The Celibates - Honore de Balzac
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42
THE CELIBATES
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
INTRODUCTION
_Les Celibataires_, the longest number of the original _Comedie
Humaine_ under a single title, next to _Illusions perdues_, is not,
like that book, connected by any unity of story. Indeed, the general
bond of union is pretty weak; and though it is quite true that
bachelors and old maids are the heroes and heroines of all three, it
would be rather hard to establish any other bond of connection, and it
is rather unlikely that any one unprompted would fix on this as a
sufficient ground of partnership.
Two at least of the component parts, however, are of very high
excellence. I do not myself think that _Pierrette_, which opens the
series, is quite the equal of its companions. Written, as it was, for
Countess Anna de Hanska, Balzac's step-daughter of the future, while
she was still very young, it partakes necessarily of the rather
elaborate artificiality of all attempts to suit the young person, of
French attempts in particular, and it may perhaps be said of Balzac's
attempts most of all. It belongs, in a way, to the Arcis series--the
series which also includes the fine _Tenebreuse Affaire_ and the
unfinished _Depute d'Arcis_--but is not very closely connected
therewith. The picture of the actual _Celibataires_, the brother and
sister Rogron, with which it opens, is one of Balzac's best styles,
and is executed with all his usual mastery both of the minute and of
the at least partially repulsive, showing also that strange knowledge
of the _bourgeois de Paris_ which, somehow or other, he seems to have
attained by dint of unknown foregatherings in his ten years of
apprenticeship. But when we come to _Pierrette_ herself, the story is,
I think, rather less satisfying. Her persecutions and her end, and the
devotion of the faithful Brigaut and the rest, are pathetic no doubt,
but tend (I hope it is not heartless to say it) just a very little
towards _sensiblerie_. The fact is that the thing is not quite in
Balzac's line.
_Le Cure de Tours_, is certainly on a higher level, and has attracted
the most magnificent eulogies from some of the novelist's admirers. I
think both Mr. Henry James and Mr. Wedmore have singled out this
little piece for detailed and elaborate praise, and there is no doubt
that it is a happy example of a kind in which the author excelled. The
opening, with its evident but not obtruded remembrance of the old and
well-founded superstition--derived from the universal belief in some
form of Nemesis--that an extraordinary sense of happiness, good luck,
or anything of the kind, is a precursor of misfortune, and calls for
some instant act of sacrifice or humiliation, is very striking; and
the working out of the vengeance of the goddess by the very
ungoddess-like though feminine hand of Mademoiselle Gamard has much
that is commendable. Nothing in its well exampled kind is better
touched off than the Listomere coterie, from the shrewdness of Monsieur
de Bourbonne to the selfishness of Madame de Listomere. I do not know
that the old maid herself--cat, and far worst than cat as she is--is at
all exaggerated, and the sketch of the coveted _appartement_ and its
ill-fated _mobilier_ is about as good as it can be. And the battle
between Madame de Listomere and the Abbe Troubert, which has served as
a model for many similar things, has, if it has often been equaled,
not often been surpassed.
I cannot, however, help thinking that there is more than a little
exaggeration in more than one point of the story. The Abbe Birotteau
is surely a little too much of a fool; the Abbe Troubert an Iago a
little too much wanting in verisimilitude; and the central incident of
the clause about the furniture too manifestly improbable. Taking the
first and the last points together, is it likely that any one not
quite an idiot should, in the first place, remain so entirely ignorant
of the value of his property; should, in the second, though, ignorant
or not, he attached the greatest possible _pretium affectionis_ to it,
contract to resign it for such a ridiculous consideration; and should,
in the third, take the fatal step without so much as remembering the
condition attached thereto? If it be answered that Birotteau _was_
idiot enough to do such a thing, then it must be observed further that
one's sympathy is frozen by the fact. Such a man deserved such
treatment. And, again, even if French justice was, and perhaps is, as
much influenced by secret considerations as Balzac loves to represent
it, we must agree with that member of the Listomere society who
pointed out that no tribunal could possibly uphold such an obviously
iniquitous bargain. As for Troubert, the idea of the Jesuitical
ecclesiastic (though Balzac was not personally hostile to the Jesuits)
was a common one at the time, and no doubt popular, but the actual
personage seems to me nearer to Eugene Sue's Rodin in some ways than I
could have desired.
These things, however, are very much a case of "As You Like It" or "As
It Strikes You," and I have said that _Le Cure de Tours_ strikes some
good judges as of exceptional merit, while no one can refuse it merit
in a high degree. I should not, except for the opening, place it in
the very highest class of the _Comedie_, but it is high beyond all
doubt in the second.
The third part (The Two Brothers/A Bachelor's Establishment) of _Les
Celibataires_ takes very high rank among its companions. As in most of
his best books, Balzac has set at work divers favorite springs of
action, and has introduced personages of whom he has elsewhere given,
not exactly replicas--he never did that--but companion portraits. And
he has once more justified the proceeding amply. Whether he has not
also justified the reproach, such as it is, of those who say that to
see the most congenial expression of his fullest genius, you must go
to his bad characters and not to his good, readers shall determine for
themselves after reading the book.
It was the product of the year 1842, when the author was at the ripest
of his powers, and after which, with the exception of _Les Parents
Pauvres_, he produced not much of his very best save in continuations
and rehandlings of earlier efforts. He changed his title a good deal,
and in that MS. correction of a copy of the _Comedie_ which has been
taken, perhaps without absolutely decisive authority, as the basis of
the _Edition Definitive_, he adopted _La Rabouilleuse_ as his latest
favorite. This, besides its quaintness, has undoubted merit as fixing
the attention on one at least of the chief figures of the book, while
_Un Menage de garcon_ only obliquely indicates the real purport of the
novel. Jean-Jacques Rouget is a most unfortunate creature, who
anticipates Baron Hulot as an example of absolute dependence on things
of the flesh, _plus_ a kind of cretinism, which Hulot, to do him
justice, does not exhibit even in his worst degradation. But his
"bachelor establishment," though undoubtedly useful for the purposes
of the story, might have been changed for something else, and his
personality have been considerably altered, without very much
affecting the general drift of the fiction.
Flore Brazier, on the other hand, the _Rabouilleuse_ herself, is
essential, and with Maxence Gilet and Philippe Bridau forms the centre
of the action and the passion of the book. She ranks, indeed, with
those few feminine types, Valerie Marneffe, La Cousine Bette, Eugenie
Grandet, Beatrix, Madame de Maufrigneuse, and perhaps Esther Gobseck,
whom Balzac has tried to draw at full length. It is to be observed
that though quite without morals of any kind, she is not _ab initio_
or intrinsically a she-fiend like Valerie or Lisbeth. She does not do
harm for harm's sake, nor even directly to gratify spite, greed, or
other purely unsocial and detestable passions. She is a type of
feminine sensuality of the less ambitious and restless sort. Given a
decent education, a fair fortune, a good-looking and vigorous husband
to whom she had taken a fancy, and no special temptation, and she
might have been a blameless, merry, "sonsy" _commere_, and have died
in an odor of very reasonable sanctity. Poverty, ignorance, the
Rougets (father and son), Maxence Gilet, and Philippe Bridau came in
her way, and she lived and died as Balzac has shown her. He has done
nothing more "inevitable;" a few things more complete and
satisfactory.
Maxence Gilet is a not much less remarkable sketch, though it is not
easy to say that he is on the same level. Gilet is the man of distinct
gifts, of some virtues, or caricatures of virtues, who goes to the
devil through idleness, fulness of bread, and lack of any worthy
occupation. He is extraordinarily unconventional for a French figure
in fiction, even for a figure drawn by such a French genius as Balzac.
But he is also hardly to be called a great type, and I do not quite
see why he should have succumbed before Philippe as he did.
Philippe himself is more complicated, and, perhaps, more questionable.
He is certainly one of Balzac's _fleurs du mal_; he is studied and
personally conducted from beginning to end with an extraordinary and
loving care; but is he quite "of a piece"? That he should have
succeeded in defeating the combination against which his virtuous
mother and brother failed is not an undue instance of the irony of
life. The defeat of such adversaries as Flore and Max has, of course,
the merit of poetical justice and the interest of "diamond cut
diamond." But is not the terrible Philippe Bridau, the "Mephistopheles
_a cheval_" of the latter part of the book, rather inconsistent with
the common-place ne'er-to-well of the earlier? Not only does it
require no unusual genius to waste money, when you have it, in the
channels of the drinking-shop, the gaming table, and elsewhere, to
sponge for more on your mother and brother, to embezzle when they are
squeezed dry, and to take to downright robbery when nothing else is
left; but a person who, in the various circumstances and opportunities
of Bridau, finds nothing better to do than these ordinary things, can
hardly be a person of exceptional intellectual resource. There is here
surely that sudden and unaccounted-for change of character which the
second-rate novelist and dramatists may permit himself, but from which
the first-rate should abstain.
This, however, may be an academic objection, and certainly the book is
of first-class interest. The minor characters, the mother and brother,
the luckless aunt with her combination at last turning up when the
rascal Philippe has stolen her stake-money, the satellites and
abettors of Max in the club of "La Desoeuvrance," the slightly
theatrical Spaniard, and all the rest of them, are excellent. The book
is an eminently characteristic one--more so, indeed, than more than
one of those in which people are often invited to make acquaintance
with Balzac.
_Pierrette_, which was earlier called _Pierrette Lorrain_, was issued
in 1840, first in the _Siecle_, and then in volume form, published by
Souverain. In both issues it had nine chapter or book divisions with
headings. With the other _Celibataires_ it entered the _Comedie_ as a
_Scene de la Vie de Province_ in 1843.
_Le Cure de Tours_ (which Balzac had at one time intended to call by
the name of the Cure's enemy, and which at first was simply called by
the general title _Les Celibataires_) is much older than its
companions, and appeared in 1832 in the _Scenes de la Vie Privee_. It
was soon properly shifted to the _Vie de Province_, and as such in due
time joined the _Comedie_ bearing its present title.
The third story of _Les Celibataires_ has a rather more varied
bibliographical history than the others. The first part, that dealing
with the early misconduct of Philippe Bridau, was published
separately, as _Les Deux Freres_, in the _Presse_ during the spring of
1841, and a year or so later in volumes. It had nine chapters with
headings. The volume form also included under the same title the
second part, which, as _Un Menage de garcon en Province_, had been
published in the same newspaper in the autumn of 1842. This had
sixteen chapters in both issues, and in the volumes two part-headings
--one identical with the newspaper title, and the other "A qui la
Succession?" The whole book then took rank in the _Comedie_ under the
second title, _Un Menage de garcon_, and retained this during Balzac's
life and long afterwards. In the _Edition Definitive_, as observed
above, he had marked it as _La Rabouilleuse_, after having also
thought of _Le Bonhomme Rouget_. For English use, the better known,
though not last or best title, is clearly preferable, as it can be
translated, while _La Rabouilleuse_ cannot.
George Saintsbury
I
PIERRETTE
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated by
Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Mademoiselle Anna Hanska:
Dear Child,--You, the joy of the household, you, whose pink or
white pelerine flutters in summer among the groves of
Wierzschovnia like a will-o'-the-wisp, followed by the tender eyes
of your father and your mother,--how can I dedicate to _you_ a
story full of melancholy? And yet, ought not sorrows to be spoken
of to a young girl idolized as you are, since the day may come
when your sweet hands will be called to minister to them? It is so
difficult, Anna, to find in the history of our manners and morals
a subject that is worthy of your eyes, that no choice has been
left me; but perhaps you will be made to feel how fortunate your
fate is when you read the story sent to you by
Your old friend,
De Balzac.
PIERRETTE
I
THE LORRAINS
At the dawn of an October day in 1827 a young fellow about sixteen
years of age, whose clothing proclaimed what modern phraseology so
insolently calls a proletary, was standing in a small square of Lower
Provins. At that early hour he could examine without being observed
the various houses surrounding the open space, which was oblong in
form. The mills along the river were already working; the whirr of
their wheels, repeated by the echoes of the Upper Town in the keen air
and sparkling clearness of the early morning, only intensified the
general silence so that the wheels of a diligence could be heard a
league away along the highroad. The two longest sides of the square,
separated by an avenue of lindens, were built in the simple style
which expresses so well the peaceful and matter-of-fact life of the
bourgeoisie. No signs of commerce were to be seen; on the other hand,
the luxurious porte-cocheres of the rich were few, and those few
turned seldom on their hinges, excepting that of Monsieur Martener, a
physician, whose profession obliged him to keep a cabriolet, and to
use it. A few of the house-fronts were covered by grape vines, others
by roses climbing to the second-story windows, through which they
wafted the fragrance of their scattered bunches. One end of the square
enters the main street of the Lower Town, the gardens of which reach
to the bank of one of the two rivers which water the valley of
Provins. The other end of the square enters a street which runs
parallel to the main street.
At the latter, which was also the quietest end of the square, the
young workman recognized the house of which he was in search, which
showed a front of white stone grooved in lines to represent courses,
windows with closed gray blinds, and slender iron balconies decorated
with rosettes painted yellow. Above the ground floor and the first
floor were three dormer windows projecting from a slate roof; on the
peak of the central one was a new weather-vane. This modern innovation
represented a hunter in the attitude of shooting a hare. The front
door was reached by three stone steps. On one side of this door a
leaden pipe discharged the sink-water into a small street-gutter,
showing the whereabouts of the kitchen. On the other side were two
windows, carefully closed by gray shutters in which were heart-shaped
openings cut to admit the light; these windows seemed to be those of
the dining-room. In the elevation gained by the three steps were
vent-holes to the cellar, closed by painted iron shutters fantastically
cut in open-work. Everything was new. In this repaired and restored
house, the fresh-colored look of which contrasted with the time-worn
exteriors of all the other houses, an observer would instantly
perceive the paltry taste and perfect self-satisfaction of the retired
petty shopkeeper.
The young man looked at these details with an expression of pleasure
that seemed to have something rather sad in it; his eyes roved from
the kitchen to the roof, with a motion that showed a deliberate
purpose. The rosy glow of the rising sun fell on a calico curtain at
one of the garret windows, the others being without that luxury. As he
caught sight of it the young fellow's face brightened gaily. He
stepped back a little way, leaned against a linden, and sang, in the
drawling tone peculiar to the west of France, the following Breton
ditty, published by Bruguiere, a composer to whom we are indebted for
many charming melodies. In Brittany, the young villagers sing this
song to all newly-married couples on their wedding-day:--
"We've come to wish you happiness in marriage,
To m'sieur your husband
As well as to you:
"You have just been bound, madam' la mariee,
With bonds of gold
That only death unbinds:
"You will go no more to balls or gay assemblies;
You must stay at home
While we shall go.
"Have you thought well how you are pledged to be
True to your spouse,
And love him like yourself?
"Receive these flowers our hands do now present you;
Alas! your fleeting honors
Will fade as they."
This native air (as sweet as that adapted by Chateaubriand to _Ma
soeur, te souvient-il encore_), sung in this little town of the Brie
district, must have been to the ears of a Breton maiden the touchstone
of imperious memories, so faithfully does it picture the manners and
customs, the surroundings and the heartiness of her noble old land,
where a sort of melancholy reigns, hardly to be defined; caused,
perhaps, by the aspect of life in Brittany, which is deeply touching.
This power of awakening a world of grave and sweet and tender memories
by a familiar and sometimes lively ditty, is the privilege of those
popular songs which are the superstitions of music,--if we may use the
word "superstition" as signifying all that remains after the ruin of a
people, all that survives their revolutions.
As he finished the first couple, the singer, who never took his eyes
from the attic curtain, saw no signs of life. While he sang the
second, the curtain stirred. When the words "Receive these flowers"
were sung, a youthful face appeared; a white hand cautiously opened
the casement, and a girl made a sign with her head to the singer as he
ended with the melancholy thought of the simple verses,--"Alas! your
fleeting honors will fade as they."
To her the young workman suddenly showed, drawing it from within his
jacket, a yellow flower, very common in Brittany, and sometimes to be
found in La Brie (where, however, it is rare),--the furze, or broom.
"Is it really you, Brigaut?" said the girl, in a low voice.
"Yes, Pierrette, yes. I am in Paris. I have started to make my way;
but I'm ready to settle here, near you."
Just then the fastening of a window creaked in a room on the first
floor, directly below Pierrette's attic. The girl showed the utmost
terror, and said to Brigaut, quickly:--
"Run away!"
The lad jumped like a frightened frog to a bend in the street caused
by the projection of a mill just where the square opens into the main
thoroughfare; but in spite of his agility his hob-nailed shoes echoed
on the stones with a sound easily distinguished from the music of the
mill, and no doubt heard by the person who opened the window.
That person was a woman. No man would have torn himself from the
comfort of a morning nap to listen to a minstrel in a jacket; none but
a maid awakes to songs of love. Not only was this woman a maid, but
she was an old maid. When she had opened her blinds with the furtive
motion of the bat, she looked in all directions, but saw nothing, and
only heard, faintly, the flying footfalls of the lad. Can there be
anything more dreadful than the matutinal apparition of an ugly old
maid at her window? Of all the grotesque sights which amuse the eyes
of travellers in country towns, that is the most unpleasant. It is too
repulsive to laugh at. This particular old maid, whose ear was so
keen, was denuded of all the adventitious aids, of whatever kind,
which she employed as embellishments; her false front and her
collarette were lacking; she wore that horrible little bag of black
silk on which old women insist on covering their skulls, and it was
now revealed beneath the night-cap which had been pushed aside in
sleep. This rumpled condition gave a menacing expression to the head,
such as painters bestow on witches. The temples, ears, and nape of the
neck, were disclosed in all their withered horror,--the wrinkles being
marked in scarlet lines that contrasted with the would-be white of the
bed-gown which was tied round her neck by a narrow tape. The gaping of
this garment revealed a breast to be likened only to that of an old
peasant woman who cares nothing about her personal ugliness. The
fleshless arm was like a stick on which a bit of stuff was hung. Seen
at her window, this spinster seemed tall from the length and
angularity of her face, which recalled the exaggerated proportions of
certain Swiss heads. The character of their countenance--the features
being marked by a total want of harmony--was that of hardness in the
lines, sharpness in the tones; while an unfeeling spirit, pervading
all, would have filled a physiognomist with disgust. These
characteristics, fully visible at this moment, were usually modified
in public by a sort of commercial smile,--a bourgeois smirk which
mimicked good-humor; so that persons meeting with this old maid might
very well take her for a kindly woman. She owned the house on shares
with her brother. The brother, by-the-bye, was sleeping so tranquilly
in his own chamber that the orchestra of the Opera-house could not
have awakened him, wonderful as its diapason is said to be.
The old maid stretched her neck out of the window, twisted it, and
raised her cold, pale-blue little eyes, with their short lashes set in
lids that were always rather swollen, to the attic window, endeavoring
to see Pierrette. Perceiving the uselessness of that attempt, she
retreated into her room with a movement like that of a tortoise which
draws in its head after protruding it from its carapace. The blinds
were then closed, and the silence of the street was unbroken except by
peasants coming in from the country, or very early persons moving
about.
When there is an old maid in a house, watch-dogs are unnecessary; not
the slightest event can occur that she does not see and comment upon
and pursue to its utmost consequences. The foregoing trifling
circumstance was therefore destined to give rise to grave
suppositions, and to open the way for one of those obscure dramas
which take place in families, and are none the less terrible because
they are secret,--if, indeed, we may apply the word "drama" to such
domestic occurrences.
Pierrette did not go back to bed. To her, Brigaut's arrival was an
immense event. During the night--that Eden of the wretched--she
escaped the vexations and fault-findings she bore during the day. Like
the hero of a ballad, German or Russian, I forget which, her sleep
seemed to her the happy life; her waking hours a bad dream. She had
just had her only pleasurable waking in three years. The memories of
her childhood had sung their melodious ditties in her soul. The first
couplet was heard in a dream; the second made her spring out of bed;
at the third, she doubted her ears,--the sorrowful are all disciples
of Saint Thomas; but when the fourth was sung, standing in her
night-gown with bare feet by the window, she recognized Brigaut, the
companion of her childhood. Ah, yes! it was truly the well-known
square jacket with the bobtails, the pockets of which stuck out at the
hips,--the jacket of blue cloth which is classic in Brittany; there,
too, were the waistcoat of printed cotton, the linen shirt fastened by
a gold heart, the large rolling collar, the earrings, the stout shoes,
the trousers of blue-gray drilling unevenly colored by the various
lengths of the warp,--in short, all those humble, strong, and durable
things which make the apparel of the Breton peasantry. The big buttons
of white horn which fastened the jacket made the girl's heart beat.
When she saw the bunch of broom her eyes filled with tears; then a
dreadful fear drove back into her heart the happy memories that were
budding there. She thought her cousin sleeping in the room beneath her
might have heard the noise she made in jumping out of bed and running
to the window. The fear was just; the old maid was coming, and she
made Brigaut the terrified sign which the lad obeyed without the least
understanding it. Such instinctive submission to a girl's bidding
shows one of those innocent and absolute affections which appear from
century to century on this earth, where they blossom, like the aloes
of Isola Bella, twice or thrice in a hundred years. Whoever had seen
the lad as he ran away would have loved the ingenuous chivalry of his
most ingenuous feeling.