Balzac

CHAPTER III.
THE BUSKIN AND THE SOCK

“Le génie, c’est la patience.” – Buffon

In the story of “Albert Savarus” Balzac drew a picture of the hero which, with slight modifications, might have served as his own.

He was tall and somewhat stout. His hands were those of a prelate, and his head was that of a Nero. His hair was black and dense, and his forehead, furrowed by sabre-cuts of thought, was high and massive. His complexion was of an olive hue; his nose was prominent and slightly arched; his mouth was sympathetic, and his chin firm. But his most remarkable characteristic was the expression of his gold-brown eyes, which, eloquent with interrogations and replies, seemed, instead of receiving light from without, to project jets of interior flame.

His many vicissitudes had endowed him with an air of such calm tranquillity as might have disconcerted a thunderbolt; while his voice, at once penetrating and soft, had the charm attributed to Talma’s.

In conversation persuasive and magnetic, he held his auditors breathless in a torrent of words and gesture. He convinced almost at will, and his imagination, once unbridled, was sufficient to cause a vertigo. “He frightens me,” said Gérard de Nerval; “he is enough to drive one crazy.”

“He possessed,” Gautier said, “a swing, an eloquence, and a brio which were perfectly irresistible. Gliding from one subject to another, he would pass from an anecdote to a philosophical reflection, from an observation to a description. As he spoke, his face flushed, his eyes became peculiarly luminous, his voice assumed different inflections, while at times he would burst out laughing, amused by the comic apparitions which he saw before describing, and announced, in this way, by a sort of fanfare, the entrance of his caricatures and witticisms. The misfortunes of a precarious existence, the annoyances of debt, fatigue, excessive work, even illness, were unable to change this striking characteristic of continual and Rabelaisian joviality.”

Friends, enemies, editors, strangers, money-lenders, and usurers, all with whom he came in contact, were fascinated and coerced by the extraordinary magnetism which he exerted without effort, and the most vigorous intellects were bewildered by his projects of fortune and dreams of glory.

Attracted by the mine of wealth which the theatre opens to the popular playwright; and burdened with a real or imaginary weight of debt, from which one or two dramas, if favorably received, would free him entirely; and desirous, moreover, of experiencing the delirious intoxication which the plaudits of the gallery bring to the successful dramatist, Balzac’s inflammable imagination became a veritable whirlwind of plots and epigrams whenever a new play was well received.

But for the playwright, as for the mechanic, an apprenticeship is obligatory, and, though Balzac’s novels contained action and analysis, drama and observation, it was not, as we have seen, until after a long and laborious preparation that he was enabled to attract the attention of the public; and it is evident that the heights which he then scaled were so fatiguing and time-consuming that his life, wearied by the struggle, was not of sufficient duration to permit his winning equal triumphs on the stage.

From his early schooldays, however, in which, it will be remembered, he commenced a tragedy on the Incas, which was afterwards followed by a drama in blank verse entitled “Cromwell,” the stage had possessed an irresistible attraction for him; and if therein he was not at first successful, it was perhaps from the very cause which brought to him his original popularity, and the superabundance of his ideas, paradoxical as it at first appears, was undoubtedly his greatest stumbling-block.

To imagine a plot was nothing, the scenes were but details, and the outline of a melodrama was to him the work of as little labor as would be required in the conception of a pleasing menu; but when the general plan was sketched, each scene would suggest a dozen others, and the Coliseum of Vespasian would not have been large enough to present the simultaneous action which the play, at once interminable and impossible, would have demanded.

Another reason for his lack of immediate success was the jealousy of his colleagues and the hatred of the critics; and as at that time the existence of a play depended entirely upon the manner in which the first representation was received, it was not very difficult to create a cabal against this usurper, who, not content with his legitimate celebrity, seemed, at the bare mention of a play, to meditate a universal literary monarchy, in which he would reign supreme; and while the conquest of both spheres has been effected by Hugo, Voltaire, and others of like ilk, yet these authors were careful to fortify their progress with a book in one hand and a play in the other, whereas it was not until Balzac had reached his apogee that he began a serious attack on the stage.

It was in the year 1840 that Balzac submitted “Vautrin,” his first drama, to the director of the Porte-St. – Martin. The play was at once accepted; for the author’s reputation was not only gigantic, but the Porte-St. – Martin had almost foundered in successive tempests, and to the director, who was as penniless as he was appreciative, the offer was little less than a godsend. An agreement was signed forthwith, and Balzac abandoned Les Jardies for more convenient quarters, where he could attend to the rehearsals and remodel the scenes on the stage itself, which, it may be added, he continued to do up to the very last moment.

During these preparations, the boulevards were agog with excitement. The actors and the director, accompanied by Balzac’s friends, wandered daily from the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle to Tontoni’s and the Café Riche, exciting the curiosity of the flaneurs by their reticence or murmured confidences; and Balzac’s ingress and egress from the theatre were, it is said, watched and waited for by curious crowds.

Never in the history of the drama had a first representation been so impatiently awaited; and Balzac, foreseeing the immense sale which the seats would have, bought up the entire house, and then, while endeavoring that the tickets should circulate only among his friends and their acquaintances, sold the better part of it over again at a large advance.

“My dear friend,” he wrote to Dablin, “if among your acquaintances there are any who wish to assist at the first representation of ‘Vautrin,’ let me know who they are, as I prefer to let the boxes to those whom I know about, rather than to those who are unknown to me. I particularly wish to have handsome women present. The demand for boxes is greater than the supply. The journalists are to be sacrificed.”

To Gozlan he wrote, —

“I have sent you a ticket for the stalls. The rehearsals have almost killed me. You will witness a memorable failure. I have been wrong, I think, to summon the public.

“Morituri te salutant, Cæsar!”

Unfortunately, the interval between the sale of the seats and the first representation was sufficiently great to permit of two thirds of the tickets falling into the hands of those who were unknown or hostile to Balzac; and consequently, when the great day arrived, the critics sharpened their knives, and in place of the indulgent friends and handsome women whom Balzac had expected to welcome his play the theatre was crowded with malevolent faces.

The title-rôle was taken by Frédéric Lemaître, and while the first three acts were received without any demonstrations, either of approval or disapprobation, over the fourth there burst a tempest which, since the birth-night of “Hernani,” was unequaled in the annals of the stage; for Lemaître, reappearing in the costume of a Mexican general, seemed – whether by accident or design, it has never been clearly understood – to present an insulting resemblance to Louis Philippe, whose eldest son happened to be in one of the most conspicuous boxes.

The entire house, from pit to gallery, re-echoed with hisses and catcalls. Threats and even blows were exchanged, for here and there, in spite of the general indignation, a few still remained faithful to Balzac.

Through Lemaître’s eccentricity, the battle was lost and the drama killed. Further representations were prohibited by the government; and though, a few days later, M. de Rémusat called upon Balzac, and offered in the name of the state an indemnity for the pecuniary loss which he had sustained, it was haughtily refused. “If my play was justly prohibited, there is,” he said, “no reason why I should be indemnified; if it be otherwise, I can accept nothing, unless an indemnity be also made to the manager and actors of the Porte-St. – Martin.”

Two years after the failure of “Vautrin,” and entirely unaffected by its sudden collapse, Balzac knocked at the door of the Odéon which was at that time under the management of Lireux. By this gentleman Balzac was received with the greatest cordiality; for while his first play had fallen flat, yet it had fallen with such a crash that, in the lapse of time, it was difficult to distinguish its failure from success. Moreover, the Odéon was bankrupt, and as Balzac, with his customary enthusiasm, offered nothing less than a Golconda in his manuscript, he was fêted, caressed, and altogether received with open arms.

From the office to the green room, from the door-keeper to the scene-shifters, smiles, compliments, and welcomes were showered upon him, and he was unanimously requested to read his play at once. As soon, therefore, as the actors were assembled and silence obtained, Balzac began to read “Les Ressources de Quinola.” At first thick and embarrassed, his voice gradually grew clearer, and expressed the most fugitive undulations of the dialogue. His audience laughed and wept by turns, and Balzac laughed and wept with them; the entire troop was fascinated, and applauded as only actors can. Suddenly, however, at the end of the fourth act, Balzac stopped short, and explained in the simplest and most unaffected manner that, as he had not yet written the fifth, he would be obliged to recite it to them.

The stupor and surprise of his audience can be more readily imagined than described: for the fifth act of “Quinola” is the unraveling of all the tangled threads, the union of all the joints; it is the climax and logical termination of all that has gone before; and Balzac, as he calmly rolled up his manuscript and tied it with a bit of string, easily, fluently, and unhesitatingly continued the drama through the six final scenes, and without a break, without a pause, through a torrent of varied intonations, led his listeners by a magnificent tour de force to the very fall of the curtain.

Lireux was bewildered and entranced. “The rehearsals shall commence to-morrow,” he said. “But to what address, M. de Balzac, shall I send the announcements?”

“It is unnecessary to send any,” Balzac replied. “I can come without them.”

“Ah, no, that is impossible. There will be a rehearsal one day, and none the next; and I never know until the morning at what hour a rehearsal is to take place. What is your address?”

But Balzac had not the least intention of telling where he lived, and either because he was playing hide-and-go-seek with his creditors, or else was at that time possessed of one of the inexplicable manias which caused him at times to keep his habitat a secret even from his most intimate friends, he refused flatly to impart the wished-for information.

“I do not see what we can do,” Lireux murmured helplessly, “unless we use a carrier pigeon.”

“I do,” replied Balzac, ever fertile in expedients. “Listen to me. Send a messenger up the Champs-Élysées with the notice every morning at nine o’clock. When he reaches the Arc de l’Étoile, let him turn to the left, and he will see a man beneath the twentieth tree, who will pretend to be looking up in the branches for a sparrow.”

“A sparrow?”

“A sparrow or any other bird.”

“My pigeon, perhaps.”

“Let me continue. Your messenger will approach my sentinel, and will say to him, ‘I have it.’ Thereupon my sentinel will reply, ‘Since you have it, what are you waiting for?’ Then your messenger will hand the notice to him, and immediately go away, without once looking behind him. I will attend to the rest.”

Lireux saw no objection to this fantastic whim, and contented himself by expressing the hope that if the twentieth tree should be destroyed by lightning M. de Balzac would see no insuperable objection to posting his sentinel at the twenty-first.

“No,” Balzac answered, “but I should prefer the nineteenth; the number is more quaint.”

This plan amicably arranged, the actors agreed upon, and the date of the first representation settled, Balzac proceeded to talk finance.

“Beside the customary royalty, I wish the entire house for the first three nights.”

“But what shall I get?” Lireux timidly inquired.

“Half the profits, which will be incalculable.”

Lireux reflected for a moment. “Very good,” he said; “I accept.”

From the first rehearsal Balzac recommenced with “Quinola” the treatment to which “Vautrin” had been subjected. Sometimes a phrase was altered, sometimes a scene, while at others an entire act was remodeled. That which pleased him one day displeased him the next, and each rehearsal brought fresh corrections and alterations, until the original manuscript was entirely obliterated with erasures and new ideas.

Besides undergoing the mental and physical labor attendant on these rehearsals, Balzac undertook the entire charge of the sale of the seats, or rather the entire charge of refusing seats to all comers; for the box office was opened merely for form’s sake, and tickets were to be had only of Balzac in person. To obtain one was not so much a question of money as of position and influence. The orchestra stalls he reserved for the nobility, the avant-scènes for the court circle; the boxes in the first gallery were for the ambassadors and plenipotentiaries; the second gallery was for the statesmen, the third for the moneyed aristocracy, the fourth for the select bourgeoisie. “As for the critics,” he said, “they can buy their seats, if there are any left, and there will be none.”

As a rule, therefore, when any one asked for a box, Balzac would reply, “Too late: last one just sold to the Princesse de Machin and the Grande Duchesse de Chose.” During the first few days of the sale, seats were in consequence sold at extraordinary prices; but later on the anxiety to obtain them decreased, and during the week preceding the first performance Balzac was very glad to dispose of them to any one at the regular rates.

On the 6th of March, 1842, thirteen days before the play was to be performed, he wrote to a friend as follows: —

“Dear Sofka, – Send me the address of the Princess Constantine Razumovska, that I may learn from her whether she wishes a box. Let me know also whether the two Princesses Troubetskoï want boxes, whether Kraïeska wishes one, whether the Malakoffs, and the Countess Léon, and the Countess Nariskine, – seven boxes in all. I must know, too, whether they want them in the upper or lower tier of the first gallery. I wish the handsome women in front… It is a favor to be admitted to this solemnity. There are at the theatre a hundred and fifty applications for boxes from people whom I do not know and who will get nothing.”

On the 12th he wrote to the same person: “The avant-scènes are for the king and the cabinet; they take them by the year. I can only give, therefore, to the Princess Troubetskoï a box in the first gallery, but it is one of the best in the house… The costumes have cost 20,000 francs; the scenery is entirely new. Every one insists that the play is a masterpiece, and that makes me shudder. In any event, it will be a terrible solemnity. Lamartine has asked for a box; I will place him among the Russians. Every morning I receive thirty or forty applications, but I will have no one whom I do not know about… Tell your Russian friends that I must have the names and addresses, each accompanied by a written and personal recommendation of those of their friends (men) who wish stalls. There are over fifty people a day who come under assumed names and refuse to give their address; they are enemies, who wish to ruin the piece. In a week I shall not know what I am about. We are obliged to observe the most severe precautions. I am intoxicated with the play.”

The severe precautions resulted on the night of the first representation in a half-empty house.

Few imagined that seats could really be had, and it was even reported that Balzac had been obliged to refuse a seat to the Duc de Nemours. The amateurs resigned themselves, therefore, almost without a struggle, and determined that as they could not obtain seats for the first performance they would find solace in the second or third; but on reading the articles which appeared the next day they felt little need of consolation, for the fate of “Vautrin” had been repeated, and “Quinola” had fallen flat. The most sympathetic of all the criticisms which then appeared was one contained in Le National for the 16th of March, 1842. It runs as follows: —

“The subject of M. de Balzac’s drama was excellent, but unfortunately, through eccentricity or negligence, he passed but to one side of the idea, without resolutely entering it and extracting all its wealth.

“The Odéon is the theatre of tumultuous representations, but never has this terrible battle-field offered such a conglomeration of exclamations and confusing cries. The pit, like a sharp-shooter, took up an ambush behind the substantives and verbs, and slaughtered the play while it maimed the actors, who, brave though wounded, struggled on to the end with a praiseworthy and melancholy courage. At times the comedy, through its sudden flashes of originality and abrupt cannonades of wit, seemed about to rout the enemy and wave aloft a tattered but victorious flag. The faults, however, were too numerous and the errors too grave, and in spite of many advantages the battle, in the end, was fairly lost.”

But in spite of the derision, insults, and abuse with which the first representation was received, in spite of the financial and dramatic shipwreck, after the commotion had subsided and the audience had dispersed, Balzac, superior to destiny and indifferent to fate, was found fast asleep and snoring in his box.¹⁸

In addition to “Vautrin” and “Quinola,” three other plays of Balzac’s have been produced, namely, “Paméla Giraud,” “La Marâtre,” and “Le Faiseur” (“Mercadet”), of which the first was performed at the Gaieté in September, 1843, and enjoyed a moderate success. Concerning the second, M. Hostein, formerly director of the Théatre-Historique, has offered some curious information.¹⁹ Balzac, it appears, called upon him one day, and explained that for some time past he had been thinking over an historical drama for the Théatre-Historique.

“I shall call it,” he said, “‘Pierre et Catharine,’ Peter the Great and Catharine of Russia. That, I think, would be an excellent subject.”

“Treated by you, it could not be otherwise. But are you far advanced, M. de Balzac?”

“It is all here,” Balzac answered, tapping his forehead. “I have but to write it out, and, if you care to, the first tableau can be rehearsed the day after to-morrow.”

“Can you give me an idea of this first tableau?” I asked.

“Certainly. We are in a Russian inn. You can see it from here. In this inn plenty of action: the troops are passing by; soldiers come in, drink, chat for a moment, and then off again, but everything is done rapidly. Among the people of the inn is a servant-girl, young, active, and alert, – pay attention to her: her figure is good; she is not handsome, but she is peculiarly attractive. The soldiers jest with her; she smiles at every one, but her admirers are obliged to be careful, for any familiarity is answered with a slap, which is as good as a blow.

“A soldier enters who is more daring than the others. He is charged with a particular mission; his time, therefore, is his own. He can drink at his ease and chat with the servant, if she pleases him; for that matter, she pleases him at first sight, and she likes the soldier, too. ‘Here,’ he says, catching hold of her arm, ‘sit down at this table and drink with me.’

“The soldier takes a seat, and the girl does the same. Noticing, however, some objection on the part of the innkeeper, he rises angrily, and strikes the table with his fist. ‘If any one interferes with what I do, I will burn the whole shanty down.’

“And he would have done it, too. He is a good soldier, but terrible with his inferiors. The old innkeeper motions to the girl to obey. The soldier sits down again. He places one arm tenderly about the girl’s neck, and then, having drunk deeply, he whispers, ‘I will give you a better home than this.’ While they are talking together, inattentive to the others, the door at the back opens. An officer enters, and every one rises, with respect. The soldiers make the regulation salute, and stand motionless. The soldier and the servant alone remain seated. The officer notices this, and grows angry. He looks at the girl and advances toward the table; having reached the soldier, he raises his arm, and lets it fall with a terrible force on the shoulder of the poor devil, who bends beneath the shock.

“‘Up, rascal!’ the officer cries. ‘Go write your name and regiment, and bring the paper to me.’

“At the first moment, that is to say on receiving the blow, without knowing by whom it had been directed, the soldier turns to avenge himself; but on recognizing his superior he rises automatically, salutes the officer, and goes to another table to obey the command. The officer, on his part, examines the servant with renewed attention. Her appearance pleases and calms him. The soldier returns, and respectfully presents his paper.

“‘Very good,’ the officer says, as he returns it to him. ‘Off with you.’

“The soldier salutes him again, turns right about face, and marches off, without even looking at the girl. The officer, however, smiles at her, and she smiles at him.

“‘A good-looking man,’ she thinks.

“The good-looking man takes the seat previously occupied by the soldier, orders the best that the inn affords, and invites the servant to keep him company. She accepts without hesitation. The conversation begins, and they are soon quite friendly. A stranger appears at the doorway. He is enveloped in a long cloak. At his entrance, men and women fall on their knees; some of them even bend their foreheads to the ground. As was the case with the soldier, the officer does not notice what is going on behind him. His seductive companion has captivated him completely. In a moment of enthusiasm, the officer exclaims, ‘You are divine! I will take you with me. You shall have a beautiful apartment, where it will be always warm.’

“From afar the stranger scrutinizes the couple, and, in spite of himself, the girl’s sympathetic appearance attracts his attention. He approaches the table, and, throwing open his cloak, stands with his arms crossed on his breast.

“The officer looks around, and, immediately rising, bends on one knee, and stammers these words: —

“‘Your pardon, sire!’

“‘Rise.’

“Like the soldier, the officer then stands erect, awaiting the good pleasure of his master. The master, meanwhile, is engaged in looking at the servant, and she, in turn, is fearlessly admiring the all-powerful Czar.

“‘You may go,’ he says to the officer. ‘I will keep this woman. She shall have a palace.’

“It was in this way that Peter the Great met for the first time the woman who afterwards became Catharine of Russia…

“And now tell me, what do you think of my prologue?”

“Very curious, very original; but the rest of it?”

“That you shall have in a little while; in the mean time, I am planning an entirely novel mise-en-scène. Russia is for our theatres, and especially for yours, an unexplored and fecund mine. We will be the first to introduce it.”

Balzac left me in a state of great enthusiasm, and I built mountains of hopes on the inevitable success of “Pierre et Catharine.”

When I saw him again, however, everything had changed. He had given up the Russian drama for the moment, but promised to complete it later on. He had, he said, thought it over. It was a colossal undertaking, in which nothing should be neglected; and as the details concerning certain ceremonies were wanting, he proposed to take a trip to Moscow during the winter, and study the subject on the ground itself. He begged me, therefore, not to insist upon its immediate production, and offered another play in the place of the one thus postponed.

In spite of my disappointment, I could, of course, do nothing but submit, and in sheer despair I asked him to tell me something of his new piece.

“It will be horrible,” Balzac contentedly replied.

“How, horrible?”

“Understand me: it is not a question of a heavy melodrama, in which the villain burns the house down, and runs the inmates through and through, – not at all. My play is to be a simple comedy, in which everything is calm, tranquil, and pleasing. The men play placidly at whist, the women laugh and chat over their worsted work, everything announces harmony and order; but beneath this calm surface passions are at work, and the drama ferments, till at last it bursts forth like the flame of a conflagration.”

“You are in your element, sir. Then your plot is found?”

“Completely. It was chance, our habitual collaborateur, that furnished me with it. I know a family, – whom I will not name, – composed of a husband, a daughter by a first marriage, and a stepmother, still young and childless. The two women adore each other. The little attentions of the one and the caressing tenderness of the other are admired by all who know them. I, too, thought it charming, at first; then I became surprised, not that a stepdaughter and stepmother should love each other, – for there is nothing unnatural in such an affection, – but that they should love each other so dearly. Excess spoils all things. I began, therefore, to observe them more closely, and a few trivial incidents served to confirm my impression that all was not as it appeared. Finally, a few evenings ago, all doubt on the subject was removed. When I entered the drawing-room, it was almost deserted, and I saw the daughter leaving the room without having seen me; in so doing, she glanced at her stepmother, and what a look she gave her! It was like the thrust of a dagger. The stepmother was engaged in putting out the candles on the whist-table. She turned to the girl; their eyes met, and the most gracious of smiles played on their lips. The door closed on the girl, and the expression on the stepmother’s face changed suddenly to one of bitter contraction. All this, you will readily understand, passed like a flash of lightning; but I had seen quite enough, and I said to myself, Here are two creatures who loathe each other. What had happened? I do not know, and I never want to; but from that moment the entire drama unrolled before me.”

“And for the first representation, you will, of course, offer a box to these ladies, that they may profit by the moral which your play will necessarily point?”

“Assuredly I shall do so; and since you mention it, I will be obliged if you will reserve an extra box for me. I have not, however, the slightest intention of teaching them a lesson, and I consider that a novelist or dramatist would be highly presumptuous did he write with such an object. An author should influence only through instinct or chance. To return, however, to these ladies: that they play a comedy of tenderness is to me beyond a doubt, but as between ourselves matters will, in all probability, rest where they are. My ferocious deductions are but the fruit of my imagination, and will never, I trust, have anything in common with the realities of their existence; but in the event of their disunion containing the germs of a violent climax, it is very possible that my play will pull them up with a round turn.”

The months rolled on. Balzac went to Russia, and as soon as I heard of his return I called upon him at his residence in the Rue Fortunée. A servant in a red vest took my card, and a few moments later I was ushered into a low-ceilinged room. Balzac was at the other end of it, and cried out from afar, “Here is your manuscript!” Then I saw my author standing by his work-table, clothed in a long, monkish robe of white linen, with one hand resting on a mass of paper. I ran to him.

On the first page Balzac had written in large characters, “Gertrude, tragédie bourgeoise en cinq actes, en prose.” On the back was the proposed distribution of the play. Melingue was designated for the rôle of Ferdinand, the lover of the stepmother and daughter; Madame Dorval was to play Gertrude; and the other parts were to be filled by Mathis, Barré, etc.

Beneath these names the author had minutely indicated everything which concerned the play, – the action, the furniture, and the decorations; he had even given the measure for the double carpet which he judged indispensable to the mise-en-scène.

It was then agreed that the play should be read the next day in the presence of Madame Dorval and Melingue. When, therefore, we had all assembled at the appointed time, he read it through from beginning to end, without stopping, and then quietly remarked, “It is much too long; it must be cut down a quarter.” Not only did he cut it down, but he changed the title to that of “La Marâtre,” which it has since so gloriously borne.

It was first represented in June, 1848, in the midst of the most disastrous political circumstances… The theatres were necessarily abandoned, but such is the power of genius that all the bold and brave in literature who remained in Paris gathered that night, and received Balzac’s work with the sympathy and applause which it so richly merited.

The next morning I paid him a visit. “We had quite a victory last night!” I joyously exclaimed.