Honoré Balzac, or de Balzac, as he loved to call himself--though really
there was no “noble” blood in his veins--was baptized under the name
of Balssa. He was born on May 20, 1799, at Tours. His mother, Laure
Sallambier, was a Parisian; his father, a provincial from Languedoc.
After completing his studies in Paris, Honoré began the study of law
at the age of seventeen, but after eighteen months’ apprenticeship to
an attorney and a second year and a half’s service to a notary, his
literary ambition began to turn him away from the law. Already at the
age of twenty he had conceived the idea of a drama on Cromwell, but
after fifteen months’ labor, he read it to a company of friends who
received it coldly. In 1822, he made his first essay at the novel,
under the title, _The Inheritress de Birague_. From this time on
he labored incessantly in producing the gigantic works which have
immortalized his name.
Debt was always threatening to overwhelm Balzac, for in the days of
his largest income his free life and passion for luxuries kept him
constantly in danger of going down in the flood. Once, in 1825, when
his first novels produced but little return, he felt compelled to
leave his vocation of letters to become bookseller, printer, and
type-founder. But after three years of disaster, resulting in one
hundred thousand francs of debt, he once more took up his pen, this
time to succeed most splendidly--though it required ten years of
strenuous, almost frenzied, production to clear him of his obligations.
The story of his loves is closely knit with his literary career, as are
also the records of his minglings with the men of his day, but no such
brief monograph as this can even refer adequately to the details of his
personal life. Inspiration, observation, and labor were its dominant
notes throughout. Two thousand distinct characters move as in life
through his forty-seven volumes of more than sixteen thousand aggregate
pages, all produced in twenty-five years of actual pen-craft. What a
monument for the titan who in 1850 passed away in his prime!
* * * * *
There are two marked tendencies of extreme displayed by the
short-story: The first, and the more modern, is a fondness for
over-compression; that is, the practice of skeletonizing the story,
of giving little more than a bare, swift outline of the action, and
only so much accessory material as may be needed to round out a body
decently clothed upon with flesh. The story is everything, the
setting almost nothing. It scarcely need be said that this tendency
comes perilously near to robbing the short-story of the literary
qualities which it should rightly display. A few of Maupassant’s
compact and abrupt shorter fictions may serve to illustrate this
characteristic--not to mention unhappy examples all too prevalent
to-day.
The second tendency is quite in the other extreme. I speak of it now
because most of Balzac’s shorter stories are of this type,--which gives
much space to detail, the development of setting, and the building up
of a well-rounded and fully-garbed body to carry the soul of the story.
If the scenario-story is likely to swing to an extreme of compression,
the leisurely type is prone to over-leisureliness, as is often seen in
the shorter work of Mr. James, and the later little fictions by Mr.
Howells, wherein, and so far properly too, the story is not made to
be everything, but wherein--not so wisely--circumstances and air are
accorded even more than due value. The effect is to draw the narrative
away from the unity and compression characteristic of the short-story
type, and range it with those other fictional forms which, while
cognate to, are really something different from the short-story.
Balzac’s short-stories--so to call them--were written from three
to five years before Poe wrote “Berenice” (1835), which was his
first short-story to anticipate and meet fully the requirements of
the type as formulated by the author himself, in his criticism of
Hawthorne’s “Tales,” in 1842. But Balzac drew more and more away
from the impressionistic, unified, condensed short-story, for it was
evidently not his ideal form, and took up the detailed psychological
novel of manners. Even in the story given herewith in translation, we
find a wealth of detail and an extent of time covered in the action
which are not part and parcel of the true short-story, technically
considered. But, lest these comments seem to cite these qualities in
derogation of Balzac’s art be it noted that Balzac’s little fictions,
with all their fullness, are greater than many technically perfect
short-stories in their miraculous compression. Certainly it is only
this dual element of fullness and consequent diffused final effect
which prevented him from anticipating Poe as the first _conscious_
artist of the short-story--yet with this one reservation I reserve
much, for compression and unity of final impression are the very twin
arteries of this fictional form. Balzac’s short-stories approached
technical perfection just as closely as did the short-stories of those
two American forerunners of Poe--Irving and Hawthorne.
It is illuminating to observe that Balzac’s full-method of short-story
art was not the reflex of the successful novelist who was sure of his
public and for that reason dared the expansive treatment. The truth is
that of his successful novels only _The Chouans_ had been written in
1829 before he began, in 1830, that brilliant series of shorter stories
which place him among the masters.
The fictive art of Balzac is more clearly displayed in his
short-stories than in his novels. By far the greater number of his
novels are filled with a vast amount of contributory detail not always
germane to the plot. As stories, they often mark time. The author’s
great motive was to make faithful transcripts from life, to present
realities, to penetrate into the deeps of the human soul and disclose
its inner life, to delineate the high and the low places of the whole
social system of his era. On this giant-journey he was often allured
from the highway of his story by side-paths rich in interest, and the
great realistic novelist did not any more hesitate to follow out these
beckoning byways than did Victor Hugo in his equally great romances.
The inevitable in each case was a far from unified type of fiction.
In Balzac’s short-stories, however, we discern but very little of
this tendency, fully expanded though they are, and that is why I
have ventured to assert their artistic superiority to his novels.
True, the genius of this greatest of French novelists can be fully
appreciated only by those who make a study of his longer works with
their tremendous sweep of character presentment, minuteness of setting,
and depth of psychological inquiry. But for approximate singleness of
effect--a great factor in the consideration of fictional merit--we must
turn to his short-stories.
This contrast in method is due not merely to Balzac’s fondness for
making excursions in his novels, but it is largely attributable to
the nature of the _nouvelle_, or expanded short-story form. Any
short-story, being complete in itself and not one of a series,
necessarily bears a much less close relation to any other of its kind
than does any one of Balzac’s novels to his other novels. Each of these
is an integrated part of a great life-record which he was engaged in
completing--but which, unhappily, was never consummated.
The themes of all Balzac’s short-stories are consistent with the
artistic requirements of the _nouvelle_; that is to say, they are
transcriptions of _exceptional marginalia_ from common life, always
dealing with the unusual, and occasionally with the unique. Because
of this quality, it seems evident that, as Brunetière has pointed
out, Balzac elected to develop these incidents in short-story form
rather than expand them into novels. Treated in the short-story, they
stand for what they are--extraordinary happenings in common life (as
distinguished from impossible “incidents” which are told in fantastic
and ultra-romantic short-stories); in the novel, they would have been
enlarged out of their true focus, and so have seemed to bear a more
important, a more typical, relation to life as a whole than any such
exceptional incidents ever do. Hence, again, Balzac has used in his
short-stories less the realistic method of narration than the romantic.
Pure realism as a method is suited to the novel, where life shows
whole; but the short-story, which presents a section, a phase, an
incident of life, and by which we do not hope to gain a picture of an
age, of a whole social system, or even of an entire individual life, is
almost compelled to adopt the methods of romanticism even when laying
its fictional foundations, as Balzac did, deep in the ground of reality.
In attempting to get a view of his broad genius we must remember our
author’s versatility, not alone of gift but of temper; and since a
consideration of his novels is not pertinent to this paper, let us see
if the many-sided Balzac is not clearly revealed in a varied half-dozen
of his greatest short-stories.
Picture this powerful worker spending endless days and nights, months
on end, roaming the streets of Paris, haunting purlieu and boulevard,
absorbing with the thirsty passion of a universal analyst the knowledge
of what man is. But he is more than a terrifically industrious
observer, he is sincere, and he codifies his observations as _The
Connoisseur of Life_.
This first phase of our social psychologist--and as such he blazed
new trails in French literature--is well illustrated in one of his
greatest stories (it seems trite to aver that it must be read to be
appreciated!) which is a romantic _nouvelle_ of about ten thousand
words, “The Unknown Masterpiece.” It is well to note in this connection
that the typical psychological-study differs from the character-study
in that the former concerns itself with _workings_ of the inner life,
while the latter notes the _effect_ of life on character, disposition,
bearing, and conduct.
Nicolas Poussin, a poor and ambitious young artist, timidly visits
François Porbus, another artist of ability, in his studio. There Master
Frenhofer, an eccentric, wealthy old artist, is discoursing on his
theories of art (set forth brilliantly and at length in the story, and
illustrating the marvellous sweep of Balzac’s knowledge). Frenhofer
is obsessed by the conviction that the artists of the day do not make
their subjects live, and illustrates by criticising the painting, “St.
Mary the Egyptian,” which Porbus has about completed. “Your saint is
not badly put together, but she is not alive. Because you have copied
nature, you imagine that you are painters, and that you have discovered
God’s secret! Bah! To be a great poet, it is not enough to know syntax,
and to avoid errors in grammar.” “The mission of art is not to copy
nature, but to express it” (an illuminating passage when applied to
Balzac’s own work). At length the old man seizes the brushes, and with
a few strokes imparts vivacity to the figure, and makes the “Saint”
stand out from the canvas.
Old Master Frenhofer himself has been laboring for ten years to perfect
his painting of a woman, but despairs of adding the final touches, and
determines to travel in search of a perfect model. In his enthusiasm
for art, and hoping to gain Frenhofer’s secret, as well as instruction
from the old painter, Nicolas asks his beautiful mistress and model,
Gillette, to pose for the old man. A protracted struggle ensues between
her abhorrence of the idea and her wish to serve her lover. At last,
however, she yields.
When Nicolas and Porbus are permitted to view Frenhofer’s completed
canvas, they discover that in his long effort to perfect his work the
old painter has entirely covered the original picture, and that not
more than a shadowy human foot is to be seen; only the imaginative eye
of the artist himself is able to see the figure!
The dénouement is a double one: As she feared would be the case,
Gillette loses her love for Nicolas, who could sacrifice the sacredness
of her beauty in order to advance his own career by capturing the
secrets of a great master; and the old artist, after burning all his
paintings, dies in despair upon discovering the truth, for he has lived
all these years with his painting as the well-loved companion of his
labors and his dreams.
A great story, illustrating Balzac as a connoisseur--a knower of life.
* * * * *
A second phase of Balzac’s genius is that of _The Impressionistic
Literary Artist_. In his inner life some pictures were born, others
were caught on the retina from his attentive journeyings afield. To
produce in the reader precisely the impression which the originator
feels, is impressionism, and this transfusion of spirit, tone, and
feeling, Balzac now and then accomplished, though not often.
One of the most striking of these impressionistic sketches, more
atmospheric, more simply pictorial, than any of his others, is “A
Passion in the Desert.”
A Provençal soldier of Napoleon tells the story over a bottle to a
friend, and he retells it in a letter to a lady who had just seen a
wonderful example of animal-training in a menagerie.
When General Desaix was in upper Egypt “a provincial soldier, having
fallen into the hands of the Maugrabins, was taken by these Arabs
into the deserts that lie beyond the cataracts of the Nile.” Freeing
himself, he secures a carbine, a dagger, a horse, and some provisions,
and makes away. But, eager to see camp once more, he rides his horse to
death and finds himself alone in the desert.
At length he seeks shelter and sleep in a grotto, but awakens to
find his asylum shared by a huge lioness. He considers well the
possibilities while he waits for her to wake. When she opens her eyes
her pretty, coquettish movements remind him of “a dainty woman.” The
soldier expects immediate conflict and draws his dagger; but the
lioness stares steadily at him for a moment, then walks slowly but
confidently toward him. Forcing himself to smile into her face, he
reaches out his hand caressingly, and she accepts these overtures with
seeming pleasure, even purrs like a cat, but the sound is so loud that
it is not unlike the dying notes of a church organ. Believing himself
safe for the present, the man rises and leaves the grotto; she follows,
rubbing against his legs and uttering a wild, peculiar cry, whereupon
he again goes through the petting motions usual with domestic animals,
at the same time weighing the chance of killing her with one blow
of his weapon. On her side, the lioness scrutinizes him kindly, yet
prudently--then she licks his shoes.
Visions of what may happen when his unwelcome companion is hungry bring
a shudder to the soldier. He tries to come and go, as an experiment,
but her eyes never leave him for the fraction of a minute. Near
the spring he sees the remains of his horse partly consumed--and
understands her forbearance thus far. He determines to try to tame her
ladyship and to win her affection. In these endeavors the day wears on
until she becomes responsive enough to his voice to turn to him when he
calls “Mignonne.”
The Provençal is now relying on his nimble feet to take him out of
danger so soon as the lioness is asleep, and when the right moment
comes he walks quickly in the direction of the Nile. But he has gone
only a short distance when he hears her in pursuit, uttering the same
wild cry. Even in this extremity the Frenchman reflects humorously,
“It may be that this young lioness has never met a man before; it is
flattering to possess her first love!”
He accompanies his hostess back to the grotto, and from this moment
feels that the desert has become friendly, human; and he sleeps. When
he awakes he sees nothing of Mignonne until, upon ascending the hill,
he discovers her bounding along in his direction. Her chops are bloody;
but she manifests her pleasure in his society by beginning to play like
a large puppy.
Several days go by filled with warring sensations for the Frenchman.
Solitude reveals her mysteries, and he feels their charm. He studies
the effects of the moon on the limitless sand; the wonderful light of
the Orient; the terrifying spectacle of a storm on the plain where sand
rises in death-dealing clouds. In the cool nights he imagines music in
the heavens above. He ponders on his past life.
The magnetic will of the Provençal seems to control brute nature,
or else she has not felt the pangs of hunger, for her amiability is
unbroken, and he trusts her completely. Whatever she may be doing,
she stops short at the word “Mignonne.” One day when he shows acute
interest in a flying eagle, the lioness is evidently jealous, and the
Provençal now declares that “she has a soul.”
Here the lady who received the Provençal’s letter about his adventure
wants to know how it ended. He replies that “it ended as all great
passions do, by a misunderstanding,” and goes on to explain that he
must have unintentionally hurt the lioness’s feelings, as one day she
turned and caught his thigh in her teeth. Fearing she meant to kill
him, the soldier plunged his dagger into her throat, but his remorse
was immediate; he felt that he had murdered a friend.
* * * * *
The brief outlines of two stories must suffice to illustrate a third
and more characteristic phase of Balzac’s genius--his sternness as _The
Recorder of Tragedy_. Both are romantic themes treated with relentless
realism of detail.
The first story bears the Spanish title, _El Verdugo_ (“The
Executioner”).
During the Napoleonic era, a certain Spanish town, Menda, is under
French government. A suspicion that the Spanish Marquis de Légañès
has made an attempt to raise the country in favor of Ferdinand VII
has caused a battalion of French soldiers to be placed here, the
garrison of occupation being in command of one Victor Marchand. On
the night of the feast-day of St. James, the English capture the town,
but Clara, the daughter of the old Spanish nobleman, had warned the
young French Commandant, Marchand, with whom she was in love, and he
had escaped. The English suspect her father of having made Marchand’s
escape possible, so the entire family of the Marquis is condemned to be
hanged. The old noble offers to the English general all that he has if
he will spare the life of his youngest son, and allow the rest to be
beheaded instead of ignominiously hanged. Both requests are granted.
The Marquis then goes to his youngest son, Juanito, and commands him
that for this day he shall be the executioner. After heart-breaking
protests, the lad is compelled to yield. As his sister Clara places her
head on the block, the young French officer, Victor, now friendly with
the English, runs to her and tells her that if she will marry him her
life will be saved. Her only reply is to her brother, “Now, Juanito,”
and her head falls at the feet of her lover. When the day is done, the
youngest son, Juanito, is alone. To save the family honor, he has been
the executioner of the day.
Only a little less tragic is “The Conscript,” which is part sketch,
part short-story.
Madame de Dey, aged thirty-eight, is the widow of a lieutenant-general.
She is possessed of a great soul and an attractive personality. During
the Reign of Terror she takes refuge in the village of Carentan.
Motives of policy influence her to open her house every evening to
the principal citizens, Revolutionary authorities, and the like. Her
only relative in the world is her son, aged twenty, whom she adores.
The Mayor, and others in authority in the town, aspire to marry her,
but her heart is bound up in her boy. Suddenly her _salon_ is closed
without explanation. Two nights pass, and gossip finds all sorts of
reasons--she is hiding a lover; or her son; or a priest. The third day
in the morning an old merchant insists upon seeing her. She shows him a
letter written by her son in prison, saying he hopes to escape within
three days and will come to her house. This is the third day, and she
is greatly agitated. The merchant tells her that people are suspicious,
and that she must surely receive as usual that night. Then he goes out
and spreads plausible tales of her recent extreme illness and marvelous
cure. That night many come to see for themselves, and, notwithstanding
her terrible anxiety, she keeps up until they all go--except the
Public Prosecutor, who is one of her suitors. He tells her he knows
she is expecting her son Auguste, and that if he comes she must get
him away early in the morning, as he, the Prosecutor, must come then
with a “denunciation,” to search her house. While they talk, a young
man arrives and is taken to the room prepared for Auguste. When she
discovers him to be only a conscript sent there by the Mayor, her grief
is great. After spending the night awake in her room, still listening
for her boy’s arrival, she is found at daybreak dead--at the hour when,
unknown to his mother, her son was shot at Morbihan.
* * * * *
No view of Balzac, the short-story writer, would be complete without
considering him as _The Social Philosopher_--by far his preponderating
character also as a novelist.
There are not lacking undiscerning folk who judge Balzac’s
short-stories by the tone of his _Contes Drolatiques_. It is far from
true, however, that Balzac preferred to deal with the corrupt side of
life. In reality, he was a great moralist, with robust convictions
of right and wrong, and a nicely balanced moral judgment. Yet this
contradictory spirit did wallow in filthy imaginations all too often,
committed personal follies, pictured the courtesan and the pander,
marital infidelity and sordidness in countless manifestations. But
let it be remembered that he chose to depict a society which was not
only the product of his age, but the outcome of a national life. No one
could be more fearless in exposing vice, and while it may be questioned
whether the world greatly profits morally by such vivid picturings, it
cannot be doubted that Balzac’s social philosophy was not that of the
literary pander. His soul had altitude, as one has said, as well as
latitude.
Balzac was keenly sensitive to criticism of his moral influence, and
himself answered the charge of being a creator of vicious feminine
types:
“The author cannot end these remarks without publishing here the
result of a conscientious examination which his critics have forced
him to make in relation to the number of virtuous women and criminal
women whom he has placed on the literary stage. As soon as his first
terror left him time to reflect, his first care was to collect his
_corps d’armée_, in order to see if the balance which ought to be
found between those two elements of his written world was exact,
relatively to the measure of vice and virtue which enters into the
composition of our present morals. He found himself rich by thirty-odd
virtuous women against twenty-two criminal women, whom he here takes
the liberty of ranging in order of battle, in order that the immense
results already obtained may not be disputed. To this he adds that
he has not counted-in a number of virtuous women whom he has left in
the shade--where so many of them are in real life.” (Here followed
tabulated lists of his prominent women characters, as arranged by
himself).
In considering the big plot of the social study, _La Grande
Brétêche_--not perfectly translated “The Great House”--we are
interestingly reminded of the similar _motifs_ in Poe’s “The Cask of
Amontillado,” and Mrs. Wharton’s “The Duchess at Prayer”--just as our
author’s “A Seashore Drama” recalls the more artistic story of fatherly
execution, “Mateo Falcone,” by Mèrimèe.
In _La Grande Brétêche_ a company of friends are spending an evening
together and one is asked to tell a story--a conventional opening
enough.
He describes a house which has been deserted, the large and once
beautiful gardens overgrown with weeds. Neglect and decay are
everywhere. The story of the house is this--told with much Balzacian
preliminary circumstance:
Monsieur de Merret one night came home quite late, and as he was about
to enter his wife’s apartments he heard a closet door, opening into her
room, close very quietly. He thought it was his wife’s maid, but just
then the maid entered the room from another door. The husband sent the
maid away and asked his wife who had gone into the closet. She answered
him that no one was there.
He said, “I believe you. I will not open it. But see, here is your
crucifix--swear before God that there is no one in there. I will
believe you--I will never open that door.”
Madame de Merret took up the crucifix and said, “I swear it.”
Monsieur de Merret sent away the servants--all but one trusted one.
He then sent for a mason, and had the closet securely walled in. At
dawn the work was completed, the mason had gone, and Monsieur, on some
pretext, left the house. As soon as he was gone, Madame de Merret
called her maid, and together they began to tear down the wall--hoping
to replace the bricks before Monsieur returned. They had just begun the
work when Monsieur entered the room. For twenty days he remained in
his wife’s apartment, and when a noise was heard in the closet and she
wished to intercede for the dying man, her husband would answer:
“You swore on the cross that there was no one there.”
No need even for a Balzac to read a moral!
A fifth side of Balzac’s genius is sweeter to contemplate--that of
_The Idealistic Philosopher_. Take time to read _The Personal Opinions
of Honoré de Balzac_, edited by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, you who
would know how the man interpreted himself, and you will find idealism
lifting its lily crest from the field of ooze.
Doubtless “A Legend of Jesus Christ in Flanders” is Balzac’s most
ethically idealistic story--a true symbolical tale of Hawthorne’s
legendary type.
Night was falling. The ferry-boat that carried passengers from the
island of Cadzand to Ostend was ready to depart. Just then a man
appeared who wished to enter the boat. It was already full. There
was no place in the stern for the stranger, for the “aristocrats” of
Flanders were seated there--a baroness, a cavalier, a young lady, a
bishop, a rich merchant, and a doctor. So he made his way to the bow,
where the more humble folk were seated. They at once made room for him.
As soon as the boat had moved out on the water, the skipper called to
his rowers to pull with all their might, for they were in the face of a
storm. All the while the tempest was growing more terrifying, and all
the while the men and women in the boat questioned in their hearts who
might the stranger be. On his face shone a light and a quiet peace
they could not understand.
Finally, the boat was capsized. Then the stranger said to them, “Those
who have faith shall be saved; let them follow me.” With a firm step he
walked upon the waves, and those who followed him came safe to shore.
When they were all seated near the fire in a fisherman’s hut, they
looked round for the man who had brought them safely out of the sea.
But he was not there, having gone down to the water to rescue the
skipper, who had been washed ashore. He carried him to the door of the
hut, and when the door of the humble refuge was opened, the Saviour
disappeared--for it was He.
And so on this spot the convent of Mercy was built, as a shelter for
storm-beleaguered sailors, and it was said by humble folk that for many
years the foot-prints of Jesus Christ could be seen there in the sands
of Flanders.
* * * * *
There is little charm in Balzac’s work, much coarseness, much detail
of vileness, much to cause the sensitive to shudder; but there is
much, too, that causes the soul to judge itself honestly, and many a
beauty-crowned peak rising nobly from the valley darkness.
In the story which here follows in full, in translation, appear all of
Balzac’s characteristic traits. Happily, its theme leads us above the
sordid and the filthy, up to the heights which he knew and sometimes
extolled.
“An Episode Under the Terror,” which Ferdinand Brunetière has
pronounced to be “in its artistic brevity one of Balzac’s most tragic
and finished narratives,” was written in 1830 as an introduction to the
fictitious Memoirs of Sanson, who is the Stranger referred to in the
story.
AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR
(_UN ÉPISODE SOUS LA TERREUR_)