THE INFLUENCE
Balzac's influence during his lifetime was, with but few exceptions,
exercised outside his own, novelist's profession. The sphere in which
it made itself chiefly felt was that of the cultured reading public,
and the public was, first and foremost, a foreign one. History
repeated itself. To Honore d'Urfe, the author of the _Astree_, in the
sixteenth century, while living in Piedmont, a letter came announcing
that twenty-nine princesses and nineteen lords of Germany had adopted
the names and characters of his heroes and heroines in the _Astree_,
and had founded an academy of true lovers. Almost the same thing
occurred to the nineteenth-century Honore de Balzac. For a while,
certain people in Venetian society assumed the titles and roles of his
chief personages, playing the parts, in some instances, out to their
utmost conclusion.
Sainte-Beuve, who, in 1850, drew attention to this curious historical
analogy, went on to mention that, in Hungary, Poland, and Russia,
Balzac's novels created a fashion. The strange, rich furniture that
was assembled and arranged, according to the novelist's fancy, out of
the artistic productions of many countries and epochs, became an
after-reality. Numerous wealthy persons prided themselves on
possessing what the author had merely imagined. The interior of their
houses was adorned _a la Balzac_.
One evening at Vienna, says his sister, he entered a concert-room,
where, as soon as his presence was perceived and bruited about, all
the audience rose in his honour; and, at the end of the entertainment,
a student seized his hand and kissed it, exclaiming: "I bless the hand
that wrote _Seraphita_." Balzac himself relates that, once travelling
in Russia, he and his friends, as night was coming on, went and asked
for hospitality at a castle. On their entrance, the lady of the house
and some other members of the fair sex vied with each other in
eagerness to serve the guests. One of the younger ladies hurried to
the kitchen for refreshment. In the meantime, the novelist's identity
was revealed to the _chatelaine_. A lively conversation was
immediately engaged in, and, when the impromptu Abigail returned with
the refreshment, the first words she heard were: "Well, Monsieur
Balzac, so you think--" Full of surprise and joy she started, dropped
the tray she had in her hands, and everything was broken. "Glory I
have known and seen," adds the narrator; "wasn't that glory?"
It was more. It was power wielded for good or evil, like that of every
other great man, be he statesman, or priest, or artist. The conviction
of possessing this power caused Balzac to complain with sincere
indignation of those who charged him with being an immoral writer.
"The reproach of immorality," he said in his preface to the second
edition of _Pere Goriot_, "which has ever been launched at the
courageous author, is the last that remains to be made, when nothing
else can be urged against a poet. If you are true in your portrayal,
if, by dint of working night and day you succeed in writing the most
difficult language in the world, the epithet immoral is cast in your
face. Socrates was immoral, Jesus Christ was immoral. Both were
persecuted in the name of the societies they overthrew or reformed.
When the world wishes to destroy any one, it taxes him with
immorality."
This argument is beside the question. It does not settle whether the
apologist's influence upon the men and women of his generation and
beyond--an influence which, in his lifetime, was incontestable, and
may be deemed potent still, to judge by the extent to which his books
are read--was and is good or bad. Balzac's personality is here only
indirectly involved. His individual character might have been better
or worse without the conclusion to be drawn being affected. Good men's
influence is not always good, nor bad men's influence always bad.
Intention may be inoperative, and effect may be involuntary.
Balzac claimed the right to speak of all conduct, to represent all
conduct in his fiction; and we shall see, farther on, that he imposed
his claim upon those who followed him in literature. But, if he
anticipated reality--and this is acknowledged--if he led society to
imitate his fiction, if his exceptional representations tended, with
him and after him, to become general or more frequent in one or
another class of society, he must be considered morally responsible
for the result. It has already been remarked, in the preceding
chapter, that there are two ways of reproducing reality in literature
and art, one of them favouring, not through didacticism but through
emotion, the creation in the mind of a state of healthy feeling,
thought, and effort; the other, that sort of fascination with which
the serpent attracts its victims. It is certain that Balzac did not
adequately take this into account, certain also that in parts of his
_Comedy_, the secret, unconscious sympathy of the author with some of
his sicklier heroes and heroines could not and did not have that
dynamic moral action which he vainly desired.
Of the chief French novelists or _litterateurs_ who were his
contemporaries, critics are inclined to esteem his influence most
evident on George Sand and Victor Hugo. Brunetiere, indeed, begins
with Sainte-Beuve. But the similarities discoverable between the
author of _Volupte_ and the author of the _Comedie Humaine_ were
present in Sainte-Beuve's work at a period when Balzac was only just
issuing from obscurity, and appear, moreover, to be due to
temperament. In the case of George Sand, the inference is based partly
on the praise she meted out to Balzac in her reminiscences. Brunetiere
specifies the _Marquis de Villemer_ as the one proved example of
imitation. But this novel was written in 1861, eleven years after
Balzac's death; and, in so far as it differs from _Mauprat_ and the
earlier books, whether _La Petite Fadette_ or _Consuelo_, can be shown
to be the result of a natural and independent evolution.
As regards Victor Hugo, on the contrary, there is plenty of _prima
facie_ evidence that he largely utilized Balzac's material and method;
and there is evidence also that Balzac utilized, though in a less
degree, the subjects developed by Hugo. The reciprocal borrowing is
easy to explain, both men, in spite of their fundamental
peculiarities, having much in them that was common--imagination
difficult to control, fondness for exaggeration, language prone to be
verbose and turgid, research of devices to astonish the reader. Hugo's
_Miserables_ is a monument of his fiction that owes much to Balzacian
architecture. The realism of the latter author is converted without
difficulty into the former's romanticism, or, rather, the alloy of
romanticism is so considerable in Balzac's work that there is little
conversion to make. Ferragus and Vautrin are prototypes of Valjean,
just as Valjean's Cosette exploited by Madame Thenardier is an
adaptation of Ferragus' daughter or Doctor Minoret's Ursula. The
prison manners and slang of the _Miserables_ inevitably recall those
of _Vautrin's Last Incarnation_, while, on the other hand, Hugo's
salon _ultra_ reappears in the _Cabinet of Antiques_. And the
analogies present themselves continually. One might almost say that
the whole of the _Comedie Humaine_ suggested things to its future
panegyrist, who wrote his greatest novel in the years consecutive to
Balzac's death. Of course, Hugo's borrowings, being those of a man of
genius, were not made use of servilely. Like Shakespeare and Moliere,
the author of the _Miserables_ metamorphosed and enhanced what he
took.
Balzac's major influence on literature began as soon as he was dead.
And the men he reacted on soonest were the dramatists; not through his
own plays, which figured so small in his achievement, or, if through
them at all, then only as they applied the same principles as his
novels. The stage, being ever _en vedette_, is best situated to
interpret the signs of the times, and is likewise more open to the
solicitations of novelty, more ready to try new methods. A noticeable
defect of the French drama, in the first half of the nineteenth
century, was the pronounced artificiality of its characters and plots.
Whatever the kind of play exhibited, the same stereotyped noble
fathers, ingenuous maidens, coquettes, and Lotharios strutted on the
boards. Whatever else changed, these did not. Only their costumes
differed. Moreover, the adventures in which the _dramatis personae_
displayed themselves contained always the same sort of tricks for
bringing about the denouement. Even the language had its own style,
outside which nothing was appropriate. All this was classicism in its
most degenerate form, an art from which original inspiration was
banished to the profit of a much inferior species of skill. Be it
granted that the drama, more than any other kind of literature, is
liable to the encroachment and dominance of such artificiality on
account of its foreshortening in perspective. Be it granted, also,
that sometimes a new movement will intensify an old habit. The
Romanticists, though reformers in other respects, did little or
nothing to render the stage more real. Their lyricism, in front of the
footlights, needed buskins and frippery, or, at any rate, fostered
them, as the pieces of Hugo and de Vigny proved.
The younger Dumas, Emile Augier, Halevy and Becque--with a crescendo
that in the last of the four is somewhat harsh--diverged from the
traditional path, and in their plays put men and women whose motives
and conduct were nearer to the humanity of their audience. The
departure from old lines in these dramatists is patent; and, after
discounting the part that may have been temperamental or contingent on
some other cause, there remains the larger share to attribute to
Balzac's influence. Dumas' _Dame aux Camelias_ originally staged in
1852, was a timid start in the new direction. The theme, that of the
courtezan in love, was a favourite one with the classical school, and
much of the ancient style and tone pervades it; yet its atmosphere is
a modern one, the expression of its sentiment is modern too, and the
accessories are supplied with an eye to material and moral exactitude.
The same author's _Question d'Argent_, composed a few years later, was
a more direct tribute to the modifying power of the _Comedie Humaine_.
It was Balzac's _Mercadet the Jobber_ remodelled with a larger stage
science. Hypnotized subsequently by the _piece a these_ (and not to
his advantage) Dumas went off at a tangent whereas Augier, once
engaged in the newer manner with his _Gendre de Monsieur Poirier_,
persisted in it with each of his succeeding pieces, flattering his
model by resurrection after resurrection of the _Comedy's_ principal
actors, Bixiou and Lousteau in Giboyer and Vernouillet, Balthazar
Claes in the Desronceretz of _Maitre Guerin_. Ludovic Halevy
apparently wished every one to perceive what he owed to the father of
French realism. Finding in the _Petty Bourgeois_ a Madame Cardinal
whose comic personality and peculiar moral squint suited one of his
plays, he adopted her entirely, name and all, altering only what her
more recent surroundings required. Henri Becque digested Balzac rather
than imitated him. One feels in reading his _Corbeaux_ that it is a
disciple's own work. The master's virtues and some of the disciple's
faults are everywhere present, both in the subject and in the
treatment. We have the same world of money and business that shows so
big throughout the _Comedy_, an unfaithful partner and lawyer
introducing ruin into the house of the widow and orphan. The practice
of legal ruse and robbery--in these things Balzac had rung the changes
again and again. What Becque added were sharpness of contrast,
dramatic concentration, bitterer satire, and likewise greater art.
If one may hazard a guess at the reasons that convinced the older
school of playwrights of their error, there are two by which they must
have been struck--the artistic possibilities of the real suggested by
the _Comedie Humaine_, and the prescience--one might say the intuition
--it exhibited of things that were destined to reveal themselves more
prominently in the latter half of the nineteenth century. And in this
respect Balzac in no wise contributed to what he foresaw and, so to
speak, prophesied--the growing stress of the struggle for life in
domains political, social, financial, industrial, the coming of
uncrowned kings greater in puissance than monarchs of yore, the reign
of not one despot but many, the generalization of intrigue, the
replacement of ancient disorders by others of equal or increased
virulence and harder to remedy, hundred-headed hydras to combat, most
difficult of herculean tasks. The reflection of all this in the
_Comedy_ was calculated to impress at its hour, and the hour arrived.
Men looked at the counterfeit presentment and wondered why no one had
recognized these things sooner. From that moment, the reputation of
the _Comedie Humaine_ was made. Perhaps, after all, in such
connection, the one or two of Balzac's plays that went so resolutely
off the old lines--the _Resources of Quinola_ and _Mercadet_,--may
have served, in remembrance, despite their insignificance beside the
novels, which were the true drama, to awaken the attention of
professional dramatists, especially as one after another story of the
_Comedy_ was dramatized. But it was the fund of observation and the
leaven of satire which startled, aroused, and ultimately set the stage
agog. Not even the lighter forms of composition were left unaffected.
Labiche, in the vaudeville style, with his _Voyage de Monsieur
Perrichon_ and _La Cagnotte_, gave his audience, behind his puppets,
the touch of present reality, the sensation of existent follies.
The relative slowness with which the novels of Balzac's younger
contemporaries and his successors were penetrated with realism was
partly due to the lasting effect of George Sand's idealistic fiction.
As we have seen, Balzac himself was reacted upon by it to some extent;
but he yielded against his will, and the result in his case was a
bastard one. She whom he called his brother George survived him for
more than twenty years, and continued to the last to add to her
reputation, so that naturally the impetus she lent to the idealistic
movement was long before it was spent, if indeed one may say that the
impetus has altogether been lost. Adepts like Octave Feuillet, with
his _Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre_, and Victor Cherbuliez, with his
_Comte Kostia_, endeavoured to perpetuate idealism or at least to
recreate it in other forms. And then there were independents, like
Flaubert who, with _Madame Bovary_, passed realism by on his way to
naturalism. Yet it is worth remarking that Flaubert made a sort of
_volte face_ in 1869, and wrote his _Education Sentimentale_, in
which, under the pressure of simple circumstance, the hero descends
gradually from the soaring of youth's hopes and ambitions to the dull,
dun monotony of mature life, with nothing left him save the iron
circle of his environment. Here the disillusionment is that of all
Balzac's chief _dramatis personae_. Moreover, the minor characters of
_Madame Bovary_ may well owe something to the _Comedy_. These doctors,
chemists, cures, prefectoral councillors and country squires would
possibly never have been depicted but for their having already existed
for twenty years in the predecessor's gallery of portraits.
There is no need to call the de Goncourts and Guy de Maupassant
imitators because they bear a strong stamp of Balzac's influence. They
have greater art, a finer style, and, above all, more pathos than the
earlier master was capable of. But they are true disciples, as
likewise Feuillet in his later manner with _Monsieur de Camors_. De
Maupassant's short stories, exemplifying his severely objective
treatment at his best, are Balzac's purified of their lingering
romanticism, and his _Bel Ami_ is a modernized Lucien de Rubempre.
And, if the resemblances are closer between works of the de Goncourts
less known, such as _Charles Demailly_, or _Manette Salomon_ and the
_Lost Illusions_, _Peter Grassou_, the _Muse of the County_, yet the
means employed by the two brothers to endow with life and form _Renee
Mauperin_ and _Germinie Lacerteux_, fixing a background, stamping the
outlines, filling in details, adding particularities, all this was
Balzacian method, insufficient forsooth, in the domain of psychology,
but furnishing idiosyncrasy in plentiful variations.
When we come to Alphonse Daudet, time enough has elapsed for realism
to evolve into naturalism so-called. Naturalism is realism stark-naked
--the dissecting-room, and a good deal besides, which Monsieur Zola
illustrated well but not wisely. Daudet, fortunately for his
reputation, was a naturalist _sui generis_, with a delicate artistic
perception altogether lacking to the author of the Rougon-Macquart
series. He was also an independent, but willing to take lessons in his
trade. And how much he learnt from _Cousin Bette_ may be judged by his
_Numa Roumestan_ and _Froment Jeune et Rissler aine_. There are close
analogies also between the best of Balzac's fiction and the sombre
realism of the _Evangeliste_, based on tragic facts that had come
under Daudet's personal notice. Of the two realisms Daudet's is
certainly the more genuine, with its lambent humour that glints on
even the saddest of his pictures.
In neither the naturalistic school of fiction, nor the psychological,
in so far as the latter is represented by Bourget, has Balzac's
influence been a gain. Bourget has borrowed Balzac's furniture, his
pompous didacticism, his occasional indecency--in fine, all that is
least essential in the elder's assets, without learning how to breathe
objective life into one of his characters. Zola borrowed more, but
mainly the unwholesome parts, truncating these further to suit his
theory of the novel as a slice of life seen through a temperament, and
travestying in the Rougon-Macquart scheme, with its burden of heredity
and physiological blemish, Balzac's cumbrous and plausible doctrine of
the _Comedy_. Both novelists made a mistake in arrogating to
themselves the role of the _savant_. Neither of them seemed to
understand that there are limits imposed on each profession by the
mode of its operation. For Zola the novel was not only an observation
working upon the voluntary acts of life, it was an experiment--like
that of the astrologers whom Moses met in Egypt--producing phenomena
artificially, and allowing a law of necessity to be deduced from the
result. And for Balzac the novel was something of the same kind--a
synthesis of every human activity framed by one who, as he proudly
claimed, had observed and analysed society in all its phases from top
to bottom, legislations, religions, histories, and present time. What
Balzac did in fiction and what he thought he did are separated by a
gulf which could only have been bridged over by the long and painful
study of a man surviving for centuries. His scientific knowledge was
superficial in nearly every branch. It was his divination which was
great. And divination is not omniscience.
An offshoot from the naturalistic school apparently, but derived more
truly from the _Comedie Humaine_, is that decadent, pornographic art,
of which Balzac would have been ashamed, had he lived to see the
vegetation that grew up from the seeds he had sown without knowing
what they would bring forth. In Zola's novels the plant was already
full grown; its earlier appearance as the slender blade was
Champfleury's vulgar satire, the _Bourgeois de Molinchart_. More
recently the blossom has revealed its pestilential rankness so plainly
that no one can be deceived as to its noxious effect.
Where Balzac's influence is likeliest to remain potent for good is in
the domain of history. He was not altogether an initiator here, having
learnt from Walter Scott in the one as in the other capacity; but he
developed and focussed what he had received; he added to it, and made
it a factor in the historical science. After him historians began to
assign a more important place in their narrations and chronicles to
the manners and interests of the people, patiently seeking to assemble
and situate everything that could relate them exactly to the great
political and other public events which would be nothing but names
without them. The de Goncourts, in their _History of French Society
during the Revolution and under the Directoire_, applied this method
with all the zeal of fresh disciples, and with hardly enough
discretion. Taine's _Origins of Contemporary France_ abdicates none of
the older historian's role, but its background is Balzacian. Among the
later writers who have taken up the historian's pen, Masson, Lenotre,
and Anatole France, illustrate the newer principles, each with a
difference, but all excellently, the first in his _Napoleon_, the
second in his _Old Houses, Old Papers_, the third in his _Joan of
Arc_.
It can scarcely be disputed that an entrance of realism into French
literature would have occurred in the second half of the nineteenth
century, had there been no Balzac. Some other novelists or writers,
themselves reacted upon by the scientific spirit, would have set the
example in their own way, if not with the achievement of the author of
the _Comedy_. On the other hand, it is certain that Balzac, had he put
his hand to another treatment of fiction, would nevertheless have
created a school. His tremendous force would have channelled into the
future, whatever the nature of its current. As Sainte-Beuve well says,
he wrote what he wrote with his blood and muscles, not merely with his
thought, and such work backed by genius was sure to tell,
notwithstanding its defects, the latter even to some extent aiding.
* * * * *
Having partly a bibliographic value, and partly confirming the
statements above as to Balzac's influence, the following details
concerning theatrical adaptations of some of his novels may serve as a
supplement to this chapter.
The first made was produced at the Vaudeville in 1832, and was based
on the story of _Colonel Chabert_, which under another title, _The
Compromise_, had finished as a serial in the March _Artiste_ of the
same year. In Balzac's tale--the one of the novels that contains most
real pathos--the Colonel, who is a Count of the Empire, is left for
dead on the battlefield of Eylau, with wounds that disfigure him
dreadfully. Rescued, and sojourning for a long while in German
hospitals, he ultimately returns to France, but only to find his wife,
who believes him dead, married to another nobleman. Treated as an
imposter by everybody save a former non-commissioned officer of his
regiment, he falls into poverty and wretchedness, and dies in a
hospice, whilst his wife continues to live rich and honoured. Jacques
Arago and Louis Lurine, who composed the play, altered the denouement.
The husband is pensioned off by his wife, who, however, suffers for
her hard-heartedness, being afterwards deserted by her second husband.
A second version of the same subject was produced twenty years later
at the Beaumarchais Theatre by Faulquemont, and, in 1888, a third at
Brussels.
_Eugenie Grandet_ was staged as a comedy, at the Gymnase in 1835, by
Bayard and Paulin, who dealt with the plot very freely. Eugenie,
happening to lay hold of the letter telling of her uncle's intention
to commit suicide, begs her father to send money enough to Paris to
prevent the catastrophe. On her father's refusing, she steals one of
the old man's strong-boxes and gives it to the son of a local notary,
who hurries to the capital with it and reaches there in time to save
Charles' father from ruin and death. As Charles has also fled with his
uncle's mare on the same errand, the miser thinks he is the thief, and
obtains a warrant for his arrest. But Eugenie avows everything except
the name of her accomplice. Explanations occur, now that Guillaume
Grandet is saved; Charles comes out of prison and marries Eugenie,
whose dowry is the money that has served so good a purpose. With
Bouffe in the chief role, the _Miser's Daughter_, as the piece was
called, had a great popularity, and was several times revived.
In 1835 also, was produced _Pere Goriot_ at the Varietes, there being
three collaborators in the dramatizing, Theaulon, de Comberousse, and
Jaime. Their adaptation possessed the same characters as the novel,
but the roles are considerably modified. Victorine Taillefer becomes
Goriot's illegitimate daughter, who is provided for by her father, yet
brought up without ever seeing him and without the least inkling of
her relationship to him. But Vautrin has discovered that a sum of five
hundred thousand francs is deposited on her behalf with a notary; and
he goes to Grenoble, where she is living, brings her back with him to
Paris, and presents her to Goriot as a poor girl, his intention being
to ask her in marriage at the proper moment. The retired tradesman
takes her in, and she remains with him when his other daughters marry,
and during the time they pass in ungratefully stripping him of his
fortune. At last his sons-in-law, to salve their consciences, offer to
place him in an almshouse. Goriot indignantly refuses, and tells them
he has another daughter whom he has made rich, and that he will go and
live with her. Now is Vautrin's opportunity. He informs Goriot who
Victorine is, and, since she had given her affections to the young
Rastignac, he, like a good fellow, renounces his own matrimonial
project and assists the old father in marrying the lovers happily. The
part of Goriot was acted by Vernet, who did entire justice to Balzac's
great creation. Simultaneously at the Vaudeville, another and poorer
version of the novel was given; and, in 1891, at the Theatre Libre,
Tabarand experimented a third piece, this last being a faithful
reproduction of the novel. Antoine scored a big success in the part of
Goriot, rendering the death-bed scene with remarkable power and skill.
In 1836, _La Grande Breteche_, with its vengeful husband who walls up
his wife's lover alive, tempted Scribe and another playwright,
Melesville. In their arrangement, there is a virtuous wife whose
husband is a bigamist. On learning the truth, she consents to receive
the visit of Lara, an admirer of hers, whom she loves; and, when the
Bluebeard, Valdini, surprises his victim and proceeds to the
immurement, his first wife slips in most conveniently and whisks him
off, leaving Valentine free to marry Lara.
It is curious to notice how, in almost every instance, the first
adapting dramatists transformed Balzac's tragedies into comedies,
softening the stern facts of life and its injustices, and meting out
the juster rewards and punishments which the novelist's realism
forbade.
In Antony Beraud's _Gars_, a play drawn from the _Chouans_ and
performed at the Ambigu-Comique in 1837, the hero and heroine, instead
of dying, are saved by a political amnesty decreed by Napoleon; and
the curtain falls to the cry of _Vive l'Empereur_. More than fifty
years later, in 1894, the same theatre gave a close rendering of the
dramatic portions of the _Chouans_, due to the collaboration of Berton
and Blavet, the tragic ending being preserved, with all the effects
properly belonging to it.
Commonplace, like the _Gars_, were the arrangements of the _Search for
the Absolute_, in 1837, and _Cesar Birotteau_ in 1838. The former was
staged under the bizarre title, _A+Mx=O+X, or the Dream of a Savant_.
The authors, Bayard and Bieville, concealed their identity under an
algebraic X as well; and their piece, which made Balthazar Claes a
Parisian chemist and a candidate to a vacant chair in the College de
France, failed to attract at the Gymnase, in spite of Bouffe's talent
and the redemption of Balthazar.
_Cesar Birotteau_ was performed at the Pantheon Theatre, which was
demolished in 1846. The love-story of Popinot and Cesarine, which is
so briefly sketched in the novel, assumed chief importance in Cormon's
adaptation, and, of course, Cesar does not die.
Scribe borrowed largely from the _Comedie Humaine_. His _Sheriff_
libretto for Halevy's music at the Opera Comique in 1839 was a
transmogrification of _Master Cornelius_. Balzac's Cornelius is Louis
XI's money-lender, who lives with his sister in an old mansion, next
to a house with the King's natural daughter, Marie de Sassenage,
occupies with her husband, the Comte de Sainte-Vallier. The old
money-lender, perceiving that his gold is disappearing, has had four of
his apprentices hanged on suspicion. The like fate now threatens Marie's
lover, Georges d'Estouteville, who in order to see her more safely,
has persuaded Cornelius to let him stay in his dwelling one night.
Marie appeals to the King to spare her lover's life, and Louis, on
investigating the matter, discovers that Cornelius is a somnambulist,
and has been robbing himself and burying his gold. On being told of
this, the old money-lender has no peace of mind, fearing the King will
take all his treasure, and ultimately cuts his own throat. In Scribe's
parody, for a parody the piece virtually is, the scene is laid in
England. John Turnel, the Sheriff of London, is the somnambulist, and
he suspects his own daughter and his cook of stealing his money. But,
differing from Cornelius, he accepts the situation when the truth is
revealed to him under circumstances that make him as ridiculous as the
spectre of Tappington in the _Ingoldsby Legends_; and, as a comic
opera generally ends happily, he consents to the marriage of his
daughter, Camilla, and of Keat, the cook, with their respective
swains.
An English setting was likewise given by Scribe to his play of
_Helene_, suggested by Balzac's _Honorine_, which was staged at the
Gymnase in 1846. Helene is a young orphan who draws and paints for her
living, and has the good fortune to have all her canvases bought at
advantageous prices by a rich dealer named Crosby. But suddenly she
learns that the dealer is acting in behalf of a certain Lord
Clavering, and, fearing some underhand designs, she refuses to keep
the money that has been paid her. Smitten by her disinterestedness as
well as by her beauty, Lord Clavering would gladly marry her, but is
bound by his word plighted to Lord Dunbar's daughter. However, the
latter elopes with another nobleman, and Clavering marries Helene.
This pretty theme, developed by the actress Rose Cheri, made a huge
hit.
Nearly as great was the actress's success at the same theatre in 1849,
when she played the principal role in Clairville's _Madame Marneffe_ a
version of _Cousin Bette_, but very much modified, since Bette is
eliminated altogether, and Valerie Marneffe, instead of being a
depraved creature, is merely a clever woman of the world, who avenges
her father's ruin on the Baron Hulot and Crevel, they being mainly
responsible for it. When Balzac was at Wierzchownia, on his last
visit, he wrote to his mother asking her to go to the theatrical
agent's in order to receive his third of the receipts produced by the
piece. These author's royalties must have helped his purse
considerably.
In the year after the novelist's death, the applauded representation
of _Mercadet_, at the Gymnase, stimulated other managers of theatres
to go on exploiting his _Comedy_. In September, the _Shagreen Skin_,
arranged by Judicis, was played at the Ambigu-Comique, with _tableaux_
of almost literal imitation, yet bringing to life again, in the
denouement, the chief _dramatis personae_, and making the whole drama
a dream.
At the Comedie Francaise, in 1853, Barriere and de Beauplan produced a
five-act prose play drawn from the _Lily in the Valley_. The novel was
an awkward one to dramatize, there being very few elements in it
capable of yielding situations for the stage. So the result was poor.
A better thing was made in 1859 by de Keraniou out of the _Sceaux
Ball_. On it he based an agreeable piece entitled _Noblesse Oblige_,
with a delicately interpreted love scene in it which met with
appreciative audiences at the Odeon.
One more example, that of _Cousin Pons_, may be given to close the
list of these adaptation, which are fully treated in Edmond Bire's
interesting book dealing with certain aspects of Balzac's life and
work. _Cousin Pons_ was staged at the Cluny Theatre in 1873. Alphonse
de Launay, the author of the play, keeps to his text fairly well; but
he adds a love episode which thrusts the friendship of the two
musicians into the second place. Moreover, after the death of Pons,
Schmucke lives to inherit his fortune and the Camusots are checkmated.