In Retirement.
Upon leaving Les Jardies, Balzac took refuge in the village of Passy,
at No. 19, Rue Basse, and there buried himself. (Thanks to M. de
Royaumont, this building has become the Balzac Museum, similar to that
of Victor Hugo at Paris, and of Goethe at Frankfort.) It was there that
he meant to make his last effort and either perish or conquer destiny.
Under the name of M. de Brugnol he had hired a small one-storey
pavilion, situated in a garden and hidden from sight by the houses
facing on the street. His address was known only to trusted friends,
and it was now more difficult than ever to discover him. And his life
as literary galley-slave was now burdened, in this solitude, with new
and overwhelming tasks.
In the midst of the stormy tumult of money troubles and creative labour
there was only one single gleam of calm and tender light. In November,
1840, he formed the project of going to Russia, and promised himself
the pleasure of joining the Comtesse de Hanska at St. Petersburg for
two long months. This hope, which he clung to with all the strength of
his ardent nature, was not to be realised until 1843, for his departure
was delayed from day to day through his financial embarrassment and
unfulfilled contracts with publishers.
Shutting himself into his writing den, a small narrow room with a low
ceiling, he proceeded to finish The Village Cure and The Diaries of Two
Young Brides; he began A Dark Affair for a journal called Le Commerce,
The Two Brothers, later A Bachelor's Establishment, for La Presse; Les
Lecamus, for Le Siecle; The Trials and Tribulations of an English Cat,
for one of Hetzel's publications, Scenes from the Private and Public
Life of Animals; he worked upon The Peasants and wrote Ursule
Mirouet,--altogether more than thirty thousand lines in the newspaper
columns, in less than one year!
Meanwhile his business affairs, so entangled that he himself hardly
knew where he stood, in spite of a portfolio bound in black in which he
kept his promissory notes and every other variety of commercial
paper,--and which he called his Compte Melancoliques (his Melancholy
Accounts), adding that they were not to be regarded as a companion
volume to his Contes Drolatiques (his Droll Tales),--began to assume
some sort of order, thanks to the efforts of his lawyer, M. Gavault,
who had undertaken to wind them up. Balzac remained as poor as ever,
for he had to turn over to M. Gavault all the money he took in, aside
from what he needed for the strict necessities of life. He admitted
proudly that at this period there were times when he contented himself
with eating a single small roll on the Boulevard, and that he had gone
for days together with one franc as his sole cash on hand.
But a new edition was soon destined to put him on his feet, enable him
to liquidate a portion of his floating debt and to pay back some of his
biggest loans. An agreement had been formed between Furne, Dubochet,
Hetzel and Paulin to bring out an edition of his complete works under
the glorious and definitive title of The Human Comedy. But it meant a
vast amount of work, all his older volumes to revise and new ones to
write,--a task that he estimated would require not less than seven years
to finish. If he had produced thirty thousand lines in 1841, he
calculated that he was bound by his contracts to produce not less than
forty thousand in 1842, not counting the work of correcting proofs of
all the new editions of his published stories.
His mental powers were as fertile as ever, but his bodily strength,
despite his robust constitution, sometimes broke down under the
prodigious fever of creation. Balzac's physician, Dr. Nacquart, obliged
him to take a rest. "I am ill," he wrote at this time. "I have been
resting all through the latter part of May (1841) in a bathtub, taking
three-hour baths every day to keep down the inflammation which
threatened me, and following a debilitating diet, which has resulted in
what, in my case, amounts to a disease, namely, emptiness of the brain.
Not a stroke of work, not an atom of strength, and up to the beginning
of this month I have remained in the agreeable condition of an oyster.
But at last Dr. Nacquart is satisfied and I am back at my task and have
just finished The Diaries of Two Young Brides and have written Ursule
Mirouet, one of those privileged stories which you are going to read;
and now I am starting in on a volume for the Montyon prize." (Letters
to a Foreign Lady, Volume 1, page 560, Letter of June-July, 1841.)
Every one of Balzac's novels cost him unimaginable and never ending
toil. After having brooded over his subject, planned the situation,
characterised his personages, and decided upon the general philosophy
that he intended to express, there followed the task of translating all
that he had conceived and thought into an adequate literary form.
Balzac often proceeded in bursts of enthusiasm, flashes of
illumination, and in a few nights would map out the entire scenario of
a whole novel. This first effort was in a certain sense the
parent-cell, which little by little gathered to itself the elements
necessary for the final composition of the work. The proof sheets sent
to Balzac always had broad margins, and it is not too much to say that
he amplified the initial draft as though he were attaching the muscles
and tendons to the bones of a skeleton; then one set of proofs followed
another, while he imparted to his story a network of veins and arteries
and a nervous system, infused blood into its veins and breathed into it
his powerful breath of life,--and all of a sudden there it was, a
living, pulsating creation, within that envelope of words into which he
had infused the best that he possessed in style and colour. But he
suffered bitter disillusions when the work was finally printed; the
creator never found his creation sufficiently perfect. Balzac suffered
with all the sensibility of his artistic conscience from blemishes
which he regarded as glaring faults, and which he followed up and
corrected with unparalleled ardour. He was aided in this task by Mme.
de Berny, his sister Laure, Charles Lemesle and Denoyers; and he
himself, a literary giant, who did not hesitate to write to Mme.
Carraud that his work was in its own line a greater achievement than
the Cathedral at Bourges was in architecture, spent whole days in
shaping and reshaping a phrase, like some sublime mason who--by a
prodigy--had built a cathedral single-handed and whose heart bled upon
discovering a neglected carving in the shadow of some buttress and
expended infinite pains to perfect it, although it was almost invisible
amidst the vastness and the beauty of the whole structure.
Accordingly his work became steadily more laborious to Balzac, and from
time to time we can hear him grumbling and groaning; we can see him at
his task, his broad face contracted, his black eyes bloodshot, his skin
bathed in perspiration and showing dark, almost greenish, in the
candle-light, while his whole body trembled and quivered with the
unseen effort of creation. His fatigue was often extreme; the use of
coffee troubled his stomach and heated his blood; he had a nervous
twitching of the eyelids, and suffered from painful shortness of breath
and a congested condition of the head that resulted in over-powering
somnolence.
But he rallied and his will power dominated illness itself and imposed
his own rules upon his overstrained body. At the same time he dreamed
of a calmer life, he pictured the delights of bucolic days and longed
to know when this driving slavery was to end. Accordingly we find him
consulting a sorcerer, a reader of cards, the celebrated Balthazar, in
regard to his future. He was amazed to find how much of his past this
man was able to reveal to him, a past made up of struggles and of
obstacles overcome, and he joyously accepted predictions that assured
him victory. Balzac was superstitious, not in a vulgar way, but through
a deep curiosity in the presence of those mysteries of the universe
which are unexplained by science. He believed himself to be endowed
with magnetic powers; and, as a matter of fact, the irresistible effect
of his words, the subtle force which emanated from his whole
personality and confirmed by his contemporaries. He believed in
telepathy, he held that two beings who love each other, and whose
sensibilities are in a certain degree in harmony, are able, even when
far apart, mutually to respond to emotions felt by the one or the
other. He consulted clairvoyants as to the course of diet to be
followed by Mme. Hanska, and gravely communicated their replies to her,
urging her to follow their advice. Occurrences apparently quite trivial
troubled him profoundly, and he was anxious for several days because he
had lost a shirt-stud given him by Mme. de Berny and could not
determine what could be the meaning of the loss. His sorcerer had
predicted that he would shortly receive a letter which would change the
entire course of his life, and, as a confirmation of his clairvoyance,
Mme. de Hanska announced a few months later the death of her husband,
M. de Hanski, which permitted Balzac to indulge in the highest hopes.
This event brought him an access of fresh courage, for in order to make
the journey to St. Petersburg it was essential that he should first
achieve a triumph, brief, brilliant and complete. He decided once again
to make a bold attempt at the theatre, and the scene of battle was to
be the Odeon. He offered The Resources of Quinola to the manager,
Lireux, who accepted it with enthusiasm. Balzac read his comedy to its
future interpreters,--notwithstanding that he had as yet written only
four acts of it,--and calmly informed them that he would have to tell
them the general substance of the fifth. They were amazed at such bold
disregard of professional usages, but it was passed over, for Lireux
was all impatience to produce The Resources and to begin the rehearsals.
Warned by the failure of Vautrin, Balzac took the most minute care in
arranging for the opening night audience which he relied upon to sweep
Quinola heavenward on a mounting wave of glory. To begin with, he did
away with the claquers and fixed the price of admission at five francs,
while the general scale of prices was as follows: balcony seats twenty
five francs, stalls twenty francs, seats in the open boxes of the first
tier twenty-five francs, open boxes of the second tier twenty francs,
closed boxes of the second tier twenty five francs, baignoir boxes
twenty francs. He had no use for mere nobodies, but determined to sift
out his audience from amongst the most distinguished men and women in
all Paris, ministers, counts, princesses, academicians, and financiers.
He included the two Princesses Troubetskoi, the Countess Leon, the
Countess Nariskine, the Aguados, the Rothschilds, the Doudeauvilles,
the Castries, and he decided that there should be none but pretty women
in the front seats of the open boxes. And he counted upon piling up a
fine little surplus, since the revenues of the box-office were in his
hands for the first three nights. Alas, on the night of March 19, 1842,
The Resources of Quinola met with the same reception as Vautrin had
done before it; in spite of all his precautions, his enemies had gained
admission to the Odeon, and throughout the whole evening, from the
first act onward, there was a ceaseless storm of hisses and cat-calls.
He had wasted four months, only to arrive at another defeat.
And all the while his financial difficulties were becoming keener, more
pressing, more imminent, and Balzac, overburdened, recapitulated his
disasters as follows: the Chronique de Paris, the Trip to Sardinia, the
Revue Parisienne and Vautrin; nevertheless he proudly squared his
shoulders. "My writings will never make my fortune until the time comes
when I shall no longer be in need of a fortune for it takes twenty-five
years before a success begins to pay, and fifty years before a great
achievement is understood." And he returned to his work! His Complete
Works were now published, for he had written a "Foreword," summing up
his method, his art and his idea; he composed Albert Savarus, in order
"to respond with a masterpiece to the barkings of the press"; he
completed The Peasants, The Two Brothers (later A Bachelor's
Establishment), he wrote The Pretended Mistress, A Debut in Life, which
appeared in La Legislature, David Sechard, The Evil Doings of a Saint,
The Love of Two Beasts; he began The Deputy from Arcis and The Brothers
of Consolation; he dreamed of bringing out a new edition--and we know
the labour that new editions cost him!--of Louis Lambert and Seraphita;
and, lastly, he corrected three volumes of the Comedie Humaine!
Living as a recluse at Passy, shut up in his working room with its
hangings of red velvet, seated at his table, with one shapely hand
supporting his massive head and his eyes fixed upon a miniature
reproducing the somewhat opulent contours of Mme. Hanska's profile, and
hence straying to an aquarelle representing the chateau at
Wierzchownia, Balzac interrupted his proof correcting to forget his
weariness in golden dreams: It was impossible that he should fail to be
elected to the Academie Francaise--which would mean two thousand
francs--hereupon he smiled--he was sure of being appointed a member of
the dictionary committee--six thousand francs more--his smile
broadened--and why should he not become a member of the Academy of
Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres and its permanent secretary?--another
six thousand francs--total, fourteen thousand!--and laughing his vast
sonorous laugh--in view of this assured and honourable position--Balzac
made plans for a prompt marriage with his far-off and long-awaited
bride.
But his dreams were of short duration. There was no end of ink-stained
paper which had to be inked still further, for without money there
could be no journey to St. Petersburg. And then there were losses of
time, which he regretted but could not avoid, such as having to pose
for David of Angers, who was modelling his monumental bust; having to
take long walks, in order to keep down his growing corpulence; and
inviting a few friends to Le Rocher de Cancale, Victor Hugo and Leon
Gozlan, in order to entertain a Russian, M. de Lenz, who wished to meet
him,--a sumptuous and lively dinner which cost him a hundred and twenty
francs,--a sum which he naturally had to borrow, and with no small
difficulty!
After alternating between hope and despair, Balzac set forth by way of
Dunkerque for St. Petersburg, where he arrived July 29, 1843, not
returning to Paris until the 3rd of November. This was his fourth
meeting with Mme. Hanska in the space of ten years, and the first since
the death of M. de Hanski. (Hanski is the masculine form for Hanska.
[Translator's Note.]) Balzac was happy and irresponsible, he laughed
his deep, resounding laugh of joyous days, that laugh which no
misfortune could quite extinguish. He was carefree and elated, and
found the strength to write a short story, Honorine, without taking
coffee. He indulged in jests; the Emperor of Russia, he declared,
valued him to the extent of thirty-two roubles, for that was the cost
of his permit of residence. And heart and soul he gave himself up to
his dear Countess Hanska.
Balzac's trip to Russia was the source of numerous legends. It was said
that he went for the purpose of asking the Czar to authorise him to
write a work that should be to a certain extent official, for the
purpose of refuting M. de Custine's Russia in 1839, and that, having
demanded an audience in too cavalier a tone, he was ordered to regain
the frontier by the shortest possible route. Others related that he had
gone there in pursuit of a princess whom he was bent upon marrying.
The return trip was made in short stages through Germany and Belgium,
and Balzac stayed over long enough in Berlin, Dresden and Liege to
become acquainted with these cities and their museums. But he had no
sooner arrived in Paris than he was attacked with inflammation of the
brain, and Dr. Nacquart put him on a very strict regime. In Paris he
once again found his tasks and his financial difficulties faithfully
awaiting him, and, faithful in his turn, he set to work again with true
"Balzacian fury." But now a new element had entered into his life: his
marriage to Mme. Hanska, although still far distant, and dependent upon
chance, was at least a settled question, and he left St. Petersburg
taking her formal promise with him. Consequently, whatever the
hardships of his existence, his periods of poverty and toil, he was now
sustained by the hope of realising a union that had been so long
desired, and he strove towards it with all his tenacious energy, as
towards a supreme goal. For the next seven years his every act was
designed as a preparation for his marriage, the future organisation of
his life, when he should become the husband of Countess Hanska. He
concerned himself with her financial affairs, with the lawsuit brought
against her after the death of her husband, with the difficulties
arising from a contested inheritance; and from a distance he gave her
advice as to the management of her property and the investment of her
principal. And at the same time he kept her informed of his efforts to
find a home worthy of their happiness, told her of household
furnishings he had bought, and sketched the various scales of domestic
and social life which one could live according to the amount of one's
income.
These were no longer dreams, practically speaking, but projects for an
assured future. Nevertheless, he was still destined to pass through
many a disastrous period before the triumph came. In 1843 he was a
candidate for the Academie Francaise, and he had reason to believe that
he would be welcomed there with especial honours. His already extensive
achievements, surpassing all contemporary production, were further
augmented by Honorine, The Muse of the Department, Lost Illusions (part
three), The Sufferings of an Inventor, a Monograph on the Parisian
Press, which had aroused great anger, The Splendour and Misery of
Courtezans (second part), Modeste Mignon, and Madame de la Chanterie
(later The Seamy Side of Contemporary History), and there was no other
writer who was in a position to dispute the sceptre with him.
Nevertheless, legitimate as his candidacy was, he felt the opposition
to it, and, realising the cause, he wrote to Nodier, who was supporting
him, this proudly sad letter:
"MY GOOD NODIER,
"I know to-day so surely that my financial position is one of the
reasons for the opposition to my candidacy for the Academie, that I beg
you, though with profound regret, not to use your influence in my
favour.
"If I am debarred from the Academie by reason of a most honourable
poverty, I shall never again present myself in the days when prosperity
accords me her favours. I am writing to the same effect to our friend
Victor Hugo, who has been working for me.
"God give you health, my good Nodier."
And, this letter being written, Balzac once more buried himself in his
work with such energy that he had a rush of blood to the head, together
with such atrocious neuralgic pains that it was necessary to apply
leeches. None the less he continued to work, and, if he went out at
all, it was for the purpose of visiting his printers or going on the
trail of works of art. From the time that the question of his marriage
was assured he began an assiduous search for beautiful adornments for
his future home, their home; and he prided himself on his instinct as a
collector and his cleverness as a buyer. He could get the upper hand of
the oldest antiquary. He had bought some Florentine furniture worthy of
the Louvre, a commode and a writing-desk that had belonged to Marie de
Medicis, for thirteen hundred and fifty francs--a unique bargain!--and he
could sell them again at a profit of thousands of francs if he wished
to. Perhaps he would consent to part with the commode, but he intended
to keep the writing desk and place it between two ebony wardrobes which
he already possessed, and it would cost him nothing, because the sale
of the other piece, the commode, would cover the entire cost! And
although in his letters to Mme. Hanska he defended himself against the
charge of prodigality, these "good bargains" still continued. A clock
of royal magnificence and two vases of pale green garnet, also
Bouchardon's "Christ" in a frame by Brustolone. And for years he
continued in pursuit of bric-a-brac, paintings and other works of art.
In 1845, on his way home after accompanying Mme. Hanska to Naples, he
passed through Marseilles, where he found some Chinese vases and plates
at Lazard's curio shop, and, after reaching Paris, he wrote to Lazard,
ordering some Chinese Horns-of-plenty and some "very fine bookcases ten
metres long by three high, richly ornamented or richly carved." And,
not content with giving these instructions to the dealer, he wrote to
Mery, who had entertained him at Marseilles, explaining what he wanted
from Lazard, and giving the following excellent lesson in the art of
bargaining:
"While you are jollying the worthy Lazard, do me the favour of sending
from time to time some of your friends to bargain for the two objects
in question, and have them always make an offer, some of fifty, others
of a hundred, others of twenty-five francs less than yours. After a
fortnight of this manoeuvring, some fine morning Lazard will let you
have them."
And Balzac added a postscript to this little lesson in the fine art of
bargaining: "Never become a collector, for if you do you give yourself
into the keeping of a demon as exacting and jealous as the demon of
gambling." But while warning his friends against his own ruling passion
he surrendered himself to it with passionate delight. During his
leisure hours he wandered at random through Paris, like a hunter on the
trail of his quarry,--through Paris which he knew down to the remotest
of its back alleys and which he loved even in its slums. When he ran
across some rare and precious piece, or something that merely appealed
to his individual taste, he derived an intense joy out of employing all
his trickery, his readiness of speech, his persuasive powers, to beat
down the price of the coveted object. It was a battle in which he chose
to come out conqueror. It pleased him to be recognised as a man with
the business instinct; and he threw out his chest when he repeated the
remark of his publisher, Souverain, "M. de Balzac is better at figures
than Rothschild!"
In 1846, during a new trip to Italy with Mme. Hanska, her daughter Anna
and the latter's husband, Count Georges Mniszech, he ransacked all
Naples, Rome and Genoa, and no longer confined his attention to
furniture and bric-a-brac, but had his eye open for paintings as well,
because his latest ambition was to found a gallery. This taste for
paintings came to him rather late in life, for his artistic
appreciation had long been limited to the works of Girodet, a taste
which called forth many a sarcasm from the far better informed
Theophile Gautier. In Rome Balzac purchased a Sebastiano del Piombo, a
Bronzino and a Mierevelt, he hunted up some Hobbemas and Holbeins, he
secured a Natoire and a Breughel,--which he decided to sell, as it
proved not to be genuine,--for he wanted "pictures of the first rank or
none at all"; furthermore, he brought back to Paris a Judgment of
Paris, attributed to Giorgione, a Greuze,--a sketch of his wife,--a Van
Dyck, a Paul Brill, The Sorceresses, a sketch of the birth of Louis XIV
representing the Adoration of the Shepherds, an Aurora by Guido, a Rape
of Europa, by Annibale Carrachio or Domenichino,--and there we have the
beginning of his gallery such as he described it in Cousin Pons. At the
same time he did not neglect other forms of art for the sake of his
paintings; he acquired a Saxon dinner service and a set of Dutch
furniture from Amsterdam; Mme. Hanska sent him some porcelains from
Germany; he sent to Tours for a writing desk and a commode of the Louis
XVI period, he bought a bed supposed to have belonged to Mme. de
Pompadour and which he intended for his guest chamber, besides a
parlour set in carved woodwork, "of the last degree of magnificence,"
and a dining-room fountain made by Bernard Palissy for Henry II or
Charles IX. Little by little he accumulated these marvels, destined to
adorn his home after the marriage.
And, in the hope of hastening the date, he made one supreme effort,
with his brain as clear and as fertile as in the periods of his most
furious production. Between 1844 and 1847 he produced, in addition to
the works already mentioned, The Peasants, The Splendour and Misery of
Courtezans (third part), Cousin Bette, The Involuntary Comedians, The
Last Incarnation of Vautrin, Cousin Pons, The Deputy from Arcis, and
The Lesser Bourgeoisie. He foresaw the dawn of his deliverance: he
would be able to achieve his gigantic task in peace.
Balzac was fully conscious of his genius and of the greatness of the
monument which he had already partly raised. He objected to being
classed with the men of letters of his period, and for some time past
had claimed recognition as standing on a higher level. Eugene de
Mirecourt was witness of a scene which bore evidence to his justifiable
pride:
"It was during the winter of 1843," he wrote, "that Messrs. Maulde and
Renon published a Picture of the Great City, which was edited by Marc
Fournier, the present manager of the Port-Saint-Martin theatre.
"One evening Balzac entered the publishers' office and said:
"'Our agreement, gentlemen, was that I should be paid for my Monograph
on the Parisian Press at the rate of five hundred francs a page.'
"'That is so,' they replied.
"'I have received only fifteen hundred francs and there are four pages;
accordingly you still owe me five hundred francs.'
"'But your corrections, M. de Balzac! Have you any idea what they
amounted to?'
"'There was nothing said about my paying for corrections.'
"'That is true,' replied M. Renon, 'but I ought to tell you that
Alexander Dumas's article, Filles, Lorettes et Courtisanes, also ran to
four pages, yet we have not given him a centime more than we have given
you.'
"Balzac started and turned pale. It is evident that he must have been
in great financial need before he would have come to make such a
request. But he quite forgot this in the face of the words he had just
heard. For, without pressing his claim further, he arose, took his hat
and said, with an accent of solemn dignity:
"'From the moment that you compare me with that negro I have the honour
of wishing you good evening!'
"He went out. And that was how the mere name of Alexandre Dumas saved
the business office of The Great City five hundred francs." (Balzac, by
Eugene de Mirecourt, pp. 80-82.)
In order to hasten his liberation from debt and his settlement with
creditors, Balzac tried to augment the sums which he received from
editors and publishers with the profits from various speculations. He
expected a rise in value of the shares which he held in the company of
the Chemins de Fer du Nord, and, either trusting to reliable
information or else himself possessing an intimate knowledge of the
development of real estate in Paris, he urged Mme. Hanska to invest her
capital in land in the Monceau district. He cited the example of
Louis-Philippe, who was the cleverest speculator of his time, and who
had acquired tracts of immense extent.
After the close of 1846 Balzac retired from the outside world and gave
himself up almost entirely to his great work. Through an intermediary
he had purchased the residence of the financier, Baujon, in the Rue
Fortunee, and with great secrecy he had it repaired and redecorated,
with a view to making it habitable at the earliest possible date. Here
he deposited his wealth of furnishings,--which had already begun to
excite public wonderment, owing to certain indiscreet revelations,--but
his life, which had always been closely hidden, had now become
practically unknown. He was unwilling to show himself again in public
until he could return in triumph after his marriage. Mme. Hanska
visited Paris a second time, in 1847, and approved of all his
arrangements. Balzac in return went to Wierzchownia that same year, and
he was dazzled by the vastness of her estates,--which were equal in
extent to a whole department of France,--and by the possibilities of
neglected and undeveloped resources which might be made to yield
millions. After his return to Paris he had but one desire: to go back
to Wierzchownia, celebrate his marriage, and realise the dream which he
had tenaciously pursued for seventeen years.
He remained in Paris six months, living in his new home in the Rue
Fortunee, denying himself to all but his most intimate friends, and
hiding his prosperity until the day should come when he could announce
his good fortune to the world at large. One of the last portraits of
Balzac at this period is the one traced by Champfleury, whom he had
received as a disciple and fervent admirer:
"M. de Balzac," he wrote, "descended the stairs enveloped in his famous
monk's robe. His face is round, his black eyes are excessively
brilliant, the general tone of his complexion verges upon olive, with
patches of violent red in the cheeks, and pure yellow towards the
temples and around the eyes. His abundant hair is a dense black,
intermingled with threads of silver; it is an astonishing head of hair.
In spite of the amplitude of his dressing-gown, his girth appears
enormous." And, further on, he gives us this second sketch: "but at the
age of forty-nine M. de Balzac ought to be painted rather than
sculptured. His keen black eyes, his powerful growth of hair
intermingled with white, the violent tones of pure yellow and red which
succeed each other crudely in his cheeks, and the singular character of
the hairs of his beard, all combine to give him the air of a festive
wild boar, that the modern sculptors would have difficulty in
reproducing."
Arriving in Paris a few days before the Revolution, Balzac witnessed
the turbulent scenes of 1848. It is said that he was one of the first
to reach the Tuileries, mingling with the excited populace, and he
brought away a fragment of the tapestry which covered the throne of
Louis-Philippe. He attended an Assembly of Men-of-Letters, which met to
decide what their attitude should be towards the provisional
government, but he had an absent-minded and detached air, as though he
found himself a stranger among all those writers. He found no one he
knew, and seemed to be searching for his comrades of earlier days. His
frequent journeys outside of France, which began in 1845, his long
periods of residence in foreign countries, in company with Mme. Hanska,
seemed to have weaned him away from the environment in which he had
lived and developed, and fitted him for a different mode of life.
The club of Universal Fraternity, in Paris, having placed him upon its
list of candidates for the legislative elections, he sent to its
president the following public letter, proud and somewhat
disillusioned, in reply to the question of a member, who wished to know
his political opinions:
"I have already stated that if the functions of a representative were
entrusted to me I would accept them. But I thought from the beginning
and I still think that it is superfluous for any man whose life and
works have been public property for twenty years to make a profession
of faith.
"There are some men whom the votes solicit, and there are others who
must solicit votes, and it is the latter who must prove the soundness
of their political views. But, as to me, if I have not taken my place,
through my writings, amongst the nine hundred individuals who represent
in our country either intelligence, or power, or commercial activity,
or a knowledge of laws and men and business, the ballot will tell me
so!"
But although Balzac had for twenty years had an ambition to hold
political office, to be a cabinet minister and have a share in the
government, he witnessed the Revolution of 1848 with no other feeling
than sorrow, for he felt that it augured no good for France. Besides,
at this time he had no other wish than to return to Russia, join Mme.
Hanska, and close the great mystery of his life with a glorious
marriage. During the few months that he remained in Paris, from
February to September, 1848, he showed nothing of his customary
literary activity, and seems to have had no other thought than that of
putting his new home in order, and transforming it into a sumptuous
abode. And when everything was ready to receive the future bride he set
out for Wierzchownia, at the end of September, leaving his home in the
care of his mother, with whom he had often had clashes and periods of
coldness, yet who had never refused her son a devotion which, although
at times somewhat churlish, was based upon a deep affection and a
precise recognition of her duties.
Accordingly Mme. de Balzac watched over his interests, just as she
formerly did in 1832, when he had gone to Aix in the company of Mme. de
Castries; and Balzac sent instructions to her from Russia, but their
tone showed an assurance, a certain complete tranquillity, which he had
not had in the days of his laborious youth. These instructions related
to business ventures which he was thinking of undertaking,--during his
first sojourn he had considered the plan of utilising Count Mnizscek's
forests by converting them into railway ties,--and now he wanted her to
send him a work by Vicat, treating of mortars and hydraulic cement;
then there were orders relating to the care he wished to be given to
the final settling of his home,--which cost him not less than four
hundred thousand francs. Mme. de Balzac must needs oversee the various
contractors, Grohe, the upholsterer, Paillard, who had the contract for
furnishing the parlour, Feuchere, the worker in bronze, from whom
Balzac wished his mother to order two brackets in gilded copper, while
at the same time she was to send him a complete list of all his table
silver. He went into the most minute details, which showed his love of
order, begging his mother to remind Francois, one of his servants, to
fill and clean the lamps, "for that is an essential matter," he
insisted. Each of these letters to his mother contains some such
trivial recommendation, which goes to show that he had the instinct of
a careful housekeeper who hates needless waste.
From Russia he continued to supervise his theatrical interests, and
entrusted them so far as they related to Mercadet, to his friend,
Laurent-Jan, while at the same time he protested against a performance
of Vautrin which he had not authorised. He announced to Laurent-Jan
that he was hard at work and was preparing some scenarios for him. He
had not renounced the idea of making money through the dramatic branch
of his art. For there were times when Mme. Hanska became anxious
regarding his personal debts, which were not yet wholly paid off, as
well as their mutual debts incurred in relation to their future home
and its furnishings. He feared that his mother, who was herself easily
alarmed, might write some discouraging news as to his financial
position, and in this way alarm the countess. Accordingly he sent her
one day a secret letter, through the post-office in Berditcheff, in
which he gave her most explicit orders in this connection. For he had
now been in Wierzchownia almost twelve months, and his marriage,
although ostensibly agreed upon, had not yet taken place, and he knew
that in such a case the whole thing might fall through at any time, up
to the very moment of the ceremony. As a matter of fact, he was a sick
man, his heart and lungs were both affected, he had lost the last of
his teeth, and there were some days when he found it impossible even to
move his arms without a sense of suffocation.
Nevertheless his constancy was at last recompensed, after months of
despair, during which he said, "I must regard the project which brought
me here as indefinitely postponed." In March, 1850, preparations were
made for the marriage, and in announcing it to his mother he said that
he would notify her of the day of his return, so that she could
decorate the rooms with flowers, "beautiful, beautiful flowers." And on
March 15th he despatched two letters, one to Mme. de Balzac and the
other to Laure, in which he announced the event so long delayed.
"Yesterday, at Berditcheff, in the parish church of St. Barbara, a
delegate of the bishop Jatomir, a saintly and virtuous priest, closely
resembling our own Abbe Henaux, confessor of the Duchess of Angouleme,
blessed and celebrated our marriage." And he signed the letter to his
sister: "Your brother, Honore, at the pinnacle of happiness!"
The happiness was brief. Balzac seems to have been destined to have a
life made up solely of toil and struggles, and at the very moment when
he had forced his way out of the jungle of obstacles and superhuman
efforts, and had reached that vast plain where travellers along the
path of life repose, destiny forbade him any joy. At the moment when he
was hoping for happiness, peace, and love, death was at his elbow.
He returned with his wife to Paris towards the end of May, 1850, in a
state of exhaustion, and yet full of dreams, projects and hopes,--but
only to take to his bed and await his destined hour. nothing could be
more dramatic than his last weeks. He suffered from heart, lungs and
liver. Every care was taken of him, and hope was offered of a cure; yet
he never rose again. His work had killed him. No one can read without
emotion the simple line that he traced on June 20, 1850, on a letter
dictated to his wife for Theophile Gautier, who had called to see him:
"I can no longer read nor write!"
Honore de Balzac died during the night of August 18, 1850, at a time
when his beautiful and weary eyes had barely caught a fleeting glimpse
of fortune, glory and peace.
Victor Hugo was notified and hurried to his bedside.
"We traversed a corridor," he has recorded, "we ascended a staircase
covered with a red carpet and encumbered with works of art, vases,
statues, paintings, cabinets containing enamels; then another corridor,
and I saw a door standing open. I heard a rattling breath, loud and
sinister. I found myself in Balzac's bedroom.
"A bed stood in the middle of the chamber. It was a bed of acacia wood,
at the head and foot of which were cross-pieces and straps, apparently
forming part of an apparatus for lifting and moving the sick man. M. de
Balzac lay in this bed, with his head supported on a pile of pillows,
to which had been added some red damask cushions taken from the sofa in
the same room. His face was purple, almost black, and was turned
towards the right. He was unshaven, but his gray hair was cut short.
His eyes were wide open and staring. I saw him in profile, and, seen
thus, he resembled the emperor.
"An old woman, the nurse, and a man-servant were standing, one on each
side of the bed. A candle was burning behind the headboard on a table,
and another on a commode near the door. On still another table a silver
vase had been placed. The man and woman stood silent, listening in a
sort of terror to the noisy rattle of the dying man's breath.
"The candle at the head of the bed vividly lighted a portrait of a
young man, high coloured and smiling, which hung above the mantle.
"An insupportable odour emanated from the bed. I lifted up the coverlid
and took Balzac's hand. It was bathed in sweat. I pressed it, but he
did not return the pressure.
"The nurse said to me:
"'He will die at daybreak.'
"I descended the stairs, carrying away that livid face in my thoughts;
as I crossed the parlour I once again came upon the motionless bust (of
Balzac, by David of Angers), impassible, proud and vaguely radiant, and
I drew a comparison between death and immortality.
"On reaching my home, as it happened to be Sunday, I found several
callers waiting for me, amongst others Riza-Bey, the Turkish charge
d'affaires, Navarrete, the Spanish poet, and Count Arrivabene, an
Italian exile. I said to them:
"'Gentlemen, Europe is about to lose a great mind.'
"He died during the night, at fifty-one years of age."
Balzac loved to compare his struggles with the military campaigns of
Bonaparte, and to point out that he had conducted them without halt or
bivouac, after the manner of the great conqueror. He wished to equal
him in glory and to surpass him in the achievements that he should
leave behind him for the benefit of future generations. He has recorded
his great desire: "In short, here is the game I am playing; during this
present half century four men will have exerted an immense influence:
Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell, and I should like to be the fourth. The
first lived upon the blood of Europe, he inoculated himself with
armies; the second espoused the globe; the third was the incarnation of
an entire people; as for me, I shall have borne an entire social epoch
in my head."
More fortunate than the young Corsican sub-lieutenant, Balzac produced
a work possessing a permanence which the other could not have,--since
thought is always greater than action,--and although death surprised him
before he could lay the last stone of his edifice, its incompleted
grandeurs might well suffice the loftiest ambition.