Here’s an excerpt:

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Reblogged from Bennythomas's Weblog:

The Yahoo Balzac Group will be reading and discussing this work beginning October 1.

Publisher’s Comment: The novel begins with a brilliant comedic scene in which the local bourgeoisie wonders about its new vicar, a dashingly handsome young man with a dark, brooding personality. Ultimately, they begin to uncover his “terrible” past . . .

Now that we have finished reading The Human Comedy, we are exploring other works by Balzac and relating to Balzac.

The first work chosen was a biography: The Prodigal Genius: The Life and Times of Honoré de Balzac by by Noel B. Gerson. We began June 1, 2012.

Chapter 1: Seraphitus

Balzac begins with a travelogue of the fiords of Norway, concentrating ultimately on one isolated valley that is isolated by the roaring waters of the Sieg River which rises in Sweden and by the forbidding mountains of Jarvis.

We begin with two figures cross-country skiing UP a mountain, past unimaginable abysses. One of them is Minna Becker, daughter of the village pastor. The other is apparently (why I say this will itself become apparent soon) a pale young male named Seraphitus, who expertly guides Minna up the slope to an Alpine meadow.

It is evident that Minna is in love with Seraphitus, but the latter urges her to consider marrying a young man named Wilfrid. But first, let’s get a short description of Seraphitus:

“His complexion was of marvellous whiteness, which brought out vividly the coral lips, the brown eyebrows, and the silken lashes, the only colors that trenched upon the paleness of that face, whose perfect regularity did not detract from the grandeur of the sentiments expressed in it; nay, thought and emotion were reflected there, without hindrance or violence, with the majestic and natural gravity which we delight in attributing to superior beings. That face of purest marble expressed in all things strength and peace.”

It is useful to remember that the name Seraphitus reminds one of the Seraphim, one of the highest orders of angels in Christian belief.

At the alpine meadow, Seraphitus gives Minna some rare flowers which have pushed up through the snows and requests that she wear them in her bosom. Then he guides her down the slope back to the village, where they call on the girl’s father, Pastor Becker.

One of the first clues we get to the strange nature of Seraphitus is that Becker addresses him/her as mademoiselle. To Minna, Seraphitus is a he; to Becker, a she.

Seraphitus returns to his house, the only stone house in the village, which is referred to by locals as “The Swedish Castle,” even though it is but a house. His/her servant is an old man named David, who sees his employer as Seraphita:

“Wrapped as he was in a formless garment, which resembled equally a woman’s robe and a man’s mantle, it was impossible not to fancy that the slender feet which hung at the side of the couch were those of a woman, and equally impossible not to note how the forehead and the outlines of the head gave evidence of power brought to its highest pitch.

“‘She suffers, and she will not tell me,’ thought the old man. ‘She is dying, like a flower wilted by the burning sun.’

“And the old man wept.”
Chapter 2: Seraphita

Seraphitus/-a is ensconced in his/her “Swedish Castle” in the small almost inaccessible Norwegian village, when the servant, David, announces a visitor: It is none other than the Wilfrid that Seraphitus wants Minna Becker to marry.

Except it seems that Wilfrid is in love with Seraphita. (I am starting to lose myself in all the gender tagging.) Where Minna sees Seraphit[x] as a male, Wilfrid sees her as a female.

Seraphit[x] tells Wilfrid about the skiing trip up the mountain, to the latter’s consternation.

Wilfrid tells S: “What can I tell you that you do not know? Besides, the request is ironical. You allow yourself no intercourse with social life; you trample on its conventions, its laws, its customs, sentiments, and sciences; you reduce them all to the proportions such things take when viewed by you beyond this universe.”

S’s answer: “Therefore you see, my friend, that I am not a woman. You do wrong to love me. What! am I to leave the ethereal regions of my pretended strength, make myself humbly small, cringe like the hapless female of all species, that you may lift me up? and then, when I, helpless and broken, ask you for help, when I need your arm, you will repulse me! No, we can never come to terms.”

Nonetheless, Wilfred loves S. Minna loves S. S wants Wilfrid and Minna to love each other. What a stand-off! It becomes evident that S is some sort of supernatural being who is above mixing carnally with mere mortals:

“Speed thy way through the luminous spheres; behold, admire, hasten! Flying thus thou canst pause or advance without weariness. Like other men, thou wouldst fain be plunged forever in these spheres of light and perfume where now thou art, free of thy swooning body, and where thy thought alone has utterance. Fly! enjoy for a fleeting moment the wings thou shalt surely win when Love has grown so perfect in thee that thou hast no senses left; when thy whole being is all mind, all love. The higher thy flight the less canst thou see the abysses. There are none in heaven. Look at the friend who speaks to thee; she who holds thee above this earth in which are all abysses. Look, behold, contemplate me yet a moment longer, for never again wilt thou see me, save imperfectly as the pale twilight of this world may show me to thee.”

Sounds pretty high-flown. In any case, Wilfrid is totally flummoxed and decides to visit Pastor Becker and his daughter Minna. Wilfrid is confused by S:

“These phenomena are within us, not without us,” Wilfrid went on. “The being whom we call Seraphita seems to me one of those rare and terrible spirits to whom power is given to bind men, to crush nature, to enter into participation of the occult power of God. The course of her enchantments over me began on that first day, when silence as to her was imposed upon me against my will. Each time that I have wished to question you it seemed as though I were about to reveal a secret of which I ought to be the incorruptible guardian. Whenever I have tried to speak, a burning seal has been laid upon my lips, and I myself have become the involuntary minister of these mysteries. You see me here to-night, for the hundredth time, bruised, defeated, broken, after leaving the hallucinating sphere which surrounds that young girl, so gentle, so fragile to both of you, but to me the cruellest of magicians! Yes, to me she is like a sorcerer holding in her right hand the invisible wand that moves the globe, and in her left the thunderbolt that rends asunder all things at her will. No longer can I look upon her brow; the light of it is insupportable. I skirt the borders of the abyss of madness too closely to be longer silent. I must speak. I seize this moment, when courage comes to me, to resist the power which drags me onward without inquiring whether or not I have the force to follow. Who is she? Did you know her young? What of her birth? Had she father and mother, or was she born of the conjunction of ice and sun? She burns and yet she freeze; she shows herself and then withdraws; she attracts me and repulses me; she brings me life, she gives me death; I love her and yet I hate her! I cannot live thus; let me be wholly in heaven or in hell!”

The course of love never did run smooth.
Chapter 3: Seraphitus/Seraphita

In this chapter, we begin by Pastor Becker explaining to Minna and Wilfrid all about Emanuel Swedenborg, the prolific Swedish scientist, philosopher, and prophet who was born in Sweden in 1688 and died in London in 1772. It just so happens that Becker, who does not altogether believe in Swedenborg’s prolix thinking, nonetheless is impressed by his work.

He talks of a Baron Seraphitus, friend of Swedenborg, who lived in the “Swedish Castle” of Jarvis. He and his wife gave birth to a daughter, who is called Seraphita. The apparent gender confusion is due to whether the Spirit of Love or the Spirit of Wisdom is uppermost:

“The Spirit of Love has acquired strength, the result of all vanquished terrestrial passions; it loves God blindly. But the Spirit of Wisdom has risen to understanding and knows why it loves. The wings of the one are spread and bear the spirit to God; the wings of the other are held down by the awe that comes of understanding: the spirit knows God. The one longs incessantly to see God and to fly to Him; the other attains to Him and trembles. The union effected between the Spirit of Love and the Spirit of Wisdom carries the human being into a Divine state during which time his soul is woman and his body man, the last human manifestation in which the Spirit conquers Form, or Form still struggles against the Spirit,—for Form, that is, the flesh, is ignorant, rebels, and desires to continue gross. This supreme trial creates untold sufferings seen by Heaven alone,—the agony of Christ in the Garden of Olives.”

Wilfrid begins reading one of Swedenborg’s books which Becker hands to him. Their evening is interrupted by S’s old servant David, who cries out:

“For the last five hours she has stood erect, her eyes raised to heaven and her arms extended; she suffers, she cries to God. I cannot cross the barrier; Hell has posted the Vertumni as sentinels. They have set up an iron wall between her and her old David. She wants me, but what can I do? Oh, help me! help me! Come and pray!”

Okay, I’m not going to explain all this as it’s rather involved, and Balzac is not terribly convincing (as always whenever he goes too deeply into philosophy), but suffice it to say that S manages to fend off the demonic tempters who have attacked her.

The rest of the chapter consists of separate conversations of S with Minna and Wilfrid — all of uncertain purpose. As before, it is the male side of S that talks with Minna and the female side with Wilfrid.
Chapter 4: The Clouds of the Sanctuary

Clouds is right. In essence, this chapter contains a long conversation in “The Swedish Castle” between Seraphitus/Seraphita and Pastor Becker, his daughter Minna, and Wilfrid. Although I will attempt (and probably fail) to convey Balzac’s summary about the spirit, matter, number, and all those other ineffable things, I can tell you that I find it downright strange for an angelic being to be talking so far over the heads of these poor mortals when a quiet half-smile and silence would have been more effective. But you know Balzac: you-know-who rushes in where angels fear to tread.

To return to the effable, tea is served to the visitors; and the old servant, David, is also present.

S begins announcing that this is probably the last time they will see him/her because “this winter has killed me.” The conflict referred to briefly in the Chapter 3 summary has gladdened S and resolved him/her to leave this life:

“Do you think that you have conquered?” asked Minna.

“I do not know,” she said, “perhaps I have only taken a step in the path.”

At this point, S enters into a very long disquisition on the relationship between God, matter, and the spirit. I will not attempt to summarize Balzac’s own summary of the Complete Works of Emanuel Swedenborg — nor, trust me, do you want to read such a summary. S did make an interesting point on the subject of faith:

“To believe,” continued Seraphita, in her Woman’s voice, for the Man had finished speaking, “to believe is a gift. To believe is to feel. To believe in God we must feel God. This feeling is a possession slowly acquired by the human being, just as other astonishing powers which you admire in great men, warriors, artists, scholars, those who know and those who act, are acquired. Thought, that budget of the relations which you perceive among created things, is an intellectual language which can be learned, is it not? Belief, the budget of celestial truths, is also a language as superior to thought as thought is to
instinct. This language also can be learned. The Believer answers with a single cry, a single gesture; Faith puts within his hand a flaming sword with which he pierces and illumines all. The Seer attains to heaven and descends not. But there are beings who believe and see, who know and will, who love and pray and wait. Submissive, yet aspiring to the kingdom of light, they have neither the aloofness of the Believer nor the silence of the Seer; they listen and reply. To them the doubt of the twilight ages is not a murderous weapon, but a divining rod; they accept the contest under every form; they train their tongues to every language; they are never angered, though they groan; the acrimony of the aggressor is not in them, but rather the softness and tenuity of light, which penetrates and warms and illumines. To their eyes Doubt is neither an impiety, nor a blasphemy, nor a crime, but a transition through which men return upon their steps in the Darkness, or advance into the Light.

Finally, after many more paragraphs along the same line, S stops. Wilfrid asks the rather singular question as to why S does not marry, to which he/she answers that indeed he/she is already betrothed:

“Ask not my secret,” she said; “I will promise, if our father permits it, to invite you to these mysterious nuptials.”

S throws open a window and indicates that Spring is coming, while everyone is more or less flabbergasted. (That includes me, too, dear reader.)
Chapter 5: Farewell
It is now time for S to make good on his/her promise to die soon. While Wilfrid and Minna are arguing whether the divine creature is male or female, S comes down to them and asks to go to the falls of the Sieg. Balzac paints a picture of natural power and glory while S weakens and dies, but not without some energetic deathbed speeches that I am sure would be well beyond me if I were in a similar situation. The servant David comes and, as if he were young again, lifts the body of S and carries it to the Swedish Castle.
Chapter 6: The Path to Heaven

Odds bodkins! Seraphitus/Seraphita is not only still alive, but takes the next two chapters to die. Here I was opening for a wild Norwegian wake where herring and akvavit are consumed in vast quantities, but such is not to be. No, no, S still has a lot to say; and both Wilfrid and Minna still do not have copious amounts of blood issuing from their ears. That is to come.

This post is not so much of a summary, because I think what S is talking about is mostly beans. I am talking about lines such as:

“Who can tell how many times the human being lives in the sphere of Instinct before he is prepared to enter the sphere of Abstractions, where thought expends itself on erring science, where mind wearies at last of human language? for, when Matter is exhausted, Spirit enters. Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude whose starry plains are but the vestibule of Spiritual Worlds? He feels his way amid the void, makes trial of nothingness, and then at last his eyes revert upon the Path. Then follow other existences,—all to be lived to reach the place where Light effulgent shines. Death is the post-house of the journey. A lifetime may be needed merely to gain the virtues which annul the errors of man’s preceding life. First comes the life of suffering, whose tortures create a thirst for love. Next the life of love and devotion to the creature, teaching devotion to the Creator,—a life where the virtues of love, its martyrdoms, its joys followed by sorrows, its angelic hopes, its patience, its resignation, excite an appetite for things divine. Then follows the life which seeks in silence the traces of the Word; in which the soul grows humble and charitable. Next the life of longing; and lastly, the life of prayer. In that is the noonday sun; there are the flowers, there the harvest!”

While S is “dying” of excessive talk, I would like to make a point. There is something about how profundity is conveyed in fiction of the time which doesn’t work today. I found the same problem with Ossian, whom I found unreadable. And I have not been kind to Balzac’s other philosophical studies. It was to take a few decades before writers like Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche could write about ultimate things without launching into the Ultimate Boredom of the Spheres in which Abstractions transcend Matter and Spirit, not to mention Word and Number and the Square Root of Minus One.

If you cotton to this kind of writing, please forgive me. That would show a tolerance to blather that would arouse my deepest sympathies. I’ll send you a card…
Chapter 7: The Assumption  

I’m not quite sure at this point whether S has shuffled off his/her mortal coil — or not. Whenever a creature so epicene buys the farm, there is considerable room for doubt:

“The aspiration of the Soul toward heaven was so contagious that Wilfrid and Minna, beholding those radiant scintillations of Life, perceived not Death.

“They had fallen on their knees when he had turned toward his Orient, and they shared his ecstasy.

“The fear of the Lord, which creates man a second time, purging away his dross, mastered their hearts.

“Their eyes, veiled to the things of Earth, were opened to the Brightness of Heaven.

“Though, like the Seers of old called Prophets by men, they were filled with the terror of the Most High, yet like them they continued firm when they found themselves within the radiance where the Glory of the Spirit shone.

“The veil of flesh, which, until now, had hidden that glory from their eyes, dissolved imperceptibly away, and left them free to behold the Divine substance.

“They stood in the twilight of the Coming Dawn, whose feeble rays prepared them to look upon the True Light, to hear the Living Word, and yet not die.

“In this state they began to perceive the immeasurable differences which separate the things of earth from the things of Heaven.”

Among those differences is the overuse of certain words, such as “veil” or “Spirit.”

There follows some mummery during which S enters the afterlife in plain view of Minna and Wilfrid and becomes, surprise, a seraph.

This whole experience sobers Minna and Wilfrid up so considerably that they decide to speak in abstract nouns with initial caps for ever after. And they decide to go to heaven together.
Read it here

Summarized by Jim, April 2012

PART I

April, 1839. Elections are imminent and Madame Marion (a widow), readying her garden for a meeting of forty, is dreaming of an attendance of seventy. When her brother Colonel Giguet expresses doubt about so many, she says the regular visitors to her salon for twenty-four years had better not fail them.

Colonel Giguet, a respected officer in the Grand Army, rises and goes to bed with the sun and is devoted to his roses. His son, Simon, has aspirations of being elected and marrying the wealthy Cecile Beauvisage.

Francois Keller has represented Arcis-sur-Aube for twenty years and proposes passing the seat on to his son Charles, the grandson of Comte de Gondreville. But since this would wound the pride of the newly-risen bourgeoisie who like to think themselves independent, it is proposed that they nominate a strawman who will later be made a pubic official and relinguish the seat to Charles.

Old Notary Grevin, staunch ally of Comte de Gondreville and former mayor, announces his intention to back Charles Keller. Grevin’s son-in-law, Beauvisage, affects independence from Grevin and is allowed to do so because it suits Grevin’s purposes. When Beauvisage hears of his father-in-law’s intention, he declares that, although he has the highest esteem for Charles Keller, he will vote for the first-comer rather than have Arcis remain a “rotten borough”.

The Arcis arrondissement remains divided into factions supporting the Cinq-Cygnes or the Gondrevilles because of the supposed abduction of Senator Malin (now the Comte de Gondreville) by two Simeuse brothers and the resulting trial.

Simon Giguet is described as a long-winded, bilious-looking bore who always dressed in baggy black with a stiff white collar.

The current mayor, Beauvisage, arrives with Achille Pigoult who was loaned the money to purchase Grevin’s practice by the Comte de Gondreville and who Simon suspects could be an enemy.

The owner of the best inn in Arcis, Poupart who married Gothard’s sister, is devoted to the Cinq-Cygnes. Colonel Giguet’s valet cleverly convinced Poupart that he would be doing an ill-turn to the Gondrevilles by backing Simon.

When approximately fifty men are present, Simon calls the meeting to order, saying that his father wishes Beauvisage to preside. When Beauvisage is tongue-tied, Pigoult rushes to the rescue, saying how Beauvisage is placing patriotism before family and more.

Simon then suggests that Fromaget and Marcelin act as inspectors of the ballot, but Pigoult craftily suggests they each vote for two by secret ballot and then announces it will be Monsieur Mollot, the clerk of the court, and Monsieur Godivet, the registrar. When Simon is announced as a candidate, Pigoult cries that they are moving too fast. It appears that there are few in the district who are not indebted to the Comte de Gondreville.

While Simon’s speaking technique is putting the party to sleep indoors, the Ministerial faction (Keller/Gondreville party currently in control) are outside counting the electors entering the Giguet house. As the four officials walk toward the square, M Groslier (superintendent of police) calls Goulard aside and tells him that Charles Keller (their proposed candidate) was killed during the fighting in Africa. Confidential instructions regarding the election are to follow. Shortly they see old Madame Beauvisage talking to the people in the square and Sinot (an attorney to the Royalists of Arcis) rushing to Madame Marion’s house.

Both Goulard and Marest have been turned down in the past as suitors for Mlle Beauvisage and would like to spoil Simon’s chances.

The meeting breaks up and as Pigoult comes out of the house, Vinet asks him what happened. Pigoult replies that all but five (Poupart, my grandfather, Mollot, Sinot, and Pigoult) had promised to use every means in their power to get Simon elected. He mentions that he has made a mortal enemy of Simon, but that he will make sure the Comte de Gondreville hears the calumies said about him.

In addition to vineyards, hosiery manufacturing is important in the area. Workers use middlemen to sell their products in Paris. When in his early twenties, Beauvisage’s mother paid him one hundred fifty thousand francs as his portion of his late father’s estate and advised him to purchase his master’s hosiery business. His energy and astuteness in business enabled young Beauvisage to greatly increase his fortune. Upon his return to Arcis, Beauvisage (of a family faithful to the Simeuses) married Severine Grevin (daughter of an enemy), prompting the application of Louis XVIII’s famous saying: “Union et oubli” (“Union and Oblivion”). After two years of marriage, Severine and her father realized that her husband’s only talent was common sense in business. Severine consulted her father on all subjects, leading her husband to think she was mistress of all knowledge as well as mistress of the house.

Cecile-Renee Beauvisage is the only child of Phileas and Severine. It was rumoured at the time of her birth that her father was actually Melchior de Chargeboeuf who had been sub-prefect and living in Arcis for five years. The rumours died down after the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne, upon hearing the rumours of his connection with enemies of her family, had him transferred. He never returned to Arcis, so the child’s resemblance to him in both appearance and mannerisms was not noted.

Severine ruled the family and kept her husband working in his hosiery business which paid their living expenses and enabled her to invest their interest. In 1830, with a half million francs in capital, the business was sold to Jean Violette (grandson of one of the chief witnesses for the prosecution in the Simeuse trial). The Beauvisage house is one of the best in Arcis and well situated. Severine hides her husband’s intellectual inepititude by feigning jealousy to keep him from paying visits in the evening. This has the added benefit of allowing her freedom in the evenings since her husband retires at eight. However, this life suits him and he is the happiest man in Arcis. Cecile is now nineteen. When asked about Simon, she replies that he bores her, but there is no one else suitable in Arcis.

Madame Beauvisage’s father, Grevin, is seventy-six. He has been life-long friends with the Comte de Gondreville (Malin) who is eighty, although deep down Grevin is resentful of Malin’s political success. He advises his daughter to marry Cecile to an ambitious man and go with them to Paris, leaving her fool of a husband behind. Grevin keeps early hours and rarely ventures beyond his garden. He lived the simple life because he wished to live long enough to guide a grandson-in-law in a political career as he did Malin. But he had planned on Cecile’s marrying Charles Keller who has now been killed. The only choice left in the district is the young Marquis de Cinq-Cygne but Cecile could not be happy there as long as his bitter enemy, the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne lived. As a last resort, he could ask Gondreville to find her a husband in Paris among the dukes of the Empire. He reveals his plans to Severine, including the fact that he purchased the Beauseant Mansion in 1831 and intends it as a wedding present.

A stranger has arrived in town. He is staying at the Mulet inn with his tiger (young boy groom) and his three trunks. It is supposed he is there to purchase land, maybe even the Chateau and he is supposed to be an Englishman. He refused to sign the register. Antonin Goulard (sous-prefet and Simon’s old schoolmate) sends his valet Julien on a spy mission to the Mulet inn to note what is painted on the stranger’s tilbury, along with any other information he can discover. Julien reports that there is a coat of arms on the tilbury which includes a coronet indicating he is a Count. While Julien was at the inn, Princesse de Cadignan’s lady’s maid (Anicette) arrived in a Cinq-Cygne carriage with a letter for the stranger. She wrote down the motto on the coat of arms, “Quo me trahit fortuna”, but it is unfamilar to Goulard. Anicette mentioned to Julien that there are many visitors at the Chateau of Cinq-Cygne and Monseigneur the Bishop of Troyes (Troubert) is also expected, probably to see the stranger. More arrivals are expected, including Monsieur le president Michu who is to spend a few days there.

Goulard learns that the stranger dined at Gondreville that evening and, although he was already in bed, is now preparing to go to Cinq-Cygne. After Goulard relates the findings, Cecile says they will know more soon as her grandfather, Grevin, is going to visit the Comte de Gondreville the next day. She asks Goulard to try, through Julien, to get Anicette to come work for the Beauvisages, adding that her mother will pay any wages. This fits perfectly with Goulard’s plans since he had told Julien to try to get Anicette into town, but not to mention his name, instead to tell her he had heard of a good place.

The next afternoon as the four officials (Antonin Goulard, Frederic Marest, Olivier Vinet and Monsieur Martener) are enjoying their custom of walking and smoking cigars, Simon joins them. Simon tells his old friend Goulard that he hopes he can count on his support. Goulard honestly tells him that his colleague of Bar-sur-Aube would complain if he did not support the government. Simon confesses that his Aunt Marion has gone to Grevin to propose on his behalf for Cecile. As they stand across from the Mulet inn, the stranger returns from Cinq-Cygne. The inn servants open the gate and Goulard follows the tilbury into the courtyard and asks the tiger (Paradis) to tell his master that the sous-prefet would like to see him.

Instead of giving his name, the stranger gives Goulard a confidential note from the Prefet telling him to consult with the bearer about the election, conform to his wishes in every respect and be absolutely secret. He tells Goulard that if the election is managed to the wishes of those who send him to Arcis, then Goulard will be made a prefect and gives him two more letters.

Goulard advises Vinet that the stranger, whom they must not appear to know, said Vinet would receive a letter from his father telling him to make sure that all the people of his department vote for the candidate that the government proposes. Vinet’s promotion depends on this and his secrecy.

A flash back of two months to Madame d’Espard’s salon in Paris incorporates the past history and current situation of dandy, gambler and perpetual debtor, Maxime de Trailles, now forty-eight. Knowing his dissipations are beginning to seriously affect his health, Maxime has decided he must settle and marry but won’t find a wealthy wife in Paris because they all know his past. In a private conversation with Count de Rastignac (Eugene), Maxime asks him to help him find a wife who bring bring him half a million and then send him as Minister to “some wretched little republic in America” long enough to justify giving him a post in Germany. Rastignac tells Maxime that he must distinguish himself in the coming electoral battle and adds that he will look at secret documents and confidential letters to find the locality where the Opposition will be the strongest. About seven weeks later, Maxime secretly takes a cab to Rastignac’s one morning before dawn. Rastignac tells him that the Ministry candidate for Arcis, Charles Keller, was killed in Africa; the news will be in the papers in two days. He gives Maxime copies of reports, letters of introduction and more verbal information, including the fact that the rival candidate (Simon) desires the seat to further his suit for an heiress. Within an hour, Maxime is on his way to Arcis in his tilbury.

Maxime de Trailles (the Stranger) chooses Phileas Beauvisage as candidate for the government since, as mayor, his name is known to the “mass of indifferent voters”. Advantages: Gondreville party consider Simon a presumptious upstart, minority legitimist and republican parties could support a ridiculous, inept candidate who would reflect poorly on a government which supported him, could cause a split among Simon’s supporters and, personally, it would aid him in his quest for an heiress if he can win over the grandfather, old Grevin.

All begins well, but suddenly another candidate appears! He is introduced by a series of letters.

PART II

The characters writing the letters (the L’Estorades, Marie Gaston, Madame de Camps and Charles de Sallenauve aka Dorlange) all appeared in Memoires de deux jeunes Mariees (Letters of Two Brides/Memoirs of Two Young Married Women).

Marie-Gaston left his home following the death of his wife. He is now planning to return and wants a monument for her. He has drawn a sketch and would like the work done by his old friend Dorlange. When the Comte de L’Estorade approaches the sculptor about it, Dorlange was so much hurt by his old friend’s neglect that he initially affected not to know Marie-Gaston. Later he informed the Comte that he was running for political office and would not have time to undertake such a work. The Comte offers Marie-Gaston his wife’s intervention as one who personally suffered from Madame Marie-Gaston’s neglect.

With Louise de Chaulieu (Madame Marie-Gaston) dead, Comtesse de L’Estorade decides to seek advice from Madame Octave de Camps (nee Cadignan and Madame Firmiani in her first marriage). The man who saved her daughter Nais from the runaway horses was not a stranger to her but had been giving her the “most obstinate attention” for three months. She would like him to stop following her and yet is in a dilemma of how to thank him without encouraging him.

Comte de L’Estorade (husband of Renee de Maucombe, Louise’s friend) writes Monsieur Marie-Gaston of the duel between the Duc de Rhetore (brother of dead Louise who was married to Marie Gaston) and Dorlange (who was Marie Gaston’s schoolmate) after Dorlange overhears the Duc slander Marie Gaston. Having no cards with him, Dorlange later presented the Duc with a sketch of the proposed mausoleum with his name and address as designer. Dorlange is shot in the leg and as the Duc helps him to the carriage, Dorlange says, “All the same, Marie-Gaston is an honest gentleman, a heart of gold–” and faints. The Comte mentions that Dorlange now has political aspirations and urges Gaston to dissuade his friend from leaving the field of Art where he has already made a name for himself.

The Comtesse writes to her friend of two schoolboys at Tours. Immediate friends, neither received any visitors in seven years and both were sent to Paris when their schooldays ended. Dorlange was sent to sculptor Bosio and given an allowance to be paid quarterly by a deaf, mute dwarf. He did well and won the Grand Prix at the Salon of 1831. Gaston, with his poems and dramas, did not fare well, but Dorlange generously shared his allowance until he left for his five years of study in Rome. That was the last time they saw each other.

When Marie-Gaston learned of Dorlange’s duel on his behalf, he planned to rush to Paris to see him, but was hindered by a dislocated ankle. He wrote to Comtesse de L’Estorade and begged her to visit Dorlange and express his gratitude. Using the excuse of the mausoleum, and accompanied by her husband and Nais, the Comtesse went to the studio where Nais immediately recognized the stranger who had saved her. Fortunately for the flustered Comtesse, her husband began conveying grateful thanks.

Dorlange remarked on the Comtesse’s resemblance to a member of the mysterious Lanty family and unveiled a statue showing the Comtesse herself “in the guise of a saint, crowned with glory.” It is Saint Ursula which was commissioned by a convent in the provinces. While trying to recreate the young lady from memory, Dorlange happened to see the Comtesse and, not at liberty to ask her to sit for him, took every opportunity to see and study her. Nais pipes up to say: “Oh! I have often seen you following us.” Dorlange goes on to say that he would have found out her name and address and asked her to view the statue prior to sending it to the convent and, if the likeness displeased her, changed it with a few chisel strokes.

When they finally discuss Marie-Gaston, Dorlange says he will not forgive, but he will forget and wishes Marie-Gaston would stop dwelling on his grief and find consolation in work and study.

Dorlange changed the face on his statue of Saint Ursula, but before he doing so, he made a mould and used a miniature for a statuette of the Comtesse which he sent as a gift, adding that the mould was now broken.

Dorlange goes several evenings a week to the Cafe des Arts and has became interested in politics. One evening a waiter warned him he was being watched by the police and later pointed out a little old man. The following Sunday, Dorlange happened to hear a talented organist and waited near the door of the organ loft for him to appear. It was the man from the Cafe! And stranger yet, he was followed by the dwarf from whom he received his quarterly allowance. Dorlange follows the organist and discovers from the porter that his name is Jacques Bricheteau. The man, whom Dorlange believes could inform him of his parentage, denys all, slams the door in his face and moves the next morning.

Dorlange receives a letter from Sweden which begins “Monsieur my Son” but it is unsigned. The letter says that Dorlange’s mother died in childbirth and his father had to leave Paris shortly afterward. The father made a fortune in another country and rose to a high government position. He would like his son to follow in his footsteps, but first he needs to be elected to the Chamber in France. He will send a quarter million francs to him via the Mongenod Brothers (bankers). He is to purchase land, shares in a newspaper and sculpt the state of Saint Ursula.

Dorlange writes Marie-Gaston of the woman whom the Comtesse de L’Estorade resembles. In 1835, Dorlange’s last year in Rome, Desroziers arranged for him to copy a statue of Zambinella. Through this he met the De Lanty family and begin giving lessons to the daughter Marianina. They moved to Paris and when Dorlange returned to Paris, he visited the family but met with a cold reception.

At the 1837 Salon, Dorlange saw the family with Maxime de Trailles. As he watched and listened, Max pronounced Dorlange’s entry atrocious and Marianina responded: “How fortunate you came with us! Without your enlightened knowledge I might, with the rest of the good public, have thought this statue admirable. It is a pity the sculptor is not here to learn his business from you.” At this point, the landlady of the building where Dorlange had his studio blurted out that he was right behind them, causing Marianina to blush.

After his success at the Salon and having been made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, Dorlange determined to call on the De Lanty family again. His reception was worse than before as he was told that it was discovered that Marianina had been writing love letters to him and had been sent to a convent. Dorlange told Monsieur de Lanty that he never received the letters and broke off the conference in response to numerous gestures by Comtesse de Lanty. The next morning Abbe Fontanon called to see Dorlange with an explanation. Several weeks prior, Monsieur de Lanty awakened in the night to find an intruder in the house and deduced that it was an admirer of his daughter. Marianina confessed to her mother and they concocted a plan to name Dorlange and went so far as to have Marianina write letters which they then hid in the garden for the dog to find. Dorlange discovers that all this was told to the Abbe, not by Marianina, but by her mother. He doubts the truth of the story as he trusts neither the De Lantys nor the Abbe who has a poor reputation.

Dorlange will be a candidate at Arcis-sur-Aube. The Comte de L’Estorade feels that the Opposition made a very poor choice and Dorlange will not have a chance of winning. The Comtesse receives a note that Armand has been ill all day. As her husband is out, Dorlange accompanies her and on the return trip, she finally hears the story of the woman she resembles. Back at the L’Estorade Mansion, the Comte scolds his wife and delights in telling Dorlange that his candidacy was discussed at the ministry dinner and was doomed to suffer an overwhelming defeat.

Dorlange writes his old friend Marie-Gaston that he has received a letter of instructions written in a domineering tone. He was told to ship the statue of Saint Ursula to the Ursuline Convent at Arcis-sur-Aube. He is to follow within a few days after announcing his candidancy to the Paris press. Dorlange suggests that Marie-Gaston could also enter into politics or at least return to his literary pursuits to help distract his mind from the past. He also urges him to make use of his home during his absence instead of returning to his own at Ville-d’Avray.

When Dorlange went to the bankers Mongenods for another quarter million francs which were to be awaiting him, he found them addressed to M. le Comte de Sallenauve, otherwise Dorlange, sculptor. Mongenod Senior could give no explanation other than that the funds had been forwarded through a Dutch banker.

When Dorlange arrives at Arcis, the diligence is met by Jacques Bricheteau, who instead of running away this time, smiles, tells him they are almost at the end of the mystery and escorts him to meet his father after warning him that his reception will probably be cold and dignified.

After determining that Dorlange has no objection to their political aspirations for him, the two men tell him of his family history. Francois-Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve, returned to France from the Emigration in 1808 and met his illegitmate son’s mother. She died after giving birth. Soon afterward, the Marquis was implicated in a conspiracy plot and fled the country after asking his fellow countryman Jacques Bricheteau to care for his son. Bricheteau originally kept the boy’s identity a secret for fear of government retaliation against his father. Then, during the Restoration, Bricheteau feared the remaining Sallenauve family would be the enemy of this natural son of the Marquis.

That evening the trio go to the office of Maitre Achille Pigoult to sign the papers necessary for Dorlange to take the name of de Sallenauve and be recognized officially as the son of the Marquis. Pigoult’s father recognized both the Marquis and Bricheteau (who is also the nephew of the Mother Superior), satisfying his son’s legal scruples. As the father is still keeping the location of his current home secret, the Chateau d’Arcis which was newly purchased for the son, is used as his official domicile. Very early the next morning, the Marquis departs without saying farewell to his son.

Marie-Gaston writes the Comtesse de L’Estorade from Arcis where he has gone in response to Dorlange’s letter expressing perplexity about his father. He tells her about all that has happened to Dorlange, including his chances to win the election. Mother Marie-des-Anges is expected to be a great support as she seems to have influence with all factions.

Marie-Gaston writes to the Comtesse de L’Estorade about the large banquet held at the Chateau to celebrate the dedication of the statue of Saint Ursula. The guest list was large and included people from the opposing political camps who were expected to decline. Sallenauve’s resemblance to Danton is noted and he explains that he is too young to be Danton’s son.

The Sallenauve party have left the Hotel de la Poste and are now living at the Chateau. Their former landlord keeps them up to date on Max’s doings because of his rivalry with the owner of the Mulet.

A Parisian journalist has arrived in Arcis and at the same time, a Mademoiselle Antonia Chocardelle with a bill signed by the late Charles Keller. Left largely on her own, Antonia takes up fishing and is spotted by Beauvisage. He is quite taken by the sight and, being a former fisherman, decides to give her some instruction during which they were spotted by his wife. Everything probably would have blown over except for the big fuss the woman makes and the severe scolding she gives her hen-pecked husband. After her tirade, the entire town soon learns of the happenings by the stream and yet more political followers desert the Beauvisage camp.

Antonia causes another stir in the town when she has an interview with Mother Marie-des-Anges and gives her the bill for ten thousand francs against Charles Keller and tells her to keep the money for the poor. The Mother Superior had been looking for a way to discuss the election with the Comte de Gondreville, but hesitated because of the recent loss of his grandson. The bill gave her the perfect excuse and she didn’t waste the opportunity. The Comte, upon leaving the convent, went straight to his friend Grevin who was later heard remarking “that certainly his son-in-law was too much of a fool, he had compromised himself with that Parisian woman, and would undoubtedly lose his election.”

Simon Giguet was the first speaker at the preliminary meeting which was held in a large dance-hall. Much laughter ensued when Achille Pigoult rose and announced that the absent Beauvisage was unwell. He added that Madame Beauvisage wished them to transfer their support to Simon Giguet. Sallenauve was well received and feels his election is certain.

Sallenauve relates the history of the woman who is his model and housekeeper. One night when her abusive husband returned home drunk with a pistol, threatening to kill her, she waited until he was asleep and lit a charcoal brazier. She passed out, but survived. Her husband died. The judge cleared her and a priest gave her absolution. She wanted to leave Italy and begged Sallenauve (then Dorlange) to take her with him. Luigia had a talent for singing and, although pious, had dreams of going on stage. Sallenauve hired a tutor for her and she is now ready to appear in public. Sallenauve realizes that as a future politician, the living arrangement will leave him open to gossip which would damage both their reputations, but fears she knows too little of Paris to live safely on her own at once. He would like to beg the assistance of the Comtesse. Sallenauve also mentions that Mother Marie-des-Anges will discover the convent where Mademoiselle de Lanty is.

In a brief letter Marie-Gaston tells the Comtesse that, although the Ministerial party tried to use the riots in Paris against them, Bricheteau saved the day and Sallenauve won by a landslide.

PART III

After the defeat in Arcis, Maxime de Trailles returns to Paris and rushes to the home of Colonel Franchessini who has just been elected by one of the “rotten” boroughs. After Maxime relates the story of the defeat, the Colonel advises him, “But, my dear fellow, political horizon apart, don’t let that million slip through your fingers.” Maxime assures him that the hoped-for marriage is only delayed and that the Beauvisages will still be moving to Paris, especially as the mortifying defeat made it impossible for them to stay in Arcis. They have purchased the Beauseant Mansion and Maxime will be in charge of directing repairs and furnishing.

Another part of Maxime’s salvage plan is to discover Sallenauve’s parentage and he asks Colonel Franchessini to request the assistance of Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, the current head of detectives. When the Colonel demurs a bit, Maxime says he thought Saint-Esteve was totally at the Colonel’s command for helping get him released from prison. The Colonel says he will do his best but it will take some time. As soon as Maxime leaves, Colonel Franchessini sends a secret message to Saint-Esteve requesting a meeting.

Colonel Franchessini and Rastinac discuss Vautrin and his anger at Rastignac for refusing his help. The Colonel tells Rastignac to be careful about angering Vautrin who now goes by Monsieur de Saint-Esteve and is rich and leading a respectable bourgeois life, although his aunt Jacqueline Collin who lives with him “still dabbles in certain dirty jobs.”

Rastignac goes to see Comtesse de L’Estorade to glean information about Sallenauve and have her arrange an “accidental” meeting. Only the Count is home, but he tells Rastignac that there is to be a children’s ball which Nais had long been desiring and, as her saviour, Sallenauve will be a sort of guest of honor.

During the year before his election, Sallenauve studied and learned about various matters which would pertain to his political career. At the children’s ball, Monsieur de Camps is impressed by Sallenauve’s knowledge. The arranged accidental meeting of Sallenauve and Rastignac takes place.

On returning to Ville d’Avray, Sallenauve discovers that Marie-Gaston has left for Paris with an Englishman he knew in Italy. Marie-Gaston’s old retainer, Philippe, gives Sallenauve a letter which the Englishman left for him in secret and after reading it, Sallenauve exclaims that they have a three hour start on him and rushes after them.

Philippe brings a letter he found addressed to Comtesse de L’Estorade. The Comtesse reads it but refuses to allow her husband to do so. When she hears a scream from her youngest child, the Comtesse rushes out dropping the letter. Her husband reads it. Marie-Gaston wrote that he planned to commit suicide in order to be with his deceased wife. He adds that the Comte will die of liver disease and urges the Comtesse to then marry Sallenauve as she will be much happier with him than with a man she married reluctantly and it will make for a much more pleasant foursome when they are reunited on the other side.

While M de L’Estorade and M de Camps are visiting Rastignac, Jacques Bricheteau arrives trying to locate Sallenauve. A letter from Sallenauve arrives while he is there and the Comtesse tells him to contact Sallenauve in care of Dr. Ellis in Hanwell, England.

Sallenauve’s letter reveals that the Englishman, Lord Lewin, pretended to go along with Marie-Gaston’s suicide plans and said there were some high waterfalls in South America where he had always dreamed of dying and invites Marie-Gaston to accompany him there. In reality he planned to place Marie-Gaston under the care of the specialist Dr. Ellis. Sallenauve is following them there, taking care not to be seen by Marie-Gaston and requests that the Comte make his apology to the President of the Chamber for missing the first sessions.

When the two men return, they say that Rastignac told them compromising discoveries had been made about Sallenauve in Arcis and the Comte absolutely refuses to take Sallenauve’s part with the President. A flashback relates the details of the compromising discoveries that Rastignac mentioned to M de L’Estorade and M de Camps who in turn mentioned it to their wives. Maxime de Trailles and Vinet told Rastignac that they have heard from two different sources, Madame Beauvisage and Vinet’s son Olivier, about a peasant woman from Romilly who arrived in Arcis on the last market day saying she is a Sallenauve and should be considered an heir. When Maitre Pigoult dismissed her, she went to the market square with a legal practitioner who had accompanied her from her village and loudly proclaimed her status. Legally it is felt that she has no case at all, but one never knows with a lengthy lawsuit and politically it could be very damaging to the newly-elected deputy Sallenauve. Rastignac states that the government will not get involved, but words it in such a way as to encourage the pursuit of the claim, especially as the Beauvisages have undertaken to pay all expenses. Maxime and Vinet decide that Maxime should place the matter in the hands of Desroches while Vinet lays low so as to appear uninvolved if he is called upon to speak of it in the Chamber.

Maxime goes to see Desroches at his home and is told that they do not have a legal case. However, Desroches advises that the peasant woman should give a petition for prosecution to the President of the Chamber of Deputies. It will be refused, but will also be public and picked up by the newspapers resulting in Sallenauve’s reputation being damaged. Desroches will not prepare the paperwork and does not want his name even mentioned. He recommends Massol for the job. As Maxime is leaving, he chances to ask Desroches where he is dining that evening. Desroches replies that Madame de Saint-Esteve is giving a dinner with the director of the London opera-house and others regarding a theatrical venture and he has been asked to look over the contracts. The press will be there to immediately start the publicity.

Another flashback relates that Herrera/Vautrin happened to hear Luigia singing at the Church. he rushed to his aunt, Madame de Saint-Esteve, who happened to have sent Luigia to Madame Fontaine for a consultation a few days earlier.

Around 1830, when Vautrin was very discouraged by the death of a friend he left the criminal world and is now head of detectives and is relentless in persecuting his former accomplices. But he is now bored with police work and is interested in politics.

Jacqueline Collin, reportedly once a mistress of Marat’s and skillful in the use of poisons has not reformed. But having made a large amount of money and now going by the name of Madame de Saint-Esteve, she can be choosier about her projects. She’s very inventive with the promotion of her marriage agency. She does not advertise in the papers, but has flyers designed by Gaudissart distributed in the country and abroad. She hires nice carriages to wait outside her office and well-dressed people to come and go and sing her praises. She dresses up and attends weddings, arriving in a carriage with servants. It is supposed that she arranged these matches. When Madame Fontaine’s clients are curious about their future husbands, the fortune teller mentions they will meet a handsome man and blatantly adds that the wedding will never come about without the assistance of Madame de Saint-Esteve’s agency. Vautrin’s aunt returns the favor by sending some of her clients to the “famous” Madame Fontaine who never makes a mistake.

Vautrin tells his aunt about the engraver/forger who was running from him, at which point, Jacqueline Collin says he is too easily recognized. Vautrin, a master of disguises in the past, says that wearing no disguise now has vastly increased his popularity with prospective clients. When Vautrin mentioned that he lost his man in the Church, Jacqueline Collin guesses that he was listening to a singer and tells him she knows her identity. She briefs him of Luigia’s situation and how shocked she was that Luigia and Sallenauve had been living together platonically.

Jacqueline (or Mme de Saint-Esteve as she is currently styling herself) doesn’t have as easy a time gaining Luigia’s trust as she expected, even after sending her to the fortune teller, Madame Fontaine.

Vautrin says that if Luigia is an “honest woman” then he doesn’t want to ruin her, adding that he knows a really respectable man who will get her on to the stage on honorable terms, without asking for anything in return. Jacqueline is flabberghasted that there could be such a person. It turns out that Vautrin has decided to take Rastignac’s advice and reinvent himself with a spotless reputation. “You may tell your Italian that Count Halphertius–a great Swedish lord, crazy about music and philanthropy–takes a great interest in her advancement.”

Chronologically in the story we’re now at the point when Sallenauve told Luigia that they must part. The next morning, Vautrin receives a note from his aunt that Luigia had run away from Sallenauve and come to her for an introduction to her respectable friend. She tells him to get into his disguise and come to meet the singer.

When Vautrin arrives at his aunt’s, even she would not have recognized him had she not known by which name he would be announced. Vautrin chuckles as he tells his aunt that Sallenauve came to him for assistance in locating Luigia. He also briefs her about his visit to the Englishman who had come to France to get a singer and financing for a London opera company.

Just after Jacqueline leaves her sitting-room to get Luigia, Ronquerolles bursts in. Of course he does not recognize Vautrin and Vautrin plays with him verbally. Vautrin leaves and since her plans for Luigia have changed, Jacqueline picks a quarrel with Ronquerolles and tells him about Count Halphertius and that she doesn’t know Luigia’s whereabouts since she ran away from the sculptor.

As soon as Ronquerolles’ coach is heard driving away, Vautrin, having snuck in the back way, enters the sitting-room. They chuckle about Ronquerolles as Vautrin had overheard most of the interview, then Jacqueline gets Luigia from her room and introduces her to Count Halphertius. He promises not to make advances toward Luigia or to expect anything from her except for keeping up appearances. There will be gossip and she must not have any lovers while he is her patron.

Luigia’s small audition was a success. Vautrin plans to go to London with the Englishmen to investigate the finances, etc. He asks his aunt to plan a dinner party which Count Halphertius will host and to include journalists (for publicity) and an attorney to go over the contracts on the spot. This is the dinner party which Desroches told Maxime he would be attending.

The requested guests are assembled at Mme de Saint-Esteve’s for the dinner party with the Englishman, Sir Francis Drake, and Vautrin in his persona of Count Halphertius arriving last. The dinner was a rather quiet affair as all these men, loaded with wit, had been advised not to risk offending the “chaste ears” of Luigia. They ate and drank, but they could not be said to have dined. Bixiou is bored and also a bit suspicious of the Count’s identity. He decides to test it by speaking of Sweden and Vautrin, by the aid of a book he studied, carries off his impersonation of a Swedish nobleman well. After dinner, La Luigia’s singing is extremely well-received. The contract is signed and Luigia is to leave the next day for London with Sir Francis Drake.

Sallenauve is still at the asylum (Hanwell) near London to be with Marie-Gaston who is worse. Jacques Bricheteau visits him to warn him of the political plots against him and tell him of the cold reception he received from the the l’Estorades. When consulted, the doctor advises Sallenauve to return to Paris as there is nothing he can do to aid his friend at this time.

Upon arriving in London, Sallenauve sees posters advertising Signora Luigia at Her Majesty’s Theatre. The house is sold out, but Sallenauve is able to privately purchase two seats. Sallenauve is as enchanted by the performance as the rest of the audience.

The performance ends just in time for Sallenauve and Bricheteau to catch the last boat for France, but when Bricheteau turns around, Sallenauve has vanished. In a discussion with Luigia at her hotel, Sallenauve learns that she had loved him the past two years, since he made no personal advances toward her thinks the he was indifferent or disgusted by her past life. Yet, she admits that had he made advances, she would have felt that he despised her. She accuses him of loving Madame de l’Estorade and he informs her that his only interest there was her resemblance to the woman he loved before he had even met Luigia. She tells him how Madame de Saint-Esteve introduced her to the foreign Count and how his vanity insists that the world think he is her lover–which she will never be as no one else will be able to win her heart, adding that he should not believe the gossip he will hear of her. Back at his hotel, Sallenauve tells Bricheteau that had a jewel in my hands and flung it away.

The Chamber has opened without Sallenauve and his party lost one important position by one vote. The president failed to report the receipt of Sallenauve’s letter saying he needed to be absent which led to the gossip that he had fled to avoid the investigation into his use of a name to which he had no right. Maxime de Trailles wrote a lengthy letter to Madame Beauvisage trying to salvage his position as future son-in-law after the loss of the election.

On the day when Sallenauve’s week’s leave of absence from the Chamber is up, the l’Estorades and Madame Octave de Camps are in the gallery. During the discussion and speculation of Sallenauve’s absence, he arrives and refutes all arguments, adding that an unnamed person (L’Estorade) was supposed to explain his absence to the President of the Chamber.

A vote regarding the admission of Sallenauve to the Chamber is called for. “Almost every member present rose to vote in favor of the admission of the new member; a few deputies of the Centre abstained from voting on either side.” Monsieur de Sallenauve was admitted and sworn in.

Read it here

Summarized by Dagny, November 2011 – January 2012

Part 1 Ch 1 – Departing Paris

Balzac begins with a chapter that shows the history of a building over almost three centuries, the building being the three-story residence with warehouse space near the present Hotel de Ville in the 4th Arrondisement.

The author warms to his task as he describes how the building changed from one generation to another until, “today” (presumably the 1840s) it is a rather grim pastiche of a building that looks to be in dubious taste, but is worth a lot of money for all that.

Part 1 Ch 2 – The History of a Tyranny

The building is currently owned by Mlle Brigitte Thuillier, the unmarried sister of Louis-Jerome Thuillier, who was laid off from his position as a sub-director of a clerical department of the monarchy at the time of the July Revolution of 1830, when Louis-Philippe, the “Citizen-King,” came into power.

Brigitte used to own her own business, sewing money bags for banks, which she sold at a profit to one of her employees. She bought the house described earlier and rented out the warehouse space (which formerly consisted of stables and miscellaneous outbuildings) to a book merchant and a dealer in paper. She also went into money-lending in a small way (which, as we all know from reading Balzac, is probably the most remunerative profession of all). The residential space she occupied herself and set about trying to find a useful occupation for her now “retired” brother Jerome. That business, as we shall see, involved property management.

Also, it was Brigitte who was responsible for Jerome marrying – for a huge dowry – a rather dim-witted young woman named Celeste, whom she put on an allowance and lorded over, but not without some delicacy and care. Jerome, who has been called “the handsome Thuillier” based on his looks and comportment several decades ago, still regards himself as quite a gay blade, and goes out by himself to balls, leaving Celeste to twiddle her thumbs with Brigitte.

Part 1 Ch 3 – Colleville

Thuillier’s best friend was a former fellow clerk named Colleville. He was one of the finance ministry’s “pluralists,” meaning that he simultaneously held down several jobs, including the position of clarinetist at the theater. It was at the theater that he met his wife, Flavie, and married her.

Unlike Thuillier, the Collevilles were philoprogenitive, and all of their children survived. One of them, named after Mme Celeste Thuillier, who, with her husband Jerome, had no luck in producing children.

No matter, Thuillier invited the Collevilles to move into one of their apartments, and – before that – had lent them a fair amount of money (which Balzac says Thuillier did not expect to be repaid). Where the Thuilliers are a pretty serious bunch, the Collevilles are happy-go-lucky.

So far, the Thuilliers and Collevilles are fairly attractive specimens of petits bourgeois, even the spinster Mlle Thuillier, who is the sharpest tack in the bunch.

Part 1 Ch 4 – The Circle of M and Mme Thuillier

Others in the circle are Phellion, Laudigeois, and a young man by the name of Charlie-Marie-Theodose de la Peyrade. He is thinking of marrying Celeste Colleville, whom the Thuilliers, being childless, will leave their fortune to and who looks to become a rich heiress.

Part 1 Ch 5 – A Principal Personage

The character of Charlie-Marie-Theodose de la Peyrade begins to come to the fore in this chapter. He is a young (aged 27) barrister who has rented rooms from the Thuilliers for the last three years and who has designs on the hand of Celeste Colleville. Hailing from Avignon in the South of France, he is ambitious and appears to have a good career ahead of him.

Balzac describes Theodose as a philanthropist and advocate of the working classes. Yet he seems to like to set people against one another: In the previous chapter, we saw him working on Thuillier by referring to Colleville as de Colleville, because for some reason he wore a rosette of the Legion of Honor, whereas Thuillier did not. Theodose begins to work on Flavie Colleville, the mother of Celeste, and against her husband by flattering her and acknowledging her potential for passion. With his declaration that she had been loved but not divined, Flavie felt divined indeed.

Part 1 Ch 6 – A Keynote

The main lineaments of the conflict are now in place. We are introduced to one of the author’s smarmier villains, a clerk named Cerizet, who is in league with Dutocq, an “artist in evil”. He has a history of plotting of infamous but legal deeds.
Cerizet and Dutocq wait for Theodose de la Peyrade, who joins them. C & D have a plan in mind involving some real estate on the Right Bank near the Madeleine. It sounds almost too good to be true, and the conspirators plan on persuading the wealthy Mlle Thuillier to buy the property for some reason that involves the larger plot to have Theodose wed Celeste Colleville.

Another plot arises on the part of Theodose and his friends to get M Thuillier elected to the Municipal Council, awarded a rosette of the Legion of Honor (which Colleville has and regarding which Thuillier is envious), and, farther on, named an Officer of the Legion and a Deputy in the government.

Part 1 Ch 5 – The Worthy Phellions

Cerizet, Dutocq, and La Peyrade want to replace the deceased Popinot on the municipal council with Thuillier. In order to do that, they must canvass their friends and trade some favors. THE favor of favors appears to be the hand of Celestine Colleville, who is the heir of the childless Thuilliers. La Peyrade and his friends are shameless about offering Celeste to everyone who has a son of marriageable age – though La  Peyrade secretly wants her for himself. To this end, he has begun a kind of desultory seduction of Celeste’s mother, Flavie.

M. Phellion is introduced as a pompous bore who likes to think of himself as the last of the Noble Romans, a veritable Cincinnatus: His motto is “nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa,” which translates to “to have a clear conscience and not pale at any charge.”

When La Peyrade tells M. Phellion the reason for his visit, the latter says he has his own candidate in mind for the post, Popinot’s nephew, the good doctor Horace Bianchon. Phellion has a young son, and La Peyrade casually drops the info about the possible availability of Celeste, which greatly interests Mme. Phellion, whose son Felix has already cast sheep’s eyes at the lovely heiress.

We hear a little about Phellion’s background, which does sound fairly impressive compared to that of some of the co-conspirators. He is respected in the National Guard for his boldness and compassion. He hopes the king will grant him at last the Legion of Honor as he thinks of retirement at nearly age 60.

Part 1 Ch 8 – Ad Majorem Theodosis Gloriam

An impromptu dinner and ball takes place at the Thuilliers with the express purpose of twisting arms so that Thuillier gets chosen to the municipal council. There is much discussion of the various factions and how they are maneuvering for the hand of Celeste. La Peyrade makes love to Flavie in order to get to Celeste. Flavie is more or less happily married to Colleville, but she is highly gratified by all the attention.

Part 1 Ch 10 – How Brigitte Was Won

Now it is La Peyrade’s turn to work on Brigitte, because it is she who must put up the money for the conspirators’ real estate transaction. He begins by urging her to get her friends Barbet and Metivier to back Thuillier’s quest for a Municipal council seat. She agrees, and we learn that the seat is not only in the bag, but it lacks just a few votes of being unanimous. So chalk this up as a victory for La Peyrade.

Now he begins to describe some of the details about the large house in the Madeleine on the Right Bank that sits unfinished on a desirable corner lot location that will make its value rise to a million … eventually. They can get it cheap at one hundred thousand francs even though its current unfinished value is four hundred thousand due to some partnership difficulties. The notary involved wants a cut of the deal under an assumed name – it’s all very complicated but potentially immensely profitable.

Brigitte is elated: she sees the dollar signs dance before her eyes. She agrees to put up the cash. When La Peyrade leaves, seemingly walking on air, Brigitte calls in Flavie Colleville and asks her to get an introduction from one of her old theater friends who made it into the nobility for an introduction to one Chaffaroux, a rich contractor, whom Brigitte wants to enlist for his opinion of the property.

Part 1 Ch 11 – The Reign of Theodose La Peyrade

The deal seems to be going through. But we are in the middle of another Balzacian financial deal which is beginning to grow increasingly murky:

“Ten days later a yellow poster announced the sale of the house, after due publication; the price named being seventy-five thousand francs; the final purchase to take place about the last of July. On this point Cerizet and Claparon had an agreement by which Cerizet pledged the sum of fifteen thousand francs (in words only, be it understood) to Claparon in case the latter could deceive the notary and keep him quiet until the time expired during which he might withdraw the property by bidding it in. Mademoiselle Thuillier, notified by Theodose, agreed entirely to this secret clause…[The notary] offered Claparon ten thousand francs to secure himself in this dirty business, — a sum which was only to be paid on receipt, through Claparon, of a counter-deed from the nominal purchaser of the property. The notary was aware that that sum was all-important to Claparon to extricate him from present difficulties, and he felt secure of him.”

Theodose is trying hard to keep pumping up the Thuilliers, the Phellions, the Minards, and all the others. Theodose is beginning to look quite anxiously over his shoulder for fear that something is gaining on him.

Something is.

Part 1 Ch 12 – Devils Against Devils

We find out why Theodose is apprehensive about the impending real estate deal with the Thuilliers. During his early days in poverty, La Peyrade cut some sort of deal with Cerizet, affixing his signature as a  barrister to some bills of exchange. In cutting this real estate deal, La Peyrade hopes eventually to rid himself of Cerizet and Dutocq.

Part 1 Ch 13 – The Perversity of Doves

Thuillier begins by being declared “a non-dispossessable property owner” by his notary Cardot (not to be confused with the notary who let the property slip through his fingers). Cardot even wants one of the apartments on the 3rd floor for one of his clients.

The Thuilliers appear to be in Seventh Heaven. But is La Peyrade off the hook for what he owes to Cerizet and Dutocq? La Peyrade continues to work on the Thuilliers, painting wonderful pictures of their finishing the house and making vast profits on rentals. He reminds Thuillier also that he’s working on the Legion of Honor for him, asking Thuillier for an additional 10,000 francs to “facilitate” Thuillier’s cross of the Legion of Honor. Thuillier agrees to give it to him. (Might this not be part of what La Peyrade owes Cerizet and Dutocq?)

As La Peyrade passes his lovely Celeste’s room, he sneaks a peak and notices that his loved one is having an argument with Felix Phellion, her tutor. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, Felix is also in love with Celeste; but he is doing his best to wreck his chances. Celeste is a devout Catholic girl, and Felix (like his father) is a freethinker and a bit of an agnostic. This does not sit well with Celeste, who raises her voice at him.

At this point, La Peyrade lets himself into the room and, in contrast to Felix, makes all the right sounds about the Catholic religion, to Celeste’s delight. Felix leaves disgruntled, promising to read The Imitation of Christ, which Celeste urges upon him.

Also at the Thuilliers, La Peyrade runs into the attorney Desroches, who urges La Peyrade to pay up 25,000 francs plus 2,680 francs for court costs by 9 pm at the latest or Cerizet will take action against him for debt nonpayment.

Part 1 Ch 14 – One of Cerizet’s Female Clients

Theodose has paid off Cerizet the previous evening and was curious to see how the “lender for the short week” was taking it all. When he enters the premises, Cerizet is talking to one of his female clients, a somewhat shabby fishmonger by the name of Mère Cardinal. They are in the middle of a conversation about some people called the Toupilliers. When Cardinal leaves, Cerizet tells Theodose he has his money and says Dutocq should not be told about the payment.

Theodose asks if Cerizet got his money. ‘”Yes,” returned Cerizet “we have measured our claws, they are the same length, the same strength, and the same sharpness. What next?”‘ They decide not to tell Dutocq about the payment. Theodose and Cerizet make a new agreement. Cerizet will not try to prevent Theodose’s marriage to Celeste and thus Theodose may be in a position of importance in the future and can help Cerizet. Theodose will get Cerizet the lease of the new Thullier property and Cerizet will give one of the notes he holds on Theodose back to him cancelled. Theodose is on his own in dealing with Dutocq and the notes he holds on Theodose.

Cerizet wants the lease because he has observed similar situations in which as principal tenant he can sublease shops and other parts for a considerable fortune. “Cerizet had spent a happy night; he fell asleep in a glorious dream; he saw himself in a fair way to do an honest business, and to become a bourgeois like Thuillier, like Minard, and so many others.”

It looks as if that new apartment building of the Thuilliers is becoming  “oversubscribed,” much as Celeste Colleville has been more or less promised to various parties.

We learn, among other things, that Cerizet wants to marry Mère Cardinal’s daughter Olympe, who has run off and joined the Bobinot Theater, where her mother finds her.

In addition to the above, Cerizet finds another potentially lucrative goal. Mère Cardinal’s uncle Toupilliers is dying. One of balzac’s famous wealthy misers, he is even now watchful and well-defended by his tenants, most notably Perrache. Cerizet wants at that money and we will soon be joining him in his attempt.

Part 1 Ch 15 – The Difficulties That Crop Up

Cerizet is working with Mère Cardinal to steal the gold of her uncle, the dying miser Toupillier. Thuillier, Phellion, La Peyrade, and the others may as well be a million miles away. The only link outside of this tight little story is that one of Toupillier’s tenants, Du Portail, is taking care of an insane young woman named Lydie de la Peyrade.

Cerizet had decided to pass himself off as a doctor, but he quickly decides when he sees the flat that that would be too risky. For one thing, he sees the tenant, du Portail, walking in the garden with an important member of the government, Count Martial de la Roche-Hugon. In addition, the porter Perrache seems to be a diligent sort.

Not only that, but Toupillier is so incredibly suspicious that he half expects an attempt will be made on his fortune. Cerizet arranges for Mme Cardinal to slip him a Mickey Finn while he reconnoiters. He even discovers the miser’s hiding place (because he kept staring at one point along the wall intently), but no sooner does he see the loot than an unidentified little old man walks in and notifies everyone that the police have been sent for. The old man dismisss Mme Cardinal but invites Cerizet to settle down for a conference.

Part 1 Ch 16 – Du Portail

Cerizet seems to have run into a formidable adversary. When he nabbed him trying to steal Toupillier’s diamonds and gold, he demanded that the money lender meet him at his place at an agreed-upon time. When Cerizet shows up, the old man tells him that Toupillier is dead – most likely from the drugged wine he had Mme Cardinal serve him. He also notices that Mme Perrache, the porter’s wife, took a while to shake the effects of the drug.

How did du Portail know that Cerizet had broken into Toupillier’s hoard? He himself had set up the hiding place and had a bell ring in his apartment when the hiding place was breached.

And then – complexity upon complexities – when the conversation turns on our friend La Peyrade, du Portail not only wants him to marry someone else, but enlists Cerizet as the cupid. The woman La Peyrade is to marry is Mlle Lydie de la Peyrade, his cousin, who is slightly older than him, probably more of an heiress than Celeste, and only slightly plagued with hysteria (read, mental illness). Our old friend Dr Bianchon has seen Lydie and pronounces that her hysteria will vanish the moment she has a baby.

Apparently, Lydie is the sole legatee of Toupillier, and is also set to inherit from Du Portail.

I don’t know if La Peyrade wants to give any credence to Cerizet in a matter of such intimate importance.

Part 1 Ch 17 – In Which the Lamb Devours the

Cerizet is frightened by du Portail (who has proof that the money lender was trying to rob Toupillier and may have hastened his death) into talking La Peyrade into marrying his slightly unstable cousin Lydie instead of the lovely Celeste Colleville.

The chapter begins by Cerizet setting up a meeting with La Peyrade at the Rocher de Cancale the next day at 6:30; also he invites Dutocq to join him there fifteen minutes earlier. Dutocq shows up on time, and there is a sharp exchange over his participation in the scheme. He appears to be unwilling to let La Peyrade (and Cerizet) off the hook for what he thinks he has coming to him. Both Cerizet and Dutocq stand to lose on the deal, though I am not sure about exactly how much who owes whom by rights.

La Peyrade also shows up on time and appears to be flashing a large bankroll. He announces that Cerizet’s plans to rent part of the new apartment block have been vetoed by Brigitte Thuillier, who wants complete control of the tenants. Cerizet observes that La Peyrade is losing ground with the Thuillers and isn’t likely to marry Celeste. He observes this is because he has done them an immense favor in securing the new property, and people don’t respond well to being in moral obligations. Cerizet makes a proposal to La Peyrade that he marry the rich Lydie instead of Celeste, but La Peyrade is cool to the idea of dumping Celeste in favor of Lydie. He then begs off because he has another appointment and irks Cerizet by paying for the meal himself.

In a thoughtful mood, the money lender spends some time in a pool hall – at which he encounters the staring eyes of Du Portail. That puts Cerizet off his game.

Returning to his place, Cerizet is pummeled by none other than Mme Cardinal, who has been roughly used by the police for her participation in the Toupillier affair. She tells Cerizet that his planned marriage to her daughter Olympe is off, and that the girl now appears to be Minard’s mistress. She wants Cerizet to indemnify her for her pains, but that is not terribly likely.

Part 1 Ch 18 – Set a Lamb to Catch a Lamb

After his unwanted encounter with Du Portail at the billiard hall, Cerizet cringes when he sees a shadowy figure by his front doorstep, but it is only his partner in crime Dutocq, who had come for his notes to collect his due from la Peyrade.

La Peyrade then runs into a woman he knows. He is surprised to see a pious Jansenist woman dressed like an English Puritan. Here begins a truly weird subplot in which this woman wants to give La Peyrade some money to hold and invest for him so that she can claim to be poor and possibly win a lucrative prize for – of all things – her piety.

Part 2 Ch 1 – Phellion Under a New Aspect

Time has passed since the beginning of the novel. We overhear a conversation between Phellion and Minard. The Thuilliers have moved to their bargain apartment block obtained with the help of La Peyrade -  but a new influence has entered their lives.

It appears that La Peyrade is now being looked down upon as an ambitious rotter. Minard and Phellion meet with Mme Phellion, and we begin to hear about the new influence on the Thuilliers: one Torna, Countess of Gödöllö, a Hungarian. Although La Peyrade got the Thuilliers the building, the Countess got them a great deal on the furniture.

Part 2 Ch 2 – The Provencal’s Present Position

La Peyrade’s position vis-a-vis the Thuilliers has markedly changed for the worse, and in the Countess of Gödöllö, he has a determined rival who is determined to stand in his way.

Where she could do the most damage is in La Peyrade’s hopes to marry Celeste. Despite the fact that young Felix Phellion has put his foot in it so deep with respect to science vs. religion that the two young people are on the outs, the older generation is backing Felix and are willing to go to considerable lengths.

Part 2 Ch 3 – Good Blood Cannot Lie

Countess Gödöllö comes calling on the Phellions. She starts out by expressing interest in Felix Phellion making a good marriage. She adds: “Another reason which leads me to take a deep interest in the happiness of these young people is that I am not so desirous for that of Monsieur Theodose de la Peyrade, who is false and grasping. On the ruin of their hopes that man is counting to carry out his swindling purposes.”

Now in the previous chapter, La Peyrade gave himself fifteen days to pop the question to Celeste. The Countess knows this and wants to throw a monkey wrench at La Peyrade’s chances with the girl. She is disturbed that Celeste and Felix do not appear to be on speaking terms with each other because of one of their arguments about religion – Celeste affects a strong devotion to the Church – which La Peyrade is poised to take advantage of.

Cut to a dinner party at the Thuilliers’ new house. It appears that Felix is the overwhelming choice of those present (La Peyrade has not yet made his appearance). Brigitte sees that Felix would be no threat to her remaining in control of the household.

The fifteen days are up, and no Felix. The Countess lies and suggests  that Felix is under the tutelage of a worthy Jesuit known as Pere Anselme. When Felix shows up, Celeste looks at him with new eyes. Felix stupidly denies the association, and the crowd collectively roll their eyes.

Part 2 Ch 4 – Hungary vs Provence

Actually, this chapter should have been titled “Theodose in the Lion’s Den.”

La Peyrade decides to pay the Countess of Gödöllö a visit since he is fairly certain that she is out to jinx his marriage plans with Celeste Colleville, the heiress of the Thuilliers.

The countess’s place is quite impressive in a cluttered 19th century way, and Theodose is kept waiting while she finishes a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (and, perhaps, to put him in his place a bit).

At first, she denies trying to throw a wrench into the marriage. It seems to me that the Countess is trying to propose herself as a substitute for Celeste, but she is so cagey and circumspect about it that poor Theodose is by no means certain what is happening. She becomes cryptic about other marriage opportunities while denigrating little Celeste.

Part 2 Ch 5 – The Tarpeian Rock

The title of this chapter refers to the south face of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, which was used for hurling malefactors to their deaths. (The 75-foot cliff face was also used for killing the chronically disabled, who were thought to have angered the gods.) My guess it refers to the suddenly shifting ground under Theodose de la Peyrade, who had thought himself as reaching the summit of his career, when in fact he was hovering so close to the edge of a cliff.

He writes a note to M. Thuillier, only to have his sister Brigitte respond with an invitation. Theodose visits the Thuilliers at the apartment block/mansion on the Right Bank whose purchase by the Thuilliers he made possible with his scheming. Brigitte appears to be intent on mending fences with Theodose and even makes a few disparaging comments about the Hungarian countess who has so attracted and repelled the young Provencal lawyer. She admits that Celeste is more drawn to young Felix Phellion than to him, but disagrees that she stands against La Peyrade’s hopes.

Theodose finishes the pamphlet he has been writing on “Taxation and the Sliding Scale” to be published under Thuillier’s name. This pamphlet is supposed to elevate Thuillier’s chances for advancement. It is published by a young man named Barbet. Copies are widely distributed around Paris, much to Thuillier’s pride — but it does not seem to sell. Barbet suggests that Thuillier pay for a breakfast for the Press Corps, which would then generate the buzz which would make the pamphlet fly off the shelves. He does so, but is dismayed to find that the attendees are more like bloggers (to make a comparison) than representatives of the mainstream media.

To make matters worse, Thuillier is requested to appear at the police. It seems his pamphlet has offended the powers that be. Thullier blames La Peyrade for now vetting more carefully what was written and declares him not fit for his household. Brigitte also is livid. The chapter ends with Theodose not quite sure what hit him.

Part 2 Ch 6 – ‘Twas Thus They Bade Adieu

With the setbacks of the last chapter, La Peyrade decides to give the countess another try: Maybe he could figure her out. While waiting to see her, Theodose espies a book cracked open to a page entitled The Hatred of a Woman. Oh oh!

He hears the Countess saying good-bye to a diplomatic visitor who reminds her to attend the ball given by an ambassadress. Theodose is relieved to find it is not a young dandy as he had feared.

La Peyrade discusses the pamphlet that has aroused the ire of the police and tells the countess that he expects a woman is behind it. Theodose suspects that it is the countess and more or less tells her so. Bizarrely he declares himself now loyal to Madame de Godollo nevertheless:

“I bless the harshness that deigns to hurt me. Now that I know my beautiful and avowed enemy, I shall not despair of touching her heart; for never again will I follow any road but the one that she points out to me, never will I march under any banner but hers…”

The Countess tells Theodose that the Thuilliers are not a bad lot, but they are not quite the right people for him. In the meantime, it would seem that Theodose has thrown in his lot with the countess.

Part 2 Ch 7 – How to Shut the Door in People’s Faces

We begin this chapter with a conversation between Thuillier and an angry  Theodose de la Peyrade regarding the pending legal issues relating to the pamphlet Theodose wrote under Thuillier’s name.

Theodose blames the Thuilliers for having “shopped” Celeste to too many people to further their ambitions, including Felix Phellion, the son of Mayor Minard, Godeschal, and one Olivier Vinet. He (and Thuillier) think that Vinet is the one behind the legal action. When Thuillier wants some legal assistance from Theodose, the latter explodes in anger and refuses. He declares he is no longer a suitor for Celeste. The unexpectedness and squareness of this declaration left Thuillier without words or voice….

Brigitte walks in at this point with a newspaper article from an obscure journal called L’Echo de la Bievre (remember that name!) that defends Thuillier and attacks the government of Louis Philippe.

But La Peyrade is still feeling vindictive with the Thuilliers and wants to see them squirm. Brigitte fights back, wondering about the extra 10,000 francs they had to pay for the house. Theodose says he will pay it back but in anger reminds Brigitte of all the good things he has done for the family.

Part 2 Ch 8

This untitled chapter begins with a letter from the Countess Gödöllö to Theodose telling him that she can no longer live in the house that has spurned Theodose. She tells him to not come to see him for two days, by which time she will have gotten the better of Brigitte.

Now the tone of this letter is just what Theodose wants to hear, having slammed the door on Celeste and the Thuilliers. After the two days were up, La Peyrade bounds up the stairs to the Countess’s apartment, only to find that she has moved out and left no forwarding address. Moreover, he learns from the porter that she left driven by post horses. Now, in those days, that meant she was undertaking a long journey, perhaps back to Hungary.

Walking down the street while brooding, Theodose feels a strong pair of arms grasp him by the shoulders and pull him back. It is the senior Phellion, who has saved Theodose from being crushed by a wall that is falling down in a building being demolished. Phellion is as otiose as usual, but he gives Theodose the idea to check with the Royal Postal Establishment which controls the distribution of post horses and vehicles. He finds out that his Countess hired the post horses, and thereupon ordered them to drive in circles around the Bois de Boulogne, the huge park on the Right Bank of the Seine. Something is mighty fishy here: it looks as if the Countess had pulled a bunk.

But then he receives a tardy letter from the Countess telling him that she has done him a favor in making him lose Celeste, who does not love him. She proposes “another charming girl” as a substitute – one richer and more beautiful, who may be inquired about throu Du Portail.

Now you may recall that this Du Portail is the wily old codger who caught Cerizet and Mme Cardinal in a flagrant attempt at robbing a dying miser and proposed that Cerizet try to get Theodose to marry his slightly dimwitted cousin, who just happened to be Du Portail’s ward. Has the “Countess” – if indeed she is a countess – just acted a role in an attempt to draw Theodose in and trap him into this marriage? If so, she has seemingly succeeded.

So Theodose decides to see Cerizet again, despite the mutual bad feelings existing between the two. Cerizet is well aware of the bad odor that La Peyrade has among the Thuilliers and their set. He asks the moneylender about the marriage he had mentioned to him some weeks back, and asked him if he knew anything about a Hungarian countess. Cerizet answers positively to the first question, but apparently knows nothing of the Countess. At Cerizet’s he also runs into Mme Lambert, the pious woman who had entrusted Theodose with some money so that she could, by appearing to be poor, win the Montyon prize for her piety.

One October day while he is walking down the Boulevard des Italiens, Theodose espies a woman who looks identical to the Countess. She leaves, but he asks someone who apparently knows of her who she is. He is told she is a Madame Komorn and that she is a spendthrift and a dangerous women who arrivede from Berlin six months ago.

Theodose is in a bad position: his investment of time and effort with the Thuillers all gone for nothing, his financial affairs in worse shape than ever, and his anger and frustrations exhibiting themselves in sleepness nights and agitated dreams.

Part 2 Ch 9 – Give and Take

Caught between his failures with the Countess and with Celeste, La Peyrade has what I call his Rastignac moment. You may recall the end of Pere Goriot, when Eugene de Rastignac resolves to conquer Paris while standing in on a hillock in Pere Lachaise cemetery. He is full of distain with the path he has taken. He will start anew, “fling himself on Paris” and work his way to success anew.

La Peyrade is a little frightened of seeing Du Portail about marrying his cousin Lydia because he thinks that the old man was responsible for hiring some actress (Mme Komorn) to pretend to be a Hungarian Countess. So he gives up being the “advocate of the poor” and becomes a regular barrister. While at his new job, he is paid a visit by Etienne Lousteau, the editor of the same newspaper that had praised “Thuillier’s” pamphlet on taxation; you may recall the newspaper name L’Echo de la Bievre. Lousteau proposes that he talk Thuillier into buying the paper so that he has a journalistic organ behind his political ambitions.

At this point, La Peyrade thinks he might renew his acquaintance with the Thuilliers, using the newspaper to get his foot in the door, and – who knows – perhaps marry Celeste Colleville after all? He runs into Thuilliers, who is by no means unhappy to see him because he needs his help to redeem his chances for success. Theodose springs the idea of the newspaper on him. And he also renews his interest in Celeste, with Thuillier accepting the idea.

Part 2 Ch 10 – In Which Cerizet Practices Healing >

Cerizet goes to see Du Portail about his most recent contretemps with Theodose and expresses frustration that they can’t quite get Theodose to agree to marry Lydia. In patching things up with Thuillier, the marriage with Celeste Colleville is on again, with the banns to be read shortly. Du Portail suggests that Cerizet work with Theodose on the newspaper bought by Thuillier. Cerizet is amazed, because that is exactly what he has done: He is now managing editor of L’Echo de la Bievre.

Being an incredibly astute thinker, Du Portail plans to hit at Theodose over the 25,000 francs that the latter got from Mme Lambert. What if the story got circulated that the money actually came from the police, who paid La Peyrade off as a stooge when he wrote the pamphlet under Thuillier’s name. That would get Thuillier going! And Du Portail is determined to make Theodose come to him on his knees, so that he can unload his cousin Lydie on him.

Then who should shoe up Lydie de la Peyrade herself carrying – wrapped in swaddling clothes – more swaddling clothes! She acts as if all that cloth were a sick child, and she appeals to Cerizet as a “doctor” (which he pretended to be some chapters back when he attempted to rob the dying miser and met her in that guise) to heal. Cerizet mumbles a few words and makes the poor girl feel a shade better with her “baby’s” condition.

Cut to the offices of the newspaper, where a heated discussion is taking place about the “profession of faith” that is to appear on the newspaper’s first edition under the new ownership.

Hearing about the possible source of that 25,000 francs, Brigitte demands that her brother get to the bottom of the affair, seeing as how Theodose is about to marry the family heir.

Part 2 Ch 11 – Explanations and What Came of Them

We are at the offices of L’Echo de la Bievre, the newspaper which was bought by Thuillier to further his political ambitions and which is edited by La Peyrade and managed by Cerizet.

Phellion, who fancies himself a big noise in the theater world of Paris, comes in and offers to be the newspaper’s drama critic. Thuillier and La Peyrade sidestep the issue by saying that the position had been promised to another. He then offers to write a column of essays, but refuses for them to go out under his own name – which allows the two to turn him down again.

Next to come in are Mme Cardinal and her daughter Olympe, the actress. They are trying to drum up some free coverage of Olympe’s next role. As they are let out, Thuillier and La Peyrade refuse to see any more visitors – as they have some issues to discuss.

The main issue is a claim that 25,000 francs which Du Portail and Cerizet have noised about were a payoff from the police for La Peyrade to insert some incendiary material in the pamphlet he wrote under Thuillier’s name. La Peyrade is so incensed that he calls in Mme Lambert, who gave him the money to invest for her. She comes in and at first tries to waffle, but La Peyrade threatens to blow her cover and makes her confess.

Thuillier is abashed in being proven wrong. He is irate at Cerizet and promptly fires him for making a fool of him. (Does Thuillier need any help in being made to look like a fool?) La Peyrade takes advantage of the situation. Thuillier is to pay him 500 francs a month for his services plus a high fee for each column. He must agree to publish the paper for at least six months and give Theodose omnipotence as editor-in-chief. He also gives security for the 25,000 francs Theodose owes Madame Lambert.

Part 2 Ch 12 – A Star

The day has finally come: Theodose is to be betrothed to Celeste Colleville at the Thuilliers, and a betrothal dinner has been ordered. Missing are Minard senior, his son Julien (a suitor for Celeste’s hand), and the notary Dupuis, who promised to show up at 9 am to finalize the papers. The mood is somber, partly because of the absent guests, and partly because Celeste does not really want to become Mme de la Peyrade.

Mayor Minard finally makes it to the party and announces the latest news: A new star has been discovered. The discoverer is none other than Pere Picot (whose housekeeper is the strange pietistic fraud Mme Lambert), and whose student is Felix Phellion. Picot has been named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and has been granted a pension of 1,800 Francs a year from the fund devoted to the encouragement of science and letters.

Picot enters the party unexpectedly. He is dressed in a bizarre, absent-minded professor sort of attire. Picot promptly launches into a diatribe against young Felix Phellion, whom he says discovered the star and noised it about that it was his teacher who had discovered it. The guests smile indulgently at the old man. Celeste, on the other hand, is beaming at her inamorato’s accomplishment. The Thuilliers conspire to get rid of the old man before Felix shows up and gets into a spat with him.

Part 2 Ch 13 – Man Who Thinks the Star Too Bright

The subject is still the star purported to have been discovered by Pere Picot, but was really discovered by his student Felix Phellion. M. Minard, the mayor of the 11th Arrondissement, comes to visit the boy’s father with some interesting news. Apparently, the boy’s assiduousness, brilliancy, and above all his modesty has been looked at favorably by the French intellectual and governmental authorities.

Even more interesting is what didn’t happen at the previous night’s betrothal party at the Thuilliers: The betrothal was not signed. The notary Dupuis, who promised to show up late, never showed up. In fact, he disappeared, after having swindled 25,000 francs (there’s that number again!) from that pious fraud, Mme. Lambert, who appears to have mulcted it from her boss, Pere Picot.

Dupuis had been the churchwarden of the parish, and Mme. Lambert was bucking for an award for her own piety. Oops!

That same night, around 10 pm, Mme Lambert shows up at the Thuilliers and accosts La Peyrade about her investment with him and Dupuis. La Peyrade tells her he doesn’t owe her since the investment was made at her request but that if she cannot get the money back from the notary he will make up the difference.

Amid all these dramatic reversals a page enters with a letter from Pere Picot, in which he “forgives” his pupil and notes that the government will give Felix the rank of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and appoint him to the Academy of Sciences.

M. Phellion asks for his coat and tie and marches over to the Thuilliers to ask for the hand of Celeste Colleville for his up and coming son Felix, the future Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and member of the Academy of Sciences. From being a low bumbler, Felix looks now to have been raised on high, while Theodose is still sucking a mop in left field with the likes of Cerizet and Dutocq.

Part 2 Ch 14 – A Stormy Day

The two Celestes – Mme Thuillier (Jerome’s wife, about whom we’ve heard very little in this novel) and Mlle Colleville – go to church to see the Abbe Gondrin. Celeste the Younger is still sold on Felix as opposed to Theodose. At the betrothal dinner that wasn’t a betrothal dinner (because the notary Dupuis had skipped town with his clients’ money), the Abbe had said some kind words about Felix; and the pious girl hoped against hope that Felix could not only be hers, but that he could be acceptable to Holy Mother the Church. The Abbe gives his blessing:

“He who thinks himself a Christian may be in the eyes of God an idolator; and another who is thought a pagan may, by his feelings and his actions be, without his own knowledge, a Christian.”

All this does not sit too well with Brigitte Thuillier, who is (at least this particular five minutes on the side of Theodose). It is Celeste’s mother Flavie who breaks the news to the angry spinster. Just at this time, the replacement notary arrives to sign the papers for Celeste’s betrothal to Theodose.

Sister-in-Law Celeste Thuillier is defiant of her support of Flavie’s Celeste. She says, “Yes. As I told you yesterday, I think Celeste can be more suitably married, and my intention is not to rob myself for a marriage of which I disapprove.” The “rob myself” refers to the fact that Mme Thuillier is to contribute to her heir’s “dot,” or dowry, for a wedding to La Peyrade. Brigitte then locks her sister-in-law in her room for future chastisement by her husband. When Papa Thuillier comes home, it is into the middle of the marital storm. He reproves Brigitte for being violent against his wife.

Then Theodose drops in and hears the news. Before talking to the girl, he asks Thuillier to tell her that her consent to the marriage with him must be given without delay; and then he wanted to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her. What La Peyrade does is make the poor girl feel guilty for causing such a ruckus.

The next one to enter the fray is Mayor Minard, who announces that the Countess of Godollo was a “kept woman.” La Peyrade pretends he not only knew all along, but was instrumental in getting her to leave the Thuilliers’ property (that’s a lie!).

The chapter keeps going on: News is received of an attach on L’Echo de la Bievre by a royalist publication, saying, in essence, that Thuillier was using it for no other reason than to further his personal political ambitions.

Part 2 Ch 15 – At Du Portail’s

It was a foregone conclusion that, eventually, Theodose would meet with Du Portail. The man was holding way too many cards, and La Peyrade was tired of being blindsided by him.

La Peyrade recognizes him as The Commander, friend of the so-called Countess Godollo.  Du Portail calmly tells the Provencal lawyer that he will marry his ward, Lydie, and that it would be to his advantage. She has a fortune which will be increased eventually by du Portail’s fortune. Theodose says he might may a heiress, a fury, or the daughter of a fool if it suits him, but he will not have a marriage imposed on him.

Du Portail then says the Celeste marriage is impossible because he threatened Thuillier with dire consequences should that marriage goes through. Among other things, Du Portail is about to have La Peyrade disbarred. But now we come to an unmasking of Du Portail: He is none other than the infamous Corentin, a shadowy figure who controls the French police. Balzac has always had a respect for shadowy power figures, whether in the police or outside the law, or possibly belonging to strange organizations like The Thirteen.

Why is Corentin interested in such a mess-up as la Peyrade? Apparently, his uncle was Corentin’s teacher, and later the police chief became his protector. He is motivated to help La Peyrade, as he once helped him – anonymously – at the beginning of his career by sending him 2,000 francs. Now he wants the Provencal to marry his cousin Lydie, whom he and the good Dr Bianchon think can be cured by bearing real children – instead of the bundles of rags she pretends are her children.

Part 2 Ch 16 – Checkmate to Thuillier

An aptly named chapter: We see the action from the Thuilliers’ perspective as all of their hopes and dreams end in nothing but bitterness and recriminations. The action itself appears to take place offstage.

Enter Cerizet, who twits the watchful Thuillier about the failure of the marriage to Celeste. He brings up that mysterious 25,000 francs which was given as security, plus an additional 10,000 francs to bribe someone in the government for “the pretense” of Thuillier’s Cross of the Legion of Honor, which he never received. This gets the brother and sister team fuming, but Cerizet is not there for that reason alone, but to make an offer.

What’s that saying about beware of Greeks bearing gifts? “It relates to a farm in Beauce, which has just been sold for a song, and it is placed in my hands to resell, at an advance, but a small one; you could really buy it, as the saying is, for a bit of bread.”

And Cerizet went on to explain the whole mechanism of the affair, which we need not relate here, as no one but Brigitte would take any interest in it. The statement was clear and precise, and it took close hold on the old maid’s mind. Even Thuillier himself, in spite of his inward distrust, was obliged to own that the affair had all the appearance of a good speculation.

Brigitte wants to see the farm, and three hours later the trio were on the road to Chartres, Cerizet having advised Thuillier not to let la Peyrade know of his absence, lest he might take some unfair advantage of it.

When they return to Paris, Thuillier’s first task is to see what L’Echo de la Bievre published in his absence. Oh oh! Apparently it was Thuillier’s political obituary in which he renounces his candidacy in favor of his good friend, M. Minard, Mayor of the 11th Arrondissement.

Soon, several delegations are knocking at the paper’s door: one in favor of the announcement, another – opposed to Minard – angry about it.

Finally La Peyrade comes in and hands Thuillier 10,000 francs (presumably the failed bribe, if indeed it was ever offered), plus the 25,000 franc bond which Thuillier signed regarding Mme. Lambert’s money. This squares La Peyrade with the Thuilliers financially, but there is still that dire political disappointment.

Part 2 Ch 17 – In the Exercise of His Poers

Several months have passed. La Peyrade is married to his cousin Lydie, who now has “lucid intervals.” He is working in the police with Corentin, who finds him not quite the brilliant helper he had hoped for. But never mind, he married off his ward to him and delivered on his promise to give the attorney lots of money to pay off his debts.

Pere Picot now occupies the apartment in the Madeleine area formerly occupied by the Thuilliers, who have returned to their former digs in the Latin Quarter.

Living in the Madeleine building are now Picot and Cerizet. The latter has finally married his actress, the former Olympe Cardinal – which shows that a certain persistence in crime tends to pay dividends. By the way, Picot is also married, to an Englishwoman who loved him for his brains.

Also news is that young Felix Phellion has been elected to the Academy almost unanimously and is now well embarked on a scientific career. Felix, with help from Picot, asks for Celeste Colleville’s hand in marriage – and is enthusiastically accepted:

Felix will not only inherit from the Thuilliers, but also from the Picots, who are now wealthy because Mme Picot is independently wealthy. Lucky boy!

La Peyrade is a bit shocked by Felix’s rise, but Corentin tells him Theodose made his own bed by trying to short-cut his own rise to prominence. He has a different future now, and reminds him:

“You have another sphere, my dear fellow; and you must learn to be more content with your lot. Governments pass, societies perish or dwindle; but we—we dominate all things; the police is eternal.”

Read it here

Summarized by Jim, September – November 2011

 Includes four parts:
Esther Happy/How Girls Love
What Love Costs an Old Man
The End of Evil Ways
Vautrin’s Last Avatar/The Last Incarnation of Vautrin

NOTE: The story of Lucien de Rubempre begins in the Lost Illusions trilogy which consists of Two Poets, A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, and Eve and David. The action in Scenes From A Courtesan’s Life commences directly after the end of Eve and David.

Esther Happy/How Girls Love

It is 1824, a few months have passed since Lucien left Eve’s house with the intention of committing suicide and met the Spanish priest, Carlos Herrera, who hired him as a secretary and gave him money to send Eve and David. Lucien is wandering around at an Opera Ball as if expecting to meet someone and his handsome appearance is causing much comment. He is being shadowed by a man wearing a domino to hide his identity.

When Chatelet mentions Lucien to Rastignac, the latter answers, “If I were half as good looking as he is, I should be twice as rich.” At that instant, the heavy-set masked man who was following Lucien, mutters “No” in Rastignac’s ear, grasps him with a grip of steel and leads the stunned Rastignac to a window recess where he mentions Madame Vauquer’s boarding house and the Taillefer millions. He then threatens Rastignac, telling him to treat Lucien as a beloved brother, ending with, “Choose between life and death–Answer.” Rastignac now knows the identity of the masked man. It is Jacques Collin aka Vautrin!

Lucien lacks the courage to cut Blondet and Finot as he remembers how they gave him a bed when he was penniless. Instead he “compromised his character by shaking Finot’s hand, and not rejecting Blondet’s affection.” Upon seeing a certain woman approaching, Lucien rushes to meet her.

The masked woman causing such a stir among the journalists is Esther Van Gobseck, the daughter of Sarah Van Gobseck. Vautrin starts upon hearing her name. Bixiou calls her name when she and Lucien pass nearby. She turns quickly and faints into Lucien’s arms.

As Rastignac turns to go, Vautrin says that he will prove that Rastignac can never have seen him anywhere and removes his mask. His face is different, prompting Eugene to say, “The devil has enabled you to change in every particular, excepting your eyes, which it is impossible to forget.” Vautrin tightens his grip on Rastignac’s arm, reminding him that he must keep the secret of his identity.

The portress of an ignoble house on the Rue de Langlade, saw Esther “brought home half dead by a young man” thirteen hours earlier. A cloaked man arrives inquiring for Esther and as he begins climbing the staircase, the portress notices the silver buckles on his shoes and catches sight the black fringed sash of a cassock. Upstairs, receiving no answer to his knock, Carlos Herrera easily forces the door and finds Esther near death by suicide from charcoal fumes. The room is a study in poor furnishings and elegant clothing down to a Ternaux shawl plugging a crack in the window and pawn tickets cluttering the shelves of the hideous and otherwise empty wardrobe.

As Esther begins to regain consciousness, she smiles on recognizing the clothing of a priest. She is excited to think that Lucien suspected she might try to commit suicide and sent the priest to save her. Esther relates how she met Lucien, left the house of ill repute for this small apartment loaned to her by a friend and was trying to make herself a better person in order to be worthy of Lucien. Herrera tells Esther that her future depends on her being able to forget her past. He wants to send her away secretly to be educated and tells her where to meet a carriage in a week, using the time to furnish herself with an appropriate wardrobe. She is not to see Lucien or tell anyone of this plan. Herrera places a purse on her mantle. Esther agrees saying that she would like to become a Catholic.

When Esther first arrives at the religious institution, her fellow students are jealous of her beauty. But they soon become very attached to her sweet, simple ways and since she can neither read nor write, they were able to feel superior in that regard. Esther is a quick learner and Herrera is surprised during his first visit. A few of the customs, such as wearing all white for her baptism and first communion, are upsetting to her because they are so different from the Jewish customs.

After a couple of months, although happy, Esther’s health begins to fail and the doctor feels she could die within a month. Herrera concludes that she “is dying of love for Lucien.” Finally, when Herrera determines that Esther is about to break, he tells her that she may see Lucien on the day after her baptism and that if she feels she can live in virtue while living for him, then they will not have to be parted again.

Lucien is living near Saint Sulpice with Herrera. Lucien’s wing is luxurious and Herrera’s is sparce and simple as befits his station. It is fifteen months after the night at the Opera and Herrera’s sending away of Esther. Lucien is also failing as Esther did. Herrera tells him that he should have a mistress befitting his station. Lucien replies that he would give up his ambition and everything for Esther and attacks Herrera when told that he sent her away. Herrera explains it was to be educated.

Herrera purchases a house in the rue Taitbout and installs Esther in it. Lucien rushes off to see her. He spends the night with Esther and Herrera arrives the next morning. Herrera is emphatic that Lucien’s relationship with Esther be kept secret as it would his prospects for a good marriage. Herrera gives orders that this home is to be Esther’s prison. She is only to go out late at night when she won’t be seen. Esther is threatened with death if she doesn’t obey Herrera and she pales when Lucien agrees that this is the way it must be.

Lucien is very happy with Esther and in Society and four years pass. His novel and his poems have become successful. It is now 1829 and the possibility has arisen of a marriage for Lucien to the oldest daughter of the Duchesse de Grandlieu which should restore the title of Marquis and assure Lucien’s political future.

The Baron de Nucingen dined in the country, as did his driver and footman. Everyone has fallen into a drunken sleep on the way home in the carriage and the horses stop by another carriage at a crossroads. The Baron awakens to the sight of Esther, who has been out for one of her usual late night drives. Esther’s carriage takes off at top speed. Nucingen is so enchanted with Esther that he promises his driver one hundred francs if they catch the carriage and curses their incompetence when they don’t.

The Baron has never known true love or been a fool over any woman but the mere sight of Esther makes such an impression that when he hasn’t found her in two weeks, he loses his appetite. Two months pass and the Baron is “astonished at the powerlessness of his millions.”

At one of Delphine’s receptions, De Marsay mentions Nucingen’s poor look to him and the banker describes his almost encounter one midnight. Lucien recognizes that the mystery woman was Esther. This brings a smile to Lucien’s face which doesn’t go unnoticed. Nucingen offers a million francs to know the woman’s identity. When Lucien informs Herrera of this, Herrera realizes that he might be able to sell Esther to Nucingen for a million francs. Lucien is appalled. Herrera informs him that not only are they broke, but they owe and the creditors are becoming impatient.

The events since Vautrin’s escape after being arrested in Pere Goriot are related. He did not just assume an identity of a priest, but cruelly murdered the real Abbe Carlos Herrera as he was on his way to France on a diplomatic mission. Lucien knows all and is an accomplice by virtue of going along with everything, unlike Rastignac.

A brief history of both branches of the Grandlieus follows. Ajuda-Pinto is now married to one of the Grandlieu daughters. One of the Grandlieu daughters, Clotilde, is madly in love with Lucien who, although he loves Esther, sees an advantageous alliance.

When Lucien finally arrives at Esther’s he finds her very upset because Herrera has ordered her to go into hiding early the next morning and have no contact with Lucien until further notice. Lucien assures her that it is only for a few days and it is a matter of his life. Esther swoons on the couch. Her replacement arrived in the same carriage which took Esther away.

Contenson tells Nucingen that Corentin’s right hand and Fouche’s strong arm could find the mystery woman for him and arranges a meeting.

It is Peyrade under a disguise as Father des Canquoelles! He now has a daughter, Lydia whom he nearly worships. He would like to find her a husband and thinks he needs money for a dowry and perhaps a better, more presentable home. When Peyrade mentions marriage again to Lydia, se tells him she saw the handsomest man in the Tuileries with Countess Serisy. It was Lucien! Peyrade has numerous nephews and thinks that one of them might be worthy of his daughter. Just at that moment, a poor nephew named Theodosius arrivs in Paris on foot. It is believed in Peyrade’s home town that Peyrade made millions in India.

Peyrade uses De Saint-Germain as his professional name. He tells Nucingen that for part of his payment he would like Nucingen to use his influence to get him a position at the Prefecture of Police. As he leaves the meeting, Peyrade reflects on the coincidence of his now being paid to investigate the very man who caught his daughter’s eye when she saw him at Tuileries.

Meanwhile, Herrera and Lucien are discussing Esther’s “substitute” who is a beautiful woman from London who was sent to France after killing her lover in a fit of jealousy. As the daughter of a clergyman, she was well brought up and can speak French like a native.

Five days later Corentin tells Nucingen the mystery woman has been located and is, as suspected, Lucien’s mistress. Nucingen tarts himself up, even dying his hair which causes Delphine to remark that he looks like a ridiculous fool and give him a few fashion tips. After paying thirty thousand francs for a meeting, Nucingen is astounded to discover a fair woman, the very opposite of the dark beauty he was expecting. When Georges hears that his master was done out of thirty thousand francs, he remarks that his toilette was for nothing.

Lucien has been taken to the forester’s house for another visit with Esther and as the visit comes to an end, Herrera tells them that they will never meet again. Esther cries out that she will die and Herrera sends the ever compliant Lucien off to pick flowers while he tells Esther that she has had four years of happiness and now has the chance to be the rich mistress of an old man, Nucingen. Esther is to return to Paris that evening.

 
What Love Costs an Old Man

Asia now extorts an additional one hundred thousand francs from Nucingen and he finally gets to meet and speak with Esther. Nucingen takes Esther to his carriage where he promises her a carriage of her own and other luxuries. Contenson, Louchard and armed guards arrive at rue Taitbout demanding three hundred twelve thousand francs. Nucingen sends Contenson to his cashier for the funds and requests everyone to keep this a secret. The cost is escalating! Fake bills and pawn tickets account for another hundred and fifty thousand francs.

Europe’s name is Prudence Servien. She came to Paris at age seventeen to escape the vengence of a man against whom she had testified. Herrera has not only given her protection, but has now arranged the convict’s death. Europe will be able to return home and set up a business for herself with funds obtained in service to Herrera.

Herrera visits Lucien and tells him to visit Eve and David and have them lie that they gave him six hundred thousand francs. Lucien cries that he is saved, but Herrera is concerned for his own safety as he knows he is being watched. Now he must act like a priest.

Esther loves Lucien so much that the thought of tainting that love brings thoughts of suicide with it. She extracts a promise from Nucingen that for forty days they will only have a father/daughter relationship. Ever the businessman, Nucingen writes a letter to Esther detailing that their father/daughter relationship will end the day she moves into the new home he is purchasing for her. Esther writes three letters to Nucingen. The third one tells Nucingen that if they continue the father/daughter relationship, he will have the pleasure of her company and, although it may be a smaller pleasure, it will last. But should he persist in forcing her to comply with the terms of the bargain, he will only mourn her. Asia convinces Nucingen to install her at Esther’s establishment as cook and gives him tips on how to win Esther which cost him a few more hundred thousand francs.

Nucingen takes Esther to her “little palace” which was formerly the home of Madame du Val-Noble (Suzanne). It is marvelously decorated and furnished and Asia has prepared dinner. She sneakily spiced it to give the Baron indigestion which would send him home early, relieving Esther of any obligation on the first night.

Madame du Val-Noble (Suzanne) is down on her luck and plans to meet Esther “accidentally” on the Champs Elysees. Esther is friendly and offers to help her, mentioning that it’s only fair as it was Nucingen who ruined Val-Noble’s protector. We learn in an aside that Nucingen has still been unsuccessful in making his way to Esther’s bed.

The master of disguise Peyrade, who has even fooled Contenson at times, has been shadowing the events of the Champs Elysees disguised as a weathy Englishman accompanied by his mulatto servant who is none other than Contenson. Peyrade is looking forward to enjoying the debauchery he will enjoy while portraying a wealthy Englishman. While he is eating and drinking heartily, he is ordered by a gendarme to accompany him to the Prefecture in the carriage waiting outside the hotel. Inside the coach, we discover that it is Herrera! It is Herrera’s driver and not only will he not notice if Herrera leaves the coach but no fuss will be made should he arrive at the destination with a dead body in the carriage.

Corentin appears unexpectedly. After Herrera leaves, Corentin tells Peyrade that he has been fooled and the magistrate is none other than Father Carlos Herrera. Corentin calls out the window, “Monsieur l’Abbe!” Vautrin turns his head and realizes he has been recognized and must complete the scam fast. Contenson now recognizes Herrera as the man to whom he gave the three hundred thousand francs. Peyrade is in agony to think that he won’t be able to provide his daughter, Lydia, with the hundred thousand franc dowry but Corentin tells him they will still succeed in obtaining it.

The next morning as Lucien and Herrera are smoking after breakfast, Corentin arrives using the name of M. de Saint-Esteve! Herrera is supposedly on his way to Spain and hides in the next room. Corentin says he is acting on behalf of blackmailers who want one hundred thousand francs to keep the secret of Lucien, Esther and the plot against Nucingen in order that Lucien’s marriage with Clotilde may proceed. Lucien’s reply is that it may or may not be true, but there are plenty of other aristocratic daughters available.

Esther is now in full courtesan mode, although she still plans that the day she gives herself to Nucingen will be her last. At the Italiens, she nags Nucingen for chattering, saying she can’t hear the music. He says she never listens to him and they quarrel but Esther’s wiles bring him back to her on his knees.

Lucien went to the Grandlieu Mansion earlier and, although there were five equipages in the yard, was told they were “not at home.” The Duke had received an anonymous letter about Lucien and is going to have him investigated further. He knows a a spy who will be perfect for this case. It is Corentin!

Esther has ordered Nucingen to bring Lucien to her box. As Esther and Lucien speak privately, they plan a dinner party that evening and Madame du Val-Noble and her English nabob (Peyrade) will be invited so that Herrera can deal with him. Peyrade is very impressed by the splendour, the food and the beautiful women at Esther’s impromptu dinner party. Bixiou, designated to drink Peyrade into oblivion, is successful. Peyrade awakens at six o’clock the next evening in Esther’s attic and is told that Lydia has been kidnapped and will be held until the day after Lucien is married to Clotilde. Should he fail to remedy the upset he caused, he will be killed and Lydia will be forced into prostitution. Peyrade rushes to Contenson’s to change into his Papa Canquoelle disguise. At home he discovers that Lydia left in response to a message supposedly from him. Crying that he and Corentin have met their match, he hurries to consult Corentin and is told he is away for ten days.

Corentin, in his guise of M de Saint Denis, met with Derville at the Grandlieu home and they left Paris to investigate Lucien and his past, including the Sechards. When Corentin mentions that Lucien had lived with a woman using the name Esther van Bogseck, Derville remarks on the coincidence of his seeking the heiress of a Dutchman named Gobseck. Corentin tells him he will check into it as soon as they return to Paris.

When Derville and Corentin arrive to speak with David and Eve. Derville takes Eve aside and tells her of Lucien’s claim to have received over one million francs from them. Eve, with tears in her eyes, wonders how Lucien could have obtained that kind of money.

The two Parisians discover there is only one seat available on the coach to Paris. Derville, pleading business appointments, persuades Corentin to allow him to take the seat. In reality, Derville doesn’t entirely trust Corentin who is forced to remain three more days awaiting a coach bound for Paris.

Although receiving the assistance of over a dozen spies, Contenson and Peyrade are unable to locate Lydia.

Lucien, Rastignac and Nucingen attend a dinner at the home of Madame du Val-Noble where Peyrade is continuing his nabob portrayal. Unknown to Peyrade, Asia has been asked to assist with the cooking. As the dinner begins, Peyrade finds a note in his napkin: “The ten days are up at the moment when you sit down to supper.”

Contenson, who is still attending Peyrade as his mulatto servant, is called out to pay the bill of the local restaurant. He returns with the news that Lydia has returned home in very bad shape and Peyrade should see her immediately. In his upset at this, Peyrade curses in French, exposing his disguise.

When Corentin finally arrived home, he found the note left by the panic-stricken Peyrade. Later as he is setting about starting an investigation, he happens to see Lydia on the street in a nightgown. She has escaped and has been walking five hours trying to make her way home. When pressed for details of her ordeal, Lydia can only say that she is ruined, dishonored and lost and wants to spend the rest of her days in a convent if one will take her.

A breathless Peyrade arrives and, as Lydia begs her father’s forgiveness, collapses muttering, “I am dying!–the villains!” Corentin realizes his friend was poisoned at dinner. Contenson has arrived sans disguise and as he attempts to lay Peyrade on the bed, Corentin says they must remove him from the room or Lydia will think she is the cause of his death. As Corentin swears vengeance, Contenson pledges his aid. Corentin sends for the police and orders an autopsy. Nothing is discovered. Desplein says he knows of one very dangerous poison which might have been used. He advises that Lydia be placed in a clinic. When Katt advises Corentin that Lydia does nothing but sing and dance, he tells the woman to take her to Charenton.

Esther had offered Madame du Val-Noble fifty thousand francs in return for two doses of a fast-acting poison. Esther tested one of them on her pet greyhound, Romeo, who instantly fell over dead.

It is the evening of the expensive house-warming party and Esther is closeted along in her room. Lucien is secretly brought to her upon his arrival. He tells her that if he can’t marry Clotilde, then he will give up all his ambitions and have no other wife but Esther. She tells him to sneak out carefully without compromising himself. Esther’s entrance to the party causes a sensation. She is not only stunningly beautiful, but witty and shines in the company. Everyone except Nucingen got roaring drunk, even Bixiou, and at last Nucingen gives Esther his hand to lead her upstairs.

Nucingen arrives home on Monday and his stock-broker informs him that Esther sold her bond on Friday and has just collected her money. The broker also mentions that Derville’s head clerk said Esther has inherited seven million francs as the only heir of her great-uncle Gobseck. When Nucingen arrives at Esther’s to tell her the good news, he is told she is sleeping. When Esther is discovered dead, Nucingen thinks of theft and murder and inquires about the seven hundred fifty thousand francs. As soon as he leaves, Europe finds the money under Esther’s pillow. When Europe tells Asia to go for Vautrin/Collin, Paccard suggests to Europe that they take the money and run. Upstairs, Collin writes a will leaving everything to Lucien. When Asia returns from placing it under Esther’s pillow, she advises him that authorities have arrived and also that she believes Europe and Paccard have stolen the money and left. Collin exclaims, “The low villains! They have done for us by their swindling game.”

Nucingen rushed to the Prefecture of Police after recognizing that Esther had died of poison. Collin pulls himself through the skylight of his attic room up onto the roof to see if there is an escape route. Contenson was on lookout on the roof–to his detriment as Collin throws him to the ground. As Contenson lays dead in the gutter, Collin calmly reenters his attic and goes to bed. He asks Asia to give him something to make him too sick to answer questions.

Meanwhile, Lucien had traveled overnight to meet Clotilde at a spot where the carriage would stop prior to descending a steep hill. As Clotilde is telling Lucien she will never marry anyone but him and for him to dispel the prejudices against him, a party of gendarmes arrive with a warrant for his arrest. The charge is accessory to theft and murder. Clotilde faints. By midnight, Lucien is in solitary confinement at La Force. “Father Carlos Herrera” is also at La Force. He was arrested earlier that evening.

 
The End of Evil Ways

At six a.m. Lucien and Collin are being transported in “salad baskets” to the Conciergerie. Lucien shrinks back so no one can see him. Jacques Collin presses his face against the grill and listens to the guards chatting. Jacques Collin is in the first of the two “salad baskets” and just as it reaches a dark and narrow passage, it is required to stop because the way is blocked. Asia had engineered the obstruction in order to pass a message to Collin: “Your poor boy has been arrested; but I shall be there to look after you both. You will see me again.”

Jacques Collin is assisted to the registry where he continues to call for the Spanish ambassador, a breviary and a doctor since he is dying. He is taken through the underground labyrinth to a dark cell whose only light is received from the narrow inner yard in which the women prisoners exercise. Collin paces and then sits in a corner where he cannot be seen through the peephole. He retrieves paper and a tiny piece of lead which were glued under his wig.

Lucien, when brought in, mechanically does as requested as he tries to think of a method of accomplishing suicide in order to escape the upcoming ignominies. He is shattered and cries for hours.

Camusot was President of a provincial court and, through the influence of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse for whom he performed a small service, was appointed to a coveted magistracy in Paris. An incident in Lucien’s caused a severe hatred of him by Madame d’Espard, cousin of the former Madame de Bargeton with whom Lucian traveled from Angouleme. As soon as Madame d’Espard heard that Lucien had been arrested, she sent for Camusot’s wife and told Amelie to influence her husband to “secure his condemnation”.

Just when Camusot is telling Amelie not to get mixed up in the matters of the Law Courts, she is sent for by the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse who tells her she would like Lucien to have a private visitor and to be released within twenty-four hours. This will oblige the Attorney General and Madame de Serisy among others. When Amelie returns home she tells her husband, “We are caught between two fires,” and asks him which is the most powerful. He shows Amelie the notes sent to him by the Prefet. Of “Father Carlos Herrera” they say that he is assuredly Jacques Collin/Vautrin nicknamed Dodgedeath/Trompe-la-Mort. Lucien’s history is also related and his relationships with Coralie and Esther and that the source of his funds is probably Nucingen. Camusot then mentions that he shall see what the information is worth, but he can know nothing about it–but that Lucien is guilty. Amelie comes up with the great idea of letting Father Carlos “put his finger on somebody who can get you out of this”.

As Camusot walks to work, he wonders how to set about his work with someone as sharp as Jacques Collin. Looking in shop windows, his eye is caught by a Boule clock. Inside the curiosity shop, he encounters Count Granville who is Attorney General. Through their conversation, Camusot learns that Count Granville also wants Lucien to be saved.

Once at the Conciergerie, Camusot finds out that the doctor says Collin was not really ill. Bibi-Lupin tells Camusot that the convicts will be happy to turn in Collin because he embezzled their funds which were entrusted to him and used them for Lucien’s benefit.

Collin writes two letters on his scrap of paper. One is to Asie in code telling her to contact the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse or Madame de Serisy and have them pass the other note to Lucien. He also tells her to have Rastignac and Bianchon testify that Father Carlos Herrera “bears no resemblance to the Jacques Collin arrested at Ma Vauquer’s”. In Lucien’s note he writes that Lucien is not to admit knowing anything except that he is Father Carlos. He rolls the two notes into a tiny ball.

After Asie managed to communicate with Collin as he was being transported, she rushed by cab to her shop and where she was dressed as a Baroness of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. She arrives at the magistrates’ office and inquires for Monsieur Camusot fifteen minutes before his arrival. She chooses a young lawyer reading the Gazette des Tribunaux and cosies up to him. Massol is very flattered and dreams of getting rich from such a client.

As Massol shows Asie around the building, she spies the Conciergerie through the window and inquires about it. When told what it is, she replies that she has always dreamed of seeing Marie-Antoinette’s dungeon. After dropping the name of Granville the Attorney General and a few society names, it seems she will be allowed to be shown the Conciergerie without a permit.

Asie and Massol chat with the constables until they see a prisoner being brought up, at which time the constables tell her she must leave. Recognizing Collin, Asie calls out loudly, “Oh! where am I?” Collin swoons and as he leaves, allows the small ball of paper to fall from his sleeve. After he is gone, Asie drops her purse and adroitly scoops up the paper while retrieving her purse. She then loudly laments about her lost dog, calls out that she sees him and dashes off.

Following Collin’s instructions, Asie goes to see the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse who quickly recognizes that she isn’t a baroness. Nevertheless, in order to save Lucien, the Duchesse agrees to go with Asie to see Madame de Serisy.

Madame de Serisy had been attached to the Marquis d’Aiglemont for ten years but when he left for the colonies, she doted on Lucien and fell in love for the first time in her life and was crushed to learn about Esther. But she nearly died when she heard he had been arrested and in a delirium said to her husband, “Save Lucien, and I will live henceforth for you alone.” Asie told Madame de Serisy that to save Lucien she must give him the note, adding added that it was her fault he was in that scrape because she hadn’t given him any money but Esther had given him a million at the cost of her body and soul. Poor Madame de Serisy blessed Esther on hearing this.

Jacques Collin is brought into Camusot’s office where he continues to say he is Don Carlos Herrera, canon of Toledo and secret envoy from Spain. When asked by Camusot why he happened to be at the home of Lucien’s mistress, a prostitute, Collin comes up with the answer that Lucien is his son and then swoons from having to reveal this deep, dark secret.

The doctor and infimary attendant arrive and after a ten minute examination, the doctor states that the prisoner has been ill but is now strong. Once Collin’s shirt is removed, he is struck with the rod. When no letters are visible, Collin insists they try the other shoulder and down his back. The doctor declares that the back has been too severely scarred to allow the mark of a convict to show.

Camusot abruptly says, “You have an aunt.” When Collin denies it, Camusot continues: ” . . . Mademoiselle Jacqueline Collin, whom you placed in Esther’s service under the eccentric name of Asie.” Camusot relates a history of Jacqueline Collin and Jacques Collin, but Collin doesn’t reveal anything by his expression. An usher arrives and announces in a low voice to Camusot that Bibi-Lupin has arrived.

As Jacques Collin took considerable pains to change his appearance, Bibi-Lupin is taken aback upon seeing Collin and can only recognize him by certain characteristics.

The next witness is Madame Poiret–the former Mlle Michonneau who was responsible for his getting caught at Ma Vauquer’s boarding house. When other possible witnesses are mentioned, Collin is thrilled to hear Eugene de Rastignac’s name and says he has met him several times at Lucien’s and was never mistaken for a convict.

Just when Camusot was thinking of sending Collin back to the Conciergerie, a woman arrives who has a letter which was sent to Lucien. She had stuck it in a drawer to await reimbursement of ten sous for the postage. Camusot inspects the postmark and determines it arrived for Lucien the day after Esther’s death. It is her beautiful final letter to Lucien. Camusot tells Collin that if he can prove he is really Don Carlos Herrera that he will be released as it is no longer as case of murder but suicide.

Lucien is finally brought into Camusot’s office. After he is allowed to read Esther’s final letter to him, he sobs for a quarter hour before Camusot is able to begin questioning him. Collin was right to be afraid of Lucien’s being questioned as he admitted everything which Camusot mentioned. Lucien was horrified to learn that Collin was passing himself off as Lucien’s father and cried, “Oh! my poor mother.” When Lucien finally realizes his mistake, drops of sweat break out and mingle with tears. Camusot relishes his triumph. When Lucien asks if he will be released, Camusot says tomorrow after his confrontation with Jacques Collin. For tonight he will be given the best cell in the pistole and whatever he wishes. Lucien requests writing materials.

Count Octave de Bauvan enters bringing Countess Serisy. Camusot confesses that her letter arrived too late to stop his interrogation of Lucien. She suggests destroying the reports and when Camusot tells her it would be a crime against society, she replies that it is a greater crime against her to have written them in the first place. Camusot is told to have a new interrogation of the “Spanish diplomate” and that Rastignac and Bianchon will not identify him as Jacques Collin.

Unable to bear a confrontation with Collin and thinking of Esther’s letter, Lucien pens his Last Will and Testament as soon as he is brought writing materials. He encloses it with a letter to Collin and a retraction for Camusot in an envelope with a note to Comte de Granville. The irony of Lucien’s plan to commit suicide is that he couldn’t have accomplished it in the barren cell, but here in a pistole, he sees a way and when Madame de Serisy arrives at his cell, she sees Lucien hanging like clothes on a peg. A news article says that Lucien was innocent and died from a ruptured aneurism.

 
The Last Incarnation of Vautrin/Vautrin’s Last Avatar

Amelia thinks and tells Camusot that she will turn this to his advantage. She tells him to make sure Collin’s real identity is exposed by the other prisoners.

Dr. Lebrun tells Collin that Lucien hanged himself and gives him the letter Lucien left for him. Collin is assisted to the pistole and falls upon Lucien’s body asking for a lock of his hair. The next morning when Collin arrives in the prison yard, although his face is different, he is soon recognized by former associates. Bibi-Lupin’s plan to have the prisoners murder Collin fails as three prisoners play along with Collin’s impersonation and even call for a chair for the good priest.

Another prisoner currently in the Conciergerie is an earlier protegee of Collin’s, a young Corsican criminal named Theodore Calvi. When Bibi-Lupin hears that Collin has asked to make a priestly visit to this man who is condemned to death, he feels he has another chance to get something on Collin and plans to be present disguised as a constable. But there’s no fooling Jacques Collin! He immediately recognizes Bibi-Lupin and quickly speaks to Theodore in Italian telling him he is there to save him from death and will later arrange a jail break for him.

Aunt Jacqueline (Asie) arrives in full magnificent force including two lackeys, one of which is the wayward Paccard, and waving an official paper. Speaking in their slang, Collin gives her orders to hide the letters to Lucien which might compromise Madame de Serisy or the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.

Back in the prison yard, Collin works on La Pouraille, totally gains his trust, and intimates he will avenge him on those who squealed on him. Collin finds out where La Pouraille hid his proceeds and also where his two co-horts hid theirs. He now proceeds to talk La Pouraille into confessing to Theodore’s crime in addition to the ones he is in for, saying that he can then get him off the murder charges and consideration for the thefts if the money is returned. The two men then talk the incredibly naive Biffon into confessing to crimes and involving his girl friend, Biffe, by telling him she will then be locked up for a year and thus unable to cheat on him. Biffon believes they will both be released in a year but Collin plans to pin murders on him.

Amelie’s first call is at Mme d’Espard who outwardly pretends to be concerned about Mme de Serisy but shows that she is secretly pleased, thinking that woman being out of her mind is vengeance for a past event. She promises to help advance Camusot’s career.

Amelie’s next call is on the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse who had a restless night worrying about her letters to Lucien becoming public because they were compromising in the extreme. They go together to the Grandlieu Mansion. The Duchesse de Grandlieu rapidly sends for her husband who takes charge, sends for a couple of people and dismisses Amelie. As Amelie is leaving, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse mentions helping Camusot’s career and the Duke agreed.

One of the men summoned by the Duke de Grandlieu was M de Saint Denis aka Corentin! The fear is that if Collin is imprisoned or dies that the letters may get into someone else’s hands. Corentin now feels that since Collin has murdered both Peyrade and Contenson, Collin is actually the only person qualified be Corentin’s successor. He plans to recruit Collin to the other side of the law.

At Granville’s office, Camusot mentions prosecuting Jacques Collin and Granville cries out that they will be lost if his identity is revealed. Jacques Collin arrives and announces: “Monsieur le Comte, I am Jacques Collin. I surrender!”Collin also confesses that the woman was his aunt, Jacqueline Collin. He is glad when Comusot is sent out of the room, saying that he considers him Lucien’s murderer and hates him with an unrelenting passion. Jacques Collin thinks that he has Justice on the ropes because they will care more about the honor of three families than the life of three convicts. Collin says that a beggarwoman in rags can be found in the hall and should be brought to him. He is astounded when Granville sends the constables away and tells Collin that he can go meet the woman himself. As Collin is leaving Granville’s office, Corentin arrives disguised as a sickly-looking old man.

Collins goes with his aunt in a cab and returns to Granville’s office with three sample letters. Collin recognizes the grubby old man as Corentin. Collin and Corentin play word games back and forth and Corentin offers Collin the position with the police. Collin tells Granville that the only crime of which he has been convicted is forgery and that he has served over five years total, so has paid his legal debt.

When Collin is granted permission to freely attend Lucien’s funeral, he tells de Granville that while he was out earlier he questioned his servants and they believe that Esther’s bond money was not stolen because she had a habit of hiding things. He adds that he will find the money stolen from the Crottats. Outside, Collin feels self-satisfied and ready to embark on a new life. One of the few people that follow the procession to the cemetery is Rastignac. Collin is grateful and tells him that he will always be at his service if needed. Rastignac tries to distance himself. Lucien is buried beside Esther and Collin remarks that he will be buried here also. As the gravediggers begin to throw dirt into the grave, Collin faints. Two men of the security brigade lift him into a cab.

Collin is taken to de Granville’s office where he finds Count Bauvan who reminds him of his promise to save Mme de Serisy. Collin goes to his room where he changes into the costume of Father Herrera and picks up a letter which Lucien had written but neglected to mail. It was to Mme de Serisy and written after she had banished him upon seeing him at the Italiens with Esther. Collin suspects that Mme de Serisy feels guilty about Lucien’s suicide and this letter professes Lucien’s love for her. After half an hour alone with Collin, Mme de Serisy is calm and reconciled. M de Granville tells Collin that Theodore will be released and can go into Collin’s service. Collin is to serve a six month probation under Bibi-Lupin before replacing him. Jacques Collin does all he promised within the first week. Lucien and Esther have a magnificent monument at Pere Lachaise. Collin works for around fifteen years and retires in 1845.

 
Read it here

Summarized by Dagny, September – November 2008

The tale is set along Balzac’s beloved Loire Valley, at the wine-growing town of Sancerre. A weakling who was not expected to live, Monsieur de la Baudraye, has wed a talented young beauty, Dinah Piedefer, thirty years his junior, from a Calvinist family that had converted to Catholicism.

De la Baudraye is a spider of a man of the type whom one encounters in the provinces, full of a kind of strongly directed miserliness and love of purchasing adjoining estates (reminding me of Grandet in Eugenie Grandet). Here is Balzac’s description of the husband:

“Monsieur de la Baudraye, whose legs were so thin that, for mere decency, he wore false calves, whose thighs were like the arms of an average man, whose body was not unlike that of a cockchafer…. As he walked, the little wine-owner’s leg-pads often twisted round on his shins, so little did he make a secret of them, and he would thank anyone who warned him of this little mishap.”

At first, he allows Dinah enough to furnish their house in Sancerre and attract a cadre of male admirers. Yet, because Dinah is a “Superior Woman” and something of a bluestocking, other women are intimidated by her and do not attend her little affairs.

Although her husband cuts back her household expenses to the bone, Dinah is not unduly affected until her old school friend Anna Grossetete, who has become the Baronne de Fontaine, comes to visit from Paris:

“This meeting was strangely disastrous. Anna, who at school had been far less handsome than Dinah, now, as Baronne de Fontaine, was a thousand times handsomer than the Baronne de la Baudraye, in spite of her fatigue and her traveling dress. Anna stepped out of an elegant traveling chaise loaded with Paris milliners’ boxes, and she had with her a lady’s maid, whose airs quite frightened Dinah. All the difference between a woman of Paris and a provincial was at once evident to Dinah’s intelligent eye; she saw herself as her friend saw her – and Anna found her altered beyond recognition. Anna spent six thousand francs a year on herself alone, as much as kept the whole household at La Baudraye.”

But Dinah is not without resources. Even though she admits to her male admirer Clagny that “Anna has learned to live, while I have been learning to endure,” she draws upon her talent to publish some locally famous poems under the names of Jan Diaz and Paquita la Sevillane.

In addition to her feelings of being kept back by her husband, just when she realizes the disadvantages of her position compared to Anna, she loses her old friend and confessor, the Abbe Duret. Before he dies, the good Abbe has seen Dinah’s dissatisfaction and warns her of dangers ahead:

“So beware of offending Monsieur de la Baudraye; he would forgive an infidelity, because he would make capital out of it, but he would be doubly implacable if you should touch him on [a vulnerable] spot … and would make your life unendurable.”

Poor Dinah de la Baudraye is so disheartened being saddled with a miserly squib of a husband that she surrounds herself with local candidates for her favors. But she has bigger game in mind: She arranges to have two notables from Sancerre who have made good in Paris invited with the prospect of being made a deputy dangled before them … and, who knows? There may be more interesting consequences of a more intimate nature.

The well-known physician Horace Bianchon and the roué litterateur Etienne Lousteau come down from Paris and are met with … the wine grape harvest. Eventually, the two are driven out to meet Dinah, and are met by the young lady herself at the door dressed in a romantic garb and spouting a decadent lament:

“What do you do to make life endurable?” [This is Lousteau asking]

“‘Ah! That is the crux,’ said the lady. ‘It is unendurable. Utter despair or dull resignation — there is no third alternative; that is the arid soil in which our existence is rooted, and on which a thousand stagnant ideas fall; they cannot fertilize the ground, but they supply food for the etiolated flowers of our desert souls.’”

Lousteau and Bianchon conclude that our muse is a bit of a chatterbox. But here begins a period of testing. The Parisians want to see what Dinah is made up of (especially Lousteau); and Dinah wants to see if the difference between the local yokels and the visitors from Paris is worth the trouble.

The latter two tentatively posit that Dinah and the public prosecutor, M. Clagny, might be something of an item. They decide to recount several tales about adulterous love. Then, that night, they surreptitiously position hairs on Dinah’s door and the prosecutor’s door. They are surprised (and amused) to see that Dinah and Clagny are probably both innocent of their suspicions. Curiously, this has the effect of stoking Lousteau’s fires of passion for Dinah. (Bianchon seems somewhat less interested.)

There follows a rather strange scene in which Lousteau receives a manuscript from Paris which is bound in make-up sheets for a romance called Olympia, or Roman Revenge. By now, several other curious members of local society have gravitated to Dinah’s estate to see the visitors for themselves. There follows the reading of several fragments of this dreadful and badly dated romance.After the reading out loud of the romance which was wrapped around the manuscript sent to Lousteau by his publisher, Lousteau decides to get down to business; and the story takes up a comic tone.

It begins as the Parisian notices a young Mademoiselle Gorju, “whose figure threatened terrible things after the birth of her first child,” and continues in that vein. Dinah de la Baudraye seems not to care quite so much for Doctor Horace Bianchon as for his friend Etienne:

“Everything was against the physician – his frankness, his simplicity, and his profession. And this is why: Women who want to love – and Dinah wanted to love as much as to be loved – have an instinctive aversion for men who are devoted to an absorbing occupation.”

Being the all-around good guy that he is – perhaps the nicest guy in all of Balzac’s many works -, he does not seem to mind being passed over by the provincial belle; and he is more than willing to help set up the liaison between the two lovers.

Bianchon is set to leave for Paris in a day or two. Dinah sets up to drive the good doctor to a town from which he can take a diligence to Paris. Accompanying Bianchon and Dinah are Lousteau and, following on a horse, one of Dinah’s local beaux, the young Gatien Boisrouge. Bianchon arranges to throw some dust in Gatien’s eyes by having him ride back to get some “papers” he left behind, which he does. That leaves Dinah and Etienne to canoodle in peace. He even goes so far as to disarrange her muslin dress, which embarrasses the young baroness and becomes very evident to any onlookers what has been going on.

After Gatien tells his fellow beaux about the dress, Etienne addresses them:

“For my part, I say boldly, before Gatien, I give up Paris; I mean to stay at Sancerre and swell the number of your cavalieri serven ti. I feel so young again in my native district [he is originally from Sancerre]; I have quite forgotten Paris and all its wickedness, and its bores, and its wearisome pleasures. – Yes, my life seems in a way purified.”

It is to laugh, however, because Etienne must leave for Paris at the insistence of his publisher. He does so, and promptly forgets his “muse of the department, going so far as to shove her long perfumed and impassioned missives into his underwear drawer while he plots a marriage with the young widowed daughter of his acquaintance Cardot.

This turns to farce as Cardot’s puritanical wife comes with her daughter,  unannounced, to Etienne’s quarters – at the same time that the Baroness de la Baudraye arrives in tears to say that she is preggers. Mme Cardot and daughter are shocked and call off any further efforts in that direction. In the meantime, Lousteau pens a quick note to his friend Bixiou (who is in on the writer’s secrets) and tells him to come read the riot act (in good fun) to Lousteau while Dinah cowers in the bedroom.

Bixiou comes over and (wink wink) berates Lousteau in such a way as to increase Dinah’s love for him:

“His [Etienne's] plan of action was quickly decided on; he determined to play the farce of passion once more, and to perfection. His mean self-interestedness and his false vehemence of passion had disastrous results. Madame de la Baudraye, when she set out from Sancerre for paris, had intended to live in rooms of her own quite near to Lousteau; but the proofs of devotion her lover had given her by given up such brilliant prospects [e.g., marrying Cardot's daughter], and yet more the perfect happiness of the first days of their illicit union, kept her from mentioning such a parting. The second day was to be – and indeed was – a high festival, in which such a suggestion proposed to ‘her angel’ would have been a discordant note.”

We leave this chapter with Lousteau remembering Bianchon’s earlier comment that her little weasel of a husband in Sancerre would no doubt die soon, leaving Dinah’s lover with far more francs than Cardot would have given him for marrying his daughter.

Predictably, the relationship between Dinah de la Baudraye and Lousteau begins to lose its luster. It was great fun for a while going to all the theatrical openings and such:

“By the end of three months Dinah was acclimatized; she had reveled in the music at the Italian opera; she knew the pieces ‘on’ at all theatres, and the actors and jests of the day; she had become inured to this life of perpetual excitement, this rapid torrent in which everything is forgotten. She no longer craned her neck or stood with her nose in the air, like an image of Amazement, at the constant surprises that Paris has for a stranger. She had learned to breathe that witty, vitalizing, teeming atmosphere where clever people feel themselves in their element, and which they can no longer bear to quit.”

The problem was not Paris: It was Lousteau. He was a journalist who lived in what the Japanese of bygone times called “the floating world” of mistresses, drunken revels, and all-around dissipation – or, to use the French term, nostalgie de la boue (“yearning for the mud”).

Remember that Dinah came to Paris, ditching her husband, with a bun in the oven, which turned into a son. Soon, he was joined by a second. Dinah brings her mother from Sancerre to help raise the children while she tries, vainly, to resume her career as a bluestocking. As Lousteau’s journalistic output declines, Dinah winds up taking up his half-done pieces and finishing them. But the spark of their relationship is gone. And so is Lousteau’s career. Etienne justly remarks:

“‘You do not understand me,’ said he. ‘I blame myself, for I am not worth such sacrifices, dear angel. I am, in a literary sense, a quite second-rate man. If the day comes when I can no longer cut a figure at the bottom of the newspaper, the editors will let me lie, like an old shoe flung into the rubbish heap. Remember, we tight-rope dancers have no retiring pension! The State would have too many clever men on its hands if it started on such a career of beneficence. I am forty-two, and I am as idle as a marmot. I feel it—I know it’…”

At the same time, Dinah’s cast-off husband is going from triumph to triumph. His wealth increases … his investments pay off spectacularly … and he petitions the Citizen King, Louis-Philippe, to become a Count and be promoted to a higher grade of the Legion of Honor.

And what does this miserly paragon do? He takes back Dinah under terms favorable to her and her children … he acknowledges the boys to be his own … and he turns generous. Dinah has no wish to go down with Lousteau’s ship – and his ship is definitely going down.

Although de la Baudraye spends most of his time in Sancerre making money, he has put Dinah up in a charming abode which he has allowed her to decorate. Her old friend Clagny has risen in the French court system and becomes her friend and advisor – without ulterior motives, as he is a married man.

Finally, Lousteau shows up to borrow money from Dinah. His furniture is about to be attached, and he owes thousands of francs. She lends him 6,000 francs and has good reason to consider herself lucky to be rid of such a self-destructive paramour as Etienne Lousteau. So for her, it’s a kind of happy ending. For Lousteau, he will probably swirl down the drain in another year or two after blowing what little money he has on drink and whores. The last word belongs to Dinah:

“Why,” said Lousteau presently, “why not end as we ought to have begun—hide our love from all eyes, and see each other in secret?”

“Never!” cried the new-made Countess, with an icy look. “Do you not comprehend that we are, after all, but finite creatures? Our feelings seem infinite by reason of our anticipation of heaven, but here on earth they are limited by the strength of our physical being. There are some feeble, mean natures which may receive an endless number of wounds and live on; but there are some more highly-tempered souls which snap at last under repeated blows. You have—”

“Oh! enough!” cried he. “No more copy! Your dissertation is unnecessary, since you can justify yourself by merely saying—’I have ceased to love!’”

Read it here

Summaried by Jim, March 2011

Balzac takes the first two chapters to set his scene (chapter 1) and the de Guenic family (chapter 2). Brittany had been fighting with France for some twelve hundred years over autonomy, special privileges, or rejection of both the French Revolution (Les Chouans/) and the Orleanist monarchy represented by the “Citizen King” Louis-Philippe (Béatrix). It is really a very special place miles apart from the rest of France both culturally and linguistically.

Within this very snarky cultural milieu, the de Guenic family are ancient holdouts. Whenever Brittany was at loggerheads with the rest of France, you can count on the de Guenics picking up their weapons and joining, if not leading, the fray. Their family’s motto is FAC, which roughly translates as JUST DO IT!

The family members at the time Balzac begins his story are the old Baron de Guenic, his elder sister Zephirine (who is blind), his wife the former Fanny O’Brien whom he had met in Ireland, and two servants, Mariotte and Gasselin, who are like two bookends. There is also a son, Calyste, whom we have not met yet who is a subject of conversation because of his womanizing ways.

The de Guenics have two guests over to play Mouche, a card game: Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel and the Chevalier du Halga.The family of the Baron and his guests are shaking their heads over the family heir, Calyste, who is shamefully engaged in a relationship with Felicité des Touches, a commoner – albeit a wealthy one. That is not the worst of it: Not only is she suspected of having Liberal political tendencies, but she is in the arts, affects men’s clothing, and calls herself by a man’s name, Camille Maupin. And there is still more: She is as old as Calyste’s  mother, whereas Calyste has not yet attained adulthood. In the words of the Abbé Grimond, an old family friend:

“[She is] a woman of questionable morals, a writer for the stage, frequenting theaters and actors, squandering her fortune among pamphleteers, painters, musicians, a devilish society, in short. She writes books herself, and has taken a false name by which she is better known, they tell me, than by her own. She seems to be a sort of circus woman who never enters a church except to look at the pictures. She has spent quite a fortune in decorating Les Touches [her estate] in a most improper fashion, making it a Mohammedan paradise where the houris are not women….”

… and more, much more, along the same line. As the card players return home or go to bed, only the Baroness remains up to wait for the absent Calyste, who comes in at 1 a.m.

As in many of Balzac’s provincial novels, the atmosphere is as confining as bonds of iron; and Calyste feels the need to breathe freely without having the weight of the past come crushing down on his head at every family meeting. As Balzac writes, “Passion was an unknown thing to these Catholic souls, these old  people exclusively concerned about salvation, God, the king, and their  property.”

We cut to the life of “Camille Maupin,” who is largely self-taught due to the early death of her parents and guardian. She is also extremely wealthy, much more so than the de Guenics. Balzac is careful to mention her in the same breath with the real George Sand, presumably so that people would not think that she actually is George Sand – but it becomes apparent that she is very like the author of Indiana, Consuelo, and other famous and somewhat scandalous novels  of the day.

In Chapter 7, we see Les Touches, Camille’s estate, in its dark slate splendor arising from the dunes and salt pools around Croisic. We see Calyste let himself in and run upstairs as he hears Mlle des Touches playing her piano and crying. She welcomes Calyste’s interference and tells him that her male companion, one Claude Vignon, a literary critic, has disappeared, presumably for the bright lights of Paris.

It seems that “Camille Maupin” is one of those women who toy with men’s  affections without intending any real harm. Claude and Calyste were jealous of each other in vying for their Camille’s attention. At some point in the past, Camille had already told Calyste that she is not in love with the young man. We do not at this point know the real nature of her feelings for Claude.

Camille shows Calyste a letter from her friend Beatrix, the Marquise de Rochefide née Cateran (an old family every bit as noble as the de Guenics). She paints an appetizing picture of Beatrix as a pale blond beauty with delicate features – who has abandoned her own child to run off with a Neapolitan musician named Gaetano Conti. Now, it appears that the gloss has worn off her relationship with Conti, and both Conti and the Marquise are coming to Les Touches for a stay. It seems as if Camille Maupin wants Calyste to fall for Beatrix.

Even before he meets the belle Beatrix, it seems as if Calyste has fallen head over heels with her. So much so that Beatrix is a little perturbed by all the attention; and Camille feels that Calyste is acting like a goose, which may be a hereditary trait of the de Guenics.

Into this mix rides the young Charlotte Kergarouet, the de Guenic family-approved bride for the boy, along with her redoubtable mother and Mlle de Pen-Hoel. And, what is more, they share the same carriage with Calyste, Beatrix, and Camille. Calyste acts with some coldness toward his old playfellow Charlotte, which disturbs her and her minders. The de Guenics are confused by Calyste and have little idea what is going through his mind.

The one person who is not confused is Camille. She clearly wants Beatrix and Calyste to fall madly in love with each other. She gives Calyste his marching orders: He must appear to be madly in love with Felicité and pay scant attention to Beatrix. Meanwhile, Felicité will work on Beatrix behind the scenes.

“They were like the preliminaries of a duel between two women, – a duel without truce, in which the assault was made on both sides with snares, feints, false generosities, deceitful confessions, crafty confidence, by which one hid and the other bared her love; and in which the sharp steel of Camille’s treacherous words entered the heart of her friend, and left its poison there.”

The somewhat overheated love triangle between Calyste de Guenic, Felicité des Touches (a.k.a. Camille Maupin), and the Marquise Beatrix de Rochefide continues apace. It seems that Calyste has thrown off Camille’s (perhaps disingenuous) advice to follow her lead and Beatrix will be his. Instead, he enters into a secret correspondence with Beatrix and like the naïf he is blurts out his innermost feelings to her. At the same time, he lets his mother Fanny read his letters, which dismays her to no end.

Things come to a head when Calyste and the two women go on a picnic to Croisic and around the wild shoreline. At one point, Calyste and Beatrix are alone in a particularly dangerous spot. He becomes insistent about his love, she resists him, and he hurls her off the cliff. She falls about ten feet and is held in place by her voluminous dress. While not in the immediate area, Camille has witnessed the deed and calls the servant Gassenet to fetch a ladder from a nearby paludier’s house. Calyste and Gassenet rescue Beatrix and take her swooning body to the house.

Balzac’s description of the effect of Calyste’s violence is rather surprising:

“Cold, fragile, thin, hard women like Madame de Rochefide, women whose necks turn in a manner to give them a vague resemblance to the feline race, have souls of the same pale tint as their light eyes, green or gray; and to melt them, to fuse those blocks of stone it needs a thunderbolt. To Beatrix, Calyste’s fury of love and his mad action came as the thunderbolt that nought resists, which changes all natures, even the most stubborn. She felt herself inwardly humbled; a true, pure love bathed her heart with its soft and limpid warmth. She breathed a sweet and genial atmosphere of feelings hitherto unknown to her, by which she held herself magnified, elevated….”

Does this remind you of a caveman’s wooing? Bash the woman in the head with a club and drag her by the hair to one’s cave. Calyste’s action is not altogether successful, as Beatrix, while feeling more moist-eyed about him, has no inclination to run off with him.

Camille, on the other hand, knows by now that Calyste has flouted her advice and engaged in correspondence with Beatrix. She confronts him and, in effect, calls him a stupid ninny. She contacts Conti and urges him to visit Les Touches.

What ensues is an interesting scene in which Conti, who knows what has happened, decides to have a man-to-man talk with Calyste. He begins by saying that he was only waiting for an excuse to dump the Marquise because he has fallen in love with Mlle Falcon of the Paris stage and contemplates marriage with her. Heady with anticipation, Calyste does not know he is being taken for a ride by the shrewd musician. He blabs out everything about his hopes vis-a-vis Beatrix while Conti takes careful note of what he says.

Quite suddenly, Conti and Beatrix leave together, leaving Calyste in left field sucking on a mop.

I am still rather puzzled about Camille’s motivation in all this. She tells Calyste that Beatrix originally abandoned her family and ran off with Conti because “[s]he is one of those women who prefer the celebrity of a scandal to obtain the fatal alms of a rebuke; they desire to be talked about at any cost.” I know that Camille is playing some sort of game in which she takes revenge on Beatrix for talking Conti away from her. Plus, I do not think she really cares one iota for Calyste and the whole de Guenic clan.

When the Marquise de Rochefide decamped with her lover Conti, she left Calyste lovesick and helpless – so lovesick and helpless that both he and his father the Baron fall sick and have their lives despaired of. Calyste himself sends Charlotte de Kergarouet away, after warning her off from him by telling her the truth and advising her to marry another. (At least, SHE’s safe!) Unfortunately, the baron dies, to the grief of the population around Guerande, to whom his death marked the passing of an era.

After the funeral, the Baroness brings Mlle des Touches to see Calyste. He promises his mother to save Calyste. Felicité brings Calyste to Paris and arranges a marriage between him and one of the daughters of the Duchesse de Grandlieu, the 19-year-old Sabine. As a result of some shrewd real estate transactions, Felicité winds up with 2.5 million francs. Of that, 700,000 goes to buy a house in Paris’s rue de Bourbon for Calyste and Sabine; and a million goes for the recovery of the du Guenic estates.

You can tell where this is going, can’t you? After doing her best for Calyste (contrary to her avowed character earlier in the story), Felicité enters a convent of the Visitation Order for “a lifetime of prayer and solitude.” Yes, to be sure!

Calyste takes his young wife to Brittany, where, before long, she detects that Calyste, though superficially healed, has a worm in his heart – something connected, perhaps, with a former love. The honeymoon goes off somewhat less than well, and Sabine is already writing letters to her family about her strange relationship. In the honeymoon carriage, her husband tells her:

“I want you to be happy, and, above all, do I wish you to be happy in your own way. Therefore, in the situation in which we are, instead of deceiving ourselves mutually about our characters and our feelings by noble compliances, let us endeavor to be to each other at once what we should be years hence. Think always that you have a friend [I would have said fiend] and a brother in me, as I shall feel I have a sister and a friend in you.”

Sabine goes to visit Mlle des Touches at her convent, but the latter is feeling uneasy in her conscience about the situation. She ends up by warning her, “manage, if you can, that he shall never again see Beatrix.” Also she warns her from visiting Les Touches, which she had settled on Calyste, because insofar as Sabine is concerned, it would be like visiting “Bluebeard’s chamber.”

Originally, Balzac had planned to end Beatrix with Chapter XVII, saying that, despite the marriage, Calyste “retains a sadness in his soul which nothing dissipates…. Beatrix lives still in the depths of his heart, and it is impossible to see what disasters might result should he again meet with Madame de Rochefide.”

It is unfortunate that Balzac decided to tinker with his story as originally written.

Sabine writes to her mother, “I am not loved.” Like Pandora playing with the lid of that mythical box, she wants to see Les Touches for any light such a visit would cast on her loveless marriage. Mlle de Pen-Hoel has the best line about the place: “It is a place of perdition…. Mlle des Touches committed many sins there, for which she is now asking the pardon of God.” But she eventually gives in and goes with Calyste. While there, she tries to make light of the place’s “poisonous flowers,” but instead she rouses her husband against her: He reprimands her and asks her to “cease galvanizing that passion.” She writes to her mother:

“I saw that Calyste’s love was increasing through his reminiscences; that he was expending on me the stormy emotions I revived by asking him of the coquetries of that hateful Beatrix, – just think of it! That cold unhealthy nature, so persistent yet so flabby, something between a mollusk and a bit of coral, dares to call itself Beatrix, Beatrice!”

Sabine has given birth to a male heir to the du Guenic family and dedicates herself to his upbringing. (Curiously, Balzac does not divulge his name at this point.) While she is taking care of the baby’s croup, Calyste goes by himself to the theatre and sees … none other than Beatrix.

The moment of danger has arrived. Calyste visits her in her box and wrangles an invitation to her house in the Parc Monceau area. She informs him that Conti has in fact abandoned her, so she is, in effect, free.

The wheels are now in motion.

There have been some changes to Beatrix:

“Madame de Rochefide, now become bony and gaunt, her complexion faded and almost discolored, her eyes hollow with deep circles, had that evening brightened those premature ruins by the cleverest contrivances of the article Paris. She had taken it into her head, like other deserted women, to assume a virgin air, and recall by clouds of white material the maidens of Ossian, so poetically painted by Girodet….”

Well, Calyste wastes no time in once again falling head over heels in love with her. Sabine does not take long to figure out what has happened. Calyste is now interested in spending lots of time with his popsie. It is Balzac who writes:

“Fallen into a mortifying position through Conti’s desertion, Beatrix was determined to have, at any rate, the fame which unprincipled conduct gives. The misfortune of the poor young wife, a rich and beautiful Grandlieu, should be her pedestal.”

Let us summarize the situation:

• Calyste – No longer just a lovesick goose, but now an uncaring adulterer.
•  Mlle (now Sister) des Touches – Conscience-stricken, suspecting that Calyste would go over to the dark side, which he does with alacrity.
•  Sabine – Innocent victim, a beautiful young woman who deserves better.
•  Beatrix, Marquise de Rochefide – An unprincipled and hateful woman who disguises her failing powers to attract with a diabolic art.

How demeaning to a fresh, vital, beautiful young mother like Sabine du Guenic to have lost your young husband to a woman twelve years her senior! But there is no doubt that Calyste is now enjoying the favors of Beatrix de Rochefide and neglecting his home, his wife, and his son Calyste Jr for a bad girl of a slightly older generation.

Out of rage and frustration, Sabine finally tells the tale to her mother the Duchesse de Grandlieu and her sisters Clotilde and Athenais. She goes so far as to warn Athenais not to put her best face forward to her upcoming marriage to the Vicomte Juste de Grandlieu, but to “be calm, dignified, cold; measure the happiness you give by that which you receive.” In other words, you’d do better to be a cold manipulatrix like Beatrix than to be your lovely self.

But Mama has resources which she plans to put into action. She’s been around, the Duchesse de Grandlieu has, and knows something of the weaknesses of erring men and women. In her own words to her confessor, the Abbé Brossette,

 ”I have committed the sin, my dear director, of thinking how to launch upon Madame de Rochefide a little man, very self-willed and full of the worst qualities, who will certainly induce her to dismiss my son-in-law.”

And who is this little man? None other than the Marquis de Rochefide, who is currently involved in a relationship with La-Petite-Aurélie Schontz (born Josephine Schiltz) of the Paris stage (sort of: best to think more of a Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan type).

No sooner do we hear of this very unlikely sounding plot than Balzac pulls back the curtain to show us the big picture. Instead of looking at the sad life and loves of the du Guenics and their gloomy households, we are now looking from a great height at a city that has thousands of footloose young women whose sole purpose in life is to romance large numbers of francs from foolish older men like the Marquis Arthur de Rochefide. Whole neighborhoods are populated by these young women, and legions of artisans are employed to create precious little love nests for them and their inamoratas.

Balzac defines three stages of barnacle-like attachment to these older men, from the “rat” stage, where they are at first cautious and niggardly with their money; to the next stage, where they have wormed their way into their confidence; to the penultimate stage where they act in loco uxoris (in place of a wife) and help raising the child of the former marriage, giving financial advice without being greedy for financial recompense.

But note I said penultimate. There is a fourth stage which involves marriage. Mlle Schontz wants a ring and the security that comes with it. She can’t marry the Marquis de Rochefide because his wife Beatrix is still running around doing pretty much the same thing her “ex” is, and that would be bigamy. So what does she do but settle on a stupid young man, one of a new class that Balzac describes as having risen as a result of the July monarchy’s gross multiplication of titles and distinctions? The young man is a Norman of good family named Fabien du Ronceret.

“‘I have seven hundred thousand francs,’ she [Mlle Schontz] said, ‘and I admit to you that if I could find a man full of ambition, who knows how to understand my character, I would change my position; for do you know what is the dream of my life? To become a true bourgeoise, enter an honorable family, and make my husband and children truly happy.’”

After some denseness on the part of Fabien, the young man finally toes the mark: “Within a week, the latter [Fabien], whom she put on the scent of her fortune, had offered his hand, and heart, and future, – three things of about the same value.” [Good one, Honoré!]

The Duchesse de Grandlieu continues to intervene to save her daughter Sabine’s marriage with Calyste. She calls in the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, who in turn calls in the notorious rake Maxime de Trailles, friend and follower of Henri de Marsay, a member of Balzac’s notorious “The Thirteen.” Using the dissipated Comte de Trailles to effect a marital reconciliation is like using Mephistopheles to help an old lady across the street.

What is it, exactly, that Maxime de Trailles does?

First, he hits the Duchesse up for 20,000 francs and gives them to the impecunious (but in a small way only) young rake the Comte de la Palferine, urging him to spend money freely in attempting to romance Beatrix away from Calyste. Now this de la Palferine is witty and fairly accomplished, compared to the dull, mooning Calyste, and Beatrix is likely to find him a tad sharper.

Next, he convinces Mlle Aurelie Schontz to go through with her plan to dump the old Marquis Arthur de Rochefide (Beatrix’s estranged husband) and marry Fabien de Roncereau, whom he will contrive to be appointed chief justice and made a member of the Legion of Honor. Voila! Instant respectability!

He succeeds in both endeavors. Old Arthur is disconsolate when he finds Aurelie canoodling with Fabien on several occasions. When it appears he won’t take the hint (just as Fabien originally was slow on the pickup), Maxime provides the impetus that leaves the old Marquis out in the cold and minus his customary corset.

De Trailles urges that Sabine plan to spend a l-o-o-o-n-g vacation traveling around remote parts of Europe just to allow the Marquis and Marquise to get together again without unduly upsetting their respective digestions.

In the meantime, de la Palferine romances Beatrix away from Calyste (which is about as difficult as shooting fish in a barrel). Which gives our author the opportunity to tell us what women are really like:

“These two natures of woman, so opposed to each other, have at the bottom of their hearts, the one that faint desire for virtue, the other that faint desire for libertinism which Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first to have the courage to diagnose. In one, it is a last reflexion of the ray divine that is not extinct; in the other, it is the last remains of our primitive clay. This claw of the beast was rapped, this hair of the devil was pulled by Nathan [working with de Trailles] with extreme cleverness. The marquise began to ask herself seriously if, up to the present time, she had not been the dupe of her head, and whether her education was complete. Vice – what is it? Possibly only the desire to know everything.”

Like many of Balzac’s sententious maxims, I am not 100% sure what they mean, nor am I necessarily convinced of their truth, but they sure sound good. In any event, the Marquise does return to Arthur, but we are spared the reconciliation scene.

As for Calyste, he returns to Sabine – to stay. Calyste was just as obtuse as the Marquis when it came to a dismissal by their former inamoratas, but he finally gets the picture when de Trailles and de la Palferine join together in drawing the picture for him.

In summary, I think that Beatrix is one of Balzac’s better long efforts – not up to the level of Goriot, Lost Illusions, the two Cousins, and A Harlot High and Low. If it received a more up to date translation, I am fairly sure it would be one of his more popular works … except that I was somewhat less entranced by the opening scenes in Brittany and the disappearance of Camille Maupin into a convent.

Read it here

Summaried by Jim,  January – February 2011