Balzac

This programme, joyously arranged, was fearlessly carried out. The silver was liberated, the caterer inspired with confidence, the invitation accepted, and after a sumptuous repast Balzac, glass in hand, arose and addressed the company as follows: —

“Gentlemen, you are all aware of the object for which we have assembled this evening about the liberal and gracious guest here seated at my right. It is the creation of a publication destined to assume, thanks to him and to his munificent intelligence, an unexceptionable position among the reviews of the century. Although I have not, to my great regret, been possessed of sufficient leisure to cultivate as I should have desired this rare intelligence, which has been called not only to fecundate our own, but also to assist us in spreading the fruits of our genius over a world which awaits them, and which, I may confidently state, would never know them save for the generous and effective assistance of our guest, I may nevertheless be permitted to say to what extent he has, in momentary confidences, permitted me to foresee treasuries of encouragement and rich rewards. I do not fear, therefore, to say that the ‘Chronique de Paris’ will owe to him its existence, its splendor, and its popularity. Were my emotion not so great and so real, I would speak at greater length of the future of our cherished and illustrious publication; but I prefer, in begging you, in honor of our guest, to join your toasts to mine, to leave the floor to him, that he may explain what in his generosity he proposes to do for the ‘Chronique de Paris,’ at once happy and proud to possess him as protector and patron.”

Then, lowering his voice to one of simple politeness, Balzac turned to his guest, and said, “Be good enough, my dear young friend, to explain what your liberal intentions are.”

“Gentlemen,” the banker’s son replied, “I will talk it over with papa.”

Balzac grew white as the table-cloth, but, magnificent in his defeat, hardly had the pseudo-capitalist disappeared than he exclaimed, with an accent which might have unsettled destiny itself, “It is daylight; let us repawn the silver!”²⁰

Partly for the sake of solitude, and partly to affect, for business purposes, an appearance of luxury, Balzac, in 1837, built a villa at Ville d’Avray, which he named Les Jardies, as a reminiscence of the days when Louis XIV. lounged at Versailles.

It consisted of but three rooms, or rather three stories. The ground floor, the rez-de-chaussée, was the reception-room, the second the study, and the third the bedroom.

When the architect’s plan was first submitted, the staircase greatly interfered with the dimensions of the rooms, and Balzac, exasperated at this impertinence, ordered it out of the house, and caused it, by way of punishment, to climb in spiral solitude about the outer wall.

This little eccentricity gave to his parrot’s cage the appearance of having been transplanted from some old Hanseatic or Flemish town, and satisfied at the same time his proprietary pride.

At a little distance was another habitation, in which the kitchen and servants’ rooms were situated; and the whole establishment was surrounded by a high wall, which, being built on the incline of a hillock, was devastated by every storm, and fell five times into his neighbor’s grounds; until Balzac, wearied by constant summons and complaints, bought the surrounding property, that his cherished wall might lie at ease where it chose.

The interior of Les Jardies was fully in keeping with the character of its owner. The reception-room was but scantily furnished, and the bare walls were ornamented with a promise of Gobelin tapestry traced in charcoal.

On the ceiling was written, “Fresco by Delacroix.” On the wall of his study he wrote, “Here is a regal Venetian mirror,” while a corner of his bedroom assured the visitor that he was looking at one of Raphael’s priceless Madonnas.

In this way Balzac furnished his home with magnificent dreams, while he dined, perhaps, as did that creation of Dickens, who cut his bread into imaginary omelets, and sliced it into tenderloins.

Before Balzac’s advent, the plot of ground on which Les Jardies was built had been a vineyard, on which the warm sun had lain all day, and ripened the clustering grapes. The knowledge of this fact preoccupied him greatly. If grapes had grown there, he argued, why should not anything else? Why should not pine-apples?

Now pine-apples were dear in Paris, costing from ten to fifteen francs apiece; and no sooner did this idea present itself than it was grappled, seized, and caressed by Balzac, who immediately saw an annual harvest of an hundred thousand pine-apples, which had bloomed in hot-houses as yet unbuilt.

These pine-apples would, he thought, sell at least for five francs apiece; the attendant expenses could not be over a hundred thousand francs; and by a simple mathematical process, with which no one was more familiar, he foresaw a princely revenue of four hundred thousand francs more.

These four hundred thousand francs danced with such charm and grace before him that he lost no time in looking for a shop in which to sell his unplanted fruit. He soon found a suitable one on the Boulevard Montmartre, which he would have immediately hired, painted in black and yellow, and decorated with an enormous sign, bearing for epigraph Pine-apples from Les Jardies, had he not been forcibly dissuaded by friends less enthusiastic than he.

In this way scheme succeeded scheme, and one project was abandoned only for another. His latest idea he always considered his best, unless he was agreed with, when he would reverse all his arguments to prove that a precedent one was better still. At one time he thought that through a mathematical combination he had discovered a system which would enable him to break the bank at Baden; at another he proposed to cut down a forest in Poland, and supply Paris with timber, and would have done so had not his brother-in-law proved to him that the expenses for transportation would far exceed any possible profit.

To make money, to become a millionaire, and to lead the life of a prince was his constant aim and ambition.

“The life of an artist,” he said, “should be a succession of splendors;” and while he detested Dumas, he secretly admired his Oriental magnificence and envied his prodigal luxury. But while the firm of Dumas and Company was manufacturing novels by the dozen, Balzac was engaged in weighing a phrase and occupied with its corrections; while Dumas never so much as glanced at the proof-sheets of his feuilletons, Balzac’s were not only carefully corrected, but the attendant expenses were, by agreement, charged to him; and where, as in the case of “Pierrette,” he was obliged to pay for the corrections three hundred francs more than he received for the story itself, it will be readily understood that the amounts which he earned by his pen were not always as satisfactory as could have been desired.

In this respect, however, it should be stated that while the money which he earned in his later years was out of all proportion to that which he at first received, yet, in the mean time, some few debts had necessarily accumulated, and his income, consequently reduced, averaged at best not more than ten or twelve thousand francs.

The history of his financial troubles, and of that which he laughingly termed his floating debt, can best be found in his correspondence, which, ranging from his twentieth year to but a few days prior to his death, contains many details of the thirty years’ war which he waged with poverty; and his letters, while interesting in their account of his transient successes, attendant struggles, defeats, and final victory, will convince even the prejudiced reader, that the writer was, in the first place, a man of the strictest integrity; for it may be said, without exaggeration, that the better part of his life was passed in attempting to satisfy that necessity whose earthly representatives are creditors; secondly, that his morals were perfectly pure, for he loved and reverenced women with that amor intellectualis which made chastity to him one of those graces which are superfluities to the vulgar and necessities to the re-fined; and thirdly, that his heart, which was as great as his brain, was yet too full of affection, for those whom he loved to harbor malice against his detractors and persecutors.

The earliest of these letters, the majority of which are addressed to his sister, or to Madame Zulma Carraud, one of her intimate friends, are mere descriptions of his life and poverty, and are expressed with the smiling indifference of youth, to whom the shadows of the future are yet vague and distant.

“Since you are so much interested in all that I do,” he wrote from Paris to his sister, in 1819, “you must know that last night I slept magnificently; and how could I do otherwise? I dreamed of you, of mother, of my loves, of my hopes, and now, on awakening, I give you my earliest thoughts. I must tell you, in the first place, that that wretch, Myself, becomes more and more negligent. He goes but twice a week for provisions, and then, being economical even of his steps, always to the nearest, and consequently to the worst, shops in the neighborhood; hence, your brother, destined to such celebrity, is already nourished like any other great man, which means that he is dying of hunger.”

To his sister, in the following year, he wrote, —

“I feel to-day that wealth does not constitute happiness, and that my life here will be to me always a source of the sweetest remembrances. To live as I choose; to work when I will, and after my own manner; to do nothing, even, if I so desire; to fall asleep in a beautiful future; to think of you, and to know that you are happy; to possess the Julie of Rousseau for mistress, La Fontaine and Molière for friends, Racine for master, and Père-Lachaise for promenade!.. Oh, could it but last forever!”

And a little later, —

“I have just returned from Père-Lachaise, where I have been inhaling magnificent inspirations. Decidedly, the only beautiful epitaphs are such as these, La Fontaine, Molière, Masséna, – a single name which tells all, and makes the passer dream!”…

The next year he wrote, —

“Dear Sister, – I am going to work like the horse of Henri IV. before it was cast in bronze; and this year I hope to make the twenty thousand francs which are to commence my fortune. I have a quantity of novels and dramas to prepare… In a little while there will be, between the me of to-day and the me of to-morrow, the difference that exists between the boy of twenty and the man of thirty. I reflect; my ideas ripen; and I see that in giving to me the heart and head which I possess Nature has treated me with favor. Believe in me, dear sister; for while I do not despair of being something, some day, I yet have need of a believer. I see now that ‘Cromwell’ had not even the merit of an embryo. As to my novels, they are as poor as the devil, though not half so seductive.”

But when, later on, at the age of twenty-seven, Balzac found himself without position, without a profession, entirely unknown, without resources, and burdened, moreover, with a debt of 120,000 francs, – the result of his disastrous experience as printer and publisher, – he had but his pen with which to conquer poverty and combat the world. His family had no faith in him; they had sunk a large sum in his enterprise; he was friendless, and his genius was entirely unrecognized; and it is at once curious and pathetic to note through the rest of his correspondence the continued recurrence and repetition of his dream of prospective fortune and freedom from debt.

His first letters after his disaster are profoundly sad: in one he wrote to his sister, —

“I must live without asking aid of any one. I must live to work, that I may repay you all; but shall I be able to live long enough to pay my debts of love and gratitude as well?”

To the Duchesse d’Abrantès, in the same year, he wrote, —

“I wonder if you have ever experienced the extent to which misfortunes develop within us the terrible faculty of breasting a tempest, and of opposing to adversity an immobile calm.

“As for myself, I have acquired the habit of smiling at the torments of fate, – torments that still continue.

“I am old in suffering, but my light-hearted appearance offers no criterion of my age. I have never been otherwise; I have been always bent beneath a terrible weight. Nothing can give you an idea of the life which I have led, nor of my astonishment at having nothing but fortune to combat.

“Were you to inquire about me, you would be unable to obtain any insight to the nature of my misfortunes; but then you know there are those who die without any apparent disease…

“I have undertaken two books at a time, to say nothing of a number of articles. The days evaporate in my hands like ice in the sunlight. I do not live; I waste away; but death from work or from any other cause amounts to the same thing in the end… I sleep from six in the evening until midnight, and then I work for sixteen hours. I have but one hour of liberty, and that during dinner. I have sworn to owe nothing, and though I die like a dog my courage will support me to the end.”

In 1831, he wrote to the same lady, —

“You do not know that in 1828 I had but my pen with which to live and pay off 120,000 francs. In a few months I shall be free from debt, and be able to arrange a comfortable home. During the next six months, therefore, I shall enjoy my last miseries. I have asked aid from no one. I have never stretched my hand, either for a page or a sou. I have hidden my griefs and my wounds, and you who know how difficult it is to make money with the pen will, with your feminine glance, be able to sound the depths of the abyss which I disclose to you, and by the side of which I have marched without falling.”

In the following year, he wrote to his mother, —

“Sooner or later, literature, politics, journalism, marriage, or some good speculation will make my fortune.”

And later on, —

“Thank you, my sister; you have restored to me that energy which has been my sole support. Yes, you are right. I will not stop; I will continue to advance, and some day you will see mine counted among the great names of our country… My books are the only replies which I shall make to those who commence to attack me. Do not let their criticisms annoy you: they are the best of auguries; mediocrity is never discussed. Tell my mother that I love her as I did when a child. The tears fall from my eyes as I write these lines, – tears of tenderness and of despair, for I feel my future near at hand, and in my days of triumph my mother will be a necessity. When will they come? As to you and to your husband, I can only hope that you will never doubt my heart, and if I do not write to you let your tenderness be indulgent. Do not misjudge my silence, but say, rather, ‘He thinks of us, he is speaking to us;’ for, after my long meditations and overwhelming duties, I rest in your hearts as in some delicious spot where there is no pain.”

In the same year, from Aix, he wrote to his mother, —

“I shall not return to Paris until all my engagements are fulfilled; when I do so everything will have been paid off.”

In 1833, to Madame Carraud, —

“My life is mechanically changed. I go to sleep with the chickens and am called at one in the morning. I then work until eight o’clock, sleep for an hour, and at nine I take a cup of pure coffee, and remain in harness until four. I then take a bath, and go out, and after dinner return to bed. Profit is slow, and debts are inexorable, but I am certain now of immense wealth. I have but to wait and work for three years.”

In the following year, he wrote, —

“The fiascos of the ‘Médecin de Campagne’ and ‘Louis Lambert’ have affected me deeply, but I am resolved that nothing shall discourage me. After the 1st of August I think that I shall be free.”

And later on, in the same year, —

“If I but live, I shall have a beautiful position, and we will all be happy. Let us laugh then still, my sweet sister; the house of Balzac will triumph yet.”

To his mother he wrote, —

“The day when we shall all be happy rapidly approaches. I begin to gather the fruit of the sacrifices which I made for the sake of future prosperity. In a few months I will bring to you the ease and comfort which you need… Oh, my dear mother, you will yet live to see my beautiful future; for, in the end, everything must bend beneath the work of him who loves you, and is your devoted son.”

In 1835 he wrote to Werdet, his publisher, —

“Some day, – and that day rapidly advances, – we shall both have made our fortune; and the sight of our carriages meeting in the Bois will make our enemies swoon with envy.”

To his mother, in the same year, he wrote, —

“Do not be vexed at my silence. I not only have a great deal to do, but I work twenty-one hours and a half daily. A letter is not only a loss of money, but an hour’s sleep and a drop of blood.”

To Madame Hanska he wrote, —

“That you may know the extent of my courage, I must tell you that the ‘Secret des Ruggieri’ was written in one night, ‘La Vieille Fille’ in three, and ‘La Perle Brisée,’ which terminates ‘L’Enfant Maudit,’ was composed in a few hours of mental and physical agony. It is my Brienne, my Champaubert, my Montmirail. It is my campaign in France.”

And to Madame Carraud, —

“I sleep but five hours, and work eighteen. I shall purchase the Grenadière,²¹ and pay my debts. I need at least a year to be completely free from debt, but the happiness of owing nothing, which I thought impossible, is no longer a chimera.”

In October, 1836, he wrote to Madame Hanska, —

“You do not know the depths of my grief, nor the sombre courage which accompanies the second great defeat which I have experienced.²² The first occurred when I was barely twenty-nine; and then I had an angel at my side.²³ To-day I am too old to inspire a sentiment of inoffensive protection… I am overcome, but not conquered. My courage yet remains… During the past month, I have worked from midnight until six in the evening; and while I have observed the strictest diet, that my brain might not be troubled by the fatigue of digestion, nevertheless, I not only suffer from indescribable weaknesses, but I also experience nervous attacks of the most singular character. I sometimes lose the sense of verticality, and even in bed it seems as though my head fell to the right or to the left; and when I attempt to get up I am as though weighed down by an enormous burden, which seems to be in my brain. I understand now how Pascal’s absolute continence and excessive brain work caused him continually to see an abyss about him, and obliged him to sit between two chairs… But if I do not succumb in the mean time, two years of work will suffice for the payment of everything.”

To the same lady, two years later, he wrote, —

“I am thirty-nine years old, and I owe two hundred thousand francs. Belgium has stolen a million from me.”²⁴

In 1838 he wrote to Madame Carraud, —

“I have greater faith than ever in my work. I have been offered twenty thousand francs for a play. Hereafter, I shall devote my time to the theatre; books no longer pay… You have no idea how happy I shall be in a few years. My gains will be enormous.”

A few months later he wrote, —

“My debts and money troubles are the same as ever, but my courage has redoubled with the decrease of my desires… I hope to remain here²⁵ for three or four months, and then, if my plays succeed, it may be that over and above my debts I shall have gained sufficient capital to supply my daily bread, my flowers, and my fruits. The rest, perhaps, will come with time.”

Continually overthrown, but never conquered, in his letters during the next eight years he seems to breathe the delicious idea of De Custine, that hope is the imagination of those who are unhappy. In May, 1846, however, he wrote to his sister, —

“A series of terrible and unbelievable disasters have happened to me. I am entirely without money, and am being sued by those who were friendly to me… I shall have to work eighteen hours a day.”

These terrible and unbelievable disasters were the result of a debt of ten thousand francs, which he owed to William Duckett, the editor of the “Dictionnaire de la Conversation,” who, being in difficulties himself, was obliged not only to sue Balzac, but to obtain an order for his arrest. Balzac, however, was not to be found. No trace of him was to be had at Passy, nor at any of his several habitations, which, though secret to the world at large, were necessarily known to the police. One day, however, a woman, whose advances to Balzac had not been met with that degree of cordiality which she had doubtless expected, called upon Duckett, and told him that Balzac was to be found at the residence of Madame Visconti, on the Champs-Élysées.

In an hour the house was surrounded, and Balzac, interrupted in the middle of a chapter, was informed that a cab awaited him at the door. Madame Visconti, with a hospitality which was simply royal, asked the amount of the debt, and paid the ten thousand francs on the spot. A few days later Balzac wrote to Madame Hanska, —

“You can form no idea of the life of a hunted hare which I have led. Two years of calm and tranquillity are absolutely necessary to soothe my spirit, worn by sixteen years of successive catastrophes. I am tired, very tired, of this incessant struggle. My last debts are more irksome than all the others which I have paid.”

But now in regard to these debts, to the payment of which he seems to have devoted his life, it is only natural to ask in what they consisted and whence they came: for they became as famous as Balzac himself; they followed him about like a glittering retinue, and found their way not only into his correspondence, but into his romances, and supplied him with a subject of conversation of which he never tired.

Balzac, as has been seen, wished to be considered as much of a Monte Cristo as Dumas himself, and could not, without causing his pen to blush, permit it to be believed that he did not extract from his books the same magnificent harvest which was annually reaped by his rival. The debt of 120,000 francs which had crippled his early manhood was, with his habitual probity, soon wiped out; but the remembrance of it remained, and this remembrance, joined to the annoyance caused by a few creditors, suggested an innocent deceit which would explain why he did not live in a palace and enjoy the splendors of a literary monarch. He imagined, therefore, and caused it to be understood that he was not only immensely in debt, but that the sums which he owed were fabulous; and he talked of them, wrote of them, and increased them to such an extent that it was not long before they became even more celebrated than the prodigalities of his confrère.

His debts, however, both real and imaginary, were finally paid, and their liquidation was the climax of the solitary romance of his life.

About the year 1835, he became acquainted with the Countess Hanska, a Polish lady, of great beauty and immense wealth, whose husband was an invalid. It has been stated – on what authority it has been difficult to discover – that when she accidentally met the author of the “Comédie Humaine” her emotion was so great that she lost consciousness. The better opinion, however, would be that a correspondence, begun on her side after the publication of the “Médecin de Campagne,” a work which she greatly admired, was continued for a number of years before they finally met. Balzac paid several visits to her Polish estates, and it is probable that she frequently came to Paris. After her husband’s death marriage was naturally thought of, but for the time being there were many obstacles: Balzac’s pecuniary position was most unfortunate, while she, as a Russian subject, was not in a position to marry off-hand.

The winter of 1848, as well as the spring of the following year, Balzac passed at Vierzschovnia, with Madame Hanska and her children. He was wretchedly ill, and the physicians had forbidden any kind of mental labor. Incessant work and the abuse of coffee had seriously undermined his constitution and shattered his nerves of steel, but the day to which he had looked with such constant expectation had at last arrived: his debts were not only paid, but the revenues from the sale of his books were magnificent.

For some little time he had been preparing in the Rue Fortunée – now Rue Balzac – a superb residence. His taste in furniture and works of art found ample expression there. For one set of Florentine workmanship the king of Holland himself was in treaty, while his art gallery was the same as is described in “Le Cousin Pons.”

While he was in Poland his mother was his general agent, and he wrote to her the most minute directions of everything appertaining to the house, its fixtures and decorations; and finally, on the 17th March, 1850, he wrote from Vierzschovnia as follows: —

“Three days ago I married the only woman whom I have loved, whom I love more than ever, and whom I shall love until death. I believe that this union is the recompense that God has held in reserve for me through so many adversities, years of work, and difficulties suffered and overcome. My youth was unhappy and my spring was flowerless, but I shall have the most brilliant summer and the sweetest of autumns.”

Balzac had now fulfilled his two immense desires: he was celebrated, he was beloved. His own income combined with that which remained to his wife – she had, at his instance, made over the greater portion of her fortune to her children – sufficed for the realization of his most extravagant dreams. “I shall live to be eighty,” he said. “I will terminate the ‘Comédie Humaine’ and write dozens of dramas. I will have two children, – not more; two look well on the front seat of a landau.” It was all too beautiful; nothing remained but death, and five months after his marriage, on the 20th of August, 1850, after thirty years of ceaseless toil, at the very moment when the world was his, Balzac, as a finishing touch to his own “Études Philosophiques,” died suddenly of disease of the heart.

At his grave in Père-Lachaise is a simple monument, bearing for epitaph that “single name which tells all and makes the passer dream;” and here, at the very spot where Rastignac, after the burial of Père Goriot, hurled his supreme defiance at Paris, Victor Hugo delivered the funeral oration.

“Alas!” he said, “this powerful and tireless worker, this philosopher, this thinker and poet, whose existence was filled with more labors than days, passed among us that life of struggles and combats common in all time to all great men. To-day, at last, he is at peace: he has taken leave of contests and hatreds, and enters now both glory and the tomb. Hereafter he will shine above all the clouds about us, high among the stars of our country.”