"Here was the project," he tells us, "a hundred thousand square feet of pineapples were to be planted in the grounds of Les Jardies, metamorphosed into hothouses which would require only a moderate amount of heating, thanks to the natural warmth of the situation. The pineapples were expected to sell at five francs each, instead of a louis (twenty francs), which was the ordinary price; in other words, five hundred thousand francs for the season"s crop; from this amount a hundred thousand francs would have to be deducted for the cost of cultivation, the gla.s.s frames, and the coal; accordingly, there would remain a net profit of four hundred thousand, which would const.i.tute a splendid income for the happy possessor,--"without having to turn out a page of copy," he used to say. This was nothing; Balzac had a thousand projects of the same sort; but the beautiful thing about this one was that we went together to the Boulevard Montmartre to look for a shop in which to sell these pineapples that were not yet even planted. The shop was to be painted black, with gold tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and there was to be a sign proclaiming in enormous letters: PINEAPPLES FROM LES JARDIES.
"However, he yielded to our advice not to hire the shop until the following year, in order to save needless expense."
When the first satisfaction of being a landed proprietor had pa.s.sed, Balzac realised that he had added a new burden to those he already carried, and he confided to Mme. Carraud: "Yes, the folly is committed and it is complete! Don"t talk of it to me; I must needs pay for it, and I am now spending my nights doing so!" Forty thousand francs had been added to his former debts, to say nothing of all sorts of trouble which Les Jardies was still destined to cost him.
In spite of his formidable powers of production, which had caused him to be called by Hippolyte Souverain "the most fertile of French novelists,"--a t.i.tle, by the way, of which he was far from proud,--Honore de Balzac could not succeed in freeing himself from debt. Nevertheless, between 1836 and 1839 he published: The Atheist"s Ma.s.s, The Interdiction, The Old Maid, The Cabinet of Antiques, Facino Cane, Lost Illusions (1st part); The Superior Woman (later The Employees), The Cabinet of Antiques (2d part), The House of Nucingen, Splendours and Miseries of Courtezans (1st part), A Daughter of Eve, Beatrix, Lost Illusions (2d part), A Provincial Great Man in Paris, The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan, The Village Cure, and to these he added in 1840 Pierrette, Pierre Gra.s.sou, and A New Prince of Bohemia. His prices had risen, new ill.u.s.trated editions of his earlier works had been issued, and he was receiving high rates for his short stories, not only from the magazines but from newspapers such as the Figaro, the Presse, the Siecle and the Const.i.tutionnel; yet nothing could extinguish his debts, those debts which he had been so long carrying like a cross.
"Why," said he, "I have been bowed down by this burden for fifteen years, it hampers the expansion of my life, it disturbs the action of my heart, it stifles my thoughts, it puts a blight on my existence, it embarra.s.ses my movements, it checks my inspirations, it weighs upon my conscience, it interferes with everything, it has been a drag on my career, it has broken my back, it has made me an old man. My G.o.d, have I not paid dearly enough for my right to bask in the sunshine! All that calm future, that tranquillity of which I stand so much in need, all gambled away in a few hours and exposed to the mercy of Parisian caprice, which for the moment is in a censorious mood!"
Balzac now staked all his hopes upon his first play, Vautrin, which was about to be produced at the Porte Saint-Martin theatre. From the very outset of his literary career his thoughts had steadily turned to the drama, and his earliest attempt had been that ill-fated Cromwell, which had failed so ignominiously when read to his family. Yet this setback had not definitely turned him aside from the stage; and, while he rather despised the theatre as a means of literary expression, he had never ceased to consider it as the most rapid method of earning money and founding a fortune. All the time that he was writing his Human Comedy, one can feel that he was constantly pre-occupied with the composition of plays, of which he drafted the scenarios without ever elaborating them. In 1831 he invited Victor Ratier, editor of La Silhouette, to collaborate with him, specifying, however, "that it was more a question of establishing a literary porkshop than a reputation"; in 1832 he announced to his mother that he had "taken the step of writing two or three plays for stage production!" and he added, "This is the greatest misfortune which could happen to me; but necessity is stronger than I, and it is impossible to extricate myself in any other way. I shall try to find some one who will do me the service of signing them, so that I shall not need to compromise my own name." Thereafter he conceived successively a Marie Touchet, a tragedy in prose ent.i.tled Don Philip and Don Carlos, a farce comedy, Prudhomme Bigamist, a drama, The Courtiers, written in collaboration with Emmanuel Arago and Jules Sandeau, and a high-cla.s.s comedy, The Grande Mademoiselle, also in collaboration with Sandeau. Then, in 1836, he reverted to Marie Touchet, and composed La Gina, a drama in three acts, and Richard the Sponge-Hearted. Finally, in 1839, he wrote for the Renaissance Theatre The School of Married Life, with the obscure aid of La.s.sailly, a five-act play for which he was offered an award of six thousand francs, and which he himself produced in print. But it was never performed, in spite of many promises.
This first unsuccessful attempt at stage production discouraged him at first, yet he never gave up his determination to succeed. He prepared a second play, intending to ask Theophile Gautier to collaborate with him; this second play was Vautrin.
The first performance of Vautrin took place March 14, 1840. Balzac expected that this play would bring him in at least six thousand francs. Tickets had been greatly in demand, and speculators had so completely cornered them that the audience, composed largely of the author"s friends, could not obtain them at the box office. It was a tumultuous evening, and one would have to go back to the great opening nights of Victor Hugo in order to find a parallel case of hostile demonstrations. Frederik Lemaitre, who played the role of Jacques Collin, had conceived the idea of making himself up to resemble Louis Philippe. The King of France, far from being pleased at seeing himself masquerading as a bandit, suppressed the play, which consequently had only the one performance. It was a disaster, but Balzac bore up valiantly under it. Leon Gozlin, who called upon him at Les Jardies on the very day when the royal interdiction reached him, relates that he talked of nothing else but his plans for improving his property.
Balzac"s friends, headed by Victor Hugo, tried to use their influence with the government officials, but the latter were powerless to do otherwise than to confirm the order of Louis Philippe; the royal edict had been imperative. The government offered to pay Balzac an indemnity, but he proudly refused.
A few months prior to the production of Vautrin, Balzac, then at the height of his financial difficulties and literary labours, had nevertheless courageously undertaken the defense of a man accused of murder whom he believed to be innocent. This act was in accordance with his conception of his duty as a citizen, and it bore witness to his generosity and sense of justice. The case in question was that of a certain notary, Peytel by name, of Belley, who was accused of the premeditated murder of his wife and man-servant. Balzac had had a slight acquaintance with him in 1831, at the time when Peytel was part owner of the Voleur, to which Balzac contributed. This acquaintance had sufficed him to judge of the man"s character and to conclude that he was incapable of the double crime with which he was charged. Regardless of his own most pressing interests, Balzac, accompanied by Gavarni, set out for Bourg, where the trial and sentence of death had already taken place. He saw the condemned man, and the conversations which they had together still further strengthened his opinion. This opinion he set forth in a Comment on the Peytel Case, which the Siecle published in its issues of September 15-17, 1839, and with a compelling force of argument and a fervent eloquence he demonstrated the innocence of the unfortunate notary. Nevertheless, the Court of Ca.s.sation found no reason for granting a new trial, and Peytel was executed at Bourg, October 28, 1839. This was a bitter blow to Balzac, who had believed that he could save him. Furthermore, his efforts and investigations had cost him ten thousand francs!
This was a cruel loss, both in time and in money. His novels were not bringing him in a hundredth part of what he estimated that he ought to be earning, in view of his extraordinary rate of production. He placed the blame upon the unauthorised Belgian reprints, which, according to his calculations, had robbed him of more than a million francs.
Literary works were not at that time properly protected, and it was the province of the Society of Men of Letters to demand from the Government an effective defense against the "hideous piracy" of foreign countries.
Balzac was admitted to the Society in 1839,--although with no small difficulty, for he had many enemies, and received only fifty-three votes, while forty-five were necessary for election,--but it was not long before he had made his influence felt and had been chosen as a member of the committee. Leon Gozlan, who served with him, acknowledged his influence. "Balzac," he wrote, "brought to the Society a profound, almost diabolical knowledge of the chronic wretchedness of the profession; a rare and unequalled ability to deal with the aristocrats of the publishing world; an unconquerable desire to limit their depredations, which he had brooded over on the Mount Sinai of a long personal experience; and, above all else, an admirable conviction of the inherent dignity of the man of letters."
It was Balzac"s ambition to form a sort of author"s league, under the direction of "literary marshals," of whom he should be the first, and including in its membership all the widely scattered men of letters, banded together in defense of their material and moral interests. He himself set an example by requesting the support of the Society against a little sheet ent.i.tled Les Ecoles, which had libelled him in a cartoon in which he was represented in prison for debt, wearing his monkish robe and surrounded by gay company. The cartoon bore the following legend: "The Reverend Father Seraphitus Mysticus Goriot, of the regular order of the Friars of Clichy, at last taken in by those who have so long been taken in by him." This was in September, 1839, and on the 22d of the following October Balzac appeared as the representative of the Society of Men of Letters before the trial court of Rouen, in an action which it had begun against the Memorial de Rouen, for having reprinted certain published matter without permission. But he did not limit himself to a struggle from day to day, to discussions in committee meetings, to appeals to the legislature,--his ambition was to become himself the law-maker for the writers. In May, 1840, two months after the disastrous failure of Vautrin, he offered to the consideration of the Society of Men of Letters a Literary Code, divided into t.i.tles, paragraphs, and articles, in which he laid down the principles from which to formulate practical rules for the protection of the interests of authors, and for the greater glory of French literature.
Having been appointed a member of the Committee of Official Relations, a committee which had been created at his suggestion for the purpose of seeing that men of letters should exercise a just influence over the government, Balzac drew up in 1841, some highly important Notes to be submitted to Messieurs the Deputies const.i.tuting the Committee on the Law of literary Property. But that same year, after having worked upon a Manifesto which the Committee was to present to the ruling powers, he handed in his resignation from the Society, on the 5th of October, and it was found impossible to make him reconsider his decision. It may be that he had received some slight which he could not forgive, or perhaps he had decided that it was to his interest to retain in his own name the right to authorise the republication of his works.
At this period he had attained that supremacy of which he had formerly dreamed in his humble mansarde chamber in the Rue Lesdiguieres, and he wished to have it crowned by some sort of official recognition. He made up his mind to present himself for election to the Academie Francaise, in December, 1839, but withdrew in favour of the candidacy of Victor Hugo, notwithstanding that the latter begged him, in a dignified and gracious message, not to do so.
An intercourse which, without being especially cordial, was fairly frequent had been established between these two great writers as a result of their joint labours on the committee of the Society of Men of Letters. During the month of July, 1839, Victor Hugo breakfasted with Balzac at Les Jardies, in company with Gozlan, for the purpose of discussing the great project of the Manifesto. Gozlan, who formed the third member of this triangular party, has left the following delectable account of the interview:
"Balzac was picturesquely clad in rags; his trousers, dest.i.tute of suspenders, parted company with his ample fancy waistcoat; his downtrodden shoes parted company with his trousers; his necktie formed a flaring bow, the points of which nearly reached his ears, and his beard showed a vigorous four days" growth. As for Victor Hugo, he wore a gray hat of a very dubious shade, a faded blue coat with gilt b.u.t.tons resembling a ca.s.serole in colour and shape, a much frayed black cravat, and, as a finishing touch, a pair of green spectacles that would have delighted the heart of the head clerk of a county sheriff, enemy of solar radiation!"
They made the circuit of the property, and Victor Hugo remained politely cold before the dithyrambic praises which Balzac lavished on his garden. He smiled only once, and that was at sight of a walnut tree, the only tree that the owner of Les Jardies had acquired from the community.
Victor Hugo had revealed to him the enormous profits that he drew from his dramatic writings, and it is easy to believe that Balzac"s persistent efforts to have a play produced were due to the momentary glimpse of a steady stream of wealth that was thus flashed before his dazzled eyes. After the catastrophe of Vautrin, he still pursued his dramatic ambitions with Pamela Giraud and Mercadet, but failed to find any theatre that would consent to produce them. What was worse, the year 1840 was, beyond all others, a frightful one for Balzac. He faced his creditors like a stag at bay; and all the while he found the burden of Les Jardies becoming constantly heavier. The walls surrounding the property had slipped on their clay foundation and broken down, while Balzac himself had sustained a serious fall on the steep slopes of his garden, and had consequently lost more than a month"s work.
Furthermore, he underwent imprisonment at Sevres for having refused to take his turn at standing guard over his neighbours" vineyards.
In his distress he thought seriously of expatriating himself and setting out for Brazil; and, before coming to a final decision, he awaited only the success or failure of a publishing venture such as he had already undertaken in vain. In the month of July, 1840, he started the Revue Parisienne, of which he was the sole editor, and through which he proclaimed a dictatorial authority over the arts and letters, society and the government. He had to abandon it after the third number.
Balzac remained in France, but he was obliged to quit Les Jardies. His creditors looked upon this property as their legitimate prey, and neither ruse nor sacrifice could any longer keep it from them. He first made a fict.i.tious sale of it to his architect, and then a real one, on the advice of his lawyer. It had cost him more than ninety thousand francs, and he got back only seventeen thousand five hundred. But he had lived there through some beautiful dreams and great hopes.
Chapter 9.
In Retirement.
Upon leaving Les Jardies, Balzac took refuge in the village of Pa.s.sy, at No. 19, Rue Ba.s.se, and there buried himself. (Thanks to M. de Royaumont, this building has become the Balzac Museum, similar to that of Victor Hugo at Paris, and of Goethe at Frankfort.) It was there that he meant to make his last effort and either perish or conquer destiny.
Under the name of M. de Brugnol he had hired a small one-storey pavilion, situated in a garden and hidden from sight by the houses facing on the street. His address was known only to trusted friends, and it was now more difficult than ever to discover him. And his life as literary galley-slave was now burdened, in this solitude, with new and overwhelming tasks.
In the midst of the stormy tumult of money troubles and creative labour there was only one single gleam of calm and tender light. In November, 1840, he formed the project of going to Russia, and promised himself the pleasure of joining the Comtesse de Hanska at St. Petersburg for two long months. This hope, which he clung to with all the strength of his ardent nature, was not to be realised until 1843, for his departure was delayed from day to day through his financial embarra.s.sment and unfulfilled contracts with publishers.
Shutting himself into his writing den, a small narrow room with a low ceiling, he proceeded to finish The Village Cure and The Diaries of Two Young Brides; he began A Dark Affair for a journal called Le Commerce, The Two Brothers, later A Bachelor"s Establishment, for La Presse; Les Lecamus, for Le Siecle; The Trials and Tribulations of an English Cat, for one of Hetzel"s publications, Scenes from the Private and Public Life of Animals; he worked upon The Peasants and wrote Ursule Mirouet,--altogether more than thirty thousand lines in the newspaper columns, in less than one year!
Meanwhile his business affairs, so entangled that he himself hardly knew where he stood, in spite of a portfolio bound in black in which he kept his promissory notes and every other variety of commercial paper,--and which he called his Compte Melancoliques (his Melancholy Accounts), adding that they were not to be regarded as a companion volume to his Contes Drolatiques (his Droll Tales),--began to a.s.sume some sort of order, thanks to the efforts of his lawyer, M. Gavault, who had undertaken to wind them up. Balzac remained as poor as ever, for he had to turn over to M. Gavault all the money he took in, aside from what he needed for the strict necessities of life. He admitted proudly that at this period there were times when he contented himself with eating a single small roll on the Boulevard, and that he had gone for days together with one franc as his sole cash on hand.
But a new edition was soon destined to put him on his feet, enable him to liquidate a portion of his floating debt and to pay back some of his biggest loans. An agreement had been formed between Furne, Dubochet, Hetzel and Paulin to bring out an edition of his complete works under the glorious and definitive t.i.tle of The Human Comedy. But it meant a vast amount of work, all his older volumes to revise and new ones to write,--a task that he estimated would require not less than seven years to finish. If he had produced thirty thousand lines in 1841, he calculated that he was bound by his contracts to produce not less than forty thousand in 1842, not counting the work of correcting proofs of all the new editions of his published stories.
His mental powers were as fertile as ever, but his bodily strength, despite his robust const.i.tution, sometimes broke down under the prodigious fever of creation. Balzac"s physician, Dr. Nacquart, obliged him to take a rest. "I am ill," he wrote at this time. "I have been resting all through the latter part of May (1841) in a bathtub, taking three-hour baths every day to keep down the inflammation which threatened me, and following a debilitating diet, which has resulted in what, in my case, amounts to a disease, namely, emptiness of the brain.
Not a stroke of work, not an atom of strength, and up to the beginning of this month I have remained in the agreeable condition of an oyster.
But at last Dr. Nacquart is satisfied and I am back at my task and have just finished The Diaries of Two Young Brides and have written Ursule Mirouet, one of those privileged stories which you are going to read; and now I am starting in on a volume for the Montyon prize." (Letters to a Foreign Lady, Volume 1, page 560, Letter of June-July, 1841.)
Every one of Balzac"s novels cost him unimaginable and never ending toil. After having brooded over his subject, planned the situation, characterised his personages, and decided upon the general philosophy that he intended to express, there followed the task of translating all that he had conceived and thought into an adequate literary form.
Balzac often proceeded in bursts of enthusiasm, flashes of illumination, and in a few nights would map out the entire scenario of a whole novel. This first effort was in a certain sense the parent-cell, which little by little gathered to itself the elements necessary for the final composition of the work. The proof sheets sent to Balzac always had broad margins, and it is not too much to say that he amplified the initial draft as though he were attaching the muscles and tendons to the bones of a skeleton; then one set of proofs followed another, while he imparted to his story a network of veins and arteries and a nervous system, infused blood into its veins and breathed into it his powerful breath of life,--and all of a sudden there it was, a living, pulsating creation, within that envelope of words into which he had infused the best that he possessed in style and colour. But he suffered bitter disillusions when the work was finally printed; the creator never found his creation sufficiently perfect. Balzac suffered with all the sensibility of his artistic conscience from blemishes which he regarded as glaring faults, and which he followed up and corrected with unparalleled ardour. He was aided in this task by Mme.
de Berny, his sister Laure, Charles Lemesle and Denoyers; and he himself, a literary giant, who did not hesitate to write to Mme.
Carraud that his work was in its own line a greater achievement than the Cathedral at Bourges was in architecture, spent whole days in shaping and reshaping a phrase, like some sublime mason who--by a prodigy--had built a cathedral single-handed and whose heart bled upon discovering a neglected carving in the shadow of some b.u.t.tress and expended infinite pains to perfect it, although it was almost invisible amidst the vastness and the beauty of the whole structure.
Accordingly his work became steadily more laborious to Balzac, and from time to time we can hear him grumbling and groaning; we can see him at his task, his broad face contracted, his black eyes bloodshot, his skin bathed in perspiration and showing dark, almost greenish, in the candle-light, while his whole body trembled and quivered with the unseen effort of creation. His fatigue was often extreme; the use of coffee troubled his stomach and heated his blood; he had a nervous twitching of the eyelids, and suffered from painful shortness of breath and a congested condition of the head that resulted in over-powering somnolence.
But he rallied and his will power dominated illness itself and imposed his own rules upon his overstrained body. At the same time he dreamed of a calmer life, he pictured the delights of bucolic days and longed to know when this driving slavery was to end. Accordingly we find him consulting a sorcerer, a reader of cards, the celebrated Balthazar, in regard to his future. He was amazed to find how much of his past this man was able to reveal to him, a past made up of struggles and of obstacles overcome, and he joyously accepted predictions that a.s.sured him victory. Balzac was superst.i.tious, not in a vulgar way, but through a deep curiosity in the presence of those mysteries of the universe which are unexplained by science. He believed himself to be endowed with magnetic powers; and, as a matter of fact, the irresistible effect of his words, the subtle force which emanated from his whole personality and confirmed by his contemporaries. He believed in telepathy, he held that two beings who love each other, and whose sensibilities are in a certain degree in harmony, are able, even when far apart, mutually to respond to emotions felt by the one or the other. He consulted clairvoyants as to the course of diet to be followed by Mme. Hanska, and gravely communicated their replies to her, urging her to follow their advice. Occurrences apparently quite trivial troubled him profoundly, and he was anxious for several days because he had lost a shirt-stud given him by Mme. de Berny and could not determine what could be the meaning of the loss. His sorcerer had predicted that he would shortly receive a letter which would change the entire course of his life, and, as a confirmation of his clairvoyance, Mme. de Hanska announced a few months later the death of her husband, M. de Hanski, which permitted Balzac to indulge in the highest hopes.
This event brought him an access of fresh courage, for in order to make the journey to St. Petersburg it was essential that he should first achieve a triumph, brief, brilliant and complete. He decided once again to make a bold attempt at the theatre, and the scene of battle was to be the Odeon. He offered The Resources of Quinola to the manager, Lireux, who accepted it with enthusiasm. Balzac read his comedy to its future interpreters,--notwithstanding that he had as yet written only four acts of it,--and calmly informed them that he would have to tell them the general substance of the fifth. They were amazed at such bold disregard of professional usages, but it was pa.s.sed over, for Lireux was all impatience to produce The Resources and to begin the rehearsals.
Warned by the failure of Vautrin, Balzac took the most minute care in arranging for the opening night audience which he relied upon to sweep Quinola heavenward on a mounting wave of glory. To begin with, he did away with the claquers and fixed the price of admission at five francs, while the general scale of prices was as follows: balcony seats twenty five francs, stalls twenty francs, seats in the open boxes of the first tier twenty-five francs, open boxes of the second tier twenty francs, closed boxes of the second tier twenty five francs, baignoir boxes twenty francs. He had no use for mere n.o.bodies, but determined to sift out his audience from amongst the most distinguished men and women in all Paris, ministers, counts, princesses, academicians, and financiers.
He included the two Princesses Troubetskoi, the Countess Leon, the Countess Nariskine, the Aguados, the Rothschilds, the Doudeauvilles, the Castries, and he decided that there should be none but pretty women in the front seats of the open boxes. And he counted upon piling up a fine little surplus, since the revenues of the box-office were in his hands for the first three nights. Alas, on the night of March 19, 1842, The Resources of Quinola met with the same reception as Vautrin had done before it; in spite of all his precautions, his enemies had gained admission to the Odeon, and throughout the whole evening, from the first act onward, there was a ceaseless storm of hisses and cat-calls.
He had wasted four months, only to arrive at another defeat.
And all the while his financial difficulties were becoming keener, more pressing, more imminent, and Balzac, overburdened, recapitulated his disasters as follows: the Chronique de Paris, the Trip to Sardinia, the Revue Parisienne and Vautrin; nevertheless he proudly squared his shoulders. "My writings will never make my fortune until the time comes when I shall no longer be in need of a fortune for it takes twenty-five years before a success begins to pay, and fifty years before a great achievement is understood." And he returned to his work! His Complete Works were now published, for he had written a "Foreword," summing up his method, his art and his idea; he composed Albert Savarus, in order "to respond with a masterpiece to the barkings of the press"; he completed The Peasants, The Two Brothers (later A Bachelor"s Establishment), he wrote The Pretended Mistress, A Debut in Life, which appeared in La Legislature, David Sechard, The Evil Doings of a Saint, The Love of Two Beasts; he began The Deputy from Arcis and The Brothers of Consolation; he dreamed of bringing out a new edition--and we know the labour that new editions cost him!--of Louis Lambert and Seraphita; and, lastly, he corrected three volumes of the Comedie Humaine!
Living as a recluse at Pa.s.sy, shut up in his working room with its hangings of red velvet, seated at his table, with one shapely hand supporting his ma.s.sive head and his eyes fixed upon a miniature reproducing the somewhat opulent contours of Mme. Hanska"s profile, and hence straying to an aquarelle representing the chateau at Wierzchownia, Balzac interrupted his proof correcting to forget his weariness in golden dreams: It was impossible that he should fail to be elected to the Academie Francaise--which would mean two thousand francs--hereupon he smiled--he was sure of being appointed a member of the dictionary committee--six thousand francs more--his smile broadened--and why should he not become a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres and its permanent secretary?--another six thousand francs--total, fourteen thousand!--and laughing his vast sonorous laugh--in view of this a.s.sured and honourable position--Balzac made plans for a prompt marriage with his far-off and long-awaited bride.
But his dreams were of short duration. There was no end of ink-stained paper which had to be inked still further, for without money there could be no journey to St. Petersburg. And then there were losses of time, which he regretted but could not avoid, such as having to pose for David of Angers, who was modelling his monumental bust; having to take long walks, in order to keep down his growing corpulence; and inviting a few friends to Le Rocher de Cancale, Victor Hugo and Leon Gozlan, in order to entertain a Russian, M. de Lenz, who wished to meet him,--a sumptuous and lively dinner which cost him a hundred and twenty francs,--a sum which he naturally had to borrow, and with no small difficulty!
After alternating between hope and despair, Balzac set forth by way of Dunkerque for St. Petersburg, where he arrived July 29, 1843, not returning to Paris until the 3rd of November. This was his fourth meeting with Mme. Hanska in the s.p.a.ce of ten years, and the first since the death of M. de Hanski. (Hanski is the masculine form for Hanska.
[Translator"s Note.]) Balzac was happy and irresponsible, he laughed his deep, resounding laugh of joyous days, that laugh which no misfortune could quite extinguish. He was carefree and elated, and found the strength to write a short story, Honorine, without taking coffee. He indulged in jests; the Emperor of Russia, he declared, valued him to the extent of thirty-two roubles, for that was the cost of his permit of residence. And heart and soul he gave himself up to his dear Countess Hanska.
Balzac"s trip to Russia was the source of numerous legends. It was said that he went for the purpose of asking the Czar to authorise him to write a work that should be to a certain extent official, for the purpose of refuting M. de Custine"s Russia in 1839, and that, having demanded an audience in too cavalier a tone, he was ordered to regain the frontier by the shortest possible route. Others related that he had gone there in pursuit of a princess whom he was bent upon marrying.
The return trip was made in short stages through Germany and Belgium, and Balzac stayed over long enough in Berlin, Dresden and Liege to become acquainted with these cities and their museums. But he had no sooner arrived in Paris than he was attacked with inflammation of the brain, and Dr. Nacquart put him on a very strict regime. In Paris he once again found his tasks and his financial difficulties faithfully awaiting him, and, faithful in his turn, he set to work again with true "Balzacian fury." But now a new element had entered into his life: his marriage to Mme. Hanska, although still far distant, and dependent upon chance, was at least a settled question, and he left St. Petersburg taking her formal promise with him. Consequently, whatever the hardships of his existence, his periods of poverty and toil, he was now sustained by the hope of realising a union that had been so long desired, and he strove towards it with all his tenacious energy, as towards a supreme goal. For the next seven years his every act was designed as a preparation for his marriage, the future organisation of his life, when he should become the husband of Countess Hanska. He concerned himself with her financial affairs, with the lawsuit brought against her after the death of her husband, with the difficulties arising from a contested inheritance; and from a distance he gave her advice as to the management of her property and the investment of her princ.i.p.al. And at the same time he kept her informed of his efforts to find a home worthy of their happiness, told her of household furnishings he had bought, and sketched the various scales of domestic and social life which one could live according to the amount of one"s income.
These were no longer dreams, practically speaking, but projects for an a.s.sured future. Nevertheless, he was still destined to pa.s.s through many a disastrous period before the triumph came. In 1843 he was a candidate for the Academie Francaise, and he had reason to believe that he would be welcomed there with especial honours. His already extensive achievements, surpa.s.sing all contemporary production, were further augmented by Honorine, The Muse of the Department, Lost Illusions (part three), The Sufferings of an Inventor, a Monograph on the Parisian Press, which had aroused great anger, The Splendour and Misery of Courtezans (second part), Modeste Mignon, and Madame de la Chanterie (later The Seamy Side of Contemporary History), and there was no other writer who was in a position to dispute the sceptre with him.
Nevertheless, legitimate as his candidacy was, he felt the opposition to it, and, realising the cause, he wrote to Nodier, who was supporting him, this proudly sad letter:
"MY GOOD NODIER,
"I know to-day so surely that my financial position is one of the reasons for the opposition to my candidacy for the Academie, that I beg you, though with profound regret, not to use your influence in my favour.
"If I am debarred from the Academie by reason of a most honourable poverty, I shall never again present myself in the days when prosperity accords me her favours. I am writing to the same effect to our friend Victor Hugo, who has been working for me.
"G.o.d give you health, my good Nodier."