appeared to be
-right; perhaps even this option had failed him, because
-his beautiful handwriting had already deteriorated with
-the crumpled, crossed out, overwritten, near hieroglyphic
-drafts of the writer fighting for the idea and no longer
-concerned about the beauty of the character.
-
-Thus, nothing resulted from this rigorous confinement,
-this hermetic life in the Thébaïde in which Raphaël
-outlines the budget: "Three sous of bread, two sous of
-milk, three sous of meat that prevented me from dying of
-hunger and kept my mind in a state of singular lucidity.
-My lodgings cost me three sous a day; I burned three
-sous of oil every night, I took care of my own room, I
-wore flannel shirts so that I would spend only two sous a
-day for laundry. I warmed myself with coal, whose price
-divided by the days in the year never gave more than two
-sous for each. I had suits of clothes, linens, and shoes for
-three years: I didn't want to get dressed except to go to
-certain public lectures and to the libraries; these expenses
-combined were only eighteen sous: there remained two
-sous for unforeseen things. I do not recall having, during
-this long period of work, having passed the Pont des Arts
-or ever buying water."
-
-Without doubt, Raphaël exaggerated these economies a
-little, but Balzac's correspondence with his sister shows
-that the novel does not differ much from the reality. The
-old woman referred to in his letters by the name of Iris la
-Messagère, who was 70 years-old, could not have been a
-very active housekeeper, as Balzac writes: "The news of
-my household is disastrous, the work does harm to its
-cleanliness. This rascal of Myself neglects himself more
-and more, he only descends every three or four days to
-make some purchases, he goes to the closest and worst
-provisioned merchants in the quarter: the others are too
-far, and the fellow economizes even his steps; so that
-your brother (destined for so much celebrity) is already
-nourished absolutely like a great man, that is to say that
-he is dying of hunger."
-
-"Another problem: The coffee is made terribly bitter by
-dirt. Lots of water is needed to correct the damage; but
-the water does not rise to my celestial garret (it descends
-there only on stormy days), it will require, after the
-purchase of the piano, the installation of a hydraulic
-machine, if the coffee continues to disappear while the
-master and the servant daydream."
-
-Elsewhere, continuing the joking, he reprimands the lazy
-Myself, the only footman that he has in his service, who
-does not fill the basin, leaves dust balls scattered freely
-under the bed, the dirt obscuring the windows,
-and the spiders spinning their webs in the corners.
-
-In another letter, he writes: "I have eaten two melons …
-it will be necessary to pay for them with nuts and dry
-bread!"
-
-One of the rare recreations that he permitted himself was
-to go to the Jardin des Plantes or Père-Lachaise. At the
-summit of the funereal hill, he towered over Paris like
-Rastignac at the burial of Père Goriot. His gaze glided
-over this ocean of slate and tile that cover up so much
-luxury, misery, intrigue and passion. Like a young eagle,
-he took in his prey at a glance; but he still had no wings,
-no beak, no talons, although his eye could already fix
-itself on the sun. He said, contemplating the tombs:
-"There are no more beautiful epitaphs than these: La
-Fontaine, Masséna, Molière: one single name that says
-everything and makes us dream!"
-
-This sentence contains an ill-defined but prophetic
-understanding that the future realized, alas!, too soon. On
-the slope of the hill, upon a sepulchral stone, beneath a
-bust cast in bronze, after the marble of David, the word
-BALZAC says everything and makes the solitary
-wanderer dream.
-
-The dietary regimen recommended by Raphaël could be
-favorable to the lucidity of the brain; but certainly it was
-worthless for a young man used to the comfort of family
-life. The fifteen months that passed under these intellectual
-burdens, sadder, without fail, than those of Venice, had
-made the youthful Tourangeau with the soft, glowing
-cheeks a Parisian skeleton, haggard and yellow, nearly
-unrecognizable. Balzac reentered the paternal home,
-where the fatted calf was killed for the return of this only
-slightly prodigal child.
-
-I glide lightly over the period of his life when he tried to
-ensure independence by speculations in the book trade
-and during which only a lack of capital prevented him
-from finding success. These ventures put him in debt,
-mortgaged his future, and despite the devoted assistance
-offered perhaps too late by the family, burdened him
-with the rock of Sisyphus that he so many times pushed
-just to the edge of the hill, and which always fell back
-with more crushing weight upon the shoulders of this
-Atlas, overloaded besides by an entire world.
-
-This debt that he made it a sacred duty to discharge,
-because it represented the fortune of those who were
-dear to him, was Necessity armed with a spiked whip, her
-hand bearing bronze nails that harassed him night and
-day, with neither truce nor pity, making him regard every
-hour of repose or recreation as a theft. She dominated his
-entire life painfully, often rendering it inexplicable to he
-who did not possess its secret.
-
-Having provided these indispensable biographical details,
-I come to my direct and personal impressions of Balzac.
-
-Balzac, that immense brain, that physiologist so
-penetrating, that observer so profound, that mind so
-intuitive, did not possess the literary gift: within him there
-opened an abyss between the thought and the form. That
-abyss, particularly in the early years, he despaired of
-crossing. He threw himself without fulfillment into
-volume upon volume, observation upon observation,
-essay upon essay; an entire library of disavowed books
-passed through there. A will less robust would have been
-discouraged a thousand times; but happily Balzac had an
-unshakeable confidence in his genius, unknown to all the
-world. He wanted to be a great man, and he was that by
-his unrelenting projections of that force that was more
-powerful than electricity, and with which he made such
-subtle analyses in Louis Lambert.
-
-Unlike the writers of the romantic school, who
-distinguished themselves by a boldness and astonishing
-facility of execution, and produced their fruits at nearly
-the same time as their flowers, in a blossoming that was in
-a sense involuntary, Balzac, the equal in genius of them
-all, did not find his means of expression, or did not find
-it until after infinite suffering. Hugo said in one of his
-prefaces, with his Castilian pride: "I do not know the art
-of soldering a beauty in the place of a defect, and I
-correct myself in another work." But Balzac would cover
-a tenth proof with his crossings out, and when he saw me
-return to the La Chronique de Paris the proof of an article
-written in a hurry, on the corner of a table, with only
-typographical corrections, he could not believe, as
-content as he was otherwise, that I had applied all of my
-talent there. "By reworking it two or three times, it would
-have been better," he said to me.
-
-Citing himself as an example, he preached to me a
-strange literary lifestyle. I must cloister myself for two or
-three years, drink water, eat soggy lupins like Protogène,
-go to bed at six o'clock in the evening, get up at
-midnight, and work until morning, using the day to
-revise, expand, shorten, perfect, polish the nocturnal
-work, correct the proofs, take notes, do the necessary
-studies, and live most importantly with absolute chastity.
-He insisted a great deal upon this last recommendation,
-which was very challenging for a young man of twenty-four
-or twenty-five years. According to him, true chastity
-develops to the highest degree the powers of the mind,
-and gives to those who practice it unidentified abilities. I
-timidly objected that the greatest geniuses did not forbid
-themselves love, passion, or even pleasure, and I cited
-some illustrious names. Balzac shook his head and
-responded, "They would have done better, without the
-women!"
-
-The only concession that he would grant me, and even
-then he regretted it, was to see my beloved one half hour
-each year. He permitted letters: "These guide the
-development of style."
-
-By means of this regimen, he promised to make of me,
-with the natural abilities that he was pleased to recognize
-in me, a writer of the first order. It is clear from my work
-that I have not followed this plan.
-
-It must not be believed that Balzac was joking when he
-laid down these conditions that the Trappists or the
-Carthusians would have found harsh. He was perfectly
-convinced, and spoke with such eloquence that many
-times I consciously tried to use this method to develop
-genius; I awoke numerous times at midnight, and after
-having partaken of the inspirational coffee, acted
-according to the formula, seating myself in front of a
-table on which sleep caused me to quickly lay my head.
-La Morte Amoureuse, published in the La Chronique de Paris,
-was my only nocturnal work.
-
-Around this time, Balzac had written for a review Facino
-Cane, the story of a noble Venetian who, imprisoned in
-the vaults of the ducal palace, had fallen, while digging an
-escape tunnel, upon the secret treasure of the Republic, a
-good part of which he carried away with the help of a
-bribed jailer. Facino Cane, who became blind and played
-the clarinet under the common name of Father Canet,
-had kept an extrasensory perception for gold; he
-recognized it through walls and in vaults, and he offered
-to the writer, at a wedding in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine,
-to guide him, if he was willing to pay him the
-cost of the journey, toward this immense mass of riches
-whose location had been lost due to the fall of the
-Venetian Republic. Balzac, as I have said, lived his
-characters, and at this moment, he was Facino Cane
-himself, although without the blindness, for never have
-there been eyes more sparkling or scintillating on a
-human face. He dreamed of nothing but tons of gold,
-heaps of diamonds and garnets, and, by means of
-magnetism, with whose practices he had been long
-familiar, he sought from these explorations the
-location of the buried and lost treasure. He pretended to
-have learned in this way, in the most precise manner, the
-place where, near the hill of Pointe-à-Pître, Toussaint
-Louverture had caused his booty to be buried by negroes
-who were immediately shot. The Gold-Bug, of Edgar Poe,
-does not equal, in subtlety of reasoning, in clarity of plan,
-in divination of details, the fevered rendition that he has
-given us of the expedition to attempt to become master
-of this treasure, which was far richer than that which was
-buried by Tom Kidd at the skull at the foot of the
-Talipot.
-
-I implore the reader to not make too much fun of me, if
-I confess to him in all humility that I soon shared the
-conviction of Balzac. What brain could have resisted his
-breathtaking speech? Jules Sandeau was also soon
-seduced, and as he needed two dependable friends, two
-devoted and robust companions to perform the
-nocturnal excavations under the direction of the seer,
-Balzac was pleased to grant us one-fourth each of this
-prodigious fortune. One-half was to revert to him by
-right, as he had made the discovery and directed the
-enterprise.
-
-We were to buy pikes, pickaxes and shovels, get them
-secretly on board the vessel, and get ourselves to a
-designated point by different routes so as not to excite
-suspicions, and, the blow being struck, we were to
-transport our riches on a brigantine chartered in advance;
-in short, it was quite a tale, which would have been
-admirable if Balzac had written it instead of speaking it.
-
-There is no need to say that we did not unearth the
-treasure of Toussaint Louverture. Money was not
-available to pay our passage; the three of us had at most
-enough to buy the pickaxes.
-
-The dream of a sudden fortune won by some strange and
-marvelous means often haunted the brain of Balzac;
-some years before (in 1833), he had made a voyage to
-Sardinia to examine the slag of the silver mines
-abandoned by the Romans, which, treated by imperfect
-processes, must according to him still have contained a
-great deal of metal. The idea was reasonable and,
-imprudently confided, made the fortune of another.
-
-III
-
-I have related the anecdote of the treasure buried by
-Toussaint Louverture, not for the pleasure of telling a
-strange story, but because it is connected with a
-dominant idea of Balzac – money. Certainly, nobody was
-less avaricious than the author of La Comédie Humaine, but
-his genius made him foresee the immense role that this
-metallic hero would play in art, more interesting for
-modern society than the Grandissons, the Desgrieux, the
-Oswalds, the Werthers, the Malek-Adhels, the Renés, the
-Laras, the Waverleys, the Quentin Durwards, etc.
-
-Until then the story had been confined to the portrayal of
-a unique passion, love, but love in an ideal sphere and
-outside of the necessities and miseries of life. The
-personages of these entirely psychological recitals neither
-ate, nor drank, nor lodged, nor had an account with their
-tailor. They moved in an abstract environment like those
-of a tragedy. If they wished to travel, they put, without
-obtaining a passport, some handfuls of diamonds into the
-bottom of their pocket, and paid with this currency the
-postilions, who did not fail at each way station to have
-exhausted their horses; some chateaus of indistinct
-architecture received them at the end of their journeys,
-and with their blood they wrote to their beloveds
-interminable epistles dated from the tour of the North.
-The heroines, no less immaterial, resembled an aquatint
-of Angelica Kauffmann: a large straw hat, hair somewhat
-straightened in the English style, a long robe of white
-chiffon, held at the waist by an azure sash.
-
-With his profound instinct for reality, Balzac understood
-that the modern life he wanted to portray was dominated
-by one grand fact, money, and, in La Peau de Chagrin, he
-had the courage to present a lover not only anxious to
-know if he had touched the heart of the one he loves, but
-also if he will have enough money to pay for the carriage
-in which he was bringing her home. This audacity is
-perhaps one of the greatest that one might permit oneself
-in literature, and it alone sufficed to immortalize Balzac.
-The consternation was profound, and the purists were
-indignant at this infraction of the laws of the genre; but
-all the young people who, going out in the evening to the
-home of some beautiful woman wearing white gloves ironed
-with gum elastic, had traversed Paris as dancers, on the
-tips of their shoes, fearing a spot of mud more than the
-crack of a pistol, commiserated, having shared these fears,
-like the anguishes of Valentin, who cared deeply about a
-hat that he could not renew and preserve despite his minute
-care. In moments of supreme misery, the discovery of a one
-hundred sou piece slid under the papers of the drawer, due
-to the discreet pity of Pauline, produced the effect of the
-most romantic theatrical strokes or of the intervention of
-a Peri in the Arabian tales. Who has not discovered during
-days of distress, forgotten in pants or in a vest, a few
-glorious coins appearing at just the right time and saving
-you from the calamity that youth fears the most: to fail to
-provide a beloved woman with a carriage, a bouquet, a small
-bench, a show program, a tip to the usherette or some trifles
-of this type?
-
-Balzac excels in the portrayal of youth who are poor, as
-they almost always are, entering into their first struggles
-with life, prey to the temptation of pleasures and luxury,
-and experiencing profound miseries due to their high
-hopes. Valentin, Rastignac, Bianchon, d'Arthez, Lucien
-de Rubempré, Lousteau, have all sunk their beautiful
-teeth into the tough meat of the angry cow, fortifying
-food for robust stomachs, indigestible for weak
-stomachs; he does not lodge them, these beautiful young
-ones without a sou, in conventional garrets decorated
-with Persian rugs, with windows festooned with sweet
-peas and looking out on gardens; he does not have them
-eat "some simple dishes, prepared by the hand of nature,"
-and does not dress them in luxurious garments, but in
-those that are proper and practical; he puts them in the
-boarding house of Mother Vauquer, or forces them to
-crouch under the sharp angle of a roof, he presses them
-into greasy tables at mean little restaurants, dressing them
-in black clothing with gray seams, and he is not afraid to
-send them to the pawn shop, if they still have, a rare
-occurrence, their father's watch.
-
-Oh Corinne, you who allows, upon Cape Misèna, your
-snowy arm to dangle across your ivory lyre, while the son
-of Albion, draped in a superb new coat, and shod in his
-beloved perfectly polished boots, reflects on you and
-listens to you in an elegant pose, Corinne, what would
-you have said to such heroes? They have however one
-small quality that was lacking in Oswald, they live, and of
-a life so robust that it seems like one has encountered
-them one thousand times; also Pauline, Delphine de
-Nucingen, the princess of Cadignan, Madame de
-Bargeton, Coralie, Esther, are madly infatuated with
-them.
-
-At the time that the first novels signed by Balzac
-appeared, one did not have, to the same degree as today,
-the preoccupation, or, better said, the fever for gold.
-California had not been discovered; there existed perhaps
-several leagues of railway whose future one hardly
-suspected, and that one saw as a kind of conduit that led up
-to the Russian mountains, but that had fallen into disuse;
-the public ignored, so to speak, "business," and only
-bankers gambled at the Bourse. This movement of
-capital, this flow of gold, these calculations, these figures,
-this importance given to money in works that one still
-took as simple romantic fictions and not as serious
-portraits of life, singularly shocked the subscribers to the
-reading rooms, and critics added up the total sums spent
-or staked by the author. The millions of father Grandet
-led to arithmetic discussions, and serious people,
-troubled by the enormity of the totals, doubted the
-financial abilities of Balzac, very great abilities
-nevertheless, and recognized later. Stendhal said with a
-sort of disdainful smugness, "Before writing, I always
-read three or four pages of the Civil Code to give me the
-tone." Balzac, who understood money so well, also
-discovered poems and dramas in the Code: Le Contrat de
-Mariage, where he places in opposition, in the persons of
-Matthias and of Solonnet, the ancient and the modern
-notary, has all of the interest of the most eventful
-comedy of the cloak and sword. The bankruptcy in
-Grandeur et Décadence de César Birotteau makes you quiver
-like the story of an empire's fall; the conflict of the
-château and the cottage in Les Paysans offers just as much
-adventure as the siege of Troy. Balzac knows how to give
-life to the soil, to a house, to a heritage, to a capital, and
-in fact to heroes and heroines whose adventures are
-devoured with anxious avidity.
-
-These new elements introduced into the novel were not
-appreciated at first; the philosophical analyses, the
-detailed character portraits, the minute descriptions that
-seemed to have the future in view, were regarded as
-unpleasantly lengthy, and quite often one skipped them
-to move on to the story. Later, one recognized that the
-goal of the author was not to weave intrigues that were
-more or less well-plotted, but to portray society in its
-entirety, from the summit to the base, with its characters
-and its components, and that one will admire in it the
-immense variety of these types. Is it not Alexandre
-Dumas who said of Shakespeare: "Shakespeare, the man
-who has created the most after God?"; the words might
-be even more justly applied to Balzac; never, indeed, did
-so many living creatures issue from one human brain.
-
-At this time (1836), Balzac had conceived the plan for his
-Comédie Humaine and possessed the full awareness of his
-genius. He adroitly connected the works that had already
-been published to his general concept and found them a
-place in the categories that had been philosophically
-outlined. Some novels of pure fantasy did not fit in very
-well, despite the connections that were added afterwards;
-but these are details that are lost in the immensity of the
-ensemble, like ornaments in a differing style on a grand
-edifice.
-
-I have said that Balzac worked laboriously, and, being an
-obstinate smelter, rejected ten or twelve times from the
-crucible the metal that had not perfectly filled the mold;
-like Bernard Palissy, he would have burned the furniture,
-the flooring and up through the beams of his house
-without regret to maintain the fire in his furnace; the
-most challenging necessities would never make him
-deliver a work on which he had not put the utmost
-effort, and he gave admirable examples of literary
-conscientiousness. His corrections, so numerous that
-they were almost equivalent to different editions on the
-same idea, were charged to his account by the editors
-who were responsible for earnings, and his
-compensation, often modest for the value of the work
-and the pain it had cost him, were diminished in
-proportion. The promised sums did not always arrive on
-time, and to sustain what he laughingly called his floating debt,
-Balzac displayed prodigious resources of mind and a
-level of activity that would have completely absorbed the
-life of an ordinary man. But, when seated before his table
-in his friar's frock, in the midst of the nocturnal silence,
-he found himself confronted with blank sheets
-illuminated by the glow of seven candles, concentrated by
-a green shade, in taking pen in hand he forgot
-everything, and thus commenced a struggle more terrible
-than the conflict of Jacob with the angel, that of form
-and idea. In these nightly battles, from which in the
-morning he would issue broken but victorious, when the
-extinguished hearth chilled the atmosphere of his room
-once again, his head steamed and his body exhaled a
-visible fog like the body of a horse in wintertime.
-Sometimes only a single phrase occupied an entire
-evening; it was considered, reconsidered, twisted,
-kneaded, pounded, stretched, shortened, written in one
-hundred different ways, and, bizarrely, the necessary,
-complete, form, would not present itself until after the
-exhaustion of the approximate forms; without doubt the
-metal often flowed from a fuller and thicker hose, but
-there are very few pages in Balzac that stayed identical to
-the first draft. His manner of proceeding was this: when
-he had for a long time borne and lived a subject, with
-writing that was rapid, jumbled, blotted, nearly
-hieroglyphic, he would outline a sort of scenario in a few
-pages, which he would send to the printer and which was
-returned on placards, that is to say as isolated columns in
-the middle of large sheets. He read these placards
-carefully, which already gave to his embryo of work that
-impersonal character that the manuscript does not have,
-and he applied to this rough sketch the high critical
-faculty that he possessed, acting as if he were another
-person. He worked on something; approving or
-disapproving, he kept or corrected, but mostly added.
-Lines issuing from the beginning, the middle or the end
-of phrases, were directed toward the margins, to the
-right, to the left, to the top, to the bottom, leading to
-some developments, to insertions, to interpolations, to
-epithets, to adverbs. At the end of some hours of work,
-one would have called his sheet a bouquet of fireworks
-drawn by a child. From the primitive text shot forth
-rockets of style which exploded on all sides. Then there
-were simple crosses, crosses recrossed like a coat of arms,
-stars, suns, Arab or Roman numerals, Greek or French
-letters, every imaginable sign of reference to mix with the
-scratchings. Some strips of paper, fastened with sealing
-wafers, stuck on with pins, added to the insufficient
-margins, striped with lines of fine characters to conserve
-space, themselves full of crossings out, because the
-correction that had barely been made had itself already
-been corrected. The printed placard nearly disappeared in
-what appeared to be a cabalistic book of spells, which the
-typographers passed from hand to hand, each not
-wanting to work for more than an hour on Balzac.
-
-The following day, they sent back the placards with the
-corrections made, and already expanded by half.
-
-Balzac resumed work, always amplifying, adding a trait, a
-detail, a description, an observation on manners, a
-characteristic word, a phrase for effect, bringing the form
-closer to the idea, always moving closer to his internal
-outline, choosing like a painter among three or four
-contours the definitive line. Often this terrible work
-ended with that intensity of attention of which he alone
-was capable, as he recognized that a thought had been
-poorly expressed, that one incident predominated, that a
-figure that he wished to be secondary for general effect
-deviated from his plan, and with one stroke of the pen he
-would courageously destroy the result of four or five
-nights of labor. He was heroic in these circumstances.
-
-Six, seven, and sometimes ten proofs were returned with
-crossings out, rewritten, without satisfying the author's
-desire for perfection. I have seen at Les Jardies, on the
-shelves of a library composed of only his works, each
-different proof of the same work bound in a separate
-volume from the first sketch to the definitive book; the
-comparison of Balzac's thought at these diverse stages
-offers a very curious study and contains profitable literary
-lessons. Near these volumes a sinister looking book,
-bound in black morocco leather, with neither clasps nor
-gilding, drew my attention: "Take it," Balzac said to me,
-"it is an unpublished work which may have some value."
-Its title was Comptes Mélancoliques; it contained lists of
-debts, due dates of bills to be paid, notices of purveyors
-and all that menacing paperwork that is legalized by a
-stamp. This volume, with a kind of  mocking contrast,
-was placed beside the Contes Drolatiques, "of which it is
-not a continuation," added the author of La Comédie
-Humaine with a laugh.
-
-Despite this laborious method of execution, Balzac
-produced a great deal, thanks to his superhuman will
-supplemented by the temperament of an athlete and the
-seclusion of a monk. For two or three months in
-succession, when he had some important work in
-progress, he labored sixteen or eighteen hours out of
-twenty-four; he granted to his animal being only six hours
-of a heavy, feverish, convulsive sleep, encouraged by the
-torpor of digestion after a hastily taken meal. He would
-disappear so completely, his best friends would lose all
-trace; but he would soon return from underground,
-waving a major work above his head, laughing his hearty
-laugh, applauding himself with a perfect innocence and
-according himself the praise that he demanded from no
-one else. No author was more unconcerned than him
-regarding reviews and advertising upon the release of his
-books; he allowed his reputation to grow by itself,
-without putting his hand to it, and he never courted
-journalists. Indeed other things consumed his time: he
-delivered his copy, took his money and fled to distribute
-it to his creditors who often waited in the journal's
-courtyard, like, for example, the masons of Les Jardies.
-
-Sometimes, in the morning, he would meet me
-breathless, exhausted, giddy from the fresh air, like
-Vulcan escaping from his forge, and he would fall upon a
-couch; his long vigil had left him starving and he would
-blend sardines with butter and make a sort of paste which
-reminded him of the rillettes of Tours, and which he
-would spread on bread. This was his favorite dish; he had
-no sooner eaten than he fell asleep, begging me to
-awaken him after one hour. Without regard for his
-admonition, I would respect this well-earned sleep, and I
-silenced all of the whispers in the house. When Balzac
-awoke of his own accord, and he saw that the evening's
-twilight was diffusing its gray tints across the sky, he
-would leap up from his couch and heap me with abuse,
-calling me traitor, thief, assassin: I made him lose ten
-thousand francs, because awake he could have had the
-idea for a novel that would have earned this sum (without
-the reprints). I was the cause of the gravest catastrophes
-and unimaginable disorders. I had made him miss
-meetings with bankers, editors, duchesses; he would not
-be able to repay his debts on time; this fatal sleep would
-cost millions. But I was already used to these prodigious
-betting systems that Balzac, starting from the lowest
-figure, would push excessively to the most monstrous
-sums, and I easily consoled myself by seeing the beautiful
-colors characteristic in Tours reappear on his rested
-cheeks.
-
-Balzac lived then at Chaillot, rue des Batailles, a house
-from which one found an admirable view of the course
-of the Seine, the Champ de Mars, the École Militaire, the
-dome of the Invalides, a large proportion of Paris and
-further away the hills of Meudon. He had arranged there
-an interior that was luxurious enough, because he knew
-that in Paris nobody believed in an impoverished talent,
-and that perception often leads to reality. It was during this
-period that one hears of his tendencies toward elegance
-and dandyism, the famous blue coat with solid gold
-buttons, the walking stick with a turquoise head, the
-appearances at the Bouffes and at the Opera, and the
-more frequent visits into society where his sparkling flair
-made him much sought after, visits that were useful for
-more than one reason, for he met there more than one
-model. It was not easy to penetrate into his home, which
-was better guarded than the garden of the Hespérides.
-Two or three passwords were required. Balzac, for fear
-they might be divulged, changed them often. I remember
-these ones: to the porter one said: "Prune season has
-arrived," and he would let you cross the threshold; to the
-servant who ran to the stairs at the sound of the bell, it
-was necessary to whisper: "I bring lace from Belgium,"
-and if you could assure the bedroom valet that "Madame
-Bertrand was in good health," you were finally
-introduced.
-
-This childish behavior very much amused Balzac; it was
-necessary to ward off unwanted people and those who
-were even more disagreeable.
-
-In La Fille aux Yeux d'Or is found a description of the
-salon in the rue des Batailles. It is of the most scrupulous
-fidelity, and one will not be displeased to see the lion's
-den painted by himself. There is not a detail to add or to
-subtract.
-
-"Half of the sitting room described a delicately graceful
-circular line, opposite of which the other half was
-perfectly square, in the middle of which shined a fireplace
-of white marble and gold. One entered through a side
-door concealed by a rich tapestry and which faced a
-window. The horseshoe-shaped section of the room was
-decorated with a real Turkish divan, that is to say with a
-mattress placed on the ground, but a mattress as large as
-a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference covered in white
-cashmere, embellished with tufts of black and poppy-colored
-silk, arranged in a diamond pattern; the back of
-this immense bed was elevated several inches higher by
-the numerous cushions that enriched it further by their
-stylish compatibility. This sitting room was hung with a
-red fabric on which was mounted a muslin from the
-Indies that was fluted like a Corinthian column by piping
-that alternated between hollow and round and stopped at
-the top and bottom with a band of poppy-colored fabric,
-on which were drawn some black arabesques. Under the
-muslin, the poppy color became rose, an amorous color
-that repeated in the window curtains, which were of
-muslin from the Indies lined with rose-colored taffeta
-and ornamented with poppy and black fringes. Six silver
-arms each supporting two candles were attached to these
-wall coverings at equal distances, to illuminate the divan.
-The ceiling, from the center of which hung a lantern of
-matte silver, sparkled with whiteness, and the molding
-was gilded. The carpet resembled an Oriental shawl, it
-presented the designs and recalled the poetry of Persia,
-where the hands of slaves had created it. The furniture
-was covered in white cashmere, set off by black and
-poppy-colored accents. The clock, the candelabras, all
-were of white marble and gold. The only table in the
-room had a cashmere covering; elegant jardinières
-contained roses of every type, and white or red flowers."
-
-I can add that upon the table was placed a magnificent
-writing desk in gold and malachite, the gift, without a
-doubt, of some admiring stranger.
-
-It was with a childlike satisfaction that Balzac showed me
-this sitting room set in a square salon, and by necessity
-leaving empty spaces at the angles of the circular half.
-When I had admired the stylish splendors of this room
-sufficiently,  splendors whose luxury would seem less
-today, Balzac opened a secret door and made me enter a
-shadowy passage that led around the semicircle; at one of
-the corners was placed a narrow iron bed, a kind of
-working camp bed; in the other, there was a table "with
-everything that is necessary to write," as M. Scribe said in
-his stage directions: it was there that Balzac took refuge
-to be free of all intrusions and all investigations.
-
-Many thicknesses of fabric and paper padded the wall to
-block all noise from both sides. To be sure that no
-sounds could pass into the salon from outside, Balzac
-asked me to return to the room and shout as loudly as I
-could; one could still hear a little; it was necessary to add
-a few sheets of gray paper to entirely block the sound.
-These mysterious actions intrigued me immensely and I
-demanded to know their motivation. Balzac gave me a
-reason that Stendhal would have approved, but modern
-prudery prevents my repeating. The fact is that he was
-already developing in his mind the scene of Henry de
-Marsay and Paquita, and he was anxious to know if the
-cries of the victim in the salon could reach the ears of the
-other inhabitants of the house.
-
-He gave me a splendid dinner in the same sitting room,
-for which he lit with his own hand all of the candles on
-the silver arms, as well as the lantern and the candelabras.
-The guests were the Marquis de B. and the painter L. B.:
-although very sober and abstemious by habit, Balzac
-from time to time did not fear to "indulge in a little good
-cheer"; he ate with a jovial gourmandism that inspired the
-appetite, and he drank in the manner of Pantagruel. Four
-bottles of the white wine of Vouvray, one of the headiest
-known, did not affect his powerful brain and gave only a
-greater sparkle to his gaiety. What good stories he told us
-at dessert! Rabelais, Beroalde de Verville, Eutrapel, le
-Pogge, Straparole, the Queen of Navarre and all of the
-doctors of the happy science would have recognized in
-him a disciple and a master!
-
-Characteristic feature! At this splendid feast provided by
-Chevet there was no bread! But when one has excess
-then what is the point of necessities?
-
-After dinner, our Amphytrion led us to the Italians in a
-superb presentation. The evening was already getting late,
-but Balzac did not want to miss "the descent of the
-staircase" spectacle, which, according to him, was
-eminently instructive.
-
-Weighed down by the good food and fine wines,
-enveloped in the warm atmosphere of the room, I should
-say that the three of us slept the sleep of the just and only
-awakened to offer our final compliments.
-
-Balzac was quite amused by this somnolent trio.
-
-In the same apartment on the rue des Batailles, whose
-salon I described using Balzac's own words, I recall
-having seen a magnificent sketch of Louis Boulanger
-after a bas-relief of Léda and the Swan attributed to
-Michelangelo. It was the only picture that it contained,
-because the author of La Comédie Humaine did not yet
-have the taste for paintings and curiosities that he would
-later develop, and his luxury then, as we have seen,
-consisted more of sumptuousness than of art. His painter
-was Girodet. Some of his first stories show the influence
-of this admiration which led me to tease him with jibes
-that he accepted with good grace.
-
-IV
-
-One of the dreams of Balzac was of a heroic and devoted
-friendship, two souls, two courages, two intelligences
-blended into the same will. Pierre and Jaffier of Otway's
-Venice Preserv'd had impressed him greatly and he spoke of
-them many times. L'Histoire des Treize is nothing but this
-idea enlarged and complicated: one powerful unit
-composed of multiple beings acting unquestioningly
-toward an accepted and suitable goal. We know what
-gripping, mysterious and terrible effects he has drawn
-from this starting point in Ferragus, La Duchesse de Langeais,
-and La Fille aux Yeux d'Or; but real life and the
-intellectual life were not as clearly separated for Balzac as
-they were for certain authors, and his creations followed
-him outside of his study. He wanted to form an
-association after the fashion of that which united
-Ferragus, Montriveau, Ronquerolles, and their
-companions. Only it was not done in such bold strokes; a
-certain number of friends were to lend each other aid and
-relief at all times, and to work according to their
-strengths for the success or the fortune of the individual
-who would be selected, with the understanding that that
-person should in turn work for the others. Very much
-infatuated with his project, Balzac recruited some
-associates whom he put in contact with each other but
-took precautions as if it were a political society or a
-meeting of Carbonari. This needless mystery amused him
-considerably, and he pursued his activities with the
-utmost seriousness. When their numbers were complete,
-he assembled the adepts and made known the goal of the
-society. It need not be said that everyone was in
-agreement, and that the statutes were approved with
-enthusiasm. No one more than Balzac possessed the
-ability to agitate, to overexcite, to intoxicate the coolest
-heads, the most considered intellects. He had an
-eloquence that was overflowing, tumultuous, rousing,
-that carried you off: no objection was possible with him;
-he would immediately drown you in such a deluge of
-words that you were compelled to be silent. Besides he
-had an answer for everything; then he would cast upon
-you glances that were so sharp, so brilliant, so full of a
-mysterious power that he would infuse you with his own
-desire.
-
-The association which counted among its members G. de
-C., L. G., L. D., J. S., Merle, who was called Handsome
-Merle, myself, and a few others who it is not necessary to
-name, was called Le Cheval Rouge. Why Le Cheval Rouge,
-you are going to say, rather than Le Lion d'Or or La Croix
-de Malte? The first meeting of the members took place at
-a restaurant on the Quai de l'Entrepôt, at the end of the
-Pont de la Tournelle, whose sign was a carrier’s horse,
-and this had given Balzac the idea of that
-somewhat bizarre, unintelligible, and cabalistic
-designation.
-
-When it was necessary to organize a project, to agree on
-certain steps, Balzac, elected by acclamation grandmaster
-of the order, sent by one of the members to each horse
-(that was the slang name used by the members among
-themselves) a letter on which was drawn a small red
-horse with the words: "Stable, at such and such a day, at
-such and such a location”; the place changed each time, out
-of fear of awakening curiosity or suspicion. In the society,
-although we all knew each other and for a long time for
-the most part, we were to avoid speaking to each other or
-approaching each other except in the most distant
-manner to avoid any idea of complicity. Often, in the
-middle of a salon, Balzac would pretend to meet me for
-the first time, and by blinks of the eye and facial
-expressions such as actors make in their asides, he would
-call my attention to his finesse and seem to say to me:
-"See how well I play my game!"
-
-What was the goal of Le Cheval Rouge? Did it wish to
-change the government, set forth a new religion, found a
-philosophical school, master men, seduce women? Far
-less than that. It sought to take control of the
-newspapers, take control of the theatres, sit in the seats
-of the Academy, receive an array of decorations, and end
-modestly as a peer of France, minister and millionaire. All
-this was easy, according to Balzac; we had only to work
-in harmony with each other, and by such modest
-ambition we should prove well the moderation of our
-characters. This devil of a man had such a powerful
-vision that he described to each of us, in the most minute
-details, the splendid and glorious life that the association
-would procure for us. As we listened to him, we believed
-ourselves already leaning, at the heart of a beautiful
-mansion, against the white marble of the fireplace, red
-ribbons around our necks, a shining badge over our hearts,
-receiving with an affable air the greatest politicians,
-artists and writers, who were shocked by our rapid and
-mysterious fortune. For Balzac, the future did not exist,
-everything was in the present; he drew it out of the mists
-and made it palpable; an idea was so vivid that it became
-real in a certain way: in speaking of a dinner, he ate it as
-he told its story; of a carriage, he felt the soft cushions
-under him and the steady ride; a perfect well-being, a
-profound jubilation were then shown on his face,
-although often he was hungry and walking over a rough
-pavement with worn-out shoes.
-
-The whole association would push, praise, and extol, by
-articles, advertisements and conversations, any one of its
-members who had just published a book or staged a
-drama. Whoever showed himself to be hostile to one of
-the horses would provoke the kicks of the entire stable; Le
-Cheval Rouge would not forgive: the culpable became the
-target of insults, cutting remarks, pin pricks, taunts and
-other means of driving a man to despair, which are well
-known by the smaller newspapers.
-
-I smile while betraying after so many years the innocent
-secret of this literary freemasonry, which had no other
-result than some persuasive words for a book whose
-success did not require them. But, at that time, we
-took the thing seriously, we imagined ourselves to be the
-Treize themselves in person, and I was surprised to find
-that obstacles still existed; but the world is so badly
-designed! What an important and mysterious air we had
-in challenging other men, poor conventional men who in
-no way doubted our power.
-
-After four or five meetings, Le Cheval Rouge ceased to
-exist; most of the chevaux could not afford to pay for their
-oats in this symbolic manger, and the association which
-was going to seize total control was dissolved, because its
-members often lacked the fifteen francs to pay their
-share. Each one now dove back alone into the chaos of
-life, fighting his own fight,  and it is this that explains why
-Balzac was not a member of the Academy and died a
-simple knight of the Legion of Honor.
-
-The idea however was good, for Balzac, as he himself
-says of Nucingen, could not have a bad idea. Others who
-have succeeded have set to work without surrounding
-themselves with the same romantic fantasies.
-
-Thrown off of one chimera, Balzac very quickly mounted
-a new one, and he set out for another voyage in the blue
-with that childlike innocence which in him was combined
-with the profoundest sagacity and the shrewdest intellect.
-
-So many bizarre projects he has described to me, so
-many strange paradoxes he has defended to me, always
-with the same good faith! Sometimes he would maintain
-that one should live on nine sous a day, sometimes he
-would require one hundred thousand francs in order to
-be most comfortable. Once, when I asked him to
-reconcile the accounting, he responded to the objection
-that thirty thousand francs still remained unallocated.
-"Ah well! That is for the butter and the radishes. In what
-even slightly proper house does one not eat thirty
-thousand francs of radishes and butter?" I wish I could
-portray the look of sovereign disdain he cast on me as he
-gave that triumphal reason; that look said: "Decidedly
-Theo is nothing but a contemptible person, a skinned rat,
-a pitiful spirit; he understands nothing of a grand
-existence and he has all his life eaten only the salted
-butter of Brittany."
-
-Les Jardies attracted a great deal of attention from the
-public when Balzac bought it with the honorable
-intention of making an investment for his mother. While
-riding on the railway that passes Ville-d'Avray, every
-passenger would look with curiosity at that little house,
-half cottage, half chalet, which rose in the middle of a
-clay slope.
-
-This plot of land, in Balzac's opinion, was the best in the
-world; formerly, he asserted, a certain celebrated wine
-was grown there, and the grapes, thanks to an
-unparalleled exposure, baked like the grapes of Tokaj on
-the Bohemian hills. The sun, it is true, had the freedom
-to ripen the crop in this place, where there existed only a
-single tree. Balzac tried to enclose this property with
-walls, which became famous for obstinately collapsing or
-sliding all in one piece down the steep escarpment, and
-he dreamed of the most fabulous and the most exotic
-crops for this heavenly place. Here comes naturally the
-anecdote of the pineapples, which has been so often
-repeated that I would not tell it again except to add one
-truly characteristic trait. Here is the project: one hundred
-thousand feet of pineapples were planted within the
-boundaries of Les Jardies, transformed into greenhouses
-that required only limited heat due to the sunniness of
-the site. The pineapples were going to be sold for five
-francs instead of the one louis that they ordinarily cost,
-for a total of five hundred thousand francs; from this
-sum it was necessary to deduct one hundred thousand
-francs for the costs of cultivation, equipment, and coal;
-there remained therefore a net profit of four hundred
-thousand francs which would constitute a splendid profit
-for the happy proprietor, "without the least bit of
-writing," he added. That was nothing, Balzac had a
-thousand projects like this; but the beauty of this was that
-we sought together, on the Boulevard Montmartre, a
-shop for the sale of the pineapples that were still in the
-form of seeds. The shop was to be painted black with
-thin gold stripes, and carry on its sign, in enormous
-letters: "PINEAPPLES FROM LES JARDIES."
-
-For Balzac, the one hundred thousand pineapples were
-already raising their plumes of serrated leaves above their
-great lozenged cones under immense glass roofs: he saw
-them; he swelled in the high temperature of the
-greenhouse, he breathed in the tropical scent through his
-passionately open nostrils; and when, having returned to
-his home, he watched, while leaning on the window, the
-snow descend silently onto the bare slopes, he still only
-gave up his illusion with difficulty.
-
-Yet he followed my advice to hold off on renting the
-shop until the following year in order to avoid an
-unnecessary expense.
-
-I write my reminiscences as they return to me, without
-trying to place in order things which are better left apart.
-Besides, as Boileau said, transitions are the great difficulty
-of poetry, and of newspaper articles too, I will add; but
-modern journalists have neither as much conscience nor
-even more importantly as much leisure as the legislator of
-Parnasse.
-
-Madame de Girardin professed for Balzac a lively
-admiration that he appreciated and that he acknowledged
-with his frequent visits, he who was so justifiably stingy
-with his time and his working hours. Never did a woman
-possess to such a high degree as Delphine, as I permitted
-myself to call her familiarly when we were together, the
-ability to stir the minds of her guests. With her, we always
-found ourselves to be particularly eloquent and each left
-her salon enthralled with himself. There was no stone so
-hard that she could not make a spark fly from it, and with
-Balzac, as you would expect, it was not necessary to strike
-the stone for very long: he sparkled and then lit up right
-away. Balzac was not precisely what one would call a
-talker, but he was quick with a reply, throwing a fine and
-decisive word into a discussion, changing the thread of
-the discourse, touching everything with lightness, and
-never going past a half smile: he had a verve, an
-eloquence, and an irresistible brio; and, as each person
-became silent to listen to him, with him, to the general
-satisfaction, the conversation would quickly descend into
-a soliloquy. The starting point was soon forgotten and he
-passed from an anecdote into a philosophical reflection,
-from an observation on manners to a local description; as
-he spoke his complexion would redden, his eyes would
-develop a distinctive luminosity, his voice would take on
-different inflections, and sometimes he would roar with
-laughter, amused by comic images that he saw before he
-described them. He announced in this way, like a sort of
-fanfare, the entry of his characters and his humorous
-comments, and his hilarity was soon shared by his
-assistants. Although this was the age of dreamers with
-hair hanging loosely like a willow, of weepers in their
-garrets and of disillusioned Byronians, Balzac had that
-robust joy and power that one would attribute to
-Rabelais, and that Molière did not show except in his
-plays. His loud laugh coming from his sensual lips was
-that of a kindly god amused by the spectacle of the
-human marionettes, and who is distressed by nothing
-because he understands everything and grasps at once
-both sides of things. Neither the worries of an often
-precarious situation, nor the tedium of money, nor the
-fatigue of excessive work, nor the confinement of the
-study, nor the renunciation of all of the pleasures of life,
-nor even sickness could strike down this Herculean
-joviality, in my opinion one of the most striking
-characteristics of Balzac. He knocked out the hydras
-while laughing, happily tore the lions in two, and carried
-as if it were a hare the boar of Erymanthe on the
-mountainous muscles of his shoulders. At the least
-provocation this gaiety would burst forth and cause his
-strong chest to heave, which might surprise a person with
-a delicate constitution, but it had to be shared, no matter
-how much effort one made to remain serious. Do not
-believe however that Balzac was seeking to entertain his
-audience: he obeyed, affected by a kind of internal
-euphoria and painting with rapid strokes, with a comic
-intensity and an incomparable talent for satire, the bizarre
-phantasmagoria that danced in the dark chamber of his
-brain. I do not know how to better compare the
-impression produced by certain of his conversations than
-with that which one experiences while leafing through the
-strange drawings of Songes Drolatiques, by the master
-Alcofribas Nasier. These are of monstrous personages,
-composed of the most hybrid elements. Some have for a
-head a bellows in which the hole represents the eye, while
-others have an alembic flute for a nose; these ones walk
-with wheels in place of feet; those ones have the rounded
-belly of a cooking pot and wear a lid in place of a hat, but
-an intense life animates these fanciful beings, and one
-recognizes in their grimacing faces the vices, the follies
-and the passions of man. Some, although absurdly
-outside the realm of possibility, stop you like a portrait.
-One could give them a name.
-
-When one listened to Balzac, a whole carnival of
-extravagant and real puppets frolicked before your eyes,
-wearing on their shoulders a colorful phrase, waving long
-sleeves of epithets, blowing their noses noisily with an
-adverb, smacking themselves with a bat of antitheses,
-pulling you by the tail of your coat, and whispering into
-your ear your secrets in a disguised and nasal voice,
-pirouetting, whirling in the midst of a sparkle of lights
-and of glitter. Nothing was more vertiginous, and at the
-end of one half hour, one felt, like the student after the
-speech of Méphistophélès, a millstone turning in the
-brain.
-
-He was not always so spirited, and on those occasions
-one of his favorite jokes was to imitate the German
-jargon of Nucingen or Schmucke, or otherwise to speak
-in rama, like the clients of the middle class boarding
-house of Madame Vauquer (née de Conflans). At the time
-that he wrote Un Début dans la Vie based on an outline of
-Madame de Surville, he was seeking proverbs that were
-slightly off for the art student Mistigris, to whom later,
-having found him to be full of spirit, he gave a fine place
-in La Comédie Humaine, under the name of the great
-landscape painter Léon de Lora. Here are some of his
-nonsensical proverbs: "He is like an ass on a plain." "I am
-like the hare, I die or I flee." "Good Counts make good
-sieves." "Extremes become blocked." "The slap always
-smells the herring"; and so on like this. A discovery of
-this type put him in a good humor, and he would
-pleasantly frolic like an elephant through the furniture
-and around the salon. For her part, Madame de Girardin
-was in quest of sayings for the the famous lady of the
-seven little chairs of Le Courrier de Paris. She sometimes
-required my assistance, and if a stranger had entered,
-seeing this beautiful Delphine painting spirals through
-her golden hair with her white fingers, with a profoundly
-dreamlike air; Balzac, seated on one of the arms of the
-great upholstered chair on which Monsieur Girardin
-usually slept, his hands clenched in the bottoms of his
-pockets, his waistcoat turned back from his stomach,
-swinging his leg with a uniform rhythm, expressing with
-the tense muscles of his face an extraordinary mental
-focus; me planted between two cushions of the divan,
-like an opium eater seen in a hallucination; that stranger,
-certainly, could never have suspected what we were doing
-there, in so great a meditation; he would have supposed
-that Balzac was thinking of a new Madame Firmiani,
-Madame de Girardin of a role for Mademoiselle Rachel,
-and me of some sonnet. But it was nothing of the kind.
-As for the puns, Balzac, although his secret ambition was
-to create them, had, after painstaking efforts, to recognize
-his notorious incapacity in this area, and to keep to the
-slightly off proverbs, which preceded the rough puns
-brought into fashion by the school of good sense. What
-beautiful evenings that will never return! We were then
-far from foreseeing that this great and superb woman,
-carved fully out of marble from antiquity, that this stocky,
-robust, lively man, who combined in himself the vigor of
-the boar and the bull, half Hercules, half satyr, built to
-last longer than one hundred years, would soon sleep,
-one at Montmartre, the other at Père-Lachaise, and that,
-of the three, I alone would remain to preserve those
-memories that were already so distant and close to being
-lost.
-
-Like his father, who died accidentally at more than eighty
-years of age, and who had flattered himself that he would
-become wealthy from the annuity scheme of Lafarge,
-Balzac believed in his longevity. Often he planned with
-me projects for the future. He was going to finish La
-Comédie Humaine, write the Théorie de la Démarche, compose
-the Monographie de la Vertu, fifty dramas, attain a great
-fortune, marry and have two children, "but not more;
-two children look good," he said, "on the front of a
-carriage." All of this could not fail to take a long time,
-and I pointed out that, once these tasks were
-accomplished, he would be around eighty years of age.
-"Eighty years!" he cried, "Bah! It's the flower of age."
-Monsieur Flourens, with his comforting theories, did not
-say it better.
-
-One day that we dined together at the home of M. E.
-de Girardin, he told us a story about his father to show
-us the strength of the stock to which he belonged.
-Balzac's father, who had been hired to work in a
-prosecutor's office, ate following the custom of the time
-at the table of the master with the other clerks. Partridges
-were served. The prosecutor's wife, who had her eye on
-the new arrival, said to him: "Monsieur Balzac, do you
-know how to carve?" "Yes, Madame," responded the
-young man, blushing up to his ears; and he bravely took
-hold of the knife and fork. Entirely ignorant of culinary
-anatomy, he divided the partridge into four pieces, but
-with so much strength that he split the plate, sliced the
-tablecloth, and cut into the wood of the table. He was
-not nimble, but he was strong: the prosecutor's wife
-smiled, and from that day, Balzac, the young clerk, was
-treated with great kindness in that house.
-
-This story that I have told seems lukewarm, but it is
-necessary to see the pantomime of Balzac as he imitated
-on his own plate his father's actions, with an air that was
-both frightened and resolute, mimicking the manner in
-which he seized his knife after having rolled up his
-sleeves and in which he sunk his fork into an imaginary
-partridge; Neptune hunting the monsters of the sea did
-not wield his trident with a more vigorous fist, and with
-what an immense weight he bore down with it! His
-cheeks became purple, his eyes left his head, but the
-operation ended with him casting upon the guests a look
-of innocent satisfaction trying to conceal itself in the
-guise of modesty.
-
-Moreover, Balzac had in him the makings of a great
-actor: he possessed a full, sonorous, resonant voice, with
-a rich and powerful timbre, that he knew how to
-moderate and soften as needed, and he read in an
-admirable manner, a talent that most actors lack.
-Whatever he related, he performed it with intonations,
-grimaces and gestures that no comedian has surpassed in
-my opinion.
-
-I find in Marguerite, by Madame de Girardin, this
-remembrance of Balzac. It is a character from the book
-who speaks.
-
-"He related that Balzac had dined at his house on the
-preceding day, and that he had been more brilliant, more
-scintillating than ever. He very much amused us with the
-story of his trip to Austria. What fire! What verve! What
-power of imitation! It was marvelous. His manner of
-paying the postilions is an invention that only a novelist
-of genius could have discovered. ‘I was very embarrassed
-at each stopping point,' he said, ‘how was I going to pay?
-I did not know a word of German, I did not know the
-currency of the country. It was very difficult. Here is
-what I invented. I had a bag full of small silver coins,
-some kreuzers … When I arrived at the stopping point, I
-would take up my bag; the postilion would come to the
-window of the carriage; I would watch his eyes
-attentively, and I would put in his hand one kreuzer, …
-two kreuzer, … then three, then four, etc., until I saw
-him smile … when he smiled, I understood that I had
-given him one kreuzer too much … quickly I would take
-back my coin and my man was paid.'"
-
-At Les Jardies, he read Mercadet to me, the original
-Mercadet, by far more sweeping, complicated and dense
-than the piece arranged for the Gymnase by d'Ennery,
-with so much delicacy and skill. Balzac, who read like
-Tieck, without indicating acts, scenes, or names, utilized a
-voice that was particular to and perfectly recognizable for
-each character; the voices that he gave to the different
-kinds of creditors were hilariously funny: there were the
-hoarse, the honeyed, the hasty, the slow, the menacing,
-the pleading. They shrieked, wailed, scolded, muttered,
-screamed in every possible and impossible tone. Debt
-first sang a solo that soon an immense choir took up. He
-brought out creditors from everywhere, from behind the
-stove, from below the bed, from the drawers of the
-commode; they came from the chimney; they passed
-through the keyhole; others entered through the window
-like lovers; these sprung from the bottom of a trunk like
-those devilish toys that take you by surprise, those moved
-across the walls as if they were passing by an English
-ambush, it was a mob, an uproar, an invasion, truly a
-rising tide. Mercadet might well have shaken them off,
-when others always returned to start an assault, and as far
-as the horizon one could make out a somber swarm of
-creditors on the march, arriving like legions of termites to
-devour their prey. I do not know if this piece was better
-when performed this way, but no other performance
-produced such an effect.
-
-Balzac, during this reading of Mercadet, occupied, partially
-reclining, a long divan in the salon of Les Jardies because
-he had sprained his ankle when he slipped, like his walls,
-on the clay of his property. A stray hair, sticking through
-the fabric, poked the skin of his leg and bothered him.
-"The fabric is too thin, the hay passes through it; you will
-need to put a thick canvas beneath it," he said while
-pulling at the hair that annoyed him.
-
-François, the Caleb of this Ravenswood, would not listen
-to this mocking of the splendors of the manor. He
-corrected his master and said: horsehair. "The upholsterer
-has cheated me?" responded Balzac. "They are all the
-same. I had insisted that he use hay! Cursed thief!"
-
-The splendors of Les Jardies were mostly imaginary. All
-of the friends of Balzac remember having seen written in
-charcoal upon the bare walls or veneer of gray paper:
-"Rosewood paneling, tapestry of the Gobelins, Venetian
-mirrors, paintings by Raphaël." Gerard de Nerval had
-already decorated an apartment in this manner, so this
-did not shock me. As for Balzac, he believed literally in
-the gold, the marble and the silk; but, he did not
-complete Les Jardies and if he led others to laugh at his
-pipe dreams, he knew at least that he had built himself an
-eternal home, a monument "more durable than iron," an
-immense city, populated with his creations and gilded by
-the rays of his glory.
-
-V
-
-Due to an oddity of nature that he shared with several of
-the most poetic writers of this age, such as
-Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, George Sand, Mérimée,
-Janin, Balzac possessed neither the gift nor the love of
-verse, despite the effort that he otherwise made to attain
-them. On this point, his judgment that was so fine, so
-profound, so sagacious was at fault; he admired work
-somewhat aimlessly and in a way in line with public
-notoriety. I did not believe, even though he professed a
-great respect for Victor Hugo, that he had ever truly
-appreciated the lyrical qualities of the poet, while at the
-same time the sculpted and colored prose amazed him.
-He, who was so laborious and who rewrote a sentence as
-many times as a versifier could rework an Alexandrine on
-an anvil, found working on meter to be puerile, tedious,
-and without utility. He would have voluntarily awarded a
-bushel of peas to those who could manage to pass an
-idea through the narrow ring of rhythm, as Alexander did
-for the Greek who was trained to throw a ball through a
-ring from a long distance; verse, with its fixed and pure
-form, its elliptical speech little suited to a multiplicity of
-details, seemed to him to be an obstacle invented on a
-whim, an unnecessary difficulty or a mnemonic device
-taken from primitive times. His doctrine was in that way
-nearly the same as that of Stendhal: "Does the idea that a
-work has been made while hopping on one leg add to the
-pleasure that it produces?" The Romantic school holds in
-its heart some followers, partisans of the absolute truth,
-who rejected verse as trivial or unnatural. If Talma said:
-"I do not want fine verses!" Beyle said: "I do not want
-verses at all." This was the basis of the sentiments of
-Balzac, however in order to appear open-minded,
-comprehensive, universal, he sometimes in society
-pretended to admire poetry, just as the middle class
-simulate great enthusiasm for music that bores them
-profoundly. He was always shocked to see me write verse
-and take pleasure from it. "That is not copy," he would
-say, and if he held me in any esteem, I owed it to my
-prose. All of the writers, young then, who associated
-themselves with the literary movement represented by
-Hugo, used, like the master, the lyre or the pen: Alfred de
-Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de Musset, spoke
-interchangeably the language of the gods and the
-language of men. I too, if I am permitted to mention
-myself after such glorious names, have had since the
-beginning this double aptitude. It is always easy for poets
-to descend to prose. The bird may walk as needed, but
-the lion cannot fly. Those who are born to write prose
-never rise to poetry however poetic they may be
-elsewhere. Rhythmic speech is a particular gift, and one
-can possess it without being a great genius, while it is
-often refused to superior minds. Among the proudest
-who appear to disdain it, more than one keeps to himself
-a secret resentment to not possess it.
-
-Among the two thousand characters in La Comédie
-Humaine, one finds two poets: Canalis, of Modeste Mignon,
-and Lucien de Rubempré, of Splendeurs et Misères des
-Courtisanes. Balzac portrayed both of them as having traits
-that were not particularly favorable. Canalis is dry, cold,
-sterile, petty, an adroit arranger of words, a maker of
-imitation jewelry, who sets rhinestones in gilded silver,
-and makes necklaces of artificial pearls. His volumes,
-with many blank spaces, wide margins, and large gaps,
-contain only a melodious nothingness, monotonous
-music, suitable only to cause young boarders to fall asleep
-or dream. Balzac, who ordinarily shapes with warmth the
-interests of his characters, seems to take a secret pleasure
-in ridiculing this one and putting him in embarrassing
-positions: he challenges his vanity with a thousand ironies
-and a thousand sarcasms, and finishes by taking from
-him Modeste Mignon with her great fortune, to give her
-to Ernest de la Brière. This conclusion, in contrast to the
-beginning of the story, sparkles with concealed malice
-and fine mockery. One would say that Balzac is
-personally happy at the good trick that he has played on
-Canalis. He avenges, in his own way, the angels, the
-sylphs, the lakes, the swans, the willows, the skiffs, the
-stars and the lyres that had been used so abundantly by
-the poet.
-
-If in Canalis we have the false poet, reserving his meager
-inspiration and putting it behind a dam so that it can
-flow, foam and sound for a few minutes in order to seem
-like a cascade, the man used to taking advantage of his
-laboriously wrought literary successes to serve his
-political ambitions, the man with material interests who is
-in love with money, medals, pensions and honors, despite
-his elegiac attitudes and pose as an angel who misses
-being in heaven, Lucien de Rubempré shows us the poet
-who is lazy, frivolous, oblivious, capricious, and as
-nervous as a woman, incapable of prolonged effort,
-without moral force, living in the hooks of actresses and
-courtesans, a puppet whose strings the terrible Vautrin,
-under the pseudonym Carlos Herrera, pulls as he
-pleases. Despite all of his vices, Lucien is seductive;
-Balzac has equipped him with spirit, beauty, youth, and
-elegance; women adore him; but he ends by hanging
-himself at the Conciergerie. Balzac did everything he
-could to successfully complete the marriage of Clotilde
-de Grandlieu with the author of Marguerite; unfortunately
-the demands of morality intervened, and what would the
-Faubourg Saint-Germain have said of La Comédie Humaine
-if the student of Jacques Collin the convict had married
-the daughter of a duke?
-
-Regarding the author of Marguerite, I will note here a bit
-of information that could amuse those who are interested
-in literature. The few sonnets that Lucien de Rubempré
-shows as a sample of his volume of verse to the
-bookseller Dauriat are not the work of Balzac, who did
-not write verse, and asked his friends for those that he
-happened to need. The sonnet on the daisy is by
-Madame de Girardin, the sonnet on the camellia is by de
-Lassailly, and the one on the tulip is by myself.
-
-Modeste Mignon also contained a piece of verse, but I do
-not know the author.
-
-As I have said regarding Mercadet, Balzac was an
-admirable reader, and he very much wanted, one day, to
-read some of my own verses. He read to me, among
-others, La Fontaine du Cimitière. Like all prose writers, he
-read only for the meaning, and tried to conceal the
-rhythm that poets, when they deliver their verses out
-loud, in contrast accentuate in a manner intolerable to
-everyone, but which delights them alone, and we had
-together, on this point, a long discussion, which, like
-always, served only to cause each of us to persist in our
-particular opinion.
-
-The great literary man of La Comédie Humaine is Daniel
-d'Arthez, a writer who was serious, a hard worker, and
-for a long time buried, before achieving his success, in
-immense studies of philosophy, history and linguistics.
-Balzac feared facility, and he did not believe that a rapidly
-produced work could be good. In this context, journalism
-held a singular repugnance for him, and he regarded the
-time and talent consecrated to it to be wasted; he didn't
-hold journalists in any higher regard, and he, who was
-however such a great critic, despised criticism. The
-unflattering portraits that he has drawn of Etienne
-Loustau, of Nathan, of Vernisset, of Andoche Finot,
-represent fairly well his true opinion of the place of the
-press. Emile Blondet, introduced into that bad company
-to represent the good writer, is compensated for his articles
-in the imaginary Débats of La Comédie Humaine with a rich
-marriage to the widow of a general, which permits him to
-leave journalism.
-
-Moreover, Balzac never worked toward the point of view
-of a newspaper. He brought his novels to the magazines
-and daily newspapers as they had come to him, without
-preparing any breaks or interesting twists at the end of
-each installment, to increase the desire for the
-continuation. His work was broken up into sections that
-were roughly the same length, and sometimes the
-description of an armchair would start on one day and
-finish the next. With justification, he did not want to
-divide his work into little dramatic or vaudevillian
-tableaus; he thought of nothing but the book. This
-working method was often to the detriment of the
-immediate success that journalism requires of the authors
-it employs. Eugène Sue, Alexandre Dumas were more
-frequently victorious in the battles each morning that
-then captivated the public. He did not obtain
-immense popularity, like that of Les Mystères de Paris and
-Le Juif-Errant, of Les Mousquetaires and of Monte-Cristo. Les
-Paysans, a masterpiece, even caused a great number of
-readers to cancel their subscriptions to the Presse, where
-the first installment appeared. Its publication had to be
-suspended. Every day letters arrived that demanded that
-it be ended. Balzac was found to be boring!
-
-There was still not a good understanding of the great idea
-of La Comédie Humaine, to take on modern society and
-write about Paris and our times the book that sadly no
-ancient civilization has left for us. The collected edition
-of La Comédie Humaine, by assembling all of the scattered
-works, put into relief the philosophical intention of the
-writer. From that date forward, Balzac grew considerably
-in public opinion, he finally ceased being considered "the
-most productive of our novelists," a stereotyped phrase
-that irritated him as much as "the author of Eugénie
-Grandet."
-
-There have been a number of critiques on Balzac and he
-has been discussed in many ways, but in my opinion one
-very characteristic feature has not been emphasized: this
-point is the absolute modernity of his genius. Balzac
-owes nothing to antiquity; for him there are neither
-Greeks nor Romans, and he has no need to cry for
-deliverance from them. One does not find in the
-composition of his talent any trace of Homer, of Virgil,
-of Horace, not even of De Viris Illustribus; nobody was
-ever less classical.
-
-Balzac, like Gavarni, observed his contemporaries; and,
-in art, the supreme difficulty is to portray that which one
-sees before one's eyes; one can pass through one's time
-without appreciating it, and that is what many eminent
-minds have done.
-
-To be of his time, nothing would appear to be simpler
-but nothing is more difficult! To wear no glasses, neither
-blue nor green, to think with his own brain, to use the
-speech of the present day, not stitch together a colorful
-fabric from the phrases of his predecessors! Balzac
-possessed this rare merit. The ages have their perspective
-and their distance; at that distance the great masses move
-away, the lines end, the flickering details disappear; with
-the help of classical memories, of melodious names from
-antiquity, the least rhetorician could create a tragedy, a
-poem, an historical study. But, to find yourself in the
-crowd, to be elbowed by it, and to appreciate its features,
-understand its flow, sort out its personalities, outline the
-features of so many diverse beings, to show the motives
-for their actions, that demands an entirely special genius,
-and this genius, the author of La Comédie Humaine had to
-a degree that no one has equaled and probably no one
-will equal.
-
-This profound understanding of modern things rendered
-Balzac, it must be said, insensitive to sculptural beauty.
-He read with a careless eye the stanzas of white marble
-with which Greek art sung the perfection of the human
-form. In the museum of antiquities, he looked at the
-Venus de Milo without great ecstasy, but the Parisian
-woman who has stopped in front of the immortal statue,
-draped in her long cashmere shawl running without a
-crease from the neck to the heel, wearing her hat with a
-veil from Chantilly, gloved with her tight Jouvin gloves,
-showing from under the hem of her flounced dress the
-polished tip of her worn boots, made his eyes sparkle
-with pleasure. He analyzed her coquettish allure, he
-savored at length her skillful graces, only to find as she
-did that the goddess was too heavyset and would not be
-an attractive addition to the homes of Mesdames de
-Beauséant, de Listomère, or d'Espard. Ideal beauty, with
-its serene and pure lines, was too simple, too cold, too
-harmonious for this complicated, exuberant and diverse
-genius. He also says somewhere: "It is necessary to be
-Raphaël to portray many virgins." Character pleased him
-more than style, and he preferred looks to beauty. In his
-portraits of women, he never fails to put a mark, a crease,
-a wrinkle, a red blemish, a softened and tired corner, a
-vein that is too apparent, some detail indicating the
-bruises of life that a poet, in tracing the same image,
-would surely have suppressed, mistakenly without a
-doubt.
-
-I do not intend to criticize Balzac in this. This fault is his
-principal strength. He accepted nothing of the mythologies
-and traditions of the past, and he did not know, happily
-for us, that ideal that was achieved with the verses of the
-poets, the marbles of Greece and Rome, the paintings of
-the Renaissance, which stands between the eyes of artists
-and reality. He loved the woman of our day just as she is,
-and not as a pale statue; he loved her for her virtues, for
-her vices, for her fantasies, for her shawls, for her
-dresses, for her hats, and followed her across her life, far
-beyond the point in the journey where love abandons
-her. He prolonged her youth by many seasons, gave her
-springs with the summers of Saint-Martin, and gilded her
-twilight years with the most splendid rays. We are so
-classical, in France, that we have not perceived, after two
-thousand years, that roses, in our climate, do not bloom
-in April as in the descriptions of poets of antiquity, but in
-June, and that our women begin to be beautiful at the age
-at which those of Greece, who are more precocious,
-cease to be. How many charming types he has imagined
-or reproduced! Madame Firmiani, the Duchesse de
-Maufrigneuse, the Princess de Cadignan, Madame de
-Morsauf, Lady Dudley, the Duchess de Langeais,
-Madame Jules, Modeste Mignon, Diane de Chaulieu,
-without counting the middle class women, the
-seamstresses and the ladies of ill repute.
-
-And how he loved and knew that modern Paris, whose
-beauty the amateurs of local color and the picturesque of
-that time appreciated so little! He roamed across it in
-every direction night and day; there is not a forgotten
-alley, a foul passage, a narrow, muddy and black street
-which did not become under his pen an etching of
-Rembrandt, full of teeming and mysterious darkness or
-sparkling with a trembling star of light. Wealth and
-poverty, pleasure and suffering, shame and glory, grace
-and ugliness, he knew all of his beloved town; it was for
-him an enormous, hybrid, formidable monster, an
-octopus with one hundred thousand arms that he heard
-and saw as a living thing, and which constituted in his
-eyes an immense individual. See with regard to this the
-marvelous pages placed at the beginning of La Fille aux
-Yeux d'Or, in which Balzac, impinging on the art of the
-musician, had wanted, as in a grand orchestral symphony,
-to make all of the voices sing together, all of the sobbing,
-all of the cries, all of the rumors, all of the grinding of
-Paris at work!
-
-From this modernity on which I purposefully dwell arose,
-without his suspecting it, a difficulty in labor that Balzac
-experienced in his efforts to complete his work: the
-French language as refined by the classics of the
-seventeenth century is not suitable, when one conforms
-to it, other than to express general ideas, and to portray
-conventional figures in a vague setting. To describe this
-multiplicity of details, of characters, of types, of
-architectures, of furnishings, Balzac was obliged to create
-for himself a special language, composed of all of the
-technical terms, all of the argots of science, of the
-workshop, of the theater, even of the lecture hall. Every
-word that said something was welcomed, and the
-sentence, in order to receive it, opened a space, a
-parenthetic expression, and lengthened itself obligingly. It
-is this that made superficial critics say that Balzac did not
-know how to write. He possessed, even though he did
-not know it, a style and a very beautiful style, the
-necessary, inevitable, and mathematical style of his ideas!
-
-VI

-No one could have the ambition to write a complete
-biography of Balzac; any relationship with him was
-necessarily limited by gaps, absences, disappearances.
-Work absolutely ruled the life of Balzac, and if, as he
-himself says with touching sensitivity in a letter to his
-sister, he has painlessly sacrificed the joys and distractions
-of existence to this jealous god, it cost him to renounce
-all company that might have led to friendship. To reply with a few
-words to a long letter became for him who was
-overburdened with labor a prodigality that he could rarely
-permit himself; he was the slave of his work and a
-voluntary slave. He had, with a very good and very tender
-heart, the selfishness of the great worker. And who could
-have dreamed of being mad at his pressured negligences
-and his apparent forgetfulness, when one saw the results
-of his escapes or his seclusions? When, the work
-completed, he would reappear, one would have said that
-he had left you the day before, and he would take up the
-interrupted conversation once again, as if sometimes six
-months and more had not passed. He made trips within
-France to study localities that he included in Scènes de
-Province, and he withdrew to the houses of friends, in
-Touraine, or in the Charente, finding there a calm that
-the creditors did not always allow him in Paris. After
-some great work, he permitted himself, occasionally, a
-longer excursion to Germany, northern Italy, or
-Switzerland; but these rapid excursions, made with the
-preoccupations of bills that were due to be paid,
-contracts to fulfill, and limited funds for travel, may have
-fatigued him more than they gave him rest. His vast gaze
-took in the skies, the horizons, the mountains, the
-countryside, the monuments, the houses, the interiors to
-commit them to that universal and meticulous memory
-that never failed him. Superior in this to descriptive
-poets, Balzac saw man at the same time as nature; he
-studied the physiognomies, the manners, the passions,
-the characters in the same glance as locations, clothing
-and furnishings. One detail sufficed for him, as the least
-fragment of bone did for Cuvier, to accurately imagine
-and reconstitute a personality glimpsed while passing.
-Balzac has often been praised, and rightly so, for his
-power of observation; but, however great he was, it is not
-necessary to imagine that the author of La Comédie
-Humaine always drew from nature his portraits whose
-truth was so clearly from elsewhere. His process did not
-resemble in any way that of Henri Monnier, who
-followed in real life an individual in order to make a
-sketch with a pencil and a pen, drawing his least gestures,
-writing down his most insignificant phrases in order to
-obtain at the same time a photographic plate and a page
-of shorthand notes. Buried most of the time in the
-excavations of his work, Balzac could not materially
-observe the two thousand characters who play their role
-in his comedy of one hundred acts; but every man, when
-he looks inward, contains humanity: it is a microcosm in
-which nothing is missing.
-
-He has, not always, but often observed within himself the
-numerous types that live in his work. That is why they are
-so complete. No one could absolutely comprehend the
-life of another; in such a case, there are motives that
-remain obscure, unknown details, actions of which one
-loses track. In even the most faithful portrait, some
-creativity is necessary. Balzac has thus created much
-more than he saw. His rare faculties of the analyst, of the
-physiologist, of the anatomist, have merely served the
-poet in him, just as the assistant serves the professor at
-his lectern when he passes him the substances that he
-needs for his demonstrations.
-
-Perhaps this could be the place to define the truth as
-understood by Balzac; in this time of realism, it is good to
-be understood on this point. The truth of art is not that
-of nature; everything that is represented through the
-means of art necessarily contains some element of the
-conventional; make it as small as possible, it still exists, be
-it perspective in painting, language in literature. Balzac
-accentuates, magnifies, enlarges, prunes, adds, shadows,
-illuminates, avoids or approaches men or things
-according to the effect that he wants to produce. He is
-truthful, without doubt, but with augmentations and
-sacrifices for art. He prepares backgrounds that are
-somber and darkened with charcoal for his luminous
-figures, he puts white backgrounds behind his dark
-figures. Like Rembrandt, he sets the light of day on the
-brow or nose of the character; sometimes, in his
-description, he obtains fantastic and bizarre results, by
-placing, without saying anything, a microscope under the
-eye of the reader; the details then appear with a
-supernatural clarity, an amplified minutia, some
-unbelievable and formidable magnifications; the tissues,
-the scaliness, the pores, the veins, the blemishes, the
-fibers, the capillaries take on an enormous importance,
-and turn a visage that is insignificant to the naked eye
-into a sort of fanciful mask as amusing as those that were
-sculpted under the cornice of the Pont-Neuf and
-vermiculated by time. The characters are also pushed to
-excess, as it is suited to each type: if Baron Hulot is a
-libertine, he additionally personifies lust: he is a man and
-a vice, an individual and an abstraction; he unites in
-himself all of the scattered traits of the character. Where
-a writer of lesser genius would have drawn a portrait,
-Balzac has created a figure. Men do not have as many
-muscles as Michelangelo gives them to suggest the idea
-of strength. Balzac is full of such useful exaggerations, of
-those dark strokes that enhance and support the outline;
-he dreams while writing, like the masters, and leaves his
-mark on everything. As this is not a literary critique, but a
-biographical study that I am writing, I will not take these
-remarks farther than necessary. Balzac, whom the Realist
-school seems to wish to claim as its leader, has no
-connection to its features.
-
-Unlike certain literary persons who feed on nothing but
-their own genius, Balzac read a great deal and with a
-prodigious rapidity. He loved books, and he created a
-beautiful library that he intended to leave to the town of
-his birth, an idea that the indifference of the townspeople
-made him later abandon. He absorbed in a few days the
-voluminous works of Swedenborg, which were owned by
-his mother, who was rather preoccupied with mysticism
-at that time, and that reading was responsible for
-Séraphita-Séraphitus, one of the most astonishing products
-of modern literature. Never did Balzac approach, or
-move closer to ideal beauty than in that book: the
-ascension of the mountain has a quality that is ethereal,
-supernatural, and luminous that lifts you from the earth.
-The only two colors that are employed are celestial blue
-and snow white with a few pearlescent tones for shadow.
-I know nothing more intoxicating than this beginning.
-The panorama of Norway, with its sharply cut coastline
-seen from this height, dazzles and gives one vertigo.
-
-Louis Lambert was also influenced by the reading of
-Swedenborg; but soon Balzac, who had taken on the
-eagle wings of the mystics to soar into the infinite,
-descended to the earth that we inhabit, even though his
-robust lungs could have breathed indefinitely the thin air
-that is deadly for the weak: he abandoned the world
-beyond after that flight and returned to real life. Perhaps
-his remarkable genius would have gone out of view too
-quickly if he had continued to soar toward the
-unfathomable immensities of metaphysics, and we should
-be happy that he limited himself to Louis Lambert and
-Séraphita-Séraphitus, which represent sufficiently, in La
-Comédie Humaine, the supernatural side, and open a
-door that is sufficiently large into the invisible world.
-
-I now move on to a few more intimate details. The great
-Goethe had a horror of three things: one of the things
-was tobacco smoke, I am not permitted to say the two
-others. Balzac, like the Jupiter of the German poetic
-Olympus, could not stand tobacco in any form at all; he
-denounced the pipe and forbid the cigar. He did not
-tolerate even a light Spanish cigarette; the Asian hookah
-alone found favor with him, and yet he only tolerated
-that as a curiosity and because of its local color. In his
-diatribes against the herb of Nicot, he did not imitate the
-doctor who, during a dissertation on the dangers of
-tobacco, does not hesitate to take ample doses from a
-large box of tobacco near him: he never smoked. His
-Théorie des Excitants contains an indictment against
-tobacco, and there is no doubt that if he had been Sultan,
-like Amurath, he would have beheaded relapsed and
-obstinate smokers. He reserved all of his predilections for
-coffee, which did him so much harm and might have
-killed him, although he was built to become a
-centenarian.
-
-Was Balzac wrong or right? Is tobacco, as he maintained,
-a deadly poison and does it intoxicate those that it does
-not turn stupid? Is it the opium of the Occident that dulls
-the will and the intelligence? These are questions that I
-cannot answer; but I am going to list here the names of
-some celebrated personages of our age, some of whom
-smoked while the others did not smoke: Goethe, Heinrich
-Heine, uniquely for Germans, did not smoke; Byron
-smoked; Victor Hugo does not smoke, neither does
-Alexandre Dumas père; on the other hand Alfred de
-Musset, Eugène Sue, Georges Sand, Mérimée, Paul de
-Saint-Victor, Emile Augier, Ponsard, smoked and still
-smoke; however they are not exactly imbeciles.
-
-This aversion, moreover, was shared by nearly all men
-who were born in our century or a little before. Only
-sailors and soldiers smoked then; at the odor of the pipe
-or the cigar, women fainted: they have become much
-tougher since then, and more than one pair of rosy lips
-has pressed with love the golden tip of a cigar, in a sitting
-room turned into a smoking room. Dowagers and
-turbaned mothers alone have preserved their old
-antipathy, and stoically watch their unfashionable salons
-be deserted by the youth.
-
-Every time that Balzac is obliged, for the credibility of
-the story, to allow one of his characters to indulge in this
-horrible habit, his brief and disdainful sentence betrays a
-secret disapproval: "As for de Marsay," he said, "he was
-busy smoking cigars." And he must have really loved this
-captain of dandyism to permit him to smoke in his work.
-
-A fragile and elegant young woman had without doubt
-inspired this aversion in Balzac, although that is a
-question that I cannot answer definitively. Still it's true
-that the tax collector never earned a sou from him. Regarding
-women, Balzac, who described them so well, must have
-known them, and one understands the sense that the
-Bible attaches to this word. In one of the letters that he
-writes to Madame de Surville, his sister, Balzac, quite
-young and completely unknown, sets down an ideal for
-his life in two words: "To be celebrated and to be loved."
-The first part of this program, which all artists map out
-for themselves, had been realized in every way. Was the
-second also accomplished? The opinion of the most
-intimate friends of Balzac is that he practiced the chastity
-that he recommended to others, and shared at most
-platonic love; but Madame de Surville laughs at this idea,
-with a smile of feminine delicacy and full of discreet
-reserve. She maintains that her brother was unfailingly
-discreet, and that if he had wanted to speak, he would
-have had many things to say. This must be true, and
-without doubt the safe of Balzac contained more of the
-notes with delicate, sloping handwriting than the
-lacquered box of Canalis. There is, in his work, the scent
-of a woman: odor di femina; when one enters there, one
-hears behind the doors that close on the hidden staircase
-the rustling of silk and the creaking of shoes. The
-semicircular and padded salon on the Rue de Batailles, of
-which I have quoted the description inserted by the
-author in La Fille aux Yeux d'Or, did not remain
-completely virginal, as many of us had assumed. In the
-course of our close friendship, which lasted from 1836
-until his death, only once did Balzac make allusion, with
-the most respectful and the most tender terms, to an
-attachment of his early youth, and even then he gave me
-only the first name of the person whose memory, after so
-many years, still made his eyes moisten. Had he said any
-more to me, I certainly would not have abused his
-confidences; the genius of a great writer belongs to all of the
-world, but his heart is his own. I touch only briefly on
-this tender and delicate side of Balzac's life, because I
-have nothing to say that does not honor him. This
-reserve and this mystery are those of a gentleman. If he
-was loved as he wished in the dreams of his youth, the
-world knows nothing of it.
-
-Do not imagine after these reflections that Balzac was
-austere and prudish in his speech: the author of Les Contes
-Drolatiques had been nourished with too much Rabelais
-and was too pantagruelistic to be unable to laugh; he
-knew good stories and invented them: his broad jokes
-interspersed with Gallic crudities would have made the
-sanctimonious and horrified members of society cry out
-shocking; but his laughing and talkative lips were sealed
-like a tomb when there was a question of a serious
-sentiment. He scarcely allowed his closest friends to
-surmise his love for a foreign woman of distinction, a
-love of which one can speak, since it was crowned by
-marriage. It was that passion that had been felt for a long
-time that necessitated his distant excursions, although
-their object remained until the last day a mystery for his
-friends.
-
-Absorbed by his work, Balzac did not think until rather
-late of the theater, for which the general opinion judged
-him, wrongly to my mind, after a few more or less risky
-efforts, to be hardly suited. He who created so many
-types, analyzed so many characters, gave life to so many
-people, should succeed on the stage; but, as I have said,
-Balzac was not spontaneous, and one cannot correct the
-proofs of a drama. If he had lived, after a dozen works,
-he would assuredly have found his form and attained
-success; La Marâtre that played at the Théâtre-Historique
-was close to a masterpiece. Mercadet, lightly edited by an
-intelligent arranger, enjoyed a long posthumous success
-at the Gymnase.
-
-Nevertheless, the factor that motivated his efforts was
-mostly, I must say, the idea of a windfall that would
-liberate him all at once from his financial predicament
-rather than a real vocation. Theater, as we know, is much
-more profitable than books; the continuing nature of the
-performances, on which a rather large royalty is drawn,
-produces quickly by accumulation some considerable
-sums. If the strategic work is greater, the material labor is
-less. Several dramas are necessary to fill a volume, and
-while you promenade or rest idly with slippers on your
-feet, the footlights are illuminated, the scenery descends
-from the ceiling, the actors recite and gesticulate, and you
-find yourself having made more money than you would
-have by scribbling for an entire week bent painfully over
-your desk. Such melodrama has more value to its author
-than Notre-Dame de Paris to Victor Hugo and Les Parents
-Pauvres to Balzac.
-
-It's curious that Balzac who contemplated, elaborated,
-and corrected his novels with such unrelenting
-meticulousness, seemed, when it concerned the theater,
-to become dizzy from the rapidity of his work. Not only
-did he not rewrite his theater pieces eight or ten times
-like his books, he really did not write them at all. Having
-just come upon his first idea, he chose a day for the
-reading and called his friends to request their assistance
-in the project; Ourliac, Lassailly, Laurent-Jan, myself and
-others, have often been summoned in the middle of the
-night or at fabulously early times of the morning. It was
-necessary to drop everything; every minute of delay
-caused the loss of millions.
-
-A pressing note from Balzac summoned me one day to
-come right away to 104 Rue de Richelieu, where he had a
-lodging in the house of Buisson the tailor. I found Balzac
-wrapped in his monastic frock, and hopping up and
-down with impatience on the blue and white rug of a tidy
-attic room that had walls upholstered in light brown
-percale embellished with blue, because, despite his
-apparent neglectfulness, he had an understanding of
-interior design, and always prepared a comfortable den
-for his laborious vigils; in none of his lodgings was there
-the picturesque disorder dear to artists.
-
-"Finally, here is Theo!" he cried when he saw me. "You
-are lazy, slow, slothlike, an obstacle, hurry up then; you
-should have been here an hour ago. Tomorrow I am
-reading Harel a great drama in five acts."
-
-"And you would like to have my advice," I responded
-while settling myself into an armchair like a man who is
-preparing himself to endure a long lecture.
-
-From my attitude Balzac understood my thought, and he
-said to me in the most straightforward way, "The drama
-is not written."
-
-"The devil," I said. "Oh well, you will need to delay the
-reading for six weeks."
-
-"No. We are going to rush the dramorama to get paid. At
-this time I have a heavy debt that is due."
-
-"From now until tomorrow, it's impossible; there would
-not be time to copy it."
-
-"Here is how I have arranged things. You will do an act,
-Ourliac another, Laurent-Jan the third, de Belloy the
-fourth, me the fifth, and I will read at noon as agreed.
-One act of a drama has no more than four or five
-hundred lines; one can write five hundred lines of
-dialogue in a day and in a night."
-
-"Tell me the subject, outline the plan, describe to me in a
-few words the characters, and I will get to work," I
-responded to him, somewhat alarmed.
-
-"Ah!" he cried with an air of superb weariness and
-magnificent disdain, "if I need to tell you the subject, we
-will never be finished."
-
-I did not think I was being inappropriate in posing that
-question, which seemed quite pointless to Balzac.
-
-After a brief instruction that I obtained with difficulty, I
-set to work to put together a scene from which only a
-few words remained in the final work, which was not
-read the next day, as one might well believe. I do not
-know what the other collaborators did; but the only one
-who seriously joined in, this was Laurent-Jan, to whom
-the play is dedicated.
-
-That play, it was Vautrin. Everyone knows that the
-dynastic and pyramidal tuft of hair that Frédérick
-Lemaître fantasized wearing in his disguise as a Mexican
-general brought down on the work the criticism of the
-authorities; Vautrin, forbidden, had only a single
-performance, and poor Balzac remained like Perrette in
-front of his overturned milk jug. The prodigious
-proceeds that he had anticipated as the probable product
-of his drama vanished into ciphers, which did not stop
-him from refusing very nobly the compensation offered
-by the ministry.
-
-At the beginning of this study, I told you about the
-tendencies toward dandyism that were demonstrated by
-Balzac, I spoke of his blue coat with solid gold buttons,
-his monstrous cane topped with a group of turquoise
-stones, his appearances in society and in the extravagant
-salon; this splendor lasted only for a period of time, and
-Balzac recognized that he was not suited to play the role
-of Alcibiades or Brummel. Everyone could encounter
-him, particularly in the morning, when he rushed to the
-printers carrying copy or seeking proofs, in an infinitely
-less splendid outfit. I recall the green hunting jacket, with
-brass buttons representing the head of a fox, the black
-and gray checked pants that extended to his feet, which
-were encased in large laced shoes, the red scarf wrapped
-around the neck like a rope, and the hat that was at the
-same time both bristly and smooth, its blue bleached by
-sweat, which covered rather than clothed "the most
-fertile of our novelists." Despite the disorder and poverty
-of his dress, nobody would have been tempted to take
-for an unknown commoner this large man with the
-blazing eyes, flaring nostrils, and cheeks struck with
-violent tones, all illuminated by genius, who passed while
-carried away by his dream like a whirlwind! At the sight
-of him, the mocking stopped on the urchin's lips, and the
-serious man did not begin to smile. Everyone recognized
-one of the kings of thought.
-
-Sometimes, to the contrary, he would be seen walking
-with slow steps, his nose in the air, his eyes searching,
-following one side of the street then examining the other,
-not daydreaming, but looking at the signs. He was
-looking for names to christen his characters. He
-maintained with some justification that a name could not
-be invented any more than a word. According to him,
-names arose on their own like languages; besides real
-names possessed a life, a meaning, a destiny, a mystical
-significance, and it was impossible to place too much
-importance on their choice. Léon Gozlan has told in a
-charming way, in his Balzac en Pantoufles, how the famous
-Z. Marcas of the Revue Parisienne was found.
-
-A sign of a chimney man provided the name of Gubetta
-that had long been sought by Victor Hugo, who was no
-less careful than Balzac in the names of his characters.
-
-This demanding life of nocturnal work had, despite his
-strong constitution, left its traces on the features of
-Balzac, and we find in Albert Savarus a portrait of him,
-written by himself, that represents him such as he was at
-that time (1842), with some minor differences:
-
-"… A superb head, black hair already streaked with some
-white, hair like that of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in our
-paintings, with thick shining curls, stiff like horsehair, a
-round white neck like that of a woman, a magnificent
-forehead, divided by the powerful furrows that great
-projects, great thoughts, strong reflections inscribe on the
-the foreheads of great men; an olive complexion marbled
-with red marks, a square nose, eyes of fire, then the
-hollow cheeks, with two long lines full of suffering, a
-mouth with a sardonic smile and a small chin that was
-narrow and too short; crow's feet at his temples, sunken
-eyes, rolling under the eyebrow arches like two burning
-globes; but despite all of these signs of violent passion, a
-calm manner, profoundly accepting, the voice of a
-penetrating sweetness which surprised me with its facility,
-the true voice of an orator, sometimes pure and astute,
-sometimes insinuating, and thunderous when necessary,
-then pliant with sarcasm, and then becoming incisive.
-Monsieur Albert Savaron is of middle height, neither fat
-nor thin; finally, he has the hands of a prelate."
-
-In this portrait, which is incidentally very faithful, Balzac
-idealizes himself a little for the needs of the novel, and
-subtracts from himself a few kilograms of portliness,
-license which is certainly permitted to a beloved hero of
-the Duchess d'Argaiolo and Mademoiselle Philomène de
-Watteville. This novel of Albert Savarus, one of the least
-known and least quoted of Balzac, contains many
-transposed details on his habits of life and of work; one
-could even see there, if it was permissible to lift those
-veils, secrets of another kind.
-
-Balzac had left the Rue des Batailles for Les Jardies; he
-then went to live at Passy. The house in which he lived,
-situated on a steep slope, offered a unique architectural
-layout. One entered there
-
-    A little like wine enters bottles
-
-It was necessary to descend three floors to reach the first.
-The entry door, which was on the side of the house that
-faced the road, opened nearly into the roof, like a
-mansard. I dined there once with L. G. It was a strange
-dinner, with its dishes based on economical recipes
-invented by Balzac. At my express request, the famous
-onion purée, endowed with so many healthy and
-symbolic qualities and which almost killed Lassailly, did
-not appear. But the wines were marvelous! Each bottle
-had a story, and Balzac told it with an eloquence, a verve,
-a conviction without equal. The wine of Bordeaux had
-gone around the world three times; the Châteauneuf-du-Pape
-traced back to legendary times; the rum came from
-a barrel rolled for more than a century by the sea, which
-had to be opened with blows from an axe, because the
-crust that had been formed around it by shellfish, coral
-and seaweed was thick. My palate, surprised, irritated by
-the acidic flavors, protested in vain against these
-illustrious origins. Balzac maintained the solemnity of a
-soothsayer, and despite the proverb, I kept my eyes fixed
-on him, but I did not make him laugh!
-
-For dessert, we had pears of a ripeness, a size, a
-tenderness and a quality that would do honor to a royal
-table. Balzac devoured five or six of them with the juice
-running down his chin; he believed that this fruit was
-good for him, and he ate them in such a quantity as much
-for health as for sweetness. Already he felt the first
-effects of the illness that would take him. Death, with its
-skeletal fingers, was touching this robust body to know
-where to attack it, and finding no weakness there, killed it
-through excess and hypertrophy. The cheeks of Balzac
-were already lined and marked with those red spots that
-simulate health to inattentive eyes; but for the observer,
-the yellow tones of hepatitis surrounded the tired eyelids
-with their golden halo; the expression, brightened by this
-warm sepia hue, appeared even more vivacious and
-shining and lessened anxieties.
-
-At that time, Balzac was very preoccupied with the occult
-sciences, palmistry, and card reading; he had been told of
-an oracle even more astonishing than Mademoiselle
-Lenormand, and he persuaded me, as well as Madame E.
-de Girardin and Méry, to go and consult her with him.
-The prophetess lived in Auteuil, I no longer know in
-which street; that matters little to my story, because the
-address that was given was false. We came upon an
-honorable middle class family on holiday: the husband,
-the wife, and an old mother in whom Balzac, sure of his
-facts, persisted in finding a mystical air. The good
-woman, not flattered to have been taken for a sorceress,
-became angry; the husband took us for tricksters or
-crooks; the young woman laughed loudly, and the servant
-hastened prudently to lock up the silver. We had no
-choice but to withdraw after our blunder; but Balzac
-maintained that we were in the right place, and having
-climbed back into the carriage, muttered insults at the old
-lady: "Demon, harpy, magician, vampire, worm, monster,
-lemur, ghoul, snake charmer, creature," and all of the
-bizarre terms that a familiarity with the litanies of
-Rabelais could suggest to him. I said: "If she is a
-sorceress, she hides her game well." "Of cards," added
-Madame de Girardin with a quickness of mind that never
-failed her. We tried some further explorations, always
-fruitlessly, and Delphine asserted that Balzac had
-imagined this resource of Quinola in order to be driven by
-carriage to Auteuil, where he had business, and to
-procure some pleasant traveling companions. It is
-necessary to believe, however, that Balzac alone found
-that Madame Fontaine that we were all seeking together,
-because, in Les Comédiens Sans le Savoir, he depicted her
-between her hen Bilouche and her toad Astaroth with a
-fantastic and frightening truthfulness, if those two words
-can go together. Did he consult her seriously? Did he go
-to see her as a simple observer? Many passages in La
-Comédie Humaine seem to suggest that Balzac had a kind
-of faith in the occult sciences, about which the official
-sciences have still not said their last word.
-
-Around this time, Balzac began to show a taste for old
-furniture, chests, vases; the least piece of worm-eaten
-wood that he bought on the Rue de Lappe always had an
-illustrious provenance, and he created detailed
-genealogies for his lesser knickknacks. He hid them here
-and there, always because of those fantastical creditors
-that I was starting to doubt. I even amused myself by
-spreading the rumor that Balzac was a millionaire, that he
-was buying old stockings from dealers in caterpillars to
-hide onces, quadruples, génovines, crusades, colonnates,
-double louis, in the manner of Père Grandet; I said
-everywhere that he had three cisterns, like Aboul-Casem,
-filled to the brim with garnets, dinars and rials. "Théo will
-get my throat cut with his jokes!" said Balzac, annoyed
-and charmed.
-
-That which gave some veracity to my jokes was the new
-house in which Balzac lived, on the Rue Fortunée, in the
-Beaujon quarter, less populated then than it is today. He
-occupied a mysterious little house there that would have
-suited the fantasies of an ostentatious financier. From
-outside, one saw over the wall a sort of cupola formed by
-the arched ceiling of a sitting room and fresh paint on the
-closed shutters.
-
-When one entered this small house, which was not easy,
-because the master of this dwelling hid himself with
-extreme care, one discovered a thousand details of luxury
-and comfort that contradicted the poverty that he
-affected. He received me however one day, and I could
-see a dining room adorned with old oak, with a table, a
-fireplace, some buffets, some sideboards and some chairs
-of sculpted wood, that would have made Berruguète,
-Cornejo Duque and Verbruggen envious; a salon of
-golden yellow damask, with doors, cornices, plinths and
-window frames of ebony; a library arranged in armoires
-inlayed with shell and brass in the style of Boule, and
-whose door, hidden by the shelves, once closed, could
-not be found; a bathroom in yellow Breccia, with bas-reliefs
-of stucco; a domed sitting room, whose old
-paintings had been restored by Edmond Hédouin; a
-gallery lit from above, that I recognized later in the
-collection of Le Cousin Pons. There were on the shelves all
-sorts of curiosities, porcelain from Dresden and Sèvres,
-horns of crackled celadon, and on the stairway, which
-was covered with a rug, some great vases from China and
-a magnificent lantern suspended by a cable of red silk.
-
-"So have you emptied one of the caches of Aboul-Casem?"
-I said to Balzac, laughing, confronted with these
-splendors. "You can see well that I was right to suggest
-that you are a millionaire."
-
-"I am poorer than ever," he responded while taking on a
-humble and pious air. "None of this is mine. I have
-furnished the house for a friend that I await. I am only
-the caretaker and porter of the building."
-
-I quote here his exact words. This response, he made it in
-passing to many people who were as shocked as me. The
-mystery was soon explained by the marriage of Balzac to
-the woman whom he had loved for a long time.
-
-There is a Turkish proverb that says: "When the house is
-finished, death enters." It is for this reason that the
-sultans always have a palace in the course of construction
-that they are very careful not to complete. Life seems to
-want nothing to be complete – except misfortune.
-Nothing is as dreaded as a wish fulfilled.
-
-The notorious debts were finally paid, the dream union
-completed, the nest made for happiness padded and
-covered with down; as if they had foreseen his
-approaching end, those who envied Balzac started to
-praise him: Les Parents Pauvres, Le Cousin Pons, where the
-genius of the author shines in all its radiance, united all
-opinions. It was too beautiful; nothing more remained
-for him but to die.

-His illness made rapid progress, but nobody believed that
-there would be a fatal outcome, so much we all trusted in
-the athletic constitution of Balzac. I thought firmly that
-he would bury us all.

-I was going to take a trip to Italy. And before leaving I
-wanted to say goodbye to my illustrious friend. He had
-left in a carriage to collect from customs some exotic
-curiosity. I drew away reassured, and at the moment that
-I returned to my carriage, I was given a note from
-Madame de Balzac, which explained to me obligingly and
-with polite regrets why I had not found her husband at
-home. At the bottom of the letter, Balzac had scrawled
-these words.
-
-    "I can neither read, nor write.
-    "De Balzac."
-
-I have preserved like a relic that ominous line, probably
-the last that was written by the author of La Comédie
-Humaine; it was, and I did not understand it right away,
-the final cry, "My God, why have you forsaken me!" of
-the thinker and of the worker. The idea that Balzac could
-die did not even occur to me.
-
-A few days after that, I was eating ice cream at the Café
-Florian, on the Piazza Saint Marco; in my hand I found
-the Journal des Débats, one of the few French papers that
-was available in Venice, and I saw in it the announcement
-of the death of Balzac. I almost fell from my chair onto
-the stones of the Piazza at this sudden news, and my pain
-was quickly mixed with an impulse of indignation and
-outrage that was not very Christian, because all souls
-have an equal value before God. I had just visited the
-insane asylum on the island of San-Servolo, and I saw
-there decrepit idiots, doddering octogenarians, human
-worms who are not even guided by animal instinct, and I
-asked myself why this luminous brain was extinguished
-like a flame on which one blows, while tenacious life
-persisted in these murky heads that were dimly traversed
-by fickle rays.
-
-Nine years have already passed since that fatal date.
-Posterity has commenced for Balzac; every day he seems
-greater. When he was in the company of his
-contemporaries, he was poorly appreciated, he was seen
-only in fragments under sometimes unfavorable
-circumstances: now the edifice that he built rises as one
-draws further away, like the cathedral of a city that
-conceals the neighboring houses, and which on the
-horizon appears immense above the flattened roofs. The
-monument is not completed, but, such as it is, it terrifies
-by its enormity, and surprised generations will ask
-themselves who is the giant who alone has raised these
-formidable blocks and built so high this Babel that made
-all of society sing.
-
-Although he is dead, Balzac still has detractors; on his
-memory are thrown the banal reproach of immorality,
-the last insult of powerless and jealous mediocrity, or
-even of total stupidity. The author of La Comédie Humaine
-not only is not immoral, but he is actually a strict
-moralist. Monarchical and catholic, he defends authority,
-exalts religion, preaches duty, reprimands passion, and
-does not accept happiness except in marriage and the
-family.
-
-"Man," he says, "is neither good, nor bad; he is born with
-instincts and aptitudes; society, far from corrupting him,
-as Rousseau maintained, improves him, makes him
-better; but self-interest develops also his evil tendencies.
-Christianity, and particularly Catholicism, being, as I said
-in Le Médecin de Campagne, a complete system for the
-repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the
-most important component of social order."
-
-And with the ingenuity that suits a great man, anticipating
-the reproach of immorality that will be addressed to him
-by shoddy spirits, he numbers the irreproachably virtuous
-characters who are found in La Comédie Humaine: Pierrette
-Lorrain, Ursule Mirouët, Constance Birotteau, la
-Fosseuse, Eugénie Grandet, Marguerite Claës, Pauline de
-Villenoix, Madame Jules, Madame de la Chanterie, Eve
-Chardon, Mademoiselle d'Esgrignon, Madame Firmiani,
-Agathe Rouget, Renée de Maucombe, without counting
-among the men, Joseph Le Bas, Genestas, Benassis, the
-cleric Bonnet, Dr. Minoret, Pillerault, David Séchard, the
-two Birotteaus, the cleric Chaperon, the judge Popinot,
-Bourgeat, the Sauviats, the Tascherons, etc.
-
-Rogues are not missing, it is true, in La Comédie Humaine.
-But is Paris populated only with angels?
-
-END
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