Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings Part 2

This happy childish life, chastened only by the tremors which both children felt when taken by their governess in the morning and at bedtime into the stern presence of their mother, did not last very long for Honore. When he was eight years old (his sister says seven, but this seems to be a mistake), there was a change in his life, as the home authorities decided that it was time his education should begin in good earnest. He was therefore taken from the day school at Tours, and sent to the semi-military college founded by the Oratorians in the sleepy little town of Vendome. On page 7 of the school record there is the following notice: "No. 460. Honore Balzac, age de huit ans un mois. A eu la pet.i.te verole, sans infirmites. Caractere sanguin, s'echauffant facilement, et sujet a quelques fievres de chaleur. Entre au pensionnat le 22 juin, 1807. Sorti, le 22 aout, 1813. S'adresser a M. Balzac, son pere, a Tours."[*] Thus is summed up the character of the future writer of the "Comedie Humaine," and there was apparently nothing remarkable or precocious about the boy, as his quick temper is his most salient point in the eyes of his masters. It will be noticed, too, that the "de," about which Balzac was very particular, and which was the occasion of many scoffing remarks on the part of his enemies, does not appear on this register.

[*] "Balzac au College," by Champfleury.

Honore was a small boy to have been completely separated from home, and the whole scheme of education as devised by the Oratorian fathers appears to have been a strange one. One of the rules forbade outside holidays, and Honore never left the college once during the six years he was at school; so that there was no supervision from his parents, and no chance of complaint if he were unhappy or ill treated. His family came to see him at Easter and also at the prize-givings; but on these occasions, to which he looked forward, his sister tells us, with eager delight, reproaches were generally his portion, on account of his want of success in school work. In "Louis Lambert" he gives an interesting account of the college, which was in the middle of the town on the little river Loir, and contained a chapel, theatre, infirmary, bakery, and gardens. There were two or three hundred pupils, divided according to their ages or attainments into four cla.s.ses--_les grands_, _les moyens_, les pet.i.ts_, and _les minimes_ --and each cla.s.s had its own cla.s.s-room and courtyard. Balzac was considered the idlest and most pathetic boy in his division, and was continually punished. Reproaches, the ferule, the dark cell, were his portion, and with his quick and delicate senses he suffered intensely from the want of air in the cla.s.s-rooms. There, according to the graphic picture in "Louis Lambert," everything was dirty, and eighty boys inhabited a hall, in the centre of which were two buckets full of water, where all washed their faces and hands every morning, the water being only renewed once in the day. To add to the odours, the air was vitiated by the smell of pigeons killed for fete days, and of dishes stolen from the refectory, and kept by the pupils in their lockers.

The boy who, in the future, was to awaken actual physical disgust in his readers by his description of the stuffy and dingy boarding-house dining-room in "Le Pere Goriot," was crushed and stupefied by his surroundings, and would sit for hours with his head on his hand, not attempting to learn, but gazing dreamily at the clouds, or at the foliage of the trees in the court below. No wonder that he was the despair of his masters, and that his famous "Traite de la volonte,"

which he composed instead of preparing the ordinary school work, was summarily confiscated and destroyed. So many were the punishment lines given him to write, that his holidays were almost entirely taken up, and he had not six days of liberty the whole time that he was at college.

In addition to the troubles incident to Honore's peculiar temperament and genius, he had in the winter, like the other pupils, to submit to actual physical suffering. The price of education included also that of clothing, the parents who sent their children to the Vendome College paying a yearly sum, and therewith comfortably absolving themselves from all trouble and responsibility. But the results were not happy for the boys, who dragged themselves painfully along the icy roads in miserable remnants of boots, their feet half dead, and swollen with sores and chilblains. Out of sixty children, not ten walked without torture, and many of them would cry with rage as they limped along, each step being a painful effort; but with the invincible physical pluck and moral cowardice of childhood, would hide their tears, for fear of ridicule from their companions.

Nevertheless, even to Balzac, who was peculiarly unfitted for it, life at the college had its pleasures. The food appears to have been good, and the discipline at meals not very severe, as a regular system of exchange of helpings to suit the particular tastes of each boy went on all through dinner, and caused endless amus.e.m.e.nt. Some one who had received peas as his portion would prefer dessert, and the proposition "Un dessert pour des pois" would pa.s.s from mouth to mouth till the bargain had been made. Other pleasures were the pet pigeons, the gardens, the sweets bought secretly during the walks, the permission to play cards and to have theatrical performances during the holidays, the military music, the games, and the slides made in winter. Best of all, however, was the shop which opened in the cla.s.s-room every Sunday during playtime for the sale of boxes, tools, pigeons of all sorts, ma.s.s-books (for these there was not much demand), knives, b.a.l.l.s, pencils--everything a boy could wish for. The proud possessor of six francs--meant to last for the term--felt that the contents of the whole shop were at his disposal. Sat.u.r.day night was pa.s.sed in anxious yet rapturous calculations, and the responses at Ma.s.s during that happy Sunday morning mingled themselves with thoughts of the glorious time coming in the afternoon. Next Sunday was not quite so delightful, as probably there were only a few sous left, and possibly some of the purchases were broken, or had not turned out quite satisfactorily.

Then, too, there was a long vista of Sundays in the future, without any possibility of shopping; but after all a certain amount of compounding is always necessary in life, and an intense short joy is worth a grey time before and after.

When Balzac was fourteen years old, his life at the college came suddenly to an end, as, to the alarm of his masters, he was attacked by coma with feverish symptoms, and they begged his parents to take him home at once. It is curious to notice that the Fathers make no reference to this failure in their educational system in the school record, where there is no reason given for Honore's departure from school. Certainly his life at Vendome was not very healthy, as sometimes for idleness, inattention, or impertinence he was for months shut up every day in a niche six feet square, with a wooden door pierced by holes to let in air. When Champfleury visited the college years afterwards, the only person who remembered Balzac was the old Father who had charge of these cells, and he spoke of the boy's "great black eyes." Confinement in these _culottes de bois_, as they were called, was much dreaded by the boys, and the punishment seems barbarous and senseless, except from the point of view of getting rid of troublesome pupils. Balzac, however, welcomed the relief from ordinary school life, and indeed manoeuvred to be shut up. In the cells he had leisure to dream as he pleased, he was free from the drudgery of learning his lessons, and he managed to secrete books in his cage, and thus to absorb the contents of most of the volumes in the fine library collected by the learned Oratorian founders of the college. The ideas in many of the learned tomes were far beyond his age, but he understood them, remembered them afterwards, and could recall in later years not only the thought in each book, but also the disposition of his mind when he read them. Naturally this precocity of intellect caused brain fatigue, though this would never have been suspected by the Fathers of their idlest pupil.

Honore, his sister tells us, came home thin and puny, like a somnambulist sleeping with open eyes, and his grandmother groaned over the strain of modern education. At first he heard hardly any of the questions that were put to him, and his mother was obliged to disturb him in reveries, and to insist on his taking part in games with the rest of the family; but with the fresh air and the home life he soon recovered his health and spirits, and became again a lively, merry boy. He attended lectures at a college near, and had tutors at home; but great efforts were necessary in order to get into his head the requisite amount of Greek and Latin. Nevertheless, at times, he was astonishing, or might have been to any one with powers of observation.

On these occasions he made such extraordinary and sagacious remarks that Madame de Balzac, in her character of represser, felt obliged to remark sharply, "You cannot possibly understand what you are saying, Honore!" When Honore, who dared not argue, looked at her with a smile, she would, with the ease of absolute authority, escape from the awkwardness of the situation by remarking that he was impertinent. He was already ambitious, and would tell his sisters and brother about his future fame, and accept with a laugh the teasing he received in consequence.

It must have been during this time that he grew to love with an enduring love the scenery of his native province of Touraine, with its undulating stretches of emerald green, through which the Loire or the Indre wound like a long ribbon of water, while lines of poplars decked the banks with moving lace. It was a smiling country, dotted with vineyards and oak woods, while here and there an old gnarled walnut tree stood in rugged independence. The susceptible boy, lately escaped from the abominations of the stuffy school-house, drank in with rapture the warm scented air, and often describes in his novels the landscape of the province where he was born, which he loves, in his own words, "as an artist loves art." Another lasting memory[*] was that of the poetry and splendour of the Cathedral of Saint-Gatien in Tours, where he was taken every feast-day. There he watched with delight the beautiful effects of light and shade, the play of colour produced by the rays of sunlight shining through the old stained gla.s.s, and the strange, fascinating effect of the clouds of incense, which enveloped the officiating priests, and from which he possibly derived the idea of the mists which he often introduces into his descriptions.

[*] See "Balzac, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres, d'apres sa Correspondance" par Madame L. Surville (nee de Balzac).

CHAPTER III

1814 - 1820

Balzac's tutors and law studies--His youth, as pictured in the "Peau de Chagrin"--His father's intention of making him a lawyer --He begs to be allowed to become a writer--Is allowed his wish --Life in the Rue Lesdiguieres, privations and starvation--He writes "Cromwell," a tragedy.

At the end of 1814 the Balzac family moved to Paris, as M. de Balzac was put in charge of the Commissariat of the First Division of the Army. Here they took a house in the Rue de Roi-Dore, in the Marais, and Honore continued his studies with M. Lepitre, Rue Saint-Louis, and MM. Sganzer and Benzelin, Rue de Thorigny, in the Marais. To the influence of M. Lepitre, a man who, unlike old M. de Balzac and many other worthy people, was an ardent Legitimist _before_ as well as _after_ 1815, we may in part trace the strength of Balzac's Royalist principles. On the 13th Vendemiaire, M. Lepitre had presided over one of the sections of Paris which rose against the Convention; and though on one occasion he failed in nerve, his services during the Revolution had been most conspicuous. On his reception at the Tuileries by the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, she used these words, never to be forgotten by him to whom they were addressed: "I have not forgotten, and I shall never forget, the services you have rendered to my family."[*]

[*] "Biographie Universelle," by De Michaud.

We can imagine the enthusiasm and delight with which the man who, whatever might be his shortcomings in courage, had always remained firm to his Royalist principles, and who had been a witness of the terrible anguish of the prisoners in the Temple, would hear these words from the lips of the lady who stood to him as Queen--the Antigone of France--the heroine whose sufferings had made the heart of every loyal Frenchman bleed, the brave woman who, according to Napoleon, was the one man of her family. Lepitre's visit to the Tuileries took place on May 9th, 1814, the year that Balzac began to take those lessons in rhetoric which first opened his eyes to the beauty of the French language. During Lepitre's tuition he composed a speech supposed to be addressed by the wife of Brutus to her husband, after the condemnation of her sons, in which, Laure tells us, the anguish of the mother is depicted with great power, and Balzac shows his wonderful faculty for entering into the souls of his personages.

Lepitre had evidently a powerful influence over his pupil, and as a master of rhetoric he would naturally be eloquent and have command of language, and in consequence would be most probably of fiery and enthusiastic temperament. We can imagine the fervour with which the impressionable boy drank in stories of the sufferings of the royal family during their imprisonment in the Temple, and strove not to miss a syllable of his master's magnificent exordiums, which glowed with the light and heat of impa.s.sioned loyalty.

No doubt Balzac's "Une Vie de Femme," a touching account of the life of the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, which appeared in the _Reformateur_ in 1832, was partly compiled from the reminiscences of his old master; and when we hear of his ardent defence of the d.u.c.h.esse de Berry, or that he treasured a tea-service which was not of any intrinsic value, because it had belonged to the Duc d'Angouleme, we see traces of his intense love and admiration for the Bourbon family.

Nevertheless, in that big, well-balanced brain there was room for many emotions, and for a wide range of sympathies. The many-sidedness which is a necessary characteristic of every great psychologist, was a remarkable quality in Balzac. He may have been present at Napoleon's last review on the Carrousel--at any rate he tells in "La Femme de Trente Ans" how the man "thus surrounded with so much love, enthusiasm, devotion, prayer--for whom the sun had driven every cloud from the sky--sat motionless on his horse, three feet in advance of the dazzling escort that followed him," and that an old grenadier said, "My G.o.d, yes, it was always so; under fire at Wagram, among the dead in the Moskowa, he was quiet as a lamb--yes, that's he!" Balzac's admiration for Napoleon was intense, as he shows in many of his writings, and his proudest boast is to be found in the words, said to have been inscribed on a statuette of Napoleon in his room in the Rue Ca.s.sini, "What he has begun with the sword, I shall finish with the pen."

None of Balzac's masters thought much of his talents, or perceived anything remarkable about him. He returned home in 1816, full of health and vigour, the personification of happiness; and his conscientious mother immediately set to work to repair the deficiencies of his former education, and sent him to lectures at the Sorbonne, where he heard extempore speeches from such men as Villemain, Guizot, and Cousin. Apparently this teaching opened a new world to him, and he learned for the first time that education can be more than a dull routine of dry facts, and felt the joy of contact with eloquence and learning. Possibly he realised, as he had not realised before--Tours being, as he says, a most unliterary town--that there were people in the world who looked on things as he did, and who would understand, and not laugh at him or snub him. He always returned from these lectures, his sister says, glowing with interest, and would try as far as he could to repeat them to his family. Then he would rush out to study in the public libraries, so that he might be able to profit by the teaching of his ill.u.s.trious professors, or would wander about the Latin Quarter, to hunt for rare and precious books. He used his opportunities in other ways. An old lady living in the house with the Balzacs had been an intimate friend of the great Beaumarchais.

Honore loved to talk to her, and would ask her questions, and listen with the greatest interest to her replies, till he could have written a Life of the celebrated man himself. His powers of acute observation, interest, and sympathy--in short, his intense faculty for human fellowship, as well as his capacity for a.s.similating information from books--were already at work; and the future novelist was consciously or unconsciously collecting material in all directions.

In 1816 it was considered necessary that he should be started with regular work, and he was established for eighteen months with a lawyer, M. de Guillonnet-Merville, who was, like M. Lepitre, a friend of the Balzac family, and an ardent Royalist. Eugene Scribe--another amateur lawyer--as M. de Guillonnet-Merville indulgently remarked, had just left the office, and Honore was established at the desk and table vacated by him. He became very fond of his chief, whom he has immortalised as Derville in "Une Tenebreuse Affaire," "Le Pere Goriot," and other novels; and he dedicated to this old friend "Un Episode sous la Terreur," which was published in 1846, and is a powerful and touching story of the remorse felt by the executioner of Louis XVI. After eighteen months in this office, he pa.s.sed the same time in that of M. Pa.s.sez, a notary, who lived in the same house with the Balzacs, and was another of their intimates.

Balzac does not appear to have made any objection to these arrangements, though his legal studies cannot have been congenial to him; but they were only spoken of at this time as a finish to his education--old M. de Balzac, _homme de loi_ himself, remarking that no man's education can be complete without a knowledge of ancient and modern legislation, and an acquaintance with the statutes of his own country. Perhaps Honore, wiser now than in his school-days, had learnt that all knowledge is equipment for a literary life. He certainly made good use of his time, and the results can be seen in many of his works, notably in the "Tenebreuse Affaire," which contains in the account of the famous trial a masterly exposition of the legislature of the First Empire, or in "Cesar Birotteau," which shows such thorough knowledge of the laws of bankruptcy of the time that its complicated plot cannot be thoroughly understood by any one unversed in legal matters.

Honore was very well occupied at this time, and his mother must have felt for once thoroughly satisfied with him. In addition to his study of law, he had to follow the course of lectures at the Sorbonne and at the College of France; and these studies were a delightful excuse for a very fitful occupation of his seat in the lawyer's office. Besides his multifarious occupations, he managed in the evening to find time to play cards with his grandmother, who lived with her daughter and son-in-law. The gentle old lady spoilt Honore, his mother considered, and would allow him to win money from her, which he joyfully expended on books. His sister, who tells us this, says, "He always loved those game in memory of her; and the recollection of her sayings and of her gestures used to come to him like a happiness which, as he said, he wrested from a tomb."

Other recollections of this time were not so pleasant. Honore wished to shine in society. No doubt the two "immense and sole desires--to be famous and to be loved"--which haunted him continually, till he at last obtained them at the cost of his life, were already at work within him, and he longed for the tender glances of some charming _demoiselle_. At any rate he took dancing-lessons, and prepared himself to enter with grace into ladies' society. Here, however, a terrible humiliation awaited him. After all his care and pains, he slipped and fell in the ball-room, and his mortification at the smiles of the women round was so great that he never danced again, but looked on henceforward with cynicism which he expresses in the "Peau de Chagrin." That wonderful book, side by side with its philosophical teaching, gives a graphic picture of one side of Balzac's restless, feverish youth, as "Louis Lambert" does of his repressed childhood.

Neither Louis Lambert nor the morbid and selfish Raphael give, however, the slightest indication of Balzac's most salient characteristic both as boy and youth--the healthy _joie de vivre_, the gaiety and exuberant merriment, of which his contemporaries speak constantly, and which shone out undimmed even by the wretched health and terrible worries of the last few years of his life. In his books, the bitter and melancholy side of things reigns almost exclusively, and Balzac, using Raphael as his mouthpiece, says: "Women one and all have condemned me. With tears and mortification I bowed before the decision of the world; but my distress was not barren. I determined to revenge myself on society; I would dominate the feminine intellect, and so have the feminine soul at my mercy; all eyes should be fixed upon me, when the servant at the door announced my name. I had determined from my childhood that I would be a great man. I said with Andre Chenier, as I struck my forehead, 'There is something underneath that!' I felt, I believed the thought within me that I must express, the system I must establish, the knowledge I must interpret." In another place in the same book the bitterness of his social failure again peeps out: "The incomprehensible bent of women's minds appears to lead them to see nothing but the weak points in a clever man and the strong points of a fool."

Reading these words, we can imagine poor Honore, a proud, supersensitive boy, leaning against the wall in the ball-room, and watching enviously while agreeable nonent.i.ties basked in the smiles he yearned for. It was a hard lot to feel within him the intuitive knowledge of his genius; to hear the insistent voice of his vocation calling him not to be as ordinary men, but to give his message to the world; and yet to have the miserable consciousness that no one believed in his talents, and that there was a huge discrepancy between his ambition and his actual attainments.

In 1820 Honore attained his majority and finished his legal studies.

Unfortunately the pecuniary misfortunes which were to haunt all this generation of the Balzac family were beginning--as old M. de Balzac had lost money in two speculations, and now at the age of seventy-four was put on the retired list, a change which meant a considerable diminution of income. He therefore explained to his son--Madame Surville tells us--that M. Pa.s.sez, to whom he had formerly been of service, had in grat.i.tude offered to take Honore into his office, and at the end of a few years would leave him his business, when, with the additional arrangement of a rich marriage, a prosperous future would be a.s.sured to him. Old M. de Balzac did not specify the nature of the service which was to meet with so rich a reward; and as he was a gentleman with a distinct liking for talking of his own doings, we may amuse ourselves by supposing that it had to do with those Red Republican days which he was not fond of recalling.

Great was Honore's consternation at this news. In the first place, owing to M. de Balzac's constant vapourings about the enormous wealth he would leave to his children, it is doubtful whether Honore, who was probably not admitted to his parents' confidence, had realised up to this time that he would have to earn his own living. Then, if it _were_ necessary for him to work for his bread, he now knew enough of the routine of a lawyer's office to look with horror on the prospect of drawing up wills, deeds of sale, and marriage settlements for the rest of his life. He never forgave the legal profession the shock and the terror he experienced at this time, and his portraits of lawyers, with some notable exceptions, are marked by decided animus. For instance, in "Les Francais peints par eux-memes," edited by Cunmer, the notary, as described by Balzac, has a flat, expressionless face and wears a mask of bland silliness; and in "Pamela Giraud" one of the characters remarks, "A lawyer who talks to himself--that reminds me of a pastrycook who eats his own cakes." It was rather unfair to decry all lawyers, because of the deadly fear he felt at the prospect of being forced into their ranks, as there is little doubt that he would have shrunk with like abhorrence from any business proposed to him.

His childish longing for fame had developed and taken shape, and for him, if he lacked genius, there was no alternative but the dragging out of a worthless and wearying existence. Conscious of his powers, it was a time of struggle, of pa.s.sionate endeavour, possibly of bewilderment; with the one great determination standing firm in the midst of a chaos of doubt and difficulty--the determination to persevere, and to become a writer at any cost.

He therefore, to his father's consternation, announced his objection to following a legal career, and begged to be allowed an opportunity of proving his literary powers. Thereupon there were lively discussions in the family; but at last the kindly M. de Balzac, apparently against his wife's wishes, yielded to his son's earnest entreaties, and allowed him two years in which to try his fortune as a writer. The friends of the family were loud in their exclamations of disapproval at the folly of this proceeding, which would, they said, waste two of the best years of Honore's life. As far as they could see, he possessed no genius; and even if he _were_ to succeed in a literary career, he would certainly not gain a fortune, which after all was the princ.i.p.al thing to be considered. However, either the strenuousness and force of Honor's arguments, or the softness of his father's heart, prevailed in his favour; and in spite of the opposition of the whole of his little world, he was allowed to have his own way, and to make trial of his powers. The rest of the family retired to Villeparisis, about sixteen miles from Paris, and he was established in a small attic at No. 9, Rue Lesdiguieres, which was chosen by him for its nearness to the Bibliotheque de l'a.r.s.enal, the only public library of which the contents were unknown to him. At the same time, appearances, always all-important in the Balzac family, were observed, by the fiction that Honore was at Alby, on a visit to a cousin; and in this way his literary venture was kept secret, in case it proved unsuccessful.

Having arranged this, and a.s.serted himself to the extent of insisting that his son should be allowed a certain amount of freedom in choosing his career, even if he fixed on a course which seemed suicidal, old M.

de Balzac appears to have retired from the direction of affairs, and to have left his energetic wife to follow her own will about details.

There was no doubt in that lady's mind as to the methods to be pursued. Her husband had been culpably weak, and had allowed himself to be swayed by the freak of a boy who hated work and wanted an excuse for idleness. Honore must be brought to reason, and be taught that "the way of transgressors is hard," and that people who refuse to take their fair share of life's labour must of necessity suffer from deprivation of their b.u.t.ter, if not of their bread. Her husband was an old man, and had lost money, and it was most exasperating that Honore should refuse a splendid chance of securing his own future, and one which would most probably never occur again. To a good business woman, who did not naturally share in the boundless optimistic views of M. de Balzac for the future, the cra.s.s folly of yielding to the wishes of a boy who could not possibly know what was best for him, was glaringly apparent. However, being a practical woman, when she had done her duty in making the household--except the placid M. de Balzac--thoroughly uncomfortable, and had most probably driven Honore almost wild with suppressed irritation, she embarked on the plan of campaign which was to bring the culprit back, repentant and submissive, to the lawyer's desk.

To accomplish this as quickly as possible, it was necessary to make him extremely uncomfortable; so having furnished his attic with the barest necessities--a bed, a table, and a few chairs--she gave him such a scanty allowance that he would have starved if an old woman, _la mere Comin_, whom he termed his Iris, had not been told to go occasionally to look after him. In spite of the gaiety of Balzac's letters from his garret, the hardships he went through were terrible, and in later years he could not speak of his sufferings at this time without tears coming to his eyes. Apparently he could not even afford to have a fire; and the attic was extremely draughty, blasts coming from the door and window; so that in a letter to his sister he begs her, when sending the coverlet for which he has already asked, to let him have a _very_ old shawl, which he can wear at night. His legs, where he feels the cold most, are wrapped in an ancient coat made by a small tailor of Tours, who to his disgust used to alter his father's garments to fit him, and was a dreadful bungler; but the upper half of his body is only protected by the roof and a flannel waistcoat from the frost, and he needs a shawl badly. He also hopes for a Dantesque cap, the kind his mother always makes for him; and this pattern of cap from the hands of Madame de Balzac figures in the accounts of his attire later on in his life. It is not surprising that he has a cold, and later on a terrible toothache; but it _is_ astonishing that, in spite of cold, hunger, and discomfort, he preserves his gaiety, pluck, and power of making light of hardships, traits of character which were to be strikingly salient all through his hard, fatiguing career. In spite of the misery of his surroundings, he had many compensations. He had gained the wish of his heart, life was before him, beautiful dreams of future fame floated in the air, and at present he had no hateful burden of debt to weigh him down. Therefore he managed to ignore to a great extent the physical pain and discomfort he went through, as he ignored them all through his life, except when ill health interfered with the accomplishment of his work.

Another characteristic which might also be amazing, did we not meet it constantly in Balzac's life, is his longing for luxury and beauty, and his extraordinary faculty for embarking in a perfectly business-like way on wildly unreasonable schemes. With hardly enough money to provide himself with scanty meals, he intends to economise, in order to buy a piano. "The garret is not big enough to hold one," as he casually remarks; but this fact, which, apart from the starving process necessary in order to obtain funds, would appear to the ordinary mind an insurmountable obstacle to the project, does not daunt the ever-hopeful Honore.

He has taken the dimensions, he says; and if the landlord objects to the expense of moving back the wall, he will pay the money himself, and add it to the price of the piano. Here we recognise exactly the same Balzac whose vagrant schemes later on were listened to by his friends with a mixture of fascination and bewilderment, and who, in utter despair about his pecuniary circ.u.mstances at the beginning of a letter, talks airily towards the end of buying a costly picture, or acquiring an estate in the country.

There is a curious and striking contrast in Balzac between the backwardness in the expression of his literary genius, and the early development and crystallisation of his character and powers of mind in other directions. Even when he realised his vocation, forsook verse, and began to write novels, he for long gave no indication of his future powers; while, on the other hand, at the age of twenty, his views on most points were formed, and his judgments matured.

Therefore, unlike most men, in whom, even if there be no violent changes, age gradually and imperceptibly modifies the point of view, Balzac, a youth in his garret, differed little in essentials from Balzac at forty-five or fifty, a man of world-wide celebrity. He never appears to have pa.s.sed through those phases of belief and unbelief --those wild enthusiasms, to be rejected later in life--which generally fall to the lot of young men of talent. Perhaps his reasoning and reflective powers were developed unusually early, so that he sowed his mental wild oats in his boyhood. At any rate, in his garret in 1819 he was the same Balzac that we know in later life. Large-minded and far-seeing--except about his business concerns--he was from his youth a _voyant_, who discerned with extraordinary acuteness the trend of political events; and with an intense respect for authority, he was yet independent, and essentially a strong man.

This absolute stability--a fact Balzac often comments on--is very remarkable, especially as his was a life full of variety, during which he was brought into contact with many influences. He studied the men around him, and gauged their characters--though it must be allowed that he did not make very good practical use of his knowledge; but owing to his strength and breadth of vision, he was himself in all essentials immovable.

The same ambitions, desires, and opinions can be traced all through his career. The wish to enter political life, which haunted him always, was already beginning to stir in 1819, when he wrote at the time of the elections to a friend, M. Theodore Dablin, that he dreamt of nothing but him and the deputies; and his last book, "L'Envers de l'Histoire contemporaine," accentuated, if possible more than any work that had preceded it, the extreme Royalist principles which he showed in his garret play, the ill-fated "Cromwell."

He never swerved from the two great ambitions of his life--to be loved, and to be famous. He was faithful in his friendships; and when once he had found the woman whom he felt might be all in all to him, and who possessed besides personal advantages the qualifications of birth and money--for which he had always craved--no difficulties were allowed to stand in the way, and no length of weary waiting could tire out his patience. He was constant even to his failures. He began his literary career by writing a play, and all through his life the idea of making his fortune by means of a successful drama recurred to him constantly. Several times he went through that most trying of experiences, a failure which only just missed being a brilliant success, and once this affected him so much that he became seriously ill; but, with his usual spirit and courage, he tried again and again.

His friend Theophile Gautier, writing of him in _La Presse_ of September 30th, 1843, after the failure of "Pamela Giraud," said truly that Balzac intended to go on writing plays, even if he had to get through a hundred acts before he could find his proper form.

One part of Balzac never grew up--he was all his life the "child-man"

his sister calls him. After nights without sleep he would come out of his solitude with laughter, joy, and excitement to show a new masterpiece; and this was always more wonderful than anything which had preceded it. He was more of a child than his nieces, Madame Surville tells us: "laughed at puns, envied the lucky being who had the 'gift' of making them, tried to do so himself, and failed, saying regretfully, 'No, that doesn't make a pun.' He used to cite with satisfaction the only two he had ever made, 'and not much of a success either,' he avowed in all humility, 'for I didn't know I was making them,' and we even suspected him of embellishing them afterwards."[*]

He was delightfully simple, even to the end of his life. In 1849 he wrote from Russia, where he was confined to his room with illness, to describe minutely a beautiful new dressing-gown in which he marched about the room like a sultan, and was possessed with one of those delightful joys which we only have at eighteen. "I am writing to you now in my termolana,"[+] he adds for the satisfaction of his correspondent.

[*] "Balzac, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres, d'apres sa Correspondance," by Madame L. Surville (nee de Balzac).

[+] "H. de Balzac--Correspondance," vol. ii. P. 418.

We must now return to Honore in his attic, where, as in later years, he drank much coffee, and was unable to resist the pa.s.sion for fruit which was always his one gourmandise. He records one day that he has eaten two melons, and must pay for the extravagance with a diet of dry bread and nuts, but contemplates further starvation to pay for a seat to see Talma in "Cinna."

He writes to his sister: "I feel to-day that riches do not make happiness, and that the time I shall pa.s.s here will be to me a source of pleasant memories. To live according to my fancy; to work as I wish and in my own way; to do nothing if I wish it; to dream of a beautiful future; to think of you and to know you are happy; to have as ladylove the Julie of Rousseau; to have La Fontaine and Moliere as friends, Racine for a master, and Pere-Lachaise to walk to,--oh! if it would only last always."[*]

[*] "Correspondance," vol. i.

Pere-Lachaise was a favourite resort when he was not working very hard; and it was from there that he obtained his finest inspirations, and decided that, of all the feelings of the soul, sorrow is the most difficult to express, because of its simplicity. Curiously enough, he abandoned the Jardin des Plantes because he thought it melancholy, and apparently found his reflections among the tombs more cheerful. He decided that the only beautiful epitaphs are single names--such as La Fontaine, Ma.s.sena, Moliere, "which tell all, and make one dream."