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Photograph : Nadar
Portrait of Balzac, known as the Daguerreotype
BALZAC
BY
FREDERICK LAWTON, M.A.
AUTHOR OF "THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC," ETC.
WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON: GRANT RICHARDS LTD
NEW YORK : WESSELS k BISSELL CO
1910
Printed by Ballanttnb, Hanson 6* Co., at the
Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh, Scotland
L2>
First printed May 1910
Reprinted September 1910
791584
HONORfi DE BALZAC
DEDICATED,
In remembrance of many pleasant and instructive hours
spent in his society, to the sculptor
AUGUSTE RODIN,
rvhose statue of Balzac, with its fine, synthetic portraiture,
first tempted the author to write this book.
Pabst, Paris, 1910.
PREFACE
Excusing himself for not undertaking to write a life
of Balzac, Monsieur Brunetiere, in his study of the
novelist published shortly before his death, refused
somewhat disdainfully to admit that acquaintance with
a celebrated man's biography has necessarily any value.
** What do we know of the life of Shakespeare ? " he
says, " and of the circumstances in which Hamlet or
Othello was produced? If these circumstances were
better known to us, is it to be believed and will it be
seriously asserted that our admiration for one or the
other play would be augmented ? " In penning this
quirk, the eminent critic would seem to have wilfully
overlooked the fact that a writer's life may have much
or may have httle to do with his works. In the case
of Shakespeare it was comparatively little — and yet we
should be glad to learn more of this little. In the case
of Balzac it was much. His novels are literally his life ;
and his life is quite as full as his books of all that makes
the good novel at once profitable and agreeable to read.
It is not too much to affirm that any one who is
acquainted with what is known to-day of the strangely
chequered career of the author of the Comedie Humaine
is in a better position to understand and appreciate the
different parts which constitute it. Moreover, the
steady rise of Balzac's reputation, during the last fifty
years, has been in some degree owing to the various
patient investigators who have gathered information
viii PREFACE
about him whom Taine pronounced to be, with Shake-
speare and Saint- Simon, the greatest storehouse of
documents we possess concerning human nature.
The following chapters are an attempt to put this
information into sequence and shape, and to insert such
notice of the novels as their relative importance requires.
The author wishes here to thank certain French pub-
lishers who have facilitated his task by placing books
for reference at his disposal, Messrs. Calmann-Levy,
Armand Colin, and Hetzel, in particular, and also the
Curator of the Musee Balzac, Monsieur de Royaumont
who iias rendered him service on several occasions.
CONTENTS
CHAP
I.
Introduction ....
.
.
PAGB
1
II.
Boyhood
.
.
17
III.
Experiments in Literature and
Business : 1
:he
''Dilecta" ....
.
38
IV.
First Successes and Fame .
.
60
V.
Letters to "The Stranger, 1831,
1832 \
i
. 85
VI.
VII.
» }} }) looo,
>> )} }} LooO)
1834
1836
. 112
. 134
VIII.
}} )) >) 1837,
1838
\ •«*
. 156
IX.
5> >) >) 1839j
1840
/^
. 179
X.
XI.
>) }> >j 1841,
»> >> j> 1843,
1842
1844
. 202
. 222
XII.
>> >» » 1845,
1846 ^
^
. 251
XIII.
Last Years : Marriage and Death
.
. 272
XIV.
The ''Comedie Humaine" .
.
. 299
XV.
Value of the Work .
. 319
XVI.
Influence
.
. 341
XVII.
Conclusion : The Man and his Portraits .
. 360
INDEX . . .
. 375
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATB
1. Portrait of Balzac, known as the Daguerreotype Frontispiece
2. The Cafe Frascati. From a Painting hy Debu-
court ........ To face page 10
3. House at Tours where Balzac was Born . ,, ,, 22
4. Prison of the Vendome College. After a
Drawing hy A. Queyroy . . . . „ ,, 32
5. Balzac's Lodgings in the Rue Lesdigui&res . „ ,, 44
6. Balzac's Printing Premises in the Rue des
Marais .......„„ 56
7. Hand of Balzac. From a Plaster-Cast . . „ „ 68
8. The Place de la Concorde in 1829. From a
Painting hy Canella „ „ 80
9. Balzac at the Age of Thirty. From a Sepia
Drawing hy Louis Boulanger . . . „ „ 9^
10. House where Balzac lived. 1 Rue Cassini . „ ,, 104
11. Balzac and Countess Hanska. A Caricature
of the time . . . . . . „ „ 1 1 6
12. The Boulevard Poissonniere in 1834. From
a Painting hy Dagnan . . . . „ ,,128
13. The Hotel des Haricots where Balzac was
imprisoned . . . . . . „ ,^140
14. Balzac. Dantons Comic Statue . . . „ ,,152
15. The Villa of Les Jardies where Balzac lived
from 1837-1840 ,, „ l64
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi
PliATE
16. Balzac. From a Painting by Louis Boulanger . To face page 176
17. Balzac. From a Caricature of the year 1838 . „ „ 188
18. House in Passy where Balzac lived from
1840-1847 „ „ 200
19. Balzac. From a Lithograph hy Julien . . „ ,,212
20. Balzac. From a Painting hy Gerard-Seguin . „ „ 224
21. The Champs Elysees in 1843. From a Painting
hy Cadolle „ „ 236
22. Celebrities at a Tea- Party. From a Caricature
hy Grandville ......„,, 248
23. Garden of the House at Passy . . . „ „ 260
24. Balzac's House in the Rue Fortunee. From a
Painting hy V. Dargaud ....„„ 272
25. Portrait of Madame Hanska. From a Painting
hy Gigoujc . ,, ,,284
26. Balzac on his Death-bed. From a Pastel hy
Eugene Giraud „ „ 296
27. Room in Balzac's House „ „ 308
28. Balzac. From an Etching hy Hedouiu • • „ „ 320
29. Alfred de Musset and Honore de Balzac.
Caricature attributed to Theophile Gautier . „ „ 332
SO. The Eagles of Thought and Style. From a
Comic Drawing hy Tony Johannot •.,,,, 344
31. Balzac's Famous Stick » tt 356
32. Balzac's Statue. By Rodin^ ••••„„ S68
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS
PLATK
1. Portrait of Balzac, known as the Daguerreotype Frontispiece
2. The Cafe Frascati. From a Painting hy Debu-
court ........ To face page 10
3. House at Tours where Balzac was Born . „ ,, 22
4. Prison of the Vendome College. After a
Drawing hy A. Queyroy . . . . „ ,,32
5. Balzac's Lodgings in the Rue Lesdigui^res . „ ,, 44
6. Balzac's Printing Premises in the Rue des
Marais .......„„ 56
7. Hand of Balzac. From a Plaster-Cast . . „ „ 68
8. The Place de la Concorde in 1829. From a
Painting hy Canella „ „ 80
9. Balzac at the Age of Thirty. From a Sepia
Drawing hy Louis Boulanger . . . „
10. House where Balzac lived. 1 Rue Cassini . „
11. Balzac and Countess Hanska. A Caricature
of the time . . . . . . „
12. The Boulevard Poissonniere in 1834. From
a Painting hy Dagnan ....,,
13. The Hotel des Haricots where Balzac was
imprisoned .......
14. Balzac. Danton's Comic Statue . . . „ ,,152
15. The Villa of Les Jardies where Balzac lived
from 1837-1840 ,, „ l64
}t
92
)t
104
yj
116
»
128
)f
140
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi
PIiATB
16. Balzac. From a Painting by Louis Boulanger . To face page 176
17. Balzac. From a Caricature of the year 1838 . „ « 188
18. House in Passy where Balzac lived from
1840-1847 „ „ 200
19. Balzac. From a Lithograph by Julien . . „ ,,212
20. Balzac. From a Painting by Gerard-Seguin . „ „ 224
21. The Champs Elysees in 1843. From a Painting
by Cadolle . ......„„ 236
22. Celebrities at a Tea- Party. From a Caricature
I by Grandville ......„„ 248
23. Garden of the House at Passy ...,,„ 260
24. Balzac's House in the Rue Fortunee. From a
Painting by V. Dargaud • . • • ,1 „ 272
25. Portrait of Madame Hanska. From a Painting
by Gigoux „ „ 284
26. Balzac on his Death-bed. From a Pastel by
Eugene Giraud ......„„ 296
27. Room in Balzac's House a >, 308
28. Balzac. From an Etching by Hedouin • > „ a 320
29. Alfred de Musset and Honore de Balzac.
Caricature attributed to Theophile Gautier . „ „ 332
30. The Eagles of Thought and Style. From a
Comic Drawing by Tony Johannot • . „ „ 344
31. Balzac's Famous Stick ••...„„ Zb^
32. Balzac's Statue. By Rodin. ....„„ 368
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The condition of French society in the early half of
the nineteenth century — the period covered by Balzac's
novels — may be compared to that of a people endea-
vouring to recover themselves after an earthquake.
Everything had been overthrown, or at least loosened
from its base — religion, laws, customs, traditions,
castes. Nothing had withstood the shock. When the
upheaval finally ceased, there were timid attempts to
find out what had been spared and was susceptible of
being raised from the ruins. Gradually the process
of selection went on, portions of the ancient system
of things being joined to the larger modern creation.
The two did not work in very well together, however,
and the edifice was far from stable.
During the Consulate and First Empire, the
Emperor's will, so sternly imposed, retarded any move-
ment of natural reconstruction. Outside the military
organization, things were stiff and starched and solemn.
High and low were situated in circumstances that
were different and strange. The new soldier aristo-
cracy reeked of the camp and battle-field ; the washer-
woman, become a duchess, was ill at ease in the
Imperial drawing-room ; while those who had thriven
and amassed wealth rapidly in trade were equally
uncomfortable amidst the vulgar luxury with which
2 HONORE DE BALZAC
they surrounded themselves. Even the common people,
whether of capital or province, for whose benefit the
Revolution had been made, were silent and afraid.
Of the ladies' salons — once numerous and remarkable
for their wit, good taste, and conversation — two or three
only subsisted, those of Mesdames de Beaumont,
Recamier and de Stael; and, since the last was re-
garded by Napoleon with an unfriendly eye, its guests
must have felt constrained.
At reunions, eating rather than talking was fashion-
able, and the eating lacked its intimacy and privacy
of the past. The lighter side of life was seen more
in restaurants, theatres, and fetes. It was modish to
dine at Frascati's, to drink ices at the Pavilion de
Hanovre, to go and admire the actors Talma, Picard,
and Lemercier, whose stage performance was better
than many of the pieces they interpreted. Fireworks
could be enjoyed at the Tivoli Gardens; the great
concerts were the rage for a while, as also the practice
for a hostess to carry off her visitors after dinner for
a promenade in the Bois de Boulogne.
Literature was obstinately classical. After the
daring flights of the previous century, writers con-
tented themselves with marking time. Chenedolle,
whose verse Madame de Stael said to be as lofty as
Lebanon, and whose fame is lilliputian to-day, was,
with Ducis, the representative of their advance-guard.
In painting, with Fragonard, Greuze and Gros, there
was a greater stir of genius, yet without anything
corresponding in the sister art.
On the contrary, in the practical aspects of life
there was large activity, though Paris almost alone
profited by it. Napoleon's reconstruction in the
provinces was administrative chiefly. A complete pro-
INTRODUCTION 3
gramme was first started on in the capital, which the
Emperor wished to exalt into the premier city of Europe.
Gas-lighting, sewerage, paving and road improvements,
quays, and bridges were his gifts to the city, whose
general appearance, however, remained much the same.
The Palais-Royal served still as a principal rendezvous.
The busy streets were the Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-
Honore on the right bank, the Rue Saint- Jacques on
the left ; and the most important shops were to be
found in the Rue de la Loi, at present the Rue de
Richelieu.
The fall of the Empire was less a restoration of
the Monarchy than the definite disaggregation of the
ancient aristocracy, which had been centralized round
the Court since the days of Richelieu. The Court of
Louis XVIII. was no more like that of Louis XVI.
than it was like the noisy one of Napoleon. Receiv-
ing only a few personal friends, the King allowed his
drawing-rooms to remain deserted by the nobles that
had returned from exile; and the two or three who
were regular visitors were compelled to rub elbows
with certain parvenus, magistrates, financiers, generals
of the Empire whom it would not have been prudent
to eliminate.
In this initial stage of society-decentralization, the
diminished band of the Boulevard Saint - Germain —
descendants of the eighteenth- century dukes and mar-
quises— ^tried to close up their ranks and to differentiate
themselves from the plutocracy of the Chaussee d'Antin,
who copied their manners, with an added magnificence
of display which those they imitated could not afford.
In the one camp the antique bronzes, gildings, and
carvings of a bygone art were retained with pious
veneration ; in the other, pictures, carpets, Jacob chairs
4 HONORE: DE BALZAC
and sofas, mirrors, and time-pieces, and the gold
and silver plate were all in lavish style, indicative of
their owner's ampler means. One feature of the pre-
Revolution era was revived in the feminine salons,
which regained most, if not the whole, of their
pristine renown. The Hotel de la Rochefoucauld of
Madame Ancelot became a second Hotel deRambouillet,
where the classical Parse val-Grandmaison, who spent
twenty years over his poem Philippe- Auguste, held
armistice with the young champion of the Romantic
school, Victor Hugo. The Princess de Vaudemont
received her guests in Paris during the winter, and
at Suresnes during the summer; and her friend the
Duchess de Duras' causeries were frequented by such
men as Cuvier, Humboldt, Talleyrand, Mole, de Villele,
Chateaubriand, and Villemain. Other circles existed in
the houses of the Dukes Pasquier and de Broglie, the
Countess Merlin, and Madame de Mirbel.
With the re-establishment of peace, literary and
toilet pre-occupations began to assert their claims.
The Ourika of the Duchess de Duras took Paris by
storm. Her heroine, the young Senegal negress, gave
her name to dresses, hats, and bonnets. Everything
was Ourika. The prettiest Parisian woman yearned
to be black, and regretted not having been born in
darkest Africa. Anglomania in men's clothes prevailed
throughout the reign of Louis XVHI., yet mixed with
other modes. "Behold an up-to-date dandy," says a
writer of the epoch ; " all extremes meet in him. You
shall see him Prussian by the stomach, Russian by
his waist, English in his coat-tails and collar, Cossack
by the sack that serves him as trousers, and by his
fur. Add to these things Bolivar hats and spurs, and
the moustaches of a counter-skipper, and you have the
INTRODUCTION 5
most singular harlequin to be met with on the face
of the globe."
Among the masses there were changes just as strik-
ing. For the moment militarism had disappeared, to
the people's unfeigned content, and the Garde Nationale,
composed of pot-bellied tradesmen, alone recalled the
bright uniforms of the Empire. To make up for the
soldier excitements of the Petit Caporal, attractions
of all kinds tempted the citizen to enjoy himself after
his day's toil was finished — menagerie, mountebanks,
Franconi circus, Robertson the conjurer in the Jardin
des Capucines. At the other end of the city, in the
Boulevard du Temple, were Belle Madeleine, the seller
of Nanterre cakes, famous throughout Europe, the
face contortionist Valsuani, Miette in his egg-dance,
Curtius' waxworks. By each street corner were char-
latans of one or another sort exchanging jests with the
passers-by. It was the period when the Prudhomme
type was created, so common in all the skits and cari-
catures of the day. One of the greatest pleasures of
the citizen under the Restoration was to mock at the
English. Revenge for Waterloo was found in written
and spoken satires. Huge was the success of Sewrin's
and Dumersan's Anglaises pour rire^ with Brunet
and Potier travestied as grandes dames, dancing a jig
so vigorously that they lost their skirts. The same
species of revanche was indulged in when Lady Morgan,
the novelist, came to France, seeking material for
a popular book describing French customs. Henri
Beyle (Stendhal) hoaxed her by acting as her cicerone
and filling her note-books with absurd information,
which she accepted in good faith and carried off as
fact. On Sundays the most respectable families used
to resort to the guinguettes, or bastringues, of the
6 HONORE DE BALZAC
suburbs. Belleville had its celebrated Desnoyers estab-
lishment. At the Maine gate Mother Sagnet's was
the meeting-place of budding artists and grisettes.
At La Villette, Mother Radig, a former canteen woman,
long enjoyed popularity among her patrons of both
sexes. All these scenes are depicted in certain of
Victor Ducange's novels, written between 1815 and
1830, as also in the pencil sketches of the two artists
Pigal and Marlet.
The political society of the Restoration was charac-
terized by a good deal of cynicism. Those who were
affected by the change of regime, partisans and
functionaries of the Empire, hastened in many cases
to trim their sails to the turn of the tide. However,
there was a relative liberty of the press which permitted
the honest expression of party opinion, and polemics
were keen. At the Sorbonne, Guizot, Cousin, and
Villemain were the orators of the day. Frayssinous
lectured at Saint- Sulpice, and de Lamennais, attacking
young Liberalism, denounced its tenets in an essay
which de Maistre called a heaving of the earth under
a leaden sky.
The country's material prosperity at the time was
considerable, and reacted upon literature of every kind
by furnishing a more leisured public. In 1816 Emile
Deschamps preluded to the after-triumphs of the
Romantic School with his play the Tour de faveur,
the latter being followed in 1820 by Lebrun's Marie
Stuart, Alfred de Vigny was preparing his JEloa;
Nodier was delighting everybody by his talents as a
philologian, novelist, poet, and chemist. Beranger was
continuing his songs, and paying for his boldness with
imprisonment. The King himself was a protector of
letters, arts, and sciences. One of his first tasks was
INTRODUCTION 7
to reorganize the " Institut Royal," making it into
four Academies. He founded the Geographical and
Asiatic Societies, encouraged the introduction of steam
navigation and traction into France, and patronized
men of genius wherever he met with them.
Yet the nation's fidelity to the White Flag was
not very deep-rooted. Grateful though the population
had been for the return of peace and prosperity, a
lurking reminiscence of Napoleonic splendours com-
bined with the bourgeois' Voltairian scepticism to rouse
a widespread hostility to Government and Church,
as soon as the spirit of the latter ventured to manifest
again its inveterate intolerance. Beranger's songs,
Paul- Louis Courier's pamphlets, and the articles of the
Constitutionnel fanned the re-awakened sentiments of
rev^olt; and Charles the Tenth's ministers, less wisely
restrained than those of Louis XVIII., and blind to
the significance of the first barricades of 1827, provoked
the catastrophe of 1830. This second revolution in-
augurated the reign of a bourgeois king. Louis-
Philippe was hardly more than a delegate of the
bourgeois class, who now reaped the full benefits of
the great Revolution and entered into possession of
its spoils. During Jacobin dictature and Napoleonic
sway, the bourgeoisie had played a waiting role. At
present they came to the front, proudly conscious of
their merits ; and an entire literature was destined to
be devoted to them, an entire art to depict or satirize
their manners. Scribe, Stendhal, Merimee, Henry
Monnier, Daumier, and Gavarni were some of the men
whose work illustrated the bourgeois regime, either
prior to or contemporaneous with the work of Balzac.
The eighteen years of the July Monarchy, which
were those of Balzac's mature activity, contrasted
8 HONORE DE BALZAC
sharply with those that immediately preceded. In
spite of perceptible social progress, the constant war of
political parties, in which the throne itself was attacked,
alarmed lovers of order, and engendered feelings of
pessimism. The power of journalism waxed great.
Fighting with the pen was carried to a point of skill
previously unattained. Grouped round the Debats —
the ministerial organ — were Silvestre de Sacy, Saint-
Marc Girardin, and Jules Janin as leaders, and John
Lemoinne, Philarete Chasles, Barbey d'Aurevilly in
the rank and file. Elsewhere Emile de Girardin's
Presse strove to oust the Constitutionnel and Siecle,
opposition papers, from public favour, and to establish
a Conservative Liberalism that should receive the sup-
port of moderate minds. Doctrines many, political
and social, were propounded in these eighteen years
of compromise. Legitimists, Bonapartists, and Repub-
licans were all three in opposition to the Government,
each with a programme to tempt the petty burgess.
Saint- Simonism too was abroad with its Utopian
ideals, attracting some of the loftier minds, but less
appreciated by the masses than the teachings of other
semi-secret societies having aims more material.
Corresponding to the character of the regime was
the practical nature of the public works executed — the
railway system with its transformation of trade, the
fortification of the capital, the commencement of
popular education, and the renovation of decayed or
incompleted edifices. Unfortunately, the rapidity of
the development and the rush of speculation prevented
any co-ordinating method in the effort, so that the
epoch was poor in its architectural achievement com-
pared with what had been produced in the past. Even
other branches of art were greatest in satire. Daumier's
INTRODUCTION 9
Robert Macaire sketches and the Mayeux of Travi^s
had large material supplied them in the various types
of citizen, greedy of pleasure and gold. The mot :
" Enrichissez-vous," attributed to Guizot, was the axiom
of the time, accepted as the nee plus ultra by the vast
majority of people. It invaded all circles with its
lowering expediency; and he who was to depict its
effects most puissantly did not escape its thrall.
# #
When Balzac began to write, no French novelist
had a reputation as such that might be considered
great. Up to the epoch of the Restoration, the novel
had been declared to be an inferior species of literature,
and no author had dreamed of basing his claims to
fame on fiction. Lesage had been and was still appre-
ciated rather on the ground of his satire ; and the
Abbe Prevost, his slightly younger contemporary, re-
ceived but little credit in his lifetime for the Manon
Lescaut that posterity was to prize. Throughout the
eighteenth century, he was chiefly regarded as a literary
hack who had translated Richardson's Pamela and done
things of a similar kind to earn a livelihood. Rousseau
too was esteemed less for his Nouvelle Helo'ise than for
his political disquisitions. No novelist since 1635 had
ever been elected to the French Academy on account
of his stories. Jules Sandeau was the first to break the
tradition by his entrance among the Immortals in 1859,
to be followed in 1862 by Octave Feuillet.
Lesage was the writer who introduced into France
with his Gil Bias what has been called the personal
novel — in other words, that story of adventures of
which the narrator is the hero, the aim of the story
being to illustrate first and foremost the vicissitudes of
life in general and those of a single person in par-
10 HONORE DE BALZAC
ticular. The subsequent introduction of letters into
the personal novel, which allowed more than one char-
acter to assume the narrator's role, brought about a
change which those who initiated it scarcely antici-
pated. Together with the larger interest, due to there
being several narrators, came a tendency to introspec-
tion and analysis, diminishing the prominence of the
facts and enhancing the effect produced by these facts
on the thoughts and feelings of the characters. It was
this development of the personal novel at the com-
mencement of the nineteenth century, exhibited in
Chateaubriand's Rene, Madame de Stael's Corinne,
Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, George Sand's Indiana,
and Sainte-Beuve's Volupte, which contributed so much
to create and establish the Romantic School of fiction
with its egoistic lyricism.
The historical novel, which more commonly is looked
upon as having been the principal agent in the change,
gave, in sooth, only what modern fiction of every kind
could no longer do without, namely, local colour. The
so-styled historical novels of Madame de la Fayette —
Zayde and the Princesse de Cleves — in the seventeenth
century, and those of Madame de Tencin and Madame
de Fontaines in the eighteenth, were simply historic
themes whereon the authors embroidered the inventions
of their imaginations, without the slightest attention to
accuracy or attempt at differentiating the men and
minds of one age from those of another ; nor was it till
the days of Walter Scott that such care for local colour
and truth of delineation was manifested by writers who
essayed to put life into the bones of the past.
Even Lesage, so exact in his description of all that
is exterior, lacked this literary truthfulness. His Spain
is a land of fancy ; his Spaniards are not Spanish ; Gil
INTRODUCTION 11
Bias, albeit he comes from Santillana, is a Frenchman.
Marivaux was wiser in placing his Vie de Marianne
and his Paysan parvenu in France. His people, though
modelled on stage pattern, are of his own times and
country ; and, in so far as they reveal themselves, have
resemblances to the characters of Richardson.
To the Abbe Barthelemy, Voltaire, and Rousseau
the novel was a convenient medium for the expres-
sion of certain ideas rather than a representation of life.
The first strove to popularize a knowledge of Greek
antiquity, the second to combat doctrines that he
deemed fallacious, the third to reform society. How-
ever, Rousseau brought nature into his Nouvelle He-
lo'ise, and, by his accessories of pathos and philosophy,
prepared the way for a bolder and completer treat-
ment of life in fiction. Different from these was
Restif de la Bretonne, who applied Rousseau's theories
with less worthy aims in his Paysan perverti and
Monsieur Nicolas, ou JLe Coeur humain devoile. If
mention is made of him here, it is because he was
a pioneer in the path of realism, which Balzac was to
explore more thoroughly, and because the latter un-
doubtedly caught some of his grosser manner.
The novelists and dramatists whom Balzac made
earliest acquaintance with were probably those whose
works were appearing and attracting notice during
his school-days — Pigault-Lebrun, Ducray-Duminil, and
that Guilbert de Pixerecourt who for a third of the
nineteenth century was worshipped as the Corneille
of melodrama. These men were the favourite authors
of the nascent democracy; and, in an age when re-
prints of older writers were much rarer than to-day,
would be far more likely to appeal to a boy's taste
than seventeenth- and eighteenth-century authors. At
12 HONOR]^ DE BALZAC
an after-period only, when* he had definitely entered
upon his maturer literary career, was he to take up the
latter and to use them, together with Rabelais, La
Bruyere, Moliere, and Diderot, as his best, if not his
constant, sources of inspiration. In the stories of the
first of the three above-mentioned modern writers, the
reader usually meets with some child of poor parent-
age, who, after most extraordinary and comic experi-
ences, marries the child of a nobleman. In those of
the second, the hero or heroine struggles with power-
ful enemies, is aided by powerful friends, and moves
in an atmosphere of blood and mystery until vice
is chastized and virtue finally rewarded. The two
writers, however, differ more in their talent than in
their methods, the first having an amount of origin-
ality which is almost entirely wanting to the second.
With both, indeed, the main object is to impress and
astonish, and the finer touches of Lesage and Prevost
are seldom visible in cither's work. As for Pixerecourt,
whose fame lasted until the Romantic drama of the
elder Dumas, Alfred de Vigny, and Victor Hugo
eclipsed it, he wrote over a hundred plays, each of
which was performed some five hundred times, while
two at least ran for more than a thousand nights.
If it was natural that Balzac should familiarize him-
self in his adolescence with such writers of his own
countrymen as every one discussed and very many
praised, it was natural also he should extend his
perusals to the translated works of contemporary
novelists on the further side of the Channel, the more
so as the reciprocal literary influence of the two
countries was exceedingly strong at the time, stronger
probably than to-day when attention is solicited on so
many sides. To the novels of Monk Lewis, Maturin,
INTRODUCTION 13
Anne RadclifFe, and other exponents of the School of
Terror, as Hkewise to the novels of Godwin, the
chief of the School of Theory, he went for instruction
in the profession that he was wishing to adopt. Mrs.
RadclifFe's stories he thought admirable; those of
Lewis he cited as hardly being equalled by Stendhal's
Chartreuse de Parme ; and Maturin — oddly as it strikes
us now — he not only styled the most original modern
author that the United Kingdom could boast of, but
assigned him a place, beside Moliere and Goethe, as
one of the greatest geniuses of Europe. And these
eulogiums were not the immature judgments of youth,
but the convictions of his riper age. As will be seen
later, the influence remained with him. In all he
wrote there enters some of the material, native and
foreign, out of which Romanticism was made.
To the true masters of English fiction his indebted-
ness was equally large, exception made perhaps for
Fielding and Smollett ; and one American author
should be included in the acknowledgment. Goldsmith,
Sterne, Walter Scott, and Fenimore Cooper were his
delight. The first and last of Richardson's productions
he read only when his own talent was formed. Pamela
and Sir Charles Grandison he chanced upon in a library
at Ajaccio ; and, after running them through, pronounced
them to be horribly stupid and boring. But Clarissa
Harlowe, on the contrary, he highly esteemed. Already
in 1821 he had studied it; and, when composing his
Pierrette, towards the end of the thirties, he spoke of it
as a magnificent poem, in a passage which brands the
procedure of certain hypocrites, their oratorical precau-
tions, and their involved conversations, wherein the
mind obscures the light it throws and honeyed speech
dilutes the venom of intentions. The phrase, says
14 HONORE DE BALZAC
Monsieur Le Breton, in his well-reasoned book on
Balzac, is that of a man who was conversant with the
patient analysis, the conscientious and minute realism
of this great painter of English life. In Monsieur Le
Breton's opinion, Balzac's long-windedness is, in a
measure, due to Richardson, who reacted upon him by
his defects no less than by his excellencies.
Throughout Balzac's correspondence, as throughout
his novels, there are numerous remarks which are so
many confessions of the hints he received in the course
of his English readings. In one passage he exclaims :
" The villager is an admirable nature. When he is
stupid, he is just the animal; but, when he has good
points, they are exquisite. Unfortunately, no one
observes him. It needed a lucky hazard for Goldsmith
to create his Vicar of Wakefield,'' Elsewhere he says :
" Generally, in fiction, an author succeeds only by the
number of his characters and the variety of his situa-
tions; and there are few examples of novels having
but two or three dramatis personce depending on a
single situation. Of such a kind, Caleb Williams, the
celebrated Godwin's masterpiece, is in our time the
only work known, and its interest is prodigious."
Sterne, even more than Scott, was Balzac's favourite
model. Allusions to him abound in the Comedie
Humaine, Tristram Shandy the novelist appears to
have had at his fingers' ends. Not a few of Sterne's
traits were also his own — the satirical humour, in which,
however, the humour was less perfect than the satire,
the microscopic eye for all the exterior details of life,
especially in people's faces and gestures and dress ; and
both had identical notions concerning the analogy
between a man's name and his temperament and
fate.
INTRODUCTION 15
Scott and Cooper being Balzac's elder contem-
poraries, it happened that their books were given to the
French public in translations by one or the other of the
novelist's earlier publishers, Mame and Gosselin. His
taste for their fiction was no mere passing fancy. It
was as pronounced as ever in 1840, at which date,
writing in the Revue Parisienne, he declared that
Cooper was the only writer of stories worthy to be
placed by the side of Walter Scott, and that his hero
Leather-stocking was sublime. " I don't know," said
he, " if the fiction of Walter Scott furnishes a creation
as grandiose as that of this hero of the savannas and
forests. Cooper's descriptions are the school at which
all literary landscapists should study : all the secrets of
art are there. But Cooper is inferior to Walter Scott
in his comic and minor characters, and in the construc-
tion of his plots. One is the historian of nature, the
other of humanity." The article winds up with further
praise of Scott, whom its author evidently regarded as
his master.
The part played by these models in Balzac's literary
training was to afford him a clearer perception of the
essential worth of the Romantic movement. Together
with its extravagancies and lyricism. Romantic litera-
ture deliberately put into practice some important
principles which certain forerunners of the eighteenth
century had already unconsciously illustrated or timidly
taught. It imposed Diderot's doctrine that there was
beauty in all natural character. And its chief apostle,
Hugo, with the examples of Ariosto, Cervantes,
Rabelais and Shakespeare to back him, proved that
what was in nature was or should be also in art, yet
without, for that, seeking to free art from law and the
necessity for choice.
16 HONORE DE BALZAC
This spectacle of a vaster field to exploit, this possi-
bility of artistically representing the common, familiar
things of the world in their real significance, seized on
the youthful mind of him who was to create the
Comedie Huwaine, It formed the connecting link
between him and his epoch, and in most directions it
limited the horizon of his life.
CHAPTER II
BOYHOOD
For all his aristocratic name, Honore de Balzac was
not of noble birth. The nobiliary particule he did not
add to his signature until the year 1830. In his birth
certificate we read: "To-day, the 2nd of Prairial,
Year VII. (21st of May 1799) of the French Republic,
a male child was presented to me, Pierre-Jacques
Duvivier, the undersigned Registrar, by the citizen
Bernard-Francois Balzac, householder, dwelling in this
commune, Rue de FArmee de Tltalie, Chardonnet
section. Number 25 ; who declared to me that the said
child was called Honore Balzac, born yesterday at eleven
o'clock in the morning at witness's residence, that the
child is his son and that of the citizen, Anne-Charlotte-
Laure Sallambier, his wife, they having been married in
the commune of Paris, eighth arrondissement, Seine
Department, on the 11th of Pluviose, Year V."
The commune referred to in the birth certificate
was Tours. There in the street now rechristened and
renumbered and called the Rue Nationale, a com-
memorative plate at No. 39 bears the following in-
scription : " Honore de Balzac was born in this house
on the 1st of Prairial, Year VII. (20th of May 1799) ;
he died in Paris on the 28th ^ of August 1850."
This former capital of Touraine, which the novelist
^ The registered date of Balzac's death was the 18th of August.
The date on the commemorative plate is wrong. See also in a sub-
sequent chapter, M. de Lovenjoul's remark on the subject.
17 B
(<,!
18 HONORE DE BALZAC
says disparagingly in the Cure of Tours was in his time
one of the least literary places in France, has had, at any
rate, an honourable past. It was one of the sixty-four
towns of Gaul that, under Vercing^torix, opposed the
conquest of Cassar; and to it, in 1870, the French
Government retired when the Germans marched on
the capital. Its ancient industry in silk stuffs, estab-
lished by Louis XI. in the fifteenth century, raised its
population to eighty thousand. By revoking the Edict
of Nantes, King '* Sun " chased away three thousand of
the wealthy, manufacturing families, who migrated to
Holland ; and Tours lost, with a quarter of its inhabi-
tants, its weaving supremacy, which fell into the hands
of Lyons. Situated on the Loire, in a rich but flat
district, its surroundings are less interesting than its
own architectural possessions, including a cathedral of
mingled Gothic and later styles, a bit of the Norman-
English Henry the Second's castle, and its three bridges.
The fine central one, of fifteen arches and a quarter of
a mile long, is a prolongation of the Rue Nationale,
and has near it statues of Rabelais and Descartes.
Balzac's father, who at the time of Honore's birth
was fifty-three years of age, was not a native of Tours.
He came from Nougayrie, a small hamlet close to
Canezac in the Tarn Department and province of
Languedoc. He was, therefore, a man of the south.
On the registers he was inscribed as a son of Bernard-
Thomas Balssa, laboureur, or peasant farmer; but he
subsequently changed his name to Balzac. Recent
investigations have disclosed the fact that — whether by
his own initiative or that of his son — he was the first to
employ the " de " before the family name, prefixing it in
the announcements made of the marriage of his second
daughter Laurence.
BOYHOOD 19
Although of humble origin, the elder Balzac acquired
both education and position. He embraced the legal
profession, and was said by his son to have acted as
secretary to the Grand Council under Louis XV., by
his daughter Laure to have been advocate to the
Council under Louis XVI. There is no documentary
proof that he held either of these offices ; but he figured
in the Royal almanacs of 1793 as a lawyer, and would
seem to have served the Republican Government,
although his children subsequently asserted that he
had always been an unswerving Royalist. The family
tradition was that he had become suspect to Robespierre
through his efforts to save several unfortunates from
the guillotine, and would himself have perished had
not a friend succeeded in getting him sent on a mission
to the frontier to organize the commissariat department
there. Thenceforward attached to the ' War Office,
he returned to Paris, and in 1797 married Laure
Sallambier, the daughter of one of his hierarchic chiefs,
she being thirty-two years his junior. The next year
he went to Tours as administrator of the General
Hospice, and remained there for seventeen years.
The father of the novelist was a man out of the
common. A contemporary of his, Le Poitevin Saint-
Alme, relates that he united in himself the Roman,
the Gaul, and the Goth, and possessed the attributes
of these three races — boldness, patience, and health.
He avowed himself a disciple of Jean- Jacques Rousseau,
considering a return to nature to be the main condition
of happiness. He shunned doctors, advocated exercise,
long walks, woollen garments for every season, and a
more scientific propagation of his species. His daughter
— afterwards Madame Surville — says of him in the
short biography she wrote of her brother : " JNIy father
20 HONORE DE BALZAC
often railed at mankind, whom he accused of unceasingly
contributing to their own misfortune. He could never
meet an ill-formed fellow-creature without fulminating
against parents and governments, who were less careful
to improve the human race than that of animals."
In addition to his notions on hygiene, he interested
himself in the problems of sociology, anticipating
Fourier and Saint - Simon, and writing numerous
pamphlets on philanthropic and scientific questions.
Large traces of his influence are found in his son's
books. His hobby was health cultivation. Every
man, he said, ought to live to over a hundred, and,
to attain this result, ought to strive for an equilibrium
of the vital forces. In his own case there was an
extra reason for his aiming at longevity. Being still
unmarried at the age of forty-five, he had sunk most
of his fortune in life annuities, one of which was a
tontine; and, after his marriage, he encouraged his
family to hope for his surviving all the competitors
of his series, and thus being able to bequeath them a
huge capital. This hope was not realized. His death
occurred in 1829, when he was eighty-three, and the
twelve thousand francs income accruing from his
annuities disappeared.
His memory was extraordinary. At seventy, happen-
ing to meet a friend of his childhood, whom he had
not seen since he was fourteen, he unhesitatingly began
speaking to him in the Proven9al tongue, which he
had ceased using for half a century. Equally great
was his benevolence. On one occasion, hearing that
his friend General de Pommereul was in monetary
difficulties, he called at the General's house, and, finding
only Madame de Pommereul, said to her, as he placed
two heavy bags on the table : "I am told you are
BOYHOOD 21
short of cash. These ten thousand crowns will be
more useful to you than to me. I don't know what to
do with them. You can give me them back when
you have recovered what has been stolen from you."
Having uttered these few brusk words, he turned and
hurried away. Later we shall meet with a younger
General de Pommereul, to whom the novelist dedicated
his Melmoth Reconciled, adding, " In remembrance of
the constant friendship that united our fathers and
subsists between the sons."
When young, the novelist's father must have been
endowed with great physical strength. He used to
relate that, during the time he was a clerk to a
Procureur, he was requested one day to cut up a
partridge at his master's table. With the first dig of
the knife, he not only severed the partridge but the
dish also, and drove his weapon into the wood of the
table. Detail worth noticing, this feat procured him
the respect of the Procureur's wife. The portrait
sketched of him by his daughter Laure represents him,
between sixty and seventy, as a fine old man, still
vigorous, with courteous manners, speaking little and
rarely of himself (in this very different from Honore),
indulgent towards the young, whose society he was
fond of, allowing to all the same liberty that he claimed
for himself, upright and sound in judgment notwith-
standing his eccentricities, of equable humour, and so
mild in character that he made every one around him
happy. Delighting in conversation, now grave, now
curious, now prophetic, he was always eagerly listened
to by his elder son, whose indebtedness to him cannot
be doubted.
Balzac's mother, who was married at eighteen, was
a Parisian by birth. Her father was Director of the
22 HONORE DE BALZAC
Paris Hospitals. At the Hotel-Dieu there is a
Sallambier ward which perpetuates his memory. A
small, active woman of nervous temperament, irritable
and inclined to worry about trifles, she yet had abundant
practical sense — a quality less developed in her husband.
Her daughter tells us she was beautiful, that she had
remarkable vivacity of mind, much firmness and
decision, and boundless devotion to her family. Her
affection, however, was expressed rather by action than
in speech. She had great imagination, adds Madame
Surville; and, says the novelist, "this imagination,
which she has bequeathed me, bandies her ever from
north to south and from south to north." Exceed-
ingly pious, with a bias to mysticism, she possessed a
library of books bearing on such doctrines, which were
read by her son and afterwards utilized by him in his
fiction.
Honore was the second child of his parents. The
first dying in infancy through the poorness of Madame
Balzac's milk, he was sent to a house on the outskirts
of the town and suckled by a foster-mother. His
sister Laure, a year younger than himself, was sub-
mitted to the same treatment, and the two children re-
mained away from home until they were four and three
years old respectively. From her remembrance of him,
when both were toddling mites, his sister speaks of him
as a charming little boy, whose merry humour, shapely,
smiling mouth, large brown eyes, at once bright and
soft, high forehead and rich black hair caused him
to be noticed a great deal in their daily outings.
In 1804 came the first important event of his life,
a visit to Paris to see his maternal grandparents. It
was a wonderful change from his home surroundings
in Tours, where a certain severity prevailed. Here he
House at Tours where Balzac was Born
I
BOYHOOD 23
was spoiled to his heart's content; and his happiness
was rendered complete by Mouche, the big watch-dog,
with whom he was on the best of terms. One evening
a magic-lantern exhibition was given in the grandson's
honour. Noticing that Mouche was not among the
spectators, he rose from his seat with an authoritative :
" Wait." Then, going out, he shortly after came
back, dragging in his canine friend, to whom he said :
" Sit down there, Mouche, and look ; it will cost you
nothing. Granddad will pay for you ! " A few months
later his grandfather died, and the widow went to live
with the Balzacs at Tours. This death made a deep
impression on the child's mind, and for a while dwelt
so constantly in his memory that, on one occasion,
when Laure was being scolded by her mother for an
offence which the culprit aggravated by a fit of in-
voluntary tittering, he approached his sister and whis-
pered in her ear, with a view to restoring her gravity :
" Think of grandpapa's death."
Distinguished in these juvenile years more by kind-
liness than cleverness, he nevertheless manifested a
certain inventiveness in improvizing baby comedies
which had more appreciative audiences than some of
his maturer stage productions. On the contrary, his
conception of music and his own musical execution
had no admirers beyond himself. For hours he would
scrape the chords of a small, red violin, drawing from
them most excruciating sounds, himself lost in ecstasy,
and most amazed when he was begged to cease his
concert, which was somewhat calculated to give his
friend Mouche the colic.
The boy's initial steps in the path of learning were
taken under the care of a nursery governess. Made-
moiselle Delahaye, whom he quitted to attend the
24 HONORE DE BALZAC
principal day-school in the town, known as the Leguay
Institution. When he was eight he entered the College
school at Vendome, a quiet spot in Touraine, with
something of the aspect of a university town. On the
registers of the school may be read the following
inscription ; '' No. 460, Honore Balzac, aged eight years
and five months. Has had small-pox ; without in-
firmities; sanguine temperament; easily excited and
subject to feverishness. Entered the College on June
22nd 1807 ; left on the 22nd of August 1813."
An old seventeenth-century foundation of the
Oratorians, the school possessed at this period a renown
almost equal to that of Oxford and Cambridge. In his
Louis Lambert, Balzac gives us a description of the
place. *'The College," he says, "is situated in the
middle of the town and on the little river Loir, which
flows hard by the main school-buildings. It stands in
a spacious enclosure carefully walled in, and comprises
all the various establishments necessary in an institution
of this kind — a chapel, a theatre, an infirmary, a bakery,
gardens, watercourses. The College, being the most
celebrated centre of education in France, is recruited
from several provinces and even from our colonies, so
that the distance at which families live does not permit
of parents' seeing their children. As a rule, pupils do
not spend the long holidays at home, and remain at the
College continuously until their studies are terminated."
As a matter of fact, Balzac passed his six years there
without once returning to Tours, being entirely cut off
from his family, save for such rare visits as were
suffered from its members.
The school life was semi-monastic, with a discipline
of iron. " The leathern ferule played its terrible role
with honour" among Minions, Smalls, Mediums, and
BOYHOOD 25
Greats. There were, however, certain mitigations — long
walks in the woods, cards, and amateur theatricals
during vacations ; gardening and pigeon - fancying ;
stilt- walking, sliding and clog-dancing ; and, withal,
the joys of a chapman's stall set up in the enclosure
itself.
Louis Lambert is a slice of autobiography, attempt-
ing also a portrait of the novelist, psychologically as well
as outwardly, while he was at Vendome. Although
the author speaks of himself as distinct from his hero,
they make up one and the same individual. Of him-
self he says : " I had a passion for books. My father,
being desirous I should enter the Ecole Polytechnique,
paid for me to take private lessons in mathematics.
But my coach, being the librarian of the college, let
me borrow books, without much troubling about what
I chose, from the library, where during playtime he
gave me my tuition. Either he was very little quali-
fied to teach, or he must have been pre-occupied with
some undertaking of his own ; for he was only too
willing I should read in the hours he ought to have
devoted to me, himself working at something else.
Thus, by virtue of a tacit agreement between us, I
did not complain of learning nothing, and he kept
secret my book-borrowing. This precocious passion
led me to neglect my studies and instead to compose
poems, which indeed were of no high promise, if
judged by the following verse: *0 Inca ! O roi in-
fortune,' commencing an epopee on the Incas. The
line became only too celebrated among my companions,
and I was derisively nicknamed the poet. Mockery,
however, did not cure me, and I continued my efforts
in spite of the apologue of the Principal, Monsieur
Mareschal, who one day related to me the misfortunes
26 HONORS DE BALZAC
of a linnet that tried to fly before being fully fledged.
He wished, no doubt, to turn me from my inveterate
habit. As I continued to read, I was continually
punished, and grew to be the least active, most idle,
most contemplative pupil of the Smalls."
And now for the altei^ ego, " Louis Lambert was
slender and thin, not more than four feet and a half
in height, but his weather-beaten face, his sun-browned
hands seemed to indicate a muscular vigour which he
had not in a normal state. So, two months after his
entering the college, when his school life had robbed
him of his well-nigh vegetable colour, we remarked
that he became pale and white like a woman. His
head was unusually big; his hair, beautifully black
and naturally curly, lent an ineflable charm to his
forehead, the size of which struck us as extraordinary,
though, as may be imagined, we little recked of phren-
ology. The beauty of this prophetic forehead resided
chiefly in the extremely pure cut of the two brows,
under which shone his dark eyes — brows that appeared
to be carved in alabaster. Their lines had the some-
what rare luck to be perfectly parallel in joining each
other at the beginning of the features. These latter
were irregular enough, but the irregularity disappeared
when one saw his eyes, whose gaze possessed an as-
tonishing variety of expression. Sometimes clear and
terribly penetrating, sometimes angelically mild, this
gaze grew dull and colourless, so to speak, in his con-
templative moments. His eye then resembled a pane
of glass no longer illuminated by the sun. The same
was true of his strength, which was purely nervous,
and also of his voice. Both were equally mobile and
variable. The latter was alternately sweet and har-
monious, and then at times painful, incorrect, and
BOYHOOD 27
rugged. As for his ordinary strength, he was incap-
able of supporting the fatigue of any games whatever.
He seemed obviously feeble and almost infirm ; but
once, during his first year at school, one of our bullies
having jeered at this extreme delicacy that rendered
him unfit for the rough games practised in the play-
ground, Lambert with his two hands gripped the end
of one of our tables containing twelve desks in two
rows ; then, stiffening himself against the master's chair
and holding the table with his feet placed on the
bottom cross-bar, he said : * Let any ten of you try to
move it.' I was there and witnessed this singular
display of strength. It was impossible to drag the
table from him. He appeared at certain moments to
have the gift of summoning unusual powers, or of con-
centrating his whole force on a given point."
That Louis Lambert is an attempted revelation
of Balzac's adolescent mind we have both Madame
Surville's and Champfleury's additional testimony to
prove. Discounting the exaggerations, due either to
literary morbidity of the kind that produced Chateau-
briand's Rene and Sainte-Beuve's Joseph Delorme,' or to
the natural vanity of which the novelist had so large a
share, there yet remains a considerable substratum of
truth in this record of twin, boyish existence, which
affords a valuable secondary help towards understanding
its author's character.
The major punishment inflicted at Vendome was
imprisonment in the dormitory. Referring to himself
and his double, Balzac says : " We were freer in prison
than anywhere. There we could talk for days together
in the silence of the room, where each pupil had a
cubicle six feet square, whose partitions were provided
with bars across the top, and whose grated iron door
28 HONORE DE BALZAC
was locked every evening and unlocked every morning
under the surveillance of a Father, who assisted at
our going to bed and getting up. The creak of the
doors, turned with singular celerity by the dormitory
porters, was one of the peculiarities of the school. In
these alcoves we were sometimes shut up for months
on end. The scholars thus caged fell under the stern
eye of the Prefect, who came regularly, and even
irregularly, to see whether we were talking instead of
working at our tasks. But nutshells on the stairs or
the fineness of our hearing nearly always warned us of
his arrival, so that we were able to indulge safely in
our favourite studies."
One of the confinements was inflicted on Honore
for his faulty Latin and impertinence. "Caius
Gracchus was a noble heart," he translated with a free
paraphrase of rzr nobilis. " What would Madame de
Stael say, if she happened to learn you had thus mis-
construed the sense ? " asked the master. (Madame de
Stael was supposed to be Louis Lambert's patroness.)
" She would say you are a stupid," muttered Honor^.
" Mister poet, you will go to prison for a week," re-
torted the master, who had overheard the comment.
Among the long walks enjoyed by the pupils on
Thursdays, when there were no lessons, was one to the
famous castle of Rochambeau. In 1812, Balzac paid
his first and impatiently anticipated visit to this spot.
" When we arrived on the hiU," he says, *' whence the
castle was visible, perched on its flank, and the wind-
ing valley with the glittering river threading its way
through a meadow artistically laid out by Nature,
Louis Lambert said to me : ' Why, I saw this last night
in a dream.' He recognized the clump of trees
under which we were, the arrangement of the foliage,
BOYHOOD 29
the colour of the water, the turrets of the castle, in
fine, all the details of the place. ... I relate this
event," he continues, " first because each man can find
in his existence some phenomenon of sleeping or
waking analogous to it ; and next, because it is true
and gives an idea of Lambert's prodigious intelligence.
In fact, he deduced from the occurrence an entire
system, possessing himself, like Cuvier, in another
order of things, of a fragment of life to reconstruct a
whole creation." And Lambert is made to develop a
theory of the astral body and astral locomotion. The
younger self announces also : '* I shall be celebrated —
an alchemist of thought."
With such notions in his head at this early age,
it was not surprising he shoiild have begun, while in
his tender teens, a metaphysical composition entitled
Treatise of the Jf'llL After working for six months on
it, a day of misfortune arrived. The pieces of paper
on which it had been written were hidden away from
all eyes in a locked box, which gradually assumed the
weird attraction of a Blue Beard's secret chamber to
his mocking class-companions, so that at length their
inquisitiveness drove them to essay capturing the said
box by violence. Amidst the noise caused by the child-
author's desperate defence of his treasure, Father
Hagoult suddenly appeared ; and, being apprized of
what was inside the box, insisted on its being opened.
The papers were at once confiscated, and were never
given back. Their loss caused the boy a serious shock,
which, combining with debility of longer standing,
brought on a malady that necessitated his leaving the
school. The Principal himself advised the removal.
In 1813, between Easter and the prize distribution, he
wrote to ]Madame Balzac asking her to come imme-
30 HONORE DE BALZAC
diately and fetch her son away. The lad, he explained,
was prostrated by a kind of coma, which alarmed his
teachers all the more as they were at a loss to account for
it. To them Honore was simply an idler. It did not
occur to them that his condition was owing to cerebral
fatigue. Thin and sickly-looking at present, he had
the air of a somnambulist, asleep with his eyes open,
oblivious of the questions put to him, and unable to
answer when asked: "What are you thinking of?
Where are you ? " His return home produced a painful
impression. " So this is how the college authorities
remit to us the nice children we entrust to them," ex-
claimed his grandmother. And it must be confessed
that the good Fathers, engrossed by the training of their
charges' souls, paid but little attention to the bodies.
In the rooms where the pupils worked, the exhala-
tions by which the air was constantly vitiated mingled
with the smells left by the debris of lunches and teas
and by other accumulated dirt. There were also cup-
boards and closets where each pupil used to keep his
private booty — pigeons killed on fete days or dishes
pilfered from the refectory. Swept only once a day,
the place was always filthy, and was further rendered
disagreeable by odours coming from wash-house, dress-
ing-room, pantries, &c. All this with the mud brought
in from the outside playgrounds made the atmosphere
insupportable. Moreover, the pupils' petty ailments
and pains were almost entirely unheeded. In winter
chaps and chilblains were Honord's unceasing lot. His
woman's complexion, and especially the skin of his
ears and lips, cracked under the least cold ; his soft
white hands reddened and swelled. Constant colds
harassed him ; and, until he was inured to the Vendome
regimen, pain was his daily portion.
BOYHOOD 31
A lively recollection of what he went through in
these school-days persisted during his niaturer years.
Writing in 1844 to Monsieur Fontemoing, one of
his few boy-companions that he maintained relations
with, he said : *' When David is ready to inaugurate
his statue of Jean Bart in Dieppe, 1 shall perhaps
be there to enjoy the spectacle ; and then we will
spend one or two days recalling to mind the cages,
wooden breeches and other Vendomoiseries."
His memory was probably less faithful in 1832,
Avhen striving to reproduce the tenour of the lost
Treatise of the Will. At thirteen he could scarcely
have had such definite notions of intuition and other
operations of the mind ; and there must be a fairly
long antedating of reflection in attributing to Louis
Lambert, even with the latter's two years seniority,
thoughts like the following : —
" Often amid calm and silence, when our inner
faculties are lulled and we indulge in sweet repose,
and darkness hovers round us, and we fall into a con-
templation of outer things, straight an idea darts forth,
flashes through the infinite space created by our brain,
and then, like a will-o'-the-wisp, vanishes never to
return — an ephemeral apparition like that of such
children as yield boundless joy and grief to bereaved
parents; a species of still-born flower in the fields of
thought. At times also the idea, instead of forcibly
gushing and dying without consistence, dawns and
poises in the fathomless limbo of the organs that give
it birth ; it tires us by its long parturition ; then it
develops and grows, is fertile, rich, and productive in
the visible grace of youth and with all the qualities
of longevity; it sustains the most inquiring glances,
invites them, and never wearies them. Now and again
82 HONORE DE BALZAC
ideas are generated in swarms, one evolves another;
they interlace and entice, they abound and are dalliant ;
now and again, they arise pale and looming, and perish
through want of strength or nourishment — the quicken-
ing substance is insufficient. And, last of all, on certain
days they plunge into the abysses, lighting up their
depths ; they terrify us, and leave us in a soul despair.
Our ideas have their complete system ; they are a
kingdom of nature, a sort of efflorescence of which a
madman perhaps might give an iconography. Yes, all
attests the existence of these delightful creations I may
compare to flowers. Indeed, their production is no more
surprising than that of perfumes and colour in the plant."
Still, without being a Pascal, Balzac, in the first
half of his teens, was evidently not an ordinary child.
There was a ferment of thought, as he said, reacting
on itself and seeking to surprise the secrets of its own
being. Fostered by the moral isolation in which he
lived during these six years, his self-analysis grew
unwholesome, there being little or nothing on the
physical side to counterbalance it. Fortunately, the
return to saner surroundings occurred before the evil
was irremediable. Running wild for a few months in
the open air, he recovered his natural vivacity and
cheerfulness. Every day he went for a long ramble
through one or another of the landscapes of Touraine,
and on his way home enjoyed the magnificent sunsets
lighting up the steeples of his native town and glinting
on the river covered with craft, both large and small.
To check his reveries, Madame Balzac forced him to
amuse his two sisters Laure and Laurence and to fly
the kite of his little brother Henry,^ who had been born
while he was at Vendome.
1 The name is spelt in the English way.
Prison of the Vendome College
WHERE Balzac was Confined as a School-Boy
After a Drawing by A. Queyroy
BOYHOOD 33
On Sundays and f§te days he regularly accom-
panied his mother to the Cathedral of Saint-Gatien,
where he must have been an observant spectator if
not consistently a devout listener. He prayed by
fits and starts; and in the intervals studied closely
and with an eye for effect the appearance of priestly
persons and functions, with altar and stained-glass
window in the background, and gathered materials
for his Abb^s Birotteau, Bonnet, and others. The
period was one of compensation and adjustment. What
he had been striving to assimilate had now the leisure
to arrange itself in his brain, which was no longer
overheated.
As soon as his health was considered sufficiently
strong, he began attending classes at the institution of
a Monsieur Chretien, and supplemented them by private
lessons received at home. His conviction that he would
become a famous man was as strong as ever, and his
naive assertion of it was frequent enough to provoke
great teasing in the domestic circle. Far from being
irritated, he laughed with those that laughed at him, his
sisters saying : " Hail to the great Balzac ! " On the
part of his elders the bantering was intended to damp
his exalted notions, which they regarded as ill-founded,
judging him, as his Vendome professors, by the small-
ness of his Latin and Greek. His mother in par-
ticular had no faith in his prophecies nor yet in his
occasional utterances of deeper things than his years
warranted : " You certainly don't know what you are
talking about," was her habitual snub. And, when
Honore, not daring to argue further, took refuge in
his sly, not to say supercilious, smile, she taxed him
with overweeningness — an accusation that had some
truth in it. She might well be excused for her scepti-
c
34 HONORE DE BALZAC
cism, for the youth had also large ignorance in some
of the commoner things of life, and, moreover, allowed
himself to be taken in easily. Laure seems to have
traded a good deal on his credulity for the sake of fun.
One day she gave him a so-called cactus seedling, sup-
posed to have come from the land of Judaea. Honore
preserved it preciously in a pot for a fortnight, only to
discover at length that this plant was a vulgar pumpkin.
At the end of 1814, Monsieur Balzac came to reside
in Paris, being placed at the head of the Commis-
sariat of the First Military Division ; and Honore s
education was continued in the capital, for a while at
the establishment of a Monsieur Lepitre, Rue Saint-
Louis, and then at another kept by Messieurs Sganzer
and Beuzelin, Rue de Thorigny, both being situated in
the Marais Quarter, near his father's house. So far
as the subjects of the curriculum were concerned, he
was still a mediocre pupil. However, literature began
to attract his attention and efforts, and one composi-
tion of his for an examination — the speech of Brutus's
wife after the condemnation of her sons — treasured up
by his sister Laure, is mentioned by her as exhibiting
some of the energy and realistic presentment in which
he was ultimately to excel.
When he was seventeen, his father, seeing that there
was no chance of his getting into the Ecole Poly-
technique, decided to put him into the legal profession ;
and, for the purpose of preliminary training, induced a
solicitor friend, Guillonnet de Merville,^ to take him
into his office in the place of a clerk — no other than
Eugene Scribe, the future dramatist — who had just
quitted law for literature. During the eighteen months
passed here, Balzac went to lectures at the Sorbonne
"^ Ati Episode under the Terror was dedicated to him.
BOYHOOD 35
University, and was coached by private tutors. Among
the College professors he heard were Villemain, Guizot,
and Cousin. These great teachers converted his passion
for reading into more serious habits of study ; and, in
order to profit more by their lessons, he often spent
his leisure hours in the libraries of the city and sought
out old books of value in the cases of the dealers along
the Quays.
The pocket-money required for such purchases was
principally supplied by his grandmother, who per-
mitted him to win from her at whist or boston in the
evenings he remained at home. A friend of his grand-
mother's that lived in a neighbouring flat was likewise
very kind to him. She was an old maiden lady who
had been acquainted with Beaumarchais, and delighted
to chat with her protege about the author of the
Mariage de Figaro. Though now a young man,
Honore was not tall; five feet two was his exact
height. Retaining his childish love of laughter and
fun of every kind, he showed at present greater facility
in learning, with a faculty of memory that was pro-
digious. Having to go with his sisters to balls, he
took lessons in dancing ; but, happening to meet with
an unlucky fall, and resenting the smiles and giggling
his accident called forth among the girls, he renounced
attempts at tripping on the light, fantastic toe, and
devoted subsequent visits to the task of jotting down
notes.
A second period of eighteen months in the office of
a notary, Maitre Passez, completed his law apprentice-
ship. In the first pages of Colonel Chabert the novelist
gives us a sketch of the interior where he acquired
his knowledge of chicane. Our nostrils are familiarized
with its stove-heated atmosphere, our eyes with the
36 HONORE DE BALZAC
yellow - billed walls, the dirty floor, the greasy furni-
ture, the bundles of papers, the chimney-piece covered
with bottles and glasses and bits of bread and cheese ;
and our ears are assailed by the quips and jokes and
puns of the clerks and office-boys who were his com-
panions for a time. He lingers over his reminiscences,
which, though pleasant from their connection with his
lost youth, had none the less to do with men and things
that settled the foundation of his maturer pessimism.
An article of his in 1839, entitled the Notary, says : —
"After five years passed in a notary's office, it is
hard for a young man to conserve his candour. He
has seen the hideous origins of all fortunes, the disputes
of heirs over corpses not yet cold, the human heart in
conflict with the Code. ... A lawyer's office is a con-
fessional where the various passions come to empty out
their bag of bad ideas and to consult about their cases
of conscience while seeking means of execution."
While we have no conclusive evidence on the point,
it is yet probable that, at least for a while, Balzac had,
during these years of legal training, serious thoughts
of adopting law as his career. Otherwise he would
scarcely have troubled to gain such an extensive ac-
quaintance with everything appertaining to its theory
and practice — knowledge which he afterwards utilized
in several of his books, notably in Cesar Birotteau and
the Mai^riage Contract, However, in 1819, he had
definitely made up his mind to follow Scribe's example.
At this date his father informed him that an oppor-
tunity offered itself for him to become a j unior partner
in a solicitor's practice, which might be ultimately
purchased with money advanced him and the dowry
that an advantageous marriage would bring. When
the newly-fledged Bachelor of Laws deckred that it
BOYHOOD 37
was impossible for him to accept the proposal, and that
he had determined to become a man of letters, trusting
to his pen for a living, the elder Balzac's astonishment
was unbounded. If any echoes of his son's recent
cogitations and conversations on the subject had come
to the father's ears, they had been deemed so much
empty talk ; and the friends who were consulted in the
dilemma had nothing more encouraging to say. One
of them pronounced that Honore was worth nothing
better than to make a scrivener of or a clerk in some
Government department. The poor fellow had a
good handwriting — this, indeed, deteriorated later.
Through his parents' influence, it was thought he
might ultimately attain a moderate competency. Per-
haps Laure, the favourite sister and early confidante
of the novelist, may have used persuasion at this juncture
with her father and mother. At any rate, as the issue
of a great deal of lively discussion, the parents agreed
to let Honor^ make a two years' experiment as a free
lance in the ranks of the book-writing tribe. By the
end of that time, they no doubt imagined he would be
glad enough to re-enact the parable of the prodigal son
and start in some safer trade.
CHAPTER III
EXPERIMENTS IN LITERATURE AND BUSINESS
It happened that Honor^'s enhstment in the army of
litterateurs coincided with considerable changes in his
parents' circumstances. His father had just been re-
tired on a pension and had recently lost money in two
investments. As there were a couple of daughters to
be provided for, the family, for the sake of economy,
quitted Paris and went to live at Villeparisis, six leagues
distant from the capital, where a modest country-house
had been bought. Honore, by dint of insistence, ob-
tained permission to remain in Paris, where he would
be freer to work and could more easily get into rela-
tions with publishers ; and a meagrely furnished attic-
study was rented for him at No. 9 Rue Lesdiguieres,
a street near the Arsenal, still bearing the same name.
A small monthly allowance was made him, just enough
to keep him from starving ; and an old woman. Mother
Comin — the Iris-messenger, he facetiously called her —
who had been in the family's service and was staying
on in the city, undertook to pay him occasional visits
and to report should he be in difficulties.
The novelty of his semi-independence caused him
at first to look with cheerful eye on his narrow sur-
roundings. To his sister he wrote in April 1819 : —
" Here are some details about my way of living. I
have taken a servant.
" A servant ! What can you be thinking of ?
38
EXPERIMENTS IN LITERATURE 39
" Yes ; a servant. His name is as funny as that of
Dr. Nacquart's domestic. The Doctor's is Tranquil;
mine is Myself. He is a bad acquisition ! . . . Myself
is idle, clumsy, and improvident. When his master is
hungry and thirsty, he has sometimes neither bread nor
water to give him ; he does not know how to protect
himself against the wind, which blows through the door
and window like Tulou through his flute, but less agree-
ably. As soon as I am awake, I ring for Myself, and
he makes my bed. He sets to sweeping, and is not
very deft in the exercise.
"Myself!
" Yes, sir.
"Just look at the cobweb where that big fly is
buzzing loud enough to deafen me, and at those bits of
fluff under the bed, and at that dust on the windows
blinding me.
" Why, sir, I don't see anything.
" Tut, tut ! hold your tongue, impudence !
" And he does, singing while he sweeps and sweep-
ing while he sings, laughs in talking and talks in
laughing. He has arranged my linen in the cupboard
by the chimney, after papering the receptacle white;
and, with a three-penny blue paper and bordering, he
has made a screen. The room he has painted from the
book-case to the fireplace. On the whole, he is a good
fellow."
In the introduction to Facmo Cane, which Balzac
wrote some fifteen years later, there is a return of
memory to this sojourn in the Lesdiguieres garret.
" I lived frugally," he says ; " I had accepted all the
conditions of monastic life, so needful to the worker.
When it was fine, the utmost I did was to go for a
stroll on the Boulevard Bourdon. One hobby alone
40 HONORE DE BALZAC
enticed me from my studious habits, and even that was
study. I used to observe the manners of the Faubourg,
its inhabitants, and their characters. Dressed as plainly
as the workmen, indifferent to decorum, I aroused no
mistrust, and could mix with them and watch their
bargaining and quarrelling with each other as they
went home from their toil. My faculty of observation
had become intuitive ; it penetrated the soul without
neglecting the body, or rather it so well grasped ex-
terior details that at once it pierced beyond. It gave
me the power of living the life of the individual in
whom it was exercised, enabling me to put myself in
his skin, just as the dervish of the Arabian Nights
entered the body and soul of those over whom he pro-
nounced certain words."
The would-be man of letters pushed his hobby even
to dogging people to their homes, and to registering
in note-book or brain their conversations — records of
joys, sorrows, and interests.
" I could realize their existence," he affirms ; " I
felt their rags on my back. I walked with my feet in
their worn-out shoes ; it was the dreaming of a man
awake. . . . To quit my own habits and become
another by the intoxication of my moral faculties at
will, such was my diversion. To what do I owe this
gift ? Is it second sight ? Is it one of those posses-
sions of the mind that lead to madness ? I have never
sought out the causes of this gift. I have it and use
it — that is all I can say."
Honore's prentice attempts at producing a master-
piece oscillated between the novel and the drama.
Two stories, entitled respectively Coquecigrue (an
imaginary animal) and Stella, were abandoned before
they were begun. A comic opera had the same fate.
EXPERIMENTS IN LITERATURE 41
The Two Philosophers, a farce in which a couple of
sham sages mocked at the world and quarrelled with
each other, while secretly coveting the good things
they affected to despise, appears to have been worked
at, but uselessly. Next a tragedy, tackled with
greater resolution, was composed and entirely finished.
Curiously, the subject of it, Cromwell, was the same as
that chosen by Victor Hugo, a few years later, to
achieve the overthrow of classicism and the substitu-
tion of Romanticism in its stead.
The drama was written in verse, a form of literary
composition foreign to Balzac's talent. Even during
the months he laboured at his task, he confessed to
Laure, 'midst his sallies of joking, that what he was
writing teemed with defective lines. He polished and
repolished, however, hoping to overcome these draw-
backs, upheld by his invincible self-confidence. The
piece, as sketched out in his correspondence, made large
alterations in English history. Its interest hinged
chiefly on the dilemma created in Cromwell's mind by
his two sons falling into the hands of a small Royalist
force, and by Charles's ordering them to be given up
without conditions to their father, although the King
was a prisoner. Posed in the third act, the dilemma
was solved in the fourth by Cromwell's decision to
condemn the King, notwithstanding his generosity. At
the close of the play, the Queen escaped from England,
crying aloud for vengeance, which she intended to seek
in all quarters. France would combat the English,
would defeat and crush them in the end.
" I mean my tragedy to be the breviary of peoples
and kings," he proudly informed his sister. ** It is
impossible for you not to find the plan superb. How
the interest grows from scene to scene ! The incident
42 HONORE DE BALZAC
of Cromwell's sons is most happily invented. Charles's
magnanimity in restoring to Cromwell his sons is finer
than that of Augustus pardoning Cinna." In blowing
his own trumpet Balzac was early an adept.
To stimulate his imagination and reflection, he
transferred his daily walk from the Jardin des Plantes
to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. " There I make," he
explained, " studies of grief useful for my* Cromwell
Real grief is so hard to depict ; it requires so much
simplicity." His garret had still its charm. " The
time I spend in it will be sweet to look back upon," he
said. " To live as I like, to work in my own way, to
go to sleep conjuring up the future, which I imagine
beautiful, to have Rousseau's Julie as a sweetheart.
La Fontaine and Moliere as friends, Racine as a master,
and Pere Lachaise as a promenade ground ! Ah ! if it
could only last for ever ! " His dreaming led him on
to wider anticipations even than those of literary glory.
" If I am to be a grand fellow (which, it's true, we don't
yet know), I may add to my fame as a great author
that of being a great citizen. This is a tempting
ambition also."
At the end of April 1820, he went to Villeparisis
with his completed tragedy. Counting on a triumph,
he had requested that some acquaintances should be
invited to the house to hear it read aloud. Among
those present was the gentleman who had advised his
turning clerk in the Civil Service. The reading com-
menced, and, as it progressed, the youthful author
noticed that his audience first showed signs of being
bored, then of being bewildered, and lastly of being
frankly dissatisfied and hostile. Laure was dumb-
founded. The candid gentleman broke out into un-
compromising, scathing condemnation ; and those who
EXPERIMENTS IN LITERATURE 43
were most indulgent were obliged to pronounce that
the famous tragedy was a failure. Honore defended
his production with energy ; and, to settle the dispute,
his father proposed it should be submitted to an old
professor of the Ecole Poly technique, whom he knew,
and who should act as umpire. This course was adopted ;
and the Professor, after careful examination of the
manuscript, opined that Honore would act wisely in
preferring any other career to literature.
The verdict was received with more calmness than
might have been expected. Instead of twisting his own
neck, as he had hinted he might, if unsuccessful, the
young author quietly remarked that tragedies were not
his forte and that he intended to devote himself to novels.
As the price of their assent to his continuance in
writing, Honore's parents stipulated that he should quit
his garret and come home. The return was all the
more advisable as Laure was about to be married to a
Monsieur Surville, who was a civil engineer, and a gap
was thus created in the home circle, which his presence
could prevent from being so much felt.^ His health
besides had suffered during his fifteen months of self-
imposed privations. In after-life he complained much
to some of his friends — Auguste Fessart and Madame
Hanska amongst others— of his parents' or rather his
mother's hardness to him while he was in the
Lesdiguieres Street lodgings, and asserted that, if more
liberality had then been displayed, most of his subse-
quent misfortunes would have been avoided. This is by
no means certain. His troubles and burdens would
seem to have been caused far more by mistakes of
' Laurence, the younger sister, was married in 1821, twelve months
after her sister. Her husband was Monsieur de Montzaigle. She died
before the close of the decade.
44 HONORE DE BALZAC
judgment and improvidence than by any stress of
circumstance.
For the next five years he remained with his father
and mother, excepting the occasional visits paid to
Touraine, L'Isle-Adam, or Bayeux, at which last place
his sister Laure was settled for a while. In a letter to
her there he banteringly spoke of his desire to enter the
matrimonial state : " Look me out some widow who is
a rich heiress," he said ; '* you know what I require.
Praise me up to her — twenty-two years of age, amiable,
polite, with eyes of life and fire, the best husband
Heaven has ever made. I will give you fifty per cent,
on the dowry and pin-money." He alluded to hismother's
worrying disposition and susceptibility : '* We are oddi-
ties, forsooth, in our blessed family. What a pity I
cannot put us into novels." This he was to do later.
Beforehand there was his Romantic cycle to be run
through, in more than forty volumes, if Laure's state-
ment could be believed. What she meant no doubt
was sections of volumes or else tales ; and even the
composition of forty tales in five years would be a con-
siderable performance. True, there were partnerships
with Le Poitevin de I'Egreville,^ Horace Raisson,
Etienne Arago. And the material turned out was of
the coarsest kind, generally second-hand, a hash-up of
stories already published, imitations of Monk Lewis,
Maturin, Mrs. RadclifFe, and French writers of the same
school, with a little shuffling of characters and incidents.
The preface to the novel that opened the series — The
Heiress of Birague — speaks of an old trunk bequeathed
by an uncle and filled with manuscripts, which the
author had merely to edit. And the apology had more
truth in it than he meant it to convey.
^ Son of Le Poitevin Saint- Alme.
Balzac's Lodgings in the Rue Lesdiguieres
A. cross marks the room occupied
46 HONORE DE BALZAC
fiction he was peculiarly fitted to write, demanded
maturity of experience that he could hardly acquire
before another decade had passed over his head. Yet
the stories he reeled off had a certain market value.
The Heiress of Birague was sold for eight hundred
francs, Jean-Louis, or the Foundling Girl, for thirteen
hundred ; and a higher price still was obtained (whether
the money was actually received is uncertain) for the
Handsome Jew, afterwards republished under a fresh
title, The Israelite,
Contemporary critics declined to acknowledge that,
in these books and their congeners,^ there were some
traces of a master-hand. To-day the traces are per-
ceptible, because criticism has a better opportunity
of discovering them. Here and there, and especially
in Argow, the Pirate, is to be noticed a beginning of
the realism that was afterwards the novelist's excellence.
. The theme, that of a brigand purified by love, is, as
Monsieur le Breton remarks in his study of Balzac,
I a romantic one in the manner of Byron, and has
things in common with Walter Scott's Heart of Mid-
lothian, Victor Hugo's Bug-Jargal, and Pixerecourt's
Belveder, There is an atmosphere of imagination in
it, the action is quick, and the characters are strongly
though distortedly drawn. Moreover, a breath of
healthy sentiment runs through the story, which is
not always the case in the later and more celebrated
novels. Balzac must have learnt much and acquired
much that was useful to him during this puddling of
his ore in the furnace of his early efforts ; and, if in
his maturer age he retained certain defects of the
1 Other youthful productions were The Centenarian, The Last
Fahy, Dom Gigadas, The Excommunicated Man, Wann-Chlore, or Jane
the Pale, The Curate of the Ardennes, and Argow, the Pirate.
EXPERIMENTS IN LITERATURE 47
Romantic school, it was because a lurking sympathy
with them in his nature prevented his shaking himself
free of them, when he reformed his manner.
The style of his letters at this same period was
admirable, sparkling with wit and with a humour
that unfortunately grew rarer, bitterer, and even
coarser often, in his l^ter career. Some of his rapidly
sketched pictures were incidents of home life. This
Kne represents his mother's fidgety disposition : —
" Louise, give me a glass of water."
"Yes, Ma'am."
" Ah, my poor Louise, I'm in a bad way ; I am
indeed ! "
" Nonsense, Ma'am ! "
" It's worse than other years."
'' Lud ! . . . Ma'am ! "
" My head is splitting Oh, Louise ! the
shutters are slamming; it's enough to break all the
panes in the drawing-room."
Already, with the faculty of exaggeration which
characterised him all his life, he anticipated gaining
within the next twelvemonth no less than twenty
thousand francs ; forgetting the small result of his
Cromwell, he spoke of having a lot of theatrical pieces
in hand, plus an historical novel, Odette de Champdivers,
and another dealing with the fortunes of the R'hoone
family. R'hoone was an anagram of his own name
Honore. Lord R'hoone was one of his pseudonyms.
And " Lord R'hoone," he told Laure, "will soon be
the rage, the most amiable, fertile author; and ladies
will regard him as the apple of their eye. Then the
little Honore will arrive in a coach with head held
up, proud look, and fob well garnished. At his ap-
proach, amidst flattering murmurs from the admiring
48 HONOR]^ DE BALZAC
crowd, people will say : ' He is Madame Surville's
brother.' Then men, women, children, and unborn
babes will leap as the hills. . . . And I shall be the
ladies' man, in view of which event I am saving up my
money. Since yesterday I have given up dowagers,
and intend to fall back on thirty-year-old widows.
Send all you can find to Lord R'hoone, Paris. This
address will suffice. He is known at the city gates.
JV.B, — Send them, carriage paid, free of cracks and
soldering. Let them be rich and amiable; as for
beauty, it is not a sine qua non. Varnish wears off,
but the underneath earthenware remains."
Through all these displays of fireworks one fact
stands out, that Balzac was in too great a hurry to
reap fame and wealth — wealth especially. It was his
hurry that inspired his constant complaint: "Ah! if
only I had enough bread and cheese, I would soon
make my mark and write books to last." This was
not altogether true nor just to his parents. He had
his bread and cheese and a home to eat it in, which
authors have not always enjoyed who have gained
immortality by their unaided pen. Although his
family were anxious to see him independent, they did
not oblige him to depend upon what he earned.
Nothing at the moment prevented him from striving
to produce something of good quality and spending
the time necessary over it. He saw the better, but
followed the worse.
" My ideas," he wrote to Laure, " are changing so
much that my execution will soon change also. . . .
In a short time there will be the same difference
between the me of to-day and the me of to-morrow as
exists between the young man of twenty and the man
of thirty ! I am reflecting ; my ideas are ripening . I
EXPERIMENTS IN LITERATURE 49
recognize that Nature has treated me favourably in
giving me my heart and my head. Believe in me, dear
sister, for I need some one to believe in me. I do not
despair of doing something one day. I see at present
that Cromwell had not even the merit of being an
embryon. As for my novels, they are not up to
much."
How could they be when he supplied them, so to
speak, machine-made ! " Citizen PoUet " button-holed
him in August 1822 and induced him to sign an agree-
ment binding him to deliver a couple of these stories
by the 1st of October. Six hundred francs were paid
cash down, and the rest in deferred bills. The second
of the couple was the Curate of the Ardennes, which
Laure helped him to write.
It surprises at first sight to read that the demand
for this cheap fiction was so great in the early decades
of the nineteenth century. The explanation is that,
during the last years of the Empire, the article had
scarcely been in the market at all, so that, in the
Restoration period, which was one of peace and leisure,
there was quite a rush for it. On the whole, Balzac
did not manage to hit the public fancy with his work
in this line. The further he went with it the less he
liked it, and such bits of better stuff as he introduced
in lieu of the blood and mystery rather lessened than
increased the saleableness of his books. For the printing
of the Last Fairy he had to pay, himself; and he was
obliged to own, after five years' catering for popular
taste, he was no nearer emerging from obscurity than
he had been at the commencement. It was discourag-
ing and humiliating; he had started with such con-
fidence and boasting. Now those who had spoken
against his literary vocation seemed to be justified, and
50 HONORE DE BALZAC
those who had been most inclined to believe in him
were sceptical.
However, there was still one woman who kept her
faith in his capacity for soaring above the common
pitch. She it was who, understanding him better than
his own family, became a second mother to him.
Attracted by him, in spite of his weaknesses of conceit,
loudness, and vulgarity, she polished his behaviour,
guided his perceptions, corrected his pretentiousness,
influencing him through the sincerity and strength of
her affection.
Twenty-two years his senior, she was the daughter
of a German harpist named Henner, in favour at the
Court of Louis XVI., whom Marie- Antoinette had
married to Mademoiselle Quelpee-Laborde, one of her
own ladies-in-waiting. Both King and Queen stood
as god-parents to the Henners' little girl, who, when
grown up, was married to a Monsieur de Berny, of
ancient, noble lineage, and bore him nine children.
The date at which Balzac made her acquaintance has
been variously stated. Basing themselves upon his
Love-story at School, some writers have supposed he
knew her when he was a boy, but there is no evidence
to confirm this hypothesis. The first definite mention
of her and her family occurs in a gossipy letter he
wrote to Laure in 1822 from Villeparisis, where the de
Berny family were settled : " I may tell you," he says,
" that Mademoiselle de B. has narrowly escaped being
broken into three pieces in a fall ; that Mademoiselle
E. is not so stupid as we imagined ; that she has a
talent for serious painting and even for caricature ; that
she is a musician to the tips of her toes ; that Mon-
sieur C. continues to swear ; that Madame de B(erny)
has become a bran, wheat, and fodder merchant,
EXPERIMENTS IN LITERATURE 51
perceiving after forty years' reflection that money is
everything."
At this date, the relationship between him and
Madame de Berny was one of ordinary friendship, yet
with indications of warmer feelings on either side that
his parents noticed and disapproved. With a view to
discouraging the intimacy, they induced him to pay
visits that took him from home for some time ; but the
object they aimed at was not attained. The intimacy
ripened. Madame de Berny was his only confidante.
His few male friends were too old or too young for his
unbosomings. There was the Abbe de Villers whom
he stayed with at Nogent, and there was Theodore
Dablin, the retired ironmonger, whom he used to call
his " cher petit per e'' Besides these two elders, there was
the young de Berny, who was considerably his junior.
But to none of them could he talk unreservedly of his
ambitions literary and political. For a man between
twenty and thirty years of age, whose mind is seething
with evolving thought, there is no more sympathetic
and appreciative adviser than a woman some years his
senior. Madame de Berny listened to his expression of
Imperialistic opinions tinged with Liberalism, as she
listened to his confession of hopes and disappointments ;
and, in turn, talked with persuasive accents of those
pre-Revolution days which she had known as a child.
She was able also to draw the curtain aside and show
him something of the history of the Revolution itself
and of the Terror, during which she and her parents'
family had been imprisoned. It was his first mingling
with the grandeurs that were his delight. Through
her narration, he was able to enter the old Court society
and watch the intrigues of the personages who had
been famous in it. Madame de Berny's mother was
52 HONORE DE BALZAC
still living, and added her own reminiscences to those
of her daughter. Later, by their agency he was intro-
duced to some of the aristocratic partisans of the fallen
dynasty — the Duke de Fitz-James and the Duchess de
Castries. Under Madame de Berny's education, his
Imperialism was transformed into Legitimism.
How a matron of her age should have allowed the
friendship of the commencement to develop into a
liaison is one of those problems of sexual psychology
easier to describe in Balzac's own language than to
explain rationally. We know that she was not happy
with her husband, and can surmise that she entered
upon the role she played without clearly foreseeing
its dangers. No doubt, her desire to form this genius
in the rough carried her away from her moorings, which,
indeed, had never been very strong, since she had already
once before in her married life had a lover. Besides
there was her temperament, sensual and sentimental;
and with it the tradition of the eighteenth-century
morals, indulgent to illicit amours.
Most likely, the second phase of her relations with
Balzac coincided with his temporary abandonment of
authorship for business. It was in 1825 that he re-
solved to embark on publishing,^ partly urged by the
mute reproaches of his parents and partly allured by the
prospect of rapidly growing rich. He had likewise
some intention of bringing out his own books, both
those previously written and those in preparation. Of
these latter there were a goodly number sketched out in
a sort of note-book or album, which his sister Laure
called his garde-manger or pantry. It was full of
^ The initiator of this project was not Balzac, although his early
biographers, Madame Surville included, gave him the credit for it.
See Hs^notaux and Vicaire, p. I9.
EXPERIMENTS IN BUSINESS 53
jottings anent people, places, and things that he had
come across in the preceding lustrum.
The idea of taking up business was mooted to him
first by a Monsieur d'Assonvillez, an acquaintance of
Madame de Berny, whom he used to see and talk
with when staying, as he occasionally did, at the small
apartment rented by his father in Paris. Just then
Urbain Canel, the celebrated publisher of Romantic
books, was thinking of putting on the market compact
editions of the old French classics, beginning with
Moliere and La Fontaine ; and Balzac, either already
knowing him or being introduced to him by a mutual
friend, was admitted to join in the undertaking. The
money necessary for the partnership was lent to him
by Monsieur d'Assonvillez, who, as a sharp business
man, imposed conditions on the loan which secured
him from loss in case of failure. The editions were
to be library ones, illustrated by the artist Deveria
(who about this time painted Balzac's portrait), and
were to be published in parts. The price was high,
twenty francs for each work ; and additional drawbacks
were the smallness of the type and the poorness of the
engravings. No success attended the experiment ; at
the end of a twelvemonth not a score of copies had
been sold. By common consent the firm, which had
been increased to four partners, broke up their associa-
tion, and Balzac was left sole proprietor of the concern,
the assets of which consisted of a large quantity of waste-
paper, and the liabilities amounted to a respectable
number of thousand francs.
Madame Surville attributes the fiasco to the pro-
fessional jealousy of competitors, who discouraged the
public from buying ; but the cause of the discomfiture
lay rather in the faulty manner in which the partners
54 HONORE DE BALZAC
carried out their plan. Monsieur d'Assonvillez being
still an interested adviser, Balzac now submitted to him
I a project for retrieving his losses by adding a printing
to his publishing business. The stock and goodwill of
a printer were to be bought, and a working type-setter,
named Barbier, was to be associated as a second prin-
cipal in the affair, on account of his practical experience.
The project was approved, and the elder Balzac was
persuaded to come forward with a capital of about
thirty thousand francs, this sum being required to
pay out the retiring printer. Monsieur Laurens, and
obtain the new firm's patent. Madame de Berny had
already lent Honore money to help him in the publish-
ing scheme. At present, she induced her husband to
intervene with the Government so that the printing
licence might be granted without delay.
The printing premises were situated at No. 17,
Rue des Marais, Faubourg Saint-Germain, to-day
Rue Visconti, near the Quai Malaquais. The street,
which is a narrow one, subsists nearly the same as it
was a century ago. Older associations, indeed, are
^ attached to it. At No. 19 died Jean Racine in 1699,
and Adrienne Lecouvreur in 1730. No. 17 was a new
construction when Balzac went to it, having probably
been built on the site where Nicolas Vauquelin des
Yveteaux used to receive the far-famed Ninon in his
gardens. On the impost, where formerly appeared
the names Balzac and Barbier, now may be read
"A. Herment, successeur de Garnier." The place is
still devoted to like uses.
In the Lost Illusions, whose part-sequel David
j Sechard reproduces Balzac's life as a printer, there is a
description of the ground floor : " a huge room, lighted
on the street-side by an old stained-glass window and
EXPERIMENTS IN BUSINESS 55
on the inner yard-side by a casement." A passage in
Gothic style led to the office ; and on the floor above
were the living rooms, one of which was hung with
blue calico, was furnished with taste, and was adorned
with the owner's first novels, bound by Thouvenin. In
this " den," during the two years that he was engaged
in the printing trade, were received the daily visits of
her he called his ZHlecta,
She could not give him the practical business
qualities in which he was utterly lacking and for which
his wonderful intuitions of commercial possibilities were
no compensation ; but she could smile at his enthusiasms
and sympathize with his disappointments, which had
their see-saw pretty regularly in the interval from the
1st of June 1826 to the 3rd of February 1828. A
very fair trade was done ; and, in fact, some of the
books he printed were important : Villemain's Mis-
cellanies, Merimee's Jacquerie, Madame Roland's
Memoirs, not to speak of his own small Critical and
Anecdotal Dictionary of Paiis Signboards, published
under a pseudonym, or rather anonymously, since it was
signed Le Batteur de Pave, the " Man in the Street."
But the senior partner, he who should have financed
the concern with all the more wariness as d'Assonvillez,
the principal supplier of capital, had a mortgage upon
the whole estate, allowed himself to be paid for his
printing, more often than not, in bills for which no pro-
vision was forthcoming and in securities that were
rotten. One debt of twenty-eight thousand francs was
settled by the transfer of a lot of old unsaleable litera-
ture, which would have been dear at a halfpenny a
volume. And then, when everything was in confusion
— debtors recalcitrant and creditors pressing — what must
he do but launch on another venture, buy the bank-
56 HONORE DE BALZAC
rupt stock of a type-founder, and start manufacturing.
A fresh partner, Laurent, was admitted into the firm
in December 1827, with a view to his exploiting the
presumably auxiliary branch ; and a prospectus was
issued vaunting a process of type-founding, which Balzac
was wrongly credited with having invented. Within
two months after this spurt, and while a fine album
was in preparation, which was to illustrate the firm's
improved method, Barbier withdrew from the partner-
ship. His desertion would have at once spelt disaster,
if Madame de Berny had not boldly stepped into the
vacant place, with a power of attorney conferred on her
by her husband, and pledged her credit for nine thousand
francs. During three months longer, the tottering
house continued to hold up ; and then, under the
avalanche of writs and claims, it fell. A petition in
bankruptcy was filed in April, and the estate was placed
in the hands of an official receiver.
On reaching this crisis so big with consequences,
Balzac had recourse to his mother, who, though little
disposed in the past to humour his bent, consented now
to every sacrifice in order to save his credit. Her first
step was to get her cousin Monsieur S^dillot to occupy
himself with the liquidation, she authorizing him at the
same time to make whatever arrangement he should
judge the best, and promising to accept it. She was
most anxious to spare her husband, at present eighty-
three years of age, the grief he must feel if informed of
the full extent of the disaster. Alas ! notwithstanding
her precautions, the old man did learn the truth ; and
the shock hastened his end. Within twelve months
after the bankruptcy he met with a slight accident,
which, acting on his enfeebled constitution, was fatal
to him.
Photograph: Xeurdei
Balzac's Printing Premises in the Rue des Marais,
NOW Rue Viscont
EXPERIMENTS IN BUSINESS 57
Balzac's liabilities, at the moment of the failure,
were one hundred and thirteen thousand francs. The
effect of the liquidation was to reduce the number of
creditors, so that his indebtedness was restricted to
members of his own family and to Madame de Berny.
The latter's claims were partly met by her son's taking
over the business with Laurent, the other partner. Being
thus reconstituted, the firm subsequently prospered.
To-day it still carries on its affairs under the control of
a Monsieur Charles Tuleu, who succeeded Monsieur de
Berny. Madame Surville would have us believe that,
if her parents had only supported Honore more un-
reservedly at the commencement, he could have realized
a fortune ; but all the facts of her brother's life go to
prove the contrary.
Referring, a decade later, to these dark days, which
loaded him with a burden of debt that he never shook
off but increased by his natural inability to balance
receipts and expenditure, he spoke of Madame de Berny's
kindness, and declared that he had repaid the Dilecta
in 1836 the last six thousand francs he owed her, to-
gether with their five per cent, interest. As on many
other occasions, Balzac imagined something which had
not been done, though he apparently believed what
he asserted. The following anecdote re-establishes the
facts of the case.
Monsieur Arthur Rhon^, a friend of the de Berny
family, who used to visit the son Alexander in the
office of the Rue des Marais, often admired on the
mantelpiece a fine bust of Flora, modelled by Marin.
One day the printer said to him : " Do you know how
much that bust cost me ? . . . Fifteen thousand francs.
I got it from Balzac, who owed me a great deal of
money. Once when I was at his house in Passy, he
58 HONORE DE BALZAC
exclaimed : ' Since I can't pay you, take what you like
from here to re-imburse yourself.' " This work of art,
a Louis XVI. gilt-bronze time-piece, with its two
candelabra, once also in Balzac's possession, was part
payment of the balance due to the de Berny family,
and was surrendered only in the forties.
The novelist, whose memory was so short in money
matters, had a longer recollection of his moral obliga-
tions. In the letter above referred to, he confessed :
*' Without her (Madame de Berny) I should have died.
She often divined that I had not eaten for several days
(here he was probably piling on the agony). She pro-
vided for everything with angelic kindness. Her
devotion was absolute." It ended only with the
Dilectas life.
In the Shagreen Skin, which embodies some of
Balzac's youthful experiences, Raphael, the hero, was
saved from committing suicide, after ruining himself,
by an accident which forms the thread of the story.
Possibly, during the bankruptcy proceedings, there
may have been a fit of despair which urged the insolvent
printer to end his own troubles in the Seine. If so, it
was of short duration. A fortnight after he had quitted
the Rue des Marais, the letter he wrote to General de
Pommereul showed him planning out a fresh future.
" At last has happened," he said in it, " what many
persons were able to foresee, and what I myself feared
in beginning and courageously supporting an establish-
ment the magnitude of which was colossal (!!!). I
have been precipitated, not without the previsions of
my conscious mind, from my modest prosperity. . . .
For the last month I have been engaged on an
historical work of the highest interest ; and I hope that,
in default of a talent altogether problematic with me.
EXPERIMENTS IN BUSINESS 59
my sketch of national customs will bring me luck.
My first thought was for you ; and I resolved to write
and ask you to shelter me for two or three weeks. A
camp-bed, a single mattress, a table, if only it is
quadrupedal and not rickety, a chair and a roof are all
that I require."
The General replied : " Your room awaits you.
Come quick." And he went. It was his definite
entrance into literature, and his resumption of the
search for wealth withal.
CHAPTER IV
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME
The historical novel that Balzac had set himself to
write was the Chouans, this name being given to the
Vendue Royalists who, under the leadership of the
Chevalier de Nougarede, combated the Revolution and
Napoleon. The scene being laid in Brittany, it was
natural that, apart from health reasons, the author
should wish to inspire his pen by a visit to the places
he intended to describe.
His hostess at Foug^res has left us a description of
her guest : " He was a little, burly man, clad in ill-
fitting garments that increased his bulk. His hands
were magnificent. He wore a most ugly hat ; but, as
soon as he took it off, one remarked nothing else besides
his head. . . . Beneath his ample forehead, on which
seemed to shine the reflection of a lamp, there were
brown, gold-spangled eyes which expressed their owner's
meaning as clearly as his speech. He had a big, square
nose, and a huge mouth, which was perpetually smiling in
spite of his ugly teeth. He wore a moustache, and his
long hair was brushed back. At the time he came to
us he was rather thin, and appeared to be half-starved.
He devoured his food, poor fellow ! For the rest, there
was so much confidence, so much benevolence, so much
naivete, so much frankness in his demeanour, his
gestures, his way of speaking and behaving that it was
impossible to know him and not love him. . . . His
60
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 61
good humour was so exuberant as to be contagious.
Notwithstanding the misfortunes he had just passed
through, he had not been with us a quarter of an hour
before he made the General and me laugh till tears
came into our eyes."
The Chouans, which his two or three months'
sojourn at Fougeres enabled him to get on with rapidly,
was completed after his return to Paris, and was pub-
lished under his own name in 1829. Charles Vimont,
who accepted and brought it out, paid him no more
than a thousand francs. The book, although it was
not badly written, and contained plenty of incident,
very fair characterization, of the minor personages
especially, and local colouring imitated from Walter
Scott, made no great impression. For the ordinary
reader it differed too little from the Romanticism with
which he was familiar. Moreover, the action savoured
too much of the melodramatic; and the character of
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, and that of the Chouan
chief, whom she had promised to deliver up to the
emissaries of Fouche, were too nebulous to gain general
sympathy, even with the heroine's tragic devotion.
There is, however, a fine sketch of Brittany and of its
spirit of revolt; the numerous figures ojf the back-
ground are vigorously executed, and nearly all the
episodes of the drama are skilfully presented. A
perusal of the Chouatis makes us regret that there was
hardly any return to this kind of composition in the
author's after- work.
When embarking on his publishing enterprise,
Balzac went to live in an apartment of the Rue
Tournon, No. 2,^ close to the Luxembourg. He aban-
1 Some early biographers state that the novelist went to the Rue
Tournon after his bankruptcy. This is a mistake.
62 HONORE DE BALZAC
doned it for the Rue des Marais in 1826; and, this
latter abode being given up in 1828, he removed on
his return from Brittany to No. 4, Rue Cassini, where
he remained for some years. A friend of his, Latouche
— soon to become an enemy — helped him to liven up
the walls of his study with the famous blue calico that
had adorned his room over the printing office. Certain
busybodies spread the report that he was furnishing
his new apartment extravagantly; and Laure, to
whose ear the tattle had come, ventured to allude to
it in a letter reproaching him with remissness in writing
home and to her. The accusation of extravagance,
which later he really merited, was at this moment a
trifle previous, money being scarce and credit also.
*' Stamps and omnibus fares are expenses I cannot
afford," he assured his sister ; " and I abstain from
going out in order to save my clothes."
However, he was now on the point of scoring a
literary success. In the same year as his Chouans
appeared his Physiology of Marriage, a book of satire
and caricature having a distinct stamp of his maturer
manner. Werdet, for a number of years his publisher
and friend, relates in his Portrait Intime that Balzac,
while still in the Lesdiguieres Street garret, had gone
one day to Alphonse Levavasseur and offered, in return
for a royalty and a cash instalment of two hundred
francs, to supply him with a book to be entitled :
Manual of the Business Man, by a former Notary's Clerk,
It was agreed the manuscript should be handed in at
the end of a month ; and the two hundred francs were
paid down. In vain the publisher waited for his
Manual. Ultimately he hunted Out his debtor ; and
the latter had to confess that the long-promised manu-
script had never been written. In order to calm the
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 63
creditor's indignation, Balzac read to him some frag-
ments of another book which he was really engaged
upon. After listening for a while, Levavasseur's
countenance grew serene : *' I will pay you two thousand
francs for this production when finished, Monsieur,"
he said ; ** and we will cancel the old transaction. Come
with me. I will give you the first thousand francs now.
The rest you shall have as soon as I get the last corrected
proofs." " Dear publisher, your speech is golden," cried
Balzac ; ** I accept." Nevertheless, the proofs were not
delivered until 1829. The book immediately became
popular. *' From the day of its appearance," comments
Werdet, " literature counted another master and France
another Moliere."
The verdict is exact only if the Physiology is regarded
in conjunction with the novelist's after achievement in
the domain of realistic fiction. Alone it would not
rank so high . Flippant, cynical, immoral — these epithets,
which were freely applied to it, all have their justification
when one looks at the work from any other standpoint
than that of its being a very amusing and clever
exposition of sex relations governed by interest and
passion. Both facts and philosophy are confined within
an exceedingly narrow horizon, one in which the writer
was most thoroughly at home, which explains why they
bear the imprint of a mind already blase.
From a letter Balzac sent to Levavasseur, while
finishing the last pages of the manuscript, it appears
that he commenced his task as a jest and completed it
with more serious purpose : "I intended to dash off a
pleasantry," he told him, " and you came one morning
and asked me to do in three months what Brillat-
Savarin took ten years to do. I haven't an idea which is
not the Physiology, I dream of it, I am absorbed by it."
64 HONORE DE BALZAC
The sale of the book was in a measure due to the
sort of scandal it provoked. Ladies especially bought
the volume to find out for themselves how far they had
been maligned ; and Levavasseur, who was pleased with
his profits, introduced Balzac to Emile de Girardin, then
chief editor of the Mode, to which paper he now began
to contribute light articles, not to speak of other
journals, which were only too glad to receive something
from his pen. The extent to which the fair sex read
the Physiology and were affected by it is illustrated by
a story that Werdet tells of a hoax perpetrated at
Balzac's expense by a number of his society friends,
who had cause to complain of his uppishness towards
them, a treatment based not merely on the belief he
entertained in his literary superiority, but on his
pretensions to aristocratic descent. The story belongs
more properly to the middle thirties, when he had been
using the prefix " de " before his name already for some
years, justifying himself on the ground that his father
claimed issue from an old family that had resisted the
Auvergne invasion and had begotten the d'Entragues
stock. His father, moreover, so he said, had discovered
documents in the Charter House establishing a
concession of lands made by a de Balzac in the fifth
century; and a copy of the transaction had been
registered by the Paris Parliament.
Between 1833 and 1836 one of the most celebrated
Paris " sets " was that of the Opera " lions," seven young
aristocratic sparks composing it, or, to be precise, six,
together with the Chevalier d'Entragues de Balzac, as
his friends jokingly dubbed him — he being an elder. It
was the period of his first flush of prosperity, when he
drove about in a hired carriage resplendent with the
d'Entragues coat of arms, which cost him five hundred
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 65
francs a month ; had a majestic coachman in fine
livery and a Tom Thumb groom ; sported himself in
gorgeous garments and strutted about in the Opera
foyer, amidst the real or feigned admiration of his
fellows.
To revenge themselves for their mentor's supercilious-
ness towards them, the six other lions induced a dancer
at the Opera to play the part of a supposed Duke's
daughter smitten with the great man's writings and
person, a role she undertook the more willingly as,
being well acquainted with the former, she was anxious
to prove to him that he was not so perspicacious as he
deemed himself. An Opera ball was chosen for the
adventure; and Balzac was duly baited and taken in
tow by the lady, whose mask only half concealed her
beauty. Thus began a flirtation, with subsequent
clandestine meetings, allowing the fair unknown to fool
him to the top of her bent. The author wanted to
propose for her hand to the Duke her father ; but,
cleverly using her knowledge of his books, the sly jade
showed him that he would have no chance of being
accepted. At last she hinted she would like to visit him
in his author's sanctum ; and the delighted novelist went
to most lavish expense in fitting up a boudoir to receive
her. The visit was presumably a secret one. Protected
by a young man employed at the Opera, to whom she
was engaged, and who accompanied her in the disguise
of a negro, she went to the Rue des Batailles one evening
and graciously listened to the enraptured conversation
of her victim till towards midnight, when her mother,
who was in the plot, came to fetch her. The novelist's
fury and humiliation were extreme on his learning how
neatly he had been tricked, and it was some time before
he ventured to reappear in his accustomed haunts. As
£
66 HONORE DE BALZAC
narrated by Werdet, the story is a good deal embellished,
and some of the details that he gives were probably
invented ; but the main outline he vouches to be true.
Among the editors of journals who sought Balzac's
collaboration after the publication of the Physiology
were Buloz of the Revue de Paris and Victor Ratier
of the Silhouette, To the latter of them, in 1831, he
wrote from I>.a Grenadi^re, where he had gone to
recruit, a letter revealing a curiously mixed state of
mind in this dawning period of fame. He would seem
to have been under a presentiment of the long years
of struggle and incessant toil he was about to be in-
volved in, and to have felt a shrinking of his physical
nature from them.
" Oh ! if you knew what Touraine is like," he
exclaimed. *' Here one forgets everything else. I
forgive the inhabitants for being stupid. They are
so happy. Now, you know that people who enjoy much
are naturally stupid. Touraine admirably explains the
lazzarone. I have come to regard glory, the Chamber,
politics, the future, literature, as veritable poison-balls
to kill wandering, homeless dogs, and I say to myself :
' Virtue, happiness, life, are summed up in six hundred
francs income on the bank of the Loire. . . .' My
house is situated half-way up the hill, near a delightful
river bordered with flowers, whence I behold landscapes
a thousand times more beautiful than all those with
which rascally travellers bore their readers. Touraine
appears to me like a pate de foie gras, in which one
plunges up to the chin; and its wine is delicious.
Instead of intoxicating, it makes you piggy and
happy. . . . Just fancy, I have been the most poetic trip
possible in France — from here to the heart of Brittany
by water, passing between the most ravishingjscenery in
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 67
the world. I felt my thoughts go with the stream,
which, near the sea, becomes immense. Oh, to lead
the life of a Mohican, to run about the rocks, to swim
in the sea, to breathe in the fresh air and sun ! Oh, I
have realized the savage ! Oh, I have excellently
understood the corsair, the adventurer — their lives of
opposition ; and I reflected : ' Life is courage, good
rifles, the art of steering in the open ocean, and the
hatred of man — of the Englishman, for example.'
(Here Balzac is of his time.) Coming back hither, the
ex-corsair has turned dealer in ideas. Just imagine,
now, a man so vagabond beginning on an article
entitled. Treatise of Fashionable Life, and making an
octavo volume of it, which the Mode is going to
print, and some publisher reprint. . . . Egad ! at the
present moment literature is a vile trade. It leads to
nothing, and I itch to go a-wandering and risk my
existence in some living drama. . . . Since I have
seen the real splendours of this spot, I have grown
very philosophic, and, putting my foot on an ant-hill,
I exclaim, like the immortal Bonaparte : * That, or men,
what is it all in presence of Saturn or Venus, or the
Pole Star ? ' And methinks that the ocean, a brig, and
an English vessel to engulf, is better than a writing-
desk, a pen, and the Rue Saint-Denis."
About the events of the 1830 Revolution the
novelist was apparently but little concerned. True, the
change was one of dynasty only, not of regime, albeit
Louis-Philippe posed rather as a plebiscitary monarch.
Balzac's clericalism and royalism, which ultimately
became so crystallized, were at this date in a position of
unstable equilibrium. At one moment his criticisms
have an air of condemning the monarchic principle, at
another they point to his being a pillar of the ancient
68 HONORE DE BALZAC
system of things. On this occasion he was twitted by
Madame Zulma Carraud, his sister s friend, with whom
his relations grew more intimate as his celebrity aug-
, mented ; and he defended himself by a confession of
' faith which forecast his endeavours — less persistent than
his desires — to add the statesman's laurels to those of
the litterateur. His doctrine, following the Machia-
vellian tradition, was that the genius of government
consists in operating the fusion of men and things —
a method which demonstrated Napoleon and Louis
XVIII. alike to be men of talent. Both of them
restrained all the various parties in France — the one by
force, the other by ruse, because the one rode horse-
y back, the other in a carriage. . . . France, he continued,
ought to be a constitutional monarchy, with an heredi-
tary Royal Family, a House of Lords extraordinarily
powerful and representing property, &;c., with all pos-
sible guarantees of heredity and privilege ; then she
should have a second, elective assembly to represent
every interest of the intermediary mass separating
high social positions from what was called the people.
The bulk of the laws and their spirit should tend to
enlighten the people as much as possible — the people
that had nothing — workmen, proletaries, &c. — so as to
bring the greatest number of men to that condition of
well-being which distinguished the intermediary mass ;
but the people should be left under the most puissant
yoke, in such a way that the individual units might find
light, aid, and protection, and that no idea, no form,
no transaction might render them turbulent. The richer
1 classes must enjoy the widest liberty practicable, since
; they had a stake in the country. To the Government
he wished the utmost force pos^ble, its interests being
the same as those of the rich and the bourgeois, viz.
Hand of Balzac
From a Plaster-Cast (Spoelbenh de Lovenjoul collection)
I
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 69
to render the lowest class happy and to aggrandize the
middle class, in which resided the veritable puissance
of States. If rich people and the hereditary fortunes
of the Upper Chamber, corrupted by their manners and
customs, engendered certain abuses, these were insepar-
able from all society, and must be accepted with the
advantages they yielded.
This conception of the classes and the masses,
which he afterwards set forth more fully in his Country
Doctor and Village Cure, partly explains why all his
best work, besides being impregnated with fatalism,
has such a constant outlook on the past. It was a
dogma with him rather than a philosophy, and was
clung to more from taste than from reasonable convic-
tion. He believed in aristocratic prerogative, because
he believed in himself, and ranked himself as high as,
or rather higher than, the noble. This was at the
bottom of his doctrine ; but he was glad all the same
to have his claim supported by such outward signs of
the inward grace as were afforded by vague genealogy
and the homage of the great. Duchesses were his pre-
dilection when they were forthcoming ; failing them,
countesses were esteemed.
The Duchess d' Abrantes — one of his early admirers
— to whom he dedicated his Forsaken Woman, was
herself a colleague in letters ; and he was able to render
her some service through his relations with publishers.
Their correspondence shows them to have been on
very friendly terms. In one of his letters to her, he
insisted on his inability to submit to any yoke, and
rebutted her insinuation that he permitted himself to
be led — possibly the Duchess's hint referred to Madame
de Berny. "My character," he said, "is the most
singular one I have ever come across. I study myself
70 HONORE DE BALZAC
as I might another person. I comprise in my five feet
two every incoherence, every contrast possible ; and
those who think me vain, prodigal, headstrong, frivolous,
inconsistent, foppish, careless, idle, unstable, giddy,
wavering, talkative, tactless, ill-bred, impolite, crotchety,
humoursome, will be just as right as those who might
affirm me to be thrifty, modest, plucky, tenacious,
energetic, hardworking, constant, taciturn, cute, polite,
merry. Nothing astonishes me more than myself. I
am inclined to conclude I am the plaything of circum-
stances. Does this kaleidoscope result from the fact
that, into the soul of those who claim to paint all the
affections and the human heart, chance casts each and
every of these same affections in order that by the
strength of their imagination they may feel what they
depict ? And can it be that observation is only a sort
of memory proper to aid this mobile imagination ? I
begin to be of this opinion."
Balzac appears to have been introduced to the
Duchess d'Abrantes about the year 1830, when he
was engaged in writing his Shagreen Skin, which, out
of the numerous pieces of fiction produced within this
and the next twelve months, added most to his notoriety,
though inferior to such stories as the House of the
Tennis-playing Cat, and even to the Sceauoo Ball in
the more proper qualities of the novel.
The Shagreen Skin is the adventure of a young
man who, after sowing his wild oats and losing his last
crown at the gaming table, goes to end his troubles in
the river, but is prevented from carrying out his inten-
tion by being fortuitously presented with a piece of
shagreen skin, which has the marvellous property of
gratifying its possessor's every wish, yet, meanwhile,
shrinks with each gratification, and in the same propor-
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 71
tion curtails its possessor s life. On this warp of fairy
tale, the author weaves a woof of romance and reality
most oddly blended. The imitations of predecessors
are numerous. The style is turgid, the thought is
shallow, the sentiment is exaggerated. But very little
of the sober characterization soon to be manifested in
other books is displayed in this one. The best that
can be said is that the thing has the same cleverness as
the Physiology, with here and there indications — and
clear ones — of the novelist's later power. He him-
self grossly overestimated it, as, indeed, he overestimated
not a few of his poorer productions — maybe because
they cost him greater toil than his masterpieces, which
generally, after long, unconscious gestation, issued
rapidly and painlessly from him.
An amusing expression of this self-praise has come
down to us in the pufF he composed on the occasion of
a reprint of the Shagreen Skin by Gosselin in 1832.
"The Philosophic Tales of Monsieur de Balzac," it
announced, " have appeared this week. The Shagreen
Skin is judged as the admirable novels of Anne Radcliffe
were judged. Such things escape annalists and com-
mentators. The eager reader lays hold of these books.
They bring sleeplessness into the mansions of the rich
and into the garret of the poet ; they animate the
village. In winter they give a livelier reflection to
the sparkling log, great privileges to the story-teller.
It is nature, in sooth, who creates story-tellers. Vainly
are you a learned, grave writer, if you have not been
born a story-teller, and you will never obtain the popu-
larity of the Mysteries of Udolpho and the Shagreen
Skin, the Arabian Nights, and Monsieur de Balzac. I
have somewhere read that God created Adam, the
nomenclator, saying to him : You are the story-teller.
72 HOl^ORfi DE BALZAC
And what a story-teller ! what verve and wit ! what
indefatigable perseverance in painting everything, daring
everything, branding everything! How the world is
dissected by this man ! What an annahst ! What
passion and what coolness !
** The Philosophic Tales are the red-hot interpreta-
tion of a civilization ruined by debauch and well-being,
which Monsieur de Balzac exposes in the pillory. The
Arabian Nights are the complete history of the luxurious
East in its days of happiness and perfumed dreams.
Candide is the epitome of an epoch in which there were
bastilles, a stag-park, and an absolute king. By thus
taking at the first bound a place beside these formidable
or graceful tale-tellers. Monsieur de Balzac proves one
thing that remained to be proved ; to wit, that the
drama, which was no longer possible to-day on the
stage, was still possible in the story — that our society, so
dangerously sceptical, blase, and scornful, could yet be
moved by the galvanic shocks of this poetry of the
senses — full of life and colour, in flesh and blood, drunk
with wine and lust — in which Monsieur de Balzac
revels with such delight. Thus, the surprise was great,
when, thanks to this story-teller, we still found among
us something resembling poetry — feasts, intoxication,
the light o' love giving her caresses amidst an orgie,
the brimming punch-bowl crowned with blue flames,
the yellow-gloved politician, scented adultery, the girl
indulging in pleasure and love and dreaming aloud,
poverty clean and neat, surrounded with respectability
and happy hazard — we have seen all this in Balzac. The
Opera with its lemans, the pink boudoir and its flossy
hangings, the feast and its surfeits ; we have even seen
Moli^re's doctor reappear, such need has this man of
sarcasm and grotesqueness. The further you advance
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 73
in the Shagreen Skin — vices, lost virtues, poverties,
boredom, deep silence, dry-as-dust science, angular,
witless scepticism, laughable egotism, puerile vanities,
venal loves, Jewish second-hand dealers, &c. — the more
astonished and pained you will be to recognize that the
nineteenth century in which you live is so made up.
The Shagreen Skin is Candide with B^ranger's notes ;
it is poverty, luxury, faith, mockery ; it is the heartless
breast, the brainless cranium of the nineteenth century
— the century so bedizened and scented, so revolution-
ary, so ill-read, so little worth, the century of brilliant
phantasmagorias, of which in fifty years' time nothing
will be seizable except Monsieur de Balzac's Shagreen
SJdnr
On account of its sensationalism, the Shagreen Skin
had a success of curiosity equal, and, if anything,
superior to that of the Physiology. The author, how-
ever, had to defend himself against the charge of
copying foreign literature — Hoffman's tales in par-
ticular. One of his correspondents, the Duchess de
Castries, who subsequently flattered him and flirted
with him, wrote to him incognito, taking exception to
certain statements he had made in each of his two
popular works. Replying to her, he for the first time
spoke of his desire to develop his fiction into a vast
series of volumes destined to make known to posterity
the life of his century.
Great schemes were always to be Balzac's day-
dreaming, one chasing the other in his fancy. They
filled his thoughts, and in his heart wcpe his constant
aim, far more than to be loved, for all he asserted of
this last desire. If literature was the one means he
resorted to in his efforts to attain them, this was because
every other means deceived his expectation, and not
74 HONORE DE BALZAC
because he deliberately preferred it to all others. He
owned .the fact without reservation. In the case of
a man whose literary achievement was so high, such
slighting of letters has its significance, and is curious.
Taken in conjunction with other evidence furnished by
his letters, it proves that genius, though sometimes
clearly the pure, simple moving of a spirit that cannot
be resisted, is also — and perhaps as often — a calculating
partnership, and that the work of art is a compromise.
Would Balzac have written better if his motive had
been single ? It is not certain.
During these early days of his popularity, a seat in
the Chamber of Deputies was his will o' the wisp.
Aided by the Dilecta's friends, he offered himself as a
candidate in two constituencies, Angouleme and Cam-
brai, after publishing his pamphlet : An Inquiry into
the Policy of Two Ministries, With a view to shining
in the future Parliament, he sharpened his witticisms,
rounded his periods, polished his style, exercised him-
self in opposing short phrases to others of Ciceronian
length, endeavouring the while to put poetry and
observation into a new subject. At least these things
were in his mind, as his communication to Berthoud of
the Cambrai Gazette testified. His intention was to
become an orator, he said. Had he been elected, he
might have become the rival of Thiers. They were
about the same age. Then France might have had
two "little bourgeois" instead of one, unless one of
the two had knocked the other out. But whether
conquering or conquered, Balzac the politician would
have swallowed up Balzac the novelist, and Eugenie
Grandet would never have been written. Why he failed
at the polls is not clear. Probably he did not possess
enough suppleness to please his party. To tell the
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 75
truth, we do not learn definitely to which party he
belonged. He was quite capable of constituting one
by himself.
These preoccupations hindered him somewhat in
carrying out his engagements with publishers and
editors, so that he did not always get the money he
counted on. Yet he worked hard. His habit, at this
time, was to go to bed at six in the evening and sleep
till twelve, and, after, to rise and write for nearly
twelve hours at a stretch, imbibing coffee as a stimu-
lant through these spells of composition. What re-
creation he took in Paris was at the theatre or at
the houses of his noble acquaintances, where he went
to gossip of an afternoon. It was exhausting to lead
such an existence ; and even the transient fillips given
by the coffee were paid for in attacks of indigestion
and in abscesses which threw him into fits of dis-
couragement. AVhen suffering from these, he poured
out his soul to his sister or Madame Carraud, com-
plaining in his epistles that his destiny compelled him
to run after fame and deprived him of his chance to
meet with the ideal woman. Madame de Berny, with
all her devotion, did not satisfy him now. " Despairing
of ever being loved and understood by the woman of
my dreams," he tragically cried, *' having met with her
only in my heart, I am plunging again into the
tempestuous sphere of political passions and the
stormy, withering atmosphere of literary glory." But
the "she" of his dreams, he added, must be wealthy.
He could not conceive of marriage and love in a
cottage. It must be admitted that from his sources
of affection as from his sources of ambition there was
a gush which was rather muddy.
Altogether, the year of 1832 was an irritating one
76 HONORE DE BALZAC
for Balzac. A rich match he had hoped to make fell
through. A second attempt of his to enter the
Chamber of Deputies ended in defeat. His books,
after their first season or two of favour, were selling
but poorly in France, although pirated editions were
issued and had a large circulation abroad. Impatiently
he meditated plans for doubling and tripling his
revenue. He would emigrate — he would recommence
publishing — he would turn playwright. Amid these
three solicitations he moved in a circle without reaching
a conclusion. And fortune, while he was hesitating,
did not come to his door. In default of her visit,
not all the flattering epistles he received from ladies
in Russia and Germany — three and four a day, he
asserted — were an adequate compensation. A journey
undertaken for the benefit of his health to Sache,
Angouleme, and Aix forced him to borrow from his
mother again, instead of paying back the capital he
owed her. His unfinished manuscripts he had taken
with him, but he found it difficult to get on with
them : *' I was going to start work this morning with
courage," he wrote to her, " when your letter came to
upset me completely. Do you think it possible for
me to have artistic thoughts when I see all at once
the tableau of my miseries displayed before me as you
display them ? Do you think I should toil thus, if I
did not feel it ? "
The novelist's relations with his mother force the
attention of any one that studies his life. Their two
natures were contrary; there were often conflicts
between them. As a child, he seems not to have
comprehended the affection underlying the maternal
severity, and to have entertained a dread of the latter
which never entirely left him. According to his friend
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 77
Fessart, he used to confess he always experienced a
nervous trembling whenever he heard his mother speak ;
and the effect was in some sort the numbing of his
faculties when he was in her presence. Her generous
abnegation at the time of his bankruptcy was a revela-
tion to him ; his gratitude for it was sincere ; and from
that date onwards, during a number of years, his letters
to her evinced it, yet not consistently ; the old distrust
recurs, and also a growing tendency to utilize her as a
servant in his concerns. Having once dipped in her
purse, he did not hesitate to hold out his hand, on each
occasion that his needs, real or fancied, prompted him,
being confident of requiting her in the future. His
refrain was ever the same : " Sooner or later, politics,
journalism, a marriage, or a big piece of business luck
will make me a Croesus. We must suffer a little
longer." And he finished by exhausting her last penny
of capital, and reduced her to depend on an allowance
he gave her, irregularly — an allowance which, when
he died, had to be continued to her from the purse of
another. Madame Balzac was sacrificed to his impro-
vidence and stupendous egotism ; nor can the tender-
ness of his language — more frequently than not called
forth by some fresh immolation of her comfort to his
interests — disguise this unpleasing side of his character
and action. While he was recouping his strength and
spirits, on the 1832 holiday, she was in Paris negotiat-
ing with Pichot of the Revue de Paris, with Gosselin
and other publishers, arranging for proofs, and also
for an advance of cash. Even his epistolary good-byes
were odd mixtures of business w^ith sentiment. After
casting himself — through the post — on her bosom and
embracing her with effusion, he terminated by : '* Pay
everything as you say. On my side, I will gain money
78 HONORE DE BALZAC
by force, and we will balance the expenses by the
receipts."
The book that cost him the greatest efforts during
the year of 1832 was his Louis Lambert, already men-
tioned in the second chapter. Writing about it to
his family from Angouleme, he explained that he was
attempting in it to vie with Goethe and Byron, with
Faust and Manfred, It was to be a conclusive reply
to his enemies, and would make his superiority mani-
fest. Some day or other it would lead science into
new paths. Meantime it would produce a deep im-
pression and astonish the Swedenborgians. Whether
the members of this sect were astonished, history does
not record. Those who were most so were the nove-
list's friends, and Madame de Berny among the number.
But their wonder was not a eulogium. First of all,
the hero — his alter ego — is a very poor replica of Pascal ;
and the exalting of Lambert's intelligence, which
was mere self-praise, jarred on them the more, as they
truly loved him. The Dilecta, whom he had asked
to pass her frank opinion on it, did not hesitate to
tell him some hard truths : " Goethe and Byron,"
she said, "have admirably painted the desires of a
superior mind; when reading them, one aggrandizes
them by all the space they have perceived; one
admires the scope of their view; one would fain give
them one's soul to help theirs to cover the distance
that separates them from the goal they aspire to reach.
But, if an author comes and tells me he has attained
this goal, I no longer see in him, however great he
may be, more than a presumptuous man; his vanity
shocks me, and I diminish him by all the height to
which he has tried to raise himself. ... I would there-
fore beg you, dearest, to cut out of your Lambert
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 79
everything that might suggest these singular ideas;
for instance : * The admirable combat of thought arrived
at its greatest force, at its vastest expression' . . .
*The moral world, whose limits he had thrown back
for himself,' cannot be tolerated. Write, dearest, in
such a manner that the whole crowd may perceive you
from everywhere, by the height at which you will have
placed yourself; but do not cry out for people to
admire you ; for, on all sides, the largest magnifying-
glasses would be directed towards you; and what
becomes of the most delicious object seen by the
microscope ? "
The lesson was a severe one. Though it did not
cure Balzac of his author's vanity — nothing could cure
him of that — it did, for a while at least, direct his
endeavours towards fiction of a more objective kind.
What he was now capable of in characterization
treated objectively he showed in his Colonel Chabert
and the Cure of Tours, both of which were published
in the same twelvemonth as Louis Lambert, These
stories are exceedingly simple in construction. The
Cure is a priest whose joys and ambitions are modest
and innocent. Having reached the age when indul-
gence in ease and comfort is excusable, he finds himself
suddenly deprived of them through unwittingly offend-
ing his landlady. She, an old maid, as inwardly
shrewish as outwardly pious, utilizes the Abbe Birotteau
and another clergyman, who both lodge with her, to
attract the good society folk of Tours to her evening
receptions. After due experience of these gatherings,
the Abbe plays truant, finding it more agreeable to
spend his leisure with friends elsewhere. His absence
causes the landlady's guests to grow remiss and finally
to desert her ; so, to revenge herself, the slighted dame,
80 HONORE DE BALZAC
proceeding by petty pin-pricks, makes the Abbe's life
a burden to him, and, ultimately enlisting the brother
clergyman in her schemes of annoyance, works on
his jealousy with such cleverness that their victim's
career is blasted and blighted. Dependent on the
development of the characters, the plot is adroitly and
naturally elaborated. Nowhere is there any forcing
of the note ; and, in alternate flow, humour and pathos,
of a saner sort than in some of the author's previous
work, run and ripple throughout. With deeper pathos
the novelist tells in Colonel Chabert the virtues of a
man of obscure origin, whose nobleness meets with
but scanty recognition, since it conducts him to the
almshouse in his old age. So vivid is the sober realism
of this fine story that the public believed the relation
to be plain, unvarnished facts, and were astonished at
the writer's daring to reveal them in all their detail.
Balzac's autumn trip was prolonged as far as
Annecy and Geneva. He had intended going on to
Italy in company with the Duke de Fitz- James. The
latter journey, however, was ultimately abandoned,
as he did not succeed in raising the thousand crowns
it required. Travelling on the top of a coach, he had
rather a serious accident when going to Aix. He was
climbing up to the front seat just as the horses set
off, and, having missed his footing, fell with all his
weight against the iron step. The strap, which he
clutched in his fall, saved him from coming to the
ground; but the impact of his eighty-four kilograms
caused the sharp iron to enter the flesh of his leg
pretty deeply. This wound took some time to heal,
and the annoyance it caused him was aggravated by
an additional malady in his stomach which he tried
to deal with by consulting a mysterious quack in Paris,
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 81
sending him, through his mother, two pieces of flannel
that he had been wearing next his skin. The doctor
was to examine No. 1 flannel, and by it to determine
the seat and the cause of the affection, as well as the
treatment to be followed ; then he was to examine
No. 2, and to give certain instructions as to its further
use. Balzac asked his mother to touch the flannels
only with paper, so as not to interfere with their
effluvia. This belief of his in magnetism of an occult
kind was an inheritance. His mother, it has already
been said, was a mystic. Her books of this doctrine
comprised more than a hundred volumes of Saint-
Martin, Swedenborg, Madame Guyon, Jacob Boehm,
and others. All these writers he was familiar with.
Throughout his life, the influence of their teaching
and his mother's firm belief remained with him. On
his conduct and practice their effect was harmless ;
but in his literary work they were a disturbance, and,
wherever they intruded, detracted from its quality.
Happily, he was beginning to be tempted more and
more by the artistic side of things in his daily ex-
perience. Of the lesser novels composed before the
end of 1832, several were directly inspired by incidents
brought to his knowledge. The Red Inn was related
to him by a former army surgeon, a friend of the
man that was unjustly condemned aud executed. An
Episode under the Terror was narrated by the hero
himself. A Desert Attachment was the outcome of a
conversation with Martin, the celebrated tamer of wild
beasts. On the other hand. Master Cornelius was
written to correct the false impression of Louis XI.
which he considered Walter Scott had given to his
readers in Quentin Durward, this making him very
angry. His curiosity concerning facts and realities of
F
82 HONORE DE BALZAC
every description led him to seek an interview with
Samson the executioner. CalHng one day to see the
Director of Prisons, he found himself in presence of
a pale, melancholy-looking man of noble countenance,
whose manners, language, and apparent education were
those of one polished and cultured. It was Samson.
Entering into conversation with this strange personage,
the novelist listened to the particulars of his life.
Samson was a royalist. On the morrow of Louis XVI. 's
execution he had suffered the utmost remorse, and
had paid for what was probably the only expiatory
mass said on that day for the repose of the King's soul.
Like other litterateurs, Balzac took up many subjects
which he did not go on with. He had this peculiarity
besides, that he often asserted some book to be com-
pleted which was either not begun at all or was in a
most unfinished condition. While on the Angouleme
and Aix excursion, he spoke especially of The Three
Cardinals, The Battle of Austerlitz (afterwards often
alluded to simply as the Battle), and The Marquis of
Carrahas. Not one of these was ever written. They
were abandoned perhaps on account of other work, or
else because the execution was less easy than the con-
ception. Napoleon, who would have been a central
figure in the Battle, is incidentally introduced in the
Country Doctor, which was begun in 1832.
Probably, also, to this same date should be assigned
the bizarre and even comical expression of hopes and
fears for the future which Balzac confided to his sister
Laure. In order to force himself to take exercise, he
used to correct his proofs either at the printer's or at
her house. Sometimes the weather, to the influence of
which he was very susceptible, sometimes his money-
tightness, or his fatigue from protracted work would
FIRST SUCCESSES AND FAME 88
cause him to arrive with lack-lustre eyes, sallow com-
plexion, glum expression and irritable temper. Laure
essayed to console and brighten him.
**Now don't try to comfort me," he answered on
one occasion. " I'm a dead man."
And the dead man began to drawl out his tale of
woe, gradually rousing up as he talked, and, at last,
speaking excitedly. But the dolent accents returned as
he opened his proofs and read them.
" I shall never make a name, sis."
" Nonsense ! with such books, any one could make
a name."
He raised his head ; his features relaxed ; the sombre
tints vanished from his face.
** You are right, by Jove ! . . . these books must live.
. . . Besides, there is Chance. It can protect a Balzac
as well as it can a fool. Indeed, one has only to invent
this chance. Let some one of my millionaire friends
(and I have a few), or a banker not knowing what to do
with his money, come and say to me : ' I am aware of
your immense talent and your anxieties ; you need such
and such a sum to be free ; accept it without scruple ;
you will pay it back some day or other; your pen is worth
my millions ! ' That's all I require, my dear sister."
Laure, being accustomed to the appearance of these
illusions which brought back his cheerfulness, never
exhibited any surprise at such soaring notes. Having
created the fable, her imaginative brother continued :
" Those people spend such sums on whims. ... A
handsome deed is a whim, like any other, and gives joy
perpetually. It is something to say : * I have saved
a Balzac' Humanity has good impulses of the sort ;
and there are people who, without being English, are
capable of like eccentricities. * Either a millioniare or a
84 HONORE DE BALZAC
banker,' he cried, thumping on his chest, ' one of them
I will have.' "
By dint of talking he had come to accredit the
thing, and gleefully strode about the room, lifting and
waving his arms.
*' Ah ! Balzac is free ! You shall see, my dear friends,
and my dear enemies, what his progress is."
In fancy, he entered the Academy ! From there it
was only a step to the House of Peers. He beheld
himself admitted thither. Why shouldn't he be a
member of the Upper Chamber ? This and that person
had been created a peer. Then he was appointed a
minister. There was nothing extraordinary about it.
Presidents existed. Were not people who had boxed
the compass of ideas the fittest to govern their fellows ?
A programme, a policy was evolved and carried out ;
and, as everything was going on smoothly, he had
time to think of the millionaire friend or banker who
had assisted him. The generous Maecenas should be
rewarded. He understood the novelist, had lent him
money on the security of his talent, had enabled him
to obtain his well-deserved honours. The benefactor
should now have his share in the honour, a share in the
immortality.
After a peregrination of this magnitude and dreams
to match, he alighted from his Pegasus, and spoke as an
ordinary mortal — he had enjoyed himself, and his fit of
the dumps was exorcised. Putting the last touch to
his proof-correcting, he left the house with his face
wreathed in smiles.
" Good-bye," he said to his sister, at the door ; " I
am off home to see if the banker is there, waiting for
me. If he isn't, I shall find some work to do all the
same ; and work is my real money-lender."
CHAPTER V
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1831, 1832
One has little doubt in deciding that, of the two spurs
which goaded Balzac's labours, his desire for wealth
acted more persistently and energetically than his
desire for glory. In his conversations, in his corre-
spondence, money was the eternal theme ; in his novels
it is almost always the hinge on which the interest,
whether of character, plot, or passion, depends. Money
was his obsession, day and night ; and, in his dormant
visions, it must have loomed largely.
Henry 1 Monnier, the caricaturist, used to relate
that, meeting him once on the Boulevard, the novelist
tapped him on the shoulder and said :
" I have a sublime idea. In a month I shall have
gained five hundred thousand francs."
'' The deuce, you will," replied Monnier ; " let's
hear how."
** Listen, then," returned his interlocutor. " I will
rent a shop on the Boulevard des Italiens. All Paris
is bound to pass by. That's so, isn't it ? "
" Yes. Well, what next ? "
" Next, I will establish a store for colonial produce ;
and, over the window, I will have printed, in letters of
gold : ' Honore de Balzac, Grocer.' This will create
a scandal ; everybody will want to see me serving the
customers, with the classical counter- skipper's smock
on. I shall gain my five hundred thousand francs ; it's
1 The name is sometimes written in the English, and sometimes
in the French way in books mentioning this celebrity.
85
86 HONORE DE BALZAC
certain. Just follow my argument. Every day these
many people pass along the Boulevard, and will not
fail to enter the shop. Suppose that each person
spends only a sou, since half of it will be profit to me
I shall gain so much a day ; consequently, so much
a week ; so much a month."
And thereupon, the novelist, launched into trans-
cendental calculations, soaring with his enthusiasm into
the clouds.
It was the same Henry Monnier who, meeting
him another time on the Place de la Bourse, and
having had to listen to another of such mirific demon-
strations about a scheme from which both were to
derive millions, answered drily :
" Then lend me five francs on strength of the affair."
Noticing this sort of monomania, in an article
which he wrote in the short-lived JDiogenes, during the
month of August 1856, Amedee Roland said of Balzac:
" His ambition was to vie in luxury with Alexandre
Dumas and Lamartine, who, before the Revolution of
1848, were the most prodigal and extravagant authors
in the five continents. For anything like a chance of
finding his elusive millions, he would have gone to
China. Indeed, on one occasion, he took it into his
head he would start, together with his friend Laurent
Jan, and go to see the Great Mogul, maintaining that
the latter would give him tons of gold in exchange for
a ring he possessed, which came, so he asserted, right
down from Mahomet. It was three o'clock in the
morning when he knocked at Laurent Jan's door to
inform his sleeping friend of his project ; and the latter
had the greatest difficulty in dissuading him from
setting off forthwith in a post-chaise for India, of
course, at the expense of the monarch in question."
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 87
In justice, however, to Balzac, it should be stated
that not a few of his suggestions were sensible enough,
and contained ideas which, if properly put into execu-
tion, could have yielded profitable results. As a matter
of fact, some were subsequently exploited by people
who listened to them, or heard of them. A scheme of
his for making paper by an improved process, which
he tried to realize in 1883, and which he induced his
mother, his sister's husband, and other friends to sup-
port with their capital, anticipated the employment of
esparto grass and wood, which since has been adopted
successfully by others and has yielded large fortunes to
them. The scheme was perhaps premature in Balzac's
day, not to speak of his small business capacity, which
was in an inverse ratio to his inventiveness.
From one of his conceptions, at least, there issued
an important benefit to the entire literary profession.
Already, in the previous century, Beaumarchais had
attempted to establish a society of authors, whose aim
should be to protect the rights of men of letters. His
efforts then met with no response. Balzac revived the
proposal, and coupled with it others tending to im-
prove the material and style of printing of books. He
had to contend with the hostility of certain publishers
and the indifference of many authors. But his en-
deavours were ultimately understood and appreciated ;
and, not long afterwards, in 1838, the Societe des Gens
de Lettres was founded.
In connection with this campaign, which he waged
for a while alone, there was also his elaboration of the
arrangement, first accepted by Charpentier, which con-
sisted in fixing the percentage of the author's royalty
on the octavo, three-franc-fifty volume at one-tenth
of the published price. One of his discussions with
88 HONORE DE BALZAC
Charpentier on the subject was overheard in the Caf^
of the Palais Royal by Jules Sandeau's cousin, who
happened to be playing a game of billiards there.
After the departure of Balzac and the publisher, the
cousin remarked that a paper had been forgotten ; and,
on reading it through, with his partner in the game,
saw a crowd of figures that were so many hieroglyphics
to them. When the paper was restored to the novelist
by Jules Sandeau, who lived in the same set of flats
as Balzac, it transpired that the figures were the calcula-
tion of the sum that a writer might obtain on the
decimal basis, if a hundred thousand copies of any
one of his works were sold.
Two of the novelist's most important books appeared
in 1833, his Country Doctor and Eugenie Grandet,
The former he disposed of to a new publisher, Mame,
who was to print it, at first, unsigned, his old publisher
Gosselin having pre-emption rights that had not been
redeemed. Referring to it in a letter to Mame,
towards the end of 1832, he said : " I have long been
desirous of the popular glory which consists in selling
numerous thousands of a small volume like Atala,
Paul and Virginia, the Vicar of Wakejield, Manon
Lescaut, &c. The book should go into all hands,
those of the child, the girl, the old man, and even
the devotee. Then once, when the book is known,
it will have a large sale, like the Meditations of
Lamartine, for instance, sixty thousand copies. My
book is conceived in this spirit ; it is something which
the porter and the grand lady can both read. I have
taken the Gospel and the Catechism, two books that
sell well, and so I have made mine. I have laid the
scene in a village, and the whole of the story will be
readable, which is rare with me." How high his
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 89
hopes of its quality and saleableness were (the two
things were oddly mixed up in his mind), he imparted
to Zulma Carraud. '* The Country Doctor has cost
me ten times more labour than Louis Lambert^ he
informed her. *' There is not a sentence or an idea
in it that has not been revised, re-read, corrected
again and again. It's terrible. But when one wishes
to attain the simple beauty of the Gospel, surpass
the Vicar of Wakefield and put the Imitation of Jesus
Christ into action, one must spare no effort. Emile
de Girardin and our good Borget (his co-tenant at
the time) wager the sale will be four hundred thou-
sand copies. Emile intends to bring out a franc
edition, so that it may be sold like a Prayer Book."
What with his writing for the Revue de Paris, to
which he was contributing Ferragus, and the pains
he gave himself with the Country Doctor, he was un-
able to deliver the latter work to Mame at the date
stipulated, and the publisher brought a lawsuit against
him, the first of a series of legal disputes he was
destined to wage with publishing firms and magazine
editors during his agitated life. >
Notwithstanding the advertisement produced him
by the lawsuit, the Country Doctor fell flat in the
market. Most of the newspapers spoke contemptuously
of it. One reason given was its loose construction, there
being no plot, and the two love stories being thrust in
towards the end to explain the doctor's altruism and
the vicarious paternity of the Commandant Genestas.
This officer, who is stationed not far from a village
close to the Grande-Chartreuse, pays a few days' visit
to a Doctor Benassis there, under pretext of consulting
him professionally. While on the visit he is initiated
into the transformation that has been wrought by the
90 HONORE DE BALZAC
doctor in the habits of the people and their homes
and surroundings — a regeneration accomphshed quietly
and gradually, vanquishing hostility and lethargy and
converting the peasant's distrust into love. The pla-
cing of the Commandant's adopted child under the
doctor's care, and Benassis' death, which occurs shortly
after, form rather a lame conclusion to the love stories,
which are mysteriously withheld to tempt the reader
to go on with his perusal. For all its dogmatism in
religion and politics, its long arguments in defence
of the author's favourite opinions, and its defective con-
struction, the novel, if one can call it a novel, is one of
Balzac's best creations. The pictures of country scenes
are presented with close fidelity to nature and also with
real artistic arrangement. There are, moreover, de-
lineations of rustic character that are truer to life than
many of the more celebrated ones in the rest of the
novelist's fiction; and, in the episode entitled the
Napoleon of the people, — the narration of an old
soldier of the First Empire, — there is a topical realism
that makes one regret the never-achieved Battle. Add
to these excellences the writer's having put into his
work, for the nonce, a sincere aspiration towards the
ideal ; and, despite flaws, the whole can be pronounced
admirable.
It was just about the time the Country Doctor was
published that he began to dwell upon the advantages
he might secure by connecting the characters in his
novels and forming them into a representative society.
Excited by the perspective this plan offered if all its
possibilities were realized, he hurried to his sister's
house in the Faubourg Poissonniere.
" Salute me," he exclaimed joyfully ; " I'm on the
point of becoming a genius ! "
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 91
And he commenced to explain his thought, which
seemed to him so vast and pregnant with consequence
as to inspire him with awe.
*' How fine it will be if I can manage the thing,"
he continued, striding up and down the drawing-room,
too restless to stay in one place. " I shan't mind now
being treated as a mere teller of tales, and can go on
hewing the stones of my edifice, enjoying, beforehand,
the amazement of my short-sighted critics, when they
contemplate the structure complete."
At length, Honore sat down and more tranquilly
discussed the fortunes of the individuals already born
from his brain, or, as yet in process of birth. He
judged them and determined their fate.
" Such a one," he said, " is a rascal, and will never
do any good. Such another is industrious, and a good
fellow ; he will get rich, and his character will make
him happy. These have been guilty of many pecca-
dilloes ; but they are so intelligent and have such a
thorough knowledge of their fellows that they are sure
to raise themselves to the highest ranks of society."
" Peccadilloes ! " replied his sister. " You are
indulgent."
" They can't change, my dear. They are fathomers
of abysses ; but they will be able to guide others.
The wisest persons are not always the best pilots. It's
not my fault. I haven't invented human nature. I
observe it, in past and present; and I try to depict
it as it is. Impostures in this kind persuade no one."
To the members of his family he announced news
from his world of fiction just as if he were speaking
of actual events.
'* Do you know who Fdix de Vandenesse is marry-
ing ? " he asked. " A Mademoiselle de Grandville.
\
92 HONORE DE BALZAC
The match is an excellent one. The Grandvilles are
rich, in spite of what Mademoiselle de Belleville has
cost the family."
If, now and again, he was begged to save some wild
young man or unhappy woman among his creations,
the answer was :
*' Don't bother me. Truth above all. Those people
have no backbone. What happens to them is in-
evitable. So much the worse for them."
This absorption in the domain of fancy was so
complete at times as to cause him to confuse it with
the outside world. It is related that Jules Sandeau,
returning once from a journey, spoke to him of his
sister's illness. Balzac listened to him abstractedly for
a while, and then interrupted him : " All that, my
friend, is very well," he said to the astonished Jules,
" but let us come back to reality ; let us speak of
Eugenie Grandetr
It was the second great book of 1833 ; and, on the
whole, exhibits the novelist at his best. Eulogiums
came from friends and enemies alike. The critics
were unanimous, too unanimous, indeed, for the
author, who detected in their chorus of praise a re-
iterated condemnation of much of his previous pro-
duction. At last, it even annoyed him to hear his
name invariably mentioned in connection with this
single novel. " Those who call me the father of
Eugenie Grandet seek to belittle me," he cried. " I
grant it is a masterpiece, but a small one. They
forbear to cite the great ones."
His ill-humour was, of course, of later growth.
While Eugenie Grandet was being written, between
July and November of 1833, Balzac was quite content
to estimate it at its higher value. During the period
Balzac at the Age of Thirty
From a Sepia Drawing by Louis Boulanger
[Musee de Tottrs)
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 93
of its composition, he had fallen, perhaps for the first
time in his life, sincerely in love with the woman he
ultimately married ; and it is appropriate to notice here
the synchronism of the event with his high-water
mark in fiction. As he confessed to Zulma Carraud,
love was his life, his essence; he wrote best when
under its influence. There were, be it granted, other
contributory causes to make this rapidly written story
what we find it to be. The place, the date, the people,
the incidents were all close to his own life. Saumur
and Tours are neighbouring towns; and 'tis affirmed
that the original of the goodman Grandet, a certain
Jean Niveleau, had a daughter, whom he refused to
give in marriage to Honore. Maybe tradition has
embroidered a little on the facts, but there would
seem to be much in the narration that belongs to the
writer's personal experience. His sister found fault
with his attributing so many millions to the miser.
*' But, stupid, the thing is true," he replied. " Do you
want me to improve on truth ? If you only knew
what it is to knead ideas, and to give them form and
colour, you wouldn't be so quick to criticize."
As is usual, when the interest is chiefly character-
ization, Balzac does not give us a complicated plot.
We have in Grandet a self-made man, who has amassed
riches by trade and speculation, and lives with his
wife and daughter in a gloomy old house, with only
one servant as miserly as the master. Eugenie's hand
is sought by several suitors, and in particular by the
son of the banker des Grassins and the son of the notary
Cruchot, these two families waging a diplomatic war-
fare on behalf of their respective candidates. Into this
midst suddenly comes the fashionable nephew Charles
Grandet, whose father has, unknown to him, just
94 HONORE DE BALZAC
committed suicide to escape bankruptcy. Eugenie
falls in love with her cousin, and he, apparently, with
her; but the old man, unsoftened by his brother's
death, using it even as a further means of speculation,
gets rid of the unfortunate lover by gingerly helping
him to go abroad. Years pass, and Eugenie's mother
dies, v^hile she herself withers, under the miser's
avaricious tyranny. At length, old Grandet pays his
debt to nature, and Eugenie is left with the millions.
Until now she has waited for the wandering lover's
return; but he, engaging in the slave-trade, has lost
all the generous impulses of his youth, and comes
back only to deny his early affection and marry the
ill-favoured daughter of a Marquis. Eugenie takes a
noble revenge for this desertion by paying her dead
uncle's debts, which Charles had repudiated, and she
marries the notary's son, who leaves her a widow
soon after.
Everything in the tale is absolutely natural, ex-
traordinary in its naturalness; and the reactions of
its various persons upon each other are traced with
fine perception. There is not much of the outward
expression of love — in this Balzac did not excel — but
there is a good deal of its hidden tragedy. Moreover,
the miser's ruling passion is exhibited in traits that
suggest still more than they openly display; and all
the action and circumstance are in the subdued tone
proper to provincial existence. The introductory words
prepare the reader's mind for what follows : —
" In certain country towns there are houses whose
aspect inspires a melancholy equal to that evoked by
the gloomiest cloisters, the most monotonous moor-
land, or the saddest ruins. . . . Perhaps, in these
houses there are at once the silence of the cloister.
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 95
the barrenness of the moorland, and the bones of ruins.
Life and movement are so tranquil in them that a
stranger might believe them uninhabited if he did not
suddenly see the pale, cold gaze of a motionless person
whose half-monastic face leans over the casement at
the noise of an unknown step. ..."
And the shadow persists even in the love-scene.
" Charles said to Eugenie, drawing her to the old
bench, where they sat down under the walnut trees :
* In five days, Eugenie, we must bid each other adieu,
for ever perhaps ; but, at least, for a long while. My
stock and ten thousand francs sent me by two of my
friends are a very small beginning. I cannot think
of my return before several years. My dear cousin,
don't place my life and yours in the balance. I may
perish. Perhaps you may make a rich marriage.' —
* You love me,' she said. — ' Oh yes, dearly,' he replied,
with a depth of accent revealing a corresponding depth
of sentiment. — * I will wait, Charles. Heavens ! my
father is at his window,' she said, pushing away her
cousin, who was approaching to kiss her. She escaped
beneath the archway ; Charles followed her there. On
seeing him, she withdrew to the foot of the staircase
and opened the self-closing door; then hardly know-
ing where she was going, Eugenie found herself near
Nanon's den, in the darkest part of the passage. There,
Charles, who had accompanied her, took her hand, drew
her to his heart, seized her round the waist, and pressed
her to himself. Eugenie no longer resisted. She re-
ceived and gave the purest, sweetest, but also the
entirest of all kisses."
The foregoing and others, equally well drawn, are
figures in the background. Standing out in front of
them, and in lurid relief, is the central figure of the
96 HONORE DE BALZAC
miser, represented with the same mobiUty of tempera-
ment noticeable in George Eliot's creations — a thing
exceptional in Balzac's work. Grandet, as long as
his wife lives, is reclaimable— just reclaimable. Sub-
sequently, he is an automaton responsive only to the
sight and touch of his gold.
The dedication of Eugenie Grandet is to Maria ; and
Maria, portrayed under the features and character of
the heroine, was, we learn, an agreeable girl, of middle-
class origin, who, in the year of 1833, attached herself
to Balzac and bore him a child.
This liaison was running its ephemeral course just
at the time when accident made him acquainted with
his future wife. On the 28th of February 1832, his
publisher Gosselin handed him a letter with a foreign
postmark. His correspondent, a lady, who had read,
she said, and admired his Scenes of Private Life, re-
proached him with losing, in the Shagreen Skin, the
delicacy of sentiment contained in these earlier novels,
and begged him to forsake his ironic, sceptical manner
and revert to the higher manifestations of his talent.
There was no signature to this communication ; and the
writer, who subscribed herself " The Stranger^' begged
him to abstain from any attempt to discover who she
was, as there were paramount reasons why she should
remain anonymous. Balzac's curiosity was keenly
aroused by so much mystery, and he tried, but in
vain, to get hold of some clue that might conduct him
to the retreat of the incognita. After a lapse of seven
months, a second epistle arrived, more romantic in
tone than the first ; and containing, among obscure
allusions to the lady's surroundings and personality,
the following declaration : " You no doubt love and
are loved ; the union of angels must be your lot. Your
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 97
souls must have unknown felicities. The Stranger loves
you both, and desires to be your friend. . . . She like-
wise knows how to love, but that is all. . . . Ah I you
understand me."
A third letter followed this one shortly afterwards,
asking the novelist to acknowledge its receipt in the
Qitotidienne journal, which he did, expressing in the
advertisement his regret at not being able to address
a direct reply. At last, in the spring of 1833, the
fair correspondent made herself known. She was a
Countess Evelina Hanska, wife of a Polish nobleman
living at Wierzchownia in the Ukraine. She further
allowed it to be understood that she was young, hand-
some, immensely rich, and not over happy with her
husband. This information sufficed to set Balzac's
imagination agog. At once, he enshrined the dame
in the temple of his ideal, poured out his heart to her,
and told her of his struggles and ambitions, meanwhile
fashioning a realm of the future in which he and she
were to be the two reigning monarchs.
Madame Hanska was also a Pole. She belonged
to the noble Rzewuska stock and was born in the castle
of Pohrebyszcze between 1804 and 1806. Owing to
family reverses, her parents, who had several other
children to provide for, were glad to meet with a
husband for her in the Count Hanski,^ who was twenty-
five years her senior. The marriage took place between
1818 and 1822, and four children, three boys and a
girl, were its issue ; but, the boys all dying in infancy,
the young mother was left with her little daughter
Anna to bring up, and with the desires of a rich,
cultured woman, who did not find in her home-circle
the wherewithal to satisfy them.
^ Hanski is the masculine form of Hanska.
G
98 HONORS DE BALZAC
Of her own charms she had spoken truly. DafF-
inger's miniature of her, painted when she was thirty,
represents her as abundantly endowed by nature;
and Gigoux pastel of 1852, which is less faithful and
shows her considerably older, still gives substantially
the portrait that Barbey d'Aurevilly sketched of her
after Balzac's death : " She was of imposing and noble
beauty, somewhat massive," says this writer. " But
she knew how to maintain, despite her embonpoint, a
very great charm, which was enhanced by her delight-
ful foreign accent. She had splendid shoulders, the
finest arms in the world, and a complexion of radiant
brilliancy. Her soft black eyes, her full red lips, her
framing mass of curled hair, her finely chiselled fore-
head, and the sinuous grace of her gait gave her an
air of abandon and dignity together, a haughty yet
sensuous expression which was very captivating."
Fascinated by Balzac's masterly delineation of her
sex, and longing to learn more about the man who
had appealed to her so powerfully, she contrived a
journey to Switzerland in 1833, in which her husband
and child accompanied her. Switzerland was a land
easier for a noble Russian subject to obtain permission
to visit. Neufchatel was the place of sojourn chosen,
since there was the home of Anna's Swiss governess.
Mademoiselle Henriette Borel, who had played an
intermediary's role in the beginning of the adventure.
As soon as he had news of the party's arrival,
Balzac posted off, concealing from every one the
reason for his sudden departure. It had been agreed
that the meeting should be on the chief promenade ;
and there, on a bench, with one of the novelist's books
on her lap, Madame Hanska sat with her husband,
when he came up and accosted her. One account
LETTERS TO *'THE STRANGER" 99
states that the Countess having, in her excitement,
allowed a scarf to drop and hide the book, he passed
her by more than once, not daring to speak till she
took up the scarf. The same account adds that the
lady, remarking the little, stout man staring at her,
prayed he might not be the one she was expecting.
But no written confession of the Countess's exists to
prove that such a thought damped her enthusiasm.
Balzac's impression was recorded in a letter to his
sister. " I am happy, very happy," he wrote. '* She
is twenty-seven, possesses most beautiful black hair,
the smooth and deliciously fine skin of brunettes, a
lovely little hand, is naive and imprudent to the point
of embracing me before every one. I say nothing about
her colossal wealth. What is it in comparison with
beauty. I am intoxicated with love." The one draw-
back to the meeting was Monsieur Hanski. *' Alas ! "
adds the writer, " he did not quit us during five days
for a single second. He went from his wife's skirt to
my waistcoat. And Neufchatel is a small town, where
a woman, an illustrious foreigner, cannot take a step
without being seen. Constraint doesn't suit me."
Evidently, during the Neufchatel intercourse, some
sort of understanding must have been reached, based
on the rather unkind anticipation of the Count Hanski's
death. At that time, the gentleman's health was pre-
carious. He survived, however, until 1841, meanwhile
more or less cognizant of his wife's attachment and
oifering no opposition. He even deemed himself
honoured by Balzac's friendship. How rapid the pro-
gress of the novelist's passion was for the new idol may
be judged by the letter he despatched to Geneva, two
or three months later, in December, whilst he was cor-
recting the proofs of Eugenie Gra?idet. " I think I
100 HONORE DE BALZAC
shall be at Geneva on the 13th," he wrote. " The desire
to see you makes me invent things that ordinarily don't
come into my head. I correct more quickly. It's not
only courage you give me to support the difficulties of
life ; you give me also talent, at any rate, facility. . . .
My Eve, my darUng, my kind, divine Eve ! w^hat a
grief it is to me not to have been able to tell you every
evening all that I have done, said, and thought."
The visit to Geneva was paid, and lasted six weeks,
the novelist quitting Switzerland only on the 8th of
February 1834. From this date onward, a regular cor-
respondence was kept up between them, compensating
for their seeing each other rarely. The project of
marriage, more tenaciously pursued by Balzac than by
his Eve, was yet no hindrance to his fleeting fancies for
other women. These interim amours have a good deal
preoccupied his various biographers, partly because of
the undoubted use he made of them in his novels, and
partly also because of the trouble he gave himself to
establish among circles outside his own immediate en-
tourage the legend of his being a sort of Sir Galahad,
leading a perfectly chaste life and caring only for his
literary labours. Says Theophile Gautier : —
" He used to preach to us a strange literary hygiene.
We ought to shut ourselves up for two or three years,
drink water, eat soaked lupines like Protogenes, go to
bed at six o'clock in the evening, and work till morn-
ing . . . and especially to live in the most absolute
chastity. He insisted much on this last recommenda-
tion, very rigorous for a young man of twenty-four or
twenty-five years of age. According to him, real
chastity developed the powers of the mind to the
highest degree, and gave to those that practised it
unknown faculties. We timidly objected that the
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 101
greatest geniuses had indulged in the love passion,
and we quoted illustrious names. Balzac shook his
head and replied : * They would have done much more
but for the women.' The only concession he would
make us, regretfully, was to see the loved one for half-
an-hour a year. Love letters he allowed. They formed
a writer's style."
George Sand speaks much to the same effect in
her reminiscences. She believed in the legend, perhaps
because Balzac was not attracted by her sexually.
k " Moderate in every other respect," she says, " he had
the purest morals, having always dreaded wildness as the
enemy of talent ; and he nearly always cherished women
solely in his heart and in his head, even in his youth.
He pursued chastity on principle ; and his relations
with the fair sex were those merely of curiosity. When
he found a curiosity equal to his own, he exploited this
mine with the cynicism of a father-confessor. But,
when he met with health of mind and body, he was as
happy as a child to speak of real love and to rise into
the lofty regions of sentiment."
Unfortunately for the preceding testimony, a flat
contradiction is given to it not only by the recorded
facts of the novelist's life, but by his sister, who knew
better than George Sand and Gautier that Balzac's
profession of sublimer sentiments did not exclude a
more mundane feeling and practice. Commenting on
George Sand's generous panegyric of her brother, she
adds : " It is an error to speak of his extreme moderation.
He does not deserve this praise. Outside of his work,
which was first and foremost, he loved and tasted all the
pleasures of this world. I think he would have been
the most conceited of all men, if he had not been
the most discreet. Confident in himself, he never
102 HONORE DE BALZAC
committed the least indiscretion in his relations with
others, and kept their secrets, though unable to keep
his own."
The Viscount Spoelberch de Lovenjoul is still more
explicit in his short book on Balzac and Madame
Hanska, entitled Roman d Amour, Speaking of the
novelist's various liaisons and love escapades, which
were covered up with such solicitude from the eyes
of the world, he remarks that Balzac, while vaunting
himself, in argument, of having remained chaste for
a number of years, owned to his sister that the truth
was quite different. The novelist did his utmost, con-
tinues Monsieur de Lovenjoul, to foster the tradition of
his hermit-like conduct ; and to all the jealous women
with whom he entertained friendly relations he asserted
that his morals were as spotless as those of a cenobite.
Ever and everywhere he abused the credulity of those
who flattered themselves they were his only love.
Madame de Berny was not among the credulous
ones, nor yet so resigned as the simple hourgeoise
Maria, who, to quote Balzac's own words, "fell like
a flower from heaven, exacted neither correspondence
nor attentions, and said : * Love me a year and I will
love you all my life.' " Though forced to accept the
transformation of her relations with her young lover
into a purely platonic friendship, she made occasional
protests against being supplanted by younger rivals —
the imperious Madame de Castries among the number.
The birth and growth of his affection for Madame
Hanska she appears to have felt and resented to a
greater degree than his previous infidelities to her.
Not even its maintenance, for the time being, on the
plane of pure sentiment, dispelled her jealous thoughts.
Being apprized of Balzac's dedication of a portion of
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 103
the Woman of Thirty Years Old to his Eve, she in-
sisted on his expunging the offending name, while the
sheets were in the press. Whether her fretting over
his transferred allegiance hastened her end it is im-
possible to say with any certainty; yet one cannot
help being struck by the fact that the serious phase
of the malady that killed her almost coincided with
the beginning of their separation.
Madame Hanska, although she started with a sup-
position of his loving another, became exacting also,
in proportion as her admirer's professions of loyalty
conferred the right upon her. Rumours reached her
now and again, and sometimes precise information,
of her place being usurped by another. And, later,
as will be again mentioned, a breach occurred between
them which was nearly final. By his various mis-
tresses, Balzac had four children, including Marias
little daughter, two of whom survived him.
All this notwithstanding, it would be a mistake
to assume that he was a deliberate woman-hunter,
and wasted his energies in licentiousness. His immense
industry and productiveness are enough to prove that
such lapses were more the natural outcome of his
having so constant a bevy of lady worshippers about
him, and occurred as opportunity offered only. On
the other hand, it must be admitted that woman's
counsels, woman's encouragements, woman's caresses
and help were very necessary to him ; and he drew
largely on the capacities, material and moral, of the
Marthas and Maries that crossed his orbit, attracting
him or themselves attracted.
The twelvemonth which was marked by the
achievement of his most perfect novel also brought
him into regular business relations with Werdet,
104 HONORE DE BALZAC
destined to be one of his biographers, who now became
his chief pubUsher and remained so during several
years. Incorrect in many details which lay outside
his own ken, and which he had gleaned from hearsay
or books hastily written, Werdet's own book, a familiar
portrait of Balzac, is nevertheless a valuable document.
If the author was unable to fathom the whole of the
genius and character of the man he described, he yet
sincerely appreciated them ; and not even the soreness
he could not help feeling when ultimately thrown
aside, destroyed his deep-rooted worship of him whom
he regarded as one of the highest glories of French
literature.
Werdet, when he was introduced to the writer of
the Physiology of Marriage, had already tried his luck
at publishing, but had been compelled to abandon the
master's position and to enter as an employee into the
house of a Madame Bechet, who was engaged in the
same line of business. Having read and liked some
of Balzac's earlier works, he persuaded the firm to
entrust him with the task of negotiating a purchase
of the exclusive rights of the novelist's Studies of
Manners and Moi^als in the Nineteenth Century, The
negotiation was carried through in 1832, and a sum
of thirty-six thousand francs was paid to Balzac. This
was the writer's real beginning of money-making.
Twelve months after, Werdet resolved to start once
more on his own account. He had only a few
thousand francs capital. His idea was to risk them
in buying one of Balzac's books ; and then, if success-
ful, gradually to acquire a publishing monopoly in the
great man's productions. Distrusting his own powers
of persuasion, he enlisted the good offices of Barbier,
the late partner of the Rue des Marais printing-house.
House where Balzac lived
I. rue Cassini
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 105
who was a persona grata with the novelist. Together,
they went to the Rue Cassini ; and Barbier set forth
Werdet's desire.
"Very good," replied the great man. "But you
are aware, Monsieur, that those who now publish my
works require large capital, since I often need con-
siderable advances."
Proudly, young Werdet brought out his six notes of
five hundred francs each, and spread them on the table.
"There is all my fortune," he said. "You can
have it for any book you please to write for me."
At the sight of them Balzac burst out laughing.
" How can you imagine, Monsieur, that I — I— de
Balzac ! who sold my Studies of Manners and Moi^als
not long ago to Madame Bechet for thirty-six thousand
francs — I, whose collaboration to the Revue de Paris
is ordinarily remunerated by Buloz at five hundred
francs per sheet, should forget myself to the point of
handing you a novel from my pen for a thousand
crowns? You cannot have reflected on your offer,
Monsieur ; and I should be entitled to look upon your
step as unbecoming in the highest degree, were it not
that your frankness in a measure justifies you."
Barbier tried to plead for his friend, and mentioned
that, in consideration of Werdet's share in the transac-
tion with Madame Bechet, a second edition of the
Country Doctor might be granted him for the three
thousand francs. But Balzac, retorting that whatever
service had been rendered was not to himself but by
himself, dismissed his visitors with the words :
"We have spent an hour, gentlemen, in useless
talk. You have made me lose two hundred francs.
For me, time is money. I must work. Good-day."
They left, and Barbier, to comfort his friend,
106 HON ORE DE BALZAC
prophesied that, in spite of this reception, Balzac
would enter into pourpa7ders with him, and that
Werdet had only to wait, and news would be received
from the Rue Cassini shortly. He was not mistaken.
Three days elapsed and then Werdet had the following
note sent him : —
" Sir, — You called upon me the other day when
my head was preoccupied with some writing that I
wanted to finish, and I consequently did not very well
comprehend what was your drift. To-day, my head
is freer. Do me the pleasure to call on me at four
o'clock, and we can talk the matter over."
Werdet waited nearly a week before he paid the
requested visit. In quite another tone, the novelist
discussed the proposed scheme, promised to use his
influence on the young publisher's behalf, and gave
him the Country Doctor for the price offered.
Thenceforward, a familiar guest in the dwelling of
the Rue Cassini, Werdet described it in detail, when
composing his Portrait Intime, It was part of a two-
storied pavilion (as the French call a moderate- sized
house) standing to the left in a courtyard and garden,
with another similar building on the right. From
the ground -floor a flight of steps led up to a glass-
covered gallery joining the two buildings and serving
as an antechamber to each. Its sides were hung in
white and blue-striped glazed calico ; and a long,
blue-upholstered divan, a blue and brown carpet, and
some fine china vases filled with flowers, adorned it.
From the gallery the visitor proceeded into a pretty
drawing-room, fifteen feet square, lighted on the east
by a small casement that looked over the yard of a
neighbouring house. Opposite the drawing-room door
was a black marble mantelpiece.
■
LETTERS TO *'THE STRANGER" 107
The salon gave access to the bedroom and the
dining-room, the latter being connected with the
kitchen underneath by a narrow staircase. A secret
door in the salon opened into the bathroom with its
walls of white stucco, its bath of white marble, and its
red, opaque window-panes diffusing a rose-coloured
tint through the air. Two easy-chairs in red morocco
stood near the bath.
The bedroom, having two windows, one towards
the south and the observatory, the other overlooking
a garden of flowers and trees, was very bright and
cheery. The furniture, with its shades of white, pink,
and gold, was rich and handsome. A secret door
existed also in this chamber, hidden behind muslin
hangings ; it led down the same narrow staircase
already mentioned to the kitchen, and thence out
into the yard. Nanon, Balzac's cook, less discreet
than Auguste, the valet-de-chambre, had tales to
tell Werdet about certain lady visitors who arrived
by means of this private staircase into the daintily
arranged bedroom.
The study, of oblong shape, about eighteen feet
by twelve, had likewise two windows affording a view
only over the yard of the next house, which, being
lofty, made the room dark, even in the sunniest
weather. Here the furniture was simple, the principal
piece being an exceedingly fine ebony bookcase, with
mirrored panels. It contained a large collection of
rare books, all bound in red morocco and set off with
the escutcheon of the d'Entragues family. Among
them were nearly all the authors who had written on
mysticism, occult science, and religion. Opposite the
bookcase, between the windows, was a carved ebony
cabinet filled with red morocco box-cases, and on the
108 HONORE DE BALZAC
top of the cabinet stood a plaster statuette represent-
ing Napoleon I. Across the sword-sheath was stuck
a tiny paper with these words written by the novelist :
*' What he could not achieve with the sword I will
accomplish with the pen. Honore de Balzac."
On the mantelpiece decorated with a mirror,
there was an alarum in unpolished bronze, together
with two vases in brown porcelain. And on either
side of the mirror hung all sorts of woman's trifles ;
here, a crumpled glove, there a small satin shoe ; and,
further, a little rusty iron key. Questioned as to the
significance of this last article, the owner called it his
talisman. There was also a diminutive framed picture
exhibiting beneath the glass a fragment of brown silk,
with an arrow-pierced heart embroidered on it, and
the English words : An Unknown Friend, In front of
a modest writing-table covered with green baize was
a large Voltaire arm-chair upholstered in red morocco ;
and about the room were a few other ebony chairs
covered in brown cloth.
Within his sanctum Balzac worked clad in a white
Dominican gown with hood, the summer material
being dimity and cashmere ; he was shod with em-
broidered slippers, and his waist was girt with a rich
Venetian-gold chain, on which were suspended a paper-
knife, a pair of scissors, and a gold penknife, all of
them beautifully carved. Whatever the season, thick
window- curtains shut out the rays of light that might
have penetrated into the study, which was illuminated
only by two moderate-sized candelabra of unpolished
bronze, each holding a couple of continually burning
candles.
The installation of these various household neces-
saries and luxuries was progressive and was associated
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 109
closely with the heyday period of his celebrity. It
was during 1833 that the metamorphosis was mainly
effected, for Werdet relates that, in the month of
November, he found Balzac, one afternoon, superin-
tending the laying down of some rich Aubusson carpets
in his house. Money must have been plentiful just
then. Learning accidentally on this occasion that his
publisher had no carpet in his drawing-room, the
novelist surprised him the same evening by sending
some men with one that he had bought for him. This
present Werdet suitably acknowledged a short time
after ; and, throughout the period of their intimacy,
there were a good few compliments of the kind ex-
changed, which appear to have cost the man of business
dearer than the man of letters.
To tell the truth, Balzac had a knack of presuming
that something he intended doing was already done.
One notorious example was the white horse he
asserted, in presence of a number of guests assembled
in Madame de Girardin's drawing-room, had been
given by him to Jules Sandeau. The animal in ques-
tion, he said, he had bought from a well-known dealer ;
the celebrated trainer Baucher had tested it and de-
clared it to be the most perfect animal ever ridden.
For nearly half-an-hour the speaker expatiated on the
points of this wonderful steed, and thoroughly con-
vinced his audience of the gift having been really
bestowed. A few evenings later, Jules Sandeau met
Balzac at the same house, and the subject was of course
reverted to by their mutual friends. As .the novelist
asked him whether he liked the horse, Jules, not to
be outvied, answered with an enumeration of its
qualities. But he never saw the animal for all that.
Another instance equally amusing was furnished at
110 HONORE DE BALZAC
a dinner given in honour of Balzac by Henri de Latouche,
who had not then broken with him. At dessert, the
host sketched the plan of a novel he intended to write,
and Balzac, who had been drinking champagne, warmly
applauded : '* The thing," he said, " is capital. Even
summarily related, it is charming. What will it be
when the talent, style, and wit of the author have en-
hanced it ! " Next evening, at Madame de Girardin's,
he reproduced, with his native fire and power of descrip-
tion, the narration he had heard the night before — repro-
duced it as his own — persuaded it was his own. Every
one was enthusiastic, and complimented him. But the
matter was bruited abroad. Latouche recognized in
Balzac's proposed new novel the creation he had himself
unfolded ; and wrote a sharp protest which, for once,
forced its recipient to distinguish fact from fiction, and
what was his share, what another's, in the output of
ideas. Yet he might be excused for some of his frequent
fits of forgetfulness, since he sowed his own concep-
tions and discoveries broadcast, and often encountered
them again in the possession of lesser minds who had
utilized them before he could put them into execution.
In the year of 1833, the novelist's correspondence
alludes to several books which, like others previously
spoken of, were never published, and probably never
written. Among these are The Pfivilege, The History
of a Fortunate Idea, and the Catholic Priest. Meanwhile,
he did add considerably to his Droll Tales, the first
series of which appeared in the same twelve months
as Eugenie Grandet. These stories — in the style of
Boccaccio, and of some of Chaucer's writing — broad,
racy, and somewhat licentious, albeit containing nothing
radically obscene, were meant to illustrate the history
of the French language and French manners from olden
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 111
to modern days. Only part of the project was realized.
They are told with a wit and humour that are nowhere
present to the same degree in the rest of the novelist's
work, and in their colouring, as Taine justly remarks,
recall Jordaens' painting with its vivid carnation tints.
At this time the author was occupied with Bertha
Repentant and the Succubus, which, however, were
published only three years subsequently.
CHAPTER VI
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER/' 1833, 1834
If Balzac's intimates, careful of his future, had besought
him to jot down in a diary the detailed doings of his
every-day life, with a confession of his thoughts, feel-
ings, and opinions, in fine an unmasking of himself, he
would surely have urged the material impossibility of
his fulfilling such a task, over and above the labours of
Hercules to which his ambition and his necessities bound
him. And yet he performed the miracle unsolicited.
From the day when he quitted Neufchatel to the
day when he arrived at Wierzchownia, on his crowning
visit in 1848, he never ceased chronicling, in a virtually
uninterrupted series of letters to Madame Hanska,
closely following each other during most of this long
period, a faithful account of his existence— exception
made for its love episodes — which, having fortunately
been preserved, constitutes an almost complete autobio-
graphy of his mature years. When the end of the
correspondence shall have been given to the public,
three volumes, at least, will have been taken up with
the record — a record which taxed his time and strength,
indeed overtaxed them, causing him to encroach unduly
on his already too short hours of sleep. The motive
must have been a powerful one that could induce him
to make so large a sacrifice. Whether it was love alone,
as he protested again and again, or love mixed with
gratified pride, or both joined to the hope of enjoying
112
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 113
the vast fortune that loomed through the mists of
the far-off Ukraine, the phenomenon remains the same.
Certainly some great force was behind the pen that
untiringly wrote in every vein and mood these astonish-
ing Lette7's to the Stranger.
In those up to the year 1834 that were, properly
speaking, private, the tone rises to a pitch of lover-
passion that could hardly fail to alarm, even whilst
they flattered the one to whom his devotion was ad-
dressed. Although Balzac's brief sojourns in Madame
Hanska's vicinity had resulted in no breach of the
marriage law, there was too much implied in his
assumption of their betrothal to please the husband, if
any of these lover's oaths should fall under his notice.
And this was what just did happen before many
months had gone by. In consequence of some accident
which is not explained, the Count had cognizance of
two epistles that reached his wife while both were stay-
ing at Vienna ; and, for a time, it seemed as though the
intercourse would be definitely severed. A humble
apology was sent to the Count, the letters being passed
off as a joke ; and the interpretation was, fortunately
for Balzac, accepted. Madame Hanska was off^ended
as well as her husband, or, at any rate, she affected to
be. It appears some negligence had been committed
by the novelist in forwarding the incriminating epistles.
However, being cleared in her husband's eyes, she
yielded her forgiveness.
Balzac's policy, after this mishap, was to keep on
the best terms possible with Monsieur Hanski, who, to
use the P'renchman's English expression, suffered from
chronic blue devils. After leaving his new friends at
Geneva, the novelist procured the Count an autograph
letter from Rossini, this great composer being a
H
114 HONORE DE BALZAC
favourite at Wierzchownia. To his new lady-love he
sent an effusion of his own in verse, having small poetic
merit, but natheless pretty sentiment : —
Rive cherie
Ou sont nees mes amours,
Sois ma patrie.
L^, mon amie,
Des cieux la fleur,
S'estiattendrie
De mon malheur.
Rive cherie
OCi sont nees mes amours,
Sois ma patrie.
L4, de«ma vie
Commen9a I'heur ;
Melancolie
N'est plus douleur.
Ah ! dis cherie,
Ou sont nees mes amours
Est la patrie.
During the Geneva intercourse, he did his best to
familiarize Eve with all the names and characters of
the people he knew, since his interests were to be hers,
or, at any rate, so he flattered himself. She learnt to
distinguish the people who were for him from those
who were against him. Of these latter there were a
goodly number, some made enemies by his own fault,
through over-susceptibility or unconscious arrogance.
Both causes were responsible for the quarrel occurring
about this time between him and Emile de Girardin,
which was never entirely healed, in spite of the persever-
ing efforts of Emile's wife, better known as Madame
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 115
Delphine Gay. *' I have bidden good-bye to the Gays'
molehill," he informed Madame Hanska. It was pretty
much the same with his estrangement from the Duke
de Fitz- James, which, however, was followed by a speedy
reconciliation, for the Duke was offering, a few months
later, to support him again in a political election. The
unsatisfactory state of his health, and some family
troubles, decided him to defer his candidature to the
end of the decade, by which date he hoped to have writ-
ten two works — The Tragedy of Philippe II, and The
History of the Succession of the Marquis of Carrabas
— which should implant his conception of absolute
monarchic power so strongly in the minds of his
fellow- citizens that they would be glad to send him to
Parliament as their representative. Other political
articles and pamphlets of his, he asserted, would enable
him by 1839 to dominate European questions.
Werdet has a great deal to say about his idol's over-
weening exaction of homage, leading him to be himself
guilty of acts of rudeness towards others, thus alienat-
ing their sympathies. The publisher relates one scene
that he witnessed at the offices of William Duckett,
proprietor of the Dictionary of Conversation and Read-
ing. The office door was suddenly opened and Balzac
stalked in with his hat on his head. " Is Duckett in ? "
he curtly asked, addressing in common the chief editor,
his sub, and an attendant. There was a conspiracy of
silence. Evidently, this was not the novelist's first
visit, and his style was known. Again the question
was put in the same language and manner, and again
no one replied. Advancing now a step, and speaking
to the chief editor, he repeated his question for a third
time. Monglave, who was an irritable gentleman,
being accosted personally, answered briefly: "Put
116 HONORE DE BALZAC
your question to the sub-editor." There was a wheel-
about, and another peremptory inquiry, to which the
sub, imitating his chief, replied with " Ask the atten-
dant." At present boiling with rage, Balzac turned to
the porter and thundered : " Is Duckett in ? " " Mon-
sieur Balzac," returned the attendant, "these gentle-
men have forbidden me to tell you." Threatening to
report the affair to Duckett, the novelist withdrew,
pursued by the mocking laughter of the chief editor
and the sub; but, on second thoughts, he deemed it
more prudent to let the matter drop.
Another example of this peculiar assumption of
superiority occurred not long after at a dinner given
by Werdet in honour of a young author, Jules Bergou-
nioux, whose novels were being much read. Among
the guests were Gustave Planche, Jules Sandeau, and
Balzac. During the meal the conversation, after many
assaults of wit and mirth, fell on the necessity of defend-
ing writers against the piracy and mutilation of their
books in foreign countries, more especially in Belgium.
All expressed their opinion energetically, young Ber-
gounioux like the rest, he happening to class himself
with his fellows in the words — we men of letters. At
the conclusion of his little speech, Balzac uttered a
guffaw : " You, sir, a man of letters ! what preten-
sion ! what presumption ! You ! compare yourself to
us ! Really, sir, you forget that you have the honour
to be sitting here with the marshals of modern litera-
ture."
This exhibition and others similar were natural to
the man. He could not help them. It was impossible
for him not to be continually proclaiming his own great-
ness. *' Don't tax me with littleness," he said in one of
bis letters to Delphine Gay, in which he Justified his
»
Balzac and Countess Hanska
A Caricature of the time
{Collection of M. Marqiiet de Vasselot)
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 117
breaking with her husband. " I think myself too great
to be offended by any one."
The domestic troubles alluded to above, which were
worrying Balzac in 1834, had partly to do with his
brother Henry, a sort of ne'er-do-well, who had been
out to the Indies and had returned with an undesirable
wife, and prospects — or rather the lack of them — that
made him a burden to the other members of the family.
Madame Balzac, too, was unwell at Chantilly ; and her
illnesses always affected Honore, who, at such moments,
reproached himself for not being able to do more on
her behalf. Not that his year's budget was a poor one.
The seventy thousand francs at which he estimated his
probable earnings for the twelvemonth were not on this
occasion so very much beyond the truth, if his author's
percentages were included. Werdet — the illustrious
Werdet, who, he said, somewhat resembled the lUus-
trious Gaudissart^ — bought an edition of his philosophic
novels for fifteen thousand francs ; and, besides two
principal books to be mentioned further on, both of
which appeared before the close of the year, there were
parts oiSeraphita and The Cabinet of Antiques which the
Revue de Paris was publishing as serials. His notorious
quarrel and lawsuit with this Review was yet to come.
But there was storm in the air even now. Seraphita,
the subject inspired by Madame Hanska and dedicated
to her, was but little to the taste of Buloz the editor ;
and he declared to Balzac, who was making him wait for
copy, that it was hardly worth while taking so long and
making so much fuss over a novel which neither the
public nor he, the editor, could understand. Happily
the dear Werdet was at hand to arrange the difficulty.
Though in the same case as Buloz, and faiHng altogether
^ One of the characters in the Comedie Humaine.
118 HONORE DE BALZAC
to comprehend the subject or its treatment, he took
over Seraphita in 1835 and published it.
Next to poUtics, as a means of gaining name and
fame more quickly, Balzac esteemed play- writing. The
esteem was purely commercial. In his heart of hearts
he rather despised this species of composition, entertain-
ing the notion that it was something to be done quickly,
if at all, and utilizable to please the groundlings. Yet,
because he saw that there was money in it, he turned
his hand to it, time after time, and, for long, had to
abandon it as constantly. In 1834 he formed a partner-
ship with Jules Sandeau and Emmanuel Arago, with
the idea of risking less in case of failure. In addition
to the tragedy already spoken of, he tried two others —
T'he Courtiers and Don Philip and Don Charles^ the
latter modelled on Schiller's Don Carlos, The Grande
Mademoiselle was a comic history of Lauzun ; and his
Prudlioimne, Bigamist was a farce, in which a dummy
placed in a bed seemed to him capable, with a night's
working on it, of bringing down the house. Vaguely
he felt, and vaguely he confessed to his sister, what
he had seen and confessed thirteen years earlier, that
the drama was not his forte. But, anchored in the
conviction that he ought finally to succeed in every-
thing he undertook, he returned to the attempt with
magnificent pluck and perseverance.
His colleague for the nonce, Sandeau, he considered
to be a protege of his ; and used him awhile as a kind
of secretary. In this year especially he showed much
solicitude about him. There was nothing to excite
his jealousy in the author of Sacs et Parchemins, who
was not elected to the Academy until nearly the end
of the decade in which Balzac died. On the contrary,
his pity was aroused by Sandeau's precarious position and
LETTERS TO **THE STRANGER" 119
by the recent separation between Madame Dudevant
and this first of her lovers, who did his best to commit
suicide by swallowing a dose of acetate of morphia.
Luckily the dose was so large that Sandeau's stomach
refused to digest it. George Sand herself Balzac
admired but did not care for at this time. He would
talk to her amiably when he met her at the Opera ;
but, if she invited him to dinner, he invented an excuse,
if possible, for not going. "Don't speak to me," he
would say, "of this writer of the neuter gender.
Nature ought to have given her more breeches and
less style."
His opinion, however, did not prevent him, in 1842,
from accepting her help. An article had come out
in her Revue Indepeiidante, without her knowledge,
attacking him violently. She wrote to apologize ; and
Balzac called on her, to explain, as he informed
Madame Hanska, how injustice serves the cause of
talent. She told him then that she should like to
write a thorough study of him and his books ; and
he made as though he would dissuade her, saying
that she would only get herself into bad odour with
his critics. Still she persisted, and he accordingly asked
her to compose a preface for an ensuing publication
of his whole works, the preface to be a defence of
him against those who were his enemies. Whether
this notice was written before the novelist's death
is uncertain. At any rate, it was not printed until
1875, when it appeared in her volume Autour de la
Table,
It was difficult for Balzac to be fair towards
those men of letters among his contemporaries who
excelled in his own domain ; yet his judgment, when
unwarped, was fine, keen, and, in many instances.
120 HONORE DE BALZAC
endowed with prophetic sight. For instance, in
placing Alfred de Musset as a poet above Victor Hugo
or Lamartine, he daringly contradicted the opinions of
his own day, and anticipated a criticism which is at
present becoming respectable if not fashionable. On
the other hand, his estimate of Volupte, Saint- Beuve's
just then published novel, which he was soon to imitate
and recreate in his Lily in the Valley, was manifestly
prejudiced. He called it a book badly written in most
of its parts, weak, loosely constructed, diffuse, in which
there were some good things, in short a puritanical
book, the chief character of it, Madame Couaen not
being woman enough. His opinion, which he imparted
to Madame Hanska, he apparently took no trouble
to conceal, for Sainte-Beuve was evidently aware of
it when he treated Balzac very sharply in an article of
this same year of 1834. From that date, the celebrated
lecturer looked with coldness and disfavour on the
novelist, and even in his final pronouncement of the
Causeries du Lundi, shortly after Balzac's death, he
meted out but faint praise.
Something has been said in a previous chapter
of the novelist's belief in certain occult powers of
the mind, with which the newly discovered action
of magnetism seemed to him to be connected. At
first, his ideas on the subject were a good deal mixed.
When, in 1832, a terrible epidemic of cholera was
spreading its ravages, he wrote to Doctor Chapelain,
suggesting that somnambulism — he would have called
it hypnotism to-day — should be employed to seek
out the causes of the malady, and a test applied to
prove whether its virtues were real or chimerical. In
1834, he had come to pin his faith to the healing
powers of magnetism. *' When you or Monsieur
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 121
Hanski or Anna are ill," he wrote to Eve, " let me know.
Don't laugh at me. At Issoudun, facts recently de-
monstrated to me that I possess very large magnetic
potency, and that, either through a somnambulist " (he
meant a hypnotist) "or through myself, I can cure
persons dear to me." To all his friends he reiterated
the same advice — magnetic treatment, which he declared
his mother capable of exercising as well as himself.
Madame Balzac's initiation into the science was due to
the Prince of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst,
Bishop of Sardica, who, in his several visits to Paris
between 1821 and 1829, wrought wonderful cures by
the simple imposition of hands. As the lady used to
suffer from a swelling in the bowels whenever she
ate raw fruit, the Bishop, hearing of it, came one day
to see her, and applied his method, which cured her.
Balzac, being a witness of the miracle, became an
ardent investigator in this new branch — or rather old
branch revived — of therapeutics. Thenceforward, his
predilection for theories of the occult went hand in
hand with his equally strong taste for the analytic
observation of visible phenomena; and not infre-
quently he indulged in their simultaneous literary
expression. The composing of Seraphita was carried
on at the same time as his Search for the Absolute
and Pa^e Goriot,
Both of these last two novels were finished and
published in 1834. In the Search for the Absolute,
we have Balthazar Claes, a man of wealth and leisure,
living in the ancient town of Douai, and married to a
wife who adores him and who has borne him children.
Claes' hobby is scientific research ; his aim, the dis-
covery of the origin of things, which he believes can be
given him by his crucible. In his family mansion, of
122 HONORE DE BALZAC
antique Flemish style, which is admirably described
by the novelist at great length, he pursues his tireless
experiments ; and, with lejss justification than Bernard
Palissy, encroaches by degrees on the capital of his
fortune, which melts away in his furnace and alembics.
During the first period of his essays, his wife tries to
have confidence in his final success, herself studies all
sorts of learned treatises, in order to be able to converse
with him suitably and to encourage him in his work ;
but, at last, unable to delude her own mind any longer,
she weeps with her children over the approaching
destruction of their home, and the grief wears her out
and kills her. Luckily the daughter, Marguerite, is
made of sterner stuff than her mother. And, with her
brother, she toils to pay her father s debts and to keep
the home together. At the end, Claes himself dies,
still absorbed in his chimera, and his last words are an
endeavour to formulate the marvellous revelation which
his disordered brain persuades him he has now received.
" ' Eureka ! ' he cried with a shrill voice, and fell
back on his bed with a thud. In passing away, he
uttered a frightful groan, and his convulsed eyes, until
the doctors closed them, spoke his regret not to have
been able to bequeath to science the key of a mystery
whose veil had been tardily torn aside under the gaunt
fingers of Death."
The Search for the Absolute may be classed with
Eugenie Grandet in the category of the novelist's best
creations. Though Claes is, as much as Grandet, and
perhaps more, an abnormal being, his sacrifice of every
duty of life to the pursuit of the irrealizable is common
enough in humanity. By reason of the novelist's
intense delineation, his figure shows out in monstrous
proportions; but these are skilfully relieved by the
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 123
happier fates of the children. The lengthy descriptions
of the opening chapter he defended against his sister
Laure's strictures, asserting that they had ramifications
with the subject which escaped her. His present-
ment, too, of Marguerite he said was not forced, as
she thought. Marguerite was a Flemish woman, and
Flemish women followed one idea out and, with phlegm,
went unswervingly towards their goal. The labour
the book had cost him he owned to Madame Hanska.
Two members of the Academy of Sciences taught him
chemistry, so that he might be exact in his representa-
tion of Claes' experiments ; and he read Berzelius into
the bargain. Moreover, he had revised and modified
the proofs of the novel no fewer than a dozen times.
As Werdet tells, the real work of composition, with
Balzac, hardly commenced until he had a set of galley
proofs. What he sent first to the printer, scribbled
with his crow's-quill, was a mere sketch ; and the
sketch itself was a sort of Chinese puzzle, largely com-
posed of scratched-out and interpolated sentences ;
passages and chapters being moved about in a curious
chasse-croise, which the type-setters deciphered and
arranged as they best could. Margins and inter-
columnal spaces they found covered with interpola-
tions ; a long trailing line indicated the way here and
the way there to the destination of the inserted passages.
A cobweb was regular in comparison to the task which
the printers had to tackle in the hope of finding begin-
ning, middle, and end. In the various presses where
his books were set up, the employees would never work
longer than an hour on end at his manuscript. And
the indemnity he had to pay for corrections reached
sometimes the figure of forty francs per sixteen pages.
Numerous were the difficulties caused on this score
124 HONORE DE BALZAC
with publishers, editors, and printers. Balzac justified
himself by quoting the examples of Chateaubriand,
Ingres, and Meyerbeer in their various arts. To Buloz,
of the Revue de Paris^ who expostulated, he impa-
tiently replied : '* I will give up fifty francs per sheet
to have my hands free. So say no more about the
matter." It is true that Buloz paid him 250 francs
per sheet for his contributions.
Indeed, the novelist's own method of work was a
reversal of the natural alternation of regular periods of
activity and repose. He not only, as he told all his
correspondents with wearisome iteration, burned the
midnight oil, but would keep up these eighteen or
twenty hours' daily labour for weeks together, until
some novel that he was engaged on was finished.
During these spells of composing he would see no one,
read no letters, but write on and on, eating sparingly,
sipping his coffee, and refreshing his jaded anatomy by
taking a bath, in which he would lie for a whole hour,
plunged in meditation. After his voluntary seclusions,
he suddenly reappeared in his usual haunts, active and
feverish as ever, note-book ready to hand, in which he
jotted down his thoughts, discoveries, and observations
for future use. On its pages were primitively outlined
the features of most of the women of his fiction.
One of these prolonged claustrations, in October
1834 — the day was Sunday — he interrupted by a call,
most unexpected, on Werdet. His face was sallow
and gaunt with vigil. He had been stopped in the
description of a spot, he explained, by the uncertainty
of his recollections, and must go into the city in order
to refresh them. So he invited Werdet to accompany
him in playing truant for the day. The morning was
spent in the slums, where he gathered the information
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 125
required ; and the afternoon they whiled away in
listening to a concert at the Conservatoire. Here he
was welcomed by the fashionables of both sexes, not-
withstanding his shabby costume, which he had donned
in view of his morning's occupation. On quitting the
concert room, he carried Werdet off to dine with him
at Vary's, the most expensive and aristocratic restau-
rant in Paris. The place was full of guests ; and those
who were in proximity to the table where the two
newcomers sat down were astounded to see the
following menu ordered and practically consumed by
one man, since Werdet, being on diet, took only a
soup and a little chicken : A hundred oysters ; twelve
chops ; a young duck ; a pair of roast partridges ; a
sole ; hors d'oeuvre ; sweets ; fruit (more than a dozen
pears being swallowed) ; choice wines ; coffee ; liqueurs.
Never since Rabelais' or perhaps Louis XI V.'s time, had
such a Gargantuan appetite been witnessed. Balzac was
recouping himself for his fasting.
When the repast, lengthened out by a flow of
humorous conversation, was at length terminated, the
nineteenth-century Johnson asked his Boswell if he
had any available cash, as he himself had none.
Werdet confessing only to forty francs, the novelist
borrowed a five-franc piece from him and thundered
out his request for the bill. To the waiter who pre-
sented it he handed the coin, at the same time return-
ing the bill with a few words scribbled at the foot.
"Tell the cashier," he cried, "that I am Monsieur
Honore de Balzac." And he stalked out with Werdet,
whilst all the diners present stared admiringly after the
great man.
But the evening was not yet finished. In the
garden of the Palais-Royal, then more frequented by
126 HONORE DE BALZAC
society than to-day, they met Jules Sandeau and
Emile Regnault. And, as they were near a gambling-
saloon, Balzac, who had an infallible system for break-
ing the bank, proposed to Jules that he should go and
try his luck. A twenty-franc piece was wheedled out
of Werdet for the experiment, which proved a fiasco.
Next, the novelist, to convince his companions of the
accuracy of his theory, which he further detailed, went
and borrowed forty francs from his heraldic engraver,
and sent Sandeau and Regnault into the saloon again.
Alas! fate was once more unkind. They returned
minus their money. To console themselves, they went
to the Funambules Theatre, to see Debureau act in
the Boeuf Enrage, and Balzac laughed so loud that
he and his party had to leave the theatre. On the
morrow Werdet was called upon to pay the restaurant-
keeper sixty-two francs, and to reimburse the engraver
the forty francs loan, which sums, together with what
he had himself advanced, ran Balzac's debit for the
day up to one hundred and twenty-seven francs.
In Pere Goriot, the publication of which came close
at the heels of the Search for the Absolute, Balzac
traces the gradual impoverishment of a fond father by
his tw^o daughters, married, the one to a nobleman, the
other to a banker, and whose husbands, when they have
received the marriage dowry, give their father-in-law,
who is a plebeian, the cold shoulder, and forbid their
wives to see him unless in secret. Goriot's daughters,
losing in their grand surroundings the little filial affec-
tion they ever had, exploit the old man's worship of
them shamelessly. If they visit him in the boarding-
house to which he has retired, after selling his home
to endow them more richly, it is solely to get from him
for their pleasures the portion of his wealth he has
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 127
retained for his own wants. And he never refuses
them, but sells and sells, until, at last, he is reduced
to lodge in the garret of the boarding-house and eat
almost the refuse of the table. Around this tragic
central figure are grouped the commensals of the
Vauquer pension, Rastignac, the young law-student,
with shallow purse and aristocratic connections ;
Bianchon, the future great-gun in medicine, at
present walking the hospitals and attending lectures
and practising dissections ; Victorine Taillefer, the re-
iected daughter of a guilty millionaire ; Mademoiselle
Michonneau, the soured spinster, who ferrets out the
identity of her fellow-boarder Vautrin, and betrays to
iustice this cynical outlaw installed so quietly, and,
to all appearance, safely, in the pension, where Madame
Vauquer, the traipsing widow, lords it serenely, atten-
tive only to her profits.
Of these subsidiary characters, two, Vautrin and
Rastignac, furnish a second interest in the story
parallel to that of Goriot and his daughters, and con-
stituting a foil. Under the influence of Paris sur-
roundings and experience, Rastignac passes from his
naive illusions to a state of worldly wisdom, which he
reaches all the more speedily as Vautrin is at his
elbow, commenting with Mephistophelian shrewdness
on his fellow-men and the society they form. Himself
a man of education, who has sunk from high to low
and is branded with the convict's mark, Vautrin is
yet capable of affection of a certain kind ; but, in the
mind and heart of the youth he would fain advantage,
he is capable only of inculcating the law of tooth and
claw. "A rapid fortune is the problem that fifty
thousand young men are at present trying to solve
who find themselves in your position," he says to
128 HONORE DE BALZAC
Rastignac. " You are a single one among this number.
Judge of the efforts you have to make and of the
desperateness of the struggle. You must devour each
other like spiders in a pot, seeing there are not fifty
thousand good places. Do you know how one gets
on here ? By the brilliance of genius or the adroitness
of corruption one must enter the mass of men like a
cannon-ball, or slip into it like the plague. Honesty
is of no use." Having a tempter about him of
Vautrin's calibre, strong, undauntable, as humorous as
Dickens' Jingle, but infinitely more unscrupulous and
dangerous, Rastignac is gained over, in spite of his
first repulsion. The nursing and burying of Pere
Goriot are his last acts of charity accorded to the
claims of his higher nature, and even these are sullied
by his relations with one of Goriot's daughters.
Standing on the cemetery heights, and looking down
towards the Seine and the Vendome column, he flings
a defiance to the society spread beneath him, the
society he despises but still wishes to conquer.
In this novel many social grades are gathered
together, and the reciprocal actions of their represen-
tative members are rendered with effective contrast
and a good deal of dramatic quickness. The chief
theme, though so painful, is developed with less strain
and monotony than in some other of the novelist's
works by reason of a larger application, conscious or
unconscious, of Shakespeare's practice of intermingling
the humorous with the tragic. Even the comic is not
entirely absent, Madame Vauquer especially supplying
interludes. The novelist himself chuckled as he put
into her mouth a mispronunciation of the word tilleul,^
and explained to Madame Hanska, whose foreign
^ English linden, or lime-tree.
o
LETTERS TO *'THE STRANGER" 129
accent in speaking French suggested it, that he chose
the fat landlady so that Eve should not be jealous.
Balzac's too great absorption in his writing forced
him more than once in this year to go into the country
and recuperate his health. During the earlier months
he spent a short time with the Carrauds at Frapesle,
which was a favourite sojourn of his, and, later on, at
Sache, a pleasant retreat in his native Touraine. His
iron constitution was not able always to resist the
demands continually made upon it ; and his abuse of
coffee only aggravated the evil. To Laure he ac-
knowledged, while at Sache, that this beverage refused
to excite his brain for any time longer than a fortnight ;
and even the fortnight was paid for by horrible cramps
in the stomach, followed by fits of depression, which
he suffered when suddenly deprived of his beloved
drink. In his Treatise of Modern Stimulants he
describes its peculiar operation upon himself. " This
coffee," he says, " falls into your stomach, and straight-
way there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to
move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the
battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things re-
membered arrive full gallop, ensign to the wind. The
light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent,
deploying charge ; the artillery of logic hurry up with
their train and ammunition ; the shafts of wit start up
like sharp-shooters. Similes arise ; the paper is covered
with ink ; for the struggle commences and is concluded
with torrents of black water, just as a battle with
powder."
When he tells us how Doctor Minoret, Ursule
Mirouet's guardian, used to regale his friends with a
cup of Moka mixed with Bourbon coffee, and roasted
Martinique, which the Doctor insisted on personally
130 HONORE DE BALZAC
preparing in a silver coffee-pot, it is his own custom
that he is detaiUng. His Bourbon he bought only in
the Rue Mont Blanc (now the Chaussee d'Antin), the
Martinique, in the Rue des Vieilles Audriettes, the
Moka at a grocer's in the Rue de TUniversit^. It was
half a day's journey to fetch them.
The Tigers or Lions, of the Loge Infernale at the
Opera, have already been spoken of. It was in this
year that Balzac, as belonging to the Club, gave a
dinner to its members, the chief guest being Rossini.
Nodier, Sandeau, Bohain, and the witty Lautour-
Mezeray were also present. He doubtless wore on the
occasion his coat of broadcloth blue, made by his tailor-
friend Buisson, with its gold buttons engraved by
Gosselin, his jeweller and goldsmith. On his waist-
coat of white English pique twined and glittered the
thousand links of the slender chain of Venice gold.
Black trousers, with footstraps, showing his calves to
advantage, patent-leather boots, and his wonderful
stick, which inspired Madame Delphine Gay to write
a book, completed the equipment.
This stick was certainly in existence in 1834, being
mentioned in the correspondence with Madame Hanska
during that year. Werdet, however, connects its origin
with the novelist's imprisonment, two years later, in
the Hotel de Bazancourt, popularly known as the Hotel
des Haricots, which was used for confining those citizens
who did not comply with Louis-Philippe's law enrol-
ling them in the National Guard and ordering them
to take their turn in night-patrol of the city. Balzac
was incurably recalcitrant. Nothing would induce him
to encase himself in the uniform and serve ; and, when-
ever the soldiers came for him, he bribed them to let
him alone. Finally, these bribes failed of their effect,
LETTERS TO ''THE STRANGER" 131
and an arrest-warrant was issued against him. In his
ordinary correspondence two experiences of his being
in durance vile at the Hotel des Haricots are mentioned,
one in March 1835, another in August 1836. The
latter of these is differently dated in the Letters to the
Stranger, the end of April being given, unless, indeed,
there were two confinements close together, which is
hardly probable. What is most likely is, that Werdet
has confused two things, the story of the lock of hair,
properly belonging to 1836, and the making of the
stick, which belongs to 1834. Here is his narration : —
The publisher one day received a note requesting
him to go at once to the prison and to take with him
some money. He went with two hundred francs, and
found Balzac, in his Dominican's dress, installed in a
small cell on the third story, busily engaged in arrang-
ing papers. Part of the money brought was utilized
to order a succulent dinner, which Werdet stayed and
shared in the smoky refectory below. Both prisoner
and visitor were very merry until the door opened
and Eugene Sue, the popular novelist, entered, himself
also a victim of the conscription law. Invited to join
in the meal. Sue decUned, saying that his valet and
servant were shortly to bring him his dinner. This
repulse damped Balzac's spirits until the arrival of a
third victim, the Count de Lostange, chief editor of
the Quotidie?ine, who sat down willingly to table.
Then Balzac forgot Sue's rudeness, and the mirth was
resumed. Notwithstanding the efforts of the novelist's
influential friends, the Count de Lobau, who was re-
sponsible for the arrest, showed himself inexorable, and
a second day was spent in captivity, which Werdet
came again towards evening to enliven. A whole pile
of perfumed epistles sent by feminine sympathizers was
132 HONORE DE BALZAC
lying on the table, and the publisher had to open them
and read them aloud to his companion. When a third
day's confinement was decided on by the authorities,
Werdet arranged to celebrate it by a dinner that should
merit being put on record. He therefore secured the
presence of some intimates of the novelist, among them
being Gustave Planche and Alphonse Karr; and at
5 P.M., eight people were assembled in the cell, with
Auguste, Balzac's valet, to serve them. The restaurant -
keeper Chevet's menu of exquisite dishes was suitably
moistened with excellent champagne sent by a Countess,
and, when the feast was in full progress, Balzac took a
scented parcel from among his presents and asked per-
mission to open it. The authorization being granted
nem, con,, he undid the parcel, and disclosed a mass of
long, fair, silky hair threaded into a gold ring that was
set with an emerald. On the gift was an inscription
in English : From an unknown friend. A great dis-
cussion ensued. One irreverent speaker opined that
the thing was a hoax, and that the hair had come from
a wig-maker's ; but his blasphemy was shouted down.
Another proposed that Balzac should cut off his own
long, flat locks (it was in 1834 that he began to let
them grow) and should send them addressed to the
Unknown Fair One. Poste Restante. But this sug-
gestion, too, was not approved. The locks were pro-
claimed to be national property, and to be cut off only
by the passing of a special law. Next, the ring was
discussed ; and here it was that Balzac, struck with
a brilliant idea, announced his intention of ordering
Gosselin, the goldsmith, to manufacture a marvellous
hollow stick-knob in which a lock of the blond hair
should be inserted, and all over the top of the knob
were to be fixed diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, topazes.
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 188
rubies, chosen out of the many he had had given him
by his rich lady-enthusiasts. On the morrow, he was
released, after spending, during the few days he had
been locked up, five hundred and seventy francs in
refreshment for himself and visitors.
CHAPTER VII
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER/' 1835, 1836
The Rue des Batailles, whither Balzac removed his
household gods in 1834, was one of those old land-
marks of Paris which have disappeared in the opening
up and beautifying of the city. Commencing at the
fortifications, it penetrated inwards along the waste
ground of the Trocadero, and crossed the Rue Chaillot
at a point which has since become the Place d'lena.
Its direction from there was very nearly the same as
that of the present Avenue d'l^na. No. 12, where
Balzac had his flat, probably occupied the site whereon
now stands the mansion of Prince Roland Bonaparte.
From its windows a good view was obtained of the
Seine, the Champ de Mars, the Ecole Militaire, and
the Dome of the Invalides.
As a matter of fact, the house of the Rue des
Batailles was for a time a supplementary dwelling
rented by the novelist, so Werdet says, as a hiding-
place from the myrmidons of the law. The flat in
the Rue Cassini was retained, and its furniture also ;
and an arrangement was made with the landlord by
which a notice-board hung continually on the door,
with the words : ** This apartment to let." In reality
the tenant often sojourned there still, and his cook
stayed on the premises to look after them, and serve
her master with meals, whenever he wished to work
in his old study without being disturbed. At the Rue
134
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 135
des Batailles he lived under the pseudonym of Widow
Brunet, so that temporarily the sergeant-major of the
National Guard was outwitted.
The second flat, when he took it, was composed
of five small rooms; but an army of workmen was
summoned ; and what with the pulling down of parti-
tions and their reconstruction on a more commodious
plan, the place was metamorphosed into four luxuri-
ously furnished chambers, the study being fitted up as
a sort of boudoir. One of its walls was a graceful
curve against which rested a large, real Turkish divan
in white cashmere, its drapery being caught and held
with lozenge-shaped bows of black and flame-coloured
silk. The opposite wall formed a straight line broken
only by a white marble chimney-piece pinked out in
gold. The entire room was hung in red stuff" as a
background, and this was covered with fluted Indian
muslin, having a top and bottom beading of flame-
coloured stuff* ornamented with elegant black arabesques.
Under the muslin the red assumed a rose tint, which
latter was repeated in the window curtains of muslin
lined with taffety, and fringed in black and red. Six
silver sconces, each supporting two candles, projected
from the wall above the divan, to light those sitting
or lying there. From the dazzlingly white ceiling
was suspended an unpolished silver-gilt lustre ; and
the cornice round it was in gold. The carpets of
curious designs were like Eastern shawls ; the furniture
was lavishly upholstered. The time-piece and can-
delabra were of white marble incrusted with gold ; and
cashmere covered the single table, while several flower-
stands filled up the corners, with their roses and other
blooms. This study, which Balzac himself has left us
a description of in his novel The Girl with the Golden
136 HONORE DE BALZAC
Eyes, was soon abandoned as a workroom for another
more simple and austere, up under the roof. The
latter, however, he likewise began, being tormented by
the desire of change, to adorn almost as fantastically.
Throughout the time that Werdet continued to be
Balzac's publisher, and up to the end of 1836, when
their active business relations ceased, it is difficult to
be quite accurate in speaking of their relations and the
things spoken of by both in which they were mutually
concerned. There is frequent discordance in their
narration of the same event, and one is often embarrassed
in trying to reconcile them. On the one hand, it is
certain that Balzac was not always exact in his state-
ments ; on the other, Werdet's memory, in the seventies,
when he wrote his Portrait Intime of the novelist, was
as certainly now and again treacherous. An example
of such discrepancy is furnished by the information
given concerning S&aphita, which Werdet says he
bought from Buloz at the end of 1834, and for which
he had to wait till December 1835. He even makes it
a reproach that the novelist, after being extracted from
a dilemma, should have dealt with him so cavalierly.
Now, from documents published by the Viscount de
Lovenjoul, there must be a mistake in Werdet's dates.
During the year of 1835, the Revue de Paris published,
after long delay, some further chapters of Seraphita ;
and not until the end of November in this same twelve-
month was the treaty signed which rendered Werdet
possessor of the book.
Seraphita, or Seraphitus — the name is designedly
spelt both ways in different parts of the book — is an
attempt on the novelist's part to represent in fiction
the dual sex of the soul. The scene is laid in the fiords
of Norway. There, in a village, we meet with a person
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 137
of mysterious nature who is loved simultaneously by a
man and a woman, and who is regarded by each as
being of the opposite sex. By whiles this herma-
phrodite seems to respond to the affection of each
admirer, and by whiles to withdraw on to a higher
plane of existence whither their mortality hinders them
from following. To the old pastor of the village,
Seraphita-Sei^aphitus talks with assurance of the essence
of phenomena and the invisible world, but, forsooth,
only to imitate the shades that visit spiritualistic seances,
and to say what is either obscure verbiage, or a hash-up
of philosophies often digested without much sustenance
derived from them. In the end, this dual personage
vanishes from our mundane atmosphere, translated
bodily to heaven ; and leaves his or her lovers to repair
their loss — just like a forlorn widow or widower — by
making a match based on rules of conduct laid down
by the departed one.
Seraphita was Balzac's pocket Catholicism. He
had another Catholicism, entirely orthodox, for the use
of the public at large. Esoterically understood, his
novel teaches a doctrine of mysticism, intuitionalism,
and materialism combined. Plotinus, the Manicheans,
and Swedenborg are borrowed from without reserve.
Ordinary reason is despised. He believes himself for
the nonce inspired, like the Pope when launching bulls.
" The pleasure," he writes, " of swimming in a lake of
pure water, amidst rocks, woods, and flowers, alone and
fanned by the warm zephyr, would give the ignorant
but a weak image of the happiness I felt when my soul
was flooded with the rays of I know not what light,
when I listened to the terrible and confused voices of
inspiration, when from a secret source the images
streamed into my palpitating brain." On the contrary.
138 HONORE DE BALZAC
he holds — and this does not square well with the pre-
ceding— that the soul is an ethereal fluid similar to
electricity ; that the brain is the matrass or bottle into
which the animal transports, according to the strength
of the apparatus, as much as the various organisms
can absorb of this fluid, which issues thence trans-
formed into will; that our sentiments are movements
of the fluid, which proceeds from us by jerks when we
are angry, and which weighs on our nerves when we
are in expectation ; that the current of this king of
liquids, according to the pressure of thought and feeling,
spreads in waves or diminishes and thins, then collects
again, to gush forth in flashes. He believes also that
our ideas are complete, organized beings (the theosophic
notion) which live in the invisible world and influence
our destinies ; that, concentrated in a powerful brain,
they can master the brains of other people, and traverse
immense distances in the twinkling of an eye. In
short, he anticipates not a httle of the science of the
present day, yet mixing up the true and false in his
guesses by the very exuberance of his fancy. At the
close, he gives us his vision of the universe : " They
heard the divers parts of the Infinite forming a living
melody; and, at each pause, when the accord made
itself felt like a huge respiration, the worlds, drawn by
this unanimous movement, inclined themselves towards
the immense Being who, from his impenetrable centre,
sent everything forth and brought it back to himself.
The light engendered melody, the melody engendered
light; the colours were light and melody, the move-
ment was number endowed with speech; in fine, all
was at once sonorous, diaphanous, mobile ; so that, all
things interpenetrating each other, distance was without
obstacles, and might be traversed by the angels through-
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 139
out the depths of the infinite. There was the fete.
Myriads of angels all hastened in like flight, without
confusion, all similar, yet all dissimilar, simple as the
field-rose, vast as worlds. They were neither seen to
come nor go. On a sudden, they studded the infinite
with their presence, just as the stars shine in the
indiscernible ether."
The fundamental error of Seraphita is its hybridity,
not to speak of its pretentious psychology. It is
neither flesh nor fowl; and, exception made for some
fine passages, more at the beginning than in the rest of
the book, it jars and irks, and amazes, but does not
captivate or persuade.
It had a great success when it came out in book
form. People were inquisitive to know the end of the
story, which the Bevue de Paris had not given ; and
their eagerness had been further whetted by a cleverly
graduated series of puffs put into the newspapers. On
the first day of sale, the whole edition was cleared out
of Werdet's warehouse, a thing that had never happened
before with any of the same author's works. Balzac,
who had been duly informed of the good news, hastened
to the office, and led the publisher off proudly to dine
with him at Very's, and to finish up the evening at the
Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, with ices afterwards at
Tortoni's. The whole affair was carried out in grand
style. The novelist had on his war-paint, and was
accompanied by a lady, young, pretty, whose name is
not revealed to us. Werdet's vis-a-vis was Madame
Louise Lemercier, a benevolent blue-stocking of that
day, who was a Providence to needy men of letters.
When dinner was over, Balzac's elegant equipage, with
its mighty coachman and its diminutive groom, yclept
Millet-seed, who unfortunately died soon after in the
140 HONORE DE BALZAC
hospital, conveyed them to the play, in which Frederick ^
Lemaitre and Serres held chief roles. Balzac was the
hero of the evening. His jewelled stick, and his pretty
companion monopolized the attention of the spectators,
who somewhat neglected the amusement offered by
the Auberge des Adrets on the stage. At the conclu-
sion of the piece, the four passed out of the theatre
through a double line of people eager to pay the
homage that notoriety can always command.
In the year 1835 the novelist's restlessness and
inability to remain long in one spot were evinced in
a very marked manner. Only by repeated changes of
scene was he able to carry on his work at all. After
wearing himself out in a fruitless attempt to complete
Seraphita in April, he fled to Madame Carraud's at
Frapesle. In October he was at La Boulonniere,
where he put the last touches to Pea-Blossom, better
known as the Marriage Contract, which came out
before the end of December. His fits of depression
alternated with spurts of cheerfulness nearly every
week, according as he had some loss or gain to register ;
here, a fire at the printer's, where some of his Contes
Drolatiqiies were burned ; there, the sale of an article
to the Conservateur for three thousand francs. In
September the barometer rose, and he exclaimed joy-
fully in a letter to Laure :
*' The Reviews are at my feet and pay me more
for my sheets. He ! He !
"The reading public have changed their opinion
about the Country Doctor, so that Werdet is certain of
selling his editions directly. Ha ! Ha !
'* In short, I can meet my liabilities in November
and December. Ho ! Ho ! "
1 So spelt.
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LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 141
This tone changed in October. To his sister now
he lamented :
"I am drinking the cup to the dregs. In vain I
work fourteen hours a day. I cannot suffice."
He had held practically the same language to
Werdet in May/ when he announced to him his in-
tention of starting for Austria, where Madame Hanska
was staying. His brain, he said, was empty ; his
imagination dried up; cup after cup of coffee pro-
duced no effect, nor yet baths — these last being the
supreme remedy.
Werdet did his best to thwart the trip ; but Balzac
would not be gainsaid. He affirmed he should return
with rejuvenated faculties, after seeing his carissima;
and ultimately he persuaded his publisher to advance
him two thousand francs for his travelling expenses.
Profuse in his gratitude, he wrote from his hotel in
Vienna — the Hotel de la Poire, situated in the Lang-
strasse — that, in the society of the cherished one, he
had regained his imagination and verve. Werdet, he
continued, was his Archibald Constable {vide Walter
Scott) ; their fortunes were thenceforward indissoluble ;
and the day was approaching when they would meet
in their carriages in the Bois de Boulogne and turn
their detractors green with envy. This flattery was
the jam enveloping the information that he had drawn
on his publisher for another fifteen hundred francs ;
there was also a promise made that he would come
back with his pockets full of manuscripts. Instead
of the manuscripts, he brought back some Viennese
curiosities. He had done no work while with Madame
1 In Werdet's account this journey is placed between September
and November ; but the Letters to the Stranger prove that the date he
gives is incorrect. ,
142 HONORE DE BALZAC
Hanska, but he had seen Munich, and had enjoyed
himself immensely, being idolized by the aristocracy
of the Austrian capital. " And what an aris-
tocracy!" he remarked to Werdet; *' quite different
from ours, my dear fellow ; quite another world.
There the nobility are a real nobility. They are
all old families, not an adulterated nobility like in
France."
The Vienna visit, which cost him, in total, some
five thousand francs — a foolish expense in his involved
circumstances — was the cause of his silver plate having
to be pawned while he was away, in order that certain
payments of interest that he owed might be made at
the end of the month. Since he was always plunging
into fresh extravagance of one kind or another, his
liabilities had a fatal tendency to grow ; and at present
even more than before, since he was puffed up by the
lionizing he had enjoyed abroad. It was hardly to be
expected that a man should study economy who saw
himself already appointed to the Secretaryship for
Foreign Affairs. " This is the only department which
would suit me," he said to Werdet. " I have now my
free entry to the house of the Count d'Appony,
Ambassador of Austria, and to that of Rothschild,
Consul of the same Power. What glory for you,
Master Werdet, to have been my publisher. I will
make your fortune then."
His display and luxury manifested themselves in
greater sumptuousness of furniture, more servants in
livery, a box at the Opera for himself, and another
at the Italiens. And the two secretaries must not
be forgotten — one was not sufficient — the Count de
Belloy and the Count de Grammont. Sandeau was not
grand enough for the post. The reason given by
LETTERS TO '*THE STRANGER" 143
Balzac to Madame Hanska was Jules' idleness, non-
chalance, and sentimentality. As a matter of fact,
Sandeau did not care to play always second fiddle,
and to write tragedies or comedies for which Balzac
wished to get all the credit. Moreover, he was not
a Legitimist. The novelist had tried to convert him
to his own doctrine of autocratic government and
had signally failed. These sprigs of nobility he felt
himself more in sympathy with.
About this time his epistles to "The Stranger"
were full of himself and his Herculean labours, and
Madame Hanska hinted pretty plainly that the quan-
tity of the latter did not necessarily imply their quality.
Such expression of opinion notwithstanding, he boasted
of conceiving, composing, and printing the AtJieisfs
Mass, a short novel, it is true, in one night only. His
portrait by Louis Boulanger, which was painted during
the year of 1835, had been ordered rather with a view
to advertizing him at the ensuing Salon, although he
asserted it was because he wanted to correct a false
impression given of him by Dantan's caricature in the
earlier months of the year. The likeness produced by
Boulanger he esteemed a good one, rendering his
Coligny, Peter the Great persistence, which, together
with an intrepid faith in the future, he said was
the basis of his character. The future hovered as a
perpetual mirage in all his introspections, sometimes
bright with tints of dawn, at other times half-threaten-
ing. " I am the Wandering Jew of thought," was his
cry to Eve from the Hotel des Haricots, '' always up
and walking without repose, without the joys of the
heart, without anything besides what is yielded me
by a remembrance at once rich and poor, without any-
thing that I can snatch from the future. I hold out
144 HONORE DE BALZAC
my hand to it. It casts me not a mite, but a smile
which means to say : to-morrow."
When he embarked on the hazardous venture of
starting a newspaper of his own, the motive was chiefly
a desire to exercise a larger political influence. Yet he
had additional incentives. The Reviews to which he
had contributed in the past had yielded him almost
as much annoyance as profit ; and, since the two most
important ones, the Revue des Deux Mondes and the
Revue de Paris, both under the same editorship, were
closed against him, he believed he needed an organ in
which to defend himself from the rising virulence of
hostile criticism. A press campaign in his favour
could be better and more cheaply waged in a paper
under his entire control. His plan was not to create
a journal, but to revive one. In 1835 the Chronique
de Paris, formerly called the Globe, was on its last
legs, albeit it had been ably edited by William Duckett ;
and the proprietor, Bethune the publisher, was only
too glad to listen to Balzac's overtures. By dint of
puffing the new enterprise, a company was formed
with a nominal capital of a hundred thousand francs ;
Duckett was paid out in bills drawn on the receipts
to accrue, since the novelist had no ready money of
his own ; and a start was made under the new manage-
ment. The staff was a strong one. Jules Sandeau
was dramatic critic ; Emile Regnault supplied the light
literature; Gustave Planche was art critic; Alphonse
Karr wrote satirical articles ; Theophile Gautier,
Charles de Bernard, and Raymond Brucker contri-
buted fiction ; and Balzac, together with his functions
of chief editor, gave the leading article.
In its reorganized form, the Review came out
Sundays and Thursdays and once a week Saturdays.
LETTERS TO **THE STRANGER" 145
The collaborators met at Werdet's house to discuss and
compare notes. Generally, they brought with them
more conversation than copy, and Balzac would begin
to scold.
" How can I make up to-morrow's issue," he asked,
" if each of you arrives empty-handed ? "
" Oh ! being a great man and a genius," was the
reply, " you have merely to say : * Let there be a
Chronicle,' and there will be a Chronicle."
*'But you know that I reserve to myself nothing
except the article on foreign policy."
"Yes, we all know," answered Karr, punning on
the French word etr anger e, " that your policy is strange."
(Not finishing the word etr anger e, he said only
etrange. )
'* j&r^," shouted Balzac, adding the termination.
*'^r^," Alphonse yelled back. "You reserve to
yourself a policy which is foreign to all governments
present and past and future. And, as you scold me,
Mr. Editor, is your own article ready ? "
" No, but it is here " — tapping his forehead — " I
have only to write it. In an hour it will be done."
" With the corrections ? " queried Karr slily.
" Yes, with the corrections."
" Ah ! well, prove that to us ; and we'll all go on
dry bread and water until a statue is raised to you. I
am hungry."
Although Balzac's colleagues had a real respect and
admiration for his talent, they chaffed him unmerci-
fully for his vanity. One Saturday, Alphonse Karr,
as a joke, crowned him with flowers ; and Balzac, in all
good faith, complacently accepted the honour. Around
him, the laughter broke out fast and furious ; and, at
length, he joined in with volleys that shook the room,
146 HONORfi DE BALZAC
while his face waxed purple beneath his explosions.
In his Guepes, Alphonse Karr subsequently recalled
this improvized coronation of the novelist.
Edited and composed in such desultory fashion, the
Chronicle's prosperity was short-lived, in spite of the
lustre it temporarily acquired from Balzac's name, and
the publication in it of some of his fiction. Before
long its financial position was so bad that the chief
editor, as a forlorn hope, tried to induce a young Russian
nobleman, who was an eager reader of his books, to
enter the concern with a large amount of fresh capital.
To bait him, a magnificent dinner was given in the
Rue Cassini flat, amidst a display of all its tenant's gold
and silver plate, liberated from the pawnbroker's for
the occasion by a timely advance of two thousand
francs from Werdet. The feast was an entire success,
and an appointment was fixed for the next day at the
Russian's hotel. Alas ! when the envoy went, he re-
ceived, sandwiched in the guest's thanks for the royal
entertainment of the preceding evening, an announce-
ment of the said guest's immediate departure for Russia,
and the intimation that, as the nobleman was not re-
turning to Paris for some time, it would be impossible
for him to accept the offer of a sleeping-partnership in
the Review. Three months later the Chronicle was
resold to Bethune for a small sum ; and the publisher
disposed of it to a third person, who, however, did
not succeed in keeping it alive. Balzac's loss by his
experiment was about twenty thousand francs.
And this loss was not the only disagreeable part of
the business. There were the bills signed to Duckett.
They being protested in 1837, Duckett sued the novelist
and obtained judgment against him. At this moment,
Balzac, tracked by his creditors, had taken temporary
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 147
refuge with some friends, the Count Visconti and his
English wife, who lived in the Champs Elysdes. Here
he remained incognito. One day a man, wearing the
uniform of a transport company, called at the mansion
and informed the servant that he had brought six
thousand francs for Monsieur de Balzac. Suiting the
action to his words, he dumped down on to the floor
a heavy bag that chinked as it struck the hall tiles.
" Monsieur de Balzac does not live here," was the
servant's reply. " Then is the master of the house in ? "
asked the man. *' No, but the mistress is." " Then
tell her I have six thousand francs for Monsieur de
Balzac." The servant vanished and soon the lady of
the mansion appeared and offered to sign the receipt
herself. To this the man demurred. He must either
see Monsieur de Balzac or must take the money away
again. There was a hurried confabulation between
hostess and guest, the upshot of which was that Balzac,
falling into the snare, came to the man, thinking that
some generous friend had sent him the money ; and he
was immediately served with an arrest-warrant for debt.
" I am caught," he cried ; " but I will pillory Duckett
for this. He shall go down to posterity with infamy
attached to his name." To get the novelist out of the
mess, Madame Visconti paid the debt for which the
warrant had been made out ; and thus spared him, for
the nonce, a sojourn in the debtors' prison at Clichy.
Balzac's lawsuit with the Revue de Paris, the details
of which are given in the Viscount de Lovenjoul's Last
Chapter of the History of Balzac s Works, was brought
about by the novelist's quarrel, in 1835, with Buloz,
the editor, because the latter, while the Lily in the
Valley was being printed, communicated proofs of it
to the Revue Fimn^aise of Saint Petersburg. Balzac at
148 HONORE DE BALZAC
once severed his connection with the Revue de Paris,
and took away his novel, on the ground that the editor
was not justified in selling it abroad without his — the
author's — permission, and especially was not justified
in communicating premature proofs, which, owing to
his practice of modifying the text while correcting it,
could in no way represent his finished work. After an
attempt made by mutual friends to settle the matter
amicably, Buloz entered an action against Balzac to
compel him to continue the publication of the Lily in
the f^alley in the Revue de Paris. Three parts had
been given. It was the end which the Review de-
manded, and ten thousand francs damages for the
delay. The case was heard in May 1836, after months
of bitter controversy, in which both sides had their ardent
supporters. The most was made by the plaintiff's
barrister of Balzac's previous disputes with other
editors, who had had to complain of his tardiness in
completing articles or stories. A letter was also put
in, signed by Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, Frederic
Soulie, and others, stating that it was usual for authors
to allow the communication of their productions to the
Revue Praufaise of Saint Petersburg, with a view to
combating Belgian and German piracies. And Jules
Janin, who during the Thirties was a zealous opponent
of Balzac, cast his weight of evidence in favour of the
Review. The Seraphita episode was dragged in, too,
with testimony to show that, even after Werdet had
bought the right to publish the novel in book form,
Balzac again negotiated for its continuation as a serial
in the Review, and had, moreover, supplied some other
chapters, yet without coming to the end. In fact, the
suit was a complicated one to decide. Ultimately, the
Court gave its verdict against Buloz on the chief point
I
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 149
at issue. He lost the conclusion of the Lily in the
Valley, and recovered only a small sum of money that
had been advanced to the novelist for copy not sup-
plied, and besides had to pay all the expenses of his
action.
What galled Balzac particularly during the speeches
of the plaintiff's barrister, was to hear the style of his
novel pulled to pieces in language of mingled sarcasm
and clever criticism that delighted the audience and
the papers. After the termination of the affair, he
thoroughly overhauled the parts of the book which had
been so severely handled, made large alterations, and,
since fun had also been poked at his pretensions to
noble ancestry, he prefixed a curious introduction to
the edition that Werdet was about to publish. In the
course of it he declared : " If some persons, deceived
by caricatures, false portraits, penny-a-liners, and Ues,
credit me with a colossal fortune, palaces, and above
all, with frequent favours from women ... I here
declare to them that I am a poor artist, absorbed in
art, working at a long history of society, which will be
either good or bad, but at which I work by necessity,
without shame, just as Rossini has made operas or Du
Ryer translations and volumes ; that I live very much
alone, that I have a few firm friends ; that my name
is on my birth-certificate, (kc, just as that of Monsieur
de Fitz- James is on his ; that, if it is of old Gaulish
stock, this is not my fault ; but that de Balzac is my
patronymic, an advantage which many aristocratic
families have not who called themselves Odet before
they were called Chatillon, Duplessis, and who are,
none the less, great families."
To the foregoing he joined a long account of his
birth and his presumed title to ancient lineage, and
150 HONORE DE BALZAC
inserted into the bargain a panegyric of Werdet as a
man of activity, intelligence, and probity, with whom
his relations would be unbroken, since by this same
declaration he constituted him henceforward his sole
publisher. That was in July 1836. Scarcely six months
after, when Werdet was threatened with a bankruptcy
which was likely to involve him — a repetition in minor
degree of Scott's entanglement with Constable — he
veered completely round, called Werdet a rotten plank,
an empty head, an obstinate mule, and other names
more expressive than polite, affirmed that he had always
considered him a bit of a fool, and dropped all further
connection with him. Werdet, it is true, was no busi-
ness genius, but he was really attached to Balzac, and
had yielded to the great man's importunities as long as
his purse would support the strain.
The Lily in the Valley was published by Werdet in
the week after the lawsuit was finished, and was well
received by the public. Its success, however, was more
considerable abroad than in France. The author com-
plained of the smallness of the numbers sold in France
compared with those of foreign editions ; but Werdet's
figures indicate a very fair sale, and are larger than
those given by Balzac, who in this instance at least was
not so accurate as his publisher.
The novel deals with the struggle in the heart of a
Madame de Mortsauf, torn between her affection for
F^lix de Vandenesse and her determination to remain
outwardly faithful in conduct towards her husband.
With his invariable enthusiasm for subjects that pleased
him in his own work, Balzac believed and affirmed
that this secret combat waged in a valley of the Indre
was as important as the most famous military battle
ever fought. Possibly the amount of early personal
LETTERS TO **THE STRANGER* 151
biography in the book — yet a good deal romanced — led
him to his conviction. Possibly, too, the richness with
which he adorned its style helped to foster the opinion
he held, which critics have not ratified. Not even
Lamartine, his eulogist, found much to say in favour
of the story. To the first part alone he gave his ap-
proval, likening it to the Song of Solomon. The rest he
thought vulgar, and hinted that the heroine degenerates
into a sort of hermaphrodite character. Brunetiere's
estimate, given in a parenthesis, is not much more
favourable. And Taine, when dipping into the book
for examples of Balzac^s style, neutralizes his praise of
one portion by his depreciation of another.
Apart from the question of the novel's style, which
is turgid because the lyric note intrudes, the most
legitimate objection to the book is the sentimentalism
which pervades it throughout, and palls on the reader
before he reaches the conclusion. Like Richardson in
his Pamela, but to a far greater extent than Richardson,
Balzac has placed the struggle on the physical plane.
Madame de Mortsauf permits de Vandenesse to make
love to her, to caress her, and she accords him every-
thing with the single exception of that which would
confer on her husband the right to divorce her. The
interest of the book therefore is largely a material one.
The moral issue is thrown into the background. And
de Vandenesse, moreover, is not a person that inspires
us with respect or even pity. He consoles himself
with l^ady Dudley, while swearing high allegiance to
his Henriette.
In sooth, the swain's position resembled the novelist's
own. Honore was also inditing oaths of fidelity to his
** dear star," his " earth-angel " in far-away Russia, while
worshipping at shrines more accessible. Lady Dudley
152 HONORE DE BALZAC
may well have been, for all his denial, the Countess
Visconti, of whom Madame Hanska was jealous and
on good grounds, or else the Duchess de Castries, to
whom he said that, in writing the book, he had caught
himself shedding tears. His reminiscences of Madame
de Berny aided him in composing the figure of the
heroine, whose death-bed scene was soon to become
sober reality. Madame de Berny died in July, having
had a last pleasure in perusing the story that immor-
talized her affection for the novelist. Balzac had
been intending to pay her a farewell visit; but he
was then in the midst of embarrassments of all kinds,
and the journey was postponed until it was too late.
At this moment, the affair of the Chronique was
being liquidated ; and then Madame B^chet, his late
publisher, was dunning him for some arrears of copy
that he owed her. His brother Henry, too, going from
bad to worse, was in a position that necessitated Madame
de Balzac's giving up the remnants of her capital ; and,
to crown all, a son of Laurence, the dead sister, quitting
an unhappy home, was living as a vagabond on the
streets of Paris, whence he had to be rescued. Since,
to these worries and griefs, there was added certain
disquieting news from Eve, whose aunt, from reading
some of his books, supposed him to be a gambler and
debauchee and was trying to turn her niece against him,
it was not astonishing that he should have been com-
pletely unnerved. While at Sache, where he had come
to stay with some friends, the de Margonnes, in order to
terminate the work he was obliged to do for Madame
Bechet, he had an attack of apoplexy ; and, on recovering
from it, was glad to seize an opportunity offered him of
a journey to Italy to escape for a while from the scene
of his toiling and moiling and to have a radical change.
Balzac
Danton's Comic Statue
{Musee Carnavalet)
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 153
His good genius on this occasion was the Count Visconti,
who, having some legal business of a litigious nature to
settle at Turin and not being able to attend to it person-
ally, asked him to go instead. On this trip he was
accompanied by Madame Marbouty, a woman of letters,
better known under her pseudonym, Claire Brunne,
whose acquaintance he had made some years back at
Angouleme. Madame Marbouty 's exterior had much
in common with that of George Sand, and the resem-
blance between the two women gave rise to the report
that it was the authoress of Indiana who accompanied
Balzac to Italy at this date.
The journey back to Paris was effected through
Switzerland, which enabled him to see Geneva again,
though under less agreeable auspices than those of 1833.
His prospects on returning to France were no better
than when he left. Indeed, they were worse, for
Werdet's bad circumstances forced him to pledge him-
self in several quarters in order to raise some ready
money for his immediate wants ; and, being pledged, he
was bound to produce at high pressure. His Old Maid,
which he sold to the Presse for eight thousand francs,
was written in three nights, Facino Cane, in one night,
and the Secret of the Ruggieri, in one night also.
Rossini, happening to meet him during this spell of
drudgery, condoled with him and remarked that he
himself had gone through the mill.
" But when I did it," he added, ** I was dead after
a fortnight, and it took me another fifteen days to
revive."
" Well ! " replied Balzac, ** I have only the coffin in
view as a rest ; yet work is a fine shroud."
Casting round for a means to free himself from a
position that had grown intolerable, he was induced to
154 HONORE DE BALZAC
lend himself to a scheme suggested by Chateaubriand's
example. Chateaubriand, having fallen into financial
straits, sold his pen to a syndicate, in return for an
annual stipend. Balzac did something of the same
kind. Victor Bohain, who played an intermediary role
in the affair, discovered Chateaubriand's capitalist ; and
a company was formed which paid the novelist fifty
thousand francs down to relieve his most pressing needs ;
and further engaged to allow him fifteen hundred francs
a month for the first year, three thousand francs a
month for the second year, and, afterwards, four
thousand francs a month up to the fifteenth year, when
the agreement was to come to an end. In return for
these sums, Balzac promised to furnish a fixed num-
ber of volumes per year, half profits in which were to
be his, after all publishing expenses were paid. The
arrangement was signed on the 19th of November
1836 ; and this date, in so far as the general quality of
his writing is concerned, marks a beginning of decadence.
Thenceforward his fiction, published mostly in political
dailies first of all — the Presse, the Constitutionnel, the
Steele, the Debats, the Messager — had to be composed
hurriedly and without the corrections which were the
sine qua iion of Balzac's excellence ; and consequently
it contained many imperfections inherent in such kinds
of literary work. There was irony in the situation.
Hitherto, he had despised the daily press and the
journalists that supplied it with matter, chiefly, it must
be confessed, because of the slatings he had received
through these organs of information; and he had re-
venged himself for the attacks by pillorying the jour-
nalistic profession in his novels. Lousteau, Finot,
Blondet, and other members of the press appear in his
pages as unprincipled men, only too willing to sell
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 155
themselves to the highest bidder. Of course, such
retahation carried with it injustice ; and men of high
principle, like Jules Janin, resented this prejudiced
condemnation of a class for no better reason than its
having black sheep, which existed in every circle,
trade, and profession. Now, Janin had an easy task
in convicting of inconsistency an accuser who, since it
suited his purpose, was fain to belong to the press
brotherhood. The real derogation, however, was not
in Balzac's turning feuilletonist e, but in his slipping into
the manner and his adopting the artifices that he
blamed so unsparingly in Eugene Sue and Alexandre
Dumas. Not to speak of his faUing off in accurate
observation, he inserted more and more padding in his
fiction ; the aridly didactic encroached upon the artist's
creation ; and, to make the arid portions go down with
his readers, he spiced them with exciting episodes and
all the stage tricks common in the serial story. To tell
the truth, he had never quite shaken off his juvenile
manner of the Heiress of Bii^ague, which reasserted
itself so much the more easily as his essentially vulgar
temperament was ready to crop out on the slightest
encouragement afforded to it. During his best period
he had a mentor at his elbow in Charles Lemesle, who
always read what he wrote before it went to the
printer ; and Balzac, though vain, was too intelligent
not to avail himself of this friend's pruning. Under
the new regime the revising was impossible, and, as
a result, that difficult perfection which he had so
perseveringly sought was destined to be attained but
rarely in the rest of his achievement.
CHAPTER VIII
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1837, 1838
By the agreement which farmed out Balzac's future
production, Werdet was implicitly sacrificed. The
final breach did not occur until the middle of 1837, but
no fresh book was given him after the November of
1836. There was one unpublished manuscript that
he then had in his possession — the first part of Lost
Illusions, and this appeared in the following spring.
The novelist was intending at the time to bring out
a new edition of the Country T>octoi\ of which Werdet
held the rights. His idea was to present it for the
Monty on prize of the Academy, and, if successful,
to devote the money to raising a statue at Chinon in
memory of Rabelais. Lemesle was one Sunday at
Werdet's place, engaged in revising the book, when
Balzac arrived in an excited state of mind, and sprang
on the astonished publisher the demand that their
respective positions should be legally specified in writ-
ing, and a clean sweep made which should leave him
perfectly free. Previously, their business relations had
been carried on by verbal understandings, which, as a
matter of fact, did not bind the novelist overmuch, since
he never sold either a first or a subsequent edition of
any of his novels for more than a comparatively short
period — usually a year — at the end of which he re-
covered his entire liberty, whether the edition were
exhausted or not. Werdet acquiesced, though grie-
vously offended and disappointed ; but asked that
certain accounts outstanding from the year before
166
LETTERS TO *'THE STRANGER" 157
should be settled on the same occasion. The promise
was given, and everything was put straight, except
the reimbursement of the money Werdet had advanced.
Instead of acquitting this debt, the ingenious author
endeavoured to squeeze a little more cash out of his
long-suffering publisher. For once, Werdet lost his
temper, and sent the great man off with fa flea in
his ear. It would almost look as if Balzac had pro-
voked the quarrel, since, on the very evening after
the tiff, he returned to Werdet's and offered to redeem
all existing copyrights that the publisher held for the
price of sixty-three thousand francs. His proposal was
accepted, and Bethune, who was acting on behalf of
the novelist's syndicate, paid over the amount.
The transaction was the best possible for Werdet,
who was too poor to continue playing Maecenas to
his Horace. Against such incurable improvidence,
and such little regard for strict equity in money
dealings, nothing but the impersonality of a syndi-
cate could stand. Nevertheless, one cannot help re-
gretting that the intercourse of the two men should
have ceased. Having so great a personal regard for
his hero, and having besides his share of the observant
faculty, Werdet could have supplied us with biographi-
cal details of the last twelve years of the novelist's life
much more interesting than those of Gozlan, Gautier,
and Lemer. His naive narrations, which are well com-
posed and have humour, carry with them a conviction
of their sincerity, whatever the errors of chronology.
Werdet's prosperity finished with Balzac, as it had
commenced with him. He was ultimately compelled
to file his petition in bankruptcy, and, abandoning
business on his own account, to take up travelling for
other firms. His creditors were not tender towards
158 HONORE DE BALZAC
the novelist, and used to the utmost the lien they had
upon the few unterminated engagements that involved
him in the liquidation. A letter addressed by Balzac
to the Marquis de Belloy, his former secretary, testifies
to the annoyance the creditors caused him : —
" My dear Cardinal " (he wrote, calling the
Marquis by a nickname), — *'Your old Mar" (a familiar
appellation applied to Balzac by his friends) "would
like to know if you are at Poissy, as it is possible he
may come and request you to hide him. There is a
warrant out against him on Werdet's account, and his
counsellors recommend him to take flight, seeing that
the conflict between him and the officers of the Com-
mercial Tribunal is begun. If you are still at Poissy,
a room, concealment, bread and water, together with
salad, and a pound of mutton, a bottle of ink, and a
bed, such are the needs of him who is condemned to
the hardest of hard literary labour, and who is yours.
"LeMar."
The last occasion on which Werdet forgathered with
his favourite author was at his house in the Rue de
Seine, where, in February 1837, he gave a dinner.
Some young members of the fair sex were present ;
and ^Balzac, whether to produce a greater impression
upon these or because he had been making some
society calls, arrived nearly an hour late. Nothing
very special occurred during the evening, but the soiree
had its conclusion disturbed by a thunderbolt. On
rising to depart, Balzac sought his wonderful stick
— an inseparable companion — which was nowhere to
be found. Every nook was explored without result.
The great man yielded to a veritable fit of despair.
A suspicion crossed his mind : " Enough of this trick,
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 159
gentlemen," he cried to the male guests. '*For
Heaven's sake, restore me my stick. I implore you I "
and he tore at his long hair in his vexation. But the
guests assured him they were as ignorant as himself
of the stick's whereabouts. Werdet then said he
would take a cab and inquire at all the places the
novelist had visited in the course of the afternoon.
Two hours later he came back, announcing that his
jaunt had been useless. At this news, Balzac fainted
outright. The loss of his talisman was overwhelming.
When he was brought round again, Werdet suggested
what ought to have been suggested in the first instance,
namely, that they should proceed to the livery stables
and see whether the stick had been left in the carriage
which the novelist had used while on his peregrina-
tions. The proposal was jumped at. He went thither,
accompanied by Werdet, and had the ineffable joy of
discovering the missing bauble quietly reposing in a
corner of the vehicle.
During the year of 1836, he had had the unique
experience of corresponding for some months con-
tinuously with an unknown lady, who called herself
Louise, and to whom, in remembrance of their epis-
tolary intercourse, he dedicated his short tale Facino
Cane. Whether he really had the opportunity of
learning who she was — as he asserted — and refrained
from availing himself of it through deference to her
wishes, is doubtful. Some, if not all, of the letters
he received from " Louise " were written in English ;
and at least one water-colour painting was sent him
which had been executed by the lady's own hand.
From the tone of his own epistles, which grew warmer
onwards till the end, one may conjecture that the
dame was a second Madame Hanska, smitten with
160 HONORE DE BALZAC
the novelist's person through reading his works ; and
Balzac, whose heart was made of inflammable stuff and
whose brain was always castle-building, indulged for
a time the hope of meeting with another ideal princess
to espouse. Like the Orientals, he was quite capable
of nourishing sentiments of devotion towards as many-
beautiful and fortuned women as showed themselves
amenable. The sudden cessation of Louise's letters,
towards the end of 1836, freed him from the risk of
Eve's learning of these divided attentions ; and it may
be presumed that the latter divinity was kept in
ignorance of his worshipping elsewhere.
Facino Cane was a blind old violinist who en-
countered Balzac, if there is any truth in the story,
one evening at a restaurant where he was playing for
the members of a wedding-party. Something in the
old man's dignified aspect moved the novelist deeply,
and, accosting him, Balzac drew forth gradually the
narration of his life. Facino was, in reality, a Vene-
tian nobleman, at present reduced to dire poverty and
obliged to dwell in the Hospice of the Quinze-Vingts.^
In his youth he had been imprisoned within the Doge's
Palace, and, while there, had accidentally come upon the
secret treasures it contained. After his escape from
confinement, his dream had been to meet with some
one who would help him to gain possession of this
wealth, without taking advantage of his blindness.
And now he confided his plan to Balzac with un-
diminished faith in the possibility of its accomplish-
ment. The pathos of the old man's situation is created
with sober touches. Among the novelist's minor tales,
this is one of the simplest and best.
1 Hospital founded by Saint Louis for three hundred noblemen
whose sight had been destroyed by the Saracens,
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 161
In his reminiscences, Theophile Gautier mentions,
apropos of Facino Cane, that Balzac himself was per-
suaded he knew the exact spot, near the Pointe-a-Pitre,
where Toussaint Louverture, the black dictator of
Santo Domingo, had his booty buried by negroes of
that island, whom he then shot. To Sandeau and
Gautier the novelist explained, with such eloquence and
precision, his scheme for obtaining the interred wealth
that they were wrought up to the point of declaring
themselves ready to set out, armed with pick-axe and
spade, and to put into action Edgar Allen Poe's yarn
of the Gold Bug, When money was the theme,
Balzac's tongue was infinitely persuasive.
One is tempted to wonder whether his returning to
Italy in the spring of 1837, and his visit to Venice,
after Florence and Milan, were not an indirect conse-
quence of his Facino Cane story. It is certain that he
regarded the ancient land of the Caesars as a possible
El Dorado ; and, curiously enough, he came back this
time, if not with Sindbad's diamonds, yet with some
prospect of becoming a Silver King. Throughout the
remainder of the twelvemonth, a plan, connected with
this prospect, was simmering in his head, a plan which,
we shall see, was less chimerical than most of those
that he concocted.
While he was at Milan, the Italian sculptor Puttinati
modelled his bust, which pleased him so much that he
gave him an order for a group representing Seraphita
showing the path heavenward to Wilfrid and Minna.
At Venice, he began Massimilla JDoni, one of his philo-
sophic novels, in which the love episode is interwoven
with mysticism and music, and Rossini's Mose is
analysed with skill. His best production of the year
was Cesar Birotteau, The subject he had borne in his
162 HONORE DE BALZAC
mind for a long while, but had feared to start on it on
account of the difficulty of treating it imaginatively.
At last, tempted by an offer of twenty thousand francs
if he would complete it by a fixed date, he sat down to
the task and wrote the novel in three weeks.
The Grandeur (or Rise) and Fall of Cesar Birotteau^
to give the book its fuller title, has neither plot nor
progress of love-passion. Its value — which is great — is
almost entirely dependent on a number of little things
that make up an imposing whole. The subject is a
commonplace one. Birotteau, who is a dealer in per-
fumes, and has invented a Sultana cosmetic and a Car-
minative Water, has reached a position of influence
and substance. Urged by his wife's desire to shine in
society, he allows himself to be inveigled into an
expenditure that compromises his fortune and reduces
him to insolvency. Although retaining the esteem
of his fellow-citizens, who are convinced of his integrity,
C^sar is stricken to the heart, less by the loss of his
money than by his failure to meet his engagements.
In vain, his wife and daughter hire themselves out in
order to aid in remedying the disaster for which they
are largely responsible. In vain, friends rally round
him, until, little by little, the debts are paid, the per-
fumer is rehabilitated, and is honoured even by the
King. On the very evening when, in the society of
his family and friends and his daughter's betrothed,
he regains the feeling of independence and freedom,
death overtakes him. Joy succeeding to the strain is
too much for him.
In the background of the novel is a tableau of the
Restoration epoch which is admirable ; and the intri-
cacies of finance and law, which form so considerable a
part of the story, are handled with an ease and fancy that
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 163
no other writer of fiction has quite equalled. We have
a romance of ledgers and day-books, in a business
atmosphere that amazingly well reveals the bent and
moral worth of the various characters. C^sarine,
Villerault, Popinot have traits which one smiles to
recognize. And Birotteau's development both of
qualities and foibles is free from caricature, yet pleases
much.
As was the case with Eugenie Grrandet, Balzac
does not seem to have cared for this masterpiece.
The rapidity with which he composed it, and the fatigue
he had undergone, caused him to regard it with some
irritation. He did not realize that it was all elaborated
in his brain before he put it on paper. Probably also
he spoke of it under the disappointment he experienced
from his continued failures in play-writing. Twice,
during the twelvemonth, he tackled pieces which he
described to Madame Hanska. One of them, the
Premiere Demoiselle, refashioned as the School for
Husbands and Wives, treated the unsavoury theme of
an adulterous husband who keeps his mistress in his
own house ; and the other, Joseph Prudhomme, much
better in conception, dealt with the not uncommon
incident of a girl's making a respectable marriage after
a first betrayal, and her bringing up in secret the
child born out of wedlock. Certain situations arising
from the plot were both original and affecting. But
in neither undertaking did he manage to go on to the
end. Heine, whom he consulted in his difficulties,
advised him to abandon further efforts in writing for
the stage. "You had better remain in your galleys,"
he said. " Those who are used to Brest cannot ac-
custom themselves to Toulon."
The advice was not palatable to a man of his
164 HONORE DE BALZAC
temperament. He wanted all domains to open before
him ; and poured out his soul in lamentations, even
while exhausting himself in fresh attempts. Now that
Madame de Berny was dead, his Eve was the chief
recipient of these jeremiads. " Are you not tired of
hearing me vary my song in all moods ? " he asked her.
" Does not this unceasing egotism of a man struggling
in a narrow circle bore you ? Tell me, for, by your
letter, you appear to me inclined to throw me over
as a sorry pauper that knows only his pater?ioste?% and
always says the same thing."
To him, as to ambitious men in every century,
reflection came now and again, whispering what folly it
was to spend life in the sole pursuit of glory. Just
now the whisperings must have been more insistent, for
he had thoughts of going to live in some sylvan retreat
on the banks of the Cher or the Loire, right away from
Paris. A visit to Sache, after an illness, afforded him
the excuse for searching ; and, as he still proposed to
write — for his pleasure, — it was congruent he should
meditate a sort of Heloise and Abelard idyll — two
lovers drawn to the cloister, and telling in epistles to
each other the history of their vocation.^
As a preliminary step towards carrying his deter-
mination into execution, he dismissed his servants,
with the exception of Auguste, finally got rid of his
lease in the Rue Cassini, whence he had removed his
furniture in the preceding year; and then, feeling
still a sneaking kindness for the city in which he
had triumphed, he compromised by retreating to
Sevres, there to study the ways and means of dwell-
1 This novel was never written, or at least completed. The Sister
Marie des Anges, so often spoken of in the novelist's correspondence,
may have been the one here alluded to.
The Villa of Les Jardies, Ville d'Avray,
WHERE Balzac lived from October 1837 to December 1840
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 165
ing secure from pestering military summonses ad-
dressed to Monsieur de Balzac, alias Madame Widow
Brunet, Man of Letters, Chasseur in the First Legion,
and also, if not secure from, at least not so accessible to
the calls of dunning creditors. The flat in the Rue
de Chaillot, however, was retained till the year 1839 ;
and, from time to time, he made short stays in it.
But, in case any of his friends wished to see him during
these sojourns, they needed to know the pass-words,
which were not infrequently changed. On arriving at
the outside door, the visitor must announce, for instance,
that the seasons of plums had arrived. Then, if he
could further announce that he was bringing lace from
Belgium, he would be permitted to enter. But, before
it was lawful for him to cross the threshold of the
novelist's sanctum, he must be prepared to state that
Madame Bertrand was in good health.
At Sevres, Balzac soon hit upon a site that pleased
his fancy. It was a plot of land on a steep slope, about
forty perches in area.^ This he bought by using his
credit, and forthwith busied himself with builder's
estimates, since he intended to have his hermitage
inhabitable some time in the following spring.
Meanwhile his project of retiring — to a distance of
twenty minutes — from Paris society did not hinder
him from occasionally putting in an appearance at one
or another of the aristocratic houses where he had his
entries, among them that of Madame de Castries, whom
he continued to see, although she confined her worship
to his talent, and merely patronized the man. Either
from sheer mischievousness, or to revenge herself for
some real or fancied slight — perhaps, indeed, to mock
at his talk of retirement — she perpetrated upon him the
^ More land was subsequently bought.
166 HONORE DE BALZAC
practical joke of getting her Irish governess, a Miss
Patrickson, to send him notes in EngUsh, signed Lady
Neville, in one of which an appointment was made to
meet him at the Opera. He went to the rendezvous ;
but no one was there waiting for him. This drew from
him a sharp letter of reproach ; and Miss Patrickson,
who was, in her private life, a humble admirer of the
great man, and had on one or two occasions translated
some of his fiction, was so smitten with remorse for her
trick that she revealed to him the name of the one who
had invented it.
Les Jardies, where Balzac had decided to take up
his residence, was built on the further side of the hill of
Saint Cloud, facing the south, and with Ville d'Avray
to the west. In front, there was the rising ground of
the forest of Versailles ; to the east, the outlook was
down on Sevres and, beyond it, on Paris, with the city's
smoky atmosphere fringing the uplands of Meudon
and Bellevue. In the direction of these last places, a
glimpse was obtainable of the plains of Montrouge and
the road leading away to Tours. In summer weather
especially, the landscape here presented charming con-
trasts, being a wealth of woodland and verdure in a
miniature Switzerland.
The architecture of the would-be hermit's house
was rather primitive. Three rooms, one over another,
composed the main building. The ground floor served
as drawing-room ; above it was the anchoret's bedroom ;
and the top story was used as a study. Sixty feet
away, rose a second building containing kitchens, stables,
and servants' rooms. The whole stood in its own
grounds, fenced in with walls, half of which, being
situated on the steepest portion of the declivity, persisted
in tumbling. One curious feature of the house was its
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 167
outside staircase. Wags pretended that the owner had
forgotten it in his plans, and been obliged to add it as
an after-thought. The truth was that an inside stair-
case would have compelled him to build with less
simplicity. " Since the staircase wants to be master
in my dwelling, I will turn it out of doors," he said.
And this was done, the said staircase being a sort of
broad ladder.
Had the novelist stayed long enough in this rural
retreat, he would have beautified the interior in accord-
ance with his fanciful tastes. Friends who were invited
out there were astonished to see scrawled in chalk on
the walls :
" Here, a covering of Paros marble ; here, a ceiling
painted by Eugene Delacroix ; here, a mosaic flooring
formed of rare wood from the isles ; here, a chimney-
piece in cipolin marble."
Jokingly, Leon Gozlan one day himself inscribed
on a convenient space :
" Here, a picture by Raphael, of priceless value,
such as was never yet seen."
Of course, in the early days of his rusticating, he
was enthusiastic about his Italian-looking brick cottage,
with its covered platform or gallery running round the
first floor and supported on slender pillars. Its value,
he was sure, would be doubled when he had created the
garden of Eden round about it, planted with poplars,
birches, vines, evergreens, magnolias and sweet peas.
His humour-barometer went up to *' set fair." For the
moment, no pessimism clouded his sky. Here he
would abide, here he would work or muse until the
long-expected and at last approaching fortune should
deign to enter beneath his roof ; and then — well then,
he believed he should have had enough of ambition's
168 HONORE DE BALZAC
spoils, and should be content under the shadow of his
vine, and watch from afar — just twenty minutes or
half-an-hour at most — the march of events without
seeking to mingle in them.
The original cost of the homestead was about forty-
thousand francs. Other expenses were incurred before
the whole of the building and installation was com-
pleted, which made the total cost very considerably
larger ; and, as hardly any of the amount had been paid
cash down, Balzac's liabilities, which were heavy enough
without this extra charge, very soon introduced a dis-
turbing element into his Arcadian existence. Within
the twelvemonth, a distraint was levied upon him
for non-payment of moneys that were owing. Lemer,
one of his biographers, narrates that, paying a visit to
Les Jardies at this date, for the purpose of soliciting
the novelist's collaboration in an international album,
he not only received a promise of help but an invitation
for himself and a companion to remain and dine off a
leg of mutton. As the two visitors declined, Balzac
said : " Ah ! you think, perhaps, I am an ordinary host
who invites his guests gratis. On the contrary, I
intend to make you pay for your meal. Aha ! You
shall aid me afterwards to flit. To-morrow, the bailiffs
are coming to seize my furniture ; and I don't mean
them to find anything to carry away. So, to-night, I
am going to put everything in my gardener's cottage.
The gardener will transport all the bigger articles of
furniture ; but, for the books, manuscripts, and valuables,
I shall be glad to have the co-operation of men of
letters like you."
And the owner of Les Jardies was inconsolable
when his visitors again expressed their inability to
comply with his request.
LETTERS TO **THE STRANGER" 169
Himself a guest once more of the Carrauds at
Frapesle in February 1838, he took advantage of his
proximity to Nohant to go and see George Sand ; and
spent two or three days with her. On his arrival, he
surprised her clad in her dressing-gown, and smoking a
cigar after dinner, beside the fire, in a huge, solitary
room. Beneath the gown, she had on some red trousers,
which allowed her smart stockings and yellow slippers
to be seen. Since he used to meet her in the house of
the Rue Cassini, she had grown stout, and now had a
double chin ; but her hair was still unbleached, and her
bistre complexion preserved its tinge as of old. Work-
ing hard, she went to bed at six in the morning, and
got up at noon. During the time he was at Nohant,
Balzac adopted her habits. They talked from five in
the evening all through the night and till five o'clock
in the morning ; and he learnt to know her more truly
in these hours of familiar converse than in the four
years of her liaison with Jules Sandeau. He summed
her up as a tomboy, an artist, a mind great, generous,
devoted and chaste (this last term would need explana-
tion) ; her characteristic traits were those of a man,
not a woman. She had, so he opined, neither force of
conception, nor gift of constructing plots, nor faculty
of reaching the true, nor the art of the pathetic. The
French language she used she did not thoroughly
know, but she had style. Of her glory she made little
account, and despised the public. Her fate was to be
duped — and duped she had been by Bocage, by de
Lamennais, by Liszt, by Madame d'Agoult. To-
gether they discussed the future revolution in manners
and morals, and the influence their books might have
in bringing it about. She suggested to him some
subjects that he might develop, and taught him — up
170 HONORE DE BALZAC
to then opposed to the weed — how to smoke latakia
tobacco in a hookah pipe. Imagining the hookah to
be something Russian, he asked Madame Hanska, to
whom he related all this, to purchase him one, telling
her that he would have his wonderful stick-knob, with
its jewels, adapted to it, since he no longer bore the
stick about with him as a fetish.
From Frapesle he returned with the plan matured
which he had been preparing since his excursion to
Italy. When at Genoa, in the previous year, a
merchant had talked to him of the existence of huge
hills of refuse metal left in the island of Sardinia by
the Romans, who had worked silver mines there.
Aware how defective the Roman methods of extraction
were, Balzac thought there might be profit in treating
this slag by some process that would cause it to yield
whatever precious metal it contained ; and he requested
the merchant to procure him some specimens of the
slag, and to forward them to Paris for examination,
promising, if the tests were satisfactory, to include the
Genoese in the company which he was sure of being
able to float for the exploitation of the concern.
Although the merchant did not forward the specimens,
Balzac consulted some specialists in Paris, Monsieur
Carraud amongst others, who all concurred in pro-
nouncing the enterprise feasible. Finally, the novelist
decided to proceed to the spot and investigate the
matter personally. If success awaited him, he would
gain enough to pay off all his debts; and these he
estimated to be about two hundred thousand francs — a
Falstaffian exaggeration, of course, but the real figures
were large. At present, he had no ready money at
all ; and had to borrow from his mother, a cousin, and
other friends, in order to get his travelling expenses.
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 171
Experience proved that he was correct in his theory.
The slag yielded ten per cent, of lead by a first treat-
ment, and the lead ten per cent, of pure silver. Unfor-
tunately, the Genoese merchant had availed himself of
Balzac's hint, and had sold the scheme to a Marseilles
firm, who were already applying for the monopoly to
the rulers of the island, when, in the spring of 1838,^
he started on his journey thither ; and, before he could
do anything, they had obtained the concession. Once
more, he had imprudently thrown out an idea, and lost
his claim on it.
On his way south he saw much that was new and
novel to him. Passing through Corsica, he went over
the house where the Emperor Napoleon was born ;
and, according to his habit of seeking information, he
ferreted out several things that contradicted received
history. The Petit CaporaVs father he discovered to
have been a fairly rich landowner, not a sheriff's officer,
as tradition said. Moreover, when the Emperor arrived
at Ajaccio from Egypt, instead of being acclaimed and
having a triumphal reception from his countrymen, he
was outlawed, a price was put upon his head, and he
escaped only through the devotion of a peasant who
hid him in the mountains.
Corsica he considered one of the finest places in
the world, with mountains like those of Switzerland,
and needing only the latter country's lakes. Com-
pletely undeveloped, and practically unexplored, it was
inhabited by people that cultivated the dolcefar niente
to the uttermost. Its population of eight thousand
vegetated rather than lived, ignorant of everything
beyond the simplest necessities of existence. The
^ Madame Surville wrongly places the date of the journey in
1833.
172 HONORE DE BALZAC
women disliked strangers, and the men did nothing
but walk about all day, clad in their threadbare velvet
coats, smoking to beguile the hours.
His account of Sardinia is equally curious. It was
a wilderness, he says, with savannas of palm-trees,
inhabited by savages. On horseback, he traversed
a virgin forest, obliged to bend over his horse's neck
to avoid the huge branches of holm-oaks and cork-
trees, and laurels and heather that were thirty feet
high. In one canton he found people naked, except
for a waist-cloth, and living on coarse bread made from
acorns mixed with clay. Their mud hovels had no
chimney, the fire being lighted on the ground in the
middle. There was no agriculture in the island, and
the only work done by the men was tending their
flocks of goats and other animals.
A tour through Genoa, Florence, and Milan made
up the rest of this interesting trip, which lasted from
March till June. Disappointed in the object for
which he left home, it furnished him with leisure to
gather fresh subjects for his pen, and even to begin
one — the Diaries of Two Young Wives. What he
wished to describe in this book was stated in the
following remarks to Madame Hanska : "I have
never seen a novel in which happy love, satisfied love,
is depicted. Rousseau puts too much rhetoric in his
attempt, and Richardson too much preaching. The
poets have too many flourishes ; the novelists are too
much the slaves of facts. Petrarch is too exclusively
occupied with his images of speech and his concetti;
he sees the poetry more than the woman. Pope has
given perhaps too many regrets to Heloise ; he wanted
her to be better than nature ; and the better is an
enemy to the good. In fine, God, who created love
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER " 173
with humanity, has alone understood it; for none of
His creatures has described, so as to please me, the
elegies, fantasies, and poems of this divine passion of
which each speaks and which so few have really-
known."
Did Balzac himself ever know it? By his own
confession, never in his youth. In the years of his
adolescence there is no sign of such a feeling having
agitated his breast, where ambition reigned to the
exclusion of everything else. If, then, he thought of
marriage, its prosaic, advantageous side only appears
to have entered into count ; and the liaison, which
stood him in lieu of it, stirred, beyond sense, nothing
but sentiments of common gratitude. In riper age,
his attachment to Madame Hanska was a bizarre
medley of flattered vanity, artistic appreciation of
beauty, and cold calculation. His epistles reek with
each and all of these; and his eternal complaints of
financial embarrassment not infrequently read like the
expressions of a pauper's whining.
That they ultimately wearied out the recipient of
them is evident from the remonstrances he drew upon
himself. Eve blamed his lightness of character, the
facility with which he let himself be tempted, his
tendency to waste in travelling the funds he would
have done more wisely to employ in reducing his
obligations or avoiding them. At such moments he
defended himself sharply, his tone savouring less of
the boudoir than the forum. Any and every excuse
was pressed into service; everything and everybody
were responsible but himself. Even his mother he
accused of causing his indebtedness — his mother who
had ruined herself for him, and from whose remaining
pittance he took in this self-same year the wherewithal
174 HONORE DE BALZAC
to go to Sardinia, although earning many thousands of
francs annually. The truth is that Balzac exploited
all the women that loved him, himself incapable of
loving any one of them with that entire devotion
which, if aroused, is unique in a man's life ; and, as
he was ignorant of it, so he has never described it
adequately, faithfully. In one or two instances, he
obtains a glimpse of it — as Moses obtained a vision
of the promised land — from afar ; when he tries to get
nearer, he presents us with mere sensualism.
What Madame Hanska probably enjoyed most in
his letters were the obiter dicta which he was never
tired of pronouncing on his contemporaries. Scribe,
whose Camaraderie he had been to see, he summed up
as a man who was conversant in his trade but had no
veritable art, who possessed talent but not the higher
dramatic genius, and who, moreover, was altogether
lacking in style. Victor Hugo's Ruy Bias was to
him an infamy in verse, and the rest of this author's
pieces miserable melodramas. Theophile Gautier's
poetry was decadent, his style sparkling with great
wit ; yet the man was wanting in force of ideas.
When, however, he added that Gautier would do
nothing that would last because he was engaged in
journalism, he spoke with all his hatred of a profes-
sion that refused him the honour he deemed his due.
Eugene Sue, also, he looked upon with jaundiced
eyes, as being a rival whose material success amazed
him — a rival, indeed, whom no less a critic than Sainte-
Beuve erroneously declared to be his equal. Sue, he
informed Madame Hanska, was a man of narrow
bourgeois mind, perceiving merely certain insignificant
details of the vulgar evils of French contemporary
society. To Balzac, besides, it was blasphemy in Sue
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 175
that he spoke slightingly of the century which to this
Legitimist was the grandest epoch in French history,
slightingly of Louis XIV., who, in the said Legitimist's
opinion, was France's premier king.
The latter half of 1838 was spent at Les Jardies,
where the novelist was busy either with his pen or in
improving the interior and exterior of the property.
A scheme for cultivating a pine-apple orchard in his
grounds kept him from fretting over the sorry ter-
mination of his Sardinian dream. He intended to set
five thousand plants, and sell the fruit at five francs
a piece, instead of twenty, which was the ordinary
price. After deducting the expenses of the under-
taking, he reckoned he could gain twenty thousand
francs a year out of his pine-apples. If they had been
willing to grow in the open air, he would undoubtedly
have gone from theory into practice. But, as this
difficulty presented itself in the initial stage, he threw
up incontinently his market-gardening ; and, since he
was in urgent want of cash, he bethought himself that,
lying by him, he had a collection of Napoleon's sayings,
which he had been making for the past seven years,
cutting them out of books that dealt with the
Emperor's life. The number was just then five
hundred. For a sum of five thousand francs he dis-
posed of the fruits of his industry to a retired hosier
named Gandy, who published them subsequently
under the title Maxims and Thoughts of Napoleon^
the preface being also supplied by the novelist.
Besides Gambara, a second study of the musical
art, containing a lyrically expressed analysis of Robert
le Diable, Balzac produced in 1837 and 1838 two
longer works, the Employees or the Superior Woman
and the Firm of Nucingen. The former, with its
176 HONORE DE BALZAC
criticism of the bureaucratic system, depicted a state of
things which has survived several changes of regime in
France, in spite of much in it that contradicts common
sense. Rabourdin, the head clerk in a government
department, seeks to simplify the useless machinery
that clogs rather than advances the administration of
the country. Having a practical mind, he believes
that a hundred functionaries at twelve thousand francs
a year would do the same work better than a thousand
employees at twelve hundred francs, and cost no more.
As in other of the novelist's books that preached reform,
there are parts in this one where the main thread of
the story disappears like a river in a canon ; and readers
of the Presse, in which it came out as a serial, railed at
the author, called his contribution stupid, and threatened
to cease subscribing if it were not withdrawn. Yet,
perused in volume form, it reveals comedy in abund-
ance. The portraits are limned with master hand;
and Celestine Rabourdin, the wife of the head clerk,
has, together with her grace and taste, the gift of
amusing by the skill with which she bamboozles the
dissolute des Lupeaulx.
The Firm of Nucingen is a scathing satire of the
world of stock- jobbing, where the money of the small
investor is robbed with impunity under cover of legality.
Balzac's Jewish banker, who thrives on others' ruin is
a type that exists to-day, as then, without any adequate
effort made by law to suppress him. Less happy in
indicating a remedy than in branding an evil, the
novelist naively held that France had only to adopt
his doctrine of absolute rule for the suppression to
become a fact. An unprejudiced reading of history
should have informed him that regimes have always
so far existed for the benefit of their creators, and that.
\
Balzac
After a Painting by Louis Boulanger
Exhibited in the Salon of 1837
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 177
although constitutional monarchies and republics have
not yet found out a system capable of defending the
interests of all individual citizens, and perhaps never
will, absolute monarchy has shown to satiety its inability
to defend the interests of more than a few.
In perusing such a book as the foregoing, one is
led to ask why it was so inoperative on the life of the
country. One reason perhaps is that Balzac wrote
from his head rather than from his heart. Whatever
may be, in other respects, the superiority of the Real-
istic over the Romantic school of fiction, it is inferior
in this, viz., that its emotiveness tends to the negation,
not to the affirmation, of action. One cannot but
recollect to the novelist's disadvantage, as applying
to this reference, the following statement he made to
Madame Hanska for another purpose : " I have never
in my life confused the thoughts of my heart with
those of my head, and, excepting a few lines written
only for you to read (for instance, Madame de Chau-
lieu's jealous letter), I have never expressed in my
books anything of my heart. It would have been
the most infamous sacrilege." Unconsciously insin-
cere, like the majority of people in their justificative
confessions, Balzac often allowed his heart to intrude
where it had no business to be present. Nevertheless
in his realist pictures he exercised himself with all the
cold delight of the anatomist, and with none of the
warm emotion that might have become communicative.
This Brunetiere implicitly admits when he says that
most of Balzac's novels are, so to speak, inquiries, —
collections of documents.
The year 1838 closed questioningly for the hermit
at Les Jardies. The yoke of his treaty with the
publishing syndicate was hardly twelve moons old;
M
178 HONORE DE BALZAC
and, however, it galled his neck to the extent of his
cogitating how he might pay off the earnest money
he had received, and be his own man again. And
how was he to do it unless by increasing his earnings ?
All his actual revenue was swallowed up by his debts
and habits of living. Ah ! if only he could become
a successful dramatic author ! Alone, he did not for
the moment feel equal to trying. But there was the
possibility of collaboration. His late secretary, the
Marquis de Belloy, had recently seemed disposed to
come and help him again. But de Belloy desired some
acknowledgment in coin ; and Balzac, on the contrary,
judged that the honour of collaborating with a novelist
of his celebrity ought to be sufficient wage.
" My dear de Belloy," (he wrote back) — *' Not a
halfpenny ; much work, your six hours a day, in three
shifts, that's what awaits you at Sevres, if you are in
the mind to come and realize things which are not
vague plans but definite arrangements, and the relative
result of which will depend on the brilliant wit that
you have had the fatal imprudence to cast to the winds.
I am at the grindstone, and forswear any one that will
not tackle it. I have put my neck in the big collar
because the other one was irksome. Your devoted
Mar
tyr
ine
ried man
about "
he concluded, punning on his nickname. Like his
fellow mortals, he was often most merry when he was
most sad.
CHAPTER IX
LETTERS TO ^^THE STRANGER," 1839, 1840
Sometimes, notwithstanding his affected indifference,
Balzac was provoked by the pleasantries, the fleerings
and floutings of satirists and caricaturists, who, finding
so many weak points in his armour — so much that was
ridiculous in his exaggerations, might be excused for
choosing him as a quarry for their wit, if not for the wit's
grossness. In 1839, the Gazette des Ecoles inserted in
one of its numbers a lithograph exhibiting the novelist
in the debtors' prison at Clichy, clad in his monk's
gown, and sitting at a table on which there were
bottles of wine and a champagne glass. In his left
hand he grasped a pipe that he was smoking, and his
right arm was round a young woman's waist. Beneath
the lithograph was the inscription : *' The Reverend
Father Dom Seraphitus, Mysticus Goriot, of the Regu-
lar Order of Clichy Friars, taken in by all those he has
himself taken in, receives amidst his forced solitude
the consolations of Sancta Seraphita {Scenes of the
Hidden Life, sequel to those of Private Life),
The last sentence being open to the interpretation
that the subject of the caricature was a dishonest man,
a complaint was lodged with the Procureur-General
against the proprietor of the paper, and was supported
by the newly-constituted Men of Letters Society.
This Society, of which Balzac may be considered
almost the founder, came into existence during his
179
180 HONORE DE BALZAC
journey to Italy in the preceding year. On his return,
he at once became a member ; and, for a while, took
a prominent part in all its deliberations, being elected
on the committee, as also Victor Hugo, with whom
thenceforward his relations were, at least outwardly,
most cordial. In the first lawsuit engaged by the
Society against the Memorial de Rouen for the pur-
pose of defending the principle of literary property, he
pleaded with all the force of his talent, and composed a
Literary Code and some Notes on Literary Ownership
containing not a few excellent suggestions. His, too,
was the initiative for the drawing up of a petition to
the King, with a view to the establishment of literary
prizes to be bestowed on well-deserving authors every
ten years. The King, or rather his advisers, rewarded
this zeal but ill. At one of the committee meetings
Balzac was prevented from attending by a three days'
confinement in a dirty lock-up at Sevres, the cause
being the old one which had partly driven him from
Paris — his unwillingness to go, as he humorously put
it, into the vineyards of his village, and, dressed in
uniform, to see that truants from Paris were not eating
the grapes.
His rural retreat, indeed, was scarcely the safe
asylum he had fondly hoped it would be. Allusion has
already been made to one defect — that of the walls
which, unlike those of Jericho, did not wait for the
trumpeters' blast before they fell down. They had an
incurable preference for tumbling down of themselves.
Constructed on a subsoil of sandy nature, their founda-
tions yielded at every spell of rain. In vain, architect
after architect was applied to, and one mode or another
was recommended of relaying and buttressing. At the
next downpour, the servant would disturb his master
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 181
with the news : " The walls have toppled over again,
sir, into the neighbours' gardens." And the neighbours'
gardens were planted with all kinds of edible vegetables,
which were crushed and pounded out of shape and suc-
culence, so that the owner of Les Jardies had claims
for damage continually sent in, until, in sheer despair,
pledging his credit more deeply, he purchased the land
beyond, content, at length, that his walls should be
able to carry on their freaks in his own demesne, with-
out let or hindrance or objection from any one. It is
said that the land on which Les Jardies stood was so
much on the incline that Frederick Lemaitre, who once
ventured over there, was compelled to take a couple of
stones and place them at each step under his feet in
order to approach the house. This was, no doubt, one
of the actor's jokes. It is probable that, in selecting
the site, Balzac had in his thought the facility the place
would afford for reconnoitring when any one came to
his doors. The domestics were directed to keep a
sharp look-out ; and, as soon as a figure was seen
approaching that appeared to be a creditor or of the
State functionary tribe, the blinds of the abode were
lowered, the dog Turk was dungeoned, and every trace
of there being inhabitants vanished. After ringing
uselessly, the unwelcome visitor generally retreated
under the impression that the place was deserted.
Then, when the last echo of his steps had died away in
the distance, the blinds were drawn up again, Turk,
barking with joy, was released from his captivity, and,
like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty, Les Jardies re-
awoke to its normal activity. How ever the tiers of
planted beds perched one above the other — a modern
example of the hanging gardens of Babylon — were
made to resist the solicitations of the walls was a puzzle
182 HONORE DE BALZAC
to Balzac's familiars. As for trees, only one, a walnut,
managed, by dint of perpetual acrobatism, to conserve
a stable equilibrium.
Most of the fiction published by Balzac in 1839 —
A Provincial Great Man in Paris, the Secrets of the
Princess de Cadignan, and the Village Cure — was
written with great verve, and may be classed in the list
of his important work. The second of the three just
mentioned, which is the shortest, gives us the story of
a woman who, after losing her fourteenth lover, succeeds
in getting a fifteenth, d'Arthez, to believe her virtuous
and a sort of saint maligned by envy. There is clever-
ness and to spare in the way the wiles of this sly jade
are related, and falsehood shown as a fine art in the
service of passional love. Balzac was thoroughly at
home in treating such a theme. Both d'Arthez and
the Princess are prominent characters in certain others
of his books. The former appears in the Provincial
Great Man in Paris, which the author calls an audacious
and frightfully exact painting of the inner morals of
the French capital.
It formed a sequel to a previously published short
novel, the Two Poets, and made part of a still larger
series united under the title Lost Illusions, the entire
work being completed in the Forties with Splendour and
W?rtchedness of Courtezans, this last portion having
also more than one section. The first two volumes
of the Lost Illusions narrate the early experiences of
Lucien de Rubempre, a young poet of Angouleme,
whose family, with some claims to gentility, has fallen
into narrow circumstances, the widowed mother being
obliged to earn money as a midwife, and the daughter
as a laundry- woman. The latter's marriage with David
Sechard, a printer, alters the situation of the family for
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 183
the better ; and Lucien is enabled to occupy himself in
the printing-house, while pursuing his poetical efforts.
Though his literary talent, for the time being, has no
value in cash, it procures him the friendship of Madame
de Bargeton, a grand dame of Angouleme ; or, more
properly speaking, it is the pretext and justifica-
tion ; for Lucien really owes the lady's favour to his
Apollo-like beauty. Subsequently the poet, desirous
of shining in Paris, quits his native place with a sum
of money scraped together by his sister and brother-in-
law, and goes to the capital, accompanied by Madame
de Bargeton. His liaison there with the lady is but of
short duration. In compensation, however, he becomes
acquainted with a new literary world, into which he
enters with his meagre stock of poems, plus a novel ;
and, after a number of adventures, turns journalist, a
metamorphosis that supplies the author with an oppor-
tunity to rage furiously against all those of that ilk.
The rest of this first part of the Lost Illusions is taken
up with the amours of Lucien and an actress named
Coralie, who gives the poet her heart and person, yet
he sharing the second with the rich Camuzot. Coralie
really loves Lucien, even though playing afresh the
role of Manon to his des Grieux ; but Lucien, less
constant in affection, and finding how difficult it is to
secure wealth and position, abases his pen to vile uses,
and would gladly abandon his mistress for a profitable
marriage. At length a duel, in which he is dangerously
wounded, lays him on a sick-bed, and Coralie, who has
sacrificed her situation on the stage to her love for him,
and is herself ill, rises to nurse him back to health, and
dies under the strain.
The further history of Lucien de Rubempre belongs
to the Splendour and Wretchedness of Courtezans.
184 HONORE DE BALZAC
Both the beginning and the middle and the end exhibit
the strong points and the weak points of the noveUst.
The defects were dwelt upon in the Revue de Paris,
soon after the book's first part came out, in probably
the longest critical article devoted to any single one of
Balzac's writings. By the irony of events, Jules Janin,
who was the author of it, praised, some dozen years
later, where now he cursed. There was exaggeration
in his panegyric, pronounced in 1850 under the impulse
dictating generosity to the memory of a dead foe ; and
there was exaggeration also in his polemic indited under
the smart of Balzac's gibes against the press. How-
ever, the closing words of the article, save for the tone,
can hardly be gainsaid : " Never," asserted Janin, " has
Monsieur de Balzac's talent been more diffuse, never
has his invention been more languishing, never has his
style been more incorrect, even if we include the days
when the illustrious novelist had nothing to fear from
serious criticism, days when he was too unknown to be
noticed by the small newspapers, days when Monsieur
Honore de Balzac was as yet only Monsieur Horace de
Saint- Aubin." ^
The preceding remarks might be applied in substance
to the Village Cure, which is one of the most incoherent
of the novelist's productions. '* I have no time to
finish the book ; just the part that concerns the Cure
will be wanting," he explained to a correspondent. A
good deal else was lacking when it was published, the
whole resembling a patchwork of odds and ends of the
crudest and least harmonious design. Its central figure
is Veronique, the wife of a Limoges banker named
Grasselin, and greatly her senior, to whom she has been
married by her parents before she has had the time to
1 A nom de guerre of Balzac in his apprenticeship days.
LETTERS TO **THE STRANGER" 185
know anything of love and its behests. Led by her
goodness of heart to patronize a youth in her husband's
employ, she falls in love with him, as he with her, and,
through weakness, becomes his mistress. A murder, of
which the young Tascheron is accused, and, as the issue
proves, quite justly, interrupts this culpable idyll ; and
the assassin is condemned and executed, without re-
vealing the secret of his liaison, and without Madame
Grasselin's interfering to save him, otherwise than
vaguely, through the Cure of the district. None the
less, she is aware that the act has been committed in-
directly through the young man's love for her. Smitten
with remorse, after the execution, she quits Limoges,
and, removing into the country, endeavours there by a
life of charity and devotion to religion to redeem her
lapse from her wifely duty. Then, finally, she dies in
presence of the Archbishop, of Bianchon the great
doctor, and of the Procureur-General and other wit-
nesses, whom she has sent for to listen to her confession
of moral complicity, the death scene being narrated
with much theatrical emphasis. On to this melodra-
matic subject, wilfully rendered obscure, and really in-
comprehensible, the novelist did his best to tack various
illustrations of Catholic repentance. He intended the
book to be the glorification of Catholicism, the refuta-
tion of Protestantism, the embodiment of virtues private
and social in people who bowed themselves to his ideal
of faith ; the story he used simply as a thread to con-
nect these things together. Consequently, the action
is intermittent, being checked by irrelevant episodes,
and by long tirades on agriculture, sociology, and on
other theories set forth by the writer with much zeal
but also with much acrimony. CathoUcism is asserted
to be the only Church which has shown humanity its
186 HONORE DE BALZAC
way of safety; Tascheron's sister, who returns from
America, is made to relate that in a certain place where
Catholic influence prevailed, the Protestants were very
soon chased away. To this religion of such charming
mansuetude, whenever it has the upper hand, a Protes-
tant engineer named Gerard is converted by puerile
arguments which in any other domain than the theo-
logical would seem to be the divagations of a lunatic ;
and the Cure Bonnet proclaims the necessity of passive
obedience by the masses to the Church's rule in matters
civil as well as ecclesiastic. To add spice to this farrago
of absurdity, Balzac spits out his hatred of the English,
albeit he is compelled to acknowledge their common
sense. As he confessed to the Marquis de Custine, it
was his delight to abuse England, and its inhabitants,
whether men or women.
From what we know of his relations with Madame
Visconti, we may, however, suppose that his prejudice
against the perfide Albion was not very deep-rooted.
Indeed in his sentiments, as in his conduct, consistency
was conspicuous by its absence. We find this would-
be Legitimist, absolutist, ultra-orthodox worshipper of
every old-time privilege and doctrine, yet continually
saying and doing things that savour more of the demo-
cratic than the aristocratic. Towards the disintegration
of monarchic attachments, his fiction contributed at
least as much as that of George Sand ; and even his
comic resistance to the compulsory service required of
him in the National Guard showed how little he was
inclined to accept for himself those doctrines of authority
which he would fain impose on others.
Such incongruity between his theory and practice
may have struck the members of the Acaddmie
Fran^aise, who manifested their disapproval of his
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 187
candidature so unmistakably in 1839 that he withdrew
in favour of Victor Hugo. This forced concession per-
haps tinged the portrait he sketched of Hugo for Madame
Hanska about the same time. ** Victor Hugo," he said,
" is an exceedingly witty man ; he has as much wit
as poetry in him. His conversation is most delightful,
with some resemblance to that of Humboldt, but superior
and allowing more dialogue. He is full of bourgeois
ideas. He execrates Racine, and treats him as a sorry
sort of man. On this point he is quite mad. His wife
he has thrown over for J ; and gives for such con-
duct reasons of signal meanness (she bore him too many
children ; notice that J has borne him none). In
fine, there is more good than bad in him. Although
the good traits are an outcome of pride, and although
in everything he is a deeply calculating man, he is ami-
able on the whole, and, besides, is a great poet. Much
of his force, value, and quality he has lost by the life
he leads, having overdone his devotion to Venus."
Calling Hugo a great poet meant little in Balzac's
mouth. Of poetry he made but small account, probably
because he succeeded so ill in it himself. When poets
appear in his stories, they are rarely estimable characters.
For Lucier. de Rubempre he has only little sympathy.
The three specimens of Lucien's verse given in the novel
he procured from his acquaintances. The sonnet to
Marguerite was composed by Madame de Girardin ;
the one to Camellia, by Lassailly, and that to Tulipe,
by Theophile Gautier.
A movement of disinterested generosity displayed
by him in the same year was his fight, in conjunction
with the artist Gavarni, on behalf of Sebastien Benoit
Peytel. Peytel was a notary living at Belley, who, on
the 20th of August 1839, was condemned to death by
188 HONORE DE BALZAC
the Ain Assizes on a charge of murdering his wife and
man-servant. Balzac had known him some time before
in Paris, when both were on the staff of the theatrical
journal Le Voleur, The Court of Cassation was ap-
pealed to in vain; and the sentence was carried out
at Bourg on the 28th of October. As long as there
seemed the slightest chance of preventing the execution,
Balzac continued his efforts to save the notary, though
blamed by his family and friends for his interference,
which they set down as quixotic. Presumably Peytel
had committed the crime in a fit of jealous passion,
to punish his wife's adultery. A curious drawing by
Balzac exists in the first volume of his general corre-
spondence, in which Gavarni is represented mocking the
headsman ; and, accompanying the design, is an auto-
graph letter to Dutacq, managing director of the Siecle,
referring to an article on the question published by the
novelist in that paper.
The time and money he gave to this lost cause were
all the more meritorious as his own concerns demanded
greater attention than ever. A new departure had
occurred in journalism. The appearance of certain
cheaper newspapers necessitated a change in the roman
feuilleton ; and the Presse and Siecle, which had inau-
gurated the reform, and to both of which Balzac con-
tributed fiction, laid down the principle that they would
print only short tales complete in three or four numbers.
This was hard on the novelist. For him to compress
a story within artificial limits determined by an editor
was a task even more difficult than to write a play.
It must have been the desire to escape from such
^rvitude which induced him to launch into another
adventure with a journal of his own. The Revue
Parisieniie, which he founded in July 1840, was not a
Balzac
From a Caricature of the year 1838
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 189
newspaper but a magazine, intended to supply the
public, at a reasonable price, with tales, novels, poetry,
and articles of criticism both literary and political, and
to give the same public for their money more than three
times as much matter as they would get in other reviews.
The success of Alphonse Karr's monthly G^tepes, which
was reported to be selling extraordinarily, encouraged
him to believe that his own fame, wider spread in 1839
than in 1836, and greater, would suffice to assure a
similar result. Author and editor combined, he made
the three numbers of his review, which were all he was
able to bring out, at any rate the equal of the older
established monthlies. In the three appeared his Z,
Marcas, and A Prince of Bohemia, the former a resusci-
tation of the Louis Lambert species of hero transformed
into a politician. The Russian Letters, likewise political,
furnish a very exact and comprehensive sketch of the
general state of mind in Europe at the commencement
of the Forties. One article of criticism praised to the
skies Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme published in the
previous year. A letter he had addressed to Stendhal
in April 1839 was more moderate in its tone, though
eulogistic with its well-turned compliment : " I make a
fresco, and you have made Italian statues." He blamed
the writer in his letter for situating the plot of the
Chartreuse in Parma. '* Neither state nor town," he
told him, "should have been named. It should have
been left to the imagination to discover the Prince of
Modena and his minister. Hoffman never failed to
obey this law without exception in the rules of the
novel. If everything be left undefined as regards reality,
then everything becomes real." In short, notwithstand-
ing parts that were too long drawn out, he found the
whole a fine piece of work ; and, if a modern Machiavelli
190 HONORE DE BALZAC
were to write a novel, it would be, he said, the Chart-
reuse de Parme.
Between the judicious language employed in the
letter and the article of the Revue Parisienne, the differ-
ence was so enormous that Beyle himself remarked :
" This astonishing notice, such as never one writer had
from another, I read, let me own it, amid bursts of
laughter. Whenever I came to fresh flights of eulogy
— and I met with them in every paragraph — I could not
help thinking how my friends would look when they saw
them." ** The reason for this augmented enthusiasm
must be sought," says Sainte-Beuve, " in the fact that
Stendhal lent or gave Balzac a sum of five thousand
francs in the interval, and thus received back a service
oiaviour propre for the service rendered in cash. Since
the proof of this gift or loan was found in Beyle's papers,
at his death, Sainte-Beuve's explanation seems well
grounded ; and yet, for Balzac's credit, one could have
wished his praise more spontaneous."
The cessation of the Revue Paiisienne forced its
founder again to enter the ranks of paid contributors
to the daily press, and to comply with its exigencies.
Yet not entirely. His qualities and his defects alike
led him frequently to break from restraint and to follow
his own bent, maugre the complaints of readers, maugre
editors' entreaties ; and, even in the final phase of his
production, there were some masterpieces supporting
comparison with those of his best period.
At the end of the Thirties, he was again, like Bruce's
spider, renewing his efforts to climb on to the stage.
He had three pieces in hand, La Gina, Richard the
Sponge- Heart, and his School for Husbands and Wives,
already mentioned. The last he had now managed to
carry through to its conclusion ; and, in February 1839,
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 191
there seemed to be some prospect of his getting it
played. Pereme, an influential acquaintance of his in
the theatrical world, had persuaded the Renaissance
Theatre to accept it on approval, but was less fortunate
with regard to the fifteen thousand francs which Balzac
had asked for on account. The roles were discussed
and partially distributed. Henry Monnier and Frederick
Lemaitre were to be chief actors on the men's side,
Mesdames Theodore and Albert on the women's. On
the 25th of the month, the author presented himself
with his manuscript before the reading committee ;
and, to his intense annoyance and dismay, was com-
pelled to put it back into his pocket. Either the com-
mittee feared the expense which the representation would
have entailed, or else the elder Dumas, who was one
of their most successful suppliers of dramas, and had
recently fallen out with them, must have made up the
quarrel just before Balzac's comedy was read. What-
ever the reason was, the rejection of the piece grievously
affected the novelist, who, besides losing a great deal of
valuable time, had spent money to no purpose in having
his comedy printed.
It must be acknowledged that, in dramatic compo-
sition, whatever Balzac had so far done by himself was
done grudgingly, and, when possible, shifted on to
other shoulders. Gozlan relates that Lassailly, who
went to Les Jardies and lived there for some little time
as a paid secretary, would be rung up at night, when
his employer usually worked — rung up not once nor
twice, but several times, to hear himself asked whether,
in his waking or his dreaming, he had hatched any good
plan; and poor Lassailly would have sorrowfully to
avow that his brain had conceived nothing of any
importance in the way of drama.
192 HONORE DE BALZAC
How Hard, the managing director of the Porte-
Saint-Martin, was brought to give in the same twelve-
month to the rejected of the Renaissance a firm promise
that anything he liked to do for that theatre should be
acted is an impenetrable mystery. But then Harel him-
self was an oddity, and he may have felt bowels of com-
passion for a confrere so original. The story goes that
once he tried to borrow thirty thousand francs from
King Louis-Philippe. " Ah ! Monsieur Harel," replied
the monarch, smiling, " I was thinking of applying to
you for a similar sum."
The subject that, after much cogitation, Balzac
chose for Harel's stage was Vautrin — the Vautrin of
Pere Goriot and the Lost Illusions — back at his old
trade of acting Providence to a presumably fatherless
and friendless young man, whose fortunes he sought to
advance by means similar to those that had brought
Lucien de Rubempre (we are anticipating a little) to
so miserable an end. In the concluding act of the play,
the young man discovers that he has a family, and a
father who is a noble ; and he marries the girl he loves.
But Vautrin is arrested, and, although he has been the
instrument of his protege's happiness, he is led off to
prison once more. The theme, as treated, was a some-
what hackneyed one, and was further spoiled by ill-
managed contrasts of the serious and comic, of which
in any form the French stage was not tolerant. Objec-
tion had been made on the same score to the School for
Husbands and Wives at the Theatre Fran^ais, where it
had been offered after its rejection by the Renaissance.
Balzac himself had no great opinion of his dramatic
arrangement of Vautrin, He had done wrong, he said,
to put a romantic character on the stage. After the
play was finished, he re-wrote nearly the whole of it ;
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 193
and, from what Thdophile Gautier relates about the
way in which it was primitively composed, we can well
believe that the revision was necessary. When the
treaty with Harel was signed, Balzac installed himself
in the small apartment which he rented at his tailor's.
No. 104 Rue de Richelieu, and sent for Gautier. " I
am going to read to Harel to-morrow," he announced,
" a grand five-act drama." '' Ah ! " replied Gautier ;
" so I suppose you want us to hear it and to give you
our opinion." " The play is not yet written," answered
Balzac coolly. "You shall do one act ; Ourliac, a second ;
Laurent Jan, a third ; de Belloy, a fourth ; and I, the
fifth. There are not so many lines in one act. With
all of us working together, we shall be able to complete
it by to-morrow." Objections were timidly put forward
as to the hotch-potch that was likely to result from so
improvized a method of work ; but the hasty play-
wright overruled them all. It need hardly be said that
the five acts were not ready on the morrow, nor for
some time after. In fact, Laurent Jan was the only
collaborator who gave any considerable help. To him,
in acknowledgment, Balzac dedicated the piece, which
was performed on the 14th of March 1840.
Knowing what a number of enemies he had among
the Parisian journalists and critics, whom he had
satirized with increased causticity in his latest fiction,
the author endeavoured to pack the theatre with his
friends, but there was a large leakage in the sale of
tickets ; and, on the eventful evening, the seats were
occupied by a majority of persons hostile to him. He
must have had an inkling of this ; for, when sending a
ticket to Lamartine, he said to him ; " You will see
a memorable failure. I have done wrong, I believe, to
appeal to the public. Morituri te salutant CcBsarT The
N
194 HONORE DE BALZAC
first portion of the performance was received, on the
whole, favourably, though there was no enthusiasm ;
but, when Frederick Lemaitre, who was entrusted with
the role of Vautrin, came on to the stage, in the fourth
act, dressed as a Mexican general, and wearing his fore-
lock of hair in a way that appeared to imitate a like
peculiarity in the King, there was an outcry among the
audience; and Louis-Philippe's son, who was present,
was informed by complaisant courtiers that the travesty
was intended as an insult to his father. The next day,
Harel was advertized that the authorities forbade any
other representation of the piece ; and, on the 16th, the
Press, following the Government's lead, were practically
unanimous in anathematizing the unhappy dramatist,
the Debats being particularly acrimonious, and assert-
ing that Vautrin was a thoroughly immoral play.
Balzac's friends, Victor Hugo included, did what
they could to get the interdiction raised; but the
Minister was inflexible. All. that he would consent
to was an indemnity of five thousand francs offered
through Cave, the Under-Secretary for Fine Arts. This,
Balzac indignantly refused. One might have expected
such continued ill-luck to prostrate its victim, at least
momentarily. Gozlan went out to Les Jardies for the
purpose of cheering the hermit up. He found him
calm and collected. "You see that strip of land
bordering the garden over there?" the latter said, looking
out of the window. '' Yes." '* I am about to establish
there a dairy, with an installation of the best kind, the
cows of which will bring me in three thousand francs a
year." Gozlan stared. '* And you see the other strip
down yonder farther than the wall ? " " Yes." " Well,
I intend to plant that with rare vegetables of the sort
that used to be supplied to the King's table. That
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 195
will bring me in another three thousand francs a year."
Gozlan waited for what would come next. " And you
see the plot right facing the southern sun ? " " Yes."
" Ah ! there I shall plant a vineyard, which will furnish
exquisite grapes that I can sell for wine-making in
quantities sufficient to bring me in twelve thousand
francs a year. This means a revenue of eighteen
thousand francs annually. And then, the walnut-tree
you see there — I can utilize it to the tune of two thou-
sand francs a year." *' How ? " " Ah ! that is my
secret. So we get a total of twenty thousand francs a
year, which I shall gain by the refusal of my Vautrin"
This was brave talk on the part of the obstacle-
breaker, as he loved to call himself. 'Twas also the
bravest temper he could assume in face of the outside
world. To Madame Hanska he revealed more the
cankering disappointment, just as he had a twelve-
month previously, after the mishap of the School for
Husbands and Wives, He had fresh thoughts of
leaving France, which being, for the nonce, a bear-
garden, he said, he detested, and of going away to
America, perhaps to Brazil, where he should soon grow
rich. He even told her she might next hear from him
at Havre or Marseilles, just as he was on the point of
embarking for the other side of the Atlantic. He had
been reading Fenimore Cooper again; and the descrip-
tions given by this painter of Nature always aroused
his roaming instincts. He envied especially Cooper's
power and skill in reproducing the details of a landscape.
Once, in a pastry-cook's shop that he had entered with
Gozlan to devour a plate of macaroni, he brandished a
book of Cooper's, which he had been carrying under
his arm, while he recounted his fruitless efforts to get
experts in botany to tell him how to describe the
196 HONORfi DE BALZAC
differences between certain grasses that he wanted to
distinguish appropriately in his fiction. An English
girl who had served him in the shop listened open-
mouthed to the great man, whose name had been
uttered by Gozlan ; and, when the moment came for
settling, marked her appreciation of what she had heard
and seen by charging him nothing for the macaroni.
Balzac, not to be outdone in generosity, made her a
gift of his copy of Cooper, expressing his regret that he
had not one of his own novels with him that he might
have offered her instead.
No account of this macaroni feast figures in his
almost daily letters at this time despatched to Madame
Hanska. To her, if he mentioned his diet, its meagre-
ness was emphasized rather. Being in one of his
chronic hard-up crises, he excused himself for the
intervals that had occurred between some of his
previous epistles on the ground of having no ready
money for the postage — the rates for Russia, it is true,
were high ; and he spoke of buying a bit of dry bread
on the boulevards, or of intending to beg from Roths-
child ; then flourished his big debt at the end, quoting
fantastic sums, variable as the barometer, which would
oblige him sooner or later, notwithstanding his constant
devotion to the Countess, whom he loved more than he
loved God, to barter himself away to some agreeable
young woman who should be willing to bestow her
person upon him, plus a couple of hundred thousand
francs. Once or twice there was really question of his
making a match through the good offices of his mother,
of whom he none the less said fretfully that she did
not think much about him. But, on each occasion,
the negotiations fell through — why we do not learn.
Such information, maybe, he reserved for the various
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 197
dames in Paris whose houses he still frequented.
Madame de Girardin had managed to get him back;
and some sort of relations had been re-established
between him and her husband, mostly business, since
Monsieur de Girardin continued to be editor of the
Presse,
One day, Gozlan met him in the Champs Elysees,
just as he had left Delphine's salon. He looked chilly
and anxious. The chill he attributed to the unheated
drawing-room that he had quitted; but it was due
mostly to his condition of mind, then much exercisfed
by something of prime importance to him, the finding
of a name for a story which he had written but could
not christen, in spite of protracted meditation. It was
a man's name he wanted — a name unusual, striking,
suggestive of the extraordinary nature of the person he
had created. " Why not try the names you see in the
street ? '' said Gozlan incautiously. " The very thing,"
answered Balzac, whose face grew radiant. " Come
along with me. We will seek together." Realizing
too late into what an adventure he had allowed himself
to be entangled, Gozlan tried in vain to escape. Pro-
tests were of no use. Balzac dragged him off; and,
with noses in the air and absorbed gaze, the two men
promenaded along the Rue Saint-Honore and a number
of other streets, knocking up against the people they
met and provoking a good deal of profane language
from these latter, who regarded them as a couple of
imbeciles. At length, Gozlan, like Columbus' sailors,
having more than enough of the tramp, refused to play
follow-my-leader any longer ; and only after a long
palaver was he dragged up one last narrow street
dubbed variously the Rue du Bouloi, du Coq Heron,
and de la Jussienne throughout its course. Here,
198 HONORE DE BALZAC
suddenly, Balzac stopped dead, and pointed to the
word Marcos, inscribed over a door. " That's what
I've been looking for," he cried. '* It exactly suits my
man. The person that owns the name ought to be
some one out of the common, — an artist, a worker in
gold, or something of the kind." Inquiry proved that
the real Marcas was a modest tailor. However, his
name was selected, and the initial Z was tacked on to
it for the book, Z being by the novelist's interpretation
a letter of mystic import.
' Another rather longer tale than this, belonging to
the year 1840, was Pierrette, which the author dedicated
to Madame Hanska's daughter Anna, characterizing
it as a pearl '* sweated through suffering," and telling
her that there was nothing in it improper — he used
the English word. The story is a painful one, and
is scarcely suitable for a young girl's perusal, the
heroine, a simple Breton maid, being the victim of an
avaricious Provins family, the Rogrons, who, under
cover of the law, inflict on her such terrible ill-treat-
ment that she ultimately dies from it. Pierrette first
appeared as a serial in the Steele. In the final edition
of the novelist's works it is classed under the Celibates ;
and, apropos of this heading, may be mentioned the
fact that Balzac reproved celibacy as a state injurious
to society, and held the opinion, dear to the hearts of
certain Parliamentarians of to-day, that the unmarried
should be taxed for the benefit of those having large
families.
Of course, the agricultural projects entertained for
a moment after the interdiction of Vautrin soon
faded from Balzac's mind, which was still harping on
the necessity of his conquering the suffrages of the
public in his character of dramatist. He now set
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 199
himself to write a play called Mercadet or the Faiseur^
the latter word implying by its meaning the tragi-
comedy of a penniless financier — the novelist's own
experience was there to guide him — who invents a
thousand and one stratagems for keeping his creditors
at bay, and for creating the illusion of a wealth which
he has not ; who deceives himself as well as others ;
who is neither entirely a rogue nor entirely honest ;
but who, after all, reaches relative tranquillity and
competency more through accident than purpose.
The piece was not performed in its author's life-time ;
but friends were acquainted with it already in 1840,
when Gautier and the rest of the inner circle were
summoned to Les Jardies to hear the hermit read it,
differing considerably then from the arrangement that
was ultimately played. Balzac read it well, with all
the inflections peculiar to each character and suitable
to every change of circumstance. He had in him,
says Gautier, the stuff of a great actor, possessing a
full, sonorous, metallic voice of rich, powerful timbre,
and kept his audience under the spell from the begin-
ning to the end of the recitation. If Vedel and
Desmousseaux, the administrators of the Comedie
Frangaise, heard him interpret his own pieces, they
might be excused for having, as he asserted they had,
a high opinion of his dramatic talent.
The greatest honour done to Les Jardies during
the hermit's residence there was a visit of Victor
Hugo, who came to talk over the affairs of the Men
of Letters Society. During lunch, the conversation
naturally turned on literature, and the host waxed
bitter against the stupidity of kings that neglected
letters, and against Louis- Philippe in particular, who
^ English, Jobber.
200 HONORE DE BALZAC
had recently put a stop to the evening gatherings —
chimney-gatherings they were called — held by the
Duke of Orleans for the purpose of honouring the
arts. In the afternoon the guests were shown round
the domain, and expected to admire its beauties.
Hugo was extremely sober in his praises until they
came to the famous walnut-tree. Encouraged by the
notice accorded to his favourite, the master of Les
Jardies repeated to Hugo what he had already affirmed
to Gozlan, to wit, that the tree was worth fifteen
hundred francs to him (to Gozlan he had said two
thousand). " In walnuts, I suppose ? " retorted the
chief guest quizzingly. *' No," replied Balzac, chuck-
ling, " not in walnuts." And he proceeded to explain
that, by an old custom, the inhabitants of the neigh-
bourhood had been accustomed to make the shadow
of the walnut-tree a " temple of all the gods," and that
he had only to exploit the offerings, in the same way
as a guano island is exploited to-day, for the fifteen
hundred francs to be added to his revenue.
A few months later, in December, Les Jardies,
with its walnut-tree and other advantages, was aban-
doned in hasty flight ; and the hermit took refuge in
the Passy quarter of Paris. On the house and property
a distraint had been levied for moneys due which had
not been paid. In total, his desire to abide under his
own vine and under his own fig-tree had cost him a
sum that he estimated between one hundred thousand
and one hundred and twenty thousand francs. De-
duction made for his Falstaffian speech, the amount
was probably about eighty thousand. This might
have been gradually saved and the interest meantime
given regularly, if he had been willing to live well
within his income. With his system of spending not
I
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 201
only what he earned but hoped to earn each year,
perpetual insolvency was inevitable.
At Les Jardies he had small creditors as well as
great, fear of whom haunted him to the extent of
curtailing his walks abroad. Leon Gozlan relates
that, going over to Ville d'Avray early one morning,
he found Balzac taking a constitutional round the
asphalt of his house. " Come and have a stroll in the
woods," said the visitor. " I am afraid," answered
Balzac. "Of what or whom?" "Of the keeper."
Not understanding why the novelist, who would not
explain, should be in dread of this humble functionary,
and imagining that much study and labour had made
his friend a little mad, Gozlan took no denial, and,
button-holing Balzac, lugged him off into the leafy
avenues. And there, sure enough, after a while, they
saw the bugbear, who, as soon as he perceived the
two pedestrians, bore down on them with plodding
but vigorous step. The shorter of the two turned
pale, but tried to put on an air of dignified indiffer-
ence. Soon the official ran in under their lee, passed
alongside with slackened pace, and clarioned into the
novelist's ear : " Monsieur de Balzac, this is beginning
to get musical." The owner of Les Jardies quailed in
his shoes. He owed the man thirty francs.
I
CHAPTER X
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER/' 1841, 1842
The abode that Balzac chose, on coming back to live
within the city walls, was not far from the Rue de
Chaillot which had been his address before he removed
to Sevres. It was situated in what is now called the
Rue Raynouard, but then bore the name of the Rue
Basse. In reality, the street is low only at one end,
to which it descends from some high land that forms
the Passy and Trocadero quarter, and, for some distance,
overhangs the Seine. The whole of the street is narrow
and winding, and still has an old-time provincial aspect,
though the modern building has begun to make its
appearance in it, replacing the ancient mansions sur-
rounded by gardens with ever-encroaching blocks of
flats.
Balzac's new home was at Number 19 (at present
Number 47). It stood — and the house still stands —
in a back garden, on a lower level than the road, from
which it was masked by houses fronting the causeway.
Any one approaching it from the side of the Rue Basse
would enter the common vestibule of one of these
houses, go down some stone steps, and would then find
himself in a courtyard, opposite a fairly good-sized,
apparently one-storied cottage, with the tree-adorned
garden to the right of him. Once inside the cottage,
however, he would notice that it was built on the
extreme upper edge of a precipitous slope, and that on
202
LETTERS TO *'THE STRANGER" 203
the farther side the structure had lower stories, with
an issue through them into a lane at the rear leading to
the Seine banks and the lower portion of the Rue Basse.
Whoever, therefore, inhabited the cottage could quit
it fore or aft, an advantage which must have weighed
with the incoming tenant, tracked as he was by creditors,
and hiding himself here under the name of Madame
de Brugnol.
The insistence of these claimants on his purse was
such that, acting on the advice of his solicitor, Gavault,
in the course of the year 1841, he executed a fictitious
sale of hes Jardies for the sum of seventeen thousand
five hundred francs, his hope being to preserve his
hermitage for the days of wealth and ease to come.
Meanwhile, he took his mother to live with him.
After giving him and her other son, Henry, all she
possessed, and the latter being now in the colonies,
where he ultimately died in poverty, she was depen-
dent on what Honore could pay her each month.
The living-together arrangement was not very success-
ful. Madame Balzac's nervous, fretful temperament
had not been improved by age and trouble ; and her
elder son found it hard to bear with her complainings,
excusable and even justifiable though they might be.
It is not pleasant to read the passages in his letters to
Madame Hanska, in which he reiterates the old charge
of his misfortunes being all due to his mother. In some
of them he goes so far as to say that she was a monster
and a monstrosity, that she was hastening the death
of his sister Laure — Laure outlived them both — after
hastening those of his sister Laurence and his grand-
mother, that she hated him before he was born, that she
had a dreadful countenance, that the doctor affirmed
her to be not mad but malicious, that his father had
204 HONOR]& DE BALZAC
stated in 1822 he — Honore — would never have a worse
enemy than his mother. Had his mother been all
this and more, it would have been ungenerous and un-
filial to blacken her reputation to a stranger. And,
being false, it was odious. Madame Balzac's partiality
towards the second son — heavily enough punished — did
not prevent her from loving the elder, though their
characters (hers and his) were not made to comprehend
each other; and her lack of enthusiasm in the days
of his literary apprenticeship was natural enough in a
parent who understood only too well the impractical,
improvident mind he possessed, and feared its con-
sequences. The fact was that Balzac ill supported re-
monstrances from his own family, and especially from
his mother, and, when irritated by them, forgot every
benefit he had received from her.
This peculiarity of temperament rendered his feelings
towards many of his friends exceedingly variable. One
day he was lauding them to the skies, another depreci-
ating them to a cipher. Even his sister Laure, in spite
of her loyalty to him, did not escape attacks from his
fickle humour. Like her mother, she never thoroughly
penetrated the nature of this wayward, excitable,
compass-boxing brother of hers, whose gaze was so
much in the clouds and whose feet so often in the
mire. But she defended him to others ; and, as far
as her purse and her husband's could possibly afford,
she gave him money when he was hard up — and when
was he not ? — money which he was never in a hurry to
pay back. Yet her, too, he maligned to " The Stranger,"
because she now and again ventured on expostulations.
Madame Balzac made two stays in the Passy
cottage, neither of them very long. After leaving the
first time, she asked her son to pay her a somewhat
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 205
larger sum per month, which would allow her to live
decently elsewhere. Considering that he had borrowed
from her a couple of thousand pounds — over fifty thou-
sand francs — and that the sum he had paid her irregu-
larly was not five per cent, interest on the money, this
request was not unreasonable. Yet he refused to accede
to it on the ground of being in financial straits ; and
offered her a home with him once more, but in language
that spoke of strained relations between them, as well
as of a personal discouragement that was real.
" The life I lead," he wrote, " suits no one ; it wearies
relatives and friends alike. All leave my melancholy
home. ... It is impossible for me to work amidst the
petty tiffs aroused by surroundings of discord ; and my
activity has waned during the past year. . . . You were
in a tolerable situation. I had a trustworthy person
who spared you all household worries. You were not
obliged to trouble about domestic matters ; you were
in peace and silence. You insisted on interfering with
me when you should have forgotten I existed, and
should have let me have my entire liberty, without
which I can do nothing. This is not your fault ; it is
in the nature of women. To-day, everything is changed.
If you like to come back, you will have a little of the
weight that will fall on me and that hitherto affected
you only because you wished it."
The conclusion of the letter, in which he assured
her of his love, could not counterbalance the harshness
of its contents. Madame Balzac, be it granted, was
cantankerous ; but how many sons who have never
sponged on their mothers have supported them cheer-
fully, gladly, for long years out of meagre resources,
and have borne with a smile the natural peevishness of
old age, not to say its egoisms I
206 HONORE DE BALZAC
At this period, Balzac's acquaintance with the grand
dames of Paris was considerably diminished. Madame
de Castries he seems to have broken with altogether.
Madame Visconti, who lived a good deal at Versailles,
he saw but seldom. In lieu of these, he regularly visited
George Sand, who was at present settled in a small flat
of the Rue Pigalle in Paris, and was there enjoying
the society of Chopin. With a connoisseur's envy, the
novelist describes to Eve the interior, the elegantly
furnished dining-room in carved oak, the cafe-au-lait
upholstered drawing-room, with its superb Chinese
vases of fragrant flowers, its cabinet of curiosities, its
Delacroix pictures, its rosewood piano, and the portrait
of the authoress by Calamatta. What struck him as
much as anything was the bedroom in brown, with the
bed on the floor in Turkish fashion. He was careful to
assure his correspondent that, Chopin being the viaitre
de ceans, she had no need to be jealous. But jealous
she was, though not of George Sand. As Paris wa^
a resort for rich Russians, Madame Hanska's cousin
among the number, she had frequent reports of Balzac
doings, distorted by society gossip, the true and th
untrue being fantastically mixed; and it was no sma^'
task to disabuse her mind and persuade her that hi
conduct was blameless. Indeed, at bottom she remaine
sceptical. \
In 1841, three books were published which mer)
attention on the part of a student of his works. Th
first, A Shady Affair, has the right to be styled an
historical novel. Dealing with the Napoleonic epoch,
its interest gathers chiefly round the person of the
brave peasant Michu, whose devotion to the Legitimist
house of Cinq-Cygne brings him, an innocent victim, to
the scaffold. The character of Laurence de Cinq-Cygne,
J
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 207
a girl of the Flora MacDonald type, and the characters
also of the two cousins de Simeuse, who both loved her
and conspired with her, and whose pardon she gained only
to lose these faithful knights dying on a field of battle,
are drawn with great power and naturalness. And the
plot, in which, together with other police spies, the
same Corentin reappears that was the evil genius of
the Chouans, is more rapid and less cumbered than in
the earlier work. When the Shady Affair came out in
the Commerce journal, Balzac was accused of having
identified a certain Monsieur Clement de Ris with his
Malin de Gondreville, who plays an evil role in the
story — that of an unscrupulous, political turncoat,
Revolutionary to begin with. Senator under the Empire,
and Peer under the Restoration. The novelist defended
himself against the imputation ; but the resemblances
i between the fictitious and the real personage were, all
the same, too close to be quite accidental.
Something, however, more important than the
'uestion of likeness or portraiture in the book, is that
gives us Balzac's conception of what the historical
ovel should be. His contemporary Dumas, and his
redecessor Walter Scott — the latter in a less degree
lan Dumas — did not weave a romance on to a warp
f history, but romanced the history itself. What he
'ied to do was to keep the historical action exact and
3curate, and to throw its romantic elements into relief
dthout dislocating them. His opinion was that history
night so be written as to be a sort of novel, which,
perhaps, will account for his answer to Lamartine, who,
in 1847, asked him if he could explain how it was that
the History of the Girondins had obtained a greater
success than the most popular novels of the same date.
** Gad ! " he replied, " the reason is that you wrote this
208 HONORE DE BALZAC
fine book as a novelist, not as an historian." The
Shady Affair recreates for us the Napoleonic atmos-
phere, silent and heavy, yet electrically charged with
grudge, hatred, and ambition, all ready to burst out at
one or another point. Underhand plotting was the
order of the day; there was a language of the eye
rather than of the tongue, since no one was sure that
in his own family there might not be eavesdroppers
listening to betray him.
Ursule Mirouet is a very different kind of story. We
have here the old Doctor Minoret, who, after making
a fortune in Paris, returns to spend the last few
years of his life in Nemours, his native town. Having
lost wife and child by death, he brings back with him
a baby niece, who is an orphan, and to whom he devotes
himself with tender care. In Nemours there are other
less estimable branches of the Minoret stock, cousins of
the Doctor s, whose hopes of inheriting his fortune are
damped by the presence of the little Ursule. Chief of
these relatives is the burly postmaster, Minoret Levrault,
whose son Desire is destined to the law and is sent by
his parents to study in Paris. Although a disciple of
Voltaire, and scouting all religious practice for himself,
the Doctor is friendly with the Cure, and allows his
niece to be brought up to Church. At the time the
story opens an unexpected event astonishes the town.
The Doctor has become converted, and goes to Mass.
The cause of the change is a wonderful experience of
clairvoyance he meets with in the capital, whither he
has been summoned by a colleague with whom he had
quarrelled years before over the new-fangled doctrines
of Mesmerism. What necessary connection there is
between clairvoyance and Catholicism, or indeed any
particular form of religion, the novelist does not attempt
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 209
to prove. It suffices for the sceptical old Doctor to be
told by a hypnotized woman in Paris what Ursule is
doing at Nemours, and the conversion is wrought.
Soon after, Doctor Minoret dies, bequeathing his for-
tune in just and appropriate shares to his various rela-
tives, Ursule included. She is at the time a fine young
woman, beloved by a young gentleman of the place.
The rest of the novel tells how the big postmaster
contrives to destroy the part of the will favourable to
Ursule and to steal certain moneys that belong to
her ; how Minoret's ghost appears in dreams and signs
to confound the guilty man and his guilty wife, who
are at last induced to confess their ill deeds, the repent-
ance being hastened by the death of their son Desire ;
and, in fine, how Ursule marries Monsieur de Porten-
duere and is happy.
In its general construction, the book holds well to-
gether, and the characters in the main are depicted
without exaggeration, while the traits of individuality
are ingeniously marked. The Doctor and Ursule are
less firmly and informingly delineated. As usual, when
Balzac shows us the figure of a virtuous girl in an
ordinary domestic circle, he represents her with passive
rather than active qualities. She has no strong likes
or dislikes, no particular mental bias, and possesses but
small attractiveness. In fact, the novelist seems at a
loss to imagine. In the case of Ursule, we see that
she cultivates flowers, but we do not feel that she is
fond of them. As for the Doctor, he would have or
might have been less a puppet, had the author himself
judged with wiser reserve the mysterious forces that
exist in the world of sub-consciousness.
His belief in these forces being alloyed with much
superstition, he was always consulting fortune-tellers,
210 HONORE DE BALZAC
even those that divined by cards. One of them, a
certain Balthazar, who was subsequently convicted and
imprisoned for dishonesty, told him that his past life
had been one series of struggles and victories, a read-
ing too agreeable to be doubted; and that he would
soon have tranquillity, a prophecy which unhappily
was not fulfilled. Concerning the prospects of a union
with Madame Hanska, the cartomancer was mute,
though he described the lady in language sufficiently
clever for his client to acknowledge the likeness. His
clairvoyance was exceedingly limited ; otherwise he
would have warned his client of the approaching death
of Count Hanski, this event taking place towards the
close of the year.
Occupied with her own affairs, which were com-
plicated by her husband's illness, and perhaps also
resenting the falling off" in the number of her distant
worshipper's epistles, caused by an indisposition in the
spring and a visit to Brittany to recuperate, she wrote
only once or twice during 1841 ; and, as chance would
have it, these letters were lost, so that, for nearly twelve
months, he had no news from her. Pathetically he
announced that his sister was planning to marry him to
a Mademoiselle Bonnard, god-daughter to King Louis-
Philippe ; but still no answer came. On the 1st of
November, as he related to his Eve afterwards, he lost
one of the two shirt-studs which Madame de Berny
had given him, and which he wore alternately with
another pair presented to him by Madame Hanska.
Beginning on the morrow, he put on thenceforth only
the pair that Eve had given him; and this trifling
occurrence affected him so much that all his familiars
noticed it. He looked upon the loss as a sign from
Heaven. Poor Madame de Berny ! Now that the
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 211
stud from her had disappeared, he had no further
tenderness for her memory. Instead of recalling her
kindness to him, he preferred to speak, in connection
with what he styled his horrible youth, of the years
which she — the Dilecta — had tarnished. Too oppor-
tune to be sincere, this condemnation of his first liaison
cannot but be regarded as an incense of flattery offered
to the coy goddess of his later vows.
The third of the three principal books of 1841 was the
Diaiies of Two Young Wives, written, like the Country
Doctor and the Village Cure, in a decidedly didactic
tone. We have two girl friends, Renee de Mau-
combe and Louise de Chaulieu, reared in a convent
school, who marry, each with an ideal of wedlock that
differs. The former, a doctor in stays, as her school
companion calls her, seeks in marriage a calm domestic
happiness, the duties and joy of motherhood, and has
a husband worthy but commonplace, to whom she
gives herself at first without much positive attachment
on her side. The latter makes of love a passion, and
marries a Spanish exile, plain-looking but virile, whom
she bends to her will. The two wives exchange their
impressions during their early years of matrimony, and
we see the happiness of the one develop while that of
the other diminishes. The Spaniard dies and Louise
de Chaulieu takes a second husband, a poor poet,
whom she adores as much as her Spaniard had adored
her. Carrying him off to Ville-d'Avray, she creates
there a snug Paradise, where she fondles him as if he
were a toy, until at length her feverish jealousy brings
on her own illness and death.
The novel in its earlier phases was being worked
at together with the Sister Marie des Anges, which
was promised to Werdet but never completed, and
212 HONORE DE BALZAC
seems to have had some connection with it. Possibly,
in his primitive plan, the author intended to set in
contrast the spouse and the nun : and certainly, in the
original draft, there was only one bride.
In 1842, at the Odeon Theatre, was performed a
dramatic piece from the novelist's pen, which by some
critics has been considered to be his best play. There
are even critics who hold that Balzac was a born
dramatist, as he was a born novelist, basing their opinion
on his possession of qualities common to dramatist and
novelist. His force of characterization, his handling of
plot, his sense of passion were all sufficient to procure
him success on the stage, which explains why pieces
adapted from his novels by other playwrights invariably
caught the public fancy. But, in order to develop
character, plot, and passion in his fiction, he employed
interminable detail and slow action; and his effects
were obtained rather by constant pressure throughout
than by sudden impact. The brevity and condensation
required by the drama were foreign to his genius ;
he could not help trying to put too much into his stage
pieces, and the unity of subject was compromised.
The School of Great Men^ as he preferred to call
his play at the Odeon, carries the spectator back to
the Spain of Philippe II. Fontanares, a clever man
of science but poor, and without influence, has dis-
covered the means of navigating by steam. His valet
Quinola, a genius in his way, resolves to aid his master,
who, being in love, has all the greater claim on his
pity; and he contrives to present the King with a
petition in favour of Fontanares, and to obtain a ship
for an experiment to be made. But now professional
jealousies combine with love rivalries to thwart the
^ More usually called : The Resources of Quinola.
1
Balzac
From a Lithograph by Julien (1840)
{Collection of M. Adolphe Jullien)
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 213
inventor ; and when, at last, the ship is made to move
by its own machinery, the honour of the success is
attributed to another. To avenge his wrongs, and the
loss of his betrothed, who is given to his rival and dies,
he blows up the steamer in presence of an assembled
multitude, and quits his native land with a courtezan
who has conceived a liking for him and will provide
him with money to recommence his enterprise else-
where.
Before the first performance, Balzac was just as
sanguine about the result as he had been with Vautrin,
It followed several pieces, Felix Pyat's Cedric the
Norwegian, Dumas' Lorenzino, and Scribe's Chaine,
which had been coldly received. What if his Quinola
should be the great attraction of the season ! and his
mind was filled with visions of overflowing houses and
showers of gold. Alas! if the representations went
beyond the single one of Vautrin, they did not exceed
twenty ; and his share of profits was insignificant. The
play is not dull to read, with its flavour of Moliere's
comedies, and the keenness of Balzac's observation.
But its colour and poesy do not compensate for the
difFuseness of the plot and the undramatic conclusion.
Instead of acknowledging the defects of his com-
position, the unlucky dramatist was wroth with his
public. For a while he caressed the thought of going
to St. Petersburg, taking out letters of naturalization,
and opening a theatre in the Russian capital with a view
to establishing the pre-eminence of French literature —
embodied in his own writings. It must be owned
that he was beginning to imagine himself persecuted.
Victor Hugo, he said, had changed towards him and
was creating a conspiracy of silence round about him, so
that no one should speak any more of his works. And
214 HONORE DE BALZAC
he liked better being attacked than ignored. Later,
he asserted that Hugo, after accepting the dedication
of the Lost Illusions to himself, had induced Edouard
Thierry to write an abusive article against him. " He
is a great writer," said the novelist in telling this, " but
he is a mean trickster."
By the death of Count Hanski, the one insuperable
obstacle to his union with Eve had been removed ;
and now, in his letters to her, there was a sudden
outburst of love protestations. He wanted the widow
to marry him at once, or, at the outside limit, as soon
as propriety would permit. Madame Hanska replied
that there was her daughter Anna, only just in her
teens, who would require her mother's entire attention
and care for some years to come ; and there were,
besides, matters concerning the inheritance, which
would hardly be settled within any shorter period.
Balzac was dismayed. He could not understand the
delay, the prudence, the hesitation. Not to speak of
his affection, his pride was offended. He overwhelmed
his Eve with reproaches. Women, he informed her,
loved fools, as a rule, because fools were ever ready to
sit at their feet. Recurring in subsequent letters to
a quieter manner, he strove to shake her resolution by
hints at his exhausted strength, his difficulty of com-
position,— this was nothing new — his lessened alert-
ness of thought and his weaker invention. Cleverly
he juxtaposed with these a description of his study,
in the little Passy house, hung with red velvet, on
which black silk cords stood out in agreeable contrast ;
on one wall was Eve's portrait, and opposite it was
a painting of the Wierzchownia mansion. Here he
toiled unceasingly, creating, always creating. God
only created during six days, he added, while he — the
LETTERS TO **THE STRANGER" 215
inference was left to be drawn. Feeling how requisite
it was he should put himself right, in every respect,
with the lady of his choice, he made a fresh confession
of his religious faith. His Catholicism, he told her,
was outwardly of the Bossuet and Bonald type, but
was esoterically mystical, Saint-Johnian, which form
alone preserved the real Christian tradition. Some-
what encouraged by vague inquiries from Madame
Hanska as to the income required by a household for
living in Paris, he entered into particulars with gusto ;
and, stating that he had eighty thousand francs worth
of furniture, he discussed the best manner of arrang-
ing an existence with eight hundred thousand francs
capital. With three hundred thousand francs, a
country residence and small estate might be bought
and the means of inhabiting there provided. Another
hundred thousand would buy a house in Paris to spend
each winter ; and the residue of four hundred thousand,
if invested in French Rentes, would purchase an
additional income of fifteen thousand francs for town
expenses. These latter he subdivided into three
thousand francs for carriage hire ; five thousand for
cooking ; two thousand five hundred for dress and
amusement ; and two thousand five hundred for
general charges ; the remaining two thousand would
go in sundries. Madame de Berny, he said, spent only
eight hundred francs a year on her wardrobe, and kept
her household with nine hundred francs. Once
launched into detail, he went far. The Countess
learnt that he had still the same carpets, covering
seven rooms, that he had bought for fifteen hundred
francs in the Rue Cassini. They had worn well and
were economical. The red velvet in his study had
cost him two francs fifty a yard ; but then he would
216 HONOR1& DE BALZAC
take it away to another house, instead of giving it to
the landlord. Living was slightly dearer in Passy,
he concluded. A mutton chop cost seven sous there,
instead of the five charged in the city. These last
details were thrown in by a habit he had grown into
of defending himself against the strictures passed by
Madame Hanska on his expenditure.
They were frequent — such strictures — because
Balzac was always repeating to her that he was penni-
less ; and she, comparing this talk wdth other state-
ments about his gaining large sums yearly, argued
that the penury must be his own fault. True, there
was the debt. But the debt grew instead of diminish-
ing. So, apparently, he was not starving himself to
pay it back. The fact was that Balzac did not tell
the truth either about his assets or his liabilities. He
neither earned as much as he affirmed, nor owed as
much. According to some of his early biographers,
his average income was not more than twelve thousand
francs a year. But these figures cannot include lump
sums he received at irregular intervals, nor yet all the
royalties due to him on continued sales of his books.
Taking one year with another, he probably made,
throughout the greater portion of his literary career,
between twenty and twenty-five thousand francs
annually. What must have increased his embarrass-
ments, in the later Thirties and early Forties, was his
hobby for buying pictures and articles of vertu ; this,
with his knack of dropping money in speculations and
imprudent ventures, rendered it impossible for him to
live within his means.
It is curious to notice how his impecuniosity re-
duced him to regard every goal of his ambition as
having merely a cash value. Speaking of his election
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 217
to the Academic Fran9aise, which he reckoned to be
near, he explained to Eve that it would mean six
thousand francs a year to him, since he would be a
member of the Dictionary Committee ; and then there
was the Perpetual Secretaryship, which, falling to him
naturally, would raise his emoluments to more than
double that amount. Emboldened by these calcula-
tions— a trifle previous — he confided to Eve his desire
to start on a trip to Naples, Rome, Constantinople,
and Alexandria, unless she should veto the proposal.
In that case, his desire would be hers. Four thousand
francs was what the journey would cost. Would she
authorize him to spend so much ? At present she
was the arbitress of his actions. As the trip was
abandoned, we are obliged to suppose that Eve was
not favourable to it.
Mention has already been made of the novelist's
initiative in the beginnings of the Men of Letters
Society, and of his scheme for a petition to the King.
In its details, what he wished to see adopted was on
the same lines as those followed now by the Nobel
Prize distribution — at any rate as regards literature.
His idea was to secure a small independence for prize-
takers in tragedy, comedy, opera, fiction. Christian
philosophy, linguistic or archaeological research, and
epic poetry, by awarding them a capital of a hundred
thousand francs, and even two hundred thousand to
poets, and to open thus an easier way to position and
fame. Finding that his programme was not acceptable
to the more influential members of the Society, he
resigned his seat on the committee, and ceased his
active connection with the Society itself, continuing,
however, to interest himself in its prosperity.
Later, his bust by David was placed in the Society's
218 HONORE DE BALZAC
Committee Room, where it may be seen at present
presiding silently over the meetings. Both the bust
and the famous daguerreotype of him belong to the
commencement of the Forties. The sculptor Etex had
asked him to sit for a bust; but David had the
preference, being a friend. His profile of the novelist,
sketched in view of a medallion, an engraving of which
appeared in 1843 in the Loire Illustree for August,
was deemed by Madame Surville to be the only real
likeness of her brother. Not until 1889 did the Men
of Letters Society decide to honour Balzac by a statue
to be erected amidst the life of the capital which he
had so well described. And even then they allowed
certain elements of prejudice and passion to dominate
their counsels, with the result that a magnificent full-
length figure of the novelist executed by the first
sculptor in France was rejected; the committee's
plighted word was violated ; and in lieu was accepted
and placed in one of the streets of Paris a sorry like-
ness hastily modelled by a man who, though a good
sculptor, had one foot in the grave, and who had not,
besides, the conception of what was required.^
Of the novels that appeared in 1842, Albert
Savarus, the first published, is worthy of attention
chiefly as being a continuation of its author's personal
experiences. The hero is the same ideal personifica-
tion already seen in Louis Lambert and Z. Maixas, A
barrister, he suddenly settles in a provincial town,
bringing with him a past history that no one can pene-
trate and every one would like to know. When inter-
viewed in his private consulting-room, he presents
himself in a black merino dressing-gown girt about
1 See my Life of Rodin (Fisher Unwin, I906) or my later and
smaller edition of the same sculptor's life (Grant Richards, 1907).
LETTERS TO ''THE STRANGER" 219
with a red cord, in red slippers, a red flannel waistcoat,
a red skull-cap. The likeness is once again Balzac's
own — adorned by fancy : a superb head, black hair
sparsely sprinkled with white, hair like that of Saint
Peter and Saint Paul as shown in our pictures, with
thick glossy curls, hair of bristly stiffness; a white
round neck, as that of a woman ; a splendid forehead
with the puissant furrow in the middle that great plans
and thoughts and deep meditations engrave on the
brow of genius ; an olive complexion streaked with red ;
a square nose ; eyes of fire ; gaunt cheeks with two
long wrinkles, full of suffering ; a mouth with sardonic
smile, and a small, thin, abnormally short chin ; crow's
feet at the temples ; sunken eyes (he repeats himself
a little) rolling beneath their beetling arches and resem-
bling two burning globes ; but, despite all these signs
of violent passions, a calm, profoundly resigned mien ;
a voice of thrilling softness, . . . the true voice of the
orator, now pure and cunning, now insinuating, but
thunderous when required, lending itself to sarcasm
and then waxing incisive. Monsieur Albert Savarus
{alias Balzac) is of medium height, neither fat nor slim ;
to conclude, he has prelate's hands.
The mystery of Savarus' earlier life, revealed as the
story goes on, is his meeting in Switzerland with
Francesca, the wife of a rich Italian, whom he eventu-
ally wins to love him and to promise marriage when
she is free and he has acquired wealth and fame. All
the details of the prologue are those of Balzac's first
relations with Madame Hanska. The development of
the novel, in which Philomene de Watteville falls in
love with Savarus, surprises his secret attachment to
Francesca, intercepts his letters to her, and ruins his
hopes, is less cleverly told. Savarus' retirement to a
220 HONORE DE BALZAC
Carthusian monastery and fate's punishment of Philo-
mene, who is mutilated and disfigured in a railway
accident, form the denouement, which is strained to
the improbable. The background of the story, with its
glimpses of the manners and foibles of provincial society,
is the most valuable portion of the book.
Between this relapse into lyricism and a much
stronger work came the amusing Beginning in Life,
suggested by his sister Laure's tale, Un Voyage en
Coucou, and giving the adventures of the young Oscar
Husson, a sort of Verdant Green, whose pretentious
foolishness leads him into scrapes of every kind, until,
having made himself the laughing-stock of all around
him, and compromised many, he enlists and goes to
the wars, whence he returns maimed for life. A comic
character in the sketch is the bohemian artist L^on
de Lora, nicknamed Mistigris, with his puns and pro-
verbs that were the rage in the early Forties. A
character of more serious calibre is Joseph Bridau, the
talented painter. He and his scamp of a brother,
Phihppe, are the twin prominent figures in the novel
above alluded to : La Rabouilleuse.
Originally called the Two Brothers, and subse-
quently A Bachelor s Household, this slice of intensely
realistic fiction exhibits the art of the author at its highest
vigour. Philippe Bridau, the mother's favourite of the
two boys, enters the army, sees Waterloo, and, after,
leads the life of an adventurer, with its ups and downs
of fortune. His widowed mother's indulgence, his own
innate selfishness, and the hardening influence of war
combine to render him a villain of the Richard III.
type, absolutely heartless and conscienceless. He robs
his own family, fixes himself leech-like on that of an
uncle, marries the latter's widow for her money, when
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 221
he has killed her lover in a duel, drives his wife into
vice, lets her die on a pallet, and refuses to pay a visit
to the deathbed of his mother, whose grey hairs he has
brought down with sorrow to the grave. Like Shake-
speare's ideal villain, he has the philosophy, the humour
of his egotism. " I am an old camel, familiar with genu-
flections," he exclaims. " What harm have I done ? "
he asks, speaking of his robbery of his relative, the old
Madame Descoings. " I have merely cleaned the old
lady's mattress." And he is equally indifferent to what
destiny reserves for him. " I am a parvenu, my dear
fellow ; I don't intend to let my swaddling-clothes be
seen. My son will be luckier than I ; he will be Si grand
seigneur. The rascal will be glad to see me dead. I
quite reckon on it ; otherwise he would not be my son."
Most of the other figures are of equal truth to life,
and are presented so as to increase the effect of the
complete picture : Jean-Jacques Rouget, the stupid
infatuated uncle, who espouses the intriguing Flore
Brazier ; and Flore herself, whose petty vices are crushed
by those of her second husband ; Maxime Gilet, the
bully of Issoudun, whose surface bravado is checked
and mated by the cooler scoundrelism of Philippe ;
Agathe, the foolish mother, whose eyes are blind to
the devotion of her son Joseph ; and Girondeau, the
old dragoon, companion to Philippe who casts him off
as soon as prosperity smiles and he has no further need
for him. And the narrow-horizoned, curiously inter-
laced existences of the country-town add the mass of
their colour- value, sombre but rich. One could have
wished in the book a little more counterbalancing
brightness, and less trivial detail ; but neither the
defect of the one nor the excess of the other takes from
the novel the right to be considered a masterpiece.
I
CHAPTER XI
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1843, 1844
The great event of the year 1843 was Balzac's visit
in the summer to Saint Petersburg, where Madame
Hanska had been staying since the preceding autumn.
He had hoped to go there in the January, commis-
sioned to exploit an important invention for cheaper
shipbuilding, in which his brother-in-law, Monsieur
Surville, was concerned. Like each of his previous
schemes for quickly becoming rich, this invention turned
out to be a soap-bubble, bursting as soon as trial was
made of it. What was left intact, however, was his
determination to go to the banks of the Neva; and,
throughout the spring, successive letters announced
preparations for departure. The real motive of his
journey was to try to persuade his lady-love to fix the
date of their marriage. Her period of mourning was
over, and no objection could be made now on the
ground of propriety. Such sentimental arguments as
Madame Hanska might still put forward, he trusted
to be able to overcome by his presence.
In order that she might be the more anxious to see
him, he talked again of abandoning literature, and sail-
ing for America. This time the West Indies were his
El Dorado. He did not say how the shy millions were
to be coaxed into his purse there, unless he wished her
to understand he intended to export spices, since he
added : '' If I had been a grocer for the last ten years,
222
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 223
I should have become a millionaire." Forsooth, these
details were mere bluff. His inmost thought was that
Eve would prevent his going across the Atlantic now,
as Madame de Berny had prevented him — so he said —
in 1829. Moreover, there was Balthazar's prediction
that he was to be happy wdth her for long years. The
fortune-teller's sanctum he attended more frequently
than church. Going one day to the house of a
magnetizer, a Monsieur Dupotet, living in the Rue du
Bac, he gave his hand to a hypnotized woman, who
placed it on her stomach and immediately loosed it
again with a scared look : ** What is that head ? " she
cried. " It is a world ; it frightens me." " She had not
looked at my heart," commented Balzac proudly. " She
had been dazzled by the head. Yet since I was born,
my life has been dominated by my heart — a secret
which I conceal with care." All this he related quite
seriously to Eve. Probably, Madame de Girardin, who
accompanied him on this pilgrimage, could have told
Madame Hanska more.
Writing on his birthday, he inserted the prayer he
had offered up to his patron-saint for the accomplish-
ment of his desires, its burden indicating how near he
believed himself to the longed-for goal: "O great
Saint Honore, thou to whom is dedicated a street in
Paris at once so beautiful and so ugly, ordain that the
ship may not blow up ; ordain that I may be no more
a bachelor, by the decree of the Mayor or the Consul
of France ; for thou knowest that I have been spiritually
married for nigh on eleven years. These last fifteen
years, I have lived a martyr's life. God sent me an
angel in 1833. May this angel never quit me again till
death ! I have lived by my writing. Let me live a
little by love ! Take care of her rather than of me ; for
224 HONORS DE BALZAC
I would fain give her all, even my portion in heaven ;
and especially let us soon be happy. Ave, Eva."
The love fervour of this prayer was a dominant
note throughout the twelvemonth; we notice after
the visit that the familiar thou prevails over the colder
you ; and the letters, both in number and length, very
largely exceed those he had written up to the end of
1842. Funnily, he expresses admiration of himself for
this work of supererogation, informing Eve, on one
occasion, that the sixteen leaves he had recently sent
her were worth sixteen hundred francs, even two
thousand, counting extra leaves enclosed to Made-
moiselle Henriette Borel, the governess, for whom he
was negotiating an entrance into a nunnery. Love-
letters estimated at five francs a page ! ! !
Let us grant that the epistles at present contained
more gossip than ever, so that the recipient of them
had her share of amusement. She was wonderfully
well kept up in Paris happenings in society, includ-
ing the stage and the art galleries. She learnt that
Madame d'Agoult — Daniel Stern ^ — had become Emile
de Girardin's mistress, on losing Liszt, who had fallen
into the toils of the Princess de Belgiojoso, the latter
lady achieving her conquest after luring in succession
Lord Normanby from his wife, Mignet from Madame
Aubernon, and Alfred de Musset from George Sand.
Going to see Victor Hugo's Burgraves, he reported
that it was nothing to speak of as history, altogether
poor as invention, but nevertheless poetic, with a
poetry that carried away the spectator. It was Titian
painting on a mud wall. He chiefly remarked the
absence of feeling, which, in Victor Hugo, was more
and more noticeable. The author of the Burgraves
^ Her literary pseudonym.
Balzac
From a Painting by Gerard-Seguin, exhibited in the Salon
of 1842
{Musee de Tours)
k
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 225
lacked the true. As he did not pubUsh these opinions,
he was able to go on dining with the poet and to
praise the beauty of his fourteen-year-old daughter.
On George Sand's Consuelo he pronounced a severer
judgment still, calling it the emptiest, most improb-
able, most childish thing conceivable — boredom in
sixteen parts. And yet he had conceived certain
improbable plots himself.
Like Charles Lamb, who left his office earlier in
the afternoon to make up for arriving late in the
morning, he counterbalanced these heavy - handed
slatings of his friends by extolling his own perform-
ance past and present. Being engaged in revising
the Chouans for a fresh edition, he was struck by
qualities in it that he had hitherto held too lightly.
It was all Scott and all Fenimore Cooper, he said,
with a fire and wit, into the bargain, that neither of
these writers ever possessed. The passion in it was
sublime ! Its landscapes and scenes of war were de-
picted with a perfection and happiness that surprised
him. As a piece of self-praise there is probably
nothing surpassing this in the annals of literature.
In a competition, Balzac's blasts of vanity would
beat the Archangel Michael's last trump for loudness.
Horace Vernet, he asserted, would never be a
^reat painter. He was a colourist ; he knew how to
lesign and compose, had technical skill, and, now and
gain, found sentiment, but did not understand how
3 combine these talents in his pictures. He was
ever, but had no genius. His alter ego was Dela-
che, to whom he gave his daughter in marriage.
f the other painters, Boulanger, Delacroix, Ingres,
)ecamps, Jules Dupre were his favourites — true
xrtists, he deemed them. At the Salon he saw hardly
p
226 HONORE DE BALZAC
anything to please him besides a canvas by Meissonier
and Cogniet's Tintoretto painting his Dead Daughter.
He would have liked to see Boulanger s Death of
Messaliiia, but the Salon Committee had refused it.
In music his preferences were as eclectic as in
pictures. Liszt, whom he thought ridiculous as a
man, he considered superb as a musician — the Paga-
nini of the piano, yet inferior to Chopin, since he had
not the genius of composition. And, in singing,
Rubini was his idol — Rubini who triumphed in the
role of Othello, giving the suspicion air in a manner
no one could equal. It intoxicated him to hear this
tenor with Tamburini, Lablache, and Madame Grisi;
while Nourrit's song, Ce Rameau qui donne la Puis-
sance et V Immortalite in Robert le Diable made his
flesh creep. It yielded a glimpse of life with all its
dreams satisfied.
Originally intending to start for St. Petersburg
early in June, Balzac was not able to leave Paris until
a month later. As usual, filthy lucre had to do with
his tarrying. In spite of a loan of 11,500 francs from
lawyer Gavault — his guardian, the novelist called him
— who for the privilege of the great man's friendship
had been endeavouring during the two years past to
introduce a little order into his affairs, he had not
available cash enough for a trip so far, and stayed
on, hoping to finish his David Sechard,^ which was
running as a serial in the Etat, and his Esther,^ ap-
pearing similarly in the Parisien, June he spent at
Lagny, where his manuscripts were being printed, in
order to correct the proofs and get his money. But
the Etat ceased issue while he was there ; and the
Parisien, being in parlous condition, refused likewise
1 Part of the Lost Illusions,
LETTERS TO **THE STRANGER" 227
to pay up, so that he had to go off with a thinner-
lined pocket than he had expected. Otherwise, he
was in a fitting state of grace to meet his fair tyrant,
whose envelope lectures had brought him into fear of
her and at least outward obedience.
The torrents of coffee by the aid of which he had
forced his last pen-work through, had been reduced
to minimum doses ; the occasional mustard foot-baths
that cured his cerebral inflammations were replaced
by entire ablutions every other day ; he liked hot
baths well enough ; but, in the spells of composition,
they were often indefinitely adjourned, so that this
season of purification had its raison d'etre. And now,
with his gaze turned to the east, he wondered how
long he was going to remain there. His reply to a
person who asked him to pledge himself for some
novels on his return reads much as though he were
counting on an offer to fix his residence in the empire
of the czars. " I don't know whether I shall come
back," he said. "France bores me. I am infatuated
with Russia. I am in love with absolute power. I
am going to see if it is as fine as I believe it to be.
De Maistre stayed a long time at St. Petersburg.
Perhaps I shall stay also." This he naturally repeated
to Madame Hanska. Not that it was new to her.
A similar hint had been given in January, when he
capped his declaration, ** I abhor the English ; I
execrate the Austrians ; the Italians are nothing,"
with, "I would sooner be a Russian than any other
subject." The comic side of this fury is that Madame
Hanska was a Pole, her late husband too ; and neither
she nor her family were reconciled to the Russian
yoke. To make his renunciation more complete, he
humbly spok^ his dread she might turn from him
228 HONORE DE BALZAC
with the ''get away "said to a dog. No! She had
no intention of dismissing him. His outpourings of
devotion caressed her woman's pride, even if she did
not accept them as gospel truth. And however tedious
she found his vamping song of sixpence, his sittings
in the parlour counting out his mirage-money, she
put up with them in consideration of her privilege.
Sailing from Havre in the Devonshire, an English
boat, Balzac arrived at St. Petersburg towards the
end of July. He lodged in a private house not far
from Eve's KoutaizofF mansion ; but passed the three
months of his sojourn almost entirely in her society.
It was the first opportunity he had had of getting
to know her intimately, their previous meetings being
surrounded with too many restrictions to allow of
familiar intercourse. No detailed record has come
down to us of these days of tete-a-tete existence. All
we learn from subsequent allusions is that, together
with a good deal of billing and cooing, more sustained
on the novelist's side, there were some lovers' tiffs,
followed by reconciliations. Apparently the friction
was mainly caused by Eve's evasiveness on the subject
of their marriage.
It would seem as though there were an attack on
her aloofness in the long criticism he sent her from
his lodgings on Madame d'Arnim's Bellina, a French
translation of which had been published not long
before he left Paris. After some general remarks
on the circumstance of a girl's fancying herself in
love with a great man living at a distance, he waxed
wroth over what he styled Bellina's head-love, and
over head-love in general. To this monster, Merimee,
in his Double Mistake, had given a thrust, but a thrust
that made it bleed only. The cleverer Madame d' Arnim
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 229
had poisoned it with opium. ** In order for the literary
expression of love to become a work of art and to be
sublime," he continued, "the love that depicts should
itself be complete ; it should occur in its triple form,
head, heart, and body ; should be a love at once sensual
and divine, manifested with wit and poetry. Who
says love says suffering; suffering from waiting;
suffering from combats ; suffering from separation ;
suffering from disagreement. Love in itself is a sub-
lime and pathetic drama. When happy, it is silent.
Now, the cause of the tedium of Madame d'Arnim's
book," he added, " is easily discoverable by a soul that
loves. Goethe did not love Bellina. Put a big stone
in Goethe's place — the Sphinx no power has ever been
able to wrest from its desert sand — and Bellina's letters
are understandable. Unlike Pygmalion's fable, the
more Bellina writes, the more petrified Goethe be-
comes, the more glacial his letters. True, if Bellina
had perceived that her sheets were falling upon granite,
and if she had abandoned herself to rage or despair,
she would have composed a poem. But, as she did
not love Goethe, as Goethe was a pretext for her
letters, she went on with her girl's journal; and we
have read some (not intended for print) much more
charming, not in units, but in tens."
In the rest of the criticism, Balzac swirls round
his guns and directs his fire on Goethe's replies to
Bellina. The latter's epistles were accompanied with
presents of braces and slippers and flannel waist-
coats, which were much more appreciated by the
poet than her theories on music. Not so did he,
Balzac, treat his Lina, his Louloup — such was the
inference suggested. Every one of her, ix. Eve's,
sayings was treasured up, after being duly pondered
230 HONORE DE BALZAC
upon. Such adulation must have been delicious to
Madame Hanska ; and yet she sent her sighing swain
back into his loneliness, with his bonds riveted tighter,
his promises to break with all rivals more solemn, and
a disappointment, over his deferred hopes, that brought
on an illness after his return.
The journey back was made by land through Riga,
Taurogen, and Berlin. In the Prussian capital. Von
Humboldt came to see him with a message from the
King and Queen; and Shakespeare's Midsummer
Nighfs Dream was seen on the stage, without pleasure
being derived from it. To its poesy the novelist was
little open. Instead of pushing on straight to France,
he bent his course southwards to Dresden, where he
visited the Pinakothek. The Saxon town pleased him
more than Berlin, both by its structural picturesqueness
and surroundings. The palace, begun by Augustus,
he esteemed the most curious masterpiece of rococo
architecture. The Gallery he thought over-rated ; but
he none the less admired Correggio's Night, his Mag-
dalene and two Virgins, as also Raphael's Virgins, and
the Dutch pictures. His highest enthusiasm was aroused
by the theatre, decorated by the three French artists
Desplechin, Sechan, and Dieterle. He reached Passy
on the 3rd of November, having crowded into the
preceding week visits to Maintz, Cologne, Aix-la-
Chapelle, and several places in Belgium.
The form assumed by his malady was arachnitis,
an inflammation of the network of nerves enveloping
the brain. For the time being, Nacquart, his doctor,
conjured it away, as he had done in the case of other
seizures from which the patient had suffered. He had
known Balzac since boyhood and was well acquainted
with his constitution. Unfortunately he could not
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER 231
change the novelist's abnormal manner of living and
working. And the mischief v^as in them.
Balzac's three months' absence from Paris had
caused profane tongues to wag considerably. Not-
withstanding his reticence concerning Countess Hanska,
a legend had gathered round about their relations to
each other. More than one paper reported that he
had been off on an expedition, wife and fortune-
hunting — which was true ; and one daily, at least,
spoke of his having been engaged by the Czar as a
kind of court litterateur. The Pi^esse especially annoyed
him by copying from the Independance Beige a story
of his having been surprised by the Belgian police
dining in an hotel with an Italian forger, whose grand
behaviour and abundance of false bank-notes had com-
pletely captivated him. The forger was certainly
arrested in the hotel where he had put up, but the
dinner and the chumming were inventions ; at any rate,
Balzac affirmed they were, uttering furious anathemas
against the scorpion Girardin, who had allowed so
illustrious a name to be taken in vain.
On the 26th of September, during the St. Peters-
burg visit, his third finished theatrical piece, Pamela
Giraud, was produced at the Gaite Theatre. Differing
essentially from his previous efforts, this play is an
ordinary melodramatic comedy. Pamela, like Richard-
son's heroine, is an honest girl, who, occupied in the
humble trade of flower-selling, loves a young man,
Jules Rousseau, that she believes to belong to her
own modest rank, whereas, in reality, he is the son of
a big financier. Involved in a Bonapartist conspiracy,
which has just been discovered, Jules comes one night
to her room and tries to persuade her to fly with him.
She refuses ; and, while he is with her, the police enter
232 HONORE DE BALZAC
and arrest him. To save him she consents, though
opposed by her parents, to say in Court that her lover
had spent the night of the conspiracy with her; and
Jules is acquitted through this false confession of her
being his mistress. Once the happy result obtained,
Jules and his family forget her. The lawyer, however,
smitten by her beauty and virtue, proposes to marry
her, and is about to carry his intention into effect
when, remarking that she is pining for the ungrateful
Jules, he contrives to bring him to Pamela's feet again,
and the marriage is celebrated.
Pamela Giraud was written in 1838, but no theatre
had been willing to stage it in its original form. Ulti-
mately two professional playwrights, Bayard and Jaime,
who had already dramatized, the one, Eugenie Grandet
and the Search for the Absolute, the other, Pere
Goriot, pruned the over-plentifulness of its matter and
strengthened the relief of various parts ; and, in the
amended guise, it was performed. Balzac resented the
modifications, which explains his equanimity on hearing,
as he travelled homewards, that the piece had fallen flat.
He considered that, presented as he wrote it, the chances
of success would have been greater. He was wrong,
and those critics as well who attributed the failure to
enmities arising out of a recent publication of his, en-
titled the Monography of the Press, Neither of the
two chief dramatis personce was capable of properly
interesting a theatrical audience. The character of
Jules is contemptible from beginning to end, and that
of Pamela ceases to attract after the trial. The con-
clusion of this play, as that of Vautrin, is an anticlimax
and leaves an unsatisfactory impression.
Why did Balzac write his Monography of the
Parisian Press ? Not altogether from a pure motive,
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 233
one must own. There is too much gall in his language,
too much satire in the thought. He was sufficiently-
acquainted with the inner ring of journalistic life to be
able to say truly what were its blemishes ; and, without
doubt, at the time when he composed the chief of his
novels, these had a prejudicial effect on literature as on
other phases of activity. But his pamphlet, besides its
indiscriminate condemnations, erred in adopting a style
which rendered the turning of the tables only too easy.
And Jules Janin, whom he had already indisposed by
sketching a seeming portrait of him in the Provincial
G?^eat Man in Paris, came down heavily on the daring
satirist in the Debats of the 20th of February 1843.
The retort, so he informed Madame Hanska, made him
laugh immoderately. Perhaps ; but the laugh must
have been somewhat forced — what the French call
" yellow."
In the Monography, men of letters, baptized by the
novelist gendelettres — one of the few words coined by
Balzac which have become naturalized — may be divided
into several categories. First, there are the publicistes,
occupied in scratching the pimples of the body politic.
From these pimples they extract a book which is a
mystification. Not far removed from the publicistes
are the chief managing editors and proprietors general,
big wigs who sometimes become prefects, receivers
general, or theatrical directors. The type of this class
is glory's porter, speculation's trumpeter, the electorate's
Bonneau. He is set in motion by a ballet-dancer, a
cantatrice, an actress ; in short, he is a brigand-captain,
with other brigands under him. And of the latter : —
There are the Premiers Paiis, alias, first tenors. In
writing Premiers Paris, it is impossible for a man to
avoid mental warp and rapid deterioration. In such
234 HONORS DE BALZAC
writing, style would be a misfortune. One must know
how to speak jesuitically ; and, in order to advance,
one must be clever in getting one's ideas to walk on
crutches. Those who engage in the trade confess them-
selves corrupt ; like diplomatists, they have as a pension
the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, a few
librarianships, even archiveships.
Next to the Premiers Paris come the Faits Paris ;
then the Camarillists, other banditti commissioned to
distort Parliamentary speeches ; then the newspaper
Politicians, who have not two ideas in their heads. If
appointed under-officials, they would be unable to ad-
minister the sweeping of the streets. Consequently,
the more incapable a man is, the better he is qualified
to become the Grand Lama of a newspaper. Indeed,
nothing is more explicable than politics. It is a game
at ninepins.
In addition to its Politicians, the newspaper has its
Attaches, The Attaches of the Republican party are
watched very closely. One day two Republicans meet,
and the first says to the second : " You have sold your-
self; people find you are getting fatter." Whence it
follows that any paper knowing its trade will have only
exceedingly thin Attaches ; otherwise, your Attache will
be a mere detached Attache, that is to say, a sort of paid
spy, who is mostly a professor of rhetoric or philosophy.
He will dine at all tables, with mission to attack political
leaders ; he runs in and out of newspaper offices, like
a dog seeking his master ; and, when he has bitten
sharply, he becomes the professor of a fantastic science,
the private secretary of some cabinet, or else consul-
general.
Afterwards come the gendelettre pamphleteers.
According to the author of the Monography, the
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 235
pamphlet is the brochure masterpiece ; and he himself is
its most illustrious exponent. The Abbe de Lamennais
does not know how to speak to the proletariat. He is
not Spartacus enough, not Marat enough, not Calvin
enough ; he does not understand how to storm the posi-
tions of the ignoble bourgeoisie at present in power.
Following on are the gendelettre-vidgarisateurs,
who have invented Germany. The type of this class is
appointed professor in the College de France. He
marches at the head of the Nothingologues ; he is the
almighty king of the Sorbonne. Such people are the
skin parasites of France. The Nothingologue is ordinarily
monobible ; ^ and, as the bourgeoisie are essentially lack-
ing in intelligence, they are infatuated with him. The
Monobible becomes a director of canals, railways, the
defender of negroes, or else the advocate of slavery ;
in a word, the Nothingologue is an important man,
quite as the convinced gendelettre, who reserves to
himself the Council of State, and as the sceptic
gendelettre, who becomes Master of Requests or
Governor of the JNIarquisas Isles.
Replying to this diatribe, with its medley of shrewd-
ness and exaggeration, Janin pointed out that it insulted
Quinet, professor at the College de France; Sainte-
Beuve, the poet, novelist, and critic, the historian of
Port-Royal; Philarete Chasles, professor of Foreign
Literature ; Loeve Weimars, Consul at Bagdad ; not to
speak of Planche, Berlioz, Michel and Chevalier ; and
that it came amiss from a man who had lived and still
lived on newspapers ; who himself had been the chief
managing editor, tenor, Jack-of-all-trades, canard -seller,
camarillist, politician, premier-Paris, fait-Paris, detache-
1 In Balzac's use of the word : A man who has written only one
book and boasts of it always.
236 HONORE DE BALZAC
attache, pamphleteer, translator, critic, euphuist, bravo,
incense-bearer, guerillero, angler, humbug, and even,
what was more serious, the banker of a paper of which
he was the only, unique, and perpetual gendelettre, and
which, so admirably written, cleverly conducted, and
signed with so great a name, did not live six months.
Within a very few years, Janin was to bury the
hatchet of polemics beside Balzac's grave, and, for-
getting the soreness generated in him by the Mono-
graphy of the Press, to constitute himself the dead
author's apologist.
Besides his continuation of Lucien de Bubempre's
story in the Splendour and Wretchedness of Courtezans,
Balzac published, in the year 1843, two complete
novels, viz. Honorine, and The Muse of the County,
and a portion of an historical study on Catherine de
Medici. This last work, to which the Calvinist Martyr
belongs, was undertaken with the idea of composing,
as he said, a retrospective history of France treated
clairvoyantly, and, as the fragment shows, with his
peculiar bias towards despotism. In the experiment
made with Catherine de Medici, he started out thinking
to justify and rehabilitate her memory. Instead, he
found himself obliged to exhibit her committing the
worst actions imaginable ; and, his conclusions not
concording with his premises, he abandoned further
incursions into the past. History is a dangerous
ground for a doctrinaire to investigate.
The former of the two novels is mainly psycho-
logical. The wife of a Count Octave, having quitted
her husband for another, has repented of her fault and
separated from her lover, but, through shamefastness,
will not return to her husband. She seeks to gain a
livelihood by flower-making; and her husband, who
U
4
LETTERS TO '*THE STRANGER " 237
still loves her and is full of forgiveness, helps her
secretly to obtain orders. At length, by the good
offices of a secretary and the latter's uncle, a priest, he
pleads with his wife more efficaciously, and induces her
to return to him, yet without her pardoning herself;
and she dies in giving birth to a child, dies because she
wishes, rather from wounded pride, it would appear,
than on account of her husband, to whose affection she
is strangely insensible. The heroine is not particularly
interesting with her morbidness and hysterical posing ;
she probably stands for one of Balzac's principles,
and his principles are the most tedious thing about
him.
With the Muse of the County, which the author
declared to be Constant's Adolphe treated realistically,
we are back in the truer Balzacian manner. Dinah
de la Baudraye — a Sancerre Catherine de Vivonne —
married to an apology for a man, is human flesh and
blood ; and her love for the journalist Etienne Lousteau
is natural, though culpable. Indeed, her subsequent
devotion to this shallow egotist is not without greatness.
Here the novelist, as much by his wit as by his denoue-
ment, gives perhaps the best practical condemnation
of adultery.
" Bah ! " says the little de la Baudraye, " do you call
it vengeance, because the Duke of Bracciano will kill
his wife for putting him into a cage and showing herself
to him in her lover's arms. Our tribunals and society
are much more cruel."
*' In what ? " asked Lousteau.
" In letting the woman live with a slender allow-
ance. Every one turns away from her. She has neither
dress nor consideration, two things which are every-
thing to a woman."
238 HONORS DE BALZAC
"But she has happiness," repHed Madame de la
Baudraye grandly.
" No ! " replied the husband, lighting his candle to
go to bed ; " for she has a lover."
Dinah's punishment is of this kind. Persuaded at
length to go back to the house of her husband, who
has been made a peer of France and accepts Lousteau's
children with her, she lives to see her former lover and
father of her children sink so low that she must despise
him, while still occasionally tempted to yield to his
caresses.
When Alexandre Dumas, the younger, was re-
ceived into the French Academy in 1875, the Count
d'Haussonville, who welcomed him, asserted that the
elder Dumas, like Balzac, Beranger, de Lamennais and
others, had preferred to remain an outsider. In the
case of Balzac, the Count was mistaken. The so-called
preference was Hobson's choice. He stayed outside
only because he could not get in. Between 1839 and
1849, he made several attempts to secure the promise
of a number of votes sufficient to elect him. Having
stood aside at the earlier date in favour of Victor
Hugo, who was admitted in 1841, he thought he might
count on a reciprocal service from the poet. And, on
Bonald's death in the same year, he asked him, during
the visit to Les Jardies, to use his influence with his
colleagues in the Academy. " Hugo promised but
little," says Gozlan ; and Balzac had to wait for a better
opportunity. This happened at the end of 1843, when
Campenon died, and a vacancy occurred which he
might reasonably claim to fill. Encouraged at present
by Hugo and Charles Nodier, he began the round of
visits required by Academy etiquette; but soon dis-
covered that the members whose votes he solicited did
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 239
not consider him rich enough. He therefore withdrew
from the list of candidates, writing to Nodier that, if he
could not succeed in entering the Academy while in
honourable poverty, he would never present himself at
the moment when prosperity should have bestowed her
favours on him.
And, so far as personal solicitation was concerned,
he never did. Though not abandoning his desire of
belonging to the Forty, and esteeming rightly that the
value of his work entitled him to a place among them,
he felt after this rebuff that, if a fresh proposal were
made, it should come from the other side. He might
have done more to provoke it had not Madame Hanska
been against his taking any further action in the
matter, however indirect. Maybe she realized better
than he did the uselessness of his candidature. The
enemies he had in the Academy and its entourage
were too powerful for his claims to be considered.
Many years afterwards, Victor Hugo related that the
novelist put himself forward for the vacancy left by
Ballanche's death at the end of 1847, and apropos added
the following anecdote.
" I was driving," he said, " down the Rue du Fau-
bourg Saint-Honore, when in front of the Church I
perceived Monsieur de Balzac, who beckoned to me
to stop. I was going to get out of the carriage, but
he prevented me, and said : * I was just coming to see
you. You know I am on the list for the Academy.'
' Really ! ' ' Yes. What do you think of my chances ? '
*You are too late, I fear. You will get only my
vote.' ' It is your vote especially I want.' * Are you
quite in earnest ? ' ' Quite.' Balzac quitted me. The
election was virtually decided. For political motives,
the candidature of Monsieur Vatout had a majority of
240 HONORE DE BALZAC
supporters. I tried to canvass for Balzac, but met with
no success. It vexed me to think that a man of Balzac's
caHbre should have only one vote, and I reflected that,
if I could obtain a second one, I might create some
change of opinion. How was I to gain it ? On the
election day I was sitting beside the excellent Ponger-
ville, one of the best of men. I asked him point blank,
' For whom are you voting ? ' ' For Vatout, as you
know.' ' I know it so little that I ask you to vote
for Balzac' ' Impossible ! ' ' Why ? ' ' Because my
bulletin is ready. See.' ' Oh ! that makes no matter.'
And on two bits of paper I wrote in my best hand :
' Balzac' ' Well ! ' quoth Pongerville ; ' well ! you will
see.' The apparitor who was collecting the votes
approached us. I handed him one of the bulletins I
had prepared. Pongerville, in his turn, stretched out
his hand to put Vatout's name in the urn ; but, with a
friendly tap on his fingers, I caused his paper to flutter
to the floor. He looked, appeared irresolute for a
moment; and, as I presented him with the second
bulletin, on which Balzac's name was inscribed, he
smiled, took it, and gave it with good grace. And that
is how Honore de Balzac had two votes in his favour
at the Academy."
This story is inexact chronologically. Balzac was
not a candidate in 1847-48, when Monsieur Vatout was
chosen, but at two later elections, those of the 11th
and 18th of January 1849. In each of these he ob-
tained two votes ; and, since the second election was
to fill the chair of Monsieur Vatout, who died after
occupying it during a twelvemonth, it would seem that
Victor Hugo, deceived by his memory, confused the
two events. As for the conversation with Balzac, it
probably refers to the candidature which the novelist
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 241
did begin in 1844 ; and either Hugo's age in 1877,
when he told the story, or his capacity for embelHshing
was responsible for the interview being tacked on to
the election incident of 1849.
The Pongerville mentioned by Hugo was the same
in whose album, in 1844, Balzac wrote a couple of
complimentary verses. He happened to come across
the album at his sister's, and, after inserting his poetry,
took the book to Pongerville's house without finding
him at home. He had certainly reckoned, at the close
of the preceding year, on having this Academician's
vote, as well as Dupaty's, Hugo's, and Nodier's.
Pongerville may have deemed his own tardy support a
sufficient reward for the verses.
Although Balzac's monetary embarrassments were
fated to persist as long as he lived, the causes being
so much in the man, their burden was somewhat less
felt in and from the year 1844. This better state of
things was proved by his looking round for a more
commodious residence. The Passy cottage, picturesque
as it was, accorded but ill with his designs of marrying
so grand a dame ; and even for his work was not very
suitable, being close to the flats of the Rue Basse, where
families lived with children that disturbed his medita-
tions. He would have liked to free Les Jardies from
its mortgage and keep the place as a summer resort,
while renting a snug mansion in the city during the
winter; but the two abodes were hardly within his
means, unless Eve would loosen her purse-strings. ** I
will not sell it," he informed her, referring to his
" Folly " ; '* it was built with my blood and brains. I
will stick to it — if I cannot dispose of it advantage-
ously," he finished up with, inconsequently. And still
she made no sign; or, rather, she proffered no cash.
Q
242 HONORE DE BALZAC
Business advice she gave in plenty. About each of
the Paris houses suggested she had some objections
to make, so that, after fixing successively on a residence
belonging to Madame Delannoy (one of his creditor
friends) in the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, on the old
mansion opposite his Passy abode once possessed by
the Princesse de Lamballe, on a property in the Rue
Ponthieu, and on a plot of land in the Allee des Veuves
where he thought they could build, the end of the
year arrived without any definite solution being reached.
The two "louloups," as he called himself and Eve,
filled their correspondence with calculations and figures,
the Paris '* louloup " expressing his conviction that
figures were the foundation of their happiness.
If he did not die too soon, she might consider she
would marry a million in giving him her hand, he said.
Slily, he now and again quoted his worth in the esti-
mation of a rival feminine authority. For example,
Madame de Girardin was about to write an article
on the great conversationalists of the day, and had
mentioned that she held him to be one of the most
charming. However, when he raised his rate of ex-
change in this way, he was always prudent enough to
follow up with concessions. His intimacy with the
Englishwoman, Madame Visconti, who was Eve's bug-
bear, he broke off completely — at least he swore he had
done so, and offered to send his beloved tyrant the
cold letter in which his whilom friend and benefactress
bade him good-bye. To let Eve see it would not be
gallant on his part, he confessed ; but what could he
deny her, if she insisted. He was her Paris agent,
even her Paris errand-boy, at one time negotiating the
entrance of the governess, Mademoiselle Borel, into
the Saint-Thomas-de-Villeneuve nunnery ; at another,
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 243
purchasing gloves, millinery, and other articles of dress.
Yet she never considered him submissive enough, not-
withstanding his pretty flattery.
'* Why shouldn't you have a poet ? " he asked, think-
ing of himself, " as other people have a dog, a monkey,
a parrot — the more so as I have in me something of
these three creatures : I always repeat the same phrase,
I imitate society, I am faithful." And again in a burst
of lyricism, he exclaimed: "Adieu, loved friend, to
whom I belong like the sound to the bell, the dog
to his master, the artist to his ideal, prayer to God,
pleasure to cause, colour to the painter, life to the sun.
Love me, for I need your aifection, so vivifying, so
coloured, so agreeable, so celestial, so ideally good,
of such sweet dominance, and so constantly vibrating."
With comparisons of this sort he was lavish. " I am
like Monsieur de Talleyrand," he told her in another
letter. ** Either I show a stolid, tin face and do not
speak a word, or else I chatter like a magpie." Adopt-
ing the expression first invented by Guizot, he charac-
terized their mutual relations as an entente cordiale,
impatient, none the less, for the realization of his fancy,
which was to see his idol enter a tabernacle prepared
to receive her on the return from a delightful honey-
moon. Meanwhile, he was amassing furniture and
bric-a-brac, just as the bird bits of straw; and he
implored her not to scold him. In the Rue Neuve-
Saint-Augustin, he had ferreted out two Dresden vases,
which he bought, resolving to deprive himself for a
time of his grapes at forty sous a pound, in order to
retrieve the money.
The retrieval indeed was not easy, since his passion
for collecting curios led him far, and he generally
succumbed to the temptation of something ancient
244 HONORE DE BALZAC
and rare. In the previous autumn he had bought, for
thirteen hundred and fifty francs, a secretaire and com-
mode in ebony, with inlaid pearl, that had apparently
been manufactured at Florence in the seventeenth
century ; these objets dart he estimated at values
ranging up to forty or fifty thousand francs. A descrip-
tion of them appeared in the press, and rich amateurs
inquired whether he were willing to sell ; but, either
because he asked too much or really did not want to
part with them, they were kept, as also his Christ by
Bouchardon or Girardon, which he obtained for two
hundred francs and valued at several thousands. If
he had no cash for his purchases — and this frequently
happened — he placed one of his already acquired trea-
sures (possibly unpaid for, too) in the establishment of
his " respectable relative," as he styled the pawnbroker,
and thus secured the coveted object.
In his intercourse with his own family, Madame
Hanska was a continuously troubling factor. The
prospect of his alliance with this foreign aristocrat had
less charm for Madame Balzac and Laure than for
Honore. They probably perceived the chimera he
was pursuing, and could not be expected to show
enthusiasm. This attitude on their side and a certain
hauteur on his, partly caused by offended dignity,
widened the breach between him and them. " I have
now no family," he told " The Stranger," '* and I am glad
that the coldness should be established before I am
completely happy ; for later the reason of it would
have been attributed to you, or to what would have
been termed my uppishness. The isolation, which you
wish, will be likewise my dearest desire. My sister,"
he proceeded, *'has suppressed for ever the literary
question betwixt us, with her blue-stocking whims. I
LETTERS TO ^'THE STRANGER" 245
cannot talk to her of my affairs, nor yet of my mother's.
She brings upon me cruel anxieties by her want of tact,
whenever there is anybody at her house. She asserts
that her husband is a greater man than I am." Madame
de Berny, he added, had foreseen his mother's and
sister's transformation when she told him he was a
flower that had sprung up on a dunghill ! If Madame
de Berny told him this, it was no doubt in a fit of
anger against them for endeavouring to sever the
liaison, an endeavour they were perfectly justified in.
These portions of Balzac's confidences, which reflect
upon his character seriously, and besmirch him more
than those against whom they were spoken, cannot be
overlooked in a biography. They have to be included
in our judgment of him, and, in a measure, concern the
tragic close of his love romance.
We are fonder of him in the expansive moods when
his naive wonder at his own performances carries him
into self-panegyric, which, not infrequently, we can
endorse, though with some discount. Thus, for instance,
the Bourgeois of Paris he declared to be one of those
masterpieces that leave everything else behind. '' It
is grand, it is terrifying in verve, in philosophy, in
novelty, in painting, in style." And yet there was
Eugene Sue selling the Wandering Jew to a news-
paper for a hundred thousand francs, while the Philo-
sophy of Conjugal Life, a publication of his own in
Hetzel's Diable a Paris, fetched only eight hundred ;
and the Peasants was paid for only at the rate of sixty
centimes a line. His Modeste Mignon, which ap-
peared in the Debats, sold rather dearer, six thousand
francs being given, and, for the Bourgeois, nine
thousand. The explanation of Sue's getting more he
imagined to be because Sue lived in grander style than
246 HONORE DE BALZAC
himself, with flunkeys to open the door and overawe
the publishers who flocked to the successful writer,
whereas he, living in a cottage, had to cool his heels in
an office ante-chamber, and was exploited on account
of his neediness. There was some truth in what he said ;
but he did not sufficiently realize that Sue wrote, for
the market, exciting tales that everybody rushed to
read. His own books were, of course, most of
them infinitely superior ; but they appealed to a much
smaller public. All the same, he was loth to resign
himself to the depreciation Sue's bargains effected in
his own. Feverishly he strove to demonstrate by his
painfully gained successes that they were masterpieces,
as he said, by the side of Sue's chimney-fronts, and
as far above them as Raphael was above Dubufe.
Moliere, Lesage, Voltaire, Walter Scott — these were
the only names he acknowledged as rivals to his own.
Sue was nothing but a spangled and satined Paul de
Kock.
We can grant him that, in fiction, his proper
manner was as far in advance of his epoch as, in
politics, his doctrine was behind it. George h and was
a medium in both, although she dwelt always a little
too much in the clouds. At a dinner with her towards
the end of January, the antagonism of their principles
manifested itself over his recent visit to Russia.
" If you were to see the Czar," Balzac said to her,
'* you would fall in love with him and jump from your
bousingotism i to autocracy. "
Madame Dudevant waxed angry. It was not kind
1 A word used to characterise the dress and manners of the
Romanticists, who were fond of Robespierre waistcoats, long hair,
and other peculiarities intended to distinguish them from ordinary
mortals.
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 247
in a man who had resisted her blandishments to make
merry over her foibles.
The Russians, he gravely told her, were extremely
amiable, easy to get on with, exceedingly literary, since
everything was done on paper, and Russia was the only
country in which people knew how to obey.
The mention of obedience in a people irritated the
hostess ; but on her seething he poured a drop of cold
water by asking jestingly :
" Would you, in a great danger, wish your ser-
vants to deliberate about what you had ordered them
to do?"
The Sandist - Philosophico - Republico - Commu-
nico - Pierre - Lerouxico - Germanico - Deisto train (the
epithets are Balzac's) stopped dead at the question.
Then Marliani, one of the guests, remarked that argu-
ment was impossible with poets. Balzac bowed, and
added :
" You hear what he says ? "
" You are a dreadful satirist," retorted George Sand.
*' Go on with your Coviedie HuviaineJ"
It was not necessary to give the recommendation.
He was for ever going on ; and the further he went, the
further his horizons receded. The embracing lines
were rather indiscriminate. He came to think himself
capable of reducing every domain to his scale. Men's
ambitions, however, are part of their motive power ;
and, had his been less sweeping, the qualities of his
work might have diminished with the defects. " Four
men," he cried in one of his vauntings, " have had an
immense life. Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell, and — I
mean to be the fourth ! The first lived with the life
of Europe ; he inoculated himself with armies ! The
second espoused the globe ! The third incarnated in
248 HONORE DE BALZAC
himself a people I As for me ! I shall have borne a
whole society in my head ! It is just as well to live
thus as every evening to say, ' Spades, hearts, trumps ; '
or to wonder why Madame such a one has done such
and such a thing."
Modeste Mignon, which was published in 1844
with the extra attraction of some of Auber's music in
it, is one of Balzac's brighter and lighter books, and
reproduces part of his own last love-story more objec-
tively treated than in Albert Savai^us. Its plot was
suggested to him by a short tale which Madame
Hanska composed, intending to submit it for his
approval, but which she threw in the fire, afterwards
sending him, in one of her epistles, an outline of what
she had done. Since he utilized her invention, he paid
her back by selecting as his point of departure the
adventure of a well-educated girl of literary tastes, who,
through reading the verses of the celebrated Canalis,
at once a poet and a statesman, fell in love with him
and expressed her (literary) admiration in a letter,
though she had never seen him. There were other
such cases in the first half of the nineteenth century
besides that of the Polish Countess and the author of
Eugenie G-randet, Disdaining to reply to a correspon-
dent who did not appear to be a person with whom he
could take liberties, Canalis delegated the task to his
friend and secretary, La Briere, who answered under
cover of the great man's name and ultimately found
out and, incognito, beheld the lady. She was
beautiful and he lost his heart to her. When later the
subterfuge was discovered, Canalis, interested now,
wanted to marry the lady, she being presumably rich.
Through pique, Modeste, for a while, listened to his
suit and smiled on him, albeit, in verity, she was
A. Dumas F. Soulid Liszt
Balzac Mme. de Girardin J.Janin V.Hugo
Celebrities at a Tea-party
From a Caricature by Grandville (1845)
{Collection of M. Adolphe Jullien)
LETTERS TO **THE STRANGER" 249
touched by La Bri^re's sincere affection. The circum-
stances leading to the unmasking of Canalis' selfish
character and to Modeste's marriage with La Briere are
handled in a less Balzacian way than the introductory
chapters, which, however, are more than usually tortuous.
But the whole story is pleasing ; and, in the discursive
paragraphs, there is less dogmatism and a more delicate
sense of contrasts than the novelist is wont to exhibit
when astride a hobby-horse. The following passage
has an aroma of Shelley's Defence of Poetry in it, which
merits our attention. The divine in man says :
*' In order to live, thou shalt bend thyself towards
earth ; in order to think thou shalt raise thyself heaven-
wards. We want the life of the soul as much as that
of the body ; whence there are two utilities. Thus it
is certain that a book will not serve as foot-gear; an
epic, from the utilitarian point of view, is not worth an
economical soup from the kitchen of a Benevolent
Society; and a self-acting boiler, rising a couple of
inches on itself, procures calico a few pence a yard
cheaper; but this machine and the improvements of
industry do not breathe life into a nation, and will not
tell the future that it has existed ; whereas Egyptian
art, Mexican art, Grecian art, Roman art, with their
masterpieces accused of uselessness, have attested the
existence of these peoples in the vast expanse of time,
there where huge intermediary nations, destitute of
great men, have disappeared without leaving their visit-
ing cards on the globe. All works of genius are the
epitome of a civilization, and presuppose an immense
utility. Forsooth, a pair of boots will not outvie a
stage-play in your eyes, and you will not prefer a wind-
mill to the Church of Saint Ouen. So, a people is ani-
mated with the same sentiment as a man ; and man's
250 HONORE DE BALZAC
favourite idea is to survive himself mentally as he re-
produces himself physically. The survival of a people
is the work of its men of genius."
Beatrix, the other completed novel of the year, is a
drawn-out, ill-composed work, which is not redeemed
sufficiently by its minute description of Breton manners
and its portrait of George Sand in Fdicite des Touches.
Six years separated the publication of the first part of
the book from that of the conclusion, and, in the
interval, the unity of plan suffered. Balzac devoted a
good deal of labour to its execution. In all the con-
jugal ruses employed by Sabine de Grandlieu to detach
Calyste, her husband, from Beatrix, he displays his
peculiar talent, but the ultimate effect is poor.
CHAPTER XII
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER/' 1845, 1846
Though fertile in incidents, the year of 1845 was, from a
literary point of view, more barren than any in Balzac's
past career, exception, of course, made for the time lost
during his printing-house adventure. Beyond his short,
witty sketch, A Man of Business, relating the tricks
employed by the princes of bohemianism to pay their
debts and indulge their caprices gratis, no finished work
was published. The Peasants, which the author never
entirely got through, was taken up repeatedly, and as
often put aside from sheer inability to proceed.
The deadlock in which he found himself had been
preparing since his visit to Saint Petersburg. Whether
the intimacy created there between Madame Hanska
and himself was that of two lovers in the chaster sense,
or, as Monsieur Gabriel Ferry asserts, in his Balzac et
ses Amies, that of a closer union, it had haunted him
during his subsequent twelvemonth's loneliness. And
when Eve, who had come to spend the winter at Dresden,
discouraged, from fear of her society friends' backbiting,
"he idea of his going there to see her, he grew incap-
ble of concentrating his mind on his books ; and, even
I his letters to her, chafed and was irritable, scolding
3r for not stamping her envelopes, and recommending
er to acquire habits of order and economy ! ! ! confess-
ag the while that, to escape from his melancholy, he
had been playing lansquenet, dining out, gomg to the
theatres, and leading a nonchalant life.
251
252 HONORE DE BALZAC
This tone was a bold one to assume, but clever.
His tyrant, already repenting the pledges given, had
been hinting it would be better not to carry them out.
Her own relatives were quite as much against the
match as Balzac's, she reminded him, while narrating
all the malicious tittle-tattle that mutual acquaintances
were constantly telling her. She defended him, she
said. " A mistake ! " retorted Balzac. " When, in
your presence, any one attacks me, your best plan is to
mock the slanderers by outdoing them. When some one
sneeringly remarked to Dumas that his father was a
nigger, he answered : ' My grandfather was a monkey.' "
His scolding for once did good. Eve did not like
his "wounding prose," but she talked no more of
breaking with him. On the contrary, she relented so
far as to remove the embargo on his going to Dresden ;
so in May he went. And, what was more, she came in
August to Paris ; incognito, since the visit was without
the Czar's permission, she and her daughter Anna
travelling from the frontier under the names of Balzac's
sister and niece.
In the novelist's correspondence, there is a curious
letter written on the 2nd of August to Madame Emile
de Girardin. In it the writer excuses himself for not
calling on her, being obliged to remain at home on
account of the disquieting condition of a lady friend of
his who had hurt herself and was under medical treat-
ment. The inference is that the lady in question was
staying in his house ; and a note written to Madame
Hanska, on the 4th of September, with its allusion to
the Passy garden in which they had walked so much
together, makes it sufficiently plain that she was the
August guest. Although no proofs have yet come to
light which we can accept as irrefutable, there seems
1^
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 253
to be ground for the supposition put forward that a
premature confinement was the illness, carefully con-
cealed from every one.
If the supposition be correct, it explains the con-
valescent's being joined by Balzac again in September
at Baden-Baden, where arrangements were made for
Eve and himself to meet in October at Chalon-sur-
Saone and to travel together to Italy. It was during
this second stay in Germany that the play of the
Saltivibanques they had seen suggested to the novelist
he amusing nicknames which he thenceforth adopted
when writing to Madame Hanska's family. Anna was
dubbed Zephirine ; her betrothed, Gringalet ; Eve,
Atala ; and himself, Bilboquet, Georges, the betrothed,
who was a Pole bearing the title of Count Mniszech,
was a young man of scientific tastes and considerable
learning, for whom Balzac conceived a great liking,
and whom he helped in his entomological researches.
The ramble southwards was probably the most
pleasurable experience in the novelist's life, being an
anticipated honeymoon. From Chalon they jour-
neyed along the banks of the Rhone, visiting no
fewer than tw^enty-three towns on the way. At
Naples they parted, and the prospective bridegroom
turned Paris-wards, going via Pisa, Civita Vecchia, and
Marseilles; in this last city he comforted himself
for the separation by hunting out further adornments
for the home he was still busily striving to find in the
capital.
At Marseilles lived a poet-friend of his named
Mery, whom he had enlisted as a collaborator in his
teeming dramatic schemes. Him he commissioned to
bargain for certain articles of vertu which Lazard, the
famous dealer in antiquities, quoted too dear — eight
254 HONORE DE BALZAC
hundred francs for a mirror, and five hundred for a
statuette. "Let Lazard see that you will give a
thousand francs for the two things," he advised Mery ;
" but don't offer more than nine. Glance stoically at
the articles when passing by, and joke the dealer.
Then send acquaintances to offer a little less than
you. After a fortnight's haggling, Lazard will let
you have them one fine morning." For getting the
better of these sly shopkeepers, Balzac had a good
many devices up his sleeve.
Back in Passy, he was seized again by the same
restlessness as in the spring, thwarting his efforts to
settle down to his desk. The utmost he could accom-
plish was to wander about, note-book in hand, collect-
ing material for later use. Happening in December
to be near the Assize Courts, he went in to listen to
the trial of Madame Colomes, a niece of Marshal
Sebastiani, who was accused of forging bills. He was
struck by her strong resemblance to the dead Dilecta,
and also by her attachment, herself being forty-five
years of age, to a young man of twenty. The latter,
after wasting in riotous living the money she had
procured him by her forgeries, fled and left her to bear
the brunt of her shame. The most repugnant detail
of this unfortunate woman's case Balzac utilized not
long afterwards in his Cousin Bette.
Perhaps it was less his ennui than the curiosity for
new sensations which caused him to accept Gautier's
invitation to pass an evening with Baudelaire and one
or two others, at the Hotel Pimodan, for the purpose
of eating hashish. He experienced none of the
extraordinary phenomena usually attributed to the
consumption of this drug, his explanation being that
the dose was too weak, or his brain too strong. How-
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 255
ever, he owned to having heard celestial voices and
to having seen divine paintings while he descended
Lauzun's staircase, in a promenade that seemed to have
lasted twenty years. He does not appear to have
repeated the intoxication. Yet, on receiving another
unkind epistle from Eve, shortly afterwards, he men-
tioned the possibility of his arming himself against
his sea of troubles through the drug's lethal pro-
perties.
f In anything that had to do with the function of
^the brain, he was as interested as if medicine had been
his profession. A book of Dr. Moreau's on madness,
which he read during these months of mental relaxa-
tion, drew from him an acknowledgment wherein he
foreshadowed his intention of studying anatomy and
myology. " I believe," he said, " we shall do no good
until we have determined the action exercised by the
physical organs of thought in the production of mad-
ness. The organs are the containing sheaths of some
fluid or other as yet inappreciable. I hold this for
proved. Well ! there are a certain number of organs
which are vitiated by their lack, by their constitution,
others which are vitiated by an excess of afflux.
People who, like Cuvier and Voltaire, have exercised
their organs early, have rendered them so powerful
that no excess can aflect them ; whereas those who
keep to certain portions of the ideal encephalos, which
we represent as the laboratory of thought — the poets,
who leave deduction and analysis inactive and exploit
the heart and imagination exclusively — may become
mad. In short, there would be a fine experiment to
make. I have thought of it for twenty years. This
would be to reconstitute the brain of an idiot, to de-
monstrate whether a thinking apparatus can be created
256 HONORE DE BALZAC
by developing its rudiments. Only by building up a
brain shall we know how one is demolished."
The beginning of the new year did not bring back
his former zeal for labour. Much of his time he
frittered away in adding to his collections. Here he
picked up a portrait of Queen Marie Leczinska by a
pupil of Coypel, there, a Flemish lustre for which he
paid four hundred and fifty francs. Eve reproached
him with his idleness, presumably because he was
too frequently at the house of Madame de Girardin.
To calm her he penned a few remarks anent that lady
not exactly complimentary. " Madame de Girardin,"
he said, " who is charming among a few friends, is a
less agreeable hostess when she holds a large recep-
tion. She belies her origin only by her talent ; but, when
she is outside her talent, she becomes once more her
mother's daughter, that is to say * bourgeoise ' and
' Gay ' thoroughbred." To the soiree which drew from
him this jibe, he had been invited to meet Sheridan's
granddaughter — an English bore, he styled her — who
looked him up and down through an eye-glass as if he
were an actor. His relations with Emile, Delphine's
husband, continued to be marked by breezes. Before
starting for Rome on the 17th of March, he sent him
a few sharp lines complaining of the Presses delay in
printing the Peasants, As a matter of fact, the
readers of the Presse were not pleased with the story ;
and the editor had been obliged to request the author
to modify the unpublished part. Balzac complied, but
felt sore.
The earlier chapters of this novel appeared in 1844 ;
the last ones did not come out until five years after
the novelist's death. The plot of the book turns on
the struggle waged by the peasants and petty bourgeois
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER" 257
of Soulanges against a new but estimable landlord,
General Montcornet, whose estate they are determined
to have by hook or by crook in their own hands, not
hesitating, at least some of them, to assassinate the
honest agent who strives to protect his employer's
property against their depredations. All these coun-
try folk Balzac has portrayed with effects depending
on the painter's and sculptor's art as much nearly as
on the writer's ; and the inmates and visitors of the
village-inn and coffee-house are individualized with
an anatomical intensity fringing on the brutal. Like
the Village Cure and the Country Doctor, the Peasants
is a novel with a purpose and a warning. The author
preaches against the dividing up of the land ; and
advocates agriculture on a large scale by a rever-
sion to the old estates with their castles and forests.
As adjuvants to these he pleads for the development
of Catholicism, a wider influence of the clergy both
in education and private life. His picture of peasant
avarice has been repeated by later writers, Guy de
Maupassant and Zola. True in many particulars, it
is traced by a prejudiced mind, and cannot be accepted
as thoroughly representative.
At Rome he found Madame Hanska, and stayed
with her there till May. Instead of describing the
Eternal City to his sister, he referred her to de Lamennais'
accounts, himself being fully occupied with his com-
panion and sight-seeing. He was duly received by
the Pope, and obtained a small crown chaplet for his
mother, together with His Holiness' blessing. Saint
Peter's surpassed his expectations, and the choir's
Miserere so delighted him that he went to hear it a
second time in lieu of that of the Sixtine Chapel. The
journey back through Genoa, the Grisons, and Bale
R
258 HONORE DE BALZAC
was a pretext for continuing his bric-^-brac purchases,
Holbein's Saint Peter being added to his treasures.
Reaching Paris at last, he now took up his pen with
his old ardour. Fresh pledges for the future had been
given him by Eve. These served to lure him onward ;
and behind him were the creditors who had lent him
money for his trip, and were wanting some of it restored.
At this period Madame Hanska's funds and his own
were partly associated. Some of her capital and some
of his own, probably the sum accruing from the sale of
Les Jardies, at present definitive, had been invested in
North Railway Shares. Besides, not a few of his paint-
ings and antique pieces of furniture had been paid for
with advances from her strong-box.
The two works that issued from his new effort of
creation were Cousin Bette and Cousin Pons, These,
with Pie7Tette, made up his series of the Poor Relations.
The Old Musician, as he originally called Pons, was
meant to give us the case of a man overwhelmed with
humiliations and insults, yet preserving his generosity
and pardoning everybody and everything, avenging
himself only through kindness. Composed, like Cesar
JBirotteau, very rapidly, it bears evidence of the author's
haste. There is no proper love interest in the book,
the lack being supplied by the friendship between Pons
and the old German musician, Schmucke. A number
of subordinate biographies are interwoven with the
principal story — those of the banker Briinner, the
Auvergnat Remonencq, the Cibots, who were Pons'
porters and caterers. Doctor Poulain and Lawyer
Fraisier. We have plots within plots, wheels within
wheels, in this strange, pathetic life of the musician,
whose collecting hobby and expert's skill in finding out
rarities Balzac dwells on with all the greater detail as
LETTERS TO **THE STRANGER" 259
he was indulging at the time his own bent in this
direction with peculiar zest and success. But the com-
plexity and crowding are foils one is glad to have
against the sordid treachery of the Cibot household,
as, too, against the woes of Pons and Schmucke.
Perhaps nowhere in his achievement has the novelist
got deeper down to the rockbed of genuine humanity
than in this work. Cousin Pons was published in
1847. Cousin Bette came a year earlier.
IK Besides the two novels just mentioned, Balzac
finished, during this same period, the long series in
which Vautrin is a chief, if not the chief, character;
and also a book variously named the Brothers of Con-
solation and the Revei^se Side of Contemporary History.
In the Vautiin sequels he took up again the fortunes
of Lucien de Rubempre, who, after returning in dis-
grace to his family, loses courage and is on the point
of drowning himself when he meets with an Abbe
Carlos Herrera; the latter changes the young man's
suicidal intentions by promising to procure him wealth,
rank, and honours. Herrera is no other than Vautrin,
who, having escaped from prison, is at the head of a
formidable association of convicts. Carefully hiding
his identity from Lucien, he persuades him to accept
monetary help ; and gradually Lucien contrives to
enter aristocratic society, becomes the favourite of the
Duchess of Serizy, and will be received as the betrothed
of the nobly born Clotilde de Grandlieu, provided he
can show that he possesses sufficient landed property.
It so happens that his mistress Esther, a Jewess of
great beauty, who is as fond of him as Coralie was,
kills herself on learning that she must give him up.
And Esther being in reality an heiress whose father,
Gobseck, has just died, Vautrin forges a will by which
260 HONORE DE BALZAC
the fortune is bequeathed to Lucien. Unluckily for
the ex-convict's plans, some police spies have been on
the track of his proceedings, and an untimely arrest of
him and his protege casts them into prison. These
adventures are told in WTiither Bad Ways Lead and two
other volumes. A concluding book, entitled VautrirCs
Last Incarnation, relates the outlaw's duel with justice
in his confinement, the suicide of his disciple, and his
own pardon at the price of entering into the Govern-
ment's secret police. The later portions of this drawn-
out piece of fiction are written in the melodramatic
style, and the characterization is distinctly inferior.
The author loses himself in the various imbroglios, and
the actors degenerate into creatures of romance, lacking
consistency.
The Reverse Side of Contemporary History has
similar defects. It was commenced in the Musee des
Families in 1842, was continued in 1844, and was
completed only in 1848 in the Spectateur Republicain,
We meet at first with a certain Godefroi who reaches
middle age without obtaining any permanent satisfac-
tion out of his life, and who thinks of burying himself
in some quiet quarter of Paris where he can dwell
unknowing and unknown. An accident introduces him
to a kind of lay community whose presiding spirit is
a Madame de la Chanterie, and whose members are
a priest and three old gentlemen. These people are
devoting what remains to them of their existence to
alleviating pain and distress. Godefroi is admitted
into the association, and, during his novice expedition,
has a curious experience which leads to the disclosure
of Madame de la Chanterie's past. This is narrated in
the second half of the book. We get the whole of that
lady's tragic history, an unjust trial of which she was
Photograph : Bergeron
Garden of the house at Passy
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 261
the victim, the Nemesis which punished the bad judge
in his daughter's frightful malady and his poverty, and
the heaping of coals of fire on his head by the woman
who had suffered so direly through him. On arriving
at the end of the story we cannot recognize it as the
one we were made acquainted with at the outset. The
tangle of episode and explanation — the latter confusing
more than it explains — which intervenes in the middle,
issues in a coarser thread that persists till the close.
And yet the start was a fair one.
With Cousin Bette, we are back among the mon-
strosities. Bette is the poor relation who, unlike Pons,
revenges herself for her humiliations and the insults
bestowed on her. She aids in the pecuniary and moral
ruin of the Hulot family, acts in cold blood, and attains
her object before she dies. She is not the only per-
verted nature delineated. There is the Baron Hulot,
whose odious licentiousness brings him to a veritable
cretinism. There is Crevel, a grotesque, contemptible
dupe ; there are the Marneffes, sinks of corruption ;
and, with these, other minor characters — the vindictive
Brazilian who wreaks his wrath on Madame MarnefFe
and on Crevel by his mysterious death -causing gift.
The ideally virtuous Adeline Hulot also the novelist
belittles, making her offer herself to Crevel to save
her husband from the consequences of his degrading
passions. Nearly all the book is harrowing, and even
the atmosphere of the bohemian circles, where conver-
sation is one sparkle of satire, is heavily tainted with
vice.
George Sand protested against Madame Hulot's
portrait as unnatural ; and, herself being the contrary
of prudish in sexual relations, the opinion cannot be
called prejudiced. Balzac defended his treatment, while
262 HONORE DE BALZAC
admitting there was force in what she said. Arguing
with her on their respective methods, he replied : " You
seek to paint man as he ought to be. I take him as he
is. Believe me, we are both right. Both ways lead to
the same goal. I am fond of exceptional beings. I am
one myself. Moreover, I need them to give relief to
my common characters ; and I never sacrifice them
without necessity. But these common characters in-
terest me more than they interest you. I aggrandize
them ; I idealize them in an inverse direction, in their
ugliness or their stupidity. I give to their deformity
terrifying or grotesque proportions. You could not do
this. You are wise not to look at people and things
that would cause you nightmare. Idealize in that which
is pretty and beautiful. This is woman's task."
In spite of sheriff's summonses and stormy discus-
sions with those to whom he still had indebtedness, and
in spite, too, of a tropical summer, the would-be bride-
groom toiled cheerfully on through 1846. His Passy
cottage was becoming, with the continually augmented
collection, quite a museum, and Bertall, the artist-
caricaturist, was in ecstasies over a china service esti-
mated by its owner at some thousands of francs. His
good humour rendered him his former conversational
brilliancy, which had been somewhat damped during
the past twelvemonth, and, at one of Delphine Gay's
dinners, where he met Hugo and Lamartine, he replied
to Jove's heavy artillery with a raking fire from his own
quick-firing guns. Lamartine was enchanted. Balzac
must go to the Chamber was his verdict. But Balzac,
at present, was content to correspond with his Eve and
to occupy himself with the restoration of the pictures
she was helping him to buy. One of these, the Cheva-
lier of 3Ialta, he had acquired on Gringalet's recom-
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 263
mendation when in Rome. It had been bistered over
by the dealer with a view to hiding a scratch, and there
was also the dirt of age upon it. Requisitioning a
clever craftsman in picture-restoring, he submitted the
treasure to him. ** It's a masterpiece," pronounced
the expert ; " but what will it be worth when the dirt
is off?" Three days later the restorer came back with
his drugs and implements. And, first, he rubbed a
corner with some cotton dipped in one of his mixtures,
which frothed the painting white. Then for an hour he
scrubbed the surface progressively until he had a lot of
little cotton balls all black. Afterwards, he began again,
for the dirt was in layers, and, at the conclusion of the
scrubbing and brushing, the chevalier emerged as life-
like and fresh as when painted by the pupil of Raphael —
Albert Diirer or another — three hundred years before.
The scratch was easily repaired, and Balzac was beside
himself with joy. Relating to Georges Mniszech this
happy result, which enriched his gallery containing
already more than half-a-dozen old masters of great
value, he said : '* When connoisseurs and dilletanti
come to visit my collection I shall say to them, * I owe
this head to a young professor of entomology ; he is a
charming young man, full of wit and feeling, who, for
the moment, is buried in bliss, science, and the steppes
of the Ukraine. He is so versed in paintings that he
is a boon to his friends. Oh I I assure you he out-
experts all the experts of Paris put together. What is
his name ?— Gringalet ! — No, really ? — As truly as I am
called Bilboquet.' "
The bliss referred to was Georges' approaching
marriage with Eve's daughter Anna, which was cele-
brated very unostentatiously at Wiesbaden in October,
owing to the recent death of the Count's father
264 HONORE DE BALZAC
Balzac went to the wedding, and stayed with the
family for four days. He had already spent a short
time with them in August, on the occasion of the old
Count Mniszech's death, and, on his return journey,
had been accompanied by Madame Hanska as far as
Strasburg, where she made him such a definite state-
ment regarding their marriage as amounted to an
official engagement. It was between the two visits
that he commissioned Georges to buy Atala a Voltaire-
armchair for her greater ease and comfort.
While at the wedding, he was able to tell Eve that
he had at last come upon a house which was every-
thing that could be desired for them two selves. It
was the smaller remaining portion of the splendid
mansion and grounds built for the famous financier,
Beaujon, by the architect Girardin in the eighteenth
century. The original property, situated near the Arc
de Triomphe, was nicknamed by contemporaries
Beaujon's Folly. At the owner's death, the mansion
and grounds were sold, and subsequently the Rues
Chateaubriand, Lord Byron, and Fortunee were cut
through the place. The abode chosen by the novelist
bordered on the Rue Fortunee. From its staircase
there was an entrance into a private chapel, which the
financier had had constructed in his old age for his
soul's edification, and in which he was finally buried.
The outside of the house in Balzac's time was modest
in appearance. Alone, a cupola, seen above the con-
taining walls, suggested memories of bygone glory.
Inside, there were still very substantial pieces of luxury
and artistic decoration that needed only touching up
to be practically what they had been of yore. Balzac
detailed all this to his betrothed, and his selection was
approved. No sooner was he in Paris again than the
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER" 265
bargain was settled, and orders were given for the
necessary repairs and renovation to be executed.
The end of 1846 seemed to smile on these projects
of a speedy installation in conformity with his desires.
Though the North Railway Shares had declined con-
siderably, he was earning a good deal of money. Cousin
Bette yielded him thirteen thousand francs, and Cousin
Pons was sold for nine — modest prices indeed ; but the
total, with other sources of revenue, gave him for the
twelvemonth an income of about fifty thousand francs.
In the Beaujon mansion the workmen soon accom-
plished prodigies, transforming its dilapidated rooms
into ship-shape and elegance. Bilboquet issued special
instructions for apartments to be fitted up for Gringalet
and Zephirine — a bedchamber and small salon, both
circular and sculptured, with paintings on the arches,
worthy of the destined aristocratic occupants.
Urged on by the sight of these preparations, he
threw himself with almost frenzy into fresh literary
labour. Dr. Nacquart warned him against the conse-
quences of such brain debauch, as he termed it, pro-
phesying that harm would ensue. And the doctor was
right. Balzac was soon to pay for his excesses. Just
now there was much in the political firmament that
caused the novelist anxiously to wish that his own
fortunes and those of Eve were indissolubly united.
" Make haste ! " was his constant cry to her.
**I see," he said, "Italy and Germany ready to
move. Peace hangs only by a thread — the life of
Louis-Philippe, who is growing old ; and, if war comes.
Heaven knows what would happen to us. . . . For a
young and ambitious sovereign who would not want,
like Louis-Philippe, above all to die quietly in his bed,
how favourable the moment would be to regain the
266 HONORE DE BALZAC
left bank of the Rhine. The populations are harassed
by petty, imbecile royalties. England is at logger-
heads with Ireland, who seeks to ruin her or separate
from her. All Italy is preparing to shake off the yoke
of Austria. Germany desires her unity, or perhaps more
liberty merely. Anyway, we are on the eve of great
catastrophes. In France, it is our interest to wait, our
cavalry and navy not being strong enough to enable us
to triumph on land and sea ; but, when these two are
improved and our defence-works completed, France
will be redoubtable. One must admit, that, by the
manner Louis-Philippe is administering and governing,
he is making her the first Power in the world. Just
think ! nothing is factitious with us. Our army is a
fine one ; we have money ; everything is strong and
real at present. When the port of Algiers is terminated,
we shall have a second Toulon in front of Gibraltar ;
we are advancing in the domination of the Mediterranean.
Spain and Belgium are with us. This man has made
progress. If he were ambitious and wished to chant
the Marseillaise, he would demolish three empires to
his advantage."
The foregoing outlook on the future neglected
certain signs of the times equally necessary to be
taken into account with others that were perceived.
In politics especially, the humourist's detachment is
essential to correct perspective, and of humour Balzac
had but small share. As compensation, pleasantry
was not wanting in this Due de Bilboquet, peer of
France and other places — as he subscribed himself
to his dear Gringalet.
In February 1847, for the second time, Madame
Hanska came to Paris incognito. The Beaujon house
was nearly ready, and as mistress of it that was to be,
LETTERS TO -THE STRANGER ' 267
her instructions were required for the garnishing.
The happy Bilboquet conducted her to the Opera, the
Italiens, the Conservatoire, and also to the Vari^t^s
where they saw BoufFe and Hyacinthe play in the
laughable Filleul de tout le Monde, It was intended
she should stay till April, and that then he should
take her back to Germany, leaving her there to pursue
her journey to Wierzchownia, whither he was to pro-
ceed later. The novelist's so far published correspon-
dence has large gaps in the year 1847, with an entire
lack of letters to Eve — yet such exist — so that we do
not learn whether the intermediate programme was
executed. Until the third volume of the Letters to
the Stranger is published, it will be impossible to fill
in accurately the history of the months between Feb-
ruary and October, in which, however, events of im-
portance occurred. One of these was Balzac's burning
all Madame Hanska's epistles to him. Why? Ap-
parently on account of a quarrel. And the quarrel?
Was it caused by her finding out that, in 1846, he
had a liaison with a lady resulting in the birth of a
six months' child, which did not survive? Monsieur
de Lovenjoul, who is the authority for this last
information, mentions that the harassment Balzac
suffered from the affair was largely responsible for
the rapid progress of the heart-disease that finally
killed him.
During the month of April ^ he was occupied in
removing his furniture from the Passy cottage to his
new residence. Theophile Gautier, who paid him a
visit there not long after the installation, gave a sketch
^ On the house in Passy ; the dates indicating the period of the
novelist's residence there are incorrect. It is to be hoped that the
error, which has been pointed out to the Curator, will be rectified.
268 HONORE DE BALZAC
of what he saw in an article that appeared in the
Artiste, He says : —
" When one entered this dwelling, which, indeed,
was not easy, since the occupant kept himself close
there, a thousand tokens of luxury and comfort were
noticeable which were but little in agreement with
the poverty that he pleaded. One day, however, he
received us, and we saw a dining-room wainscoted
in old oak, with table, chimney-piece, sideboards,
dressers, and chairs, all in wood so carved as to have
caused envy to Cornejo Duque and Verbruggen, if
they had been present; a drawing-room upholstered
in buttercup damask, and with doors, cornices, skirt-
ing-board, and embrasures in ebony ; a library arranged
in bookcases inlaid with tortoise-shell and brass in
Boule style; a bathroom in yellow and black marble,
with stucco bass-reliefs ; a dome boudoir, whose ancient
paintings had been restored by Edmond Hedouin ; a
gallery lighted from above, which we recognized later
in the collection of Cousin Pons. There were what-
nots laden with all sorts of curiosities, Dresden and
Sevres china, cornet-shaped vases of frosted celadon,
and, on the carpeted staircase, large porcelain bowls,
and a magnificent lantern suspended by a red- silk
cord. * Why ! you have emptied one of Aboul9asem's
siloes,' we laughingly remarked to Balzac, as we gazed
at all these splendours. ' We were quite right in assert-
ing that you were a millionaire.' * I am poorer than
ever I was,' he replied, with a humble, sly air. ' Nothing
of this is mine. I have furnished the house for a
friend that I am expecting. I am only the keeper and
porter.' "
Within three short years from this date, the charge
fell on her — the friend. She became the porteress
LETTERS TO ''THE STRANGER" 269
of the abode which the other had prepared with such
lavish attention and expenditure, to serve him only
as a pall.
In 1875, the widow and her son-in-law. Count
Mniszech, resolved to modify the Hotel Beaujon and
the adjoining buildings, with the intention of perpetuat-
ing the novelist's memory. The rotunda of the private
chapel they planned to convert into a kind of circular
atrium, with a fountain in the middle and a trellised
gallery running round it, decorated with busts, statues,
and other works of art. Changes likewise were to be
effected in the courtyard, to which the pillars of the
chapel nave had been removed ; and a statue of the
late owner was to be erected there, close to a tree,
the seed of which had been planted on the occasion
of his marriage. The facade of the house on the Rue
Fortunee, now the Rue Balzac, was also to be em-
bellished, and the central pavilion made to represent
the novelist's apotheosis, with a monumental bass-relief
and a niche. Only a small portion of these alterations
was completed. On Madame de Balzac's death, in
1882, the property was bought by the Baroness Salo-
mon de Rothschild ; and, before the end of the cen-
tury, it was demolished and the ground it covered
was incorporated into the Baroness's own gardens. All
that now marks the site is the small dome forming
the corner of the Rue Balzac and the Rue du Faubourg-
Saint-Honore.
Whatever menaces of rupture between the lovers
may have darkened their horizon in the spring and
summer of 1847 had vanished before the autumn. At
the end of September, Balzac went by invitation to
Wierzchownia, and remained its guest for over four
months. The sight of Russia's huge oak forests, of
270 HONORE DE BALZAC
which the Mniszech family possessed some twenty
thousand acres, suggested to him another of the
grandiose schemes for gaining a large fortune that
he was for ever elaborating in his brain. His
project was to establish an exportation to France of
oak timber, either by sea or rail; which, with every
expense figured out, might yield, so he calculated, a
profit of a million two hundred thousand francs for
a part area, and would still leave the estate well wooded
after thinning out the trees. The thing was a gold-
mine for him and his family if a banker could be in-
duced to take it up. Alas ! his brother-in-law was
obliged to pour cold water on the project, proving
to him that the expenses, contrary to what he had
estimated, would far exceed the receipts. The weak
point in the affair, however, was one that cheaper
transport following on increased railway communica-
tion could remedy. Balzac's only mistake was in
imagining that this could be provided immediately.
The visitor to Wierzchownia was not wrong in thinking
that Russia's natural productions must sooner or later
be one of the chief supplies of the European market.
A better knowledge of the country, acquired during
his stay, enabled him to perceive that internal reor-
ganization was needed before the country's immense
wealth could be exploited to the same degree as was
possible in a country like France. In the Forties, Russia
presented curious contrasts — great magnificence, and
yet entire want of the commonest conveniences.
Madame Hanska's estate was the only one boasting
of a Carcel lamp and a hospital. There were ten-
foot mirrors, and no paper on the walls. Still, he had
not to complain of his apartments in pink stucco, with
fine carpets on the floor, and furniture that was com-
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER ' 271
fortable. It astonished him to find that the whole
of the Wierzchownia castle — as big as the Louvre —
was heated by means of straw, which was burnt in
stoves, the weekly consumption being as much as could
be seen in the Saint-Laurent market at Paris. But,
then, everything was huge. One of the Mniszech
estates extended over a surface as large as the Seine
and Marne Department, and was watered by no fewer
than three rivers, the Dnieper being one of them.
And the cholera was colossal also — a conscientious
cholera, carrying off its forty to fifty victims a day
in Kiew alone, and a total of nine thousand at Savataf.
To reassure his relatives, Balzac added that this plague
paid most of its calls at the houses of rich uncles, to
which category he did not belong, and passed by people
who had debts. Ergo, he was inoculated against its
attacks.
CHAPTER XIII
LAST YEARS : MARRIAGE AND DEATH
It is time something was said now about Balzac's last
dramatic compositions. Since the Gaite fiasco, in 1843,
no other theatre had been brought up to the point of
producing a further piece from his pen, although several
negotiations were opened respecting plays supposed to
be well in hand. In 1844, there was his comedy
Prudhomme en Bonne Fortune, which the Gymnase
had some thoughts of staging. Poirson, the manager,
whom the author met one day in an omnibus, was
enchanted with the idea, and proposed help even on
most advantageous terms. The rehearsals were fixed
for March, and the first performance for May; but,
for some reason that we do not learn, the execution
of the project was abandoned. Probably it was the
burden of unfinished novels and a lurking desire to go
on with Mercadet, which was lying still in its un-
achieved state.
Twelve months later, Mercadet appears to have
received the last touches, and to be awaiting only an
opportunity for its representation. But Frederick
Lemaitre, who was to assume the chief role, had
previous engagements that monopolized him ; so
Balzac, meanwhile, turned again to a subject he had
often toyed with, Richard the Sponge-Heart, the
name recalling that of Richard the Lion-Heart, with-
out there being the least analogy between the Norman
272
7,
o ^
D
fti >
LAST YEARS 273
king and the hero of the play. In each preceding
attempt, the author had stopped short at the end of
the first act, and, on recommencing, had produced a
different version. The hero was a joiner, Uving in the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine, whose habitual drunkenness
had procured him his nickname. Had it been de-
veloped, the piece would have no doubt been a popular
drama, on the lines subsequently followed by Zola's
Assomvioir. There was talk of performing it at the
Variet^s in 1845 ; the year, however, slipped away,
and it was not forthcoming. Dining with Gautier in
December, at the house of Madame de Girardin, Balzac
agreed with Theophile to go on with the drama in
collaboration as soon as the theatres should have
worked off some of their stock. Evidently, this was
not done. However, Monsieur Henri Lecomte, in his
Life of Frederick Lemaitre, affirms that Balzac did
terminate Richard the Sponge- Heart, and that it was
handed to Frederick to study. Then, some months
afterwards, being in want of money, he asked the actor
to take it to the publisher, Paulin, and obtain an
advance of a thousand francs on it. If Paulin had it,
he must either have mislaid or destroyed it, for, from
this date, all traces of it were lost ; and, to-day, a few
fragments alone remain in Monsieur de Lovenjoul's
collection.
In 1846, vague mention was made in the corre-
spondence with Madame Hanska of a military farce
called the Trainards or Laggards. However, nothing
came of it. But in August 1847, after the publication
of Cousin Pons, the novelist paid a visit to Monsieur
Hostein, manager of the Theatre Historique, which
had been inaugurated in the preceding February. On
this stage, which was subsequently transformed into
s
274 HONORE DE BALZAC
the Theatre Lyrique, and later demolished to make
room for the Boulevard of the Prince Eugene, several
pieces of Alexandre Dumas had just been played in
succession ; and Balzac said to himself that he would
have a better chance of meeting with appreciative
audiences in these new premises. Monsieur Hostein
relates in his Reminiscences that the novelist, calling
on him one day at his Bougival country-residence,
went out and sat with him by the river-side, and there
explained that he wished to write a great historic drama
entitled Peter and Catherine {of Russia). Asked for an
outline of it, Balzac tapped his forehead and said : " It
is all there. I have only to write. The first tableau
can be rehearsed the day after to-morrow."
"We are," he continued, "in a Russian inn, with
many people running in and out, since troops are pass-
ing through the place.
" One of the servants is a lively girl. Pay attention
to her. She is not beautiful, but attractive ! and the
visitors notice her, and joke with her. She smiles at
every one ; but those who go too far in gesture or
language soon discover they have made a mistake.
" All at once, a soldier enters, bolder than the rest.
He gets the girl to sit down with him, and wants to
clink glasses with her. On the innkeeper's objecting, he
rises in a rage, thumps the table with his fist, and cries :
'Let no one oppose my will, or I will set fire to the
inn.'
" The innkeeper orders the girl to obey, for the troops
are everywhere, and the peasant is alarmed. Sitting
down again, the soldier drinks with the girl, tells her
she shall be happy with him, and promises her a finer
home than she has.
" But while they are talking, a door opens at the
LAST YEARS 275
back, and an officer appears. Those present rise with
respect, except the girl and her companion. Approach-
ing them, the officer lays his hand heavily on the
soldier's arm, and says : ' Stand up, fellow. Go to the
counter, and write your name and that of your regi-
ment, and hold yourself at my orders.'
** The soldier stands up automatically, obeys, and,
having presented the paper, retires.
** Then the officer sits down and flirts with the girl,
who accepts his compliments.
"But now a stranger shows himself at the door.
He is clad in a big cloak. At the sight of him, men
and women fall on their knees, except the officer, who
is too agreeably occupied to notice the new arrival. In
a moment of enthusiasm, he says to the girl : ' You are
divine. I will take you with me. You shall have a
fine house, where it is warm.'
" Just then, the man in the cloak draws near. The
officer recognizes him, turns pale, and bows down,
uttering : ' Oh, pardon, sire ! '
** ' Stand up,' orders the master, meantime examin-
ing the servant, who, on her side, looks without
trembling at the all-powerful Czar.
" * You may withdraw,' the latter tells the officer.
'I will keep this woman, and give her a palace.'
" Thus met for the first time Peter I. and she who
became Catherine of Russia."
Having given this prologue, Balzac went on to
speak of the staging of his play, which he promised
to arrange in accordance with what he knew of the
country's scenery and customs, Russia being, from an
artistic point of view, admirable to exhibit theatrically.
Monsieur Hostein was quite gained over by the pros-
pect of something so novel ; and Balzac, paying him a
276 HONORE DE BALZAC
second call, some few days later, pledged himself to
start for Kiew and Moscow very shortly, and, from
there, to go to Wierzchownia and finish his drama.
The journey to Russia was made ; and Balzac, in due
course, returned, but he did not bring with him the
denouement of Peter and Catherine,
Not that his mind was less preoccupied with the
drama. On the contrary, Champfleury, who went to
see him in the Rue Fortunee, soon after his arrival
in Paris, found him more bent on writing for the
stage than ever. One idea of his now was to create
a f eerie, or sort of pantomime, sparkling throughout
with wit. Another was to form an association for
dramatic authors of standing (himself naturally in-
cluded), not to defend their interests, but to get them
to work in common, and to keep thus the various
Paris theatres provided with their work. It was a
trust scheme before the era of trusts. If the thing
were managed, they might renew the miracles of
those indefatigable and marvellous Spanish play-
wrights— Calderon, who composed between twelve
and fifteen hundred pieces, Lope de Vega, who com-
posed more than two thousand. However, he feared
that many of his colleagues might not care to fall in
with his suggestion. *' They are idlers, donkeys," he
added. *' There is only one worker among them, and
that is Scribe. But what a piece of literature his
Memoirs of a Hussar Colonel is ! "
Another visitor to the Rue Fortunee in February
1848 was Monsieur Hostein, to whom the novelist
had offered for the spring a piece that should replace
Peter and Catherine, This time the manuscript was
ready. It lay on the table, bearing on its first page
the title, Gertrude, a Bourgeois Tragedy, The piece
LAST YEARS 277
was a five-act one, in prose. A couple of days later,
actors and actresses were assembled in Balzac's draw-
ing-room. Madame Dorval pursed her lips at the
words, Gertrude, tragedy, "Don't interrupt," cried
the author, laughing. However, after the reading of
the second act they had to interrupt. The play was
overloaded with detail. A good deal of pruning was
effected, together with a change in the title, before
the first performance on the 25th of May ; and more
excisions might have been made with advantage.
Alterations less beneficial were those introduced into
the cast, Madame Dorval being eliminated in favour
of Madame Lacressonniere. This lady was a much
poorer actress, but was a persona grata with Monsieur
Hostein. Both public and critics accorded Balzac's
new effort a very fair reception, notwithstanding the
mediocrity of the acting and the peculiar circum-
stances under which it was produced, just as the
Revolution storm was breaking out.
The Mardtre, or Stepmother, as the piece was
called when staged, presents the home of a Count de
Grandchamp, who, after being a general under the
First Empire, has turned manufacturer under the
Restoration. He has a grown-up daughter, Pauline,
and a second wife named Gertrude, the latter still a
young, handsome woman, with a ten-year-old son, the
little Napoleon. Though they are outwardly on good
terms, the stepmother and stepdaughter nevertheless
hate each other. They are in love with the same
man, Ferdinand, the manager of the general's works.
On this hatred the entire interest of the play turns.
Ferdinand really loves Pauline; but he has formerly
been engaged to Gertrude, who jilted him to marry
the general, and this fact somewhat embarrasses him
278 HONORE DE BALZAC
in his wooing. Moreover, his father was an officer
under the Revolution Government, and, if the general
should learn that, it would ruin his chances of ob-
taining the old gentleman's consent. The plot arising
out of these relations is, at first, cleverly dealt with
by the author, who involves matters further by a
second suitor for Pauline, to whom Gertrude tries
to marry her, in order that she herself may regain
Ferdinand's affection. In the second act, a word-
duel is fought between the two women, during a
whist-party, each seeking to surprise the opponent's
true sentiments towards Ferdinand. This scene is
exceedingly original; and, subsequently, a bold em-
ployment is made by the author of the enfant tey^rible
— the young Napoleon — for the purpose of helping
on the unravelling of the plot. The concluding por-
tion of the piece and its sombre tragedy — the deaths
of Pauline and Ferdinand — is heavier in dialogue and
cumbrous in construction, with its officers of justice
who supply a useless episode. One might sum up
the Stepviother as a weak ending to a strong begin-
ning. None the less it shows progress on Vautrin and
Pamela Giraud.
A few days after the Revolution, Theodore Cogniard,
manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, wrote to
Balzac and proposed to reproduce Vautrin, Balzac, in
replying, referred to Lemaitre's toupet, and explained
that, when disguising Vautrin as a Mexican general,
he had in his mind General Murat. He told Cogniard
he was willing to allow the revival, if care were taken
against there being any caricature of the now deposed
monarch. The manager agreed, but the performances
did not come off, apparently on account of the dis-
turbed state of the city. In 1850, an unauthorized
LAST YEARS 279
revival was put on the stage of the Gaite, while Balzac
was at Dresden. Being informed of it, the novehst
protested in a letter to the Journal des Debats, and
the piece was at once withdrawn.
The Stepmother was Balzac's last dramatic com-
position played during his lifetime. This was partly
his own fault. In the short epoch of the Second
Republic, when neither the Comedie Fran^aise nor
the Odeon, the two national homes of the drama,
were thriving, it was to the directors' interest to
seek out men of talent ; and he had overtures from
both theatres. Mauzin of the Odeon even promised
him, as he had promised Alexandre Dumas and Victor
Hugo, a premium of six thousand francs and a per-
centage of receipts on any sum over a thousand francs.
Balzac consented to write a tragedy entitled Richard
Sauvage, and got as far as — a monologue. With
Lockroy of the Theatre Francais also he made an
arrangement for a comedy. There had been talk at
first, both inside and outside the Francais, of a satiri-
cal piece called the Petty Bourgeois, but having
nothing except the name in common with his un-
finished novel similarly yclept. His motive for not
proceeding with it he set forth to the journalist
Hippolyte Rolle, in a letter published in his corre-
spondence. " Is it on the morrow of a battle," he
wrote, " when the bourgeoisie have so generously shed
their blood on behalf of threatened civilization, and
when they are in mourning, that one can drag them
before the footlights ? "
The manager, he said, had been pleased to accept
in exchange another comedy which would be soon
performed. This comedy was the resuscitated Mei-
cadet, the title of which had been altered to the
280 HONQRE DE BALZAC
Speculator in 1847, and the Jobber in 1848. Under
the last appellation, it was read by the Comedie Com-
mittee in August, and unanimously approved. How-
ever, between this date and December, Balzac had
taken his departure to Wierzchownia, where he
seemed likely to remain for a while; and, in his
absence, the members of the Committee repented of
their bargain. Another solemn sitting was held in
December, and an amended resolution was passed,
accepting the Jobber on condition that certain cor-
rections were made in it. On being apprized of the
proviso, Balzac immediately cancelled his treaty with
Lockroy, and entered into negotiations with Hostein,
who professed himself only too happy to place the
Th^4tre Historique at the author's disposal. Alas !
the same difficulties and worse cropped up here.
Hostein wrote that his public was a boulevard one,
much fonder of melodrama than comedy, and that,
if the Jobber were to succeed, it must be completely
modified. Naturally, Balzac refused. He had not
withdrawn it from the first theatre in Paris, which
demanded only trifling alterations, to permit it to
be cut up by a theatre of less importance.
Content to wait till a more complaisant director
should make overtures to him, he filled in his leisure
at Wierzchownia by inventing the King of Beggars,
which he announced to his friend Laurent Jan as an
up-to-date play flattering the all-powerful plebs ; and
he likewise sketched a tragedy in which Madame
Dorval was to have the chief role. This was in April
1849, and, a few weeks later, Madame Dorval was
dead. Only on the 23rd of August 1851, a year after
his own death, did his executors meet with a director,
Monsieur Montigny of the Gymnase, who undertook
LAST YEARS 281
to stage Mercadet the Jobber, Less intransigent than
Balzac, the executors allowed its five acts to be reduced
to three, and a considerable amount of suppression and
remodelling to be operated by a professional play-
wright, Adolphe Dennery. Performed with these
concessions to theatrical requirements and popular taste,
and with GeofFroy in the chief role, failing Lemaitre
and Regnier, Mercadet pleased the public greatly, too
greatly for some bull and bear habitues of the Bourse,
who feared that their pockets might suffer. Owing to
their complaints, the Minister for the Interior tempo-
rarily suspended the representations, basing his inter-
diction on the ground that expressions struck out by
the Censor had been inserted again by the actors.
Prudently, Monsieur Montigny ordered a few more
excisions, and the prohibition was raised. Seventeen
years elapsed before the Comedie Franc^aise at last
placed Mercadet on its repertory and inaugurated the
event by a special performance with Got as the
Jobber,
The hero of the piece is a financier who has very
little cash, but innumerable projects for gaining money.
These involve methods which are not always straight-
forward ; yet, since he believes in the success of what
he advocates, he is not absolutely unprincipled, though
he does not mind to some extent gulling the gullible.
His chief aim is to trick his creditors — themselves, as it
happens, not worthy of much pity ; and, himself kind-
hearted, loving his wife and daughter, and not a
libertine, he appeals to the sympathies of the reader or
the audience. Most of the amusement of the play —
and it is very amusing — is derived from the metamor-
phoses adopted by the Jobber in dealing with each sort
of creditor. Moreover, the love-passages between Julie,
282 HONORE DE BALZAC
the daughter, and a poor clerk who thinks her an heiress,
are so managed as to strengthen the comic side of
certain situations. The unexpected arrival of a rich
uncle from America releases the Jobber ultimately
from the tangle into which he has twisted himself. It
is the least original part of the comedy ; but was sug-
gested, like the rest of the play, by Balzac's own
circumstances. Was he not always expecting a wind-
fall ; and was not Eve a kind of rich — relative ? To add
one more detail concerning Mercadet, it was revived at
the Comedie Fran^aise in 1879, and again in 1890,
there being as many as 107 performances. Its indis-
putable qualities have caused some writers to conclude
that, if Balzac had lived longer, he would have become
as great a dramatist as he was a novelist. This is very
doubtful. Notwithstanding its long incubation of
nearly a decade, and the advantage it possessed in
embodying so much personal experience, Mercadet was
still weak in construction and was largely wanting in
dramatic compression. And, at fifty years of age, with
failing powers, Balzac would have found the task
increasingly hard to acquire an art for which, by his
own confession, he had no born aptitude.
The temporary government which was set up, in
consequence of the February Revolution of 1848, con-
ceived the curious idea of summoning the members of
the Men of Letters Society to a meeting in the Palais
Mazarin, for the purpose of eliciting from them an
expression of opinion on the situation of literature and
the best way to protect it. Balzac, who had newly
arrived from Wierzchownia, went to the meeting and
was chosen chairman. But no sooner was the discussion
opened than it degenerated into dispute and tumult;
the place became a bear-garden, and, after vainly
LAST YEARS 283
endeavouring to restore order, he took up his hat and
left the room.
When the general elections were held, for the
forming of a Constituent Assembly, he stood as a
candidate, and published a long declaration of his
opinions in the Constitutionnel, in which had appeared
his Poor Relations. The candidature had no success ;
it could scarcely be expected to have any. His political
style was not one to catch the popular vote ; and his
sympathies were too visibly autocratic to commend
themselves at such a moment. What deceived him
was that, at first, there appeared to be a chance for the
establishment of a strong central power well disposed
towards sage reforms of a social, administrative, and
financial character, with men like Lamartine to elaborate
them ; and to a government of this kind he could have
given his support. When he realized that the trend of
events was towards a Republic of Utopian experiment
which he regarded as doomed to failure and disaster,
he quietly dropped out of the struggle, and, leaving
Paris once more in September, retraced his steps to
Wierzchownia.
The political disturbances of the previous six months
had been prejudicial both to his invested capital and to his
income accruing from work. It was difficult to sell fiction
advantageously when people were more interested in
facts ; nor did he care much to continue his efforts under a
regime that he looked upon as a usurpation. Until the
speedy overthrow which he confidently reckoned upon,
he said to himself that he would do better to occupy
himself with the question of his marriage. The hope
was at present a forlorn one, but it was worth risking.
He started with the intention of coming back, like the
Spartan, either on his shield or under it.
284 HONOR]^. DE BALZAC
Short of available cash, as always, he borrowed five
thousand francs from his publisher, Souverain, for the
expenses of his journey and pocket-money, and placed
his mother in charge of his Beaujon mansion, with
procuration to buy the complement of his domestic
articles.
The warm welcome he received on reaching Madame
Hanska's residence made him so sanguine that he wrote
to Froment-Meurice, his jeweller in Paris, asking that
the cornaline cup might be sent him which had been
on order for the past two years. The jeweller was
evidently not anxious to oblige such a bad payer. This
cup, the novelist said, was to be flanked by two figures.
Faith and Hope, the former holding a scroll, with
Neuchatel and the date 1833 on it, the latter, another
scroll, with a kneeling Cupid — the whole resting on a
ground covered with cacti and various thorny plants
besides, in silver gilt.
The blasts of winter in a rigorous climate laid him
by with bronchitis in November. He suffered at the
same time great difficulty in breathing ; and the doctors
diagnosed certain symptoms of heart trouble that
caused them to consider his case a grave one. This
malady relegated all matrimonial projects for the
moment into the background. Madame Hanska did
not hide that she regretted having put so much of her
money into the purchase and furnishing of a house that
they hardly seemed likely to inhabit together. Adding
up what it had cost them both, they estimated the total
at three hundred and fifty thousand francs. Into these
figures the price of pictures entered for a large amount.
The most recent were Greuze's Jeune Fille Effrayee,
from the last King of Poland's Gallery ; two Canalettis,
once the property of Pope Clement XIII. ; James II.
Portrait of Madame Hanska after her marriage
WITH Balzac
From a Painting by Gigoux
I
LAST YEARS 285
of England's Wife, by Netscher ; the same king's por-
trait, by Lely, in addition to a Van Dyck, two Van
Huysums, and three canvases by Rotari, a Venetian
painter of the eighteenth century.
The winter was not propitious to Madame Hanska
either. Two fires on her estate did enormous damage,
and her money losses were important. Balzac, though
tenacious of his plan, talked constantly of going back
to his loneHness, yet stayed on still ; and Eve, who either
would not or could not screw up her courage, invented
fresh reasons for procrastinating. One of these was the
Emperor's refusal to sanction the marriage unless
Madame Hanska's landed property were transferred to
her daughter's husband. A scolding letter from the
novelist's mother, accusing Honore of remissness
towards his nieces and family, was by chance read to
the Wierzchownia hostess, and this further complicated
a situation already sufficiently involved. Balzac's bile
was stirred. He relieved his feelings in a long reply to
Laure. It seemed after all he would return to Paris
under his shield. " I had a marriage which made my
fortune," he told her. " Everything is now upset for
a bagatelle. Know that it is with marriages as with
cream ; a changed atmosphere, a bad odour, spoils them
both. Bad marriages are easily arranged ; good ones
only with infinite precaution. ... I can tell you,
Laure," he continued, " it is something, when one
wishes, to be able in Paris to open one's drawing-room
and gather in it an elite of society who will find there a
woman as polished and imposing as a queen, illustrious
by her birth, allied to the greatest families, witty,
educated, and beautiful. One has thus a fine means of
domination. With a household thus established, people
are compelled to reckon ; and many persons of high
286 HONORE DE BALZAC
position will envy it, especially since your dear brother
will bring to it only glory and a clever conduct."
Here we have the secret of Balzac's persistence, and
ample proof also of what has already been asserted, to
wit, that his affection for the Stranger was a fancy born
and bred rather in the head than in the heart.
It was perhaps to take the edge off this quip quarrel-
some that the following amusing lines were addressed
in the next month to his nieces, giving them particulars
about animal and vegetable foods in Russia. " The
country," he said, ** has no veal — 1 mean eatable veal,
for cows produce calves here as well as elsewhere ; but
these calves are of Republican leanness. Beef, such as
one gets in Paris, is a myth ; one remembers it only in
dreams. In reality, one has meat twenty years old,
which is stringy and which serves to bulk out the
packets of hemp intended for exportation, One con-
soles one's self with excellent tea and exquisite milk.
As for the vegetables, they are execrable. Carrots are
like turnips, and turnips are like nothing. On the
other hand, there are gruels galore. You make them
with millet, buckwheat, oats, barley ; you can make
them even with tree-bark. So, my nieces, take pity
on this country, so rich in corn, but so poor in vege-
tables. Oh ! how Valentine would laugh to see the
apples, pears, and plums ! She wouldn't give over at the
end of a year. Good-bye, my dear girls, and accept
the Republic patiently ; for you have real beef, veal, and
vegetables, and a kind uncle happy and fed on gruel."
Ill again with his heart in the April of 1849, Balzac
had the good luck to be attended by a pupil of the
famous Doctor Franck, the latter being the original of
his Country Doctor, This disciple, and his son to a
less extent, were men of a newer and more enlightened
LAST YEARS 287
school ; and the elder man, by bold experiments,
reduced his patient's arterio-sclerosis to the point of
what seemed to be convalescence. But the treatment
was tedious and lasted on into the summer, so that the
novelist was left weak and delicate at the end. In
such a condition he was less than ever fit to carry on
his wooing.
To give himself a countenance, he spoke again of
departure, fixing the date for the month of October.
Madame Hanska was apparently willing to let him go.
She had played the hostess generously during nearly
a twelvemonth to this invalid, and it seemed to her
enough. Not that she intended to sever the engage-
ment. She wished merely to wait and see how matters
turned out. Meantime, he could watch over their
common property, now augmented by the acquisition
of an extra plot of land at the side, which could be
resold later at a large profit. But a resumption of the
old burden was more than Balzac could face. In
September he was prostrated by what Dr. Knothe
called an intermittent brain fever, which continued for
more than a month. His constitution pulled him
through, with the aid of good nursing ; and then,
realizing that her tergiversations had been partly
responsible for the attack. Eve, at last, in conversa-
tions between them that followed his recovery, let
him understand that she relented and was willing to
accompany him back to Paris as his wife, if the
Emperor would permit of such a transfer of the estate
to Count Mniszech as might enable her to receive a
share of its revenues.
The victory was won, yet at a heavy cost. For a
man so worn down by illness Russia was not the place
to recruit in. Its biting winds throughout the winter
288 HONORfi DE BALZAC
of 1849 and 1850 withered what Httle vitaHty Balzac
had still remaining, and at Kiew, where he had gone
with Madame Hanska on business, he was again laid
up with fever.
All the different formalities required by Russian law
having been finally complied with, the wedding was
celebrated on the 14th of March, in the Church of Saint
Barbara at Beriditchef, some few hours distant from
Wierzchownia. At once the bridegroom despatched
the news to his family and friends. His joy was such
that he fancied he had never known happiness before.
" I have had no flowery spring," said his letter to
Madame Carraud. "But I shall have the most bril-
liant of summers, the mildest of autumns. ... I am
almost crazy with delight."
More than a month elapsed ere the newly married
couple were able to set out on their journey to the
French capital, and, even then, they had to travel along
roads studded with quagmires into which their carriage
frequently sank up to the axle. Sometimes fifteen or
sixteen men and a crick were necessary to extricate
them. Though on their honeymoon, they found the
repetition of these incidents monotonous, and were so
tired when they arrived at Dresden that they stayed
there to recover themselves. From this town Balzac
sent a few lines to his mother and sister mentioning
the approximate date of their reaching home ; and in-
structions were given that everything should be in order,
flowers on the table, and a meal prepared. He did not
want his mother to be at the house to receive them,
deeming it more proper that his wife should call on her
first, either at Laure's, or at Suresnes where she was
living. They got into Paris on the 22nd or 23rd of
May.
LAST YEARS 289
Monsieur de Lovenjoul relates that the two travellers
drove up to the Beaujon mansion a little before mid-
night. Weary vv^ith the journey, they stepped out of
the cab and rang the bell, rang more than once, for no
one came to open the door. Through the windows they
could see the lamps lighted and signs of their being
expected. But where was the valet, Francois Munck,
who had been left in charge by the novelist's mother ?
Apparently, he had deserted his post. Balzac kept on
ringing, shouting at intervals, and thumping the gate.
Still there was the same silence inside. The one or
two people passing at this late hour stopped out of
curiosity, and began in their turn to call and knock ;
while the cabman, tired of waiting, put down the
luggage on the footpath.
Madame de Balzac grew impatient. It was cold
standing in the night-air. Her husband, nonplussed
and exceedingly annoyed, did not know what to say to
the bystanders. One of the latter offered to fetch a
locksmith, named Grimault, who lived in a street close
by. The suggestion was gladly agreed to, since there
seemed nothing else to be done. However, until such
time as the locksmith should come, they continued
battering at the gate and throwing tiny pebbles at the
windows ; and the master, thus shut out from his own
dwelling, hallooed to the invisible valet : " I am Mon-
sieur de Balzac." It was useless. The door refused
to open. Around Madame de Balzac, now seated on
one of the trunks, other passers-by had gathered and
listened to the novelist's excited comments on his pre-
dicament. The occurrence was certainly extraordinary.
At length, the locksmith was brought and the gate
was forced. The whole party, hosts and impromptu
guests, hurried through the narrow courtyard, entered
T
290 HONORE DE BALZAC
the house without further hindrance, and were met
by a strange spectacle. The valet had been seized
with a sudden fit of madness and had smashed the
crockery, scattered the food about, spilt a bottle of wine
on the carpet, upset the furniture, and ruined the flowers.
Having performed these exploits, he was wandering
aimlessly to and fro with demented gestures, and in this
state they discovered him. After securing and fastening
him up in a small room, the visitors helped to place the
luggage in the yard and then retired, with profuse thanks
from the novelist, who, being thoroughly unnerved by
this untoward incident, was obliged to go straight to
bed. The next day, Francois was taken to an asylum
at his master's expense, as is proved by a receipt still
existing in which Balzac is dubbed a Count. Perhaps
the title was a piece of flattery on the doctor's part, or
the novelist may have imagined that his marrying a
Countess conferred on him letters of nobility.
Anyway, this assumed lordship was poor compensa-
tion for the immense disappointment of his marriage in
every other respect. From the moment he and his wife
took possession of their fine Beauj on residence, whatever
bonds of friendship and tenderness had previously existed
between them were irremediably snapped asunder.
Peculiarities of character and temperament in each,
which, as long as they were lovers, had been but slightly
felt, now came into close contact, clashed, and were
proved to be incompatible. Moreover, there were dis-
agreeable revelations on either side. The husband learnt
that his wife's available income was very much inferior
to what he had supposed or been led to believe, and
the wife learnt that her husband's debts, far from being
paid, as he had asserted, subsisted and were more
numerous and larger than he had ever in sober truth
LAST YEARS 291
admitted. So, instead of coming to Paris to be the
queen of a literary circle, the Stranger saw herself
involved in liabilities that threatened to swallow up
her own fortune, if she lent her succour.
Reproaches and disputes began in the week follow-
ing their instalment. The disillusioned Eve withdrew
to her own apartments in anger ; and Balzac, whose
bronchitis and congestion of the liver had grown worse,
remained an invalid in his. They had intended spending
only a fortnight or so in Paris, and then travelling south
to the Pyrenees and Biarritz ; but this programme was
perforce abandoned. All through the month of June
the patient was under medical treatment, able to go
out only in a carriage, and, even so, in disobedience to
the doctor's orders. One of these visits was to the door
of the Comedie Fran^aise, where Arsene Houssaye,
the Director, came to speak to him about Mercadet,
and indulgently promised him it should be staged soon,
the Resources of Qinnola also.
On the 20th of June, he wrote, through his wife,
to Theophile Gautier, telling him that his bronchitis
was better and that the doctor was proceeding to treat
him for his heart-hypertrophy, which was now the
chief obstacle to his recovery. At the end of the
letter he signed his name, adding : " I can neither read
nor write." They were the last words of his corre-
spondence. From that date his heart-disease under-
mined him rapidly ; and the few friends whom he re-
ceived augured ill from what they remarked. Not that
he lost hope himself. Although suffering acutely at
intervals from difficulty in breathing, and from the
oedema of his lower limbs, which slowly crept upwards,
he spoke with the same confidence as always of his
future creations that he meditated. His brain was the
292 HONORE DE BALZAC
one organ unattacked. From Dr. Nacquart he in-
quired every day how soon he might get to work again.
The month of July and the first half of August
passed thus, the dropsy gaining still on him in spite
of all that Nacquart and other medical men could do
to combat it. To every one but the patient himself,
it was evident that he was dying. Houssaye, who
came to see him on the 16th of August, found Dr.
Nacquart in the room. He relates that Balzac, ad-
dressing the latter, said : " Doctor, I want you to tell
me the truth. . : . I see I am worse than I believed.
... 1 am growing weaker. In vain I force myself
to eat. Everything disgusts me. How long do you
think I can live ? " — The doctor did not reply. — " Come,
doctor," continued the sick man, ** do you take me for
a child ? I can't die as if I were nobody. ... A man
like me owes a will and testament to the public." —
" My dear patient, how much time do you require for
what you have to do ? " asked Nacquart. — " Six months,"
replied Balzac; and he gazed anxiously at his inter-
locutor.— " Six months, six months," repeated the
doctor, shaking his head.— *' Ah!" cried Balzac dolo-
rously ; " I see you don't allow me six months. . . .
You will give me six weeks at least. . . . Six weeks,
with the fever, is an eternity. Hours are days ; and
then the nights are not lost." — The doctor shook his
head again. Balzac raised himself, almost indignant. —
" What, doctor ! Am 1, then, a dead man ? Thank
God ! I still feel strength to fight. But I feel also
courage to submit. I am ready for the sacrifice. If
your science does not deceive you, don't deceive me.
What can I hope for yet ? . . . Six days ? . . . I can
in that time indicate in broad outlines what remains to
be done. My friends will see to details. I shall be
LAST YEARS 293
able to cast a glance at my fifty volumes, tearing out
the bad pages, accentuating the best ones. Human
will can do miracles. I can give immortal life to the
world I have created. I will rest on the seventh day."
— Since beginning to speak, Balzac had aged ten years,
and finally his voice failed him. — ** My dear patient,"
said the doctor, trying to smile, " who can answer for
an hour in this life ? There are persons now in good
health who will die before you. But you have asked
me for the truth ; you spoke of your will and testa-
ment to the public."—" Well ? "— " Well ! this testa-
ment must be made to-day. Indeed, you have another
testament to make. You mustn't wait till to-morrow."
— Balzac looked up. — " I have, then, no more than six
hours," he exclaimed with dread.
The details of this narration given in the Figaro
many years after the event ^ do not read much like
history. A more probable account tells that Balzac,
after one of his fits of gasping, asked Nacquart to say
whether he would get better or not. The doctor
hesitated, then answered : " You are courageous. I
will not hide the truth from you. There is no hope."
The sick man's face contracted and his fingers clutched
the sheet. " How long have I to live ? " he questioned
after a pause. "You will hardly last the night,"
replied Nacquart. There was a fresh silence, broken
only by the novelist's murmuring as if to himself:
" If only I had Bianchon, he would save me." Bian-
chon, one of his fictitious personages, had become for
the nonce a living reality. It was Balzac who had
taken the place of his medical hero in the kingdom of
shadows. Anxious to soften the effect of his sentence,
Nacquart inquired if his patient had a message or
1 20th of August 1883.
294 HONORE DE BALZAC
recommendation to give. " No, I have none," was the
answer. However, just before the doctor's departure,
he asked for a pencil, and tried to trace a few hnes,
but was too weak ; and, letting the pencil drop from
his fingers, he fell into a slumber.
In his Choses Vues, Victor Hugo informs us that,
on the afternoon of the 18th, his wife had been to the
Hotel Beaujon and heard from the servants that the
master of the house was dying. After dinner he went
himself, and reached the Hotel about nine. Received
at first in the drawing-room, lighted dimly by a candle
placed on a richly carved oval table that stood with
its six statuettes as supports, in the centre of the room,
he saw there an old woman, but not, as he asserts,
the brother-in-law, Monsieur Survill. No member of
Balzac's own family was present in the house that
evening. Even the wife remained in her apartments.
The old woman told Hugo that gangrene had set in,
and that tapping now produced no effect on the dropsy.
As the visitor ascended the splendid, red-carpeted stair-
case, cumbered with statues, vases, and paintings, he
was incommoded by a pestilential odour that assailed
his nostrils. Death had begun the decomposition of
the sick man's body even before it was a corpse. At
the door of the chamber Hugo caught the sound of
hoarse, stertorous breathing. He entered, and saw on
the mahogany bed an almost unrecognizable form
bolstered up on a mass of cushions. Balzac's unshaven
face was of blackish-violet hue; his grey hair had
been cut short ; his open eyes were glazed ; the profile
resembled that of the first Napoleon. It was useless
to speak to him unconscious of any one's presence.
Hugo turned and hastened from the spot, thinking
sadly of his previous visit a month before, when, in
LAST YEARS 295
the same room, the invalid had joked with him on his
opinions, reproaching him for his demagogy. ** How
could you renounce, with such serenity, your title as
a peer of France?" he had asked. He had spoken
also of the Beaujon residence, the gallery over the
little chapel in the corner of the street, the key that
permitted access to the chapel from the staircase ; and,
when the poet left him, he had accompanied him to
the head of the stairs, calling out to Madame de Balzac
to show Hugo his pictures.
Death took him the same evening.^ During the
last hours of his life Giraud had sketched his portrait
for a pastel ; ^ and, on the morning of the 19th, a man
named Marminia was sent to secure a mould of his
features. This latter design had to be abandoned.
An impression of the hands alone was obtainable. De-
composition had set in so rapidly that the face was
distorted beyond recognition. A lead coffin was
hastily brought to cover up the ghastly spectacle of
nature in a hurry.
Two days later, on the 21st of August, the inter-
ment took place at Pere Lachaise cemetery. The
procession started from the Church of Saint-Philippe-
du-Roule, to which the coffin had been transported
beforehand. There was no pomp in either service or
ceremony. A two-horse hearse and four bearers —
Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Francis Wey, and Baroche,
the Minister for the Interior, made up the funeral
accessories. But an immense concourse of people
1 De Lovenjoul says that Balzac died on the 17th, not the 18th.
This discrepancy is most curious, the latter date figuring as the official
one, as well as being given by Hugo and others.
2 De Lovenjoul says that the sketch was made after death. But,
if the mask was not possible, it is difficult to understand how a pencil
likeness could have been drawn.
296 HONORE DE BALZAC
followed the body to the grave. The Institute, the
University, the various learned societies were all repre-
sented by eminent men, and a certain number of
foreigners, English, German, and Russian, were present
also. Baroche attended rather from duty than appre-
ciation. On the way to the cemetery, he hummed and
hawed, and remarked to Hugo : " Monsieur Balzac was a
somewhat distinguished man, I believe ? " Scandalized,
Hugo looked at the politician and answered shortly :
" He was a genius, sir." It is said that Baroche
revenged himself for the rebuff by whispering to an
acquaintance near him : " This Monsieur Hugo is
madder still than is supposed."
Over the coffin, as it was laid under the ground
near the ashes of Charles Nodier and Casimir Delavigne,
the author of Les Miser ables and Les Feuilles d'Automne
pronounced an oration which was a generous tribute
to the talent of his great rival. On such an occasion
there was no room for the reservations of criticism.
It was the moment to apply the maxim, JDe mortuis
nil nisi bonum, " The name of Balzac," he said, '' will
mingle with the luminous track projected by our epoch
into the future. . . . Monsieur de Balzac was the first
among the great, one of the highest among the best.
All his volumes form but a single book, wherein our
contemporary civilization is seen to move with a certain
terrible weirdness and reality — a marvellous book which
the maker of it entitled a comedy and which he might
have entitled a history. It assumes all forms and all
styles ; it goes beyond Tacitus and reaches Suetonius ;
it traverses Beaumarchais and attains even Rabelais ;
it is both observation and imagination, it lavishes the
true, the intimate, the bourgeois, the trivial, the material,
and, through every reality suddenly rent asunder, it
Balzac on his Death-bed
From a Pastel by Eugene Giraud {Musee de Besangon)
LAST YEARS 297
allows the most sombre, tragic ideal to be seen. Un-
consciously, and willy nilly, the author of this strange
work belongs to the race of revolutionary writers.
Balzac goes straight to the point. He grapples with
modern society ; and from everywhere he wrests some-
thing— here, illusion ; there, hopes ; a cry ; a mask. He
investigates vice, he dissects passion, he fathoms man
— the soul, the heart, the entrails, the brain, the abyss
each has within him. And by right of his free, vigorous
nature — a privilege of the intellects of our time, who
see the end of humanity better and understand Provi-
dence— Balzac smilingly and serenely issues from such
studies, which produced melancholy in Moliere and
misanthropy in Rousseau. The work he has bequeathed
us is built with granite strength. Great men forge
their own pedestal ; the future charges itself with the
statue. . . . His life was short but full, fuller of works
than of days. Alas ! this puissant, untired labourer,
this philosopher, this thinker, this poet, this genius
lived among us the life of storm and stress and struggle
common in all times to all great men. To-day, he is
at rest. He has entered simultaneously into glory
and the tomb. Henceforth, he will shine above the
clouds that surround us, among the stars of the father-
land."
To the credit of Balzac's widow it should be said
that, although not legally obliged, she accepted her
late husband's succession, heavy as it was with habilities,
the full extent of which was communicated to her
only after the funeral. The novehst's mother, having
renounced her claim on the capital lent by her at
various times to her son, received an annuity of three
thousand francs, which was punctually paid until the
old lady's demise in 1854. Buisson the tailor, Dabhn,
298 HONORE DE BALZAC
Madame Delannoy, and the rest of the creditors, one
after the other, were reimbursed the sums they had
also advanced, the profits on unexhausted copyright
aiding largely in the liberation of the estate. Before
Eve's own death, every centime of debt was cleared off.
In the romance of Balzac's life it will be always
arduous, if not infeasible, to estimate exactly Madame
Hanska's role, unless, by some miracle, her own letters
to the novelist could arise phcenix-like from their ashes.
The liaison that she is said to have formed soon after
her husband's death with Jean Gigoux, the artist, who
painted her portrait in 1852, may be regarded either as
a retaliation for Honore's infidelities, which she was
undoubtedly cognizant of, or else as the rebound of a
sensual nature after the years spent in the too ideal-
istic realm of sentiment. And, whichever of these
explanations is correct, the irony of the conclusion
is the same.
CHAPTER XIV
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE
The idea of joining his separate books together and
forming them into a coherent whole was one that
matured slowly in Balzac's mind. Its genesis is to be
found in his first collection of short novels published
in 1830 under the titles: Scenes of Private Life, and
containing The Vendetta, Gobseck, The Sceaux Ball,
The House of the Tennis-playing Cat, A Double
Family, and Peace in the Household. Between these
stories there was no real connexion except that certain
characters in one casually reappeared or were alluded
to in another. By 1832, the Scenes of Piivate Life
had been augmented, and, in a second edition, filled
four volumes. The additions comprised The 3Iessage,
The Bourse, TJw Adieu, The Cure of Tours, and
several chapters of The Woman of Thirtif Years Old,
some of which had previously come out as serials in
the Revue de Paris or the Mode,
It has already been related how the novelist all at
once realized what a gain his literary production might
have in adopting a plan and building up a social
history of his epoch. And, in fact, this conception did
stimulate his activity for some time, serving too, as
long as it was uncrystallized, to concentrate his vision
upon objective realities.
Needing, between 1834 and 1837, a more com-
prehensive title for the rapidly increasing list of his
works, he called them Studies of Manners and Mwals
299
300 HONORE DE BALZAC
in the Nineteenth C(^?z^?/ri/, subdividing them into Scenes
of Private Life, Scenes of Parisian Life, and Scenes of
Provincial Life, However, some things he had written
were classible conveniently neither under the specific
names nor under the generic one. These outsiders
he called Tales and Philosophic Novels, subsequently
shortening the title, between 1835 and 1840, to
Philosophic Studies. The question was what wider
description could be chosen which might embrace
also this last category. Writing to Madame Hanska
in 1837, he used the expression Social Studies, telling
her that there would be nearly fifty volumes of
them. Either she, or he himself, must, on reflection,
have judged the title unsatisfactory, for no edition of his
works ever bore this name. INlost likely the thought
occurred to him that such an appellation was more
suitable to a strictly scientific treatise than to fiction.
The expression Comedie Humaine, which he ulti-
mately adopted, is said to have been suggested to
him by his whilom secretary, the Count Auguste de
Belloy, after the latter's visit to Italy, during which
Dante's Divine Comedy had been read and appreciated.
But already, some years prior to this journey, the
novelist would seem to have had the Italian poet's
masterpiece before his mind. In his Girl with the
Golden Eyes, he had spoken of Paris as a hell which,
perhaps, one day would have its Dante. De Belloy's
share in the matter was probably an extra persuasion
added to Balzac's own leaning, or the Count may
have been the one to substitute the word human}
1 A communication has been made to me, while writing this
book, by Monsieur Hetzel, the pubhsher, tending to show that his
father, who was also known in the literary world, had a large share
in the choice of the Comedie Humaine as a title.
THE COMlfiDIE HUMAINE 301
INIadame Hanska was at once informed of the
choice. " The Comedie Hiunaine, such is the title of
my history of society depicted in action," he told her in
September 1841. And when, between 1841 and 1842,
Hetzel, together with Dubochet and Turne, brought
out sixteen octavo volumes of his works illustrated,
they each carried this name, while a preface set forth
the reasons which had led the author to choose it.
Thereafter, every succeeding edition was similarly
styled, including Houssiaux' series in 1855, and the
series of Calmann-Levy, known as the definitive one,
between 1869 and 1876.
Against the appellation itself no objection can
reasonably be made. Balzac's fiction takes in a world
— an underworld might appropriately be said — of
Dantesque proportions. As soon as it was fully fledged,
it started with a large ambition. "My work," he
said to Zulma Carraud in 1834, '*is to represent all
social effects without anything being omitted from it,
whether situation of life, physiognomy, character of
man or woman, manner of living, profession, zone of
social existence, region of French idiosyncrasy, child-
hood, maturity, old age, politics, jurisdiction, war."
And in the Forties the same intention was stated as
clearly. " I have undertaken the history of the whole
of society. Often have 1 summed up my plan in this
simple sentence : A generation is a drama in which
four or fiYQ thousand people are the chief actors.
This drama is my book."
When Hetzel decided to publish a so-far complete
edition of the Comedie, he induced the novelist to insert
a preface composed for the occasion. Balzac wished at
first to use an old preface that he had written in con-
junction with FeHx Davin, and placed, under the latter's
302 HONORE DE BALZAC
signature, at the beginning of the Study of Manners
and Morals in the Nineteenth Century, Hetzel objected
to this, and urged that so important an undertaking
ought to be preceded by an author's apology. His
advice was accepted, and the preface was developed
into a veritable doctrine and defence. Here are some
of its essential passages : —
" The Comedie Humaine^ says Balzac, " first dawned
on my brain like a dream — one of those impossible
projects, it seemed, that are caressed and allowed to
fly away ; a chimera which smiles, shows its woman's
face, and forthwith unfolds its wings, mounting again
into a fancied heaven. But the chimera, as many
chimeras do, changed into reality. It had its com-
mands and its tyranny to which I was obliged to yield.
" It was born from a comparison between humanity
and animality. It would be an error to believe that
the great quarrel which in recent times has arisen
between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire is con-
cerned with a scientific innovation. The unity of com-
position involved in it had already, under other terms,
occupied the greatest minds of the two preceding
centuries. On reading over again the extraordinary
works of such mystic writers as Swedenborg, Saint-
Martin, &c., who have studied the relations of science
with the infinite, and the writings of the finest geniuses
in natural history, such as Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles
Bonnet, &c., one finds in the monads of Leibnitz, in the
organic molecules of Buffon, in the vegetative force
of Needham, in the jointing of similar parts of Charles
Bonnet — who was bold enough to write in 1760 :
' The animal vegetates like the plant ; ' one finds, I
say, the rudiments of the beautiful law of self for self
on which the unity of composition reposes. There is
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 303
only one animal. The Creator has made use only of
one and the same pattern for all organized beings.
The animal is a principle which acquires its exterior
form, or, to speak more exactly, the differences of its
form, in the surroundings in which it is called upon to
develop. The various zoologic species result from these
differences. The proclamation and upholding of this
system, in harmony, moreover, with the ideas we have
of the Divine power, will be the eternal honour of
Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire, who was the vanquisher of
Cuvier on this point of high science, and whose triumph
was acknowledged in the last article written by the
great Goethe."
Continuing his exposition, the novelist says all men
resemble each other, but in the same manner as a horse
resembles a bird. They are also divided into species.
These species differ according to social surroundings.
A peasant, a tradesman, an artist, a great lord are as
distinct from each other as a wolf is from a sheep.
Besides, there is another thing peculiar to man, viz.
that male and female are not ahke, whereas among the
rest of the animals, the female is similar to the male.
The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy to be
the spouse of a prince, and often a prince's wife is not
worth an artist's. Then, again, there is this difference.
The lower animals are strictly dependent on circum-
stances, each species feeding and housiitg itself in a
uniform manner. Man has not such uniformity. In
Paris, he is not the same as in a provincial town ; in the
provinces, not the same as in rural surroundings. When
studying him, there are many things to be considered
— habitat, furniture, food, clothes, language. In fine,
the subject taken up by a novelist who wishes to treat
it properly, comprises man as an integral portion of a
304 HONORE DE BALZAC
social species, woman as not peculiarly belonging to
any, and entourage from its widest circumference of
country down to the narrowest one of home.
'* But," he goes on, " how is it possible to render the
drama of life interesting, with the three or four thou-
sand varying characters presented by a society ? How
please at the same time the philosopher, and the masses
who demand poetry and philosophy under striking
images ? If I conceived the importance and poetry
of this history of the human heart, I saw no means of
execution ; for, down to our epoch, the most celebrated
narrators had spent their talent in creating one or two
typical characters, in depicting one phase of life. With
this thought, I read the works of AValter Scott.
Walter Scott, the modern, trouvere, was then giving a
gigantic vogue to a kind of composition unjustly called
secondary. Is it not really harder to compete with the
registry of births, marriages, and deaths by means of
Daphnis and Chloe, Roland, Amadis, Panurge, Don
Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace, Robinson
Crusoe, Ossian, Julie d'Etanges, My Uncle Toby,
Werther, Ren^, Corinne, Adolphe, Gil Bias, Paul and
Virginia, Jeanie Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe, Manfred,
Mignon, than to arrange facts almost similar among
all nations, to seek for the spirit of laws fallen into
decay, to draw up theories which lead people astray,
or, as certain metaphysicians, to explain what exists?
First of all, nearly all these characters, whose exist-
ence becomes longer, more genuine than that of the
generations amid which they are made to be born,
live only on condition of being a vast image of
the present. Conceived in the womb of the century,
the whole human heart moves beneath their outward
covering ; it often conceals a whole philosophy. Walter
THE COM]6dIE HUMAINE 305
Scott, therefore, raised to the philosophic value of
history the novel — that literature which from century
to century adorns with immortal diamonds the poetic
crown of the countries where letters are cultivated.
He put into it the spirit of ancient times ; he blended
in it at once drama, dialogue, portraiture, landscape,
description ; he brought into it the marvellous and the
true, those elements of the epopee; he made poetry
mingle in it with the humblest sorts of language. But
having less invented a system than found out his
manner in the ardour of work, or by the logic of this
work, he had not thought of linking his compositions
to each other so as to co-ordinate a complete history,
each chapter of which would have been a novel and
each novel an epoch. Perceiving this want of connec-
tion, which, indeed, does not render the Scotchman less
great, I saw both the system that was favourable to the
execution of my work, and the possibility of carrying
it out. Although, so to speak, dazzled by the surpri-
sing fecundity of Walter Scott, always equal to himself
and always original, I did not despair, for I found the
reason of such talent in the variety of human nature.
Chance is the greatest novelist in the woidd. To be
fertile, one has only to study it. French society was
to be the historian. I was to be only the secretary.
By drawing up an inventory of virtues and vices, by
assembling the principal facts of passions, by painting
characters, by choosing the principal events of society,
by composing types through the union of several
homogeneous characters, perhaps I should succeed in
writing the history forgotten by so many historians,
that of manners and viorals. With much patience and
courage, I should realize, with regard to France in the
nineteenth century, the book we all regret which
u
806 HONORfi DE BALZAC
Rome, Athens, Tyre, Memphis, Persia, India have not
unfortunately left about their civilizations, and which,
like the Abbe Barthelemy, the courageous and patient
Monteil had essayed for the Middle Ages, but in a form
not very attractive."
One may well believe the novelist when he explains
that " it was no small task to depict the two or three
thousand prominent figures of an epoch," representing
typical phases in all existences, which, says he, " is one
of the accuracies I have most sought for. 1 have tried
to give a notion also of the different parts of our
beautiful land. My work has its geography, as it has
its genealogy and its families, its places and things, its
persons and its facts, as it has its blazonry, its nobles
and its commoners, its artisans and its peasants, its
politicians and its dandies, its army, in fine, its epitome
of life — all this in its settings and galleries."
The Human Comedy, as finally arranged and clas-
sified in 1845, had three chief divisions : Studies of
Manners and Morals, Philosophic Studies, Analytic
Studies ; and the first of these was subdivided into
Scenes ofPi^ivate Life, Scenes of Provificial Life, Scenes
of Parisian Life, Scenes of Militai^y Life, Scenes of
Political Life, Scenes of Country Life. According to
Monsieur de Lovenjoul's list given in his History of
Balzac s Wor^ks, the titles stand as follows. The dates
added are those of publication, although many of the
novels were written, either partly or entirely, much
earlier.
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 807
THE HUMAN COMEDY
FIRST PART
STUDIES OF MANNERS AND MORALS
Scenes of Private Life
1,1 TJie Children; 2, A Girls" Boarding- School ; f?, Life in a
Boys' School; 4, The House of the Tennis-playing Cat (1830);
5, The Sceaux Ball (1830) ; 6, Diaries of two Young Wives (1841) ;
7, The Bourse (1832) ; 8, Modeste Mignon (1844) ; 9, A Begin-
ning in Life (1842) ; 10, Albert Savarus (1842) ; 11, The Vendetta
(1830); 12, A Double Family (1830); 13, Peace in the House-
hold (1830) ; 14, Madame Firmiani (1832) ; 15, A Woman-Study
(1830); 16, The False Mistress (1841); 17, A Daughter of Eve
(1838); 18, Colonel Chabert (1832); 19, The Message (1832);
20, Pomegranate Grove (1832) ; 21 , The Forsaken Woman (1832) ;
22, Honorine (1843); 23, Beatrix (1844); 24, Gobseck (1830);
25, The Woman of Thirty Years Old (1834) ; 26, Pere Goriot
(1834) ; 27, Peter Grassou (1840) ; 28, The Atheisms Mass (1836) ;
29, The Interdict (1836); 30, The Marriage Settlement (1835);
31, Sons-in-Law and Mother s-in- Law ; 32, Another Woman-Study
(1842).
Scenes of Provincial Life
33, The Lily in the Valley (1836) ; 34, Ursula Mirouet (1841) ;
35, Eugenie Grandet (1833); 36, The Celibates: L Pierrette
(1840) ; 37, II. The Cure of Tours (1832) ; 38, III. A Bachelor's
Household (1842); 39,T*arisians~in the Provinces: I. The Illus-
trious Gaudissart (1833); 40, //. People who have Wri/nMes ; 41,
III. The Muse of the County (1843); 42, An Actress on her
Travels ; 43,^ The Superior Woman (1837) ; 44, Rivalries : /. The
Original; 45, //. 'TJie Heirs of Boisrouge ; 46, III. The Old Maid
^ The titles in italics indicate books that the novelist intended to
write, but was prevented from undertaking by his premature death.
2 This is the same as The Employees. Balzac made a mistake in the
double insertion.
308 HONORE DE BALZAC
(1836); 47, Provincials in Paris: I. The Cabinet of Antiques
(1838); 48, //. Jacques de Metz; 49, Lost Illusions: L The Two
Poets (1837); 50, II. A Provincial Great Man in Paris (1839);
51, III. The Inventor's Sufferings (1843).
Scenes of Parisian Life
52, History of the Thirteen: I. Ferragus (1833); 53, 11. The
Duchess de Langeais (1834); 54, III. The Girl with the Golden
Eyes (1834); 55, The Employees (1837); m, Sarrazine (1830);
57, The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau (1837) ; 58, The Firm
of Nucingen (1838) ; 59, Facino Cane (1836) ; 60, The Princess
de Cadignan's Secrets (1839); 61, Splendour and Wretchedness of
Courtezans : I. How Lemans Love (1838) ; 62, II. What Love costs
Old Men (1844); 63, III. Whither Bad Ways Lead (1846); 64,
IV. Vautrin's Last Incarnation (1847) ; Qo^ The Great ^ tJie Hospital^
and the People; m, A Prince of Bohemia (1840); 67, The Un-
conscious Comedians (1846); 68, A Specimen of French Conver-
sation (1832-1844); 69, A Viexv of the Law Courts; 70, The
Petty Bourgeois (1855) ; 71, Among Savants; 72, The Stage as it
is ; 73, The Brethren of Consolation : the Reverse Side of Con-
temporary History (1847).
Scenes of Political Life
74, An Episode under the Terror (1830) ; 75, History and the
Novel; 76, A Shady Affair (1841); 77, The Two Ambitious
Men; 78, The Embassy Attache; 79, How a Ministry is Made;
80, The M.P for Arcis (1847 and 1853); 8], Z. Marcas (1840)»
Scenes of Military Life
82, The Soldiers of the Republic ; 83, The Beginning of the
Campaign ; 84, The Vendeeans ; 85, The Chouans (1829) ; 86,
The French in Egypt : I. The Prophet ; 87, //. The Pacha ; 88,
III. A Passion in the Desert (1830); 89, The Itinerant Army;
90, The Co7isular Guard; 91, Close to Vienna: I. A Combat; 92,
//. The Besieged Army ; 93, ///. The Plain of Wag7mn ; 94, The
Inn-Keeper; 95, The English in Spain; 96, Moscow; 97, The
Battle of Dresden ; 98, The Laggards ; 99, The Partisans ; 100,
-4.
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 809
A Crnise; 101, The Pmtoons ; 102, The Campai^ of Fraiwe ;
103, Th£ Last Battle-Field ; 104, The Emir; 105, The Pamsilre ;
106, The Algerian Corsair,
Scenes of Country Life
107, The Peasants (1844 and 1855) ; 108, The Country Doctor
(1833); 109, The Justice of the Peace; 110, The Village Cure
(1839); 111, The Environs of Paris.
SECOND PART
PHILOSOPHIC STUDIES
112, The Phedon of To-day; 113, The Shagreen Skin (1831);
114, Jesus Christ in Flanders (1831); 115, Melmoth Keconciled
(1835); 116, Massimilla Doni (1839); 117, The Unknown
Masterpiece (1831); 118, Gambara (1837); 119, The Search
for the Absolute (1834); 120, President Fritot ; 121, The Philan-
thropist; 122, The Cursed Child (1831-1836); 123, The Adieu
(1830); 124, The Maranas (1832); 125, The Requisitionist
(1831); 126, El Verdugo (1830); 127, A Tragic Incident at the
Seaside (1835); 128, Master Cornelius (1831); 129, The Red
Inn (1831); 130, About Catherine de Medici: Introduction,
1843, I. The Calvinist Martyr (1841); 131, 11. Ruggieri^s Con-
fession (1836); 132, III. The Two Dreams (1830); 133, The New
AbUard; 134, The Elixir of Long Life (1830) ; 135, The Life and
Adventures of an Idea; 136, The Outlaws (1831); 137, Louis
Lambert (1832); 138, Seraphita (1834-35).
THIRD PART
ANALYTIC STUDIES
139, Anatomy of the Educational Bodies; 140, The Physiology
of Marriage (1829); 141, Petty Miseries of Married Life (1830-
1845) ; 142, Pathology of Social Life ; 143, Monogi'aphy of Virtue;
144, Philosophic and Political Dialogue concerning the Perfection
oftJie Nineteenth Century.
310 HONORE DE BALZAC
In the foregoing list, neither Cousin Bette nor Cousin
Pons is included, since both were written subsequently
to its being drawn up by the novelist. Eliminating
from it the titles of books that were projected only,
one is struck by the disproportion between the first
part, comprising fourteen volumes, the second, about
two and a half, and the third, not more than half a
volume. Even if we include the unwritten books, the
diminution from first to second and from second to
third is considerable. In the novelist's mind, this
difference was intentional. According to his concep-
tion, the first large series represented the broad base of
effects, upon which was superposed the second plane of
causes, less numerous and more concentrated. In the
latter, he strove to answer the why and wherefore of
sentiments ; in the former, to exhibit their action in
varying modes. In the former, therefore, he repre-
sented individuals ; in the latter, his individuals became
types. All this he detailed to Madame Hanska, insist-
ing on the statement that everywhere he gave life to
the type by individualizing it, and significance to the
individuals by rendering them typical. At the top of
the cone he treated, in his analytical studies, of the
principles whence causes and effects proceed. The
manners and morals at the base, he said, were the
spectacle ; the causes above were the side-scenes ; and
the principles at the top were the author.
Coming to the subdivisions, he explains that his
Scenes of Private Life deal with humanity's childhood
and adolescence, and the errors of these, in short, with
the period of budding passions ; the Scenes of Pro-
vincial Life, with passions in full development — calcu-
lation, interest, ambition, &;c. ; the Scenes of Parisian
Life, with the peculiar tastes, vices, and temptations of
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 311
capitals, that is to say, with passion unbridled. The
interpretation assigned to these categories is a fanciful
one. Passions are born and bred and produce their
full effect in every place and phase of life. They may
assume varying forms in divers surroundings, but such
variation has no analogy with change of age. Only by
forcing the moral of his stories was the author able
to give them these secondary significations. Indeed,
he was often in straits to decide in which category he
ought to class one and another novel. Peix Goriot
was originally in the Scenes of Parisian Life, where it
had a certain raison d'etre. Ultimately, it found its
way into the Scenes of Private Life, And a greater
alteration was made by removing Madame Firmiani
and the Woman- Study from the Philosophic Studies,
and placing them also in the Private Life series.
The principle of classification in the Philosophic
Studies is just as arbitrary. We have the realism of
the Search for the Absolute coupled with the lyricism
of Seraphita and Louis Lambert; poor history in
Catlieriiie de Medici ; morbid romance in the Shagreen
Skin; and, though the range of time is from the
Middle Ages up to the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury, there is no light thrown — whatever the author
may have thought — upon the why and wherefore of
sentiments. In abstract thinking Balzac lacked
originality; in psychology, he never penetrated
beyond the threshold.
As for the Analytic Studies, since we have only
names and not works to judge by — outside of the
two small series of anecdote and persiflage comprised
in the Physiology of Marriage and the Petty Miseries
of Married Life — it is impossible to deny that the
achieved task would have given us Ihe fons et origo
312 HONORE DE BALZAC
of the Comedy, Yet these names are not particularly
suggestive of anything great.
Be it granted that the plan of the Comedy was
grandiose in its scope ; it was none the less doomed in
its execution to suffer for its ambitiousness, since an
attempt was made to subordinate imagination to science
in a domain where the rights of imagination were para-
mount.
That which Balzac has best rendered in it is the
struggle for life on the social plane; and that which
forms its most legitimate claim to be deemed in some
measure a whole is the general reference to this in all
the so-called parts. Before the Revolution, the action
of the law was narrower, being chiefly limited to members
of one class. With the fall of ancient privilege, the
sphere of competition was opened to the entire nation ;
and, instead of nobles contending with nobles, church-
men with churchmen, tradesmen with tradesmen, there
was an interpenetration of combatants over all the field
of battle, or rather, the several smaller fields of battle
became one large one. Balzac's fiction reproduces the
later phase in minute detail, and, mostly, with a treat-
ment suited to the subject.
Brunetiere, whose chapter on the Comedy is written
more gropingly than the rest of his study of the novelist,
makes use of an ingenious comparison with intent to
persuade that the stories had from the very first a pre-
destined organic union, with ramifications which the
author saw but obscurely and which were joined to-
gether more closely — as also more consciously — during
the lapse of years. " Thus," he says, " brothers and
sisters, in the time of their infancy or childhood, have
nothing in common except a certain family resemblance
— and this not always. But, as they advance in age,
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 313
the features that individualized them become attenu-
ated, they return to the type of their progenitors, and
one perceives that they are children of the same father
and mother. Balzac's novels," he concludes, ** have a
connection of this kind. In his head, they were, so to
speak, contemporary."
The simile is not a happy one. It does not help to
reconcile us to an artificial approximation of books that
are heterogeneous, unequal in value, and, frequently,
composed under influences far removed from the after-
thought that was given to them as a putative father.
Balzac was not well inspired in relating his novels to
each other logically. Such natural relationship as they
possess is that of issuing from the same brain, though
acting under varying conditions and in different stages
of development ; and it is true that, if the story of this
brain is known, and its experiences understood, a certain
classification might be made — perhaps more than one —
of its creations, on account of common traits, resem-
blances of subject or treatment, which could serve to
link them together loosely. But, between this arrange-
ment and the artificial hierarchy of the Comedy^ it is
impossible to find a bridge to pass over.
One of the real links betwixt the novels is the re-
appearance of the same people in many of them, which
thing is not in itself displeasing. It has the advantage
of allowing the author to display his men and women
in changed circumstances, to cast side-lights upon them,
and to reveal them more completely. However, here
and there, we pay for the privilege in meeting with
bores whose further acquaintance we would fain have
been spared. And then, also, we are likely enough to
come across a hero or heroine as a child, after learning
all about his or her maturer life ; to accompany people
314 HONORE DE BALZAC
to the grave and see them buried, and yet, in a later
book, to be introduced to them as alive as ever they
were. This is disconcerting. Usually, Balzac remembers
his characters well enough to be consistent in other re-
spects when he makes them speak and act, or lets us
into his confidence about them. Still, he is guilty of a
few lapses of memory. In The Wovian of Thirty Years
Old, Madame d' Aiglemont has two children in the earlier
chapters ; subsequently, one is drowned, and, instead
of one remaining, we learn there are three — a new read-
ing of Wordsworth's We are seven. Again, in the
Lost Illusions, Esther Gobseck has blond hair in
one description of her, and black in another. We are
reduced to supposing she had dyed it. Mistakes of the
kind have been made by other writers of fiction who
have worked quickly. In the Comedy, the number of
dramatis personce is exceedingly large. Balzac laugh-
ingly remarked one day that they needed a biographical
dictionary to render their identity clear ; and he added
that perhaps somebody would be tempted to do the
work at a later date. He guessed rightly. In 1893,
Messrs. Cerfbeer and Cristophe undertook the task and
carried it through in a book that they called the Reper-
tory of the Comedie Humaine, All the fictitious person-
ages or petty folk that live in the novelist's pages are duly
docketed, and their births, marriages, deaths, and stage
appearances recorded in this Who's Who, a big volume
of five hundred and sixty-three pages, constituting a
veritable curiosity of literature, but of doubtful utility.
Much has been said in the preceding chapters of
the large use Balzac made of his own life, his adven-
tures, his experiences, in composing the integral
portions of his Comedy, so that its contents, for any
one who can interpret, becomes a valuable auto-
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 315
biography. And the lesser as well as the greater
novels supply facts. In the ForsaJxcn Woman,
Madame de Beauseant, who has been jilted by the
Marquis of Ajuda-Pinto, permits herself to be wooed
by Gaston de Nueil, a man far younger than herself.
After ten years, he, in turn, quits her to marry the
person his mother has chosen for him ; but, unable to
bear the combined burden of his remorse and yearning
regret, he commits suicide. This tale, like the Lily hi
the Valley, is an adaptation of Balzac's liaison with
Madame de Berny. It was written in the very year
he severed the material ties that bound them.
The only distinction between his case and that of
Gaston de Nueil was that he had no desire to kill
himself, and was content to be no more than a friend,
since he was the freer to flirt with Madame de Castries.
And, when the latter lady kept him on tenter-hooks,
tormenting him, tempting him, but never yielding to
him, he revenged himself by writing the Duchess de
Langeais, attributing to the foolish old general his
own hopes, fears, and disappointments at the hands of
the coquettish, capricious duchess. '' I alone," he said
in a letter, ** know the horrible that is in this narra-
tive." And, if, in Albert Savarus, we have a con-
fession of his political ambitions and campaigns, we
get in Cesar Birotteau and the Petty Bourgeois his
financial projects, which never brought him anything
in ; in ^ Man oj Business — as well as elsewhere — his
continual money embarrassments. How deeply he felt
them, he often lets us gather from his fiction. ** I have
been to a capitalist," he wrote in one of his epistles to
Madame Hanska, "a capitalist to whom are due in-
demnities agreed on between us for works promised
and not executed ; and I offered him a certain number
316 HONORE DE BALZAC
of copies of the Studies of Manners and Morals, I
proposed five thousand francs with deferred payment,
instead of three thousand francs cash. He refused
everything, even my signature and a bill, telling me
my fortune was in my talent and that I might die any
time. This scene is one of the most infamous I have
known. Some day I will reproduce it."
And he did, with many things else that happened
to him in his deahngs with his fellows. There is
biography too, as well as autobiography in the Comedy
— this notwithstanding his disclaimers. Exact por-
traiture he avoided for obvious reasons, but intentional
portraiture he indulged in largely; and hfe and
character were sufficiently near the truth for shrewd
contemporaries to recognize the originals. To add
one or two examples to the number already given,
Claire Brunne (Madame Marbouty) seems to have
suggested his Muse of the County, a Berrichon blue-
stocking ; Madame d'Agoult and Liszt become Madame
de Rochfide and the musician Conti in Beatrix; a
cousin of Madame Hanska, Thaddeus Wylezinski,
who worshipped her discreetly, is depicted under the
traits of Thaddeus Paz, a Polish exile in the Fake
Mistress, who assumes a feigned name to conceal his
love ; Lamartine furnished the conception of the poet
Canalis in Modeste Mignon, the resemblance being
at first so striking that the novelist afterwards toned
it away a little ; and Monnier, the caricaturist, cer-
tainly supplied the essential elements in Bixiou, who
is so well drawn in Cousin Bette and the Firm of
Nucingen, The Baron Nucingen himself has some
of the features of the James de Rothschild whom
Balzac knew; and Rastignac embodied the author's
impression of Thiers in the statesman's earlier years.
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 317
One might go further and couple Delacroix the
painter's name with that of Joseph Ikidau in A
Bachelor's Household, Frederick Lemaitre, the actor s,
with JNIedal's in Cousin Pons, Emile de Girardin's with
du Tillet's in Cesar Birotteau, At last, however,
owing to the mingling of one personality with another,
identification is increasingly difficult, unless the novehst
comes to our assistance, as in the story Cousin Bette,
where he confesses Lisbeth, the old maid, to be made
up out of three persons, Madame V^almore, Madame
Hanska's aunt, and his own mother.
Summing up Balzac's entire literary production,
which in Monsieur de Lovenjoul's catalogue occupies
no fewer than fourteen pages, we find that it com-
prises, besides the ninety-six different works of the
Comedie Humaine properly so-called, ten volumes of
his early novels ; six complete dramatic pieces — one, the
School for Husbands and Wives recently published ; ^
thirty Contes Drolatiques ; and three hundred and
fourteen articles and opuscles, some of them fairly
long, since the Reminiscences of a Pariah has a hundred
and eighty-four pages octavo, the Theory of Walk-
ing fifty, the Code of Honest People a hundred and
twelve, the Impartial History of the Jesuits eighty ;
these exclusive of the Revue Parisienne with its two
hundred and twenty pages, which, as we have seen,
was written entirely by himself. When we remember
that the whole of this, with the exception of the early
novels and six of the opuscles, was produced in twenty
years, we can better appreciate the man's industry,
which, as Monsieur Le Breton calculates, yielded an
average of some two thousand pages, or four to five
volumes a year.
1 Played for the first time March 13, 1910, at the Odeon Theatre.
318 HONORE DE BALZAC
In the miscellanies one meets with much that is
curious, amusing, and instructive, quite worthy to
figure in the Comedy — witty dialogues, light stories
containing deductions a La Sherlock Holmes or Edgar
Allan Poe, plenty of satire, sometimes acidulated as in
his Troubles and IViah of an English Cat, and theories
about everything, indicative of extensive reading, large
assimilation and quick reasoning. The miscellanies
really stand to the novels in the relation of a sort of
prolegomenon. They serve for its better understanding,
and are agreeable even for independent study.
CHAPTER XV
VALUE OF THE WORK
The aim of an author whose writings are intended
to please must be ethical as well as aesthetic, if he re-
spects himself and his readers. He wishes the pleasure
he can give to do good, not harm. The good he feels
capable of producing may be limited to the physical or
may extend beyond to the moral ; but it will be found
in his work in so far as the latter is truly artistic.
Balzac's prefaces and correspondence are so many
proofs that he rejected the pretensions of literature or
any other art to absolute independence. The doctrine
of art for art's sake alone would have had no meaning
to him. However much his striving to confer on his
novels organic unity, and however much the writing
against time deteriorated his practice, they did not
prevent him from recognizing the ethical claim. What
he realized less was the necessity of submitting treat-
ment to the same government of law.
Even if we grant that the plan of the Comedie
Humaine existed in the novelist's mind from the com-
mencement, obscurely at first, more clearly afterwards,
the plan itself was not artistic in the sense that an
image in the architect's mind is artistic when he designs
on paper the edifice he purposes to construct, or in the
painter's mind when he chooses the subject and details
of his picture, or in the sculptor's mind when he arranges
his group of statuary, or in the musician's mind when
319
320 HONORE DE BALZAC
he conjures up his opera or oratorio. Balzac's plan
was one of numbers or logic merely. The block of
his Comedy was composed on the dictionary principle
of leaving nothing out which could be put in ; and his
genius, great as it was, wrestled achingly and in vain
with a task from which selection was practically banished
and which was a piling of Pelion on Ossa.
For this reason it is that, regarded as an aggregate,
the Comedie Humaine can be admired only as one may
admire a forceful mass of things, when it is looked at
from afar, through an atmosphere that softens outlines,
hides or transforms detail, adds irreality. In such an
ambience certain novels that by themselves would
shock, gain a sort of appropriateness, and others that
are trivial or dull serve as foils. But, at the same time,
we know that the effect is partly illusion.
In a writer's entire production the constant factor
is usually his style, while subject and treatment vary.
Balzac, however, is an exception in this respect as in
most others. He attains terse vigour in not a few of
his books, but in not a few also he disfigures page after
page with loose, sprawling ruggedness, not to say
pretentious obscurity. His opinion of himself as a
stylist was high, higher no doubt than that he held of
George Sand, to whom he accorded eminence mainly
on this ground. Of the French language he said that
he had enriched it by his alms. Finding it poor but
proud, he had made it a millionaire. And the assertion
was put forward with the same seriousness that he
displayed when declaring that there were three men
only of his time who really knew their mother-tongue —
Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and himself. That
his conversancy with French extended from Froissart
downwards, through Rabelais' succulent jargon as well
-^
Balzac
From an Etching by Hedouin
VALUE OF THE WORK 821
as Moliere's racy idiom, is patent in nearly all he wrote ;
and that he was capable of using this vocabulary aptly
is sufficiently shown in the best and simplest of his
works. But it is not so clear that he added anything
to the original stock. Such words as he coined under
the impetus of his exuberance are mostly found in his
letters and have not been taken into favour.
A demur must likewise be entered against his style's
possessing the qualities that constitute a charm apart
from the matter expressed. Too many tendencies
wrought in him uncurbed for his ideas to clothe them-
selves constantly in a suitable and harmonious dress.
Generally, when his personality intruded itself in the
narrative, it was quite impossible for him to speak
unless affectedly, with a mixture of odd figures of
speech and similes that hurtled in phrases of heavy
construction. Taine has collected a few of these. In
the Cure of Tours we read : —
"No creature of the feminine gender was more
capable than Mademoiselle Sophie Gamard of formu-
lating the elegiac nature of an old maid."
Farther on in the same story there is a specimen
frankly comic : —
" Is not the apparent egoism of men that carry a
science, a nation, or laws within them the noblest of
passions, and, in some manner, the maternity of the
masses? To bring forth new peoples or to generate
new ideas, must they not unite in their puissant heads
the teats of a woman with the force of a god ? "
Men with teats in their head is something yet un-
revealed by zoology. In the Lily in the Valley such
involved, metaphor-charged sentences abound. Here
is one : —
"All the manufactories of intellectual products
X
322 HONORE DE BALZAC
have discovered a spice, a special ginger, which is their
pecuhar enjoyment. Thence the premiums, the antici-
pated dividends ; thence the rape of thoughts which,
like slave merchants in Asia, the contractors of public
wit wrest half-hatched from the paternal brain and
undress and drag to the feet of their brutish sultan,
their Shahahabam — ^this terrible public, who, if not
amused, cuts off their heads by taking from them their
feed of gold."
With the foregoing may be coupled this : —
" Caroline is a second edition of Nebuchadnezzar ;
for, one day, like the royal chrysalis, she will pass from
the fur of the caterpillar to the ferocity of the imperial
purple."
And this : —
" She allowed that smile of resigned women to
escape her which would split granite."
Elsewhere, he speaks of the " fluid projections of
looks that serve to touch the suave skin of a woman ; "
of the " atmosphere of Paris in which seethes a simoon
that swells the heart ; " of the " coefficient reason of
events ; " of " pecuniary mnemonics ; " of " sentences
flung out through the capillary tubes of the great
female confabulation;" of "devouring ideas distilled
through a bald forehead ; " of a " lover's enwrapping his
mistress in the wadding of his attentions ; " of " abor-
tions in which the spawn of genius cumbers an arid
strand;" of the "philosophic moors of incredulity;"
of a "town troubled in its public and private intes-
tines."
In one of the chapters of Seraphita, he says :
"Wilfred arrived at Seraphita's house to relate his
life, to paint the grandeur of his soul by the greatness
of his faults ; but, when he found himself in the zone
VALUE OF THE WORK 323
embraced by those eyes whose azure scintillations met
with no horizon in front, and offered none behind, he
became calm again and submissive as the lion who,
bounding on his prey in an African plain, receives, on
the wing of the winds, a message of love, and stops.
An abyss opened into which fell the words of his
delirium ! "
And the same Wilfred " trusted to his perspicacity
to discover the parcels of truth rolled by the old servant
in the torrent of his divagations."
During the years of Balzac's greatest literary
activity, which were also those of his bitterest pole-
mics, his opponents made much capital out of the
caprices of his pen. In the lawsuit against the Revue
de Paris, Monsieur Chaix d'Est-Ange, the defendant's
counsel, provoked roars of laughter by quoting passages
from the Lily in the Valley ; and Jules Janin, in his
criticism of A Provincial Gixat Man in Paris, grew
equally merry over the verbal conceits abounding in
the portraits of persons. And yet the very volumes
that furnish the largest number of ill-begotten sentences
contain many passages of sustained dignity, sober
strength, and proportioned beauty.
Normally, Balzac's style, in spite of its mannerisms,
its use and abuse of metaphor, its laboured evolution
and expression of the idea, and its length and heaviness
of period, adapts itself to the matter, and alters with
kaleidoscopic celerity, according as there is description,
analysis, or dramatization. Thus blending with the
subject, it loses a good deal of its proper virtue, which
explains why it does not afford the pleasure of form
enjoyed in such writers as George Sand, Flaubert,
Renan, and Anatole France. The pleasure his word-
conjuring {^^XK yield is chiefly of the sensuous order.
324 HONORE DE BALZAC
The following passage is, as Taine says, botany turned
into imagination and passion : —
" Have you felt in the meadows, in the month of
May, the perfume which communicates to every living
being the thrill of fecundation, which, when you are in
a boat, makes you dip your hands in the rippling water
and let your hair fly in the wind, while your thoughts
grow green like the boughs of the forest ? A tiny herb,
the sweet- smelling anthoxanthum is the principal of
this veiled harmony. Thus, no one can stay in its
proximity unaffected by it. Put into a nosegay its
glittering blades streaked like a green-and-white netted
dress ; inexhaustible effluvia will stir in the bottom of
your heart the budding roses that modesty crushes
there. Within the depths of the scooped-out neck
of porcelain, suppose a wide margin composed of the
white tufts peculiar to the sedum of vines in Touraine ;
a vague image of desirable forms turned like those of
a submissive slave. From this setting issue spirals of
white-belled convolvulus, twigs of pink rest-harrow
mingled with a few ferns, and a few young oak-shoots
having magnificently coloured leaves ; all advance bow-
ing themselves, humble as weeping willows, timid and
suppliant as prayers. Above, see the slender-flowered
fibrils, unceasingly swayed, of the purply amourette,
which sheds in profusion its yellowy anthers ; the snowy
pyramids of the field and water glyceria ; the green
locks of the barren bromus ; the tapered plumes of the
agrostis, called wind-ears ; violet-hued hopes with which
first dreams are crowned, and which stand out on the
grey ground of flax where the light radiates round
these blossoming herbs. But already, higher up, a few
Bengal roses scattered among the airy lace of the
daucus, the feathers of the marsh-flax, the marabouts
VALUE OF THE WORK 325
of the meadow-sweet, the umhellse of the white chervil,
the blond hair of the seeding clematis, the neat saltiers
of the milk-white cross-wort, the corymbs of the yarrow,
the spreading stems of the pink-and-black flowered
fumitory, the tendrils of the vine, the sinuous sprays
of honeysuckle ; in fine, all that is most dishevelled
and ragged in these naive creatures ; flames and triple
darts, lanceolated, denticulated leaves, stems tormented
like vague desires twisted at the bottom of the soul;
from the womb of this prolix torrent of love that over-
flows, shoots up a magnificent red double-poppy with
its glands ready to open, displaying the spikes of its
fire above the starred jasmine and dominating the in-
cessant rain of pollen, a fair cloud that sparkles in the
air, reflecting the light in its myriad glistening atoms.
What woman, thrilled by the love-scent lurking in the
anthoxanthum, will not understand this wealth of sub-
missive ideas, this white tenderness troubled by un-
tamed stirrings, and this red desire of love demanding
a happiness refused in those struggles a hundred times
recommenced, of restrained, eternal passion. Was not
all that is offered to God offered to love in this poesy
of luminous flowers incessantly humming its melodies
to the heart, caressing hidden pleasures there, unavowed
hopes, illusions that blaze and vanish like gossamer
threads on a sultry night ? "
This last quotation was probably in Sainte-Beuve's /
mind when he spoke of the efflorescence by which
Balzac gave to everything the sentiment of life and
made the page itself thrill. Elsewhere he found the
efflorescence degenerate into something exciting and
dissolvent, enervating, rose-tinted, and veined with every
hue, deliciously corruptive, Byzantine, suggestive of
debauch, abandoning itself to the fluidity of each move-
326 HONORE DE BALZAC
ment. Sainte-Beuve was not an altogether unpre-
judiced critic of the novelist ; but his impeachment can
hardly be refuted, although Brunetiere would fain per-
suade us that the only thing which may be reasonably
inveighed against in Balzac's style is its indelicacy or
rather native non-delicacy. If the Contes Drolatiques
alone had been in question, this lesser accusation might
suffice. But there are the Lost Illusions, the Bachelors
Household, and Cousin Bette, not to mention other
novels, in which the scenes of vice are dwelt upon
with visible complacency and a glamour is created and
thrown over them by the writer's imagination, in such
a way that the effect is nauseous in proportion as it is
pleasurable. The artistic representation of vice and
crime is justifiable only in so far as the mind contem-
plating it is carried out and beyond into the sphere of
sane emotion. True, by considerable portions of the
Comedie Humaine only sane emotions are aroused ; but
these portions are, more often than not, those where-
from the author's peculiar genius is absent. It is in
less conspicuous works, or those in which the didactic
element is too visible — works like the Cure of Tours,
the Country Doctor, Cesar Birotteau, Cousin Pons,
the Reverse Side of Contemporary History that the
eternal conflict of good and evil is so exhibited as to
evoke healthy pity, sympathy, admiration, and their
equally healthy contraries, and also a wider compre-
hension of life.
It is difficult to separate the subject-matter of a
novel from its treatment. Yet a word should be said
of Balzac's widening the limits of admission. His
widening was two-fold. It boldly took the naked
reality of latest date, the men and women of his time
in the full glare of passion and action, unsoftened by
VALUE OF THE WORK 327
the veil that hides and in some measure transforms
when they have passed into history ; and it included
in this reality the little, the commonplace, the trivial.
This innovator in fiction aimed, as Crabbe and Words-
worth had aimed in poetry, at interesting the reader in
themes which were ordinarily deemed to be void of
interest. The thing deserved trying. His predecessors,
and even his contemporaries, had neglected it. An ex-
perimenter in this direction, he now and then forgot
that the proper subject-matter of the novel is man —
man either individual or collective — and spent himself
in fruitless endeavours to endow the abstract with
reality.
When he opined, somewhat rashly, that George
Sand had no force of conception, no power of con-
structing a plot, no faculty of attaining the true, no
art of the pathetic, he doubtless wished the inference
to be drawn that he was not lacking in them himself.
As regards the first, his claim can be admitted
without reserve. Force of conception is dominant
throughout his fiction. It is that which gained his
novels their earliest acceptance. Whether they were
approved or disapproved in other respects, their strong
originality imposed itself on the attention of friends
and enemies alike. One felt then, and one feels now,
though more than half a century has elapsed since they
were produced, that, whatever factitious accretions
clung to them, they came into the world with sub-
stance and form new-fashioned; no mere servile per-
petuation of an effete type, but a fresh departure in
the annals of art.
Especially is this seen in his characterization. His
men and women are most of them put on foot with
an energy of movement in them and an idiosyncrasy
328 HONORE DE BALZAC
of speech and action that has not been surpassed. As
already stated, they generally are not portraits, al-
though his memory was of that peculiar concave
visuality which allowed him to cast its images forth
solidly into space. What he did was to remodel these
images with proportions differing from those of the
reality, magnifying or diminishing them pretty much as
Swift with his Brobdingnagians and Lilliputians ; and,
having got the body of his personage recomposed, with
mental and moral qualities and defects corresponding to
every one of its details — for Balzac was a firm believer
in the corporal being an exact reflection of the spiritual
— he set his mechanisms in motion.^
To call his men and women mechanisms, while yet
acknowledging their intense vitality, may seem a con-
tradiction; but nothing less than this antinomy is
adequate to indicate the fatality of Balzac's creatures.
None of them ever appear to be free agents. Planet-
like they revolve in an orbit, or meteor-like they rush
headlong, and their course in the one or the other
case is guessable from the beginning. Not that change
or development is precluded. The conjuror provides
for large transformation; but the law of such trans-
formation is one of iron necessity, and, when he brings
in at the end his interferences of Providence, they shock
us as an inconsequence. However, though bound by
their weird, his people are extraordinarily various in
1 " A round waist/' he says, '^ is a sign of force ; but women so
built are imperious, self-willed, more voluptuous than tender. On
the contrary, flat-waisted women are devoted, full of finesse, inclined
to melancholy." Elsewhere, he informs us that '' most women who
ride horseback well are not tender." " Hands like those of a Greek
statue announce a mind of illogical domination ; eyebrows that meet
indicate a jealous tendency. In all great men the neck is short,
and it is rare that a tall man possesses eminent faculties."
VALUE OF THE WORK 329
their aspect and doings. It is rare that he repeats
his characters, albeit many of them touch each other
at certain points. The exceptions are caused by his
sometimes altering his manner of characterization and
proceeding from the inside first. This variation goes
to the extent of distinguishing influences of the soil
as well as of social grade and temperament. His
northerners speak and act otherwise than those of
the south or west, and, in the main, are true to life,
despite the author's perceptible satire when depicting
provincials.
Parallel to his vigorous creation of character is the
force with which he builds up their environment.
Here his realism is intense. Indeed, occasionally one
is tempted to credit Balzac with a greater love of
things than of men, yet not the things of nature as
much as things made by men. His portrayal of land-
scape may be fine prose, but contains no pure feeling
of poetry in it, while, in the town, in the house, in the
street, wherever the human mind and hand have left
their imprints, his language grows warm, his fancy
swoops and grasps the significance of detail; these
dumb survivals of the past become eloquent to his
ears; his eyes discover in them a reflecting retina
which, obedient to his command, resuscitates former
contacts, a world buried and now found again. When
attempting the historical novel, in which his persons
are typical rather than individual, he still preserves
this exactitude of local colouring. His descriptions of
places, in fact, in all his books are almost photographs,
and, where change has been slow, still serve to guide
the curious traveller.
In his preface to the Cabinet of Antiques, he
explains how he dealt with his raw material. A young
330 HONORE DE BALZAC
man had been prosecuted before the Assize Court,
and had been condemned and branded. This case he
connected with the story of an ancient family fallen
from its high estate and dwelling in provincial sur-
roundings. The story had dramatic elements in it,
but less intensely dramatic than those of the young
man's case. " This way of proceeding," he says,
" should be that of an historian of manners and morals.
His task consists in blending analogous facts in a
single picture. Is he not rather bound to give the
spirit than the letter of the happenings? He syn-
thesizes them. Often it is necessary to pick out
several similar characters in order to succeed in making
up one, just as odd people are met with who are so
ridiculous that two distinct persons may be created
out of them. . . . Literature uses a means employed
in painting, which, to obtain a fine figure, adapts
the hands of one model, the foot of another, the chest
of a third, the shoulders of a fourth."
The foregoing quotation raises the question of the
significance of the term truth as applied to fiction.
Evidently, it cannot have the same meaning as when
applied to history or biography. In the latter, the
writer invents neither circumstances nor actions, nor the
persons engaged in them, but seeks to know the whole
of the first two exactly as they occurred, and to interpret,
as nearly to life as may be, the third. However, if he
be a philosopher, he will perhaps try to show the in-
timate relations existing between these same persons
and the events in which they were concerned ; and,
in doing so, he will step out of his proper role and
assume one which is less easy for him than for the
novelist to play, since the writer of fiction composes
both his dramatis personos and their story ; and the
VALUE OF THE WORK 881
concordance between them is more a matter of art
than of science.
Still it is possible that neither a novelist's characters
nor their environment shall be in entire agreement
with all observable facts. There may be arrangements,
eliminations, additions, which, though pleasing to the
reader, may remove the mimic world to a plane above
that of the so-called real one. Thus removed, Balzac
judged George Sand's production to be. And we
must confess that, even in Little Fadette, The DeviCs
Pool, and Francois le Champi, it deals with human
experience in a mode differing widely from that which
the author of Eugenie Grandet considered conform to
truth.
As regards the methods of these two rivals, the
claim to superior truth cannot be settled in Balzac's
favour by merely pointing to his realism. Realism tried
by the norm of truth is relative. What it represents of
the accidental in life may be much less than what it
omits of the essential or potential, for these two words
are often interchangeable. In the same object, different
people usually see different aspects, qualities, attributes.
Is one spectacle necessarily true and another false ? It
is certain that George Sand, in her stories of peasant life,
largely uses the artist's liberty of leaving out a great
deal that Balzac would have put in when treating a like
subject. It is certain that from some themes and details
that Balzac delighted in describing she deliberately
turned away, and it is certain also that she introduced
into her fiction not a little of the Utopian world that has
haunted man in his later development without there
being actuality or the least chance of realization to lend
it substance. But Balzac's fiction has, too, its pocket
Utopias, less attractive and less invigorating than
332 HONORE DE BALZAC
Madame Dudevant's, and in his most realistic portrayals
there are not infrequently dream-scapes of the fancy.
The truth that we can most readily perceive in his work
is one which, after all, embraces the ideally potential
in man as well as his most material manifestations. It
is small compared with the mass of what he wrote ; but,
where found, it is supreme.
In constructing plot Balzac is unequal and often in-
ferior. Here it is that his romanticist origins reappear
rankly like weeds, giving us factitious melodrama that
accords ill with his sober harvest of actuality. And his
melodrama has not the merit of being various. It nearly
always contains the same band of rogues, disguised
under different names, conspiring to ruin innocent
victims by the old tricks of their trade.
Then, again, many of his novels have no understand-
able progression from the commencement, through the
middle, to the conclusion. This is not because he was
incapable of involving his characters in the consequences
of their actions, but because things that he esteemed of
greater importance interfered with the story's logical
development. We have episodes encroaching on the
main design, or what was originally intended to be the
main design, which is disaggregated before the end is
arrived at. As a matter of fact, quite a number of his
plots are swamped by what he forces into them with
the zeal of an encyclopaedist. Philosophy, history,
geography, law, medicine, trade, industry, agriculture
enter by their own right. The novelist yields up his
wand, and the pedagogue or vulgarisateur comes for-
ward with his chalk and blackboard. Canalization is
explained at length in the Village Cure : will-making
is discoursed upon in Ursule Mirouet ; promissory notes,
bills of exchange, and protests, not to speak of business
Alfred de Musset and Honore de Balzac
Caricature attributed to Theophile Gautier (1835)
{Collection of M. Adolphe Jullien)
VALUE OF THE WORK 333
accounts, cover pages in the Lost Illusiom ; therapeutics
takes the place of narrative in the Reverse Side of Con-
temporary History ; physiology is lectured upon in the
Lily in the Valley ; Louis Lambert aims at becoming a
second and better edition of the Thoughts of Pascal ;
and in Seraphita we have sermons as long and tedious
as those of an Elizabethan divine. The result is that
even novels containing the presentment of love in its
most passional phases lose their right to the name. At
best they can be called only disparate chapters of fiction ;
at worst, they are merely raw material.
As for his achievement in the pathetic, it is almost
nil. At least, if by pathos we mean that which touches
the heart's tenderest strings. Harrow us, he can ; play
upon many of our emotions, he is able to at will. But,
at bottom, he had too little sympathy with his fellows
to find in their mistakes, or sins, or sufferings, the where-
withal to bring out of us our most generous tears. Those
he wept once or twice himself when writing were drawn
from him by a reflex self-pity that is easily evoked. In
genuine pathos, Hugo is vastly his superior.
Women occupy so preponderant a position in the
Comedy that one is forced to ask one's self whether
these numerous heroines are reproduced with the same
fidelity to nature as are his men. At any rate, they
are not all treated in the same manner. In his descrip-
tions of grand ladies the satiric intention is rarely absent.
Why, it is difficult to say, unless it was that he was
unable to avoid the error of introducing the pique of
the plebeian suitor, and that the satire was an effort to
establish the balance in his favour. ** When I used to
go into high society," he told Madame Hanska, " I
suffered in every part of me through which suffering
could enter. It is only misunderstood souls and those
334 HONORE DE BALZAC
that are poor who know how to observe, because every-
thing jars on them, and observation results from suffer-
ing." In his inmost thought he had no high opinion
of women. Notwithstanding his flattery of Madame
Hanska, he was a firm upholder of the old doctrine of
male supremacy ; and, at certain moments, he slipped
his opinion out, content afterwards to let Eve or another
suppose that his hard words were not spoken in earnest.
One of his would-be witticisms at the expense of the fair
sex was : '' The most Jesuitical Jesuit among the Jesuits
is a thousand times less Jesuitical than the least Jesuitical
woman." The form only of the accusation was new.
How often before and since the misogynist has asserted
that women have no conscience. Be it granted that
Balzac's grand dames often have very little, and some
of his other women also. They are creatures of instinct
and passion susceptible only of being influenced through
their feelings. Yet, as regards the former, Sainte-Beuve
assures us that their portraits in the Comedy resemble
the originals. He says : " Who especially has more
delightfully hit off the duchesses and viscountesses of
the Restoration period ! " Brunetiere accepts this testi-
mony of a contemporary who himself frequented the
salons of the great. Some later critics, on the contrary,
hold that the novelist has given us stage-dames with
heavy graces and a bizarre free-and-easiness as being
the nearest equivalent to aristocratic nonchalance. One
thing is certain, namely, that Balzac was personally ac-
quainted rather with that side of aristocratic society
which was not the better. It was the side bordering
on licentiousness, where manners as well as morals are
easily tainted and vulgarity can creep in. Again, he
creates his women with ^ theory, and, in art, theories
are apt to become prejudices. According to his appre-
VALUE OF THE WORK 335
elation Walter Seott's heroines are monotonous ; they
lack relief, he said, and they lack it because they are
Protestants. The Catholic woman has repentance,
the Protestant woman, virtue only. Many of Balzac's
women repent, and many of those that repent either
backslide or come very near to it. His altogether vir-
tuous women are childish without being children, and
some are bold into the bargain. In fine, his gamut of
feminine psychology seems to be limited, very limited.
Women of the finest mind he neither comprehended
nor cared to understand. They were outside his range.
But what he missed in the whole representation of
the fair sex he made up for by what he invented, as
indeed, too, in his representation of the sterner sex ;
and Jules Janin's account of the matter is not far from
the truth : —
" He is at once the inventor, the architect, the
upholsterer, the milliner, the professor of languages,
the chambermaid, the perfumer, the barber, the music-
teacher, and the usurer. He renders his society all that
it is. He it is who lulls it to sleep on bed expressly
arranged for sleep and adultery; he, who bows all
women beneath the same misfortune ; he, who buys on
credit the horses, jewels, and clothes of all these hand-
some sons without stomach, without money, without
heart. He is the first who has found the livid veneer,
the pale complexion of distinguished company which
causes all his heroes to be recognized. He has arranged
in his fertile brain all the adorable crimes, the masked
treasons, the ingenious rapes mental and physical which
are the ordinary warp of his plots. The jargon spoken
by this peculiar world, and which he alone can inter-
pret, is none the less a mother-tongue rediscovered by
Monsieur de Balzac, which partly explains the ephemeral
336 HONORE DE BALZAC
success of this novelist, who still reigns in London and
Saint Petersburg as the most faithful reproduction of
the manners and actions of our century."
Janin's animus blinded him to the rest, and it is just
the rest of the qualities which converted the ephemeral
success into the permanent. Taine's estimate is more
discursive. He is further removed from polemics.
He says : —
" Monsieur de Balzac has of private life a very deep
and fine sentiment which goes even to minuteness of
detail and of superstition. He knows how to move
you and make you palpitate from the first, simply in
depicting a garden-walk, a dining-room, a piece of
furniture. He divines the mysteries of provincial life ;
sometimes he makes them. Most often he does not
recognize and therefore isolates the pudic and hidden
side of life, together with the poetry it contains. He
has a multitude of rapid remarks about old maids and
old women, ugly girls, sickly women, sacrificed and
devoted mistresses, old bachelors, misers. One wonders
where, with his petulant imagination, he can have
picked it all up. It is true that Monsieur de Balzac
does not proceed with sureness, and that in his numerous
productions, some of which appear to us almost admir-
able, at any rate touching and delicious or piquant and
finely comic in observation, there is a dreadful pell-
mell. What a throng of volumes, what a flight of
tales, novels of all sorts, droll, philosophic, and theo-
sophic. There is something to be enjoyed in each, no
doubt, but what prolixity! In the elaboration of a
subject, as in the detail of style, Monsieur de Balzac
has a facile, unequal, risky pen. He starts off quickly,
sets himself in a gallop, and then, all at once, he stumbles
to the ground, rising only to fall again. Most of his
VALUE OF THE WORK 387
openings are delightful ; but his conclusions degenerate
or become excessive. At a certain moment, he loses
self-control. His observing coolness escapes; some-
thing in his brain explodes, and carries everything far,
far away. Hazard and accident have a good share in
Monsieur de Balzac's best production. He has his
own manner, but vacillating, fidgety, often seeking to
regain self-possession."
How much one could wish that, instead of pro-
ducing more, Balzac should have produced less. With
a man of his native power and perseverance, what
greater perfection there might have been ! Certainly,
no defect is more patent in the Comedie Humaine than
the trail of hasty workmanship, the mark of being at so
much a line. Strangely, the speed with which he wrote
furnished him with a cause for boasting. More properly,
it ought to have filled him with humiliation. Many
litterateurs are compelled to drive and overdrive their
pens. But, if they have the love of letters innate in
them, it will go against the grain to send into the
world their sentences without having had leisure to
polish each and all. Examples have already been
given of the short time spent over several books of the
Comedy. There is no need to repeat these or to add
to their names. Occasionally, the result was not bad,
when, as with Cesar Birotteau, the subject had been
long in the novelist's head. This, however, was the
exception. The fifty-five sheets once composed in a
single week, and the six thousand lines once reeled
off in ten days, were probably invented as well as set
on paper within the periods stated. No doubt, much
was altered in the galley proofs; but the alterations
would be made with the same celerity, so that they
risked being no improvement either in style or matter.
y
338 HONORE DE BALZAC
Balzac, indeed, was aware of the imperfections arising
from such a method ; and he not infrequently strove to
correct them in subsequent editions. The task might
perhaps have been carried out fully, if the bulk of his
new novels had not been continually growing faster
than he could follow it with his revision.
The commercial compromises that he consented to
were still more injurious to the artistic finish of some
of his later pieces of fiction. For instance, when the
Employees was about to come out in a volume, after
its pubUcation a^ a serial, the length was judged to
be insufficient by the man of business. He wanted
more for his money. What did Balzac do ? He
searched through his drawers, pitched upon a manu-
script entitled Physiology of the Employee, and drilled
it into the other story. Of these patchwork novels The
Woman of Thirty Years Old is the worst. Originally,
it was six distinct short tales which had appeared at
divers dates. The first was entitled Early Mistakes;
the second. Hidden Suffeiings ; the third. At Thirty
Years Old; the fourth, God's Finger ; the fiiih, Two
Meetings; and the sixth and last. The Old Age of
a Guilty Mother, In 1835, the author took it into
his head to join them together under one title. The
Same Story, although the names of the characters
differed in each chapter, so that the chief heroine
had no fewer than six appellations. Not till 1842
did he remedy this primary incoherence, yet without
the removal of the aliases doing anything towards
bestowing consistency on the several personages thus
connected in Siamese-twin fashion. To-day, any one
who endeavours to read the novel through will proceed
from astonishment to bewilderment, and thence to
amazement. Nowhere else does Balzac come nearer to
VALUE OF THE WORK 889
that peculiar vanity which fancies that every licence
is permissible to talent.
In his chapter on the social importance of the
Comedie Humaine, Bruneti^re tries to persuade us that,
before Balzac's time, novelists in general gave a false
presentation of the heroes by making love the unique
preoccupation of life. And he seems to include
dramatists in his accusation, declaring that love as
a passion, the love which Shakespeare and Racine
speak of, is a thing exceeding rare, and that humanity
is more usually preoccupied with everything and any-
thing besides love ; love, he says, has never been the
great affair of life except with a few idle people.
Monsieur Brunetiere's erudition was immense, and the
nights as well as days he spent in acquiring his
formidable knowledge may in his case have prevented
more than a passing thought being given to the solici-
tation of love. If the eminent critic had been as
skilled in psychology as he was in literature, he would
have been more disposed to recognize that, amidst
all the toils and cares of life, love, in some phase,
is after all the mainspring, and that, if it were elimi-
nated from man's nature, the most puissant factor
of his activity would disappear. Love is part of the
huge sub-conscious in man ; and the novelist, in making
the events of his fiction turn upon it, does no more
than follow nature.
However, it is not exact that all novelists and
dramatists, or even the majority of them, before Balzac's
time made love the sole preoccupation of their heroes.
What they did rather — in so far as their writing was
true — was to give a visible relief to it which in real lifp
is impossible, since it belongs to the invisible, inner
experience. Nor is it exact that Balzac consistently
340 HON ORE DE BALZAC
assigns a secondary place in his novels to love. He
does so in his best novels, but not in some that he
thought his best — The Lily in the Valley and Sera-
phita for example. The relegation of love to the
background in those novels which happen to be his
masterpieces was caused by something mentioned in a
preceding chapter, to wit, that Balzac never thoroughly
felt or understood love as a great and noble passion.
And love, with him, being so oddly mixed up with
calculation, it was to be expected he should succeed
best in books in which the dominant interest was
some other passion — an exceptional one. If money
plays, on the contrary, such an intrusive role in his
novels, its introduction was less from voluntary,
reasoned choice than from obsession. He deals with
this subject sometimes splendidly, but, at other times,
he wearies. Had money filled a smaller part of his
work, the work would not have lost.
In fine, with its beauties and its uglinesses, its
perfections and its shortcomings, the Comedy is the
illumination cast by a master-mind upon the goings-out
and comings-in of his contemporaries, the creation of
a more universal and representative history of social
life than had been previously written. Having con-
siderable ethical value, it is worth still more on account
of the ways it opens towards the fiction of the future.
CHAPTER XVI
THE INFLUENCE
Balzac's influence during his lifetime was, with but
few exceptions, exercised outside his own, novehst's
profession. The sphere in which it made itself chiefly
felt was that of the cultured reading public, and the
public was, first and foremost, a foreign one. History
repeated itself. To Honor^ d'Urfe, the author of the
Astree, in the sixteenth century, while living in Pied-
mont, a letter came announcing that twenty-nine prin-
cesses and nineteen lords of Germany had adopted the
names and characters of his heroes and heroines in the
Astree, and had founded an academy of true lovers.
Almost the same thing occurred to the nineteenth-
century Honore de Balzac. For a while, certain people
in Venetian society assumed the titles and roles of his
chief personages, playing the parts, in some instances,
out to their utmost conclusion.
Sainte-Beuve, who, in 1850, drew attention to this
curious historical analogy, went on to mention that, in
Hungary, Poland, and Russia, Balzac's novels created a
fashion. The strange, rich furniture that was assembled
and arranged, according to the novelist s fancy, out of
the artistic productions of many countries and epochs,
became an after-reality. Numerous wealthy persons
prided themselves on possessing what the author had
merely imagined. The interior of their houses was
adorned a la Balzac,
341
342 HONORE DE BALZAC
One evening at Vienna, says his sister, he entered
a concert-room, where, as soon as his presence was
perceived and bruited around, all the audience rose in
his honour; and, at the end of the entertainment, a
student seized his hand and kissed it, exclaiming : " I
bless the hand that wrote Sei^aphita,'" Balzac himself
relates that, once travelling in Russia, he and his
friends, as night was coming on, went and asked for
hospitality at a castle. On their entrance, the lady of
the house and some other members of the fair sex vied
with each other in eagerness to serve the guests. One
of the younger ladies hurried to the kitchen for refresh-
ment. In the meantime, the novelist's identity was
revealed to the chatelaine, A lively conversation was
immediately engaged in, and, when the impromptu
Abigail returned with the refreshment, the first words
she heard were : " Well, Monsieur Balzac, so you
think — " Full of surprise and joy she started,
dropped the tray she had in her hands, and every-
thing was broken. " Glory I have known and seen,"
adds the narrator ; " wasn't that glory ? "
It was more. It was power wielded for good or
evil, like that of every other great man, be he statesman,
or priest, or artist. The conviction of possessing this
power caused Balzac to complain with sincere indigna-
tion of those who charged him with being an immoral
writer. " The reproach of immorality," he said in his
preface to the second edition of Pere Goriot, " which
has ever been launched at the courageous author, is the
last that remains to be made, when nothing else can be
urged against a poet. If you are true in your portrayal,
if, by dint of working night and day, you succeed in
writing the most difficult language in the world, the
epithet immoral is cast in your face. Socrates was
THE INFLUENCE 843
immoral, Jesus Christ was immoral. Both were perse-
cuted in the name of the societies they overthrew or
reformed. When the world wishes to destroy any one,
it taxes him with immorality."
This argument is beside the question. It does not
settle whether the apologist's influence upon the men
and women of his generation and beyond — an influence
which, in his lifetime, was incontestable, and may be
deemed potent still, to judge by the extent to which
his books are read — was and is good or bad. Balzac's
personality is here only indirectly involved. His indi-
vidual character might have been better or worse
without the conclusion to be drawn being affected.
Good men's influence is not always good, nor bad men's
influence always bad. Intention may be inoperative,
and effect may be involuntary.
Balzac claimed the right to speak of all conduct, to
represent all conduct in his fiction; and we shall see,
farther on, that he imposed his claim upon those who
followed him in literature. But, if he anticipated
reality — and this is acknowledged — if he led society to
imitate his fiction, if his exceptional representations
tended, with him and after him, to become general
or more frequent in one or another class of society, he
must be considered morally responsible for the result.
It has already been remarked, in the preceding chapter,
that there are two ways of reproducing reality in
literature and art, one of them favouring, not through
didacticism but through emotion, the creation in the
mind of a state of healthy feeling, thought, and effort ;
the other, that sort of fascination with which the serpent
attracts its victims. It is certain that Balzac did not
adequately take this into account, certain also that in
parts of his Comedy, the secret, unconscious sympathy
844 HONORlfi DE BALZAC
of the author with some of his sicklier heroes and
heroines could not and did not have that dynamic
moral action which he vainly desired.
Of the chief French novelists or litterateurs who
were his contemporaries, critics are inclined to esteem
his influence most evident on George Sand and Victor
Hugo. Brunetiere, indeed, begins with Sainte-Beuve.
But the similarities discoverable between the author
of Volupte and the author of the Comedie Humaine
were present in Sainte-Beuve's work at a period when
Balzac was only just issuing from obscurity, and appear,
moreover, to be due to temperament. In the case
of George Sand, the inference is based partly on the
praise she meted out to Balzac in her reminiscences.
Brunetiere specifies the Mai^quis de Villemer as the
one proved example of imitation. But this novel was
written in 1861, eleven years after Balzac's death ; and,
in so far as it differs from Mauprat and the earlier
books, whether La Petite Fadette or Consuelo, can be
shown to be the result of a natural and independent
evolution.
As regards Victor Hugo, on the contrary, there is
plenty of prima facie evidence that he largely utilized
Balzac's material and method ; and there is evidence
also that Balzac utilized, though in a less degree, the
subjects developed by Hugo. The reciprocal borrow-
ing is easy to explain, both men, in spite of their
fundamental peculiarities, having much in them that
was common — imagination difficult to control, fondness
for exaggeration, language prone to be verbose and
turgid, research of devices to astonish the reader.
Hugo's Miserables is a monument of his fiction that
owes much to Balzacian architecture. The realism of
the latter author is converted without difficulty into
^<:.'
Eu>{ene Sue
Victor Hugo
Alexandre Dumas
H. de Balzac
The Eagles of Thought and Style
From a Comic Drawing by Tony Johannot
THE INFLUENCE 845
the formers romanticism, or, rather, the alloy of
romanticism is so considerable in Balzac^s work that
there is little conversion to make. Ferragus and
Vautrin are prototypes of Valjean, just as Valjean*s
Cosette exploited by Madame Thdnardier is an adapta-
tion of Ferragus' daughter or Doctor Minoret's Ursula.
The prison manners and slang of the Miserables inevit-
ably recall those of Vautiiris Last Incarnation, while,
on the other hand, Hugo's salon ultra reappears in the
Cabinet of Antiques. And the analogies present them-
selves continually. One might almost say that the
whole of the Comedic Humaine suggested things to its
future panegyrist, who wrote his greatest novel in the
years consecutive to Balzac's death. Of course, Hugo's
borrowings, being those of a man of genius, were not
made use of servilely. Like Shakespeare and Moliere,
the author of the Miserables metamorphosed and
enhanced what he took.
Balzac's major influence on literature began as soon
as he was dead. And the men he reacted on soonest
were the dramatists ; not through his own plays, which
figured so small in his achievement, or, if through them
at all, then only as they applied the same principles as
his novels. The stage, being ever en vedette, is best
situated to interpret the signs of the times, and is like-
wise more open to the solicitations of novelty, more
ready to try new methods. A noticeable defect of the
French drama, in the first half of the nineteenth
century, was the pronounced artificiality of its characters
and plots. Whatever the kind of play exhibited, the
same stereotyped noble fathers, ingenuous maidens,
coquettes, and Lotharios strutted on the boards. AVhat-
ever else changed, these did not. Only their costumes
differed. Moreover, the adventures in which the dramatis
346 HONORE DE BALZAC
personce displayed themselves contained always the
same sort of tricks for bringing about the denouement.
Even the language had its own set style, outside which
nothing was appropriate. All this was classicism in its
most degenerate form, an art from which original in-
spiration was banished to the profit of a much inferior
species of skill. Be it granted that the drama, more
than any other kind of literature, is liable to the en-
croachment and dominance of such artificiaUty on
account of its foreshortening in perspective. Be it
granted, also, that sometimes a new movement will
intensify an old habit. The Romanticists, though re-
formers in other respects, did little or nothing to render
the stage more real. Their lyricism, in front of the
footlights, needed buskins and frippery, or, at any rate,
fostered them, as the pieces of Hugo and de Vigny
proved.
The younger Dumas, Emile Augier, Halevy and
Becque — with a crescendo that in the last of the four is
somewhat harsh — diverged from the traditional path,
and in their plays put men and women whose motives
and conduct were nearer to the humanity of their
audience. The departure from old lines in these
dramatists is patent ; and, after discounting the part
that may have been temperamental or contingent on
some other cause, there remains the larger share to
attribute to Balzac's influence. Dumas' Dame aux
Cavielias, originally staged in 1852, was a timid start in
the new direction. The theme, that of the courtezan
in love, was a favourite one with the classical school,
and much of the ancient style and tone pervades it ; yet
its atmosphere is a modern one, the expression of its
sentiment is modern, too, and the accessories are sup-
plied with an eye to material and moral exactitude.
THE INFLUENCE 347
The same author's Question d' Argent, composed a few
years later, was a more direct tribute to the modifying
power of the Comedie Humaine, It was Balzac's
Mercadet the Jobber remodelled with a larger stage
science. Hypnotized subsequently by the piece a these
(and not to his advantage) Dumas went off at a tangent,
whereas Augier, once engaged in the newer manner
with his Gendre de Monsieur Poirier, persisted in it
with each of his succeeding pieces, flattering his model by
resurrection after resurrection of the Comedy s principal
actors, Bixiou and Lousteau in Giboyer and Vernouillet,
Balthazar Claes in the Desronceretz of Maitre Guerin.
Ludovic Halevy apparently wished every one to perceive
what he owed to the father of French realism. Finding
in the Petty Bourgeois a Madame Cardinal whose comic
personality and peculiar moral squint suited one of his
plays, he adopted her entirely, name and all, altering
only what her more recent surroundings required.
Henri Becque digested Balzac rather than imitated him.
One feels in reading his Corbeaux that it is a disciple's
own work. The master's virtues and some of the
disciple's faults are everywhere present, both in the
subject and in the treatment. We have the same
world of money and business that shows so big through-
out the Comedy, an unfaithful partner and lawyer intro-
ducing ruin into the house of the widow and orphan.
The practice of legal ruse and robbery — in these things
Balzac had rung the changes again and again. AVhat
Becque added were sharpness of contrast, dramatic
concentration, bitterer satire, and likewise greater art.
If one may hazard a guess at the reasons that con-
vinced the older school of playwrights of their error, there
are two by which they must have been struck — the
artistic possibihties of the real suggested by the Coviedie
348 HONORE DE BALZAC
Humaine, and the prescience — one might say the in-
tuition— it exhibited of things that were destined to
reveal themselves more prominently in the latter half
of the nineteenth century. And in this respect Balzac
in no w^ise contributed to what he foresaw and, so to
speak, prophesied — the growing stress of the struggle
for life in domains political, social, financial, industrial,
the coming of uncrowned kings greater in puissance
than monarchs of yore, the reign of not one despot but
many, the generalization of intrigue, the replacement
of ancient disorders by others of equal or increased
virulence and harder to remedy, hundred-headed hydras
to combat, most difficult of herculean tasks. The re-
flection of all this in the Coinedy was calculated to
impress at its hour, and the hour arrived. Men looked
at the counterfeit presentment and wondered why no
one had recognized these things sooner. From that
moment, the reputation of the Comedie Humaine was
made. Perhaps, after all, in such connection, the one
or two of Balzac's plays that went so resolutely off the
old lines — the Resources ofQuinola and Mer cadet, — may
have served, in remembrance, despite their insignifi-
cance beside the novels, which were the true drama, to
awaken the attention of professional dramatists, especi-
ally as one after another story of the Comedy was
dramatized. But it was the fund of observation and the
leaven of satire which startled, aroused, and ultimately
set the stage agog. Not even the lighter forms of com-
position were left unaffected. Labiche, in the vaude-
ville style, with his Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon and
La Cagnotte, gave his audience, behind his puppets, the
touch of present reality, the sensation of existent follies.
The relative slowness with which the novels of
Balzac's younger contemporaries and his successors were
THE INFLUENCE 349
penetrated with realism was partly due to the lasting
effect of George Sand's idealistic fiction. As we have
seen, Balzac himself was reacted upon by it to some
extent ; but he yielded against his will, and the result
in his case was a bastard one. She whom he called his
brother George survived him for more than twenty
years, and continued to the last to add to her reputa-
tion, so that naturally the impetus she lent to the
idealistic movement was long before it was spent, if
indeed one may say that the impetus has altogether
been lost. Adepts like Octave Feuillet, with his
Roman dJun Jeune Homme Pauvre, and Victor Cher-
buliez, with his Comte Kostia^ endeavoured to per-
petuate idealism or at least to recreate it in other forms.
And then there were independents, like Flaubert, who,
with Madame Bovary, passed realism by on his way to
naturalism. Yet it is worth remarking that Flaubert
made a sort of volte face in 1869, and wrote his Educa-
tion Sentimentale, in which, under the pressure of
simple circumstance, the hero descends gradually from
the soaring of youth's hopes and ambitions to the dull,
dun monotony of mature life, with nothing left him
save the iron circle of his environment. Here the dis-
illusionment is that of all Balzac's chief dramatis per-
sonce. Moreover, the minor characters of Madame
Bovary may well owe something to the Comedy,
These doctors, chemists, cures, prefectoral councillors
and country squires would possibly never have been
depicted but for their having already existed for twenty
years in the predecessor's gallery of portraits.
There is no need to call the de Goncourts and Guy
de Maupassant imitators because they bear a strong
stamp of Balzac's influence. They have greater art, a
finer style, and, above all, more pathos than the earlier
350 HONORE DE BALZAC
master was capable of. But they are true disciples,
as likewise Feuillet in his later manner with Monsieur
de Camors, De Maupassant's short stories, exempli-
fying his severely objective treatment at his best, are
Balzac's purified of their lingering romanticism, and his
Bel Ami is a modernized Lucien de Rubempre. And,
if the resemblances are closer between works of the
de Goncourts less known, such as Charles Deviailly, or
Manette Salomon and the Lost Illusions, Peter Grassou,
the Muse of the County, yet the means employed by
the two brothers to endow with life and form Renee
Mauperin and Germinie Lacerteux, fixing a back-
ground, stumping the outlines, filling in details, adding
particularities, all this was Balzacian method, insufficient
forsooth, in the domain of psychology, but furnishing
idiosyncrasy in plentiful variations.
When we come to Alphonse Daudet, time enough
has elapsed for realism to evolve into naturalism so-
called. Naturalism is realism stark-naked — the dissect-
ing-room, and a good deal besides, which Monsieur
Zola illustrated well but not wisely. Daudet, for-
tunately for his reputation, was a naturalist sui generis,
with a delicate artistic perception altogether lacking to
the author of the Rougon-Macquart series. He was
also an independent, but willing to take lessons in his
trade. And how much he learnt from Cousin Bette
may be judged by his Numa Boumestan and Froment
Jeune et Rissler aine. There are close analogies also
between the best of Balzac's fiction and the sombre
realism of the Evangeliste, based on tragic facts that
had come under Daudet's personal notice. Of the two
realisms Daudet's is certainly the more genuine, with
its lambent humour that glints on even the saddest of
his pictures.
THE INFLUENCE 851
In neither the naturalistic school of fiction, nor
the psychological, in so far as the latter is represented
by Bourget, has Balzac's influence been a gain. Bour-
get has borrowed Balzac's furniture, his pompous didac-
ticism, his occasional indecency — in fine, all that is least
essential in the elder's assets, without learning how to
breathe objective life into one of his characters. Zola
borrowed more, but mainly the unwholesome parts, trun-
cating these further to suit his theory of the novel as a
slice of life seen through a temperament, and travesty-
ing in the Rougon-Macquart scheme, with its burden
of heredity and physiological blemish, Balzac's cum-
brous and plausible doctrine of the Comedy, Both
novelists made a mistake in arrogating to themselves
the role of the savant. Neither of them seemed to
understand that there are limits imposed on each pro-
fession by the mode of its operation. For Zola the
novel was not only an observation working upon the
voluntary acts of life, it was an experiment — like that
of the astrologers whom Moses met in Egypt — pro-
ducing phenomena artificially, and allowing a law of
necessity to be deduced from the result. And for
Balzac the novel was something of the same kind — a
synthesis of every human activity framed by one who,
as he proudly claimed, had observed and analysed
society in all its phases from top to bottom, legisla-
tions, religions, histories, and present time. What
Balzac did in fiction and what he thought he did are
separated by a gulf which could only have been
bridged over by the long and painful study of a
man surviving for centuries. His scientific knowledge
was superficial in nearly every branch. It was his
divination which was great. And divination is not
omniscience.
352 HONORE DE BALZAC
An offshoot from the naturalistic school apparently,
but derived more truly from the Comedie Humaine, is
that decadent, pornographic art, of which Balzac would
have been ashamed, had he lived to see the vegetation
that grew up from the seeds he had sown without
knowing what they would bring forth. In Zola's
novels the plant was already full grown ; its earlier
appearance as the slender blade was Champfleury's
vulgar satire, the Bourgeois de Molinchart, More
recently the blossom has revealed its pestilential rank-
ness so plainly that no one can be deceived as to its
noxious effect.
Where Balzac's influence is likeliest to remain
potent for good is in the domain of history. He was
not altogether an initiator here, having learnt from
Walter Scott in the one as in the other capacity ; but
he developed and focussed what he had received; he
added to it, and made it a factor in the historical
science. After him historians began to assign a more
important place in their narrations and chronicles to
the manners and interests of the people, patiently seek-
ing to assemble and situate everything that could relate
them exactly to the great political and other public
events which would be nothing but names without
them. The de Goncourts, in their History of French
Society during the Revolution and under the JDirectoire,
applied this method with all the zeal of fresh disciples,
and with hardly enough discretion. Taine's Origins of
Contemporary France abdicates none of the older
historian's r61e, but its background is Balzacian.
Among the later writers who have taken up the
historian's pen, Masson, Len6tre, and Anatole France
illustrate the newer principles, each with a difference,
but all excellently, the first in his Napoleon^ the second
THE INFLUENCE 858
in his Old Houses, Old Papers, the third in his Joaii
of Arc,
It can scarcely be disputed that an entrance of
realism into French literature would have occurred in
the second half of the nineteenth century, had there
been no Balzac. Some other novelists or writers,
themselves reacted upon by the scientific spirit, would
have set the example in their own way, if not with the
achievement of the author of the Cornedij. On the
other hand, it is certain that Balzac, had he put his
hand to another treatment of fiction, would neverthe-
less have created a school. His tremendous force
would have channelled into the future, whatever the
nature of its current. As Sainte-Beuve well says, he
wrote what he wrote with his blood and muscles, not
merely with his thought, and such work backed by
genius was sure to tell, notwithstanding its defects,
the latter even to some extent aiding.
Having partly a bibliographic value, and partly
confirming the statements above as to Balzac's influence,
the following details concerning theatrical adaptations
of some of his novels may serve as a supplement to
this chapter.
The first made was produced at the Vaudeville in
1832, and was based on the story of Colonel Cliabert,
which, under another title. The Compromise, had finished
as a serial in the March Artiste of the same year. In
Balzac's tale — the one of the novels that contains most
real pathos — the Colonel, who is a Count of the Empire,
is left for dead on the battlefield of Eylau, with wounds
that disfigure him dreadfully. Rescued, and sojourning
for a long while in German hospitals, he ultimately
returns to France, but only to find his wife, who
z
354 HONORE DE BALZAC
believes him dead, married to another nobleman.
Treated as an imposter by everybody save a former
non-commissioned officer of his regiment, he falls into
poverty and wretchedness, and dies in a hospice,
whilst his wife continues to live rich and honoured.
Jacques Arago and Louis Lurine, who composed the
play, altered the denouement. The husband is pen-
sioned off by his wife, who, however, suffers for her
hard-heartedness, being afterwards deserted by her
second husband. A second version of the same subject
was produced twenty years later at the Beaumarchais
Theatre by Faulquemont, and, in 1888, a third at
Brussels.
Eugenie Grandet was staged as a comedy, at the
Gymnase in 1835, by Bayard and Paulin, who dealt
with the plot very freely. Eugenie, happening to lay
hold of the letter telling of her uncle's intention to
commit suicide, begs her father to send money enough
to Paris to prevent the catastrophe. On her father's
refusing, she steals one of the old man's strong-boxes
and gives it to the son of a local notary, who hurries
to the capital with it and reaches there in time to save
Charles' father from ruin and death. As Charles has
also fled with his uncle's mare on the same errand, the
miser thinks he is the thief, and obtains a warrant for
his arrest. But Eugenie avows everything except the
name of her accomplice. Explanations occur, now
that Guillaume Grandet is saved ; Charles comes out
of prison and marries Eugenie, whose dowry is the
money that has served so good a purpose. With Boufle
in the chief role, the Misers Daughter, as the piece was
called, had great popularity, and was several times
revived.
In 1835 also, was produced Pere Goriot at the
THE INFLUENCE 855
Varidtds, there being three collaborators in the drama-
tizing, Th^aulon, de Comberousse, and Jaime. Their
adaptation possesses the same characters as the novel,
but the roles are considerably modified. Victorine
Taillefer becomes Goriot's illegitimate daughter, who
is provided for by her father, yet is brought up without
ever seeing him and without the least inkling of her
relationship to him. But Vautrin has discovered that
a sum of five hundred thousand francs is deposited on
her behalf with a notary; and he goes to Grenoble,
where she is living, brings her back with him to Paris,
and presents her to Goriot as a poor girl, his intention
being to ask her in marriage at the proper moment.
The retired tradesman takes her in, and she remains
with him when his other daughters marry, and during
the time they pass in ungratefully stripping him of his
fortune. At last his sons-in-law, to salve their con-
sciences, offer to place him in an almshouse. Goriot
indignantly refuses, and tells them he has another
daughter whom he has made rich, and that he will
go and live with her. Now is Vautrin's opportunity.
He informs Goriot who Victorine is, and, since she has
given her affections to the young Rastignac, he, like a
good fellow, renounces his own matrimonial project
and assists the old father in marrying the lovers happily.
The part of Goriot was acted by Vernet, who did entire
justice to Balzac's great creation. Simultaneously at
the Vaudeville, another and poorer version of the novel
was given ; and, in 1891, at the Theatre Libre, Tabarand
experimented a third piece, this last being a faithful
reproduction of the novel. Antoine scored a big success
in the part of Goriot, rendering the death-bed scene
with remarkable power and skill.
In 1836, La Qrmde Breteche, with its vengeful
356 HONORE DE BALZAC
husband who walls up his wife's lover alive, tempted
Scribe and another playwright, Melesville. In their
arrangement, there is a virtuous wife whose husband
is a bigamist. On learning the truth, she consents to
receive the visit of Lara, an admirer of hers, whom she
loves ; and, when the Bluebeard, Valdini, surprises his
victim and proceeds to the immurement, his first wife
slips in most conveniently and whisks him off, leaving
Valentine free to marry Lara.
It is curious to notice how, in almost every in-
stance, the first adapting dramatists transformed
Balzac's tragedies into comedies, softening the stern
facts of life and its injustices, and meting out the
juster rewards and punishments which the novelist's
realism forbade.
In Antony Beraud's Gars, a play drawn from the
Chouans and performed at the Ambigu-Comique in
1837, the hero and heroine, instead of dying, are saved
by a political amnesty decreed by Napoleon ; and the
curtain falls to the cry of Vive VEmpereur. More
than fifty years later, in 1894, the same theatre gave
a close rendering of the dramatic portions of the
Chouans, due to the collaboration of Berton and Blavet,
the tragic ending being preserved, with all the effects
properly belonging to it.
Commonplace, like the Gars, were the arrange-
ments of the Search for the Absolute, in 1837, and
Cesar Birotteau in 1838. The former was staged
under the bizarre title, A-\-Mx=^0 + X, or the
Dream of a Savant, The authors. Bayard and Bieville,
concealed their identity under an algebraic X as well ;
and their piece, which made Balthazar Claes a Parisian
chemist and a candidate to a vacant chair in the
College de France, failed to attract at the Gymnase,
Balzac's Famous Stick
THE INFLUENCE 357
in spite of BoufFe's talent and the redemption of
Balthazar.
Cesar Bii^otteau was performed at the Panthdon
Theatre, which was demolished in 1846. The love-
story of Popinot and Cesarine, which is so briefly
sketched in the novel, assumes chief importance in
Cormon's adaptation, and, of course, C^sar does not
die.
Scribe borrowed largely from the Comedie Hu-
viaine. His Sheriff libretto for Halevy's music at
the Opera Comique in 1839 was a transmogrification
of Master Cornelius, Balzac's Cornelius is Louis XL's
money-lender, who lives with his sister in an old
mansion, next to a house which the King's natural
daughter, Marie de Sassenage, occupies with her
husband, the Comte de Sainte-Vallier. The old
money-lender, perceiving that his gold is disappearing,
has had four of his apprentices hanged on suspicion.
The like fate now threatens Marie's lover, Georges
d'Estouteville, who, in order to see her more safely,
had persuaded Cornelius to let him stay in his dwelling
one night. Marie appeals to the King to spare her
lover's life, and Louis, on investigating the matter,
discovers that Cornelius is a somnambulist, and has
been robbing himself and burying his gold. On being
told of this, the old money-lender has no peace of
mind, fearing the King will take all his treasure, and
ultimately cuts his own throat. In Scribe's parody,
for a parody the piece virtually is, the scene is laid in
England. John Turnel, the Sheriff of London, is the
somnambulist, and he suspects his own daughter and
his cook of stealing his money. But, differing from
Cornelius, he accepts the situation when the truth is
revealed to him under circumstances that make him
358 HONORE DE BALZAC
as ridiculous as the spectre of Tappington in the
Ingoldshy Legends ; and, as a comic opera generally
ends happily, he consents to the marriage of his
daughter Camilla, and of Keat, the cook, with their
respective swains.
An English setting was likewise given by Scribe
to his play of Helene, suggested by Balzac's Honorine,
which was staged at the Gymnase in 1846. Hdlene
is a young orphan who draws and paints for her living,
and has the good fortune to have all her canvases
bought at advantageous prices by a rich dealer named
Crosby. But suddenly she learns that the dealer is
acting in behalf of a certain Lord Clavering, and,
fearing some underhand designs, she refuses to keep
the money that has been paid her. Smitten by her
disinterestedness as well as by her beauty. Lord
Clavering would gladly marry her, but is bound by
his word plighted to Lord Dunbar's daughter. How-
ever, the latter elopes with another nobleman, and
Clavering marries Helene. This pretty theme, de-
veloped by the actress Rose Ch6ri, made a huge hit.
Nearly as great was the actress's success at the
same theatre in 1849, when she played the principal
role in Clairville's Madame Marneffe, a version of
Cousin Bette, but very much modified, since Bette is
eliminated altogether, and Valerie MarnefFe, instead of
being a depraved creature, is merely a clever woman
of the world, who avenges her father's ruin on the
Baron Hulot and Crevel, they being mainly responsible
for it. When Balzac was at Wierzchownia, on his last
visit, he wrote to his mother asking her to go to the
theatrical agent's in order to receive his third of the
receipts produced by the piece. These author's
royalties must have helped his purse considerably.
I
THE INFLUENCE 359
In the year after the novelist's death, the applauded
representation of Mercadet, at the Gymnase, stimulated
other managers of theatres to go on exploiting his
Comedy. In September, the Shagreen Skin, arranged
by Judicis, was played at the Ambigu-Comique, with
tableaux of almost literal imitation, yet bringing to life
again, in the denouement, the chief dramatis personce,
and making the whole drama a dream.
At the Comedie FranQaise, in 1853, Barriere and
de Beauplan produced a five-act prose play drawn
from the Lily in the Valley* The novel was an
awkward one to dramatize, there being very few
elements in it capable of yielding situations for the
stage. So the result was poor. A better thing was
made in 1859 by de Keraniou out of the Sceaux Ball,
On it he based an agreeable piece entitled Noblesse
Oblige, with a delicately interpreted love scene in it
which met with appreciative audiences at the Odeon.
One more example, that of Cousin Pons, may be
given to close the list of these adaptations, which are
fully related in Edmond Bird's interesting book dealing
with certain special aspects of Balzac's life and work.
Cousin Pons was staged at the Cluny Theatre in 1873.
Alphonse de Launay, the author of the play, keeps
to his text fairly well; but he adds a love episode
which thrusts the friendship of the two musicians into
the second place. Moreover, after the death of Pons,
Schmucke lives to inherit his fortune and the Camusots
are checkmated.
CHAPTER XVII
CONCLUSION : THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS
It may be affirmed, without thereby disparaging the
Comedie Humaine, that Balzac's personaUty is even
more interesting than his work ; and this is a sufficient
excuse for returning to it in a last chapter and try-
ing, at the risk of repetition, to make its presentment
completer by way of supplement and summary.
The interest does not arise alone from the contrasts
of his foibles, which, forsooth, are nearly always comic
— when they are not tragic. We are just as much
attracted by the contrasts of his qualities, and by the
interplay of the former with the latter — the victories
and defeats, the glimpses of immense possibility, the
struggles between temperament and environment, all
these having a fullness of display rarely found in human
nature.
Besides the portraits in painting or sculpture exe-
cuted of the novelist by Deveria, Boulanger, David
d' Angers, and others, some mention of which has already
been made, there was one begun by Meissonier, who
unfortunately did not finish it. Monsieur Jules Claretie
states that the canvas on which it was drawn was subse-
quently covered by the artist's Man choosing a Sword,
to-day in the Van Prael collection at Brussels. About
Boulanger's picture Thdophile Gautier has a good deal
to tell us in his article of 1837, published in the Beaux
Arts de la Presse ; and it scarcely agrees with Balzac's
360
I
THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS 361
condemnation of the portrait as a daub, when he saw
the canvas some years later in Russia. Remarking on
the difficulty of rendering the novelist's physiognomy,
on account of its mobility and strange aspect, Gautier
gives it as his opinion that Boulanger succeeded perfectly
in seizing the complex expression which seemed to
escape all efforts of the brush. The description is a
long one ; and any one desirous of comparing with each
other the impressions received by Balzac's contemporaries
who came into close contact with him would do well to
read it after this description by Lamartine. In the
tenth of his lectures on Literature during the year 1856,
the author of Jocelyn, speaking of what he had observed,
said : —
"His exterior was as uncultivated as his genius.
It was the shape of an element : big head, hair scattered
over his collar and cheeks like a mane that scissors
never trimmed, lips thick, eyes soft but of flame ; cos-
tume clashing with every elegance ; clothes too small
for his colossal body ; waistcoat unbuttoned ; linen
coarse ; blue stockings ; shoes that made holes in the
carpet; an appearance as of a schoolboy on holiday,
who has grown during the year and whose stature has
burst his garments. Such was the man that by himself
wrote a whole library about his century, the Walter
Scott of France, not the Walter Scott of landscape and
adventure, but what is much more prodigious, the
Walter Scott of characters, the Dante of the infinite
circles of human life, the Moliere of read comedy, less
perfect but more fertile than the MoHere of played
comedy. Why does not his style equal his conception ?
France would then have two Molieres, and the greater
would not be he who lived first."
Returning to the same subject in his hundred
362 HONORE DE BALZAC
and sixth lecture, eight years later, Lamartine con-
tinued : —
" He bore his genius so simply that he did not feel
it. He was not tall, and, however, the lighting up of
his face and the mobility of his body prevented his
small stature from being noticed; but this height
swayed like his thought. Between the ground and
him there appeared to be a certain margin ; now, he
stooped down to pick up a sheaf of ideas ; now, he
stood tiptoe to follow the soaring of his thought into
the infinite. He was big, thick-set, square-shouldered-
and-hipped. His neck, chest, body, thighs, and limbs
were mighty. There was much of the ampleness of
Mirabeau, but no heaviness ; there was so much soul
that this carried that lightly. The weight seemed to
give him force and not to take it from him. His short
arms gesticulated with ease ; he talked as an orator
speaks. His voice resounded with the somewhat
savage energy of his lungs, but it had neither rough-
ness nor irony nor anger. His legs, on which he
waddled a little, carried his bust smartly; his hands,
plump and broad, expressed his whole thought by
their waving movements. Such was the man in his
stalwart frame. But, in front of the face, one forgot
the framework. The speaking countenance, from
which it was impossible to detach one's gaze, both
charmed and fascinated the beholder. His hair floated
over the forehead in large locks ; his black eyes pierced
like arrows blunted by benevolence ; they entered
yours confidently as if they were friends ; his cheeks
were full, rosy, and strongly coloured ; the nose was
well modelled, yet a trifle long; his lips, gracefully
limned, ample and raised at the corners; his teeth,
unequal, broken, and blackened by cigar-smoke ; his
THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS 363
head often inclining towards the neck, then proudly
raised during speech. But the dominating trait of
his face, more even than intelligence, was communi-
cative kindness. He charmed your mind when he
spoke, and, when not speaking, he charmed your
heart. No passion of hatred or envy could have been
expressed by this physiognomy ; it would have been
impossible for him not to be kind. Yet it was not
a kindness of indifference or nonchalance, as in the
epicurean face of La Fontaine ; it was a loving kind-
ness, intelligent with regard to itself and others, which
inspired gratitude and the outpouring of the heart, and
defied a person not to love him. A gay childishness
was the characteristic of this figure, a soul on holiday
when he laid down his pen to forget himself with
his friends. . . . But, when I saw him some years
later, what gravity did that which was serious not
inspire in him ? what repulsion did his conscience not
evince towards evil ? What difficult virtues did his
apparent joviality not conceal ? "
This tribute of an intimate, as generous as that of
Hugo and perhaps more sincere, may pass without
comment in so far as it concerns the outer man. On
the moral side its exactitude may be questioned, both
for what it omits and what it asserts. The omissions
are considerable. The assertions deal too exclusively
with that conduct which people generally exhibit in
their most amicable relations with each other. Balzac's
kindness of heart came out in not a few experiences
of his life ; but deeper than these ephemeral bursts
of generosity were selfishnesses that were enormous
and persistent. The impulsive energy, the huge
boyishness, the appetites physical and mental that
age never trained nor chastened were phenomena
364 HONORE DE BALZAC
that all his friends noted, though the manifestations
differed.
Some lines of Gozlan's, in his Balzac in Slippei^s,
form a good sequel to Werdet's account of the Gar-
gantuan dinner. "Balzac drank nothing but water,"
says Gozlan, but this must have been on Fridays ;
"and ate but little meat. On the other hand, he
consumed great quantities of fruit. . . . His lips palpi-
tated, his eyes lit up with happiness, at the sight of a
pyramid of pears or fine peaches. Not one remained
to go and relate the rout of the others. He devoured
them all. He was superb in vegetable Pantagruelism,
with his cravat taken off, his shirt unbuttoned at the
neck, his fruit-knife in hand, laughing, drinking water,
carving into the pulp of a doyenne pear. I should
like to add — and talking. But Balzac talked only
little. He let others talk, laughed at intervals, silently,
in the savage manner of Leather-stocking, or else, he
burst out like a bomb, if the sentence pleased him.
It needed to be pretty broad, and was never too broad.
He melted with pleasure, especially at a silly pun
inspired by his wines, which were delicious."
Another portrait drawn of the novelist by a
contemporary, interpreting the inner man, but less
flattering to the great delineator of character, is not
free from satire and narrowness ; but some of the traits
it outlines are closely and accurately observed. In
his Histoire du Quarante et Unieme {Academy) Fauteuil,
Arsene Houssaye wrote : " Monsieur de Balzac — that
haughty rebel who would fain have been a founder,
that refined Rabelais who discovered a woman where
Rabelais had discovered only a bottle — Monsieur de
Balzac dreamed of the gigantic, yet without being
an architect of Cyclopean times. Consequently, when
THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS 365
he tried to build his temple of Solomon, he had neither
marble nor gold enough to his hand. For his human
comedy he often lacked actors, and had to resign him-
self frequently to making the understudies play. It
is the fashion to-day to raise Balzac to the level of
the dominating geniuses of the world, such as Homer,
Saint Augustine, Shakespeare and Moliere ; but for
the mind that has accurate vision, how many rocks
are overturned on this Enceladus, what staircases are
forgotten in his Tower of Babel, as in his Jardies
house ! Balzac was half a woman, as George Sand
was half a man. He had a woman's curiosities, he had
also her contradictions. Balzac believed himself re-
ligious ; but his church was the witches' sabbath, and
his priest was not Saint Paul but Swedenborg, if not
Mesmer ; his Gospel was the conjuror's book, perhaps
that of Pope Honorius — Honorius de Balzac. He
believed himself a politician, and endeavoured to
continue de Maistre; he fancied he was glorifying
authority, whereas he realized the perpetual apotheosis
of force ; his heroes were named indifferently Moses
or Attila, Charlemagne or Tamerlane, Ricci, the
General of the Jesuits, or Robespierre, the profaner of
the sanctuary, Napoleon or Vautrin. The Histoi^y of
the Thirteen will remain as the grandiose and monstrous
defence of personal force defying the social. But will
it not remain also, by the side of Hegel's philosophy,
as an eloquent codicil to those testaments of individual
sovereignty signed by Aristophanes, Montaigne, and
Voltaire ? He believed himself a spiritualist, and,
sublime sawbones, he studied only in the medical
amphitheatre. He entered a drawing-room only
through the kitchen and the dressing-room. He was
always ignorant of that fine saying of Hemsterhuys :
366 HONORE DE BALZAC
'This world is not a machine but a poem.' He
beheved himself a painter of manners, and he invented
the manners. His women who are so vividly alive,
Madame de Langeais or La Torpille, have never been
intimate with any other company than that of
Monsieur de Balzac. As other great artists, he
created his world, a strange world which has consoled
and welcomed all the outcasts of the real world, an
impossible world which has more than once painted
the actual one in its likeness. What charming women
of the provinces have since developed into a Eugenie
Grandet, a Madame de Mortsauf, a Madame Claes !
. . . What was wanting to Balzac in the hell of life,
whose every spiral he descended, was virginity in love
and ingenuousness in poetry. He always lost himself
in the difficult places of style ; and himself wept over
the lack. When he wrote the Search for the Absolute,
he was in quest of the ideal; but the ideal is that
which one has inside one's self, just as love is. The
studies of the chemist and alchemist, of the doctor
and jurist, do not light the flame of Prometheus."
These quotations do not exhaust the list of portraits
emanating from Balzac's fellows, but they adequately
illustrate the varying views, which were many. In-
deed, like the sculptor who produces several studies
of the same model and shows a different interpretation
each time, critics have presented us, in more than one
instance, with descriptions of the novelist, at an earlier
and a later date, that contain important discrepancies.
Balzac was an enigma because he was not always
the same personality to himself. Both his energies
and his desires carried him outside the limits in which
a man's individuality is usually manifested. Despite
Monsieur Houssaye, one may even sympathize, though
THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS 367
incredulous, with admirers that would have him to be
a universal genius, unfortunately thwarted by fate —
one who else might have opened up all the avenues
of knowledge that humanity can ever penetrate. This
persuasion was undoubtedly his own ; and it partly
explains his Faustus curiosities leading him now and
again into illegitimate and unwholesome experiments,
of which we get some glimpse in his books and
correspondence.
That he could have succeeded in other careers, the
medical one, for example, the painter's or sculptor's
perhaps, or the mechanical inventor's, seems likely;
but his impulsiveness, his exuberance, and his poor
financial ability would have been hindrances in direc-
tions where success depends largely on exact calculation,
method, and detail. In political life, his brilliancy
would assuredly have sufficed to procure him pro-
minence in opposition. As a minister he would have
inevitably fallen a victim to the inconsistencies of his
own attitude — inconsistencies due to the fact that his
judgments were intuitional and instinctive, with pre-
judices reacting on them, too numerous and too strong
to allow him to weigh things fairly and deliberately.
Moreover, his mind was too much engrossed by the
sole picturesqueness of phenomena to delve deep
enough beneath them for their essential relations.
This is why it happens that his arguments are often
worse than his convictions, the latter being inherited,
in general, and at least having the residuary wisdom
of tradition together with the additional force of his
common sense. Thus, on the eve of universal suffrage,
he felt rather than saw the danger of giving the ignor-
ant man a power equal to that of the intelhgent one,
and of handing over the supreme decision in the vital
368 HONORE DE BALZAC
concerns of a country to unsafeguarded majorities less
qualified for the task than ancient oligarchy or auto-
cracy. But he had nothing of worth to suggest, no
alternative save the return to abuses of the grossest
kind which experience had proved to lead to revolution.
His ponderous declaration : " I write by the light
of two eternal truths, religion and the monarchy," was
a sort of cheap-jack recommendation of the so-called
philosophy in his Comedie Humaine. His Catholic
orthodoxy, if orthodoxy it were, savoured more of
politics than religion. He did not wish the old
ecclesiastical organization and faith of France to be
changed, because he saw in it a useful police agency for
restraining the masses. As for his Royalism, which
had a smack of Frondism in it, he stuck to it because
it accorded with his conservative, eclectic tastes, and
not because he had worked it out as the best theory
of government. Such dissertations as appear in his
writings, on either the one or the other subject, have
nothing more original about them than can be found
in the most ordinary election speech or pulpit discourse.
And in the realm of pure speculative thought he
was not great. Beyond the limits of the visible, his
intuition failed him; so that he floundered helplessly
when not upheld by the doctrines of others, which,
since he did not understand them, he adapted to his
purpose but awkwardly. Whether there were latent
faculties in him that might have developed with train-
ing, it is impossible to affirm or deny; however, we
may be forgiven the doubt. From a mind so forceful,
the native perception, though uncultured, should have
issued in something better than Lambert or Seraphita.
Still, there is this to be said, that a man whose eyes '
were so constantly bent on facts, whose gaze was j
I
THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS 369
always spying out details which escaped the common
observation, was embracing a plane parallel, if inferior,
to that which was covered by a Plato.
The title of the author of the Comedy to be called
a philosopher can be defended only on the ground of
his adding a new domain to the rule of science. He
was not the discoverer of the law of cause and effect.
Nor was he the one in his own country who did the
most towards demonstrating the interdependence of
the various branches of knowledge, this honour being
reserved to Comte. But the transference of the minute
causalities of life into fiction was systematized by him.
He made the thing an artistic method, using it with
the same power, though not the same chasteness, as
George Eliot after him. His employment was not
very logical — how could it be when the guiding
mind was in chronic fermentation ? He gives us this
contradiction that human thought is at once the
grandeur and destruction of life — an opinion imbued
with ecclesiasticism, confusing thought with passion.
It is passion alone which disintegrates ; and, m the
Comedie Humaiiie, such monomaniacs as Grand et,
Claes, and Hulot are destroyed not by their thought
but their desire.
Balzac's pessimism is not philosophic. In him it
was not the despair of an intellect that had worn itself
out in vainly seeking for the solution of the riddle of
the universe, vainly striving after a theory that should
reconcile nature's brute law with the human demand
for justice and immanent goodness. By original tempera-
ment an optimist, he changed and grew pessimistic with
the untoward happenings of his agitated career, and
under the fostering of his native self-esteem. Possibly
too, as Le Breton asserts, a secondary cause was his
2 A
370 HONORE DE BALZAC
having imbibed the pretentious doctrines of the Romantic
school, the disdains of the young artistic bloods of 1830,
who held that their clan composed the loftier, super-
human race, the only one that counted. Berlioz carried
this folly of pride to its highest pitch. In his Memoirs,
he declared that the public (of course excluding himself)
were an infamous tag-rag-and-bob-tail. The people of
Paris, he protested, were more stupid and a hundred
times more ferocious, in their caperings and revolu-
tionary grimaces, than the baboons and orang-outangs
of Borneo. Balzac at times adopted and expressed
similar opinions. Gozlan relates that one day the
owner of Les Jardies said to him in the attic of his
hermitage : " Come, let us spit upon Paris." The
novelist imagined that talents of the kind he possessed
ought to be admitted to every honour ; and his hatred
of the Revolution and Republicanism was more because
he believed they were inimical to art — and his art —
than because they had cast down a throne. His bitter-
ness was to some extent excusable, for he was exploited
much during his lifetime, and had, even to the end, to
bend his neck to the yoke. But he also belonged to
the class of exploiters by his mental constitution.
Could he have had his way, all the men of letters
around him would have been in his pay, writing for
their bare living and contributing to his fame. In this
connection there is an anecdote narrated by Baudelaire,
in the Echo des Theatres of the 25th of August 1846,
and referable to the year 1839.
The Jardies hermit had a bill of twelve hundred
francs to meet ; and for this reason he was sad as he
walked up and down the double passage of the Opera
— he, the hardest commercial and literary head of the
nineteenth century ; he, the poetic brain upholstered
i
THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS 371
with figures like a financier's office; he, the man of
mythologic failures, of hyperbolic and phantasmagoric
enterprises, the lanterns of which he always forgot to
light ; he, the great pursuer of dreams for ever in quest
of the absolute ; he, the funniest, most attractive as
well as the vainest character of the Comedie Humaine ;
he, the original, as unbearable in private life as he was
delightful in his writings ; the big baby swollen with
genius and conceit, who had so many qualities and so
many failings that one feared to attack the latter for
fear of injuring the former, and thus spoiling this
incorrigible and fatal monstrosity.
At length, however, his forehead grew serene and
he went towards the Rue de Richelieu with sublime
and cadenced step. There he entered the den of a rich
man (Curmer), who received him with due honour.
" Would you like," quoth he, " the day after to-
morrow to have in the Siecle and the Debats two smart
articles on the French depicted by themselves, the
articles to be signed by me ? I must have fifteen
hundred francs. The affair is a grand one for you."
The editor, unlike his confreres, found the proposal
reasonable, and the bargain was concluded on the spot,
with the stipulation that the money should be paid on
the delivery of the first article. Leaving the office,
the visitor returned to the passage of the Opera ; and
there he met a diminutive young man of shrewish,
witty countenance (Edouard Ourliac), known among
journahsts for his clownish verve.
'' Edouard, will you earn a hundred and fifty francs
to-morrow ? "
" Won't I, if I get the chance ! " answered the
latter.
" Then come and drink a cup of coffee."
872 HONORE DE BALZAC
'* To-morrow," explained his principal, " I must
have three big columns on the French depicted by
themselves, and I must have them early, for I have
to copy and sign them."
Edouard hastened away to his task, while the
novelist went and ordered a second article in the Rue
de Navarin.
The first article appeared two days later in the
Siecle, and was signed, strangely enough, neither by the
little man nor by the great man, but by a third person
known in Bohemia for his tom-cat and opera-comique
amours (Gerard de Nerval). The second friend was
big, idle, and lymphatic. Moreover, he had no ideas ;
he knew only how to thread words together like pearls ;
and, as it takes longer to heap up three long columns
of words than to make a volume of ideas, his article
appeared only several days later in the Presse.
The twelve-hundred-francs debt was paid. Each
one was perfectly satisfied, except the editor, who was
not quite. And this was how a man of genius discharged
his liabilities.
Balzac's individuality is one of those that inevitably
raise the question as to how far genius and creative
imagination are made up of will-power, how far what
is produced by great talent is sub-conscious inspiration
virtually independent of effort. Although Shelley con-
fines his assertions on the subject to poetry, he never-
theless seems to imply that creation of any kind has
little to do with the will. "The mind in creation,"
he says, *' is as a fading coal, which some invisible influ-
ence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory
brightness; this power arises from within, like the
colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is
developed, and the conscious portions of our natures
THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS 378
are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.
Could this influence be durable in its original purity
and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of
the results ; but, when composition begins, inspiration
is already on the decline." The case of Balzac suggests
that the sort of genius Shelley had in his thought is
the exception rather than the rule. The author of
the Comedy himself asserts that great talents do not
exist without great will. *' You have ideas in your
brain ? " he says. " Just so. I also. . . . What is the
use of that which one has in one's soul if no use is made
of it ? " . . . " To conceive is to enjoy ; it is to smoke
enchanted cigarettes ; but, without the execution, every-
thing goes away in dream and smoke." . . . ** Constant
work is the law of art as it is that of life; for art
is creation idealized. Consequently, great artists and
poets do not wait for orders or customers ; they bring
forth to-day, to-morrow, continually."
It may be, after all, that the difference is one of
those verbal ones to which Locke draws attention in
his Essay on the Human Understanding, Will-power
is partly an inheritance and partly an acquisition.
And acquired qualities are always less puissantly exer-
cised, less effective in the results obtained. Even in
poetry it would appear that, without will to unlock
the door, fine faculties that are dormant may never
make their existence known. Balzac gives us an ex-
ample of a native will that was for ever rushing through
his being and arousing to activity first one and then
another of his native powers. And, if the total accom-
plishment was not conform to the tremendous libera-
tion of force, it was because there was circumstance
harder than will and the intershock of energies that ran
counter to each other.
374 HONORE DE BALZAC
In fine, alas ! there is something absent from the
man which would have both beautified himself and
added a saner beauty to his work — the pursuit of
those finer ideals which mean consistent devotion to
duty and broad sympathy with human nature, irrespec-
tive of nation, colour, and position, in its yearnings and
in its fate. Fascinated by material aims, worshipping
the Napoleonic epopee to the extent of framing his
conduct by it, measuring the happiness of existence
rather by its honours and furniture than by its moral
attainments, he missed the first poetry of love as he
missed the last wisdom of age. This limitation of
the man makes itself sorely felt in his writings,
where we, more often than not, tread a Dante's
Inferno, unrelieved by the brighter glimpses and
kindlier impulses that still are found in our world
of self-seeking and suffering.
INDEX
Abb^ Birotteau, 79
Abelard and Heloise idyll, 164
Abrantes, Duchess d', 69, 70
Academie Fran9aise, 9, 186, 187,
217 ; Balzac's candidature to, 238
Adieu, The, 299
Adolphe, 10
Agoult, Madame d', 169, 224, 316
Aiglemont, Madame d', 314
Aix, 76, 80, 82
AlbeH Savarus, 218, 219, 248, 315
Ambigu-Comique theatre, 356, 359
Amours, Balzac's, 100, 101, 102
Amusements of the bourgeois class, 5
Analytic Studies, 311
Ancelot, Madame, 4
Anecdote of Balzac and Curmer, 371,
372
Anecdote of Balzac and the Great
Mogul, 86
Anecdote of Chronique de Paris, 145
,, „ Balzac's idea of farming,
194, 195
Anecdote of Balzac and keeper of
Ville d'Avray, 201
Anecdotes by Henry Monnier con-
cerning Balzac, 85, 86
Anecdote of hypnotism, 223
„ „ Jardies House, 168
,, ,, pastry-cook's shop, 195,
196
Anecdotes of school life, 26, 27,
28
Anecdote of trick played by " Lions,"
Qb, 66
Anecdote of Z. Marcas, 197, 198
Anglaises pour rire, 5
Anglomania, 4
Angouleme, 74, 76, 82
Anna Mniszeck, 98, 198
Annecy, 80
Antagonism between Balzac and
George Sand, anecdote, 246, 247 |
375
Antoine, 355
Appetite and tastes of Balzac, 364
Appony, Count d', 142
Arabian Nights, 72
Arachnitis attacks Balzac, 230
Arago, Emmanuel, 118
„ Etieune, 44
,, Jacques, 354
Argow, the Pirate, 46^
Ariosto, 15
Aristocracy of Boulevard Saint-Ger-
main, 3, 4
Aristocracy of Vienna contrasted with
French, 141
Aristophanes, 365
Arnim, Madame d', 228, 229
Art for art's sake, 319
Artificiality of French stage in early
nineteenth century, 345, 346
Artistic representation of vice, 326
Assize Courts, 254
Assonvillez, Monsieur d', 53, 55
Astree, 341
Atala, 88 ; nickname for Madame
Hanska, 253
Atheist's Mass, The, 143
Attila, 365
Auber, 248
Aubernon, Madame, 224
Aubusson carpets, 109
Augier, Emile, 346, 347
Auguste, the valet, 107, 132, 164
Augustine, Saint, 365
Autour de la Table, by George Sand,
119
Bachelors Household, A, 220, 221,
317, 326
Baden-Baden, 253
Balthazar, cartomancer, 210, 223
Balzac and his mother, 76, 77, 78
,, burns Madame Hanska's et-
ters, 267
376
INDEX
Balzac defends his method against
George Sand, 262
Balzac described by himself, 69, 70
,, ,, „ Madame dePom-
mereul, 60, 61
Balzac in slippers, 364
Balzac scolds Madame Hanska, 251,
252
Balzac seeks wife, 44
Balzac's absent-mindedness, 92
„ absorption in his characters,
91,92
Balzac's abuse of his sister Laure,
245
Balzac's accident at Aix, 80
, , and his wife's incompatibility,
290
Balzac's bankruptcy, 56, 57
„ belief in magnetism, 81
„ birth -certificate, 17
,, brother Henry, 32, 117, 152,
203
Balzac's budget, 117
„ correspondence, 14
,, deficiencies, 367, 374
„ dramatic compositions, 271
et seq.
Balzac's earlier letters, 47, 50, 58, 59,
62, 66, 67, 69, 76, 140, 143
Balzac's egotism, 363
„ father, 18, 19, 20, 21, 56
,, final illness, 291
,, first acquaintance with Ma-
dame Hanska, 96, 97, 98
Balzac's first novels, 46
„ first steps in literature, 39
et seq.
Balzac's grandmother, 35
„ hatred of Republicanism and
Revolution, 370
Balzac's ideas of marriage, 75, 76
„ individuality, 372
,, influence on history, 352
„ literary training, 15
„ many-sided talent, 367
,, method of work, 75
,, money operations with Ma-
dame Hanska, 258
Balzac's mother, 17, 19, 21, 22, 29,
30, 33, 43, 45, 56, 81, 117, 173,
196, 203, 204, 205, 244, 297
Balzac's Pantagruelian dinner, 125
„ paper-making scheme, 87
„ pessimism, 369
Balzac's plan of the Comedie Humaine,
91
Balzac's political doctrines, 68, 69
,, printing and publishing en-
terprise, 52 et seq.
Balzac's puff of Shagreen Skin, 71, 72
„ quarrel with Madame Han-
ska, 267
Balzac's rhapsodies while proof-cor-
recting, 83
Balzac's scheme for authors' copyright,
87
Balzac's scheme for exploiting the
Mniszech forests, 270
Balzac's schooldays, 23 et seq.
,, scientific knowledge, 351
„ sister Laure, 19, 22, 23, 27,
34, 45, 48, 49, 53, 57, 62, 75, 101,
129, 171, 204, 218, 220, 244
Balzac's sister Laurence, 32, 43, 152,
203
Balzac's thought and philosophy, 311,
368, 369
Balzac's Treatise of the Will, 31, 32
„ will-power, 373
„ writing compared with that
of George Sand, 331
Barbey d'Aurevilly, 8, 98
Barbier, printer, 54, 56, 104
Baroche, 295, 296
Barriere, 359
Barthelemy Abbe, 11, 306
Batailles, Rue des, 65, 134, 135
Battle ofAusterlitz, 82, 90
Baudelaire, 254 ; anecdote of Balzac,
370
Bayard, playwright, 232, 354, 356
Bayeux, 44
Bazancourt, Hotel de, 130
Beatrix, 250, 316
Beaujon House, 264, 265, 266, 289
„ ,, description of, 267,
268
Beaujon House, modified after Bal-
zac's death, 269
Beaumarchais, 35, 87
„ theatre, 354
Beaumont, Madame de, 2
Beauplan, de, 359
Beauseant, Madame de, 315
Bechet, Madame, 104, 105, 152
Becque, Henri, 346, 347
Beginning in Life, A, 220
Bel Ami, 350
INDEX
377
Belgiojoso, Princess de, 224
Bellina, 228, 229
Belloy, de, 142, 158, 178, 198, 300
Be'ranger, 6, 7, 73, 238
Be'raud, Antony, 356
Bergounioux, Jules, anecdote, 116
Berlioz, 235, 370
Berny, Madame de, 50, 51, 52, 56,
57, 58, 75, 102, 152, 210, 215, 245,
315
Bertall, 262
Bertha Repentant, 111
Berthoud, 74
Berton, 356
Berzelius, 123
Be'thune, 144, 146, 157
Beyle, Henri. See Stendhal
Bianchon, 127, 293
Bieville, 356
Bilboquet, 253, 263, 266
Bire, Edmond, 359
Birotteau, Abbe, 33
Bixiou, 316, 347
Blavet, 356
Blondet, 154
Bocage, 169
Boccaccio, 110
Boehm, Jacob, 81
Bohain, Victor, 130, 154
Bonald, 215, 238
Bonaparte, Prince Roland, 134
Bonnard, Mademoiselle, 210
Bonnet, Abbe', 33
Bonnet, Charles, 302
Borel, Mademoiselle, 98, 224, 242
Borget, 89
Borrowing money, Balzac's, 77, 284
Bossuet, 215
Bouchardon, 244
BoufFe, 267, 354, 357
Boulanger, Louis, 143, 225, 360, 361
Bourgeois of Paris, 245
Bourgeoisie, 7
Bourget, Paul, 351
Bourse, The, 299
Brain, Balzac's theory of, 255, 256
„ fever, Balzac's, 287
Brazil, 195
Bretonne, Restif de la, 11
Bridau, Joseph, 220, 317
„ Philippe, 221
Brillat-Savarin, 63
Broglie, Duke de, 4
Brothers of Consolation, The, 259
Brucker, Raymond, 144
Brugnol, Madame de, 203
Brunet, 5
„ Widow, 135, 165
Brunetiere, 151, 177, 312, 326, 334,
339, 344 ; and preface
Brunne, Claire, 153, 316
Buffon, 302
Bug-Jargal, 46
Buisson, tailor, 130, 193, 297
Buloz, m, 105, 117, 124, 136, 147
Burgraves, The, 224
Byron, 46, 78
Cabinet of Antiques, The, 117, 329,
330, 345
Calamatta, 206
Calderon, 276
Caleb Williams, 14
Calmann-Levy, 301
Calvinist Martyr, The, 236
Cambrai, 74
Campenon, 238
Canaletti, 284
Canalis, 248, 316
Candide, 72, 73
Canel, Urbain, 53
Carraud, Madame, 68, 75, 89, 93, 129,
140, 169, 288, 301
Cassini, Rue de, 62, 134, 164, 169
„ „ description of house,
106, 107, 108
Castries, Duchess de, 52, 73, 102, 206,
315
Castries, Duchess de, trick played on
Balzac by, 165, 166
Catherine de Medici, 236, 311
Catherine de Vivonne, 237
Catholicism, Balzac's, 215
„ glorified by Balzac, 185,
186
Catholicism, advocated by Balzac, 257
Catholic Priest, The, 110
Causeries du Lundi, 120
Cave, Monsieur, 194
Celibacy, Balzac on, 198
Celibates, The, 198
Centenarian, The, 46
Cerfbeer and Christophers Repertory,
314
Cervantes, 15
Cesar Birotteau, 36, 161 et seq., 315,
317, 326, 356, 357
Chaillot, Rue de, 134, 165, 202
378
INDEX
Chaix d'Est-Ange, solicitor, 323
Chalon-sur-Saone, 253
Chamber of Deputies, Balzac's candi-
dature for, 74, 76, 115
Champfleury, 27, 276, 352
Chapelain, letter to Doctor, 120
Characterization in Balzac's novels,
313, 314, 327, 328
Charles X., 7
Charpentier, 87
Chartreuse de Parme, 13, 189, 190
Chasles, Philarete, 8, 235
Chastity, Balzac's doctrine of, 100,
101
Chateaubriand, 4, 10, 27, 124, 154
Chaucer, 110
Cheap fiction in early nineteenth cen-
tury, 49
Chenedolle, 2
Cherbuliez, 349
Chevalier, 235
Chevalier of Malta, picture, 262, 263
Chevet's menu, 132
Children. Balzac's, 103, 267
Chopin, 206, 226
Choses Vues, 294
Chouans, The, 60, 61, 207, 225, 356
Chronique de Paris, 144, 152
„ „ „ anecdotes of, 145,
146
Clairville, 858
Claretie, Jules, 360
Clarissa Harlowe, 13
Classification of novels, 307, 308, 309
„ )i ft explanation of,
310, 311
Classification of novels, arbitrary, 311
Clement de Ris, 207
Cluny Theatre, 359
Code of Honest People, The, 317
Coffee, Balzac's drinking of, 75, 129
Cogniard, Theodore, 278
Cogniet, 226
Coligny, 143
Colomes, Madame, 254
Colonel Chabert, 35, 79, 80, 353, 354
Comberousse, de, 355
Comedie Fran9aise, 279, 280, 282,
359
Comedie Humaine, 300, 301, 302, 303
„ „ nature of plan of,
320
Comin, Mother, 38
Commerce journal, the, 207
Commercial compromises, Balzac's,
338
Composition, Balzac's method of, 123,
124
Comte, Auguste, 369
Cone, Balzac's theory of, in the novels,
310
Connell, O', 247
■ Conservateur, The, 140 >
Constable, Archibald, 141
Constant, Benjamin, 10, 237
Constituent Assembly, The, 283
Constitutionnel, The, 7, 8, 154, 283
Consuelo, 225
Contes Drolatiques, 140, 326
CoDper, Fenimore, 15, 195, 223
Coquecigrue, 40
Corheauoc (The), 347
Corinne, 10
Cormon, 357
Cornaline cup, 284
Coruejo-Duque, 268
Corporal and spiritual, 328
Correggio, 230
Corsica, 171
Country Doctor (The), 69, 82, 88, 89,
90, 105, 156, 211, 257, 286, 326
Courtiers, The, 118
Cousin, 6, 35
Cousin Bette, 254, 258, 259, 261, 265,
310, 316, 317, 326, 350, 358
Cousin Pons, 258, 259, 265, 268, 273,
310, 317, 326, 359
Coypel, 256
Crabbe, 327
Critical and Anecdotal Dictionary of
Paris Signboards, 55
Cromwell, 41 et seq., 47, 49
Crowned with flowers, Balzac, 145
Curate of the Ardennes, The, 49
Cure of Tours, The, 17, 79, 299, 321,
326
Curtius, 5
Cuvier, 4, 29, 247, 302, 303
Dablin, The'odore, 51, 297
Daffinger, 97
Daguerreotype, 218
Dame aux CameliaSy 346
Dantan, 143
Dante, 300, 361, 374
Date of Balzac's death, 295
Dates of Balzac's novels, 308, 309, 310
Daudet, Alphonse, 350
INDEX
379
Daumier, 7, 8
David, sculptor, 31, 217, 360
David Sechard, 54, 226
Davin, Felix, 301
Death-bed of Balzac, 294, 296
B^bats, The, 8, 154, 194, 233, 245, 279,
371
Debtors' Prison, caricature, 179
Debts, Balzac's, 170, 196, 216
Decadence, Balzac's, 164, 166
Decamps, 225
Delacroix, 167, 206, 225, 317
Delahaye, Mademoiselle, 23
Delannoy, Madame, 242, 298
Delaroclie, 225
Delavigne, Casimir, 296
Dennery, Adolphe, 281
Deschamps, Emile, 6
Desert Attachment, A, 81
Desmousseaux, 199
Desnoyers, 6
Deveria, 53, 360
DeviPs Pool, The, 331
Diaries of Two Young TTiw*, 172, 211
Dickens, 128
Diderot, 12, 15
Dilecta, The, 55, 57, 78, 211, 254.
See also Maidame de Berny
Diogenes, 86
Discouragement, Balzac's, 164
Distraint on Balzac's house, 168, 200
Dom Gigadas, 46
Don Philip and Don Charles, 118
Dorval, Madame, 277, 280
Double Family, A, 299
Dramatic qualities, Balzac's, 212, 282
„ schemes, Balzac's, 276
Dresden, 230, 251, 279, 288
„ vases, 243
Dress, Balzac's, 108
Droll Tales, 110, 111, 317. See also
Contes Drolatiques
Dubufe, 246
Ducange, Victor, 6
Ducis, 2
Duckett, William, 144, 146 ; anec-
dote of, 115, 116
Ducray-Duminil, 11, 12
Dudevant, Madame. See George
Sand, 119, &c.
Dudley, Lady, 151
Dumas, Alexandre, the elder, 12, 86,
148, 1.55, 191, 207, 213, 238, 252,
274, 279, 295
Dumas, Alexandre, the younger, 238,
346, 347
Dumersan, 6
Dupotet, magnetizer, 223
Dupre, Jules, 225
Duras, Duchess de, 4
Durer, Albert, 263
Dutacq, 188
Early novels by Balzac, 44, 45, 46, 49
Earnings of Balzac, 117
Edgar Allan Poe, 161
Edict of Nantes, 18
Education Sentimentale, 349
Egreville, de 1', 44
Empire society, 2, 3
Employees, or Superior Woman, 176,
176, 338
English girl and Balzac, Story of, 196
Enigma of Balzac's character, 366, 367
Entente cordiale, origin of word, 243
Entragues (d'), de Balzac, 64, 107
Environment of Balzac's characters
in novels, 329
Episode under the Terror, 34, 81
Esoteric doctrine, Balzac's, 138
Essay on the Human Understanding,
373
Esther, 226, 259, 314
Etex, 218
Eugenie Grandet, 74, 88, 92 et #69., 99,
122, 163, 232, 354
Evangeliste, V, 350
Eve, Balzac's love-letter to, 99, 100
Excommunicated Man, The, 46
Fadno Cane, 39, 153, 169, 160, 161
False Mistress, The, 316
Fatality of Balzac's creatures, 328
Faulquemont, 354
Faust, 78
Fayette, Madame de la, 10
Ferragus, 89
Ferry, Gabriel, on Balzac's relations
with Madame Hanska, 251
Fessart, Auguste, 43, 77
Feuillet, Octave, 9, 349, 360
Fielding, 13
Finot, 154
Firm of Nucingen, 175, 176, 177, 316
Fitz-James, Duke de, 62, 80, 116, 149
Flaubert, 323, 349
Flora Macdonald, 207
Florence, 172
380
INDEX
Fontaines, Madame de, 10
Fontemoing, Monsieur, 31
Force of conception in Balzac, 327
Forsaken Woman, The, 69, 315
Fortune-tellers consulted by Balzac,
210
Fortune's, Rue, 269, 276
Fougeres, 60, 61
Fourier, 20
Fragonard, 2
France, Anatole, 323, 352
Franck, Dr., 286
Francois le Champi, 331
Franconi circus, 6
Frapesle, 129, 169
Frascati, 2
Frayssinous, 6
Froissart, 320
Froment Jeune et Rissler aine, 350
Froment-Meurice, 284
Funambules Theatre, 126
Funeral of Balzac, 295, 296
„ oration by Hugo, 296, 297
Gaite Theatre, 231, 279
Gamharttf 175
Gambling experiment, Balzac's, 126
Gargantuan dinner, 125
Gatien, Saint, Cathedral of, 33
Gautier, Theophile, 100, 144, 157,
161, 174, 187, 193, 199, 267, 273,
291, 320, 360, 361
Gavarni, 7, 188
Gavault, 203, 226
Gay, Delphine, Madame de Girardin,
109, 110, 115, 116, 130, 187, 197,
242, 252, 256, 273
Gazette des Ecoles, The, 179
Gendelettres, 233
Gendre de Monsieur Poirierj 347
Geneva, 80, 100, 153
Genoa, 170, 172
Genoese merchant, story of, 171
Geoffroy, 281
George Eliot, 96, 369
Germinie Lacerteux^ 350
Gertrude, 276, 277
Gigoux, 98, 298
Gil Bias, 9, 10
Gina, La, 190
Girardin, Emile de, 8, 64, 114, 224,
231, 317
Girardon, 244
Giraud, 295
Girl with the Golden Eyes, 135, 300
Glory (anecdote of Balzac in Russia),
342
Gobseck, 259
Godwin, 13, 14
Goethe, 13, 78, 229
„ and Bellina, 229
Goldsmith, 13, 14
Goncourts, The de, 349, 350, 352
Gosselin, 15, 71, 77, 96
„ jeweller, 130, 132
Got, 281 II
Government, Balzac's theory of, 68,
69
Gozlan, 157, 167, 194, 196, 196, 197,
201, 364, 370
Grammont, Count de, 142
Grande Breteche, The, 355, 356
Grande Mademoiselle, The, 118
Grandison, Sir Charles, 13
Grandmaison, Parseval, 4
Grandmother, Balzac's, 85
Greuze, 2, 284
Grimault, locksmith, 289
Gringalet, 253, 262, 263, 265
Grisi, Madame, 226,
Gros, 2
Guepes, The, 146, 189
Guizot, 6, 9, 35, 243
Guyon, Madame, 81
Gymnase Theatre, 272, 280, 356, 358,
359
Hagoult, Father, 29
Hair, gift of, to Balzac, 132
Halevy, Ludovic, 346, 347, 357
Handsome Jew, The, or The Israelite,
46
Hanska, Madame, 43, 97, 98, 99, 102,
103, 113, 114, 117, 130, 142, 143,
152, 160, 163, 164, 170, 172, 173,
174, 177, 187, 195, 196, 206, 210,
216, 219, 222, 230, 231, 239, 243,
248, 267, 273, 284, 285, 287, 295,
298, 300, 301, 310, 317
Hanska, Madame, in Paris, 252, 253,
266
Hanska' s, Madame, death, 269
,, Madame, relations with
Balzac's family, 244
Hanski, Count, 97, 99, 113, 210, 214
Harel, 192, 193
Haricots, Hotel des, 130, 131, 143.
See Hotel de Bazancourt
INDEX
881
Hashish, Balzac eats, 264, 256
Hasty workmanship in Balzac, 337
Hatred of the English, Balzac's, 67,
186
Haussonville, Count d', 238
Havre, 228
Head-love, 228
Heart and head in Balzac, 177
Heart of Midlothian, 46
He'douin, Edmond, 268
Heine, 163
Heiress o/Birague, The, 44, 46, 155
Hemsterhuys, 365
Henry Balzac, 203. See also Balzac's
brother
Henry II. of England, 18
Hetzel, publisher, 300, 301
Hetzel's Diable d Paris, 245
Historical novel, 10
„ ,, Balzac's conception
of, 207
History of a Fortunate Idea, 110
„ „ the Girondins, 207
„ „ the Succession of the Mar-
quis of Carrabas, 115
History of the Thirteen, 365
Hoax played on Balzac, 64, 65, 66
Hoffman's tales, 73, 189
Hohenlohe-Waldenburg, Prince of,
121
Holbein, 258
Homer, 365
Honorine, 236, 237, 368
Hookah pipe, 170
Horace de Saint-Aubin, 184
Hostein, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 280
Hotel Pimodan, 254
Housekeeping calculations, Balzac's,
215
House of the Tennis-playing Cat, 70,
299
Houssaye, Arsene- See Arsene Hous-
saye
Houssiaux, publisher, 301
Hugo, Victor, 4, 12, 15, 46, 174, 180,
187, 194, 199, 213, 214, 224, 238,
262, 279, 294, 295, 296, 297, 320,
344, 363
Hugo, Victor, compared with Balzac,
344
Hugo, Victor, story of the Academy
election, 239
Hugo, Victor, visits Les Jardies, 200
Hulot, Madame, George Sand on, 261
Human Comedy, List of, 307> 308,
309
Humboldt, 4, 187, 230
Humour in Daudet and Balzac, 350
Hyacinthe, actor, 267
Hypnotism, Balzac on, 121
Illness of Balzac at Wierzchownia,
284
Illustrious Gaudissart, 117
Imitation of Jesus Christ, 89
Imitations of Balzac's heroes and
heroines, 341
Immorality, Balzac reproached with,
342, 343
Impartial History of the Jesuits, 317
Income and debts of Balzac, 216
Independance Beige, story in, 231
Indiana, 10, 153
Ingoldsby Legends, 358
Ingres, 124, 225
Inquiry into the Policy of Two Ministers^
74
Italian forger, story of, 231
Italy, Balzac's visit to, 153
Jaime, 232, 355
James the Second's wife, picture,
284
Janin, Jules, 8, 148, 155, 184, 235,
236, 323
Janin's estimate of Balzac, 335
Jardies House, 166, 167, 168, 175,
181, 191, 199, 200, 201, 203, 370
Jardies House, cost of, 168
„ „ description of, 166
„ „ stories of, 167, 181,
194, 195, 370
Jean-Louis, 46
Jingle, 128
Joseph Prudhomme, 163
Journalists, Balzac's resentment
against, 154, 174
Judicis, 359
July Monarchy, 8
Karb, Alphonse, 132, 144, 145, 146,
189
Kenilworth, 45
Keraniou, de, 359
King of Beggars, 280
Knothe, Dr., 287
Kock, Paul de, 246
Koutaizoff mansion, 228
382
INDEX
Labiche, 348
Lablache, 226
La Boulonniere, 140
La Bruyere, 3 2
Lacressonniere, Madame, 277
La Fontaine, 53, 363
La Grenadiere, 66
Lamartine, 86, 120, 151, 193, 207,
262, 283, 316
Lamartine's description of Balzac, 361,
362, 363
Lamb, Charles, 226
Lamballe, Princesse de, 242
Lamennais, de, 6, 169, 235, 238, 257
Land tenure, Balzac's doctrine of, 257
Langeais, Duchess de, 315, 366
Lassailly, 187, 191
Last Chapter of History of Balzac's
Works, 147
Last Fairy, The, 49
Latouche, 62 ; anecdote of novel, 110
Launay, Alphonse de, 359
Laure helps Balzac, to write, 49
Laurence Balzac, 32. See also Bal-
zac's sister
Laurens, printer, 64
Laurent, type-founder, 56
Laurent Jan, 86, 193, 280
Lautour-Mezeray, 130
Lauzun, 118, 255
Lazard, 253, 254
Leather-stocking, 15, 364
Le Breton, 14, 46, 317, 369
Lebrun's Marie Stuart, 6
Lecomte, Henri, 273
Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 54
Leczinska, Queen Marie, 256
Leguay Institution, 24
Leibnitz, 302
Lemaitre, Frederick, 140, 181, 191,
194, 272, 273, 278, 281, 317
Le Mar, 158, 178
Lemer, 157, 168
Lemercier, 2
,, Madame Louise, 139
Lemesle, Charles, 155, 156
Lemoinne, John, 8
Lenotre, 352
Leon de Lora, 220
Lepitre's school, 34
Le Poitevin Saint-Alme, 19
Lesage, 9, 10, 11, 12
Lesdiguieres, Rue, lodgings, 38 et seq.,
62
Letter, Balzac's, to his mother, 205
Levavasseur, Alphonse, 62, 63, 64
Lily in the Valley, 120, 147, 148 ; Pre-
face to, 149, 150 et seq., 315, 321,
323, 333, 340, 359
Limits of Balzac's fiction, 326
Lina and Louloup, 229, 242
"Lions" of the Opera, 64, 65
L' Isle- A dam, 44
List of Balzac's novels, 307, 308, 309
Liszt, 169, 224, 226, 316
Literary Code, 180
Little Fadetie, 331, 344
Lobau, Count de, 131
Lock of hair anecdote, 131, 132
Locke, 373
Lockroy, 279, 280
Loi, Rue de la, 3
Loire Illustree, 218
Lope de Vega, 276
Lostange, Count de, 131
Lost Illusions^ 54, 156, 182, 183, 192,
214, 326, 333, 350
Louis Lambert, 25 et seq., 78, 79, 89,
218, 311, 333, 368
Louis-Philippe, 67, 130, 192, 194,
199, 210, 265, 266
Louis the Eighteenth, 3, 4, 7
„ „ Eleventh, 81
,, „ Fourteenth, 17
„ „ Sixteenth, 3, 82
Louise, letters to, 159, 160
Lousteau, 154, 347
Love as a motive power in life, 339
„ Balzac on, 172, 173, 229
„ Balzac's, for Madame Hanska,
173, 286
Love in Balzac's writings, 94, 339,
340
Love, influence of, on Balzac's writ-
ings, 93
Love-letters to Madame Hanska, 224,
243
Love-Story at School, A, 50
Lovenjoul, Spoelberch de, 17, 102,
267, 295, 306
Lucien de Rubempre, 182, 183, 192,
259, 260, 350
Lurine, Louis, 354
Luxury, Balzac's, 142
Macaroni, 195, 196
Madame Bovary, 349
Madame Fimiiani, 311
INDEX
383
Madeline, La Belle, 5
Magnetism, Balzac's belief in, 81
Maistre, de, 6, 227, 365
Maitre Guerin, 347
Mame, 15, 88
Manfred, 78
Man ofBusinesSy The^ 251, 315
Manon Lescaut, 88
Manual of the Business Man, 62
Marais, Rue des, 54, 58, 62 (now Rue
Visconti)
Mardtre, The, 277, 278, 279
Marbouty, Madame, 153, 316. See
also Claire Brunne
Marcas, Z., 189, 197, 198 ; story of,
218
Mareschal, Monsieur, 25
Margonnes, the de, 152
Maria, 96, 102
Marin, 57
Marivaux, 11
Marlet, 6
Marminia, 295
Marquis ofCarrahas, 82, 115
Marquis de Custine, 186
Marquis de Villemer, 344
Marriage, Balzac's ideas on, 75
„ ,, letter on, 285
„ „ schemes of, 44, 196
„ „ with Madame Han-
ska, 288
Marriage Contract, The, 36, 140
Marriage of Anna and Georges Mnis-
zech, 263
Marseilles purchases, 253, 254
Massimilla Doni, 161
Masson, 352
Master Cornelius, 81, 357
Maturin, 13, 44
Maupassant, Guy de, 349, 350
Mauzin, 279
Medal, 317
Meditations of Lamartine, 88
Meissonier, 226, 360
Melesville, 356
Melmoth reconciled, 21
Memorial de Rouen, 180
Men of Letters Society, 179, 180, 217,
218, 282
Mercadet {the Jobber), 199, 272, 279,
280, 281, 282, 291, 347, 348, 359
Me'rime'e, 7, 55, 228
Merlin, Countess, 4
Merville, Guillonnet de, 34
Mery, 253, 254
Mesmerism, 208
Message, The, 299
Meyerbeer, 124
Michel, 235
Midsummer Nights Dream, 230
Miette, 5
Mignet, 224
Milan, 172
Millet-seed (the groom), 140
Minoret, Doctor, 129
Mirabeau, 362
Mirbel, Madame de, 4
Mirmiet, Ursule, 129. See also Ursule
Mirouet
Miscellanies, Balzac's, 318
Miserables, Les, 344
Mistigris, 220
Mniszech, Georges, 253, 263, 287
„ estates, 271
Mode, The, 64, 67, 299
Modeste Mignon, 245, 248, 249, 316
Mole', 4
Moliere, 12, 13, 53, 213, 321, 361,
365
Monetary aflfairs of Balzac improve,
241
Monk Lewis, 13, 44
Monnier, Henry, 7, 85, 86, 191, 316
Monography of the Press, 232 et seq.
Montaigne, 365
Montiguy, Monsieur, 280, 281
Monty on prize, 156
Montzaigle, Monsieur de, 43
Morals, Balzac's, 103
„ „ George Sand on, 101
„ „ his sister on, 101
Moreau, Doctor, 255
Morgan, Lady, 5
Mortsauf, Madame de, 150, 151
Mouche (the dog), 23
Munck, Fran9ois, 289, 290
Munich, 142
Murat, General, 278
Muse of the Cmnty, 236, 237, 238, 316,
350
Musset, Alfred de, 120, 224
Myself, Balzac's mythical servant, 39
Mysteries of Udolpho, 71
Nacquart, Dr., 39, 230, 265, 292, 293
Nanon, 107
Napoleon, 2, 3, 60, 67, 82, 108, 171,
247, 294
384
INDEX
Napoleons Sayings {Maxims and
Thoughts), 175
National Guard, 130, 186
Natural temperament of Balzac, 204
Naturalism, 350
Nerval, Gerard de, 372
Netscher, 285
Neufchatel, 98
Ninon, 54
Niveleau, Jean, 93
Nobel Prize, 217
Nodier, 6, 130, 238, 239, 241, 296
Nohant, 169
Normanby, Lord, 224
North Railway Shares, 258, 265
Notary, Article in, 36
Notes on Literary Oumershipy 180
Nougarede, Chevalier de, 60
Nourrit's song, 226
Novels, Balzac's scheme of, 73, 90
„ „ conversation with
Laure on, 91, 92
Numa Roumestan, 350
Objets d'art purchased, 244
Occult powers, Balzac's belief in, 120,
121
Odeon Theatre, 212, 279
Odette de Champdivers, 47
Old Maid, The, 153
Opera Comique, 357
Opinions of Balzac on various coun-
tries, 227
Orleans, Duke of, 200
Ourika, 4
Ourliac, Edouard, 193, 371
Overweeningness, Balzac's, 115, 116
Paganini, 226
Palais Mazarin, 282
„ Royal, 125
Pamela, 9, 13, 151
Pamela Giraud, 231, 232, 278
Panthe'on Theatre, 357
Paper-making scheme, 87
Pascal's Thoughts, 333
Pasquier, Duke, 4
Passez, Maitre, 35
Passwords, 165
Passy House, 202, 214, 241, 262
Pathos in Balzac, 333
Patrick son. Miss, story of, 166
Paul and Virginia, 88
Paulin, playwright, 354
Paulin, publisher, 273
Pawnbroker, 146, 244
Pea Blossom, 140. See The Marriage
Contract
Peace in the Household, 299
Peasants, The, 245, 251, 256, 257, plot
Percentage scheme for books, 87
Pere Goriot, 121, 126, 127, 128, 192,
232, 311, 342, 354, 355
Pere Lachaise, 42, 295
Pere' me, 191
Personal novel, 9
Peter and Catherine, 274, 276, 276
Peter Grassou, 850
Peter the Great, 143
Peter's, Saint, 257
Petersburg, Saint, 213, 222, 226
Petition to King, 180
Petrarch, 172
Petty Bourgeois, The, 279, 315, 347
„ Miseries of Married Life, 311
Peytel, Balzac's efforts to save, 187,
188
Philosophic Studies, 300, 306, 311
„ Tales, 71, 72
Philosophy of Conjugal Life, 245
Physiology of Marriage, 62, 63.^^1—
Picard, 2 '^'^
Pichot, 77
Pierrette, 13, 198, 258
Pigault-Lebrun, 11
Pine-apple scheme, 175
Pixerecourt, Guilbert de, 11, 12, 46
Planche, Gustave, 116, 132, 144, 235
Play writing, Balzac's opinion on, 118
Plot and characterization in Balzac's
writing, 332
Plotinus, 137 ,
Plutocracy of Chaussee d'Antin, 3, 4
Poe, Edgar Allan, 318
Poem composed by Balzac, 114
Poetry, Balzac's dislike of, 187
Pohrebyszcze, 97 "
Poirson, 272
Poland, King of, 284
Political candidature, 74, 115
Pommereul, General de, 20, 21, 58, 59
„ Madame de, describes
Balzac, 60
Pongerville and the Academy, 240,
241
Poor Relations, The, 283
Pope, The, 137, 257
„ Alexander, 172
INDEX
385
Pope Clement XIII., 284
Pornographic art, 352
Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, 139, 192,
278
Portraits in the Comidie Humainey
316, 317
Portrayal of landscape in Balzac, 329
Potier, 5
Prayer, Balzac's, to patron saint, 223
Premiere Demoiselle, The, 163
Prescience in Balzac, 348
Presse, The, 8, 153, 154, 176, 188, 197,
256, 372
Prevost, Abbe', 9, 12
Princesse de Cleves, The, 10
Prince of Bohemia, A, 189
Privilege, The, 110
Prophecies on the future of Europe,
265, 266
Provincial Great Men in Paris, 182,
233, 323
Prudhomme type, 5
Prudhomme Bigamist, 118
„ en Bonne Fortune, 272
Psychology in Balzac, 311
Fxiff of Physiology of Marriage, 71, 72,
73
Puttinati, sculptor, 161
Pyat, Felix, 213
Quentin Durward, 81
Question d' Argent, 347
Quinet, 235
Quinola, Resources of, 212, 291, 348
Quotidienne, The, 97, 131
Rabelais, 12, 15, 18, 156, 320
Racine, 54, 187
Radcliffe, Anne, 13, 44, 71
Radig, Mother, 6
Raisson, Horace, 44
Raphael, 167, 230, 246, 263
Rapid writing, Balzac's, 153
Rastignac, 127, 316. 355
Ratier, ^Victor, 66 ~^ '
Raynouard, Rue, 202, 241 (formerly
Rue Basse)
Realism, slowness of its conquest,
349
Realistic school, 177
Reality, Balzac's imperfect present-
ment of, 343
Recamier, Madame, 2
Red Inn, The, 81
Regnault, Emile, 126, 144
Re'gnier, 281
Relation of Balzac's novels to each
other, 312, 313
Reminiscences of a Pariah, 317
Renaissance Theatre, 192
Renan, 323
Renee Mauperin, 350
Repertory of the Comedie Humaine,
314
Restoration Society, 6
Return, Balzac's, to Paris in 1850
story of, 289
Reverse side of Contemporary History,
259, 260, 261, 326, 333
Revolution of 1848, 282
„ „ 1830, 67
Revue des Deux Mondes, 144
„ de Paris, 66, 77, 89, 105, 117,
124, 136, 139, 144, 147 et seq., 184,
299, 323
Revue Frangaise of St. Petersburg, 147
„ Independante, George Sand's,
119
Revue Parisienne, 15, 188, 189, 190,
317
Rhone, Monsieur, anecdote by, 57,
58
R^hoone, Lord, 47
Richard Sauvage, 279
„ the Sponge-Heart, 190, 272,
273
Richardson, 9, 11, 14, 151, 172
Rivals acknowledged by Balzac as
equals, 246
Robert le Diable, 175
Robertson, conjuror, 5
Rochambeau, castle of, 28
Rochefoucauld, Hotel de la, 4
Rodin v., 218
Roland, Amedee, anecdote, 86
,, Madame, 55
Rolle, Hippolyte, 279
Roman feuilleton, change in, 188
Romantic school, 6, 10, 177, 370
Rome, Balzac at, 257
Rossini, 113, 130, 149, 153 ; anecdote,
161
Rotari, 285
Rothschild, 142, 316
Rousseau, 9, 11, 19, 172
Rubini, 226
Russia, Balzac on, 247
Russian food, 286
2b
386
INDEX
Russian Letters, 189
Russian nobleman and Chronique de
Paris J story, 146
Ruy Bias, 174
Ryer, du, 149
Sache, 76, 129, 164
Sacs et Parchemins, 118
Sagnet, Mother, 6
Sainte-Beuve, 10, 27, 174, 190, 235,
325, 326, 334, 341, 344, 353
Sainte-Beuve, Volupte, 120
Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy, 302, 303
„ -Marc-Girardin, 8
„ -Simon, viii, 20
„ -Simonism, 8
Sallambier, 19, 22
Salons, 4
Samson, the executioner, 82
Sand, George, 10, 101, 119, 153, 169,
186, 206, 224, 246, 247, 250, 320,
323, 327, 344, 349, 365
Sandeau, Jules, 9, 88, 109, 116, 118,
119, 126, 130, 142, 143, 144, 161,
169
Sardinia, 170, 172
Sceaux Ball, 70, 299, 359
Scenes of Country Life, 306
„ Military Life, 306
„ Parisian Ufe, 300, 306, 310,
311
Scenes of Political Life, 306
„ PHvate Life, 96, 179, 299,
300, 306, 310, 311
Scenes of Provincial Life, 300, 306,
310
Schiller's Don Carlos, 118
School for Husbands and Wives, 163,
190, 191, 192, 195, 317
School of Great Men, 212.. See Re-
sources of Quinola
School of Terror, 13
„ Theory, 13
Scott, Walter, 10, 14, 15, 46, 81,
141, 207, 225, 304, 305, 335, 352,
361
Scribe, Eugene, 7, 34, 36, 174, 213,
276, 356, 357, 358
Search for the Absolute, 121, 122, 123,
232, 311, 356, 366
Sebastiani, Marshal, 254
Secret of the Ruggieri, 153
Secrets of the Princess de Cadignan,
182
Sedillot, Monsieur, 56
Self-praise, Balzac's, 225, 245
Seraphita, 117, 121, 136 et seq., 140,
148, 161, 179, 311, 322, 323, 333,
340, 342, 368
Serres, actor, 140
Sevres, 165, 180
Sewrin, 5
Sganzer and Beuzelin's School, '34
Shady Affair, A, 206, 207, 208
Shagreen Skin, The, 58, 70, 71, 73,
96, 311, 359
Shakespeare, vii, viii, 15, 128, 230,
365
Shelley, 249, 372, 373
Sheridan's granddaughter, 256
Sherlock Holmes, 318
Shipbuilding project, Balzac's, 222
Shirt-studs, Balzac's, 210
Siecle, The, 8, 154, 188, 371, 372
Silhouette, The, 66
Silver, Balzac's scheme for extract-
ing, 170
Silvestre de Sacy, 8
Sister Marie des Anges, 164, 211
Sixtine Chapel, 257
Smollett, 13
Social Studies, 300
Societe' des Gens de Lettres, 87. See
also Men of Letters Society
Sonnets in Balzac's novels, 187
Sorbonne University, 34
Soulie, Frede'ric, 148
Souverain, 284
Splendour and Wretchedness of Cour-
tezans, 182, 236
Stael, Madame de, 2, 10, 28
Staircase at Les Jardies, 167
Statue to Balzac, 218
Stature, Balzac's, 35
Stella, 40
Stendhal, 5, 7, 13, 189, 190
Sterne, 14
Stick, Balzac's, 130, 131, 132, 140,
158, 159 (anecdote)
" Stranger, The," 96
Strasburg, 264
Struggle for Life, 312
Studies of Manners and Morals, 104,
299, 302, 306, 316
Studies of Workpeople by Balzac,
40
Style, Balzac's, 320
„ „ efflorescence of, 325
INDEX
387
Style^ Balzac's, in early letters, 47
„ „ qualities of, 323
„ „ specimens of, 321,
322, 324, 325
Succubits, The, 111
Sue, Eugene, 131, 148, 155, 174, 245,
246
Surville, Madame. See Balzac's sister
Laure
Surville, Monsieur, 43, 222, 294
Swedenborgr, 137, 302, 365
Swedenborgians, The, 78
Swift, 328
Syndicate for exploiting Balzac's
novels, 154, 177, 178
Tabarand, 355
Taine, viii, 321, 324 ; estimate of
Balzac, 336 ; history, 352
Tales and Philosophic Novels, 300
Talleyrand, 4, 243
Talma, 5
Tamburini, 226
Tencin, Madame de, 10,
'ITieatre Historique, 273
„ Libre, 355
Theaulon, 355
Theory of Walking, Balzac's, 317
Thiers, 74, 317
Three Cardinals^ The, 82
Tigers or Lions of the Opera, 130
„ „ „ Story of,
64,65
Tillet, du, 317
Tilleul, Madame Hanska's mispro-
nunciation of, 128
Titian, 224
Titles of Balzac's novels, 307, 308,
309
Tom Thumb groom, the, 65, 140
Tortoni, 139
Touraine, 32, 44, 66, 129
Tournon (Rue de), 61
Tours, 17, 18, 22, 23
Toussaint Louverture, 161
Tragedy of Philip 11,115
Trainards or Laggards, 273
Travies' Mayeux, 9
Treatise of Fashionable Life, 67
„ Modern Stimulants, 129
Tristram Shandy, 14
Trocadero, 202
Troubles and Trials of an English Cat,
318
J, 194, 195, 213, A
tion, 260 ^
Truth as applied to fiction, 330
Turk, the dog at Jardies, 181
Two Brothers, The, 220
„ Philosophers, The, 41
„ Poets, The, 182
Typefounding, Balzac's, 56
Urf^, Honore d', 341
Ursule Mirouet, 129, 208, 209, 332,
345
Valmore, Madame, 317
Valsuani, 5
Vandenesse, de, 151
Van Dyck, 285
„ Huysum, 285
„ Prael Collection, 360
Varie'tes Theatre, 273, 355
Vatout, 240
Vaudemont, Princesse de, 4
Vaudeville Theatre, 353
Vauquelin, Nicolas, 54
Vautrin, 127, 192, 193,
259, 278, 345, 355
Vautrin s last Incarnation,
Vedel, 199
Vendetta, The, 299
Vendome College, The, 24 et seq.
Venice, 161
Verbruggen, 268
Vercingetorix, 18
Vernet, actor, 355
„ Horace, 225
Verneuil, Mile, de, 61
Very's restaurant, 125, 139
Vicar of Wakefield, 14, 88, 89
Vienna concert, anecdote of, 342
„ visit to, 141, 142, 342
Vigny, de, 6, 12
Village Cure, 69, 182, 184, 185, 211,
257, 332
Ville d'Avray, 201
Villele, de, 4
Villemain, 4, 6, 35, 55
Villeparisis, 38, 42, 50
Villers, Abbe de, 51
Virtuous girl as depicted by Balzac,
209
Visconti, Count, 147, 153
„ Countess, 147, 186, 206, 242
Voleur, 188
Voltaire, 11, 208, 365
Voltairian scepticism, 7
Voyage en Coucou, 220
388
INDEX
Walls of Jardies garden, 180, 181
Wandering Jew of Sue, 245 .
Wann-Chlore^ 46
WeirnarSj Loeve, 235
Werdet, 62, 64, 104, 117, 125, 130,
181, 132, 134, 136, 141, 142, 145,
148
Werdet, judged by Balzac, contrary
opinions, 150
Werdet's bankruptcy, 150
„ breach with Balzac, 156, 157
„ dinner, 158, 159
„ introduction to Balzac, 105,
106, 109
Werdet's Portrait Intime, 62, 104
West Indies, 222
Wey, Francis, 295
White Flag, 7
White Horse, anecdote, 109
Whither Bad Ways Lead, 260
Widow, Balzac's, 297
Wierzchownia, 97, 114, 214, 267, 269,
270, 276, 280, 282, 283, 358
Wiesbaden, 263
Wish of Balzac for retirement, 164
Woman-Study, 311
Woman of Thirty Years Old, 103, 299,
314, 338
Women, Balzac's treatment of, and
relations with, 103, 174
Women in Balzac's fiction, 333, 334,
335, 336
Women judged by Balzac, 334, 335
Wordsworth, 314, 327
Work, Balzac's method of, 124
Writ served on Balzac, 147
Wylezinski, Thaddeus, 316
You abandoned for thou by Balzac
in writing to Madame Hanska,
224
Zayde, 10
Zephirine, 253, 265
Zola, 273, 350, 351, 352
Zola's theory of the novel, 351
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