LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1839, 1840
Sometimes, notwithstanding his affected indifference, Balzac was
provoked by the pleasantries, the fleerings and floutings of satirists
and caricaturists, who, finding so many weak points in his armour--so
much that was ridiculous in his exaggerations, might be excused for
choosing him as a quarry for their wit, if not for the wit's
grossness. In 1839, the _Gazette des Ecoles_ inserted in one of its
numbers a lithograph exhibiting the novelist in the debtors' prison at
Clichy, clad in his monk's gown, and sitting at a table on which there
were bottles of wine and a champagne glass. In his left hand he
grasped a pipe that he was smoking, and his right arm was round a
young woman's waist. Beneath the lithograph was the inscription: "The
Reverend Father Dom Seraphitus, Mysticus Goriot, of the Regular Order
of Clichy Friars, taken in by all those he has himself taken in,
receives amidst his forced solitude the consolations of Sancta
Seraphita (_Scenes of the Hidden Life_, sequel to those of _Private
Life_)."
The last sentence being open to the interpretation that the subject of
the caricature was a dishonest man, a complaint was lodged with the
Procureur-General against the proprietor of the paper, and was
supported by the newly-constituted Men of Letters Society.
This Society, of which Balzac may be considered almost the founder,
came into existence during his journey to Italy in the preceding year.
On his return, he at once became a member; and, for a while, took a
prominent part in all its deliberations, being elected on the
committee, as also Victor Hugo, with whom thenceforward his relations
were, at least outwardly, most cordial. In the first lawsuit engaged
by the Society against the _Memorial de Rouen_ for the purpose of
defending the principle of literary property, he pleaded with all the
force of his talent, and composed a _Literary Code_ and some _Notes on
Literary Ownership_ containing not a few excellent suggestions. His,
too, was the initiative for the drawing up of a petition to the King,
with a view to the establishment of literary prizes to be bestowed on
well-deserving authors every ten years. The King, or rather his
advisers, rewarded this zeal but ill. At one of the committee meetings
Balzac was prevented from attending by a three days' confinement in a
dirty lock-up at Sevres, the cause being the old one which had partly
driven him from Paris--his unwillingness to go, as he humorously put
it, into the vineyards of his village, and, dressed in uniform, to see
that truants from Paris were not eating the grapes.
His rural retreat, indeed, was scarcely the safe asylum he had fondly
hoped it would be. Allusion has already been made to one defect--that
of the walls which, unlike those of Jericho, did not wait for the
trumpeters' blast before they fell down. They had an incurable
preference for tumbling down of themselves. Constructed on a subsoil
of sandy nature, their foundations yielded at every spell of rain. In
vain, architect after architect was applied to, and one mode or
another was recommended of relaying and buttressing. At the next
downpour, the servant would disturb his master with the news: "The
walls have toppled over again, sir, into the neighbours' gardens." And
the neighbours' gardens were planted with all kinds of edible
vegetables, which were crushed and pounded out of shape and
succulence, so that the owner of Les Jardies had claims for damage
continually sent in, until, in sheer despair, pledging his credit more
deeply, he purchased the land beyond, content, at length, that his
walls should be able to carry on their freaks in his own demesne,
without let or hindrance or objection from any one. It is said that
the land on which Les Jardies stood was so much on the incline that
Frederick Lemaitre, who once ventured over there, was compelled to
take a couple of stones and place them at each step under his feet in
order to approach the house. This was, no doubt, one of the actor's
jokes. It is probable that, in selecting the site, Balzac had in his
thought the facility the place would afford for reconnoitering when
any one came to his doors. The domestics were directed to keep a sharp
look-out; and, as soon as a figure was seen approaching that appeared
to be a creditor or of the State functionary tribe, the blinds of the
abode were lowered, the dog Turk was dungeoned, and every trace of
there being inhabitants vanished. After ringing uselessly, the
unwelcome visitor generally retreated under the impression that the
place was deserted. Then, when the last echo of his steps had died
away in the distance, the blinds were drawn up again, Turk, barking
with joy, was released from his captivity, and, like the castle of the
Sleeping Beauty, Les Jardies re-awoke to its normal activity. How ever
the tiers of planted beds perched one above the other--a modern
example of the hanging gardens of Babylon--were made to resist the
solicitations of the walls was a puzzle to Balzac's familiars. As for
trees, only one, a walnut, managed, by dint of perpetual acrobatism,
to conserve a stable equilibrium.
Most of the fiction published by Balzac in 1839--_A Provincial Great
Man in Paris_, the _Secrets of the Princess de Cadignan_, and the
_Village Cure_--was written with great verve, and may be classed in
the list of his important work. The second of the three just
mentioned, which is the shortest, gives us the story of a woman who,
after losing her fourteenth lover, succeeds in getting a fifteenth,
d'Arthez, to believe her virtuous and a sort of saint maligned by
envy. There is cleverness and to spare in the way the wiles of this
sly jade are related, and falsehood shown as a fine art in the service
of passional love. Balzac was thoroughly at home in treating such a
theme. Both d'Arthez and the Princess are prominent characters in
certain others of his books. The former appears in the _Provincial
Great Man in Paris_, which the author calls an audacious and
frightfully exact painting of the inner morals of the French capital.
It formed a sequel to a previously published short novel, the _Two
Poets_, and made part of a still larger series united under the title
_Lost Illusions_, the entire work being completed in the Forties with
_Splendour and Wretchedness of Courtezans_, this last portion having
also more than one section. The first two volumes of the _Lost
Illusions_ narrate the early experiences of Lucien de Rubempre, a
young poet of Angouleme, whose family, with some claims to gentility,
has fallen into narrow circumstances, the widowed mother being obliged
to earn money as a midwife, and the daughter as a laundry-woman. The
latter's marriage with David Sechard, a printer, alters the situation
of the family for the better; and Lucien is enabled to occupy himself
in the printing-house, while pursuing his poetical efforts. Though his
literary talent, for the time being, has no value in cash, it procures
him the friendship of Madame de Bargeton, a grand dame of Angouleme;
or, more properly speaking, it is the pretext and justification; for
Lucien really owes the lady's favour to his Apollo-like beauty.
Subsequently the poet, desirous of shining in Paris, quits his native
place with a sum of money scraped together by his sister and
brother-in-law, and goes to the capital, accompanied by Madame de
Bargeton. His liaison there with the lady is but of short duration.
In compensation, however, he becomes acquainted with a new literary
world, into which he enters with his meagre stock of poems, plus a
novel; and, after a number of adventures, turns journalist, a
metamorphosis that supplies the author with an opportunity to rage
furiously against all those of that ilk. The rest of the first part of
the _Lost Illusions_ is taken up with the amours of Lucien and an
actress named Coralie, who gives the poet her heart and person, yet he
sharing the second with the rich Camuzot. Coralie really loves Lucien,
even though playing afresh the role of Manon to his des Grieux; but
Lucien, less constant in affection, and finding how difficult it is to
secure wealth and position, abases his pen to vile uses, and would
gladly abandon his mistress for a profitable marriage. At length a
duel, in which he is dangerously wounded, lays him on a sick-bed, and
Coralie, who has sacrificed her situation on the stage to her love for
him, and is herself ill, rises to nurse him back to health, and dies
under the strain.
The further history of Lucien de Rubempre belongs to the _Splendour
and Wretchedness of Courtezans_. Both the beginning and the middle and
the end exhibit the strong and the weak points of the novelist. The
defects were dwelt upon in the _Revue de Paris_, soon after the book's
first part came out, in probably the longest critical article devoted
to any single one of Balzac's writings. By the irony of events, Jules
Janin, who was the author of it, praised, some dozen years later,
where now he cursed. There was exaggeration in his panegyric,
pronounced in 1850 under the impulse dictating generosity to the
memory of a dead foe; and there was exaggeration also in his polemic
indited under the smart of Balzac's gibes against the press. However,
the closing words of the article, save for the tone, can hardly be
gainsaid: "Never," asserted Janin, "has Monsieur de Balzac's talent
been more diffuse, never has his invention been more languishing,
never has his style been more incorrect, even if we include the days
when the illustrious novelist had nothing to fear from serious
criticism, days when he was too unknown to be noticed by the small
newspapers, days when Monsieur Honore de Balzac was as yet only
Monsieur Horace de Saint-Aubin."[*]
[*] A _nom de guerre_ of Balzac in his apprenticeship days.
The preceding remarks might be applied in substance to the _Village
Cure_, which is one of the most incoherent of the novelist's
productions. "I have no time to finish the book; just the part that
concerns the Cure will be wanting," he explained to a correspondent. A
good deal else was lacking when it was published, the whole resembling
a patchwork of odds and ends of the crudest and least harmonious
design. Its central figure is Veronique, the wife of a Limoges banker
named Grasselin, and greatly her senior, to whom she has been married
by her parents before she has had the time to know anything of love
and its behests. Led by her goodness of heart to patronize a youth in
her husband's employ, she falls in love with him, as he with her, and,
through weakness, becomes his mistress. A murder, of which the young
Tascheron is accused, and, as the issue proves, quite justly,
interrupts this culpable idyll; and the assassin is condemned and
executed, without revealing the secret of his liaison, and without
Madame Grasselin's interfering to save him, otherwise than vaguely,
through the Cure of the district. None the less, she is aware that the
act has been committed indirectly through the young man's love for
her. Smitten with remorse, after the execution, she quits Limoges,
and, removing into the country, endeavours there by a life of charity
and devotion to religion to redeem her lapse from her wifely duty.
Then, finally, she dies in presence of the Archbishop, of Bianchon the
great doctor, and of the Procureur-General and other witnesses, whom
she has sent for to listen to her confession of moral complicity, the
death scene being narrated with much theatrical emphasis. On to this
melodramatic subject, wilfully rendered obscure, and really
incomprehensible, the novelist did his best to tack various
illustrations of Catholic repentance. He intended the book to be the
glorification of Catholicism, the refutation of Protestantism, the
embodiment of virtues private and social in people who bowed
themselves to his ideal of faith; the story he used simply as a thread
to connect these things together. Consequently, the action is
intermittent, being checked by irrelevant episodes, and by long
tirades on agriculture, sociology, and on other theories set forth by
the writer with much zeal but also with much acrimony. Catholicism is
asserted to be the only Church which has shown humanity its way of
safety; Tascheron's sister, who returns from America, is made to
relate that in a certain place where Catholic influence prevailed, the
Protestants were very soon chased away. To this religion of such
charming mansuetude whenever it has the upper hand, a Protestant
engineer named Gerard is converted by puerile arguments which in any
other domain than the theological would seem to be the divagations of
a lunatic; and the Cure Bonnet proclaims the necessity of passive
obedience by the masses to the Church's rule in matters civil as well
as ecclesiastic. To add spice to this farrago of absurdity, Balzac
spits out his hatred of the English, albeit he is compelled to
acknowledge their common sense. As he confessed to the Marquis de
Custine, it was his delight to abuse England, and its inhabitants,
whether men or women.
From what we know of his relations with Madame Visconti, we may,
however, suppose that his prejudice against the _perfide Albion_ was
not very deep-rooted. Indeed in his sentiments, as in his conduct,
consistency was conspicuous by its absence. We find this would-be
Legitimist, absolutist, ultra-orthodox worshipper of every old-time
privilege and doctrine, yet continually saying and doing things that
savour more of the democratic than the aristocratic. Towards the
disintegration of monarchic attachments, his fiction contributed at
least as much as that of George Sand; and even his comic resistance to
the compulsory service required of him in the National Guard showed
how little he was inclined to accept for himself those doctrines of
authority which he would fain impose on others.
Such incongruity between his theory and practice may have struck the
members of the Academie Francaise, who manifested their disapproval of
his candidature so unmistakably in 1839 that he withdrew in favour of
Victor Hugo. This forced concession perhaps tinged the portrait he
sketched of Hugo for Madame Hanska about the same time. "Victor Hugo,"
he said, "is an exceedingly witty man; he has as much wit as poetry in
him. His conversation is most delightful, with some resemblance to
that of Humboldt, but superior and allowing more dialogue. He is full
of bourgeois ideas. He execrates Racine, and treats him as a sorry
sort of man. On this point he is quite mad. His wife he has thrown
over for J----; and gives for such conduct reasons of signal meanness
(she bore him too many children; notice that J---- has borne him
none). In fine, there is more good than bad in him. Although the good
traits are an outcome of pride, and although in everything he is a
deeply calculating man, he is amiable on the whole, and, besides, is a
great poet. Much of his force, value, and quality he has lost by the
life he leads, having overdone his devotion to Venus."
Calling Hugo a great poet meant little in Balzac's mouth. Of poetry he
made but small account, probably because he succeeded so ill in it
himself. When poets appear in his stories, they are rarely estimable
characters. For Lucien de Rubempre he has only little sympathy. The
three specimens of Lucien's verse given in the novel he procured from
his acquaintances. The sonnet to Marguerite was composed by Madame de
Girardin; the one to Camellia, by Lassailly, and that to Tulipe, by
Theophile Gautier.
A movement of disinterested generosity displayed by him in the same
year was his fight, in conjunction with the artist Gavarni, on behalf
of Sebastien Benoit Peytel. Peytel was a notary living at Belley, who,
on the 20th of August 1839, was condemned to death by the Ain Assizes
on a charge of murdering his wife and man-servant. Balzac had known
him some time before in Paris, when both were on the staff of the
theatrical journal _Le Voleur_. The Court of Cassation was appealed to
in vain and the sentence was carried out at Bourg on the 28th of
October. As long as there seemed the slightest chance of preventing
the execution, Balzac continued his efforts to save the notary, though
blamed by his family and friends for his interference, which they set
down as quixotic. Presumably Peytel had committed the crime in a fit
of jealous passion, to punish his wife's adultery. A curious drawing
by Balzac exists in the first volume of his general correspondence, in
which Gavarni is represented mocking the headsman; and, accompanying
the design, is an autograph letter to Dutacq, managing director of the
_Siecle_, referring to an article on the question published by the
novelist in that paper.
The time and money he gave to this lost cause were all the more
meritorious as his own concerns demanded greater attention than ever.
A new departure had occurred in journalism. The appearance of certain
cheaper newspapers necessitated a change in the _roman feuilleton_;
and the _Presse_ and _Siecle_, which had inaugurated the reform, and
to both of which Balzac contributed fiction, laid down the principle
that they would print only short tales complete in three or four
numbers. This was hard on the novelist. For him to compress a story
within artificial limits determined by an editor was a task even more
difficult than to write a play.
It must have been the desire to escape from such servitude which
induced him to launch into another adventure with a journal of his
own. The _Revue Parisienne_, which he founded in July 1840, was not a
newspaper but a magazine, intended to supply the public, at a
reasonable price, with tales, novels, poetry, and articles of
criticism both literary and political, and to give the same public for
their money more than three times as much matter as they would get in
other reviews. The success of Alphonse Karr's monthly _Guepes_, which
was reported to be selling extraordinarily, encouraged him to believe
that his own fame, wider spread in 1839 than in 1836, and greater,
would suffice to assure a similar result. Author and editor combined,
he made the three numbers of his review, which were all he was able to
bring out, at any rate the equal of the older established monthlies.
In the three appeared his _Z. Marcas_, and _A Prince of Bohemia_, the
former a resuscitation of the _Louis Lambert_ species of hero
transformed into a politician. The _Russian Letters_, likewise
political, furnish a very exact and comprehensive sketch of the
general state of mind in Europe at the commencement of the Forties.
One article of criticism praised to the skies Stendhal's _Chartreuse
de Parme_ published in the previous year. A letter he had addressed to
Stendhal in April 1839 was more moderate in its tone, though
eulogistic with its well-turned compliment: "I make a fresco, and you
have made Italian statues." He blamed the writer in his letter for
situating the plot of the _Chartreuse_ in Parma. "Neither state or
town," he told him, "should have been named. It should have been left
to the imagination to discover the Prince of Modena and his minister.
Hoffman never failed to obey this law without exception in the rules
of the novel. If everything be left undefined as regards reality, then
everything becomes real." In short, notwithstanding parts that were
too long drawn out, he found the whole a fine piece of work; and, if a
modern Machiavelli were to write a novel, it would be, he said, the
_Chartreuse de Parme_.
Between the judicious language employed in the letter and the article
of the _Revue Parisienne_, the difference was so enormous that Beyle
himself remarked: "This astonishing notice, such as never one writer
had from another, I read, let me own it, amid bursts of laughter.
Whenever I came to fresh flights of eulogy--and I met with them in
every paragraph--I could not help thinking how my friends would look
when they saw them." "The reason for this augmented enthusiasm must be
sought," says Sainte-Beuve, "in the fact that Stendhal lent or gave
Balzac a sum of five thousand francs in the interval, and thus
received back a service of _amour propre_ for the service rendered in
cash. Since the proof of this gift or loan was found in Beyle's
papers, at his death, Sainte-Beuve's explanation seems well grounded;
and yet, for Balzac's credit, one could have wished his praise more
spontaneous."
The cessation of the _Revue Parisienne_ forced its founder again to
enter the ranks of paid contributors to the daily press, and to comply
with its exigencies. Yet not entirely. His qualities and his defects
alike led him frequently to break from restraint and to follow his own
bent, maugre the complaints of readers, maugre editors' entreaties;
and, even in the final phase of his production, there were some
masterpieces supporting comparison with those of his best period.
At the end of the Thirties, he was again, like Bruce's spider,
renewing his efforts to climb on to the stage. He had three pieces in
hand, _La Gina_, _Richard the Sponge-Heart_, and his _School for
Husbands and Wives_, already mentioned. The last he had now managed to
carry through to its conclusion; and, in February 1839 there seemed to
be some prospect of his getting it played. Pereme, an influential
acquaintance of his in the theatrical world, had persuaded the
Renaissance theatre to accept it on approval, but was less fortunate
with regard to the fifteen thousand francs which Balzac had asked for
on account. The roles were discussed and partially distributed. Henry
Monnier and Frederick Lemaitre were to be chief actors on the men's
side, Mesdames Theodore and Albert on the women's. On the 25th of the
month, the author presented himself with his manuscript before the
reading committee; and, to his intense annoyance and dismay, was
compelled to put it back into his pocket. Either the committee feared
the expense which the representation would have entailed, or else the
elder Dumas, who was one of their most successful suppliers of dramas,
and had recently fallen out with them, must have made up the quarrel
just before Balzac's comedy was read. Whatever the reason was, the
rejection of the piece grievously affected the novelist, who, besides
losing a great deal of valuable time, had spent money to no purpose in
having his comedy printed.
It must be acknowledged that, in dramatic composition, whatever Balzac
had so far done by himself was done grudgingly, and, when possible,
shifted on to other shoulders. Gozlan relates that Lassailly, who went
to Les Jardies and lived there for some little time as a paid
secretary, would be rung up at night, when his employer usually
worked--rung up not once nor twice, but several times, to hear himself
asked whether, in his waking or his dreaming, he had hatched any good
plan; and poor Lassailly would have sorrowfully to avow that his brain
had conceived nothing of any importance in the way of drama.
How Harel, the managing director of the Porte-Saint-Martin, was
brought to give in the same twelve-month to the rejected of the
Renaissance a firm promise that anything he liked to do for that
theatre should be acted is an impenetrable mystery. But then Harel
himself was an oddity, and he may have felt bowels of compassion for a
_confrere_ so original. The story goes that once he tried to borrow
thirty thousand francs from King Louis-Philippe. "Ah! Monsieur Harel,"
replied the monarch, smiling, "I was thinking of applying to you for a
similar sum."
The subject that, after much cogitation, Balzac chose for Harel's
stage was _Vautrin_--the Vautrin of _Pere Goriot_ and the _Lost
Illusions_--back at his old trade of acting Providence to a presumably
fatherless and friendless young man, whose fortunes he sought to
advance by means similar to those that had brought Lucien de Rubempre
(we are anticipating a little) to so miserable an end. In the
concluding act of the play, the young man discovers that he has a
family, and a father who is a noble; and he marries the girl he loves.
But Vautrin is arrested, and, although he has been the instrument of
his protege's happiness, he is led off to prison once more. The theme,
as treated, was a somewhat hackneyed one, and was further spoiled by
ill-managed contrasts of the serious and comic, of which in any form
the French stage was not tolerant. Objection has been made on the same
score to the _School for Husbands and Wives_ at the Theatre Francais,
where it had been offered after its rejection by the Renaissance.
Balzac himself had no great opinion of his dramatic arrangement of
_Vautrin_. He had done wrong, he said, to put a romantic character on
the stage. After the play was finished, he re-wrote nearly the whole
of it; and, from what Theophile Gautier relates about the way in which
it was primitively composed, we can well believe that the revision was
necessary. When the treaty with Harel was signed, Balzac installed
himself in the small apartment which he rented at his tailor's, No.
104 Rue de Richelieu, and sent for Gautier. "I am going to read to
Harel to-morrow," he announced, "a grand five-act drama." "Ah!"
replied Gautier; "so I suppose you want us to hear it and to give you
our opinion." "The play is not yet written," answered Balzac coolly.
"You shall do one act; Ourliac, a second; Laurent Jan, a third; de
Belloy, a fourth; and I, the fifth. There are not so many lines in one
act. With all of us working together, we shall be able to complete it
by to-morrow." Objections were timidly put forward as to the
hotch-potch that was likely to result from so improvized a method of
work; but the hasty playwright overruled them all. It need hardly be
said that the five acts were not ready on the morrow, nor for some time
after. In fact, Laurent Jan was the only collaborator who gave any
considerable help. To him, in acknowledgment, Balzac dedicated the
piece, which was performed on the 14th of March 1840.
Knowing what a number of enemies he had among the Parisian journalists
and critics, whom he had satirized with increased causticity in his
latest fiction, the author endeavoured to pack the theatre with his
friends, but there was a large leakage in the sale of tickets; and, on
the eventful evening, the seats were occupied by a majority of persons
hostile to him. He must have had an inkling of this; for, when sending
a ticket to Lamartine, he said to him: "You will see a memorable
failure. I have done wrong, I believe, to appeal to the public.
_Morituri te salutant Caesar_." The first portion of the performance
was received, on the whole, favourably, though there was no
enthusiasm; but, when Frederick Lemaitre, who was entrusted with the
role of Vautrin, came on to the stage, in the fourth act, dressed as a
Mexican general, and wearing his forelock of hair in a way that
appeared to imitate a like peculiarity in the King, there was an
outcry among the audience; and Louis-Philippe's son, who was present,
was informed by complaisant courtiers that the travesty was intended
as an insult to his father. The next day, Harel was advertized that
the authorities forbade any other presentation of the piece; and, on
the 16th, the Press, following the Government's lead, were practically
unanimous in anathematizing the unhappy dramatist, the _Debats_ being
particularly acrimonious, and asserting that _Vautrin_ was a
thoroughly immoral play.
Balzac's friends, Victor Hugo included, did what they could to get the
interdiction raised; but the Minister was inflexible. All that he
would consent to was an indemnity of five thousand francs offered
through Cave, the Under-Secretary for Fine Arts. This, Balzac
indignantly refused. One might have expected such continued ill-luck
to prostrate its victim, at least momentarily. Gozlan went out to Les
Jardies for the purpose of cheering the hermit up. He found him calm
and collected. "You see that strip of land bordering the garden over
there?" the latter said, looking out of the window. "Yes." "I am about
to establish there a dairy, with an installation of the best kind, the
cows of which will bring me in three thousand francs a year." Gozlan
stared. "And you see the other strip down yonder farther than the
wall?" "Yes." "Well, I intend to plant that with rare vegetables of
the sort that used to be supplied to the King's table. That will bring
me in another three thousand francs a year." Gozlan waited for what
would come next. "And you see the plot right facing the southern sun?"
"Yes." "Ah! there I shall plant a vineyard, which will furnish
exquisite grapes that I can sell for wine-making in quantities
sufficient to bring me in twelve thousand francs a year. This means a
revenue of eighteen thousand francs annually. And then, the walnut-tree
you see there--I can utilize it to the tune of two thousand francs a
year." "How?" "Ah! that is my secret. So we get a total of twenty
thousand francs a year, which I shall gain by the refusal of my
_Vautrin_."
This was brave talk on the part of the obstacle-breaker, as he loved
to call himself. 'Twas also the bravest temper he could assume in face
of the outside world. To Madame Hanska he revealed more the cankering
disappointment, just as he had a twelvemonth previously, after the
mishap of the _School for Husbands and Wives_. He had fresh thoughts
of leaving France, which being, for the nonce, a bear-garden, he said,
he detested, and of going away to America, perhaps to Brazil, where he
should soon grow rich. He even told her she might next hear from him
at Havre or Marseilles, just as he was on the point of embarking for
the other side of the Atlantic. He had been reading Fenimore Cooper
again; and the descriptions given by this painter of Nature always
aroused his roaming instincts. He envied especially Cooper's power and
skill in reproducing the details of a landscape. Once, in a
pastry-cook's shop that he had entered with Gozlan to devour a plate of
macaroni, he brandished a book of Cooper's, which he had been carrying
under his arm, while he recounted his fruitless efforts to get experts
in botany to tell him how to describe the differences between certain
grasses that he wanted to distinguish appropriately in his fiction. An
English girl who had served him in the shop listened open-mouthed to
the great man, whose name had been uttered by Gozlan; and, when the
moment came for settling, marked her appreciation of what she had
heard and seen by charging him nothing for the macaroni. Balzac, not
to be outdone in generosity, made her a gift of his copy of Cooper,
expressing his regret that he had not one of his own novels with him
that he might have offered her instead.
No account of this macaroni feast figures in his almost daily letters
at this time despatched to Madame Hanska. To her, if he mentioned his
diet, its meagreness was emphasized rather. Being in one of his
chronic hard-up crises, he excused himself for the intervals that had
occurred between some of his previous epistles on the ground of having
no ready money for the postage--the rates for Russia, it is true, were
high; and he spoke of buying a bit of dry bread on the boulevards, or
of intending to beg from Rothschild; then flourished his big debt at
the end, quoting fantastic sums, variable as the barometer, which
would oblige him sooner or later, notwithstanding his constant
devotion to the Countess, whom he loved more than he loved God, to
barter himself away to some agreeable young woman who should be
willing to bestow her person upon him, plus a couple of hundred
thousand francs. Once or twice there was really a question of his
making a match through the good offices of his mother, of whom he none
the less said fretfully that she did not think much about him. But, on
each occasion, the negotiations fell through--why we do not learn.
Such information, maybe, he reserved for the various dames in Paris
whose houses he still frequented. Madame de Girardin had managed to
get him back; and some sort of relations had been re-established
between him and her husband, mostly business, since Monsieur de
Girardin continued to be editor of the _Presse_.
One day, Gozlan met him in the Champs Elysees, just as he had left
Delphine's _salon_. He looked chilly and anxious. The chill he
attributed to the unheated drawing-room that he had quitted; but it
was due mostly to his condition of mind, then much exercised by
something of prime importance to him, the finding of a name for a
story which he had written but could not christen, in spite of
protracted meditation. It was a man's name he wanted--a name unusual,
striking, suggestive of the extraordinary nature of the person he had
created. "Why not try the names you see in the street?" said Gozlan
incautiously. "The very thing," answered Balzac, whose face grew
radiant. "Come along with me. We will seek together." Realizing too
late into what an adventure he had allowed himself to be entangled,
Gozlan tried in vain to escape. Protests were of no use. Balzac
dragged him off; and, with noses in the air and absorbed gaze, the two
men promenaded along the Rue Saint-Honore and a number of other
streets, knocking up against the people they met and provoking a good
deal of profane language from these latter, who regarded them as a
couple of imbeciles. At length, Gozlan, like Columbus' sailors, having
more than enough of the tramp, refused to play follow-my-leader any
longer; and only after a long palaver was he dragged up one last
narrow street dubbed variously the Rue du Bouloi, du Coq Heron, and de
la Jussienne throughout its course. Here, suddenly, Balzac stopped
dead, and pointed to the word _Marcas_, inscribed over a door. "That's
what I've been looking for," he cried. "It exactly suits my man. The
person that owns the name ought to be some one out of the common,--an
artist, a worker in gold, or something of the kind." Inquiry proved
that the real Marcas was a modest tailor. However, his name was
selected, and the initial Z was tacked on to it for the book, Z being
by the novelist's interpretation a letter of mystic import.
Another rather longer tale than this, belonging to the year 1840, was
_Pierrette_, which the author dedicated to Madame Hanska's daughter
Anna, characterizing it as a pearl "sweated through suffering," and
telling her that there was nothing in it improper--he used the English
word. The story is a painful one, and is scarcely suitable for a young
girl's perusal, the heroine, a simple Breton maid, being the victim of
an avaricious Provins family, the Rogrons, who under cover of the law,
inflict on her such terrible ill-treatment that she ultimately dies
from it. _Pierrette_ first appeared as a serial in the _Siecle_. In
the final edition of the novelist's works it is classed under the
_Celibates_; and, apropos of this heading, may be mentioned the fact
that Balzac reproved celibacy as a state injurious to society, and
held the opinion, dear to the hearts of certain Parliamentarians of
to-day, that the unmarried should be taxed for the benefit of those
having large families.
Of course, the agricultural projects entertained for a moment after
the interdiction of _Vautrin_ soon faded from Balzac's mind, which was
still harping on the necessity of his conquering the suffrages of the
public in his character of dramatist. He now set himself to write a
play called _Mercadet_ or the _Faiseur_,[*] the latter word implying
by its meaning the tragi-comedy of a penniless financier--the
novelist's own experience was there to guide him--who invents a
thousand and one stratagems for keeping his creditors at bay, and for
creating the illusion of a wealth which he had not; who deceives
himself as well as others; who is neither entirely a rogue nor
entirely honest; but who, after all, reaches relative tranquillity and
competency more through accident than purpose. The piece was not
performed in its author's life-time; but friends were acquainted with
it already in 1840, when Gautier and the rest of the inner circle were
summoned to Les Jardies to hear the hermit read it, differing
considerably then from the arrangement that was ultimately played.
Balzac read it well, with all the inflections peculiar to each
character and suitable to every change of circumstance. He had in him,
says Gautier, the stuff of a great actor, possessing a full, sonorous,
metallic voice of rich, powerful timbre, and kept his audience under
the spell from the beginning to the end of the recitation. If Vedel
and Desmousseaux, the administrators of the Comedie Francais heard him
interpret his own pieces, they might be excused for having, as he
asserted they had, a high opinion of his dramatic talent.
[*] English, _Jobber_.
The greatest honour done to Les Jardies during the hermit's residence
there was a visit of Victor Hugo, who came to talk over the affairs of
the Men of Letters Society. During lunch, the conversation naturally
turned on literature, and the host waxed bitter against the stupidity
of kings that neglected letters, and against Louis-Philippe in
particular, who had recently put a stop to the evening gatherings
--chimney-gatherings they were called--held by the Duke of Orleans for
the purpose of honouring the arts. In the afternoon the guests were
shown round the domain, and expected to admire its beauties. Hugo was
extremely sober in his praises until they came to the famous
walnut-tree. Encouraged by the notice accorded to his favourite, the
master of Les Jardies repeated to Hugo what he had already affirmed to
Gozlan, to wit, that the tree was worth fifteen hundred francs to him
(to Gozlan he had said two thousand). "In walnuts, I suppose?"
retorted the chief guest quizzingly. "No," replied Balzac, chuckling,
"not in walnuts." And he proceeded to explain that, by an old custom,
the inhabitants of the neighbourhood had been accustomed to make the
shadow of the walnut-tree a "temple of all the gods," and that he had
only to exploit the offerings, in the same way as a guano island is
exploited to-day, for the fifteen hundred francs to be added to his
revenues.
A few months later, in December, Les Jardies, with its walnut-tree and
other advantages, was abandoned in hasty flight; and the hermit took
refuge in the Passy quarter of Paris. On the house and property a
distraint had been levied for moneys due which had not been paid. In
total, his desire to abide under his own vine and under his own
fig-tree had cost him a sum that he estimated between one hundred
thousand and one hundred and twenty thousand francs. Deduction made for
his Falstaffian speech, the amount was probably about eighty thousand.
This might have been gradually saved and the interest meantime given
regularly, if he had been willing to live well within his income. With
his system of spending not only what he earned but hoped to earn each
year, perpetual insolvency was inevitable.
At Les Jardies he had small creditors as well as great, fear of whom
haunted him to the extent of curtailing his walks abroad. Leon Gozlan
relates that, going over to Ville d'Avray early one morning, he found
Balzac taking a constitutional round the asphalt of his house. "Come
and have a stroll in the woods," said the visitor. "I am afraid,"
answered Balzac. "Of what or whom?" "Of the keeper." Not understanding
why the novelist, who would not explain, should be in dread of this
humble functionary, and imagining that much study and labour had made
his friend a little mad, Gozlan took no denial, and, button-holing
Balzac, lugged him off into the leafy avenues. And there, sure enough,
after a while, they saw the bugbear, who, as soon as he perceived the
two pedestrians, bore down on them with plodding but vigorous step.
The shorter of the two turned pale, but tried to put on an air of
dignified indifference. Soon the official ran in under their lee,
passed alongside with slackened pace, and clarioned into the
novelist's ear: "Monsieur de Balzac, this is beginning to get
musical." The owner of Les Jardies quailed in his shoes. He owed the
man thirty francs.