Balzac

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The beginning of the new year did not bring back his former zeal for
labour. Much of his time he frittered away in adding to his
collections. Here he picked up a portrait of Queen Marie Leczinska by
a pupil of Coypel, there, a Flemish lustre for which he paid four
hundred and fifty francs. Eve reproached him with his idleness,
presumably because he was too frequently at the house of Madame de
Girardin. To calm her he penned a few remarks anent that lady not
exactly complimentary. "Madame de Girardin," he said, "who is charming
among a few friends, is a less agreeable hostess when she holds a
large reception. She belies her origin only by her talent; but, when
she is outside her talent, she becomes once more her mother's
daughter, that is to say 'bourgeoise' and 'Gay' thoroughbred." To the
soiree which drew from him this jibe, he had been invited to meet
Sheridan's granddaughter--an English bore, he styled her--who looked
him up and down through an eye-glass as if he were an actor. His
relations with Emile, Delphine's husband, continued to be marked by
breezes. Before starting for Rome on the 17th of March, he sent him a
few sharp lines complaining of the /Presse's/ delay in printing the
/Peasants/. As a matter of fact, the readers of the /Presse/ were not
pleased with the story; and the editor had been obliged to request the
author to modify the unpublished part. Balzac complied, but felt sore.

The earlier chapters of this novel appeared in 1844; the last ones did
not come out until five years after the novelist's death. The plot of
the book turns on the struggle waged by the peasants and petty
bourgeois of Soulanges against a new but estimable landlord, General
Montcornet, whose estate they are determined to have by hook or by
crook in their own hands, not hesitating, at least some of them, to
assassinate the honest agent who strives to protect his employer's
property against their depredations. All these country folk Balzac has
portrayed with effects depending on the painter's and sculptor's art
as much nearly as on the writer's; and the inmates and visitors of the
village-inn and coffee-house are individualized with an anatomical
intensity fringing on the brutal. Like the /Village Cure/ and the
/Country Doctor/, the /Peasants/ is a novel with a purpose and a
warning. The author preaches against the dividing up of the land; and
advocates agriculture on a large scale by a reversion to the old
estates with their castles and forests. As adjuvants to these he
pleads for the development of Catholicism, a wider influence of the
clergy both in education and private life. His picture of peasant
avarice has been repeated by later writers, Guy de Maupassant and
Zola. True in many particulars, it is traced by a prejudiced mind, and
cannot be accepted as thoroughly representative.

At Rome he found Madame Hanska, and stayed with her there till May.
Instead of describing the Eternal City to his sister, he referred her
to de Lamennais' accounts, himself being fully occupied with his
companion and sight-seeing. He was duly received by the Pope, and
obtained a small crown chaplet for his mother, together with His
Holiness' blessing. Saint Peter's surpassed his expectations, and the
choir's /Miserere/ so delighted him that he went to hear it a second
time in lieu of that of the Sixtine Chapel. The journey back through
Genoa, the Grisons, and Bale was a pretext for continuing his bric-a-
brac purchases, Holbein's /Saint Peter/ being added to his treasures.

Reaching Paris at last, he now took up his pen with his old ardour.
Fresh pledges for the future had been given him by Eve. These served
to lure him onward; and behind him were the creditors who had lent him
money for his trip, and were wanting some of it restored. At this
period Madame Hanska's funds and his own were partly associated. Some
of her capital and some of his own, probably the sum accruing from the
sale of Les Jardies, at present definitive, had been invested in North
Railway Shares. Besides, not a few of his paintings and antique pieces
of furniture had been paid for with advances from her strong-box.

The two works that issued from his new effort of creation were /Cousin
Bette/ and /Cousin Pons/. These, with /Pierrette/, made up his series
of the /Poor Relations/.

The /Old Musician/, as he originally called /Pons/, was meant to give
us the case of a man overwhelmed with humiliations and insults, yet
preserving his generosity and pardoning everybody and everything,
avenging himself only through kindness. Composed, like /Cesar
Birotteau/, very rapidly, it bears evidence of the author's haste.
There is no proper love interest in the book, the lack being supplied
by the friendship between Pons and the old German musician, Schmucke.
A number of subordinate biographies are interwoven with the principal
story--those of the banker Brunner, the Auvergnat Remonencq, the
Cibots, who were Pons' porters and caterers, Doctor Poulain and Lawyer
Fraisier. We have plots within plots, wheels within wheels, in this
strange, pathetic life of the musician, whose collecting hobby and
expert's skill in finding out rarities Balzac dwells on with all the
greater detail as he was indulging at that time his own bent in this
direction with peculiar zest and success. But the complexity and
crowding are foils one is glad to have against the sordid treachery of
the Cibot household, as, too, against the woes of Pons and Schmucke.
Perhaps nowhere in his achievement has the novelist got deeper down to
the rockbed of genuine humanity than in this work. /Cousin Pons/ was
published in 1847. /Cousin Bette/ came a year earlier.

Besides the two novels just mentioned, Balzac finished, during this
same period, the long series in which /Vautrin/ is a chief, if not the
chief, character; and also a book variously named the /Brothers of
Consolation/ and the /Reverse Side of Contemporary History/. In the
/Vautrin/ sequels he took up again the fortunes of Lucien de Rubempre,
who, after returning in disgrace to his family, loses courage and is
on the point of drowning himself when he meets with an Abbe Carlos
Herrera; the latter changes the young man's suicidal intentions by
promising to procure him wealth, rank, and honours. Herrera is no
other than Vautrin, who, having escaped from prison, is at the head of
a formidable association of convicts. Carefully hiding his identity
from Lucien, he persuades him to accept monetary help; and gradually
Lucien contrives to enter aristocratic society, becomes the favourite
of the Duchess of Serizy, and will be received as the betrothed of the
nobly born Clotilde de Grandlieu, provided he can show that he
possesses sufficient landed property. It so happens that his mistress
Esther, a Jewess of great beauty, who is as fond of him as Coralie
was, kills herself on learning that she must give him up. And Esther
being in reality an heiress whose father, Gobseck, has just died,
Vautrin forges a will by which the fortune is bequeathed to Lucien.
Unluckily for the ex-convict's plans, some police spies have been on
the track of his proceedings, and an untimely arrest of him and his
protege casts them into prison. These adventures are told in /Whither
Bad Ways Lead/ and two other volumes. A concluding book, entitled
/Vautrin's Last Incarnation/, relates the outlaw's duel with justice
in his confinement, the suicide of his disciple, and his own pardon at
the price of entering into the Government's secret police. The later
portions of this drawn-out piece of fiction are written in the
melodramatic style, and the characterization is distinctly inferior.
The author loses himself in the various imbroglios, and the actors
degenerate into creatures of romance, lacking consistency.

The /Reverse Side of Contemporary History/ has similar defects. It was
commenced in the /Musee des Familles/ in 1842, was continued in 1844,
and was completed only in 1848 in the /Spectateur Republicain/. We
meet at first with a certain Godefroi who reaches middle age without
obtaining any permanent satisfaction out of his life, and who thinks
of burying himself in some quiet quarter of Paris where he can dwell
unknowing and unknown. An accident introduces him to a kind of lay
community whose presiding spirit is a Madame de la Chanterie, and
whose members are a priest and three old gentlemen. These people are
devoting what remains to them of their existence to alleviating pain
and distress. Godefroi is admitted into the association, and, during
his novice expedition, has a curious experience which leads to the
disclosure of Madame de la Chanterie's past. This is narrated in the
second half of the book. We get the whole of that lady's tragic
history, an unjust trial of which she was the victim, the Nemesis
which punished the bad judge in his daughter's frightful malady and
his poverty, and the heaping of coals of fire on his head by the woman
who had suffered so direly through him. On arriving at the end of the
story we cannot recognize it as the one we were made acquainted with
at the outset. The tangle of episode and explanation--the latter
confusing more than it explains--which intervenes in the middle,
issues in a coarser thread that persists till the close. And yet the
start was a fair one.

With /Cousin Bette/, we are back among the monstrosities. Bette is the
poor relation who, unlike Pons, revenges herself for her humiliations
and the insults bestowed on her. She aids in the pecuniary and moral
ruin of the Hulot family, acts in cold blood, and attains her object
before she dies. She is not the only perverted nature delineated.
There is the Baron Hulot, whose odious licentiousness brings him to a
veritable cretinism. There is Crevel, a grotesque, contemptible dupe;
there are the Marneffes, sinks of corruption; and, with these, other
minor characters--the vindictive Brazilian who wreaks his wrath on
Madame Marneffe and on Crevel by his mysterious death-causing gift.
The ideally virtuous Adeline Hulot also the novelist belittles, making
her offer herself to Crevel to save her husband from the consequences
of his degrading passions. Nearly all the book is harrowing, and even
the atmosphere of the bohemian circles, where conversation is one
sparkle of satire, is heavily tainted with vice.

George Sand protested against Madame Hulot's portrait as unnatural;
and, herself being the contrary of prudish in sexual relations, the
opinion cannot be called prejudiced. Balzac defended his treatment,
while admitting there was force in what she said. Arguing with her on
their respective methods, he replied: "You seek to paint man as he
ought to be. I take him as he is. Believe me, we are both right. Both
ways lead to the same goal. I am fond of exceptional beings. I am one
myself. Moreover, I need them to give relief to my common characters;
and I never sacrifice them without necessity. But these common
characters interest me more than they interest you. I aggrandize them;
I idealize them in an inverse direction, in their ugliness or their
stupidity. I give to their deformity terrifying or grotesque
proportions. You could not do this. You are wise not to look at people
and things that would cause you nightmare. Idealize in that which is
pretty and beautiful. This is woman's task."

In spite of sheriff's summonses and stormy discussions with those to
whom he still had indebtedness, and in spite, too, of a tropical
summer, the would-be bride-groom toiled cheerfully on through 1846.
His Passy cottage was becoming, with the continually augmented
collection, quite a museum, and Bertall, the artist-caricaturist, was
in ecstasies over a china service estimated by its owner at some
thousands of francs. His good humour rendered him his former
conversational brilliancy, which had been somewhat damped during the
past twelvemonth, and, at one of Delphine Gay's dinners, where he met
Hugo and Lamartine, he replied to Jove's heavy artillery with a raking
fire from his own quick-firing guns. Lamartine was enchanted. Balzac
must go to the Chamber was his verdict. But Balzac, at present, was
content to correspond with his Eve and to occupy himself with the
restoration of the pictures she was helping him to buy. One of these,
the /Chevalier of Malta/, he had acquired on Gringalet's
recommendation when in Rome. It had been bistered over by the dealer
with a view to hiding a scratch, and there was also the dirt of age
upon it. Requisitioning a clever craftsman in picture-restoring, he
submitted the treasure to him. "It's a masterpiece," pronounced the
expert: "but what will it be worth when the dirt is off?" Three days
later the restorer came back with his drugs and implements. And,
first, he rubbed a corner with some cotton dipped in one of his
mixtures, which frothed the painting white. Then for an hour he
scrubbed the surface progressively until he had a lot of little cotton
balls all black. Afterwards, he began again, for the dirt was in
layers, and, at the conclusion of the scrubbing and brushing, the
chevalier emerged as life-like and fresh as when painted by the pupil
of Raphael--Albert Durer or another--three hundred years before. The
scratch was easily repaired, and Balzac was beside himself with joy.
Relating to Georges Mniszech this happy result, which enriched his
gallery containing already more than half-a-dozen old masters of great
value, he said: "When connoisseurs and dilletanti come to visit my
collection I shall say to them, 'I owe this head to a young professor
of entomology; he is a charming young man, full of wit and feeling,
who, for the moment, is buried in bliss, science, and the steppes of
the Ukraine. He is so versed in paintings that he is a boon to his
friends. Oh! I assure you he out-experts all the experts of Paris put
together. What is his name?--Gringalet!--No, really!--As truly as I am
called Bilboquet.'"

The bliss referred to was Georges' approaching marriage with Eve's
daughter Anna, which was celebrated very unostentatiously at Wiesbaden
in October, owing to the recent death of the Count's father. Balzac
went to the wedding, and stayed with the family for four days. He had
already spent a short time with them in August, on the occasion of the
old Count Mniszech's death, and, on his return journey, had been
accompanied by Madame Hanska as far as Strasburg, where she made him
such a definite statement regarding their marriage as amounted to an
official engagement. It was between the two visits that he
commissioned Georges to buy Atala a Voltaire-armchair for her greater
ease and comfort.

While at the wedding, he was able to tell Eve that he had at last come
upon a house which was everything that could be desired for them two
selves. It was the smaller remaining portion of the splendid mansion
and grounds built for the famous financier, Beaujon, by the architect
Girardin in the eighteenth century. The original property, situated
near the Arc de Triomphe, was nicknamed by contemporaries Beaujon's
Folly. At the owner's death, the mansion and grounds were sold, and
subsequently the Rues Chateaubriand, Lord Byron, and Fortunee were cut
through the place. The abode chosen by the novelist bordered on the
Rue Fortunee. From its staircase there was an entrance into a private
chapel, which the financier had had constructed in his old age for his
soul's edification, and in which he was finally buried. The outside of
the house in Balzac's time was modest in appearance. Alone, a cupola,
seen above the containing walls, suggested memories of bygone glory.
Inside, there were still very substantial pieces of luxury and
artistic decoration that needed only touching up to be practically
what they had been of yore. Balzac detailed all this to his betrothed,
and his selection was approved. No sooner was he in Paris again than
the bargain was settled, and orders were given for the necessary
repairs and renovation to be executed.

The end of 1846 seemed to smile on these projects of a speedy
installation in conformity with his desires. Though the North Railway
Shares had declined considerably, he was earning a good deal of money.
/Cousin Bette/ yielded him thirteen thousand francs, and /Cousin Pons/
was sold for nine--modest prices indeed; but the total, with other
sources of revenue, gave him for the twelvemonth an income of about
fifty thousand francs. In the Beaujon mansion the workmen soon
accomplished prodigies, transforming its dilapidated rooms into ship-
shape and elegance. Bilboquet issued special instructions for
apartments to be fitted up for Gringalet and Zephirine--a bedchamber
and small /salon/, both circular and sculptured, with paintings on the
arches, worthy of the destined aristocratic occupants.

Urged on by the sight of these preparations, he threw himself with
almost frenzy into fresh literary labour. Dr. Nacquart warned him
against the consequences of such brain debauch, as he termed it,
prophesying that harm would ensue. And the doctor was right. Balzac
was soon to pay for his excesses. Just now there was much in the
political firmament that caused the novelist anxiously to wish that
his own fortunes and those of Eve were indissolubly united. "Make
haste!" was his constant cry to her.

"I see," he said, "Italy and Germany ready to move. Peace hangs only
by a thread--the life of Louis-Philippe, who is growing old; and, if
war comes, Heaven knows what would happen to us. . . . For a young and
ambitious sovereign who would not want, like Louis-Philippe, above all
to die quietly in his bed, how favourable the moment would be to
regain the left bank of the Rhine. The populations are harassed by
petty, imbecile royalties. England is at loggerheads with Ireland, who
seeks to ruin her or separate from her. All Italy is preparing to
shake off the yoke of Austria. Germany desires her unity, or perhaps
more liberty merely. Anyway, we are on the eve of great catastrophes.
In France, it is our interest to wait, our cavalry and navy not being
strong enough to enable us to triumph on land and sea; but, when these
two are improved and our defence-works completed, France will be
redoubtable. One must admit, that, by the manner Louis-Philippe is
administering and governing, he is making her the first Power in the
world. Just think! Nothing is factitious with us. Our army is a fine
one; we have money; everything is strong and real at present. When the
port of Algiers is terminated, we shall have a second Toulon in front
of Gibraltar; we are advancing in the domination of the Mediterranean.
Spain and Belgium are with us. This man has made progress. If he were
ambitious and wished to chant the Marseillaise, he would demolish
three empires to his advantage."

The foregoing outlook on the future neglected certain signs of the
times equally necessary to be taken into account with others that were
perceived. In politics especially, the humourist's detachment is
essential to correct perspective, and of humour Balzac had but small
share. As compensation, pleasantry was not wanting in this Duc de
Bilboquet, peer of France and other places--as he subscribed himself
to his dear Gringalet.

In February 1847, for the second time, Madame Hanska came to Paris
incognito. The Beaujon house was nearly ready, and as mistress of it
that was to be, her instructions were required for the garnishing. The
happy Bilboquet conducted her to the Opera, the Italiens, the
Conservatoire, and also to the Varietes where they saw Bouffe and
Hyacinthe play in the laughable /Filleul de tout le Monde/. It was
intended that she should stay till April, and that then he should take
her back to Germany, leaving her there to pursue her journey to
Wierzchownia, whither he was to proceed later. The novelist's so far
published correspondence has large gaps in the year 1847, with an
entire lack of letters to Eve--yet such exist--so that we do not learn
whether the intermediate programme was executed. Until the third
volume of the /Letters to the Stranger/ is published, it will be
impossible to fill in accurately the history of the months between
February and October, in which, however, events of importance
occurred. One of these was Balzac's burning all Madame Hanska's
epistles to him. Why? Apparently on account of a quarrel. And the
quarrel? Was it caused by her finding out that, in 1846, he had a
liaison with a lady resulting in the birth of a six months' child,
which did not survive? Monsieur de Lovenjoul, who is the authority for
this last information, mentions that the harassment Balzac suffered
from the affair was largely responsible for the rapid progress of the
heart-disease that finally killed him.

During the month of April[*] he was occupied in removing his furniture
from the Passy cottage to his new residence. Theophile Gautier, who
paid him a visit there not long after the installation, gave a sketch
of what he saw in an article that appeared in the /Artiste/. He says:

[*] On the house in Passy; the dates indicating the period of the
novelist's residence there are incorrect. It is to be hoped that
the error, which has been pointed out to the Curator, will be
rectified.

"When one entered this dwelling, which, indeed, was not easy, since
the occupant kept himself close there, a thousand tokens of luxury and
comfort were noticeable which were but little in agreement with the
poverty that he pleaded. One day, however, he received us, and we saw
a dining-room wainscoted in old oak, with table, chimney-piece,
sideboards, dressers, and chairs, all in wood so carved as to have
caused envy to Cornejo Duque and Verbruggen, if they had been present;
a drawing-room upholstered in buttercup damask, and with doors,
cornices, skirting-board, and embrasures in ebony; a library arranged
in bookcases inlaid with tortoise-shell and brass in Boule style; a
bathroom in yellow and black marble, with stucco bass-reliefs; a dome
boudoir, whose ancient paintings had been restored by Edmond Hedouin;
a gallery lighted from above, which we recognized later in the
collection of /Cousin Pons/. There were what-nots laden with all sorts
of curiosities, Dresden and Sevres china, cornet-shaped vases of
frosted celadon, and, on the carpeted staircase, large porcelain
bowls, and a magnificent lantern suspended by a red silk cord. 'Why!
you have emptied one of Aboulcasem's siloes,' we laughingly remarked
to Balzac, as we gazed at all these splendours. 'We were quite right
in asserting that you were a millionaire.' 'I am poorer than ever I
was,' he replied, with a humble, sly air. 'Nothing of this is mine. I
have furnished the house for a friend that I am expecting. I am only
the keeper and porter.'"

Within three short years from this date, the charge fell on her--the
friend. She became the porteress of the abode which the other had
prepared with such lavish attention and expenditure, to serve him only
as a pall.

In 1875, the widow and her son-in-law, Count Mniszech, resolved to
modify the Hotel Beaujon and the adjoining buildings, with the
intention of perpetuating the novelist's memory. The rotunda of the
private chapel they planned to convert into a kind of circular atrium,
with a fountain in the middle and a trellised gallery running round
it, decorated with busts, statues, and other works of art. Changes
likewise were to be effected in the courtyard, to which the pillars of
the chapel nave had been removed; and a statue of the late owner was
to be erected there, close to a tree, the seed of which had been
planted on the occasion of his marriage. The facade of the house on
the Rue Fortunee, now the Rue Balzac, was also to be embellished, and
the central pavilion made to represent the novelist's apotheosis, with
a monumental bass-relief and a niche. Only a small portion of these
alterations was completed. On Madame de Balzac's death, in 1882, the
property was bought by the Baroness Salomon de Rothschild; and, before
the end of the century, it was demolished and the ground it covered
was incorporated into the Baroness's own gardens. All that now marks
the site is the small dome forming the corner of the Rue Balzac and
the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore.

Whatever menaces of rupture between the lovers may have darkened their
horizon in the spring and summer of 1847 had vanished before the
autumn. At the end of September, Balzac went by invitation to
Wierzchownia, and remained its guest for over four months. The sight
of Russia's huge oak forests, of which the Mniszech family possessed
some twenty thousand acres, suggested to him another of the grandiose
schemes for gaining a large fortune that he was for ever elaborating
in his brain. His project was to establish an exportation to France of
oak timber, either by sea or rail; which, with every expense figured
out, might yield, so he calculated, a profit of a million two hundred
thousand francs for a part area, and would still leave the estate well
wooded after thinning out the trees. The thing was a gold-mine for him
and his family if a banker could be induced to take it up. Alas! his
brother-in-law was obliged to pour cold water on the project, proving
to him that the expenses, contrary to what he had estimated, would far
exceed the receipts. The weak point in the affair, however, was one
that cheaper transport following on increased railway communication
could remedy. Balzac's only mistake was in imagining that this could
be provided immediately. The visitor to Wierzchownia was not wrong in
thinking that Russia's natural productions must sooner or later be one
of the chief supplies of the European market. A better knowledge of
the country, acquired during his stay, enabled him to perceive that
internal reorganization was needed before the country's immense wealth
could be exploited to the same degree as was possible in a country
like France. In the Forties, Russia presented curious contrasts--great
magnificence, and yet entire want of the commonest conveniences.
Madame Hanska's estate was the only one boasting of a Carcel lamp and
a hospital. There were ten-foot mirrors, and no paper on the walls.
Still, he had not to complain of his apartments in pink stucco, with
fine carpets on the floor, and furniture that was comfortable. It
astonished him to find that the whole of the Wierzchownia castle--as
big as the Louvre--was heated by means of straw, which was burnt in
stoves, the weekly consumption being as much as could be seen in the
Saint-Laurent market at Paris. But, then, everything was huge. One of
the Mniszech estates extended over a surface as large as the Seine and
Marne Department, and was watered by no fewer than three rivers, the
Dnieper being one of them. And the cholera was colossal also--a
conscientious cholera, carrying off its forty to fifty victims a day
in Kiew alone, and a total of nine thousand at Savataf. To reassure
his relatives, Balzac added that this plague paid most of its calls at
the houses of rich uncles, to which category he did not belong, and
passed by people who had debts. /Ergo/, he was inoculated against its
attacks.

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