The "Foreign Lady".
After his return to Paris, Balzac threw himself into a frightful orgy
of work. It would seem as though his one desire was to forget the
coquette who had so cruelly punished him for loving her, and as though
he felt the need of atoning to himself for the hours that she had taken
him from his work. His physician, Dr. Nacquart, feared that he would
break down, and prescribed a month's rest, during which time he was
neither to read nor write, but lead a purely vegetative life. Yet, in
spite of this injunction, he found himself unable to stop working, for
he was urged on by his genius, and hounded by the terrible necessity of
meeting maturing notes, as well as by his own luxurious tastes which
must be satisfied at any cost. He had the most extravagant hopes of big
returns from The Country Doctor; and in this belief his friends
encouraged him. Emile de Girardin and Auguste Borget estimated that the
book would sell to the extent of four hundred thousand copies. It was
proposed to bring out a one-franc edition which was expected to
circulate broadcast, like prayer-books. Balzac made his own
calculations,--for he was eternally making calculations,--and, relying
confidently upon their accuracy, allowed himself to purchase carpets,
bric-a-brac, a Limoges dinner set, a silver service and jewellery, all
for the adornment of the small den in the Rue Cassini. He ordered
chandeliers; he stopped short of nothing save a silver chafing-dish. He
piled debts upon debts: but what difference did it make, for success
was before him, within reach of his hand, and he would have no trouble
at all to pay!
Alas, none of the actualities of life would ever break down his robust
confidence nor his golden dreams! Even before The Country Doctor was
published he found himself involved in a law suit with his publisher,
and after its appearance the public press criticised it sharply.
"Everyone has his knife out for me," he wrote to Mme. Hanska, "a
situation which saddened and angered Lord Byron only makes me laugh. I
mean to govern the intellectual world of Europe, and with two more
years of patience and toil I shall trample on the heads of all those
who now wish to tie my hands and retard my flight! Persecution and
injustice have given me a brazen courage."
After each of his disillusions he had arisen again stronger than
before; and at this juncture a new element had entered into his life
which gave him an augmented energy and courage. This element was the
one secret romance of his life, which gave rise to a host of anecdotes
and legends. In the month of February, 1832, his publisher, Gosselin,
forwarded a letter to him, signed L'Etrangere, "A Foreign Lady," which
caught his attention by the nobility of the thoughts expressed in it.
This first letter was followed by several others, and in one of them,
dated November 7th, the "Foreign Lady" requested him to let her know of
its safe arrival: "A line from you, published in La Quotidienne, will
assure me that you have received my letter, and that I may write to you
without fear. Sign it, A L'E. H. de B. ('To the Foreign Lady from H. de
B.')." The line requested appeared in La Quotidienne, in its issue of
December 9th, and thus began a long and almost daily correspondence
which was destined to last for seventeen years.
The "Foreign Lady" was a Polish woman of noble birth, Mme. Hanska, who
before her marriage was Countesse Eveline Rzewuska, who lived at her
chateau of Wierzchownia, in Volhynia, with her husband, who possessed
vast estates, and her daughter, Anna, who was still a child. Mme.
Hanska had read the Scenes from Private Life, and she had been filled
with enthusiasm for the author's talent and with a great hope of being
able to exert an influence over his mind and to direct his ideas.
The mysterious nature of this strange correspondence pleased Balzac: he
was able, in the course of it, to give free rein to his imagination,
and at the same time to picture her to himself as a type of woman such
as he had longed for through many years, endowing her with a beauty
which represented all the virtues. His first letters, although
dignified and reserved, nevertheless revealed the fact that he was
seeking for some woman in whom he could confide, and very soon he began
to pour out his heart freely. It is in this collection of letters,
which extend from January, 1833, down to 1847, that we must search for
the true details of his life, rather than in any of those collections
of doubtful anecdotes, which show it only in the distorted form of
caricature, and only too often have no foundation of truth.
Nevertheless it is necessary to read them with a certain amount of
critical reservation, for he often shows himself in them in a false
light, which probably seemed necessary to him, in order to carry out
the diplomatic course which he had undertaken, and which terminated in
his marriage.
From 1833 onward he was destined to lead a double life, the one before
the eyes of the world, with its gesticulations, its eccentricities, its
harlequinades, that left the lookers-on gaping with amazement; and the
other his secret life, which he revealed only to Mme. Hanska, day by
day,--his slave-like toil, his burden of debts which no amount of effort
seemed to lighten, his prodigious hopes, and from time to time his
desperate weariness.
After the publication of The Country Doctor the confused plan of his
vast work took more definite form, the scattered parts began to fit
together, and he foresaw the immense monument in which he was destined
to embody an entire social epoch.
"The day when he was first inspired with this idea was a wonderful day
for him," Mme. Surville has recorded. "He set forth from the Rue
Cassini, where he had taken up his residence after leaving the Rue de
Tournon, and hurried to the Faubourg Poissoniere, where I was then
living.
"'Salute me,' he cried out joyously, 'for I am on the high road to
become a genius!'
"He then proceeded to unfold his plan to us, although it still rather
frightened him. In spite of the vastness of his brain, time alone would
enable him to work out such a plan in detail!
"'How splendid it will be if I succeed!' he said as he strode up and
down the parlour; he was too excited to remain in one place and joy
radiated from all his features. 'From now on they are welcome to call
me Balzac the tale-smith! I shall go on tranquilly squaring my stones
and enjoying in advance the amazement of all those purblind critics
when they finally discover the great structure that I am building!'"
What vital force there was in all the characters of Balzac's novels,
and how well entitled he was to boast that he was running in
competition with the whole social structure! He had not yet formulated
his conception of the Human Comedy, but he was on the road to it when
he planned to rearrange the volumes already published with others that
he had in preparation, in a series of scenes in which the
representative types of the different social classes should develop.
This was the first rough draft of his later great collected editions.
In order to carry out his plan, he had to break with his former
publishers, pay back advance royalties, and defend law-suits. His
collective edition took the general title of Studies of the Manners and
Customs of the Nineteenth Century, and was divided into Scenes of
Private Life, Scenes of Provincial Life, and Scenes of Parisian Life.
He gave the rights of publication of this collective edition first to
Madame the Widow Bechet and later to Edmond Werclet, in consideration
of the sum of twenty-seven thousand francs. This was the most
advantageous contract that he had made up to this time, and he hoped
that it would free him from all his debts, with the exception of what
he owed his mother. In addition to his previously published volumes, he
included in this edition the following new works: Eugenie Grandet, The
Illustrious Gaudissart, The Maranas, Ferragus, The Duchess of Langeais,
The Girl with the Golden Eyes, The Search for the Absolute, The
Marriage Contract, The Old Maid, and the first part of Lost Illusions.
But he did not include either The Chouans or his philosophic works.
Twenty-seven thousand francs was an enormous sum, without parallel save
that paid to Chateaubriand for his collected works; but in Balzac's
case the payment was made in the form of notes for long periods, and he
was left without ready money. In the midst of all his other labours he
had to rack his brain in order to find some way of cashing these notes.
"Finding that I had nothing to hope for from the bankers," he wrote to
Mme. Hanska, "I remembered that I owed three hundred francs to my
doctor, so I called upon him in order to settle my account with one of
my bits of negotiable paper, and he gave me change amounting to seven
hundred francs, minus the discount. From there I made my way to my
landlord, an old grain dealer in the Halle, and paid my rent with
another of my notes, which he accepted, giving me back another seven
hundred francs, minus the exchange; from him I went to my tailor, who,
without demur, took over another of my thousand franc notes, entered it
in his ledger, and paid me the whole thousand francs!
"Seeing that I was in for a run of luck, I took a cab and drove to the
home of a friend, who is a millionaire twice over, a friend of twenty
years standing. As it happened, he had just returned from Berlin. I
found him in, and at once he hurried to his desk, gave me two thousand
francs, and relieved me of two more of the Widow Bechet's notes,
without even looking at them. Ha! ha!--I returned to my rooms and
summoned my vendor of wood and my grocer, in order to settle my
accounts, and, in place of a five hundred franc bank note, slipped each
of them one of the widow's five hundred franc promissory notes! By four
o'clock I was free once more and ready to meet the next day's
obligations. My mind is at ease for a month to come. I can seat myself
once more in the fragile swing of my dreams and let my imagination keep
me swinging. Ecco, Signora!
"My dear, faithful wife-to-be, did I not owe you this faithful picture
of your future home life in Paris? Yes, but here are five thousand
francs squandered, out of the twenty-seven thousand, and before setting
out for Geneva I still have ten thousand to pay: three thousand to my
mother, one thousand to my sister, and six thousand in judgments and
costs.--'Good gracious, my dear man, where will you raise all that?'--
Out of my ink-well!" (Letter dated October 31, 1833.)
The tone of the correspondence had become more tender and confidential,
mirroring back an intimate picture of a laborious existence, laden with
anxieties,--and the reason is that Balzac now knew his "Foreign Lady,"
for he had met her at Neufchatel, whence he returned overflowing with
enthusiasm. From the date of the very first letters he had received his
imagination had taken fire, and he had responded with an answering
ardour to this woman who had so ingenuously laid bare her heart to him.
It was a romantic adventure upon which he set forth rejoicing. He had
sent to the fair unknown a lock of his hair, which he had allowed to
remain for some time uncut, in order to send one as long as possible;
he had presented her with a perfumed casket, destined to be the
mysterious receptacle of his letters; a friend had drawn a sketch of
his apartment in the Rue Cassini, so that she might see what a pleasant
little den the toiler had; and lastly he inserted in a copy of The
Country Doctor an aquarelle, in which he was portrayed in the somewhat
exaggerated guise of his own Doctor Bernassis. This was a sacrifice to
which he consented for love's sake, because he had always refused to
let anyone, even Gerard, paint his portrait, insisting "that he was not
handsome enough to be worth preserving in oil."
But letter-writing and delicate attentions in the form of gifts were
far from satisfying him. He wanted to see her, to talk with her, to put
into speech shades of feeling so delicate that the written word was
powerless to reproduce them. And presently chance aided and abetted
him. Mme. Hanska left Wierzchnownia for a summer vacation in
Switzerland, and Balzac, on the trail of one of those business
opportunities for which he was ever on the watch, was obliged to go to
Besancon at precisely the same season. His mission related to the
manufacture of a special kind of paper, to be made exclusively for his
works, and which he imagined would speedily make his fortune. Since she
was to be at Neufchatel and he at Besancon, how could they resist the
pleasure of a first meeting? Permission was asked to call, and
permission was granted; and Balzac, impatient and intoxicated with
hope, left Paris, September 22d, arrived at Neufchatel on the 25th, and
for five days enjoyed profound happiness, tender and unalloyed. They
met, and the sentiments born of their correspondence, far from being
destroyed by this meeting, were on the contrary exalted into trembling
avowals, transports and protestations of eternal love. Balzac returned
to Paris radiant with his new-found joy. He wrote as follows to his
sister Laure, the habitual recipient of his confidences:
"I found down yonder all that is needed to flatter the thousand
vanities of that animal known as man, of which species the poet still
remains the vainest variety. But why do I use the word vanity? No, that
has nothing to do with it. I am happy, very happy in thought, and so
far all for the best and in all honour . . .
"I say nothing to you of her colossal wealth; of what consequence is
that, beside a perfection of beauty which I can compare to no one
except the Princess of Bellejoyeuse, only infinitely better?"
Mme. Hanska was profoundly religious and a practical Catholic; and from
this time onward she exerted an influence over the trend of Balzac's
thoughts. Indeed, he brought back from their first interviews the germ
idea of his mystical story, Seraphita. The project of the special paper
having failed to materialise at Besancon, he tried to carry it out
through the mediation of Mme. Carraud, but with no better success.
The Country Doctor proved a source of nothing but disappointments to
Balzac, who received an adverse decision from the courts, in the
lawsuit bought by Mame, because he had failed to furnish copy at the
stipulated dates, and found himself facing a judgment of three thousand
francs damages, besides another thousand francs for corrections made at
his expense. The cost of the latter was, for that matter, always
charged to him by his publishers in all his contracts, because his
method of work raised this item to an unreasonable sum. For one of his
short stories, Pierette, Balzac demanded no less than seventeen
successive revised proofs. And his corrections, his additions and his
suppressions formed such an inextricable tangle that the typesetters
refused to work more than an hour at a time over his copy.
The failure of the work on which he had counted so much and the loss of
his lawsuit did not discourage him. To borrow his own phrase, he
"buried himself in the most frightful labours." Between the end of 1833
and 1834 he produced Eugenie Grandet, The Illustrious Gaudissart, The
Girl with the Golden Eyes, and The Search for the Absolute. The paper
which he used for writing was a large octavo in form, with a parchment
finish. His manuscripts often bore curious annotations and drawings. On
the cover of that of Eugenie Grandet he had drawn a ground plan of old
Grandet's house, and had compiled a list of names, from which he chose
those of the characters in the story. Balzac attached an extreme
importance to proper names, and he did not decide which to give to his
heroes until after long meditation, for he believed that names were
significant, even to the extent of influencing their destinies. The
manuscript of The Search for the Absolute bears witness to his constant
preoccupation about money. He had inscribed on it the following account:
Total for June 7,505 francs.
Total for July 1,500 francs.
Floating debt 3,700 francs.
12,705 francs.
And melancholically he wrote below it, "Deficit, 1,705!" His writing
was small, compressed, irregular and often far from easy to read; when
he suppressed a passage, he used a form of pothook erasure which
rendered the condemned phrase absolutely illegible.
In 1834, Honore de Balzac, while still keeping his apartment in the Rue
Cassini, transferred his residence to Chaillot, No. 13, Rue des
Bastailles (now the Avenue d'Iena), in a house situated on the site of
the hotel of Prince Roland Bonaparte. This was his bachelor quarters,
where he received his letters, under the name of Madame the Widow
Durand. He had by no means abandoned his projects of luxurious
surroundings, and in The Girl with the Golden Eyes he has given a
description of his own parlour, which shows that he had in a measure
already realised his desires:
"One-half of the boudoir," he wrote, "described an easy and graceful
semicircle, while the opposite side was perfectly square, and in the
centre glistened a mantelpiece of white marble and gold. The entrance
was through a side door, hidden by a rich portiere of tapestry, and
facing a window. Within the horseshoe curve was a genuine Turkish
divan, that is to say, a mattress resting directly upon the floor, a
mattress as large as a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference and
covered with white cashmere, relieved by tufts of black and poppy-red
silk arranged in a diamond pattern. The headboard of this immense bed
rose several inches above the numerous cushions which still further
enriched it by the good taste of their harmonious tints. The walls of
this boudoir were covered with red cloth, overlaid with India muslin
fluted like a Corinthian column, the flutings being alternately
hollowed and rounded, and finished at top and bottom with a band of
poppy-red cloth embroidered with black arabesques. Seen through the
muslin, the poppy-red turned to rose colour, the colour emblematic of
love; and the same effect was repeated in the window curtains, which
were also of India muslin lined with rose-coloured taffeta and
ornamented with fringes of mixed black and poppy-red. Six vermilion
sconces, each containing two candles, were fixed at even intervals to
the wall, for the purpose of lighting the divan. The ceiling, from the
centre of which hung a chandelier of dull vermilion, was a dazzling
white, and the cornice was gilded. The carpet resembled an Oriental
shawl, exhibiting the patterns and recalling the poetry of Persia, the
land where it had been woven by the hands of slaves. The furniture was
all upholstered in white cashmere, emphasised by trimmings of the same
combination of black and poppy-red. The clock, the candle-sticks, all
the ornaments, were of white marble and gold. The only table in the
room had a cashmere covering. Graceful jardinieres contained roses of
all species having blossoms of red or white."
Theophile Gautier has borne witness to the accuracy of this
description; but as though wishing to show him the double aspect of his
life, Balzac, after willingly exhibiting in detail all the luxury of
his boudoir, led him to a corner recess, necessitated by the rounded
form of one side of the room; and there, hidden behind the ostentatious
decoration, there was nothing but a narrow iron cot, a table and a
chair; this was where he worked.
Balzac disliked being disturbed while working; and, for the double
reason of avoiding unwelcome visitors and throwing his creditors off
the scent, he had invented a whole series of pass-words, which it was
necessary to know before one could penetrate to his apartment. A
visitor, let into the secret, would say to the porter, "The season for
plums has arrived," thanks to which he acquired the right to enter the
house. But this was only the first degree of initiation. A servant
would next come forward and ask, "What does Monsieur wish?" and one had
to be able to answer, "I have brought some Brussels lace." This
constituted the second degree and resulted in permission to ascend the
stairs. Then, with the door of the sanctuary just ajar, the visitor
could not hope to see it swing fully open before him until he had made
the assertion that "Mme. Durand was in good health!" Whenever Balzac
suspected that his pass-words had been betrayed, he invented a new set,
which he communicated only to those few chosen spirits whom he cared to
receive. And this method of protecting himself caused him, when with
his friends, to indulge in great outbursts of his vast, resounding
laughter.
In spite of envy and conspiracies, Balzac's reputation was now
established; he had become one of those writers who are widely
discussed and whose sayings and doings are a current topic of
conversation. At the same time, he was the prey of the low-class
journals, which attacked him maliciously. At this period, Balzac was
passing through a second attack of dandyism. He was once again to be
seen at the Opera, at the Bouffes and at the fashionable salons. He
sported a monstrous walking stick, the handle of which was set with
turquoises; he showed himself in the box occupied by an
ultra-fashionable set known as the "Tigers," wearing a blue coat,
adorned with golden buttons, "buttons," he said, "wrought by the hand
of a fairy"; and he had a "divine lorgnette," which had been made for
him by the optician of the Observatory. He began to be laughed at; and,
gossip taking a hand, his glorious luxury was attributed to the
generosity of an elderly Englishwoman, Lady Anelsy, whose lucky
favourite he was supposed to be. His walking stick especially--a stick
that, in his estimation, was worthy of Louis XIV--excited curiosity. It
was ridiculed, decried and admired. Mme. de Girardin wrote a novel
around it, Monsieur de Balzac's Walking Stick, in which she attributed
to it the power of rendering invisible whoever held it in his left hand.
He had a carriage adorned with his monogram, surmounted by the arms of
the d'Entragues; he frequented the salons of the Rothschilds, and of
Mme. Appony, the wife of the Austrian ambassador; he gave magnificent
dinners to Latour-Mezeray, to Sandeau, to Nodier, to Malitourne and to
Rossini, who declared that he had "never seen, eaten or drunken
anything better, even at the tables of kings."
Then, suddenly, Balzac returned to the fierce heat of production; he
abandoned his friends and acquaintances, and became invisible for
months at a time, buried in his hiding-place at Chaillot, or else
taking refuge at the home of M. de Margonne at Sache, or of Mme.
Carraud at Frapesle. And when he reappeared, it was with his hands
laden with masterpieces, his eye more commanding and his brow held high
with noble pride. With a speed of production that no one has ever
equalled he turned forth, one after another, his great novels, Old
Goriot, The Lily in the Valley, Seraphita, The Atheist's Mass, The
Interdiction, The Cabinet of Antiques, Facino Cane, and he revised,
corrected and remodelled a part of his earlier works into the
Philosophic Studies which he brought out through Werdet, and his
Studies of Manners, published by Mme. Bechet. His plan had grown still
larger, the formidable creation with which his brain was teeming was
taking organic shape, and he now perceived the architecture of his vast
monument. He expounded it to Mme. Hanska, with justifiable pride:
"I believe that by 1838 the three divisions of this gigantic work will
be, if not completed, at least superposed, so that it will be possible
to judge the mass of the structure.
"The Studies of Manners are intended to represent all social effects so
completely that no situation in life, no physiognomy, no character of
man or woman, no manner of living, no profession, no social zone, no
section of France, nor anything whatever relating to childhood,
maturity or old age, to politics, justice or war, shall be forgotten.
"This being determined, the history of the human heart traced thread by
thread, and the history of society recorded in all its parts, we have
the foundation. There will be no imaginary incidents in it; it will
consist solely of what is happening everywhere.
"Then comes the second story of my structure, the Philosophic Studies,
for after the effects we shall examine the causes. In the Studies of
Manners I shall already have painted for you the play of the emotions
and the movement of life. In the Philosophic Studies I shall expound
the why of the emotions and the wherefore of life; what is the range
and what are the conditions outside of which neither society nor man
can exist; and, after having surveyed society in order to describe it,
I shall survey it again in order to judge it. Accordingly the Studies
of Manners contain typical individuals, while the Philosophic Studies
contain individualised types. Thus on all sides I shall have created
life: for the type by individualising it, and for the individual by
converting him into a type. I shall endow the fragment with thought,
and I shall have endowed thought with individual life.
"Then, after the effects and causes, will come the Analytic Studies, of
which the Physiology of Marriage will form part: for after the effects
and causes, the next thing to be sought is the principles. The manners
are the performance, the causes are the stage setting and properties,
and the principles are the author; but in proportion as my work circles
higher and higher into the realms of thought, it narrows and condenses.
If it requires twenty-four volumes for the Studies of Manners, it will
not require more than fifteen for the Philosophic Studies, and it will
not require more than nine for the Analytic Studies. In this way, man,
society and humanity will have been described, judged and analysed,
without repetition, resulting in a work which will stand as the
Thousand and One Nights of the Occident.
"When the whole is completed, my edifice achieved, my pediment
sculptured, my scaffolding cleared away, my final touches given, it
will be proved that I was either right or wrong. But after having been
a poet, after having demonstrated an entire social system, I shall
revert to science in an Essay on the Human Powers. And around the base
of my palatial structure, with boyish glee I shall trace the immense
arabesque of my Hundred Droll Tales."
Think of the courage that it needed not to recoil before this
superhuman task, planned with such amplitude and precision! Yet, aside
from a few rare days of discouragement, Balzac did not feel that it was
beyond his powers. After each brief period of weakening, his optimism
always reappeared, and having indicated his goal, he concluded: "Some
day when I have finished, we can have a good laugh. But today I must
work."
Accordingly he worked, not only "today," but every day, in the midst of
the material uncertainty created by his accumulated debts, his
lawsuits, and his need of luxury; and his method of work was to retire
at six o'clock in the evening, rise at two in the morning, and remain
sometimes more than sixteen hours before his table, wrestling with his
task.
Nevertheless he was able to escape in May, 1835, for a trip to Vienna
to see Mme. Hanska, enjoy a fortnight of happiness, and return to Paris
with his heart in holiday mood. His good humour never deserted him. He
related how, lacking any knowledge of German, he devised a way of
paying his postilion. At each relay he summoned him to the door of the
carriage and, looking him fixedly in the eye, dropped kreutzers into
his hands one by one, and when he saw the postilion smile he withdrew
the last kreutzer, knowing that he had been amply paid!
Returning to Paris by the eleventh of June, Balzac found nothing but a
new crop of sorrows and anxieties awaiting him, together with "three or
four months of hard labour" in perspective. His publisher, Werdet, had
not been able to meet his payments, and his sister Laure had been
obliged to pawn all her brother's silver at the Mont-de-Piete, in order
to save the notes from being protested. On the other hand, his mother
was seriously ill; it was feared the result would be either death or
insanity, and his brother Henri had reached a state in which he was on
the point of blowing out his brains. Family sorrows, money troubles,
such was perpetually his fate! and accordingly he redoubled his
courage. He had been working not more than sixteen hours consecutively,
but now he worked for twenty-four at a stretch, and after five hours
sleep began again this new schedule which practically meant an average
of twenty-one and one-half working hours per day. He would be able to
earn eight thousand francs, but in order to do so he must deliver
within forty days the last chapters of Seraphita and the Young Brides
to the Revue de Paris, the Lily in the Valley to the Revue des Deux
Mondes, and an article for the Conservateur, all of which was
equivalent to writing four hundred and forty-eight pages.
And still this did not satisfy him! His ambition pushed him once again
towards his earlier political designs. He counted upon the support of
the reviews for which he was writing, he planned to found two
newspapers, and dreamed of creating a party composed of the
intellectual element, of which he would naturally be the leader. It was
in this spirit that, during the last months of 1835, he acquired the
Chronique de Paris, of which he became the director. To this weekly
periodical, which henceforth appeared twice a week, Balzac summoned a
brilliant editorial staff--he always disdained to supervise any other
than shining lights--including Gustave Planche, Nodier, Theophile
Gautier, Charles de Bernard, while the illustrations were furnished by
Gavarni and Daumier. Since he already aspired to a foreign ministry or
ambassadorship, he reserved the department of foreign affairs for
himself, and for more than a year he treated of European diplomacy with
extraordinary penetration and accuracy. He made prodigious efforts to
keep his review on its feet, but in spite of his activity and the
talent of his collaborators, the Chronique exerted little or no
influence, and remained very poor in subscribers.
While he was still editing it he once more underwent the singular and
vexatious experience of being imprisoned. Although a good citizen, he
energetically refused to fulfill his duties in the national guard,
which he deemed unbefitting the dignity of an artist and author. In
March, 1835, he had already been detained for seven days in the Hotel
Bazancourt; so in order to avoid a similar annoyance in the future he
hired his apartment under another name than his own. But his
sergeant-major, a dentist by profession and a man of resource,
succeeded in capturing him and landing him safely in the "Hotel des
Haricots." (Popular nickname for the debtors' prison. [Translator's
Note.]) He was locked up without a penny in his pocket, and in order to
soften the rigours of his captivity must needs appeal for help to his
publisher, Werdet. His hardships, however, proved to be tolerably mild
when once he was supplied with money. In the prison he met Eugene Sue,
who was detained for the same cause, and who carried the thing off in
lordly fashion, having sumptuous repasts brought to him on his own
silver service. Owing to this attitude there was a certain coldness at
first between the two novelists, but before long they joined forces in
order to enliven their days of imprisonment. Eugene Sue could draw, and
he made a pen-and-ink sketch of a horse, a horseman and a stretch of
seashore, which Balzac inscribed as follows: "Drawn in prison in the
Hotel Bazancourt, where we were under punishment for not having mounted
guard, in accordance with the decree of the grocers of Paris."
A still harsher prison, that of Clichy, very nearly fell to Balzac's
lot, a few months later. His efforts to carry on the Chronique had been
in vain, and he had been obliged to abandon it, toward the middle of
1837, with a fresh accumulation of debts. One of his creditors, William
Duckett, pressed him so vigorously for a sum of ten thousand francs
that Balzac was forced to go into hiding, and the process-servers were
unable to discover him. A woman finally betrayed his retreat, and one
morning the officers of the law presented themselves at the home of
Mme. de Visconti, the lady who had given him asylum. Balzac was caught,
but not taken, for the generous woman promptly paid the debt demanded
of him.
Once again he had been saved, but now all his creditors were at his
heels, and he was like a hare before them, never sure where he could
lay his head. In order to satisfy them he added toil to toil, story to
story, notwithstanding the sorrow caused him by the loss of Mme. de
Berny, that early love who had protected his youth and sustained his
courage, with an unwavering devotion, a heart of wife and mother in
one. His troubles were now constant, and he was forced to carry on a
famous litigation with Buloz, director of the Revue des Deux Mondes,
who had forwarded to the Revue Etrangere of St. Petersburg uncorrected
proofs of the Lily of the Valley. In defending himself he was defending
the common rights of all authors.
Theophile Gautier, whom he had invited to collaborate on the Chronique
de Paris at a time when the author of Mademoiselle de Maupin was but
little known, has left some vivid recollections of Balzac at this
period:
"It was," he writes, "in that same boudoir (the luxurious chamber in
the Rue des Batailles) that he gave us a splendid dinner, on which
occasion he lighted with his own hands all the candles in the vermilion
sconces as well as those in the chandelier and candlesticks. The guests
were the Marquis de B- (de Belloy) and the artist L.B. (Louis
Boulanger). Although quite sober and abstemious by habit, Balzac did
not disdain on occasion the festive board and flowing bowl; he ate with
a whole-hearted satisfaction that was appetising to see, and he drank
in true Pantagruelian fashion. Four bottles of the white wine of
Vouvray, one of the headiest wines known, in no way affected his strong
brain, and produced no other result than to add a slightly keener
sparkle to his gaiety.
"Characteristic touch! At this splendid feast, furnished by Chevot,
there was no bread. But when one has all the superfluities, of what use
are the necessities?"
Balzac, who ordinarily ate quite soberly, consumed an enormous quantity
of fruit, pears, strawberries and grapes. He held that they were good
for his health, and that they suited his temperament, overheated as it
was by his abuse of coffee and his sleepless nights. Alcohol did not
agree with him, and as to tobacco, he detested it to such a degree that
he refused to employ servants who had the habit of smoking.
His intellectual conceptions intermingled with the current events of
life, and he drew no very clear demarcation between the characters and
adventures which he created and the actualities of life. The History of
the Thirteen and the exploits of the association of which Ferragus was
chief gave Balzac the idea of forming a secret society, after the
manner of the one he had conceived, the members of which were to afford
one another aid and protection under all circumstances. This society he
called the Red Horse, from the name of the restaurant where the charter
members met. They were Theophile Gautier, Leon Gozlan, Alphonse Karr,
Louis Desnoyers, Eugene Guinot, Altorache, Merle, and Granier de
Cassagnac, all of whom swore the oath of fidelity and enthusiastically
named Balzac Grand Master of the new order. The place of meeting was
changed each week, in order not to attract the attention of the waiters
who served the "Horses,"--cabalistic name of the conspirators,--and their
secret had to be carefully guarded, for it was nothing less than a
project for distributing among the members of the Red Horse the chief
offices of State, the ministries and ambassadorships, the highest
positions in arts and letters, the Academie Francaise and the Institut.
These secret reunions ceased after a few months, for there was no more
corn in the crib,--in other words, a majority of the "Horses" were
unable to pay their dues.
Did these chimerical dreams serve to distract Balzac's thoughts from
the realities, or did he believe that he possessed some occult means of
dominating society? Perhaps it was something of both. His material
situation had become worse. Werdet succumbed under the weight of his
publications, dragging down his favourite author in his ruin. Balzac
had hours of heavy depression; he went for a rest to Mme. Carraud's
home at Frapesle, and after his return to Paris he wrote her in the
following strain:
"I am horribly embarrassed for money. By tomorrow I may not have a care
in the world, if the matters that I have in hand turn out well; but
then again it is quite possible that I may perish. It is quite dramatic
to be always hovering between life and death; it is the life of a
corsair; but human endurance cannot keep it up forever."
He sought for new publishers; then, having passed through the crisis of
humility, he straightened up once more, his courage was born again, and
he undertook a very mysterious journey the goal of which he revealed to
no one, aside from Commander Carraud, whom he had let into his secret.
He announced only that if he succeeded it would mean a fortune for him
and all his family. Balzac borrowed five hundred francs and left Paris
in March, 1836, arriving on the 20th in Marseilles, and on the 26th in
Ajaccio, where, his incognito having been betrayed by a former fellow
student, he was royally entertained by the younger generation; and on
April 1st he set out for Sardinia in a small sloop propelled by oars.
What was the object of this journey? During a stay in Genoa in 1837 a
merchant of that city had told him that whole mountains of slag existed
near the silver mines which the Romans had worked in Sardinia. This
information had set Balzac's spirit of deduction to working, and,
assuming that the ancients were very ignorant in the art of reducing
ores and had probably abandoned enormous quantities of silver in the
slag, had asked his Genoese friend to send him some specimens to Paris.
Landing at Alghiero, he explored Sardinia, saw the mountains of slag
and, returning to Genoa on the 22d, had the discomfiture of learning
that his Genoese friend, instead of sending him the requested
specimens, had adopted the idea himself and had obtained from the court
of Turin the right to develop the project in conjunction with a firm in
Marseilles which had assayed the ore. All Balzac's hopes of making his
fortune once more crumbled to pieces; yet he refused to succumb, but,
at the same time he wrote the bad news to Laure, announced that he had
hit upon something better! Such was his unconquerable optimism. He
returned by way of Milan, where he remained several weeks, attending to
some business matters for the Visconti family, and, far from his
"phrase-shop," he indulged in bitter reflections. At the age of
thirty-nine his debts amounted to two hundred thousand francs, he had
resorted to every means to clear himself, and, weary of so many useless
efforts, he ceased to look forward to a day of liberation.
But he missed his routine of exhausting labour, he sighed for his
table, his candles, his white paper; he wanted to get back to his
feverish nights, his days of meditation, in his secluded and silent
workroom where, better than anywhere else, all his heroic personages
quivered into being, and he beheld all the various lives of his
creation with a bitter, almost terrible joy. He returned to Paris
during the first half of June, lamenting: "My head refuses to do any
intellectual work; I feel that it is full of ideas, yet it is
impossible to get them out; I am incapable of concentrating my
thoughts, of compelling them to consider a subject from all its sides
and then determine its development. I do not know when this imbecile
condition will pass off, perhaps it is only that I am out of practice.
When a workman has left his tools behind him for a time his hand
becomes clumsy; it has, so to speak, undergone a divorce from them; he
must needs begin again little by little to establish that fraternity
due to habit and which binds the hand to the implement and the
implement to the hand." But his discouragement did not last long, for
he soon had his implement in hand again, with a stronger grip on it
than ever.