Balzac Part 15

All the different formalities required by Russian law having been finally complied with, the wedding was celebrated on the 14th of March, in the Church of Saint Barbara at Beriditchef, some few hours distant from Wierzchownia. At once the bridegroom despatched the news to his family and friends. His joy was such that he fancied he had never known happiness before. "I have had no flowery spring," said his letter to Madame Carraud. "But I shall have the most brilliant of summers, the mildest of autumns. . . . I am almost crazy with delight."

More than a month elapsed ere the newly married couple were able to set out on their journey to the French capital, and, even then, they had to travel along roads studded with quagmires into which their carriage frequently sank up to the axle. Sometimes fifteen or sixteen men and a crick were necessary to extricate them. Though on their honeymoon, they found the repet.i.tion of these incidents monotonous, and were so tired when they reached Dresden that they stayed there to recover themselves. From this town Balzac sent a few lines to his mother and sister mentioning the approximate date of their reaching home; and instructions were given that everything should be in order, flowers on the table, and a meal prepared. He did not want his mother to be at the house to receive them, deeming it more proper that his wife should call on her first, either at Laure's, or at Suresnes where she was living. They got into Paris on the 22nd or 23rd of May.

Monsieur de Lovenjoul relates that the two travellers drove up to the Beaujon mansion a little before midnight. Weary with the journey, they stepped out of the cab and rang the bell, rang more than once, for no one came to open the door. Through the windows they could see the lamps lighted and signs of their being expected. But where was the valet, Francois Munck, who had been left in charge by the novelist's mother? Apparently, he had deserted his post. Balzac kept on ringing, shouting at intervals, and thumping the gate. Still there was silence inside. The one or two people pa.s.sing at this late hour stopped out of curiosity, and began in their turn to call and knock; while the cabman, tired of waiting, put down the luggage on the footpath.

Madame de Balzac grew impatient. It was cold standing in the night-air.

Her husband, nonplussed and exceedingly annoyed, did not know what to say to the bystanders. One of the latter offered to fetch a locksmith, named Grimault, who lived in a street close by. The suggestion was gladly agreed to, since there seemed nothing else to be done. However, until such time as the locksmith should come, they continued battering at the gate and throwing tiny pebbles at the windows; and the master, thus shut out from his own dwelling, hallooed to the invisible valet: "I am Monsieur de Balzac." It was useless. The door refused to open.

Around Madame de Balzac, now seated on one of the trunks, other pa.s.sers-by had gathered and listened to the novelist's excited comments on his predicament. The occurrence was certainly extraordinary.

At length, the locksmith was brought and the gate was forced. The whole party, hosts and impromptu guests, hurried through the narrow courtyard, entered the house without further hindrance, and were met by a strange spectacle. The valet had been seized with a sudden fit of madness and had smashed the crockery, scattered the food about, spilt a bottle of wine on the carpet, upset the furniture, and ruined the flowers. Having performed these exploits, he was wandering aimlessly to and fro with demented gestures, and in this state they discovered him. After securing and fastening him up in a small room, the visitors helped to place the luggage in the yard and then retired, with profuse thanks from the novelist, who being thoroughly unnerved by this untoward incident, was obliged to go straight to bed. The next day, Francois was taken to an asylum at his master's expense, as is proved by a receipt still existing in which Balzac is dubbed a Count. Perhaps the t.i.tle was a piece of flattery on the doctor's part, or the novelist may have imagined that his marrying a Countess conferred on him letters of n.o.bility.

Anyway, this a.s.sumed lordship was poor compensation for the immense disappointment of his marriage in every other respect. From the moment he and his wife took possession of their fine Beaujon residence, whatever bonds of friendship and tenderness had previously existed between them were irremediably snapped asunder. Peculiarities of character and temperament in each, which, as long as they were lovers, had been but slightly felt, now came into close contact, clashed, and were proved to be incompatible. Moreover, there were disagreeable revelations on either side. The husband learnt that his wife's available income was very much inferior to what he had supposed or been led to believe, and the wife learnt that her husband's debts, far from being paid, as he had a.s.serted, subsisted and were more numerous and larger than he had ever in sober truth admitted. So, instead of coming to Paris to be the queen of a literary circle, the _Stranger_ saw herself involved in liabilities that threatened to swallow up her own fortune, if she lent her succour.

Reproaches and disputes began in the week following their instalment.

The disillusioned Eve withdrew to her own apartments in anger; and Balzac, whose bronchitis and congestion of the liver had grown worse, remained an invalid in his. They had intended spending only a fortnight or so in Paris, and then travelling south to the Pyrenees and Biarritz; but this programme was perforce abandoned. All through the month of June the patient was under medical treatment, able to go out only in a carriage, and, even so, in disobedience to the doctor's orders. One of these visits was to the door of the Comedie Francaise, where a.r.s.ene Houssaye, the Director, came to speak to him about _Mercadet_, and indulgently promised him, it should be staged soon, the _Resources of Quinola_ also.

On the 20th of June, he wrote, through his wife, to Theophile Gautier, telling him that his bronchitis was better and that the doctor was proceeding to treat him for his heart-hypertrophy, which was now the chief obstacle to his recovery. At the end of the letter he signed his name, adding: "I can neither read nor write." They were the last words of his correspondence. From that date his heart-disease undermined him rapidly; and the few friends whom he received augured ill from what they remarked. Not that he lost hope himself. Although suffering acutely at intervals from difficulty in breathing, and from the oedema of his lower limbs, which slowly crept upwards, he spoke with the same confidence as always of his future creations that he meditated. His brain was the one organ unattacked. From Dr. Nacquart he inquired every day how soon he might get to work again.

The month of July and the first half of August pa.s.sed thus, the dropsy gaining still on him in spite of all that Nacquart and other medical men could do to combat it. To every one but the patient himself, it was evident that he was dying. Houssaye, who came to see him on the 16th of August, found Dr. Nacquart in the room. He relates that Balzac, addressing the latter, said: "Doctor, I want you to tell me the truth. . . . I see I am worse than I believed. . . . I am growing weaker. In vain I force myself to eat. Everything disgusts me. How long do you think I can live?"--The doctor did not reply.--"Come, doctor," continued the sick man, "do you take me for a child? I can't die as if I were n.o.body. . . . A man like me owes a will and testament to the public."--"My dear patient, how much time do you require for what you have to do?" asked Nacquart.--"Six months," replied Balzac; and he gazed anxiously at his interlocutor.--"Six months, six months,"

repeated the doctor, shaking his head.--"Ah!" cried Balzac dolorously; "I see you don't allow me six months. . . . You will give me six weeks at least. . . . Six weeks with the fever, is an eternity. Hours are days; and then the nights are not lost."--The doctor shook his head again. Balzac raised himself, almost indignant.--"What, doctor! Am I, then, a dead man? Thank G.o.d! I still feel strength to fight. But I feel also courage to submit. I am ready for the sacrifice. If your science does not deceive you, don't deceive me. What can I hope for yet? . . . Six days? . . . I can in that time indicate in broad outlines what remains to be done. My friends will see to details. I shall be able to cast a glance at my fifty volumes, tearing out the bad pages, accentuating the best ones. Human will can do miracles. I can give immortal life to the world I have created. I will rest on the seventh day."--Since beginning to speak, Balzac had aged ten years, and finally his voice failed him.--"My dear patient," said the doctor, trying to smile, "who can answer for an hour in this life? There are persons now in good health who will die before you. But you have asked me for the truth; you spoke of your will and testament to the public."--"Well?"--"Well! this testament must be made to-day. Indeed, you have another testament to make. You mustn't wait till to-morrow."

--Balzac looked up.--"I have, then, no more than six hours," he exclaimed with dread.

The details of this narration given to the _Figaro_ many years after the event[*] do not read much like history. A more probable account tells that Balzac, after one of his fits of gasping, asked Nacquart to say whether he would get better or not. The doctor hesitated, then answered: "You are courageous. I will not hide the truth from you.

There is no hope." The sick man's face contracted and his fingers clutched the sheet. "How long have I to live?" he questioned after a pause. "You will hardly last the night," replied Nacquart. There was a fresh silence, broken only by the novelist's murmuring as if to himself: "If only I had Bianchon, he would save me." Bianchon, one of his fict.i.tious personages, had become for the nonce a living reality.

It was Balzac who had taken the place of his medical hero in the kingdom of shadows. Anxious to soften the effect of his sentence, Nacquart inquired if his patient had a message or recommendation to give. "No, I have none," was the answer. However, just before the doctor's departure, he asked for a pencil, and tried to trace a few lines, but was too week; and, letting the pencil drop from his fingers, he fell into a slumber.

[*] 20th of August 1883.

In his _Choses Vues_, Victor Hugo informs us that, on the afternoon of the 18th, his wife had been to the Hotel Beaujon and heard from the servants that the master of the house was dying. After dinner he went himself, and reached the Hotel about nine. Received at first in the drawing-room, lighted dimly by a candle placed on a richly carved oval table that stood in the centre of the room, he saw there an old woman, but not, as he a.s.serts, the brother-in-law, Monsieur Surville. No member of Balzac's own family was present in the house that evening.

Even the wife remained in her apartments. The old woman told Hugo that gangrene had set in, and that tapping now produced no effect on the dropsy. As the visitor ascended the splendid, red-carpeted staircase, c.u.mbered with statues, vases, and paintings, he was incommoded by a pestilential odour that a.s.sailed his nostrils. Death had begun the decomposition of the sick man's body even before it was a corpse. At the door of the chamber Hugo caught the sound of hoa.r.s.e, stertorous breathing. He entered, and saw on the mahogany bed an almost unrecognizable form bolstered up on a ma.s.s of cushions. Balzac's unshaven face was of blackish-violet hue; his grey hair had been cut short; his open eyes were glazed; the profile resembled that of the first Napoleon. It was useless to speak to him unconscious of any one's presence.

Hugo turned and hastened from the spot thinking sadly of his previous visit a month before, when, in the same room, the invalid had joked with him on his opinions, reproaching him for his demagogy. "How could you renounce, with such serenity, your t.i.tle as a peer of France?" he had asked. He had spoken also of the Beaujon residence, the gallery over the little chapel in the corner of the street, the key that permitted access to the chapel from the staircase; and, when the poet left him, he had accompanied him to the head of the stairs, calling out to Madame de Balzac to show Hugo his pictures.

Death took him the same evening.[*] During the last hours of his life Giraud had sketched his portrait for a pastel;[+] and, on the morning of the 19th, a man named Marminia was sent to secure a mould of his features. This latter design had to be abandoned. An impression of the hands alone was obtainable. Decomposition had set in so rapidly that the face was distorted beyond recognition. A lead coffin was hastily brought to cover up the ghastly spectacle of nature in a hurry.

[*] De Lovenjoul says that Balzac died on the 17th, not the 18th.

This discrepancy is most curious, the latter date figuring as the official one, as well as being given by Hugo and others.

[+] De Lovenjoul says that the sketch was made after death. But, if the mask was not possible, it is difficult to understand how a pencil likeness could have been drawn.

Two days later, on the 21st of August, the interment took place at Pere Lachaise cemetery. The procession started from the Church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, to which the coffin had been transported beforehand. There was no pomp in either service or ceremony. A two-horse hea.r.s.e and four bearers--Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Francis Wey, and Baroche, the Minister for the Interior made up the funeral accessories. But an immense concourse of people followed the body to the grave. The Inst.i.tute, the University, the various learned societies were all represented by eminent men, and a certain number of foreigners, English, German, and Russian, were present also. Baroche attended rather from duty than appreciation. On the way to the cemetery, he hummed and hawed, and remarked to Hugo: "Monsieur Balzac was a somewhat distinguished man, I believe?" Scandalized, Hugo looked at the politician and answered shortly: "He was a genius, sir." It is said that Baroche revenged himself for the rebuff by whispering to an acquaintance near him: "This Monsieur Hugo is madder still than is supposed."

Over the coffin, as it was laid under the ground near the ashes of Charles Nodier and Casimir Delavigne, the author of _Les Miserables_ and _Les Feuilles d'Automne_ p.r.o.nounced an oration which was a generous tribute to the talent of his great rival. On such an occasion there was no room for the reservations of criticism. It was the moment to apply the maxim, _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_. "The name of Balzac,"

he said, "will mingle with the luminous track projected by our epoch into the future. . . . Monsieur de Balzac was the first among the great, one of the highest among the best. All his volumes form but a single book, wherein our contemporary civilization is seen to move with a certain terrible weirdness and reality--a marvellous book which the maker of it ent.i.tled a comedy and which he might have ent.i.tled a history. It a.s.sumes all forms and all styles; it goes beyond Tacitus and reaches Suetonius; it traverses Beaumarchais and attains even Rabelais; it is both observation and imagination, it lavishes the true, the intimate, the bourgeois, the trivial, the material, and, through every reality suddenly rent asunder, it allows the most sombre, tragic ideal to be seen. Unconsciously, and w.i.l.l.y nilly, the author of this strange work belongs to the race of revolutionary writers. Balzac goes straight to the point. He grapples with modern society; and from everywhere he wrests something--here, illusion; there, hopes; a cry; a mask. He investigates vice, he dissects pa.s.sion, he fathoms man--the soul, the heart, the entrails, the brain, the abyss each has within him. And by right of his free, vigorous nature--a privilege of the intellects of our time, who see the end of humanity better and understand Providence--Balzac smilingly and serenely issues from such studies, which produced melancholy in Moliere and misanthropy in Rousseau. The work he has bequeathed us is built with granite strength. Great men forge their own pedestal; the future charges itself with the statue. . . . His life was short but full, fuller of works than of days. Alas! this puissant, untired labourer, this philosopher, this thinker, this poet, this genius lived among us the life of all great men. To-day, he is at rest. He has entered simultaneously into glory and the tomb. Henceforth, he will shine above the clouds that surround us, among the stars of the fatherland."

To the credit of Balzac's widow it should be said that, although not legally obliged, she accepted her late husband's succession, heavy as it was with liabilities, the full extent of which was communicated to her only after the funeral. The novelist's mother, having renounced her claim on the capital lent by her at various times to her son, received an annuity of three thousand francs, which was punctually paid until the old lady's demise in 1854. Buisson the tailor, Dablin, Madame Delannoy, and the rest of the creditors, one after the other, were reimbursed the sums they had also advanced, the profits on unexhausted copyright aiding largely in the liberation of the estate.

Before Eve's own death, every centime of debt was cleared off.

In the romance of Balzac's life it will be always arduous, if not infeasible, to estimate exactly Madame Hanska's role, unless, by some miracle, her own letters to the novelist could arise phoenix-like from their ashes. The liaison that she is said to have formed soon after her husband's death with Jean Gigoux, the artist, who painted her portrait in 1852, may be regarded either as a retaliation for Honore's infidelities, which she was undoubtedly cognizant of, or else as the rebound of a sensual nature after the years spent in the too idealistic realm of sentiment. And, whichever of these explanations is correct, the irony of the conclusion is the same.

CHAPTER XIV

THE COMEDIE HUMAINE

The idea of joining his separate books together and forming them into a coherent whole was one that matured slowly in Balzac's mind. Its genesis is to be found in his first collection of short novels published in 1830 under the t.i.tles: _Scenes of Private Life_, and containing _The Vendetta_, _Gobseck_, _The Sceaux Ball_, _The House of the Tennis-playing Cat_, _A Double Family_, and _Peace in the Household_. Between these stories there was no real connexion except that certain characters in one casually reappeared or were alluded to in another. By 1832, the _Scenes of Private Life_ had been augmented, and, in a second edition, filled four volumes. The additions comprised _The Message_, _The Bourse_, _The Adieu_, _The Cure of Tours_, and several chapters of _The Woman of Thirty Years Old_, some of which had previously come out as serials in the _Revue de Paris_ or the _Mode_.

It has already been related how the novelist all at once realized what a gain his literary production might have in adopting a plan and building up a social history of his epoch. And, in fact, this conception did stimulate his activity for some time, serving too, as long as it was uncrystallized, to concentrate his visions upon objective realities.

Needing, between 1834 and 1837, a more comprehensive t.i.tle for the rapidly increasing list of his works, he called them _Studies of Manners and Morals in the Nineteenth Century_, subdividing them into _Scenes of Private Life_, _Scenes of Parisian Life_, and _Scenes of Provincial Life_. However, some things he had written were cla.s.sible conveniently neither under the specific names nor under the generic one. These outsiders he called _Tales and Philosophic Novels_, subsequently shortening the t.i.tle, between 1835 and 1840, to _Philosophic Studies_. The question was what wider description could be chosen which might embrace also this last category. Writing to Madame Hanska in 1837, he used the expression _Social Studies_, telling her that there would be nearly fifty volumes of them. Either she, or he himself, must, on reflection, have judged the t.i.tle unsatisfactory, for no edition of his works ever bore this name. Most likely the thought occurred to him that such an appellation was more suitable to a strictly scientific treatise than to fiction.

The expression _Comedie Humaine_, which he ultimately adopted, is said to have been suggested to him by his whilom secretary, the Count Auguste de Belloy, after the latter's visit to Italy, during which Dante's _Divine Comedy_ had been read and appreciated. But already, some years prior to this journey, the novelist would seem to have had the Italian poet's masterpiece before his mind. In his _Girl with the Golden Eyes_, he had spoken of Paris as a h.e.l.l which, perhaps, one day would have its Dante. De Belloy's share in the matter was probably an extra persuasion added to Balzac's own leaning, or the Count may have been the one to subst.i.tute the word _human_.[*]

[*] A communication has been made to me, while writing this book, by Monsieur Hetzel, the publisher, tending to show that his father, who was also known in the literary world, had a large share in the choice of the _Comedie Humaine_ as a t.i.tle.

Madame Hanska was at once informed of the choice. "The _Comedie Humaine_, such is the t.i.tle of my history of society depicted in action," he told her in September 1841. And when, between 1841 and 1842, Hetzel, together with Dubochet and Turne, brought out sixteen octavo volumes of his works ill.u.s.trated, they each carried his name, while a preface set forth the reasons which had led the author to choose it. Thereafter, every succeeding edition was similarly styled, including Houssiaux' series in 1855, and the series of Calmann-Levy, known as the definitive one, between 1869 and 1876.

Against the appellation itself no objection can reasonably be made.

Balzac's fiction takes in a world--an underworld might appropriately be said--of Dantesque proportions. As soon as it was fully fledged, it started with a large ambition. "My work," he said to Zulma Carraud in 1834, "is to represent all social effects without anything being omitted from it, whether situation of life, physiognomy, character of man or woman, manner of living, profession, zone of social existence, region of French idiosyncrasy, childhood, maturity, old age, politics, jurisdiction, war." And in the Forties the same intention was stated as clearly. "I have undertaken the history of the whole of society.

Often have I summed up my plan in this simple sentence: A generation is a drama in which four or five thousand people are the chief actors.

This drama is my book."

When Hetzel decided to publish a so-far complete edition of the _Comedie_, he induced the novelist to insert a preface composed for the occasion. Balzac wished at first to use an old preface that he had written in conjunction with Felix Davin, and placed, under the latter's signature, at the beginning of the _Study of Manners and Morals in the Nineteenth Century_. Hetzel objected to this, and urged that so important an undertaking ought to be preceded by an author's apology. His advice was accepted, and the preface was developed into a veritable doctrine and defence. Here are some of its essential pa.s.sages:--

"The _Comedie Humaine_," says Balzac, "first dawned on my brain like a dream--one of those impossible projects, it seemed, that are caressed and allowed to fly away; a chimera which smiles, shows its woman's face, and forthwith unfolds its wings, mounting again into a fancied heaven. But the chimera, as many chimeras do, changed into reality. It had its commands and its tyranny to which I was obliged to yield.

"It was born from a comparison between humanity and animality. It would be an error to believe that the great quarrel which in recent times has arisen between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire is concerned with a scientific innovation. The _unity of composition_ involved in it had already, under other terms, occupied the greatest minds of the two preceding centuries. On reading over again the extraordinary works of such mystic writers as Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, etc., who have studied the relations of science with the infinite, and the writings of the finest geniuses in natural history, such as Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles Bonnet, etc., one finds in the monads of Leibnitz, in the organic molecules of Buffon, in the vegetative force of Needham, in the _jointing_ of similar parts of Charles Bonnet--who was bold enough to write in 1760: 'The animal vegetates like the plant;' one finds, I say, the rudiments of the beautiful law of _self for self_ on which the unity of composition reposes. There is only one animal. The Creator has made use only of one and the same pattern for all organized beings. The animal is a principle which acquires its exterior form, or, to speak more exactly, the differences of its form, in the surroundings in which it is called upon to develop. The various zoologic species result from these differences. The proclamation and upholding of this system, in harmony, moreover, with the ideas we have of the Divine power, will be the eternal honour of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who was the vanquisher of Cuvier on this point of high science, and whose triumph was acknowledged in the last article written by the great Goethe."

Continuing his exposition, the novelist says all men resemble each other, but in the same manner as a horse resembles a bird. They are also divided into species. These species differ according to social surroundings. A peasant, a tradesman, an artist, a great lord are as distinct from each other as a wolf is from a sheep. Besides, there is another thing peculiar to man, viz. that male and female are not alike, whereas among the rest of the animals, the female is similar to the male. The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy to be the spouse of a prince, and often a prince's wife is not worth an artist's. Then, again, there is this difference. The lower animals are strictly dependent on circ.u.mstances, each species feeding and housing itself in a uniform manner. Man has not such uniformity. In Paris, he is not the same as in a provincial town; in the provinces, not the same as in rural surroundings. When studying him, there are many things to be considered--habitat, furniture, food, clothes, language.

In fine, the subject taken up by a novelist who wishes to treat it properly, comprises man as an integral portion of a social species, woman as not peculiarly belonging to any, and _entourage_ from its widest circ.u.mference of country down to the narrowest one of home.

"But," he goes on, "how is it possible to render the drama of life interesting, with the three or four thousand varying characters presented by a society? How please at the same time the philosopher, and the ma.s.ses who demand poetry and philosophy under striking images?

If I conceived the importance and poetry of this history of the human heart, I saw no means of execution; for, down to our epoch, the most celebrated narrators had spent their talent in creating one or two typical characters, in depicting one phase of life. With this thought, I read the works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott, the modern _trouvere_, was then giving a gigantic vogue to a kind of composition unjustly called secondary. Is it not really harder to compete with the registry of births, marriages, and deaths by means of Daphnis and Chloe, Roland, Amadis, Panurge, Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace, Robinson Crusoe, Ossian, Julie d'Etanges, My Uncle Toby, Werther, Rene, Corinne, Adolphe, Gil Blas, Paul and Virginia, Jeanie Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe, Manfred, Mignon, than to arrange facts almost similar among all nations, to seek for the spirit of laws fallen into decay, to draw up theories which lead people astray, or, as certain metaphysicians, to explain what exists? First of all, nearly all these characters, whose existence becomes longer, more genuine than that of the generations amid which they are made to be born, live only on condition of being a vast image of the present.

Conceived in the womb of the century, the whole human heart moves beneath their outward covering; it often conceals a whole philosophy.

Walter Scott, therefore, raised to the philosophic value of history the novel--that literature which from century to century adorns with immortal diamonds the poetic crown of the countries where letters are cultivated. He put into it the spirit of ancient times; he blended in it at once drama, dialogue, portraiture, landscape, description; he brought into it the marvellous and the true, those elements of the epopee; he made poetry mingle in it with the humblest sorts of language. But having less invented a system than found out his manner in the ardour of work, or by the logic of this work, he had not thought of linking his compositions to each other so as to co-ordinate a complete history, each chapter of which would have been a novel and each novel an epoch. Perceiving this want of connection, which, indeed does not render the Scotchman less great, I saw both the system that was favourable to the execution of my work, and the possibility of carrying it out. Although, so to speak, dazzled by the surprising fecundity of Walter Scott, always equal to himself and always original, I did not despair, for I found the reason of such talent in the variety of human nature. _Chance is the greatest novelist in the world._ To be fertile, one has only to study it. French society was to be the historian. I was to be only the secretary. By drawing up an inventory of virtues and vices, by a.s.sembling the princ.i.p.al facts of pa.s.sions, by painting characters, by choosing the princ.i.p.al events of society, by composing types through the union of several h.o.m.ogeneous characters, perhaps I should succeed in writing the history forgotten by so many historians, that of _manners and morals_. With much patience and courage, I should realize, with regard to France in the nineteenth century, the book we all regret which Rome, Athens, Tyre, Memphis, Persia, India have not unfortunately left about their civilizations, and which like the Abbe Barthelemy, the courageous and patient Monteil had essayed for the Middle Ages, but in a form not very attractive."

One may well believe the novelist when he explains that "it was no small task to depict the two or three thousand prominent figures of an epoch," representing typical phases in all existences, which, says he, "is one of the accuracies I have most sought for. I have tried to give a notion also of the different parts of our beautiful land. My work has its geography, as it has its genealogy and its families, its places and things, its persons and its facts, as it has its blazonry, its n.o.bles and its commoners, its artisans and its peasants, its politicians and its dandies, its army, in fine, its epitome of life --all this in its settings and galleries."

The Human Comedy, as finally arranged and cla.s.sified in 1845, had three chief divisions: _Studies of Manners and Morals_, _Philosophic Studies_, _a.n.a.lytic Studies_; and the first of these was subdivided into _Scenes of Private Life_, _Scenes of Provincial Life_, _Scenes of Parisian Life_, _Scenes of Military Life_, _Scenes of Political Life_, _Scenes of Country Life_.

Even if we include the unwritten books, the diminution from first to second and from second to third is considerable. In the novelist's mind, this difference was intentional. According to his conception, the first large series represented the broad base of effects, upon which was superposed the second plane of causes, less numerous and more concentrated. In the latter, he strove to answer the why and wherefore of sentiments; in the former, to exhibit their action in varying modes. In the former, therefore, he represented individuals; in the latter, his individuals became types. All this he detailed to Madame Hanska, insisting on the statement that everywhere he gave life to the type by individualizing it, and significance to the individuals by rendering them typical. At the top of the cone he treated, in his a.n.a.lytical studies, of the principles whence causes and effects proceed. The manners and morals at the base, he said, were the spectacle; the causes above were the side-scenes; and the principles at the top were the author.

Coming to the subdivisions, he explains that his _Scenes of Private Life_ deal with humanity's childhood and adolescence, and the errors of these, in short, with the period of budding pa.s.sions; the _Scenes of Provincial Life_, with pa.s.sions in full development--calculation, interest, ambition, etc.; the _Scenes of Parisian Life_, with the peculiar tastes, vices and temptations of capitals, that is to say, with pa.s.sion unbridled. The interpretation a.s.signed to these categories is a fanciful one. Pa.s.sions are born and bred and produce their full effect in every place and phase of life. They may a.s.sume varying forms in divers surroundings, but such variation has no a.n.a.logy with change of age. Only by forcing the moral of his stories was the author able to give them these secondary significations.

Indeed, he was often in straits to decide in which category he ought to cla.s.s one and another novel. _Pere Goriot_ was originally in the _Scenes of Parisian Life_, where it has a certain _raison d'etre_.

Ultimately, it found its way into the _Scenes of Private Life_. And a greater alteration was made by removing _Madame Firmiani_ and the _Woman-Study_ from the _Philosophic Studies_, and placing them also in the _Private Life_ series.

Be it granted that the plan of the _Comedy_ was grandiose in its scope; it was none the less doomed in its execution to suffer for its ambitiousness, since an attempt was made to subordinate imagination to science in a domain where the rights of imagination were paramount.