Spanish hands could not have put into this
graceful
homage
paid to victorious arms the fire that thus betrayed the origin of
the musician.
paid to victorious arms the fire that thus betrayed the origin of
the musician.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v03 - Bag to Ber
L'Inter-
diction is the proper pendant to the history of this unfortunate sol-
dier. In it another husband, the Marquis d'Espard, suffers from the
selfishness of his wife, one of the worst characters in the range of
Balzac's fiction. That she may keep him from alienating his property
to discharge a moral obligation she endeavors to prove him insane.
The legal complications which ensue bring forward one of Balzac's
great figures, the judge of instruction, Popinot; but to appreciate him
the reader must go to the marvelous book itself. (Gobseck' is a
study of a Parisian usurer, almost worthy of a place beside the
description of old Grandet; while (Les Employés) is a realistic study
of bureaucratic life, which, besides showing a wonderful familiarity
with the details of a world of which Balzac had little personal expe-
rience, contains several admirably drawn characters and a sufficient
amount of incident. But it is time to leave these sketches and
novels in miniature, and to pass by the less important "Scenes of
this fascinating Parisian life, in order to consider in some detail the
five novels of consummate power.
First of these in date of composition, and in popular estimation at
least among English readers, comes, “Le Père Goriot. ' It is certainly
trite to call the book a French “Lear, but the expression empha-
sizes the supreme artistic power that could treat the motif of one of
Shakespeare's plays in a manner that never forces a disadvantageous
comparison with the great tragedy. The retired vermicelli-maker is
not as grand a figure as the doting King of Britain, but he is as real.
The French daughters, Anastasie, Countess de Restaud, and Delphine,
Baroness de Nucingen, are not such types of savage wickedness as
Regan and Goneril, but they fit the nineteenth century as well as
the British princesses did their more barbarous day. Yet there is no
## p. 1361 (#155) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1361
Cordelia in Le Père Goriot,' for the pale Victorine Taillefer cannot
fill the place of that noblest of daughters. This is but to say that
Balzac's bourgeois tragedy lacks that element of the noble that every
great poetic tragedy must have. The self-immolation of old Goriot
to the cold-hearted ambitions of his daughters is not noble, but his
parental passion touches the infinite, and so proves the essential kin-
ship of his creator with the creator of Lear. This touch of the
infinite, as in “Eugénie Grandet, lifts the book up from the level of
a merely masterly study of characters or a merely powerful novel to
that of the supreme masterpieces of human genius. The marvelously
lifelike description of the vulgar Parisian boarding-house, the fasci-
nating delineation of the character of that king of convicts, Vautrin,
and the fine analysis of the ambitions of Rastignac (who comes
nearer perhaps to being the hero of the Comédie humaine) than any
other of its characters, and is here presented to us at the threshold
of his successful career) remain in the memory of every reader, but
would never alone have sufficed to make Balzac's name worthy of
immortality. The infinite quality of Goriot's passion would, how-
ever, have conferred this honor on his creator had he never written
another book.
(Illusions perdues) and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes)
might almost be regarded as one novel in seven parts. More than
any other of his works they show the sun of Balzac's genius at its
meridian. Nowhere else does he give us plots so absorbing, nowhere
else does he bring us so completely in contact with the world his
imagination has peopled. The first novel devotes two of its parts to
the provinces and one to Paris. The provincial stories centre around
two brothers-in-law, David Séchard and Lucien de Rubempré, types
of the practical and the artistic intellect respectively. David, after
struggling for fame and fortune, succumbs and finds his recompense
in the love of his wife Eve, Lucien's sister, one of Balzac's noble
women. Lucien, on the other hand, after some provincial successes
a poet, tries the great world of Paris, yields to its temptations,
fails ignominiously, and attempts suicide, but is rescued by the great
Vautrin, who has escaped from prison and is about to renew his war
on society disguised as a Spanish priest. Vautrin has conceived the
idea that as he can take no part in society, he will have a repre-
sentative in it and taste its pleasures through him.
Lucien accepts
this disgraceful position and plunges once more into the vortex, sup-
ported by the strong arm of the king of the convicts. His career
and that of his patron form the subject of the four parts of the
(Splendeurs et misères, and are too complicated to be described
here. Suffice it to say that probably nowhere else in fiction are the
novel of character and the novel of incident so splendidly combined;
as
III-86
## p. 1362 (#156) ###########################################
1362
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
4
1
1
and certainly nowhere else in the range of his work does Balzac so
fully display all his master qualities. That the story is sensational
cannot be denied, but it is at least worthy of being called the Iliad
of Crime. Nemesis waits upon both Lucien and Vautrin, and upon
the poor courtesan Esther whom they entrap in their toils, and
when the two former are at last in custody, Lucien commits suicide.
Vautrin baffles his acute judge in a wonderful interview; but with
his cherished hope cut short by Lucien's death, finally gives up the
struggle. Here the novel might have ended; yet Balzac adds a
fourth part, in order to complete the career of Vautrin. The famous
convict is transformed into a government spy, and engages to use
his immense power against his former comrades and in defense of
the society he has hitherto warred upon. The artistic propriety of
this transformation may be questioned, but not the power and inter-
est of the novel of which it is the finishing touch.
Many readers would put the companion novels La Cousine Bette)
and Le Cousin Pons) at the head of Balzac's works. They have not
the infinite pathos of Le Père Goriot, or the superb construction of
the first three parts of the “Splendeurs et misères,' but for sheer
strength the former at least is unsurpassed in fiction. Never before
or since have the effects of vice in dragging down a man below the
level of the lowest brute been so portrayed as in Baron Hulot; never
before or since has female depravity been so illustrated as in the
diabolical career of Valérie Marneffe, probably the worst woman in
fiction. As for Cousine Bette herself, and her power to breed mis-
chief and crime, it suffices to say that she is worthy of a place
beside the two chief characters.
Le Cousin Pons) is a very different book; one which, though
pathetic in the extreme, may be safely recommended to the youngest
reader. The hero who gives his name to the story is an old musician
who has worn out his welcome among his relations, but who becomes
an object of interest to them when they learn that his collection of
bric-a-brac is valuable and that he is about to die. The intrigues
that circulate around this collection and the childlike German,
Schmucke, to whom Pons has bequeathed it, are described as only
the author of Le Curé de Tours) could have succeeded in doing;
but the book contains also an almost perfect description of the ideal
friendship existing between Pons and Schmucke. One remembers
them longer than one does Frazier, the scoundrelly advocate who
cheats poor Schmucke; a fact which should be cited against those
who urge that Balzac is at home with his vicious characters only.
The last novel of this group, César Birotteau,' is the least power-
ful, though not perhaps the least popular. It is an excellent study
of bourgeois life, and therefore fills an important place in the scheme
## p. 1363 (#157) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1363
of the Comedy,' describing as it does the spreading ambitions of
a rich but stupid perfumer, and containing an admirable study of
bankruptcy. It may be dismissed with the remark that around the
innocent Cæsar surge most of the scoundrels that figure in the
(Comédie humaine,' and with the regret that it should have been
completed while the far more powerful Les Petits bourgeois) was
left unfinished.
We now come to the concluding parts of the 'Études de mæurs,'
the (Scenes describing Political and Military Life.
In the first group
are five novels and stories: L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine
(The Under Side of Contemporary History, a fine story, but rather
social than political), Une Ténébreuse affaire (A Shady Affair),
(Un Épisode sous la Terreur,' (Z. Marcas,' and Le Deputé d'Arcis)
(The Deputy of Arcis). Of these the Episode is probably the most
admirable, although (Z. Marcas) has not a little strength. The
(Deputé, like (Les Petits bourgeois,' was continued by M. Charles
Rabou and a considerable part of it is not Balzac's; a fact which is
to be regretted, since practically it is the only one of these stories
that touches actual politics as the term is usually understood. The
military scenes are only two in number, Les Chouans) and Une
Passion dans le désert. ) The former of these has been sufficiently
described already; the latter is one of the best known of the short
stories, but rather deserves a place beside La Fille aux yeux d'or. '
Indeed, for Balzac's best military scenes we must go to Le Colonel
Chabert) or to (Adieu. ”
We now pass to those subterranean chambers of the great struct-
ure we are exploring, the Études philosophiques. ' They are twenty
in number, four being novels, one a composite volume of tales, and
the rest stories. The titles run as follows:- 'La Peau de chagrin,'
(L'Élixir de longue vie) (The Elixir of Life), Melmoth réconcilié,'
Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (The Anonymous Masterpiece), Gam-
bara, Massimila Doni, Le Réquisitionnaire, Adieu,'El Verdugo,'
Les Marana, L'Auberge rouge (The Red Inn), «Un Drame au
bord de la mer? (A Seaside Drama), L'Enfant maudit (A Child
Accursed), Maître Cornélius? (Master Cornelius), Sur Catherine de
Médicis,' (La Recherche de l'absolu,' Louis Lambert,' Séraphita,'
'Les Proscrits,' and Jésus-Christ en Flandre. '
Of the novels, La Peau de chagrin' is easily first. Its central
theme is the world-old conflict between the infinite desires and the
finite powers of man. The hero, Raphael, is hardly, as M. Barrière
asserts, on a level with Hamlet, Faust, and Manfred, but the struggle
of his infinite and his finite natures is almost as intensely interesting
as the similar struggles in them. The introduction of the talisman,
the wild ass's skin that accomplishes all the wishes of its owner, but
## p. 1364 (#158) ###########################################
1364
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1
1
on condition that it is to shrink away in proportion to the intensity
of those wishes, and that when it disappears the owner's life is to
end, gave to the story a weird interest not altogether, perhaps, in
keeping with its realistic setting, and certainly forcing a disastrous
comparison with the three great poems named. But when all allow-
ances are made, one is forced to conclude that "La Peau de chagrin'
is a novel of extraordinary power and absorbing interest; and that
its description of its hero's dissipations in the libertine circles of
Paris, and its portrayal of the sublime devotion of the heroine Pauline
for her slowly perishing lover, are scarcely to be paralleled in liter-
ature. Far less powerful are the short stories on similar themes,
entitled “L'Élixir de longue vie,' and Melmoth réconcilié) (Melmoth
Reconciled), which give us Balzac's rehandling of the Don Juan of
Molière and Byron, and the Melmoth of Maturin.
Below the Peau de chagrin,' but still among its author's best
novels, should be placed La Recherche de l'absolu,' which, as its
title implies, describes the efforts of a chemist to ‘prove by chem-
ical analysis the unity of composition of matter. " In the pursuit of
his philosophic will-o'-the-wisp, Balthazar Claës loses his fortune and
sacrifices his noble wife and children. His madness serves, however,
to bring into relief the splendid qualities of these latter; and it is
just here, in its human rather than in its philosophic bearings, that
the story rises to real greatness. Marguerite Claës, the daughter, is
a noble heroine; and if one wishes to see how Balzac's characters
and ideas suffer when treated by another though an able hand, one
has but to read in conjunction with this novel the Maître Guérin'
of the distinguished dramatist Émile Augier. A proper pendant to
this history of a noble genius perverted is (La Confidence des Rug-
gieri,' the second part of that remarkable composite Sur Catherine
de Médicis, a book which in spite of its mixture of history, fiction,
and speculative politics is one of the most suggestive of Balzac's
minor productions.
Concerning Séraphita' and Louis Lambert,' the remaining novels
of this series, certain noted mystics assert that they contain the
essence of Balzac's genius, and at least suggest the secret of the
universe. Perhaps an ordinary critic may content himself with say-
ing that both books are remarkable proofs of their author's power,
and that the former is notable for its marvelous descriptions of Nor-
wegian scenery.
Of the lesser members of the philosophic group, nearly all are
admirable in their kind and degree. (Le Chef-d'ouvre inconnu' and
(Gambara' treat of the pains of the artistic life and temperament.
(Massimila Doni, like (Gambara,' treats of music, but also gives a
brilliant picture of Venetian life. Le réquisitionnaire,' perhaps the
1
1
1
1
## p. 1365 (#159) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1365
best of Balzac's short stories, deals with the phenomenon of second
sight, as Adieu' does with that of mental alienation caused by a
sudden shock. "Les Marana' is an absorbing study of the effects of
heredity; L'Auberge rouge) is an analysis of remorse, as is also
(Un Drame au bord de la mer); while (L'Enfant maudit' is an
analysis of the effects of extreme sensibility, especially as manifested
in the passion of poetic love. Finally, Maître Cornélius' is a study
of avarice, in which is set a remarkable portrait of Louis XI. ; Les
Proscrits) is a masterly sketch of the exile of Dante at Paris; and
Jésus-Christ en Flandre) is an exquisite allegory, the most delicate
flower, perhaps, of Balzac's genius.
It remains only to say a few words about the third division of the
(Comédie humaine, viz. , the Études analytiques. Only two mem-
bers of the series, the Physiologie du mariage and the Petites
misères de la vie conjugale,' were ever completed, and they are not
great enough to make us regret the loss of the Pathology of Social
Life) and the other unwritten volumes. For the two books we have
are neither novels nor profound studies, neither great fiction nor great
psychology. That they are worth reading for their suggestiveness
with regard to such important subjects as marriage and conjugal life
goes without saying, since they are Balzac's; but that they add
greatly to his reputation, not even his most ardent admirer would be
hardy enough to affirm.
And now in conclusion, what can one say about this great writer
that will not fall far short of his deserts ? Plainly, nothing, yet a few
points may be accentuated with profit. We should notice in the first
place that Balzac has consciously tried almost every form of prose
fiction, and has been nearly always splendidly successful. In analytic
studies of high, middle, and low life he has not his superior. In the
novel of intrigue and sensation he is easily a master, while he suc-
ceeds at least fairly in a form of fiction at just the opposite pole
from this, to wit, the idyl ('Le Lys dans la vallée'). In character
sketches of extreme types, like (Gobseck, his supremacy has long
been recognized, and he is almost as powerful when he enters the
world of mysticism, whither so few of us can follow him. As a
writer of novelettes he is unrivaled and some of his short stories are
worthy to rank with the best that his followers have produced. In
the extensive use of dialect he was a pioneer; in romance he has
La Peau de chagrin and La Recherche de l'absolu' to his credit;
while some of the work in the tales connected with the name of
Catherine de' Medici shows what he could have done in historical fic-
tion had he continued to follow Scott. And what is true of the form
of his fiction is true of its elements. Tragedy, comedy, melodrama
## p. 1366 (#160) ###########################################
1366
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
are all within his reach; he can call up tears and shudders, laughter
and smiles at will. He knows the whole range of human emotions,
and he dares to penetrate into the arcana of passions almost too
terrible or loathsome for literature to touch.
In style, in the larger sense of the word, he is almost equally
supreme. He is the father of modern realism and remains its great-
est exponent. He retains always some of the good elements of
romance, – that is to say, he sees the thing as it ought to be, — and
he avoids the pitfalls of naturalism, being a painter and not a photog-
rapher. In other words, like all truly great writers he never forgets
his ideals; but he is too impartial to his characters and has too fast
a grip on life to fall into the unrealities of sentimentalism. It is
true that he lacked the spontaneity that characterized his great fore-
runner, Shakespeare, and his great contemporary, George Sand; but
this loss was made up by the inevitable and impersonal character of
his work when once his genius was thoroughly aroused to action.
His laborious method of describing by an accumulation of details
postponed the play of his powers, which are at their height in the
action of his characters; yet sooner or later the inert masses of his
composition were fused into a burning whole. But if Balzac is pri-
marily a dramatist in the creation and manipulation of his charac-
ters, he is also a supreme painter in his presentation of scenes.
And what characters and what scenes has he not set before us!
Over two thousand personages move through the Comédie humaine,'
whose biographies MM. Cerfberr and Christophe have collected for
us in
their admirable (Répertoire de la comédie humaine,' and
whose chief types M. Paul Flat has described in the first series of
his Essais sur Balzac. ) Some of these personages are of course
shadowy; but an amazingly large number live for us as truly as
Shakespeare's heroes and heroines do. Nor will anyone who has
trod the streets of Balzac's Paris, or spent the summer with him at
the chateau des Aigues (“Les Paysans'), or in the beautiful valleys
of Touraine, ever forget the master's pictures.
Yet the Balzac who with intangible materials created living and
breathing men and women and unfading scenes, has been accused
of vitiating the French language and has been denied the possession
of verbal style. On this point French critics must give the final
verdict;
but a foreigner may cite Taine's defense of that style, and
maintain that most of the liberties taken by Balzac with his native
language were forced on him by the novel and far-reaching character
of his work. Nor should it be forgotten that he was capable at times
of almost perfect passages of description, and that he rarely con-
founded, as novelists are too apt to do, the provinces of poetry and
prose.
## p. 1367 (#161) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1367
But one might write a hundred essays on Balzac and not exhaust
him. One might write a volume on his women, a volume to refute
the charge that his bad men are better drawn than his good, a
volume to discuss Mr. Henry James's epigrammatic declaration that
a five-franc piece may be fairly called the protagonist of the
(Comédie humaine. In short one might go on defending and prais-
ing and even criticizing Balzac for a lifetime, and be little further
advanced than when one began; for to criticize Balzac, is it not to
criticize life itself?
W. P. Zent-
-
THE MEETING IN THE CONVENT
From "The Duchess of Langeais)
I
N A Spanish town on an island of the Mediterranean there is a
convent of the Barefooted Carmelites, where the rule of the
Order instituted by Saint Theresa is still kept with the prim-
itive rigor of the reformation brought about by that illustrious
woman. Extraordinary as this fact may seem, it is true. Though
the monasteries of the Peninsula and those of the Continent were
nearly all destroyed or broken up by the outburst of the French
Revolution and the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, yet on this
island, protected by the British fleets, the wealthy convent and
its peaceful inmates were sheltered from the dangers of change
and general spoliation. The storms from all quarters which
shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century subsided
ere they reached this lonely rock near the coast of Andalusia.
If the name of the great Emperor echoed fitfully upon its shores,
it may be doubted whether the fantastic march of his glory or
the flaming majesty of his meteoric life ever reached the compre-
hension of those saintly women kneeling in their distant cloister.
A conventual rigor, which was never relaxed, gave to this
haven a special place in the thoughts and history of the Catholic
world. The purity of its rule drew to its shelter from different
parts of Europe sad women, whose souls, deprived of human
ties, longed for the death in life which they found here in the
bosom of God. No other convent was so fitted to wean the
heart and teach it that aloofness from the things of this world
## p. 1368 (#162) ###########################################
1368
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
3
which the religious life imperatively demands. On the Continent
may be found a number of such Houses, nobly planned to meet
the wants of their sacred purpose. Some are buried in the
depths of solitary valleys; others hang, as it were, in mid-air
above the hills, clinging to the mountain slopes or projecting
from the verge of precipices. On all sides man has sought out
the poesy of the infinite, the solemnity of silence: he has sought
God; and on the mountain-tops, in the abysmal depths, among
the caverned cliffs he has found Him. Yet nowhere as on this
European islet, half African though it be, can he find such differ-
ing harmonies all blending to lift the soul and quell its springs
of anguish; to cool its fevers, and give to the sorrows of life a
bed of rest.
The monastery is built at the extremity of the island at its
highest part, where the rock by some convulsion of Nature has
been rent sharply down to the sea, and presents at all points
keen angles and edges, slightly eaten away at the water-line by
the action of the waves, but insurmountable to all approach.
The rock is also protected from assault by dangerous reefs run-
ning far out from its base, over which frolic the blue waters of
the Mediterranean. It is only from the sea that the visitor can
perceive the four principal parts of the square structure, which
adheres minutely as to shape, height, and the piercing of its
windows to the prescribed laws of monastic architecture. On
the side towards the town the church hides the massive lines of
the cloister, whose roof is covered with large tiles to protect it
from winds and storms, and also from the fierce heat of the sun.
The church, the gift of a Spanish family, looks down upon the
town and crowns it. Its bold yet elegant façade gives a noble
aspect to the little maritime city. Is it not a picture of terres-
trial sublimity? See the tiny town with clustering roofs, rising
like an amphitheatre from the picturesque port upward to the
noble Gothic frontal of the church, from which spring the slen-
der shafts of the bell-towers with their pointed finials: religion
dominating life: offering to man the end and the way of liv-
ing,- image of a thought altogether Spanish. Place this scene
upon the bosom of the Mediterranean beneath an ardent sky;
plant it with palms whose waving fronds mingle their green life
with the sculptured leafage of the immutable architecture; look
at the white fringes of the sea as it runs up the reef and they
sparkle upon the sapphire of its wave; see the galleries and the
## p. 1369 (#163) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1369
terraces built upon the roofs of houses, where the inhabitants
come at eve to breathe the flower-scented air as it rises through
the tree-tops from their little gardens. Below, in the harbor,
are the white sails. The serenity of night is coming on; listen
to the notes of the organ, the chant of evening orisons, the
echoing bells of the ships at sea: on all sides sound and peace,
oftenest peace.
Within the church are three naves, dark and mysterious. The
fury of the winds evidently forbade the architect to build out lat-
eral buttresses, such as adorn all other cathedrals, and between
which little chapels are usually constructed. Thus the strong
walls which flank the lesser naves shed no light into the building.
Outside, their gray masses are shored up from point to point by
enormous beams. The great nave and its two small lateral gal-
leries are lighted solely by the rose-window of stained glass,
which pierces with miraculous art the wall above the great por-
tal, whose fortunate exposure permits a wealth of tracery and
dentellated stone-work belonging to that order of architecture
miscalled Gothic.
The greater part of the three naves is given up to the inhabi-
tants of the town who come to hear Mass and the Offices of the
Church. In front of the choir is a latticed screen, within which
brown curtains hang in ample folds, slightly parted in the middle
to give a limited view of the altar and the officiating priest. The
screen is divided at intervals by pillars that hold up a gallery
within the choir which contains the organ. This construction, in
harmony with the rest of the building, continues, in sculptured
wood, the little columns of the lateral galleries which are sup-
ported by the pillars of the great nave. Thus it is impossible
for the boldest curiosity, if any such should dare to mount the
narrow balustrade of these galleries, to see farther into the choir
than the octagonal stained windows which pierce the apse behind
the high altar.
At the time of the French expedition into Spain for the pur-
pose of re-establishing the authority of Ferdinand VII. , and
after the fall of Cadiz, a French general who was sent to the
island to obtain its recognition of the royal government pro-
longed his stay upon it that he might reconnoitre the convent and
gain, if possible, admittance there. The enterprise was a delicate
But a man of passion, a man whose life had been, so to
speak, a series of poems in action, who had lived romances
one.
## p. 1370 (#164) ###########################################
1370
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
instead of writing them; above all a man of deeds,— might well
be tempted by a project apparently so impossible. To open for
himself legally the gates of a convent of women! The Pope and
the Metropolitan Archbishop would scarcely sanction it. Should
he use force or artifice ? In case of failure was he not certain
to lose his station and his military future, besides missing his
aim ? The Duc d'Angoulême was still in Spain; and of all the
indiscretions which an officer in favor with the commander-in-
chief could commit, this alone would be punished without pity.
The general had solicited his present mission for the purpose of
following up a secret hope, albeit no hope was ever so despair-
ing. This last effort, however, was a matter of conscience. The
house of these Barefooted Carmelites was the only Spanish con-
vent which had escaped his search. While crossing from the
mainland, a voyage which took less than an hour, a strong pre-
sentiment of success had seized his heart. Since then, although
he had seen nothing of the convent but its walls, nothing of the
nuns, not so much as their brown habit; though he had heard
only the echoes of their chanted liturgies,— he had gathered from
those walls and from these chants faint indications that seemed
to justify his fragile hope. Slight as the auguries thus capri-
ciously awakened might be, no human passion was
violently roused than the curiosity of this French general. To
the heart there are no insignificant events; it magnifies all
things; it puts in the same balance the fall of an empire and the
fall of a woman's glove,- and oftentimes the glove outweighs
the empire. But let us give the facts in their actual simplicity:
after the facts will come the feelings.
An hour after the expedition had landed on the island the
royal authority was re-established. A few Spaniards who had
taken refuge there after the fall of Cadiz embarked on a vessel
which the general allowed them to charter for their voyage to
London. There was thus neither resistance nor reaction. This
little insular restoration could not, however, be accomplished with-
out a Mass, at which both companies of the troops were ordered
to be present. Not knowing the rigor of the Carmelite rule, the
general hoped to gain in the church some information about the
nuns who were immured in the convent, one of whom might be
a being dearer to him than life, more precious even than honor.
His hopes were at first cruelly disappointed. Mass was cele-
brated with the utmost pomp.
In honor of this solemn occasion
ever more
1
## p. 1371 (#165) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1371
man.
are
the curtains which habitually hid the choir were drawn aside,
and gave to view the rich ornaments, the priceless pictures,
and the shrines incrusted with jewels whose brilliancy surpassed
that of the votive offerings fastened by the mariners of the
port to the pillars of the great nave. The nuns, however, had
retired to the seclusion of the organ gallery.
Yet in spite of this check, and while the Mass of thanksgiv-
ing was being sung, suddenly and secretly the drama widened
into an interest as profound as any that ever moved the heart of
The Sister who played the organ roused an enthusiasm so
vivid that not one soldier present regretted the order which had
brought him to the church. The men listened to the music with
pleasure; the officers were carried away by it.
As for the gen-
eral, he remained to all appearance calm and cold: the feelings
with which he heard the notes given forth by the nun
among the small number of earthly things whose expression is
withheld from impotent human speech, but which-like death,
like God, like eternity — can be perceived only at their slender
point of contact with the heart of man. By a strange chance the
music of the organ seemed to be that of Rossini, -a composer
who more than any other has carried human passion into the art
of music, and whose works by their number and extent will some
day inspire an Homeric respect. From among the scores of this
fine genius the nun seemed to have chiefly studied that of Moses
in Egypt; doubtless because the feelings of sacred music are there
carried to the highest pitch. Perhaps these two souls-one so
gloriously European, the other unknown - had met together in
some intuitive perception of the same poetic thought. This idea
occurred to two officers now present, true dilettanti, who no
doubt keenly regretted the Théatre Favart in their Spanish exile.
At last, at the Te Deum, it was impossible not to recognize a
French soul in the character which the music suddenly took on.
The triumph of his Most Christian Majesty evidently roused to
joy the heart of that cloistered nun. Surely she was a French-
woman. Presently the patriotic spirit burst forth, sparkling like
a jet of light through the antiphonals of the organ, as the Sister
recalled melodies breathing the delicacy of Parisian taste, and
blended them with vague memories of our national anthems.
Spanish hands could not have put into this graceful homage
paid to victorious arms the fire that thus betrayed the origin of
the musician.
## p. 1372 (#166) ###########################################
1372
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1
“France is everywhere! ” said a soldier.
The general left the church during the Te Deum; it was
impossible for him to listen to it. The notes of the musician
revealed to him a woman loved to madness; who had buried
herself so deeply in the heart of religion, hid herself so care-
fully away from the sight of the world, that up to this time she
had escaped the keen search of men armed not only with
immense power, but with great sagacity and intelligence. The
hopes which had wakened in the general's heart seemed justi-
fied as he listened to the vague echo of a tender and melancholy
air, La Fleuve du Tage,' -a ballad whose prelude he had
often heard in Paris in the boudoir of the woman he loved, and
which this nun now used to express, amid the joys of the con-
querors, the suffering of an exiled heart. Terrible moment! to
long for the resurrection of a lost love; to find that love — still
lost; to meet it mysteriously after five years in which passion,
exasperated by the void, had been intensified by the useless
efforts made to satisfy it.
Who is there that has not, once at least in his life, upturned
everything about him, his papers and his receptacles, taxing his
memory impatiently as he seeks some precious lost object; and
then felt the ineffable pleasure of finding it after days consumed
in the search, after hoping and despairing of its recovery, -
spending upon some trifle an excitement of mind almost amount-
ing to a passion ? Well, stretch this fury of search through five
long years; put a woman, a heart, a love in the place of the
insignificant trifle; lift the passion into the highest realms of
feeling; and then picture to yourself an ardent man, a man with
the heart of lion and the front of Jove, one of those men who
command, and communicate to those about them, respectful
terror, - you will then understand the abrupt departure of the
general during the Te Deum, at the moment when the prelude
of an air, once heard in Paris with delight under gilded ceilings,
vibrated through the dark naves of the church by the sea.
He went down the hilly street which led up to the convent,
without pausing until the sonorous echoes of the organ could no
longer reach his ear. Unable to think of anything but of the
love that like a volcanic eruption rent his heart, the French gen-
eral only perceived that the Te Deum was ended when the
Spanish contingent poured from the church. He felt that his
conduct and appearance were open to ridicule, and he hastily
1
.
1
1
1
1
## p. 1373 (#167) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1373
resumed his place at the head of the cavalcade, explaining to the
alcalde and to the governor of the town that a sudden indisposi-
tion had obliged him to come out into the air. Then it suddenly
occurred to him to use the pretext thus hastily given, as a
means of prolonging his stay on the island. Excusing himself
on the score of increased illness, he declined to preside at the
banquet given by the authorities of the island to the French
officers, and took to his bed, after writing to the major-general
that a passing illness compelled him to turn over his command
to the colonel. This commonplace artifice, natural as it was,
left him free from all duties and able to seek the fulfilment of
his hopes. Like a man essentially Catholic and monarchical, he
inquired the hours of the various services, and showed the
utmost interest in the duties of religion, -a piety which in
Spain excited no surprise.
II
The following day, while the soldiers were embarking, the gen-
eral went up to the convent to be present at vespers. He found
the church deserted by the townspeople, who in spite of their
natural devotion were attracted to the port by the embarkation
of the troops. The Frenchman, glad to find himself alone in the
church, took pains to make the clink of his spurs resound
through the vaulted roof; he walked noisily, and coughed, and
spoke aloud to himself, hoping to inform the nuns, but especially
the Sister at the organ, that if the French soldiers were depart-
ing, one at least remained behind. Was this singular method of
communication heard and understood ? The general believed it
was. In the Magnificat the organ seemed to give an answer
which came to him in the vibrations of the air. The soul of the
nun floated towards him on the wings of the notes she touched,
quivering with the movements of the sound. The music burst
forth with power; it glorified the church. This hymn of joy,
consecrated by the sublime liturgy of Roman Christianity to the
uplifting of the soul in presence of the splendors of the ever-
living God, became the utterance of a heart terrified at its own
happiness in presence of the splendors of a perishable love,
which still lived, and came to move it once more beyond the
tomb where this woman had buried herself, to rise again the
bride of Christ.
## p. 1374 (#168) ###########################################
1374
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The organ is beyond all question the finest, the most daring,
the most magnificent of the instruments created by human genius.
It is an orchestra in itself, from which a practiced hand may
demand all things; for it expresses all things. Is it not, as it
were, a coign of vantage, where the soul may poise itself ere it
springs into space, bearing, as it flies, the listening mind through
a thousand scenes of life towards the infinite which parts earth
from heaven? The longer a poet listens to its gigantic har-
monies, the more fully will he comprehend that between kneeling
humanity and the God hidden by the dazzling rays of the Holy
of Holies, the hundred voices of terrestrial choirs can alone bridge
the vast distance and interpret to Heaven the prayers of men
in all the omnipotence of their desires, in the diversities of their
woe, with the tints of their meditations and their ecstasies, with
the impetuous spring of their repentance, and the thousand
imaginations of their manifold beliefs. Yes! beneath these soar-
ing vaults the harmonies born of the genius of sacred things
find a yet unheard-of grandeur, which adorns and strengthens
them. Here the dim light, the deep silence, the voices alternat-
ing with the solemn tones of the organ, seem like a veil through
which the luminous attributes of God himself pierce and radiate.
Yet all these sacred riches now seem flung like a grain of
incense on the frail altar of an earthly love, in presence of the
eternal throne of a jealous and avenging Deity. The joy of the
nun had not the gravity which properly belongs to the solemnity
of the Magnificat. She gave to the music rich and graceful
modulations, whose rhythms breathed of human gayety; her
measures ran into the brilliant cadences of a great singer striv-
ing to express her love, and the notes rose buoyantly like the
carol of a bird by the side of its mate. At moments she darted
back into the past, as if to sport there or to weep there for an
instant. Her changing moods had something discomposed about
them, like the agitations of a happy woman rejoicing at the
return of her lover. Then, as these supple strains of passionate
emotion ceased, the soul that spoke returned upon itself; the
musician passed from the major to the minor key, and told her
hearer the story of her present. She revealed to him her long
melancholy, the slow malady of her moral being, - every day a
feeling crushed, every night a thought subdued, hour by hour a
heart burning down to ashes. After soft modulations the music
took on slowly, tint by tint, the hue of deepest sadness. Soon
## p. 1375 (#169) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1375
it poured forth in echoing torrents the well-springs of grief, till
suddenly the higher notes struck clear like the voice of angels,
as if to tell to her lost love — lost, but not forgotten — that the
reunion of their souls must be in heaven, and only there: hope
most precious! Then came the Amen. In that no joy, no tears,
nor sadness, nor regrets, but a return to God. The last chord
that sounded was grave, solemn, terrible. The musician revealed
the nun in the garb of her vocation; and as the thunder of the
basses rolled away, causing the hearer to shudder through his
whole being, she seemed to sink into the tomb from which for a
brief moment she had risen. As the echoes slowly ceased to
vibrate along the vaulted roofs, the church, made luminous by
the music, fell suddenly into profound obscurity.
The general, carried away by the course of this powerful
genius, had followed her, step by step, along her way. He
comprehended in their full meaning the pictures that gleamed
through that burning symphony; for him those chords told all.
For him, as for the Sister, this poem of sound was the future,
the past, the present. Music, even the music of an opera, is it
not to tender and poetic souls, to wounded and suffering hearts,
a text which they interpret as their memories need? If the
heart of a poet must be given to a musician, must not poetry
and love be listeners ere the great musical works of art are
understood ? Religion, love, and music: are they not the triple
expression of one fact, - the need of expansion, the need of
touching with their own infinite the infinite beyond them, which
is in the fibre of all noble souls ? These three forms of poesy
end in God, who alone can unwind the knot of earthly emotion.
Thus this holy human trinity joins itself to the holiness of God,
of whom we make to ourselves no conception unless we surround
him by the fires of love and the golden cymbals of music and
light and harmony.
The French general divined that on this desert rock, sur-
rounded by the surging seas, the nun had cherished music to
free her soul of the excess of passion that consumed it. Did she
offer her love as a homage to God? Did the love triumph over
the vows she had made to Him ? Questions difficult to answer.
But, beyond all doubt, the lover had found in a heart dead to the
world a love as passionate as that which burned within his own.
When vespers ended he returned to the house of the alcalde,
where he was quartered. Giving himself over, a willing prey,
## p. 1376 (#170) ###########################################
1376
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
to the delights of a success long expected, laboriously sought, his
mind at first could dwell on nothing else,- he was still loved.
Solitude had nourished the love of that heart, just as his own
had thriven on the barriers, successively surmounted, which this
woman had placed between herself and him. This ecstasy of
the spirit had its natural duration; then came the desire to see
this woman, to withdraw her from God, to win her back to him-
self, - a bold project, welcome to a bold man. After the evening
repast, he retired to his room to escape questions and think in
peace, and remained plunged in deep meditation throughout the
night. He rose early and went to Mass. He placed himself
close to the latticed screen, his brow touching the brown curtain.
He longed to rend it away; but he was not alone, his host had
accompanied him, and the least imprudence might compromise
the future of his love and ruin his new-found hopes. The organ
was played, but not by the same hand; the musician of the last
two days was absent from its key-board. All was chill and pale
to the general. Was his mistress worn out by the emotions
which had wellnigh broken down his own vigorous heart? Had
she so truly shared and comprehended his faithful and eager love
that she now lay exhausted and dying in her cell ? At the
moment when such thoughts as these rose in the general's mind,
he heard beside him the voice beloved; he knew the clear ring
of its tones. The voice, slightly changed by a tremor which
gave it the timid grace and modesty of a young girl, detached
itself from the volume of song, like the voice of a prima donna
in the harmonies of her final notes. It gave to the ear an
impression like the effect to the eye of a fillet of silver or gold
threading a dark frieze. It was indeed she! Still Parisian, she
had not lost her gracious charm, though she had forsaken the
coronet and adornments of the world for the frontlet and serge
of a Carmelite. Having revealed her love the night before in
the praises addressed to the Lord of all, she seemed now to say
to her lover:- “Yes, it is I: I am here. I love forever; yet I
am aloof from love. Thou shalt hear me; my soul shall enfold
thee; but I must stay beneath the brown shroud of this choir,
from which no power can tear me.
Thou canst not see me. ”
“It is she ! ” whispered the general to himself, as he raised
his head and withdrew his hands from his face; for he had not
been able to bear erect the storm of feeling that shook his heart
as the voice vibrated through the arches and blended with the
## p. 1377 (#171) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1377
murmur of the waves. A storm raged without, yet peace was
within the sanctuary. The rich voice still caressed the ear, and
fell like balm upon the parched heart of the lover; it flowered
in the air about him, from which he breathed the emanations
of her spirit exhaling her love through the aspirations of its
prayer.
The alcalde came to rejoin his guest, and found him bathed
in tears at the elevation of the Host which was chanted by the
nun. Surprised to find such devotion in a French officer, he
invited the confessor of the convent to join them at supper, and
informed the general, to whom no news had ever given such
pleasure, of what he had done. During the supper the general
made the confessor the object of much attention, and thus con-
firmed the Spaniards in the high opinion they had formed of his
piety. He inquired with grave interest the number of the nuns,
and asked details about the revenues of the convent and its
wealth, with the air of a man who politely wished to choose
topics which occupied the mind of the good old priest. Then he
inquired about the life led by the sisters. Could they go out?
Could they see friends ?
Senhor,” said the venorable priest, “the rule is severe. If
the permission of our Holy Father must be obtained before a
woman can enter a house of Saint Bruno [the Chartreux] the
like rule exists here. It is impossible for any man to enter a
convent of the Bare-footed Carmelites, unless he is a priest
delegated by the archbishop for duty in the House. No nun can
It is true, however, that the Great Saint, Mother
Theresa, did frequently leave her cell. A Mother-superior can
alone, under authority of the archbishop, permit a nun to see
her friends, especially in case of illness. As this convent is one
of the chief Houses of the Order, it has a Mother-superior
residing in it. We have several foreigners, — among them a
Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa, the one who directs the music in
the chapel. ”
"Ah! ” said the general, feigning surprise : "she must have
been gratified by the triumph of the House of Bourbon ? "
«I told them the object of the Mass; they are always rather
curious. »
"Perhaps Sister Theresa has some interests in France; she
might be glad to receive some news, or ask some questions ? »
"I think not; or she would have spoken to me. ”
111—87
go out.
## p. 1378 (#172) ###########################################
1378
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
“As a compatriot,” said the general, “I should be curious to
see — that is, if it were possible, if the superior would consent,
if - »
1
!
"At the grating, even in the presence of the reverend Mother,
an interview would be absolutely impossible for any ordinary
man, no matter who he was; but in favor of a liberator of a
Catholic throne and our holy religion, possibly, in spite of the
rigid rule of our Mother Theresa, the rule might be relaxed,”
said the confessor. "I will speak about it. ”
“How old is Sister Theresa ? ” asked the lover, who dared not
question the priest about the beauty of the nun.
"She is no longer of any age," said the good old man, with
a simplicity which made the general shudder.
1
III
pers.
The next day, before the siesta, the confessor came to tell the
general that Sister Theresa and the Mother-superior consented to
receive him at the grating that evening before the hour of ves-
After the siesta, during which the Frenchman had whiled
away the time by walking round the port in the fierce heat of
the sun, the priest came to show him the way into the con-
vent.
He was guided through a gallery which ran the length of the
cemetery, where fountains and trees and numerous arcades gave
a cool freshness in keeping with that still and silent spot. When
they reached the end of this long gallery, the priest led his com-
panion into a parlor, divided in the middle by a grating covered
with a brown curtain. On the side which we must call public,
and where the confessor left the general, there was a wooden
bench along one side of the wall; some chairs, also of wood, were
near the grating. The ceiling was of wood, crossed by heavy
beams of the evergreen oak, without ornament. Daylight came
from two windows in the division set apart for the nuns, and
was absorbed by the brown tones of the room; so that it barely
showed the picture of the great black Christ, and those of Saint
Theresa and the Blessed Virgin, which hung on the dark panels
of the walls.
The feelings of the general turned, in spite of their violence,
to a tone of melancholy. He grew calm in these calm precincts.
Something mighty as the grave seized him beneath these chilling
## p. 1379 (#173) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1379
rafters. Was it not the eternal silence, the deep peace, the near
presence of the infinite? Through the stillness came the fixed
thought of the cloister, - that thought which glides through the
air in the half-lights, and is in all things, the thougnt unchange-
able; nowhere seen, which yet grows vast to the imagination; the
all-comprising phrase, the peace of God. It enters there, with
living power, into the least religious heart. Convents of men
are not easily conceivable; man seems feeble and unmanly in
them. He is born to act, to fulfil a life of toil; and he escapes
it in his cell. But in a monastery of women what strength to
endure, and yet what touching weakness! A man may be pushed
by a thousand sentiments into the depths of an abbey; he flings
himself into them as from a precipice. But the woman is drawn
only by one feeling; she does not unsex herself, - she espouses
holiness. You may say to the man, Why did you not struggle?
but to the cloistered woman life is a struggle still.
The general found in this mute parlor of the seagirt convent
memories of himself, Love seldom reaches upward to solemnity;
but love in the bosom of God,- is there nothing solemn there?
Yes, more than a man has the right to hope for in this nine-
teenth century, with our manners and our customs what they
are.
The general's soul was one on which such impressions act.
His nature was noble enough to forget self-interest, honors, Spain,
the world, or Paris, and rise to the heights of feeling roused by
this unspeakable termination of his long pursuit. What could be
more tragic? How many emotions held these lovers, reunited at
last on this granite ledge far out at sea, yet separated by an
idea, an impassable barrier. Look at this man, saying to him-
self, “Can I triumph over God in that heart ? »
A slight noise made him quiver. The brown curtain was
drawn back; he saw in the half-light a woman standing, but her
face was hidden from him by the projection of a veil, which lay
in many folds upon her head. According to the rule of the
Order she was clothed in the brown garb whose color has be-
come proverbial. The general could not see the naked feet,
which would have told him the frightful emaciation of her body;
yet through the thick folds of the coarse robe that swathed her,
his heart divined that tears and prayers and passion and solitude
had wasted her away.
The chill hand of a woman, doubtless the Mother-superior,
held back the curtain, and the general, examining this unwelcome
## p. 1380 (#174) ###########################################
1380
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
witness of the interview, encountered the deep grave eyes of an
old nun, very aged, whose clear, even youthful, glance belied
the wrinkles that furrowed her pale face.
“Madame la duchesse,” he said, in a voice shaken by emotion,
to the Sister, who bowed her head, does your companion under-
stand French >>
« There is no duchess here,” replied the nun. << You are in
presence of Sister Theresa. The woman whom you call my
companion is my Mother in God, my superior here below. ”
These words, humbly uttered by a voice that once harmonized
with the luxury and elegance in which this woman had lived
queen of the world of Paris, that fell from lips whose language
had been of old so gay, so mocking, struck the general as if
with an electric shock.
“My holy Mother speaks only Latin and Spanish,” she added.
«I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make her my ex-
cuses. »
As she heard her name softly uttered by a man once so hard
to her, the nun was shaken by emotion, betrayed only by the
light quivering of her veil, on which the light now fully fell.
“My brother,” she said, passing her sleeve beneath her veil,
perhaps to wipe her eyes, my name is Sister Theresa. ”
Then she turned to the Mother, and said to her in Spanish a
few words which the general plainly heard. He knew enough of
the language to understand it, perhaps to speak it. My dear
Mother, this gentleman presents to you his respects, and begs
you to excuse him for not laying them himself at your feet; but
he knows neither of the languages which you speak. ”
The old woman slowly bowed her head; her countenance took
an expression of angelic sweetness, tempered, nevertheless, by
the consciousness of her power and dignity.
“You know this gentleman ? ” she asked, with a piercing
glance at the Sister.
“Yes, my Mother. ”
“Retire to your cell, my daughter," said the Superior in a
tone of authority.
The general hastily withdrew to the shelter of the curtain,
lest his face should betray the anguish these words cost him; but
he fancied that the penetrating eyes of the Superior followed
him even into the shadow. This woman, arbiter of the frail and
fleeting joy he had won at such cost, made him afraid; he trem-
bled, he whom a triple range of cannon could not shake.
## p. 1381 (#175) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1381
The duchess walked to the door, but there she turned.
“My
Mother,” she said, in a voice horribly calm, “this Frenchman is
one of my brothers. ”
* Remain, therefore, my daughter,” said the old woman, after
a pause.
The jesuitism of this answer revealed such love and such
regret, that a man of less firmness than the general would have
betrayed his joy in the midst of a peril so novel to him. But
what value could there be in the words, looks, gestures of a love
that must be hidden from the eyes of a lynx, the claws of a
tiger? The Sister came back.
“You see, my brother,” she said, “what I have dared to do
that I might for one moment speak to you of your salvation, and
tell you of the prayers which day by day my soul offers to
heaven on your behalf. I have committed a mortal sin,- I have
lied. How many days of penitence to wash out that lie! But I
shall suffer for you. You know not, my brother, the joy of lov-
ing in heaven, of daring to avow affections that religion has
purified, that have risen to the highest regions, that at last we
know and feel with the soul alone. If the doctrines if the
spirit of the saint to whom we owe this refuge had not lifted me
above the anguish of earth to a world, not indeed where she is,
but far above my lower life, I could not have seen you now.
But I can see you, I can hear you, and remain calm. ”
“Antoinette,” said the general, interrupting these words, "suf-
fer me to see you, you, whom I love passionately, to madness,
as you once would have had me love you. "
"Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you: memories of the
past do me harm. See in me only the Sister Theresa, a creature
trusting all to the divine pity. And,” she added, after a pause,
«subdue yourself, my brother. Our Mother would separate us
instantly if your face betrayed earthly passions, or your eyes shed
tears. »
The general bowed his head, as if to collect himself; when
he again lifted his eyes to the grating he saw between two bars
the pale, emaciated, but still ardent face of the nun. Her com-
plexion, where once had bloomed the loveliness of youth,— where
once there shone the happy contrast of a pure, clear whiteness
with the colors of a Bengal rose,-
now had the tints of a porce-
lain cup through which a feeble light showed faintly. The beau-
tiful hair of which this woman was once so proud was shaven; a
## p. 1382 (#176) ###########################################
1382
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1
white band bound her brows and was wrapped around her face.
Her eyes, circled with dark shadows due to the austerities of her
life, glanced at moments with a feverish light, of which their
habitual calm was but the mask. In a word, of this woman
nothing remained but her soul.
"Ah! you will leave this tomb you, who are my life! You
belonged to me; you were not free to give yourself — not even
to God. Did you not promise to sacrifice all to the least of my
commands?
diction is the proper pendant to the history of this unfortunate sol-
dier. In it another husband, the Marquis d'Espard, suffers from the
selfishness of his wife, one of the worst characters in the range of
Balzac's fiction. That she may keep him from alienating his property
to discharge a moral obligation she endeavors to prove him insane.
The legal complications which ensue bring forward one of Balzac's
great figures, the judge of instruction, Popinot; but to appreciate him
the reader must go to the marvelous book itself. (Gobseck' is a
study of a Parisian usurer, almost worthy of a place beside the
description of old Grandet; while (Les Employés) is a realistic study
of bureaucratic life, which, besides showing a wonderful familiarity
with the details of a world of which Balzac had little personal expe-
rience, contains several admirably drawn characters and a sufficient
amount of incident. But it is time to leave these sketches and
novels in miniature, and to pass by the less important "Scenes of
this fascinating Parisian life, in order to consider in some detail the
five novels of consummate power.
First of these in date of composition, and in popular estimation at
least among English readers, comes, “Le Père Goriot. ' It is certainly
trite to call the book a French “Lear, but the expression empha-
sizes the supreme artistic power that could treat the motif of one of
Shakespeare's plays in a manner that never forces a disadvantageous
comparison with the great tragedy. The retired vermicelli-maker is
not as grand a figure as the doting King of Britain, but he is as real.
The French daughters, Anastasie, Countess de Restaud, and Delphine,
Baroness de Nucingen, are not such types of savage wickedness as
Regan and Goneril, but they fit the nineteenth century as well as
the British princesses did their more barbarous day. Yet there is no
## p. 1361 (#155) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1361
Cordelia in Le Père Goriot,' for the pale Victorine Taillefer cannot
fill the place of that noblest of daughters. This is but to say that
Balzac's bourgeois tragedy lacks that element of the noble that every
great poetic tragedy must have. The self-immolation of old Goriot
to the cold-hearted ambitions of his daughters is not noble, but his
parental passion touches the infinite, and so proves the essential kin-
ship of his creator with the creator of Lear. This touch of the
infinite, as in “Eugénie Grandet, lifts the book up from the level of
a merely masterly study of characters or a merely powerful novel to
that of the supreme masterpieces of human genius. The marvelously
lifelike description of the vulgar Parisian boarding-house, the fasci-
nating delineation of the character of that king of convicts, Vautrin,
and the fine analysis of the ambitions of Rastignac (who comes
nearer perhaps to being the hero of the Comédie humaine) than any
other of its characters, and is here presented to us at the threshold
of his successful career) remain in the memory of every reader, but
would never alone have sufficed to make Balzac's name worthy of
immortality. The infinite quality of Goriot's passion would, how-
ever, have conferred this honor on his creator had he never written
another book.
(Illusions perdues) and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes)
might almost be regarded as one novel in seven parts. More than
any other of his works they show the sun of Balzac's genius at its
meridian. Nowhere else does he give us plots so absorbing, nowhere
else does he bring us so completely in contact with the world his
imagination has peopled. The first novel devotes two of its parts to
the provinces and one to Paris. The provincial stories centre around
two brothers-in-law, David Séchard and Lucien de Rubempré, types
of the practical and the artistic intellect respectively. David, after
struggling for fame and fortune, succumbs and finds his recompense
in the love of his wife Eve, Lucien's sister, one of Balzac's noble
women. Lucien, on the other hand, after some provincial successes
a poet, tries the great world of Paris, yields to its temptations,
fails ignominiously, and attempts suicide, but is rescued by the great
Vautrin, who has escaped from prison and is about to renew his war
on society disguised as a Spanish priest. Vautrin has conceived the
idea that as he can take no part in society, he will have a repre-
sentative in it and taste its pleasures through him.
Lucien accepts
this disgraceful position and plunges once more into the vortex, sup-
ported by the strong arm of the king of the convicts. His career
and that of his patron form the subject of the four parts of the
(Splendeurs et misères, and are too complicated to be described
here. Suffice it to say that probably nowhere else in fiction are the
novel of character and the novel of incident so splendidly combined;
as
III-86
## p. 1362 (#156) ###########################################
1362
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
4
1
1
and certainly nowhere else in the range of his work does Balzac so
fully display all his master qualities. That the story is sensational
cannot be denied, but it is at least worthy of being called the Iliad
of Crime. Nemesis waits upon both Lucien and Vautrin, and upon
the poor courtesan Esther whom they entrap in their toils, and
when the two former are at last in custody, Lucien commits suicide.
Vautrin baffles his acute judge in a wonderful interview; but with
his cherished hope cut short by Lucien's death, finally gives up the
struggle. Here the novel might have ended; yet Balzac adds a
fourth part, in order to complete the career of Vautrin. The famous
convict is transformed into a government spy, and engages to use
his immense power against his former comrades and in defense of
the society he has hitherto warred upon. The artistic propriety of
this transformation may be questioned, but not the power and inter-
est of the novel of which it is the finishing touch.
Many readers would put the companion novels La Cousine Bette)
and Le Cousin Pons) at the head of Balzac's works. They have not
the infinite pathos of Le Père Goriot, or the superb construction of
the first three parts of the “Splendeurs et misères,' but for sheer
strength the former at least is unsurpassed in fiction. Never before
or since have the effects of vice in dragging down a man below the
level of the lowest brute been so portrayed as in Baron Hulot; never
before or since has female depravity been so illustrated as in the
diabolical career of Valérie Marneffe, probably the worst woman in
fiction. As for Cousine Bette herself, and her power to breed mis-
chief and crime, it suffices to say that she is worthy of a place
beside the two chief characters.
Le Cousin Pons) is a very different book; one which, though
pathetic in the extreme, may be safely recommended to the youngest
reader. The hero who gives his name to the story is an old musician
who has worn out his welcome among his relations, but who becomes
an object of interest to them when they learn that his collection of
bric-a-brac is valuable and that he is about to die. The intrigues
that circulate around this collection and the childlike German,
Schmucke, to whom Pons has bequeathed it, are described as only
the author of Le Curé de Tours) could have succeeded in doing;
but the book contains also an almost perfect description of the ideal
friendship existing between Pons and Schmucke. One remembers
them longer than one does Frazier, the scoundrelly advocate who
cheats poor Schmucke; a fact which should be cited against those
who urge that Balzac is at home with his vicious characters only.
The last novel of this group, César Birotteau,' is the least power-
ful, though not perhaps the least popular. It is an excellent study
of bourgeois life, and therefore fills an important place in the scheme
## p. 1363 (#157) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1363
of the Comedy,' describing as it does the spreading ambitions of
a rich but stupid perfumer, and containing an admirable study of
bankruptcy. It may be dismissed with the remark that around the
innocent Cæsar surge most of the scoundrels that figure in the
(Comédie humaine,' and with the regret that it should have been
completed while the far more powerful Les Petits bourgeois) was
left unfinished.
We now come to the concluding parts of the 'Études de mæurs,'
the (Scenes describing Political and Military Life.
In the first group
are five novels and stories: L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine
(The Under Side of Contemporary History, a fine story, but rather
social than political), Une Ténébreuse affaire (A Shady Affair),
(Un Épisode sous la Terreur,' (Z. Marcas,' and Le Deputé d'Arcis)
(The Deputy of Arcis). Of these the Episode is probably the most
admirable, although (Z. Marcas) has not a little strength. The
(Deputé, like (Les Petits bourgeois,' was continued by M. Charles
Rabou and a considerable part of it is not Balzac's; a fact which is
to be regretted, since practically it is the only one of these stories
that touches actual politics as the term is usually understood. The
military scenes are only two in number, Les Chouans) and Une
Passion dans le désert. ) The former of these has been sufficiently
described already; the latter is one of the best known of the short
stories, but rather deserves a place beside La Fille aux yeux d'or. '
Indeed, for Balzac's best military scenes we must go to Le Colonel
Chabert) or to (Adieu. ”
We now pass to those subterranean chambers of the great struct-
ure we are exploring, the Études philosophiques. ' They are twenty
in number, four being novels, one a composite volume of tales, and
the rest stories. The titles run as follows:- 'La Peau de chagrin,'
(L'Élixir de longue vie) (The Elixir of Life), Melmoth réconcilié,'
Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (The Anonymous Masterpiece), Gam-
bara, Massimila Doni, Le Réquisitionnaire, Adieu,'El Verdugo,'
Les Marana, L'Auberge rouge (The Red Inn), «Un Drame au
bord de la mer? (A Seaside Drama), L'Enfant maudit (A Child
Accursed), Maître Cornélius? (Master Cornelius), Sur Catherine de
Médicis,' (La Recherche de l'absolu,' Louis Lambert,' Séraphita,'
'Les Proscrits,' and Jésus-Christ en Flandre. '
Of the novels, La Peau de chagrin' is easily first. Its central
theme is the world-old conflict between the infinite desires and the
finite powers of man. The hero, Raphael, is hardly, as M. Barrière
asserts, on a level with Hamlet, Faust, and Manfred, but the struggle
of his infinite and his finite natures is almost as intensely interesting
as the similar struggles in them. The introduction of the talisman,
the wild ass's skin that accomplishes all the wishes of its owner, but
## p. 1364 (#158) ###########################################
1364
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1
1
on condition that it is to shrink away in proportion to the intensity
of those wishes, and that when it disappears the owner's life is to
end, gave to the story a weird interest not altogether, perhaps, in
keeping with its realistic setting, and certainly forcing a disastrous
comparison with the three great poems named. But when all allow-
ances are made, one is forced to conclude that "La Peau de chagrin'
is a novel of extraordinary power and absorbing interest; and that
its description of its hero's dissipations in the libertine circles of
Paris, and its portrayal of the sublime devotion of the heroine Pauline
for her slowly perishing lover, are scarcely to be paralleled in liter-
ature. Far less powerful are the short stories on similar themes,
entitled “L'Élixir de longue vie,' and Melmoth réconcilié) (Melmoth
Reconciled), which give us Balzac's rehandling of the Don Juan of
Molière and Byron, and the Melmoth of Maturin.
Below the Peau de chagrin,' but still among its author's best
novels, should be placed La Recherche de l'absolu,' which, as its
title implies, describes the efforts of a chemist to ‘prove by chem-
ical analysis the unity of composition of matter. " In the pursuit of
his philosophic will-o'-the-wisp, Balthazar Claës loses his fortune and
sacrifices his noble wife and children. His madness serves, however,
to bring into relief the splendid qualities of these latter; and it is
just here, in its human rather than in its philosophic bearings, that
the story rises to real greatness. Marguerite Claës, the daughter, is
a noble heroine; and if one wishes to see how Balzac's characters
and ideas suffer when treated by another though an able hand, one
has but to read in conjunction with this novel the Maître Guérin'
of the distinguished dramatist Émile Augier. A proper pendant to
this history of a noble genius perverted is (La Confidence des Rug-
gieri,' the second part of that remarkable composite Sur Catherine
de Médicis, a book which in spite of its mixture of history, fiction,
and speculative politics is one of the most suggestive of Balzac's
minor productions.
Concerning Séraphita' and Louis Lambert,' the remaining novels
of this series, certain noted mystics assert that they contain the
essence of Balzac's genius, and at least suggest the secret of the
universe. Perhaps an ordinary critic may content himself with say-
ing that both books are remarkable proofs of their author's power,
and that the former is notable for its marvelous descriptions of Nor-
wegian scenery.
Of the lesser members of the philosophic group, nearly all are
admirable in their kind and degree. (Le Chef-d'ouvre inconnu' and
(Gambara' treat of the pains of the artistic life and temperament.
(Massimila Doni, like (Gambara,' treats of music, but also gives a
brilliant picture of Venetian life. Le réquisitionnaire,' perhaps the
1
1
1
1
## p. 1365 (#159) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1365
best of Balzac's short stories, deals with the phenomenon of second
sight, as Adieu' does with that of mental alienation caused by a
sudden shock. "Les Marana' is an absorbing study of the effects of
heredity; L'Auberge rouge) is an analysis of remorse, as is also
(Un Drame au bord de la mer); while (L'Enfant maudit' is an
analysis of the effects of extreme sensibility, especially as manifested
in the passion of poetic love. Finally, Maître Cornélius' is a study
of avarice, in which is set a remarkable portrait of Louis XI. ; Les
Proscrits) is a masterly sketch of the exile of Dante at Paris; and
Jésus-Christ en Flandre) is an exquisite allegory, the most delicate
flower, perhaps, of Balzac's genius.
It remains only to say a few words about the third division of the
(Comédie humaine, viz. , the Études analytiques. Only two mem-
bers of the series, the Physiologie du mariage and the Petites
misères de la vie conjugale,' were ever completed, and they are not
great enough to make us regret the loss of the Pathology of Social
Life) and the other unwritten volumes. For the two books we have
are neither novels nor profound studies, neither great fiction nor great
psychology. That they are worth reading for their suggestiveness
with regard to such important subjects as marriage and conjugal life
goes without saying, since they are Balzac's; but that they add
greatly to his reputation, not even his most ardent admirer would be
hardy enough to affirm.
And now in conclusion, what can one say about this great writer
that will not fall far short of his deserts ? Plainly, nothing, yet a few
points may be accentuated with profit. We should notice in the first
place that Balzac has consciously tried almost every form of prose
fiction, and has been nearly always splendidly successful. In analytic
studies of high, middle, and low life he has not his superior. In the
novel of intrigue and sensation he is easily a master, while he suc-
ceeds at least fairly in a form of fiction at just the opposite pole
from this, to wit, the idyl ('Le Lys dans la vallée'). In character
sketches of extreme types, like (Gobseck, his supremacy has long
been recognized, and he is almost as powerful when he enters the
world of mysticism, whither so few of us can follow him. As a
writer of novelettes he is unrivaled and some of his short stories are
worthy to rank with the best that his followers have produced. In
the extensive use of dialect he was a pioneer; in romance he has
La Peau de chagrin and La Recherche de l'absolu' to his credit;
while some of the work in the tales connected with the name of
Catherine de' Medici shows what he could have done in historical fic-
tion had he continued to follow Scott. And what is true of the form
of his fiction is true of its elements. Tragedy, comedy, melodrama
## p. 1366 (#160) ###########################################
1366
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
are all within his reach; he can call up tears and shudders, laughter
and smiles at will. He knows the whole range of human emotions,
and he dares to penetrate into the arcana of passions almost too
terrible or loathsome for literature to touch.
In style, in the larger sense of the word, he is almost equally
supreme. He is the father of modern realism and remains its great-
est exponent. He retains always some of the good elements of
romance, – that is to say, he sees the thing as it ought to be, — and
he avoids the pitfalls of naturalism, being a painter and not a photog-
rapher. In other words, like all truly great writers he never forgets
his ideals; but he is too impartial to his characters and has too fast
a grip on life to fall into the unrealities of sentimentalism. It is
true that he lacked the spontaneity that characterized his great fore-
runner, Shakespeare, and his great contemporary, George Sand; but
this loss was made up by the inevitable and impersonal character of
his work when once his genius was thoroughly aroused to action.
His laborious method of describing by an accumulation of details
postponed the play of his powers, which are at their height in the
action of his characters; yet sooner or later the inert masses of his
composition were fused into a burning whole. But if Balzac is pri-
marily a dramatist in the creation and manipulation of his charac-
ters, he is also a supreme painter in his presentation of scenes.
And what characters and what scenes has he not set before us!
Over two thousand personages move through the Comédie humaine,'
whose biographies MM. Cerfberr and Christophe have collected for
us in
their admirable (Répertoire de la comédie humaine,' and
whose chief types M. Paul Flat has described in the first series of
his Essais sur Balzac. ) Some of these personages are of course
shadowy; but an amazingly large number live for us as truly as
Shakespeare's heroes and heroines do. Nor will anyone who has
trod the streets of Balzac's Paris, or spent the summer with him at
the chateau des Aigues (“Les Paysans'), or in the beautiful valleys
of Touraine, ever forget the master's pictures.
Yet the Balzac who with intangible materials created living and
breathing men and women and unfading scenes, has been accused
of vitiating the French language and has been denied the possession
of verbal style. On this point French critics must give the final
verdict;
but a foreigner may cite Taine's defense of that style, and
maintain that most of the liberties taken by Balzac with his native
language were forced on him by the novel and far-reaching character
of his work. Nor should it be forgotten that he was capable at times
of almost perfect passages of description, and that he rarely con-
founded, as novelists are too apt to do, the provinces of poetry and
prose.
## p. 1367 (#161) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1367
But one might write a hundred essays on Balzac and not exhaust
him. One might write a volume on his women, a volume to refute
the charge that his bad men are better drawn than his good, a
volume to discuss Mr. Henry James's epigrammatic declaration that
a five-franc piece may be fairly called the protagonist of the
(Comédie humaine. In short one might go on defending and prais-
ing and even criticizing Balzac for a lifetime, and be little further
advanced than when one began; for to criticize Balzac, is it not to
criticize life itself?
W. P. Zent-
-
THE MEETING IN THE CONVENT
From "The Duchess of Langeais)
I
N A Spanish town on an island of the Mediterranean there is a
convent of the Barefooted Carmelites, where the rule of the
Order instituted by Saint Theresa is still kept with the prim-
itive rigor of the reformation brought about by that illustrious
woman. Extraordinary as this fact may seem, it is true. Though
the monasteries of the Peninsula and those of the Continent were
nearly all destroyed or broken up by the outburst of the French
Revolution and the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, yet on this
island, protected by the British fleets, the wealthy convent and
its peaceful inmates were sheltered from the dangers of change
and general spoliation. The storms from all quarters which
shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century subsided
ere they reached this lonely rock near the coast of Andalusia.
If the name of the great Emperor echoed fitfully upon its shores,
it may be doubted whether the fantastic march of his glory or
the flaming majesty of his meteoric life ever reached the compre-
hension of those saintly women kneeling in their distant cloister.
A conventual rigor, which was never relaxed, gave to this
haven a special place in the thoughts and history of the Catholic
world. The purity of its rule drew to its shelter from different
parts of Europe sad women, whose souls, deprived of human
ties, longed for the death in life which they found here in the
bosom of God. No other convent was so fitted to wean the
heart and teach it that aloofness from the things of this world
## p. 1368 (#162) ###########################################
1368
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
3
which the religious life imperatively demands. On the Continent
may be found a number of such Houses, nobly planned to meet
the wants of their sacred purpose. Some are buried in the
depths of solitary valleys; others hang, as it were, in mid-air
above the hills, clinging to the mountain slopes or projecting
from the verge of precipices. On all sides man has sought out
the poesy of the infinite, the solemnity of silence: he has sought
God; and on the mountain-tops, in the abysmal depths, among
the caverned cliffs he has found Him. Yet nowhere as on this
European islet, half African though it be, can he find such differ-
ing harmonies all blending to lift the soul and quell its springs
of anguish; to cool its fevers, and give to the sorrows of life a
bed of rest.
The monastery is built at the extremity of the island at its
highest part, where the rock by some convulsion of Nature has
been rent sharply down to the sea, and presents at all points
keen angles and edges, slightly eaten away at the water-line by
the action of the waves, but insurmountable to all approach.
The rock is also protected from assault by dangerous reefs run-
ning far out from its base, over which frolic the blue waters of
the Mediterranean. It is only from the sea that the visitor can
perceive the four principal parts of the square structure, which
adheres minutely as to shape, height, and the piercing of its
windows to the prescribed laws of monastic architecture. On
the side towards the town the church hides the massive lines of
the cloister, whose roof is covered with large tiles to protect it
from winds and storms, and also from the fierce heat of the sun.
The church, the gift of a Spanish family, looks down upon the
town and crowns it. Its bold yet elegant façade gives a noble
aspect to the little maritime city. Is it not a picture of terres-
trial sublimity? See the tiny town with clustering roofs, rising
like an amphitheatre from the picturesque port upward to the
noble Gothic frontal of the church, from which spring the slen-
der shafts of the bell-towers with their pointed finials: religion
dominating life: offering to man the end and the way of liv-
ing,- image of a thought altogether Spanish. Place this scene
upon the bosom of the Mediterranean beneath an ardent sky;
plant it with palms whose waving fronds mingle their green life
with the sculptured leafage of the immutable architecture; look
at the white fringes of the sea as it runs up the reef and they
sparkle upon the sapphire of its wave; see the galleries and the
## p. 1369 (#163) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1369
terraces built upon the roofs of houses, where the inhabitants
come at eve to breathe the flower-scented air as it rises through
the tree-tops from their little gardens. Below, in the harbor,
are the white sails. The serenity of night is coming on; listen
to the notes of the organ, the chant of evening orisons, the
echoing bells of the ships at sea: on all sides sound and peace,
oftenest peace.
Within the church are three naves, dark and mysterious. The
fury of the winds evidently forbade the architect to build out lat-
eral buttresses, such as adorn all other cathedrals, and between
which little chapels are usually constructed. Thus the strong
walls which flank the lesser naves shed no light into the building.
Outside, their gray masses are shored up from point to point by
enormous beams. The great nave and its two small lateral gal-
leries are lighted solely by the rose-window of stained glass,
which pierces with miraculous art the wall above the great por-
tal, whose fortunate exposure permits a wealth of tracery and
dentellated stone-work belonging to that order of architecture
miscalled Gothic.
The greater part of the three naves is given up to the inhabi-
tants of the town who come to hear Mass and the Offices of the
Church. In front of the choir is a latticed screen, within which
brown curtains hang in ample folds, slightly parted in the middle
to give a limited view of the altar and the officiating priest. The
screen is divided at intervals by pillars that hold up a gallery
within the choir which contains the organ. This construction, in
harmony with the rest of the building, continues, in sculptured
wood, the little columns of the lateral galleries which are sup-
ported by the pillars of the great nave. Thus it is impossible
for the boldest curiosity, if any such should dare to mount the
narrow balustrade of these galleries, to see farther into the choir
than the octagonal stained windows which pierce the apse behind
the high altar.
At the time of the French expedition into Spain for the pur-
pose of re-establishing the authority of Ferdinand VII. , and
after the fall of Cadiz, a French general who was sent to the
island to obtain its recognition of the royal government pro-
longed his stay upon it that he might reconnoitre the convent and
gain, if possible, admittance there. The enterprise was a delicate
But a man of passion, a man whose life had been, so to
speak, a series of poems in action, who had lived romances
one.
## p. 1370 (#164) ###########################################
1370
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
instead of writing them; above all a man of deeds,— might well
be tempted by a project apparently so impossible. To open for
himself legally the gates of a convent of women! The Pope and
the Metropolitan Archbishop would scarcely sanction it. Should
he use force or artifice ? In case of failure was he not certain
to lose his station and his military future, besides missing his
aim ? The Duc d'Angoulême was still in Spain; and of all the
indiscretions which an officer in favor with the commander-in-
chief could commit, this alone would be punished without pity.
The general had solicited his present mission for the purpose of
following up a secret hope, albeit no hope was ever so despair-
ing. This last effort, however, was a matter of conscience. The
house of these Barefooted Carmelites was the only Spanish con-
vent which had escaped his search. While crossing from the
mainland, a voyage which took less than an hour, a strong pre-
sentiment of success had seized his heart. Since then, although
he had seen nothing of the convent but its walls, nothing of the
nuns, not so much as their brown habit; though he had heard
only the echoes of their chanted liturgies,— he had gathered from
those walls and from these chants faint indications that seemed
to justify his fragile hope. Slight as the auguries thus capri-
ciously awakened might be, no human passion was
violently roused than the curiosity of this French general. To
the heart there are no insignificant events; it magnifies all
things; it puts in the same balance the fall of an empire and the
fall of a woman's glove,- and oftentimes the glove outweighs
the empire. But let us give the facts in their actual simplicity:
after the facts will come the feelings.
An hour after the expedition had landed on the island the
royal authority was re-established. A few Spaniards who had
taken refuge there after the fall of Cadiz embarked on a vessel
which the general allowed them to charter for their voyage to
London. There was thus neither resistance nor reaction. This
little insular restoration could not, however, be accomplished with-
out a Mass, at which both companies of the troops were ordered
to be present. Not knowing the rigor of the Carmelite rule, the
general hoped to gain in the church some information about the
nuns who were immured in the convent, one of whom might be
a being dearer to him than life, more precious even than honor.
His hopes were at first cruelly disappointed. Mass was cele-
brated with the utmost pomp.
In honor of this solemn occasion
ever more
1
## p. 1371 (#165) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1371
man.
are
the curtains which habitually hid the choir were drawn aside,
and gave to view the rich ornaments, the priceless pictures,
and the shrines incrusted with jewels whose brilliancy surpassed
that of the votive offerings fastened by the mariners of the
port to the pillars of the great nave. The nuns, however, had
retired to the seclusion of the organ gallery.
Yet in spite of this check, and while the Mass of thanksgiv-
ing was being sung, suddenly and secretly the drama widened
into an interest as profound as any that ever moved the heart of
The Sister who played the organ roused an enthusiasm so
vivid that not one soldier present regretted the order which had
brought him to the church. The men listened to the music with
pleasure; the officers were carried away by it.
As for the gen-
eral, he remained to all appearance calm and cold: the feelings
with which he heard the notes given forth by the nun
among the small number of earthly things whose expression is
withheld from impotent human speech, but which-like death,
like God, like eternity — can be perceived only at their slender
point of contact with the heart of man. By a strange chance the
music of the organ seemed to be that of Rossini, -a composer
who more than any other has carried human passion into the art
of music, and whose works by their number and extent will some
day inspire an Homeric respect. From among the scores of this
fine genius the nun seemed to have chiefly studied that of Moses
in Egypt; doubtless because the feelings of sacred music are there
carried to the highest pitch. Perhaps these two souls-one so
gloriously European, the other unknown - had met together in
some intuitive perception of the same poetic thought. This idea
occurred to two officers now present, true dilettanti, who no
doubt keenly regretted the Théatre Favart in their Spanish exile.
At last, at the Te Deum, it was impossible not to recognize a
French soul in the character which the music suddenly took on.
The triumph of his Most Christian Majesty evidently roused to
joy the heart of that cloistered nun. Surely she was a French-
woman. Presently the patriotic spirit burst forth, sparkling like
a jet of light through the antiphonals of the organ, as the Sister
recalled melodies breathing the delicacy of Parisian taste, and
blended them with vague memories of our national anthems.
Spanish hands could not have put into this graceful homage
paid to victorious arms the fire that thus betrayed the origin of
the musician.
## p. 1372 (#166) ###########################################
1372
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1
“France is everywhere! ” said a soldier.
The general left the church during the Te Deum; it was
impossible for him to listen to it. The notes of the musician
revealed to him a woman loved to madness; who had buried
herself so deeply in the heart of religion, hid herself so care-
fully away from the sight of the world, that up to this time she
had escaped the keen search of men armed not only with
immense power, but with great sagacity and intelligence. The
hopes which had wakened in the general's heart seemed justi-
fied as he listened to the vague echo of a tender and melancholy
air, La Fleuve du Tage,' -a ballad whose prelude he had
often heard in Paris in the boudoir of the woman he loved, and
which this nun now used to express, amid the joys of the con-
querors, the suffering of an exiled heart. Terrible moment! to
long for the resurrection of a lost love; to find that love — still
lost; to meet it mysteriously after five years in which passion,
exasperated by the void, had been intensified by the useless
efforts made to satisfy it.
Who is there that has not, once at least in his life, upturned
everything about him, his papers and his receptacles, taxing his
memory impatiently as he seeks some precious lost object; and
then felt the ineffable pleasure of finding it after days consumed
in the search, after hoping and despairing of its recovery, -
spending upon some trifle an excitement of mind almost amount-
ing to a passion ? Well, stretch this fury of search through five
long years; put a woman, a heart, a love in the place of the
insignificant trifle; lift the passion into the highest realms of
feeling; and then picture to yourself an ardent man, a man with
the heart of lion and the front of Jove, one of those men who
command, and communicate to those about them, respectful
terror, - you will then understand the abrupt departure of the
general during the Te Deum, at the moment when the prelude
of an air, once heard in Paris with delight under gilded ceilings,
vibrated through the dark naves of the church by the sea.
He went down the hilly street which led up to the convent,
without pausing until the sonorous echoes of the organ could no
longer reach his ear. Unable to think of anything but of the
love that like a volcanic eruption rent his heart, the French gen-
eral only perceived that the Te Deum was ended when the
Spanish contingent poured from the church. He felt that his
conduct and appearance were open to ridicule, and he hastily
1
.
1
1
1
1
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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
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resumed his place at the head of the cavalcade, explaining to the
alcalde and to the governor of the town that a sudden indisposi-
tion had obliged him to come out into the air. Then it suddenly
occurred to him to use the pretext thus hastily given, as a
means of prolonging his stay on the island. Excusing himself
on the score of increased illness, he declined to preside at the
banquet given by the authorities of the island to the French
officers, and took to his bed, after writing to the major-general
that a passing illness compelled him to turn over his command
to the colonel. This commonplace artifice, natural as it was,
left him free from all duties and able to seek the fulfilment of
his hopes. Like a man essentially Catholic and monarchical, he
inquired the hours of the various services, and showed the
utmost interest in the duties of religion, -a piety which in
Spain excited no surprise.
II
The following day, while the soldiers were embarking, the gen-
eral went up to the convent to be present at vespers. He found
the church deserted by the townspeople, who in spite of their
natural devotion were attracted to the port by the embarkation
of the troops. The Frenchman, glad to find himself alone in the
church, took pains to make the clink of his spurs resound
through the vaulted roof; he walked noisily, and coughed, and
spoke aloud to himself, hoping to inform the nuns, but especially
the Sister at the organ, that if the French soldiers were depart-
ing, one at least remained behind. Was this singular method of
communication heard and understood ? The general believed it
was. In the Magnificat the organ seemed to give an answer
which came to him in the vibrations of the air. The soul of the
nun floated towards him on the wings of the notes she touched,
quivering with the movements of the sound. The music burst
forth with power; it glorified the church. This hymn of joy,
consecrated by the sublime liturgy of Roman Christianity to the
uplifting of the soul in presence of the splendors of the ever-
living God, became the utterance of a heart terrified at its own
happiness in presence of the splendors of a perishable love,
which still lived, and came to move it once more beyond the
tomb where this woman had buried herself, to rise again the
bride of Christ.
## p. 1374 (#168) ###########################################
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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The organ is beyond all question the finest, the most daring,
the most magnificent of the instruments created by human genius.
It is an orchestra in itself, from which a practiced hand may
demand all things; for it expresses all things. Is it not, as it
were, a coign of vantage, where the soul may poise itself ere it
springs into space, bearing, as it flies, the listening mind through
a thousand scenes of life towards the infinite which parts earth
from heaven? The longer a poet listens to its gigantic har-
monies, the more fully will he comprehend that between kneeling
humanity and the God hidden by the dazzling rays of the Holy
of Holies, the hundred voices of terrestrial choirs can alone bridge
the vast distance and interpret to Heaven the prayers of men
in all the omnipotence of their desires, in the diversities of their
woe, with the tints of their meditations and their ecstasies, with
the impetuous spring of their repentance, and the thousand
imaginations of their manifold beliefs. Yes! beneath these soar-
ing vaults the harmonies born of the genius of sacred things
find a yet unheard-of grandeur, which adorns and strengthens
them. Here the dim light, the deep silence, the voices alternat-
ing with the solemn tones of the organ, seem like a veil through
which the luminous attributes of God himself pierce and radiate.
Yet all these sacred riches now seem flung like a grain of
incense on the frail altar of an earthly love, in presence of the
eternal throne of a jealous and avenging Deity. The joy of the
nun had not the gravity which properly belongs to the solemnity
of the Magnificat. She gave to the music rich and graceful
modulations, whose rhythms breathed of human gayety; her
measures ran into the brilliant cadences of a great singer striv-
ing to express her love, and the notes rose buoyantly like the
carol of a bird by the side of its mate. At moments she darted
back into the past, as if to sport there or to weep there for an
instant. Her changing moods had something discomposed about
them, like the agitations of a happy woman rejoicing at the
return of her lover. Then, as these supple strains of passionate
emotion ceased, the soul that spoke returned upon itself; the
musician passed from the major to the minor key, and told her
hearer the story of her present. She revealed to him her long
melancholy, the slow malady of her moral being, - every day a
feeling crushed, every night a thought subdued, hour by hour a
heart burning down to ashes. After soft modulations the music
took on slowly, tint by tint, the hue of deepest sadness. Soon
## p. 1375 (#169) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1375
it poured forth in echoing torrents the well-springs of grief, till
suddenly the higher notes struck clear like the voice of angels,
as if to tell to her lost love — lost, but not forgotten — that the
reunion of their souls must be in heaven, and only there: hope
most precious! Then came the Amen. In that no joy, no tears,
nor sadness, nor regrets, but a return to God. The last chord
that sounded was grave, solemn, terrible. The musician revealed
the nun in the garb of her vocation; and as the thunder of the
basses rolled away, causing the hearer to shudder through his
whole being, she seemed to sink into the tomb from which for a
brief moment she had risen. As the echoes slowly ceased to
vibrate along the vaulted roofs, the church, made luminous by
the music, fell suddenly into profound obscurity.
The general, carried away by the course of this powerful
genius, had followed her, step by step, along her way. He
comprehended in their full meaning the pictures that gleamed
through that burning symphony; for him those chords told all.
For him, as for the Sister, this poem of sound was the future,
the past, the present. Music, even the music of an opera, is it
not to tender and poetic souls, to wounded and suffering hearts,
a text which they interpret as their memories need? If the
heart of a poet must be given to a musician, must not poetry
and love be listeners ere the great musical works of art are
understood ? Religion, love, and music: are they not the triple
expression of one fact, - the need of expansion, the need of
touching with their own infinite the infinite beyond them, which
is in the fibre of all noble souls ? These three forms of poesy
end in God, who alone can unwind the knot of earthly emotion.
Thus this holy human trinity joins itself to the holiness of God,
of whom we make to ourselves no conception unless we surround
him by the fires of love and the golden cymbals of music and
light and harmony.
The French general divined that on this desert rock, sur-
rounded by the surging seas, the nun had cherished music to
free her soul of the excess of passion that consumed it. Did she
offer her love as a homage to God? Did the love triumph over
the vows she had made to Him ? Questions difficult to answer.
But, beyond all doubt, the lover had found in a heart dead to the
world a love as passionate as that which burned within his own.
When vespers ended he returned to the house of the alcalde,
where he was quartered. Giving himself over, a willing prey,
## p. 1376 (#170) ###########################################
1376
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
to the delights of a success long expected, laboriously sought, his
mind at first could dwell on nothing else,- he was still loved.
Solitude had nourished the love of that heart, just as his own
had thriven on the barriers, successively surmounted, which this
woman had placed between herself and him. This ecstasy of
the spirit had its natural duration; then came the desire to see
this woman, to withdraw her from God, to win her back to him-
self, - a bold project, welcome to a bold man. After the evening
repast, he retired to his room to escape questions and think in
peace, and remained plunged in deep meditation throughout the
night. He rose early and went to Mass. He placed himself
close to the latticed screen, his brow touching the brown curtain.
He longed to rend it away; but he was not alone, his host had
accompanied him, and the least imprudence might compromise
the future of his love and ruin his new-found hopes. The organ
was played, but not by the same hand; the musician of the last
two days was absent from its key-board. All was chill and pale
to the general. Was his mistress worn out by the emotions
which had wellnigh broken down his own vigorous heart? Had
she so truly shared and comprehended his faithful and eager love
that she now lay exhausted and dying in her cell ? At the
moment when such thoughts as these rose in the general's mind,
he heard beside him the voice beloved; he knew the clear ring
of its tones. The voice, slightly changed by a tremor which
gave it the timid grace and modesty of a young girl, detached
itself from the volume of song, like the voice of a prima donna
in the harmonies of her final notes. It gave to the ear an
impression like the effect to the eye of a fillet of silver or gold
threading a dark frieze. It was indeed she! Still Parisian, she
had not lost her gracious charm, though she had forsaken the
coronet and adornments of the world for the frontlet and serge
of a Carmelite. Having revealed her love the night before in
the praises addressed to the Lord of all, she seemed now to say
to her lover:- “Yes, it is I: I am here. I love forever; yet I
am aloof from love. Thou shalt hear me; my soul shall enfold
thee; but I must stay beneath the brown shroud of this choir,
from which no power can tear me.
Thou canst not see me. ”
“It is she ! ” whispered the general to himself, as he raised
his head and withdrew his hands from his face; for he had not
been able to bear erect the storm of feeling that shook his heart
as the voice vibrated through the arches and blended with the
## p. 1377 (#171) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1377
murmur of the waves. A storm raged without, yet peace was
within the sanctuary. The rich voice still caressed the ear, and
fell like balm upon the parched heart of the lover; it flowered
in the air about him, from which he breathed the emanations
of her spirit exhaling her love through the aspirations of its
prayer.
The alcalde came to rejoin his guest, and found him bathed
in tears at the elevation of the Host which was chanted by the
nun. Surprised to find such devotion in a French officer, he
invited the confessor of the convent to join them at supper, and
informed the general, to whom no news had ever given such
pleasure, of what he had done. During the supper the general
made the confessor the object of much attention, and thus con-
firmed the Spaniards in the high opinion they had formed of his
piety. He inquired with grave interest the number of the nuns,
and asked details about the revenues of the convent and its
wealth, with the air of a man who politely wished to choose
topics which occupied the mind of the good old priest. Then he
inquired about the life led by the sisters. Could they go out?
Could they see friends ?
Senhor,” said the venorable priest, “the rule is severe. If
the permission of our Holy Father must be obtained before a
woman can enter a house of Saint Bruno [the Chartreux] the
like rule exists here. It is impossible for any man to enter a
convent of the Bare-footed Carmelites, unless he is a priest
delegated by the archbishop for duty in the House. No nun can
It is true, however, that the Great Saint, Mother
Theresa, did frequently leave her cell. A Mother-superior can
alone, under authority of the archbishop, permit a nun to see
her friends, especially in case of illness. As this convent is one
of the chief Houses of the Order, it has a Mother-superior
residing in it. We have several foreigners, — among them a
Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa, the one who directs the music in
the chapel. ”
"Ah! ” said the general, feigning surprise : "she must have
been gratified by the triumph of the House of Bourbon ? "
«I told them the object of the Mass; they are always rather
curious. »
"Perhaps Sister Theresa has some interests in France; she
might be glad to receive some news, or ask some questions ? »
"I think not; or she would have spoken to me. ”
111—87
go out.
## p. 1378 (#172) ###########################################
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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
“As a compatriot,” said the general, “I should be curious to
see — that is, if it were possible, if the superior would consent,
if - »
1
!
"At the grating, even in the presence of the reverend Mother,
an interview would be absolutely impossible for any ordinary
man, no matter who he was; but in favor of a liberator of a
Catholic throne and our holy religion, possibly, in spite of the
rigid rule of our Mother Theresa, the rule might be relaxed,”
said the confessor. "I will speak about it. ”
“How old is Sister Theresa ? ” asked the lover, who dared not
question the priest about the beauty of the nun.
"She is no longer of any age," said the good old man, with
a simplicity which made the general shudder.
1
III
pers.
The next day, before the siesta, the confessor came to tell the
general that Sister Theresa and the Mother-superior consented to
receive him at the grating that evening before the hour of ves-
After the siesta, during which the Frenchman had whiled
away the time by walking round the port in the fierce heat of
the sun, the priest came to show him the way into the con-
vent.
He was guided through a gallery which ran the length of the
cemetery, where fountains and trees and numerous arcades gave
a cool freshness in keeping with that still and silent spot. When
they reached the end of this long gallery, the priest led his com-
panion into a parlor, divided in the middle by a grating covered
with a brown curtain. On the side which we must call public,
and where the confessor left the general, there was a wooden
bench along one side of the wall; some chairs, also of wood, were
near the grating. The ceiling was of wood, crossed by heavy
beams of the evergreen oak, without ornament. Daylight came
from two windows in the division set apart for the nuns, and
was absorbed by the brown tones of the room; so that it barely
showed the picture of the great black Christ, and those of Saint
Theresa and the Blessed Virgin, which hung on the dark panels
of the walls.
The feelings of the general turned, in spite of their violence,
to a tone of melancholy. He grew calm in these calm precincts.
Something mighty as the grave seized him beneath these chilling
## p. 1379 (#173) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1379
rafters. Was it not the eternal silence, the deep peace, the near
presence of the infinite? Through the stillness came the fixed
thought of the cloister, - that thought which glides through the
air in the half-lights, and is in all things, the thougnt unchange-
able; nowhere seen, which yet grows vast to the imagination; the
all-comprising phrase, the peace of God. It enters there, with
living power, into the least religious heart. Convents of men
are not easily conceivable; man seems feeble and unmanly in
them. He is born to act, to fulfil a life of toil; and he escapes
it in his cell. But in a monastery of women what strength to
endure, and yet what touching weakness! A man may be pushed
by a thousand sentiments into the depths of an abbey; he flings
himself into them as from a precipice. But the woman is drawn
only by one feeling; she does not unsex herself, - she espouses
holiness. You may say to the man, Why did you not struggle?
but to the cloistered woman life is a struggle still.
The general found in this mute parlor of the seagirt convent
memories of himself, Love seldom reaches upward to solemnity;
but love in the bosom of God,- is there nothing solemn there?
Yes, more than a man has the right to hope for in this nine-
teenth century, with our manners and our customs what they
are.
The general's soul was one on which such impressions act.
His nature was noble enough to forget self-interest, honors, Spain,
the world, or Paris, and rise to the heights of feeling roused by
this unspeakable termination of his long pursuit. What could be
more tragic? How many emotions held these lovers, reunited at
last on this granite ledge far out at sea, yet separated by an
idea, an impassable barrier. Look at this man, saying to him-
self, “Can I triumph over God in that heart ? »
A slight noise made him quiver. The brown curtain was
drawn back; he saw in the half-light a woman standing, but her
face was hidden from him by the projection of a veil, which lay
in many folds upon her head. According to the rule of the
Order she was clothed in the brown garb whose color has be-
come proverbial. The general could not see the naked feet,
which would have told him the frightful emaciation of her body;
yet through the thick folds of the coarse robe that swathed her,
his heart divined that tears and prayers and passion and solitude
had wasted her away.
The chill hand of a woman, doubtless the Mother-superior,
held back the curtain, and the general, examining this unwelcome
## p. 1380 (#174) ###########################################
1380
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
witness of the interview, encountered the deep grave eyes of an
old nun, very aged, whose clear, even youthful, glance belied
the wrinkles that furrowed her pale face.
“Madame la duchesse,” he said, in a voice shaken by emotion,
to the Sister, who bowed her head, does your companion under-
stand French >>
« There is no duchess here,” replied the nun. << You are in
presence of Sister Theresa. The woman whom you call my
companion is my Mother in God, my superior here below. ”
These words, humbly uttered by a voice that once harmonized
with the luxury and elegance in which this woman had lived
queen of the world of Paris, that fell from lips whose language
had been of old so gay, so mocking, struck the general as if
with an electric shock.
“My holy Mother speaks only Latin and Spanish,” she added.
«I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make her my ex-
cuses. »
As she heard her name softly uttered by a man once so hard
to her, the nun was shaken by emotion, betrayed only by the
light quivering of her veil, on which the light now fully fell.
“My brother,” she said, passing her sleeve beneath her veil,
perhaps to wipe her eyes, my name is Sister Theresa. ”
Then she turned to the Mother, and said to her in Spanish a
few words which the general plainly heard. He knew enough of
the language to understand it, perhaps to speak it. My dear
Mother, this gentleman presents to you his respects, and begs
you to excuse him for not laying them himself at your feet; but
he knows neither of the languages which you speak. ”
The old woman slowly bowed her head; her countenance took
an expression of angelic sweetness, tempered, nevertheless, by
the consciousness of her power and dignity.
“You know this gentleman ? ” she asked, with a piercing
glance at the Sister.
“Yes, my Mother. ”
“Retire to your cell, my daughter," said the Superior in a
tone of authority.
The general hastily withdrew to the shelter of the curtain,
lest his face should betray the anguish these words cost him; but
he fancied that the penetrating eyes of the Superior followed
him even into the shadow. This woman, arbiter of the frail and
fleeting joy he had won at such cost, made him afraid; he trem-
bled, he whom a triple range of cannon could not shake.
## p. 1381 (#175) ###########################################
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
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The duchess walked to the door, but there she turned.
“My
Mother,” she said, in a voice horribly calm, “this Frenchman is
one of my brothers. ”
* Remain, therefore, my daughter,” said the old woman, after
a pause.
The jesuitism of this answer revealed such love and such
regret, that a man of less firmness than the general would have
betrayed his joy in the midst of a peril so novel to him. But
what value could there be in the words, looks, gestures of a love
that must be hidden from the eyes of a lynx, the claws of a
tiger? The Sister came back.
“You see, my brother,” she said, “what I have dared to do
that I might for one moment speak to you of your salvation, and
tell you of the prayers which day by day my soul offers to
heaven on your behalf. I have committed a mortal sin,- I have
lied. How many days of penitence to wash out that lie! But I
shall suffer for you. You know not, my brother, the joy of lov-
ing in heaven, of daring to avow affections that religion has
purified, that have risen to the highest regions, that at last we
know and feel with the soul alone. If the doctrines if the
spirit of the saint to whom we owe this refuge had not lifted me
above the anguish of earth to a world, not indeed where she is,
but far above my lower life, I could not have seen you now.
But I can see you, I can hear you, and remain calm. ”
“Antoinette,” said the general, interrupting these words, "suf-
fer me to see you, you, whom I love passionately, to madness,
as you once would have had me love you. "
"Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you: memories of the
past do me harm. See in me only the Sister Theresa, a creature
trusting all to the divine pity. And,” she added, after a pause,
«subdue yourself, my brother. Our Mother would separate us
instantly if your face betrayed earthly passions, or your eyes shed
tears. »
The general bowed his head, as if to collect himself; when
he again lifted his eyes to the grating he saw between two bars
the pale, emaciated, but still ardent face of the nun. Her com-
plexion, where once had bloomed the loveliness of youth,— where
once there shone the happy contrast of a pure, clear whiteness
with the colors of a Bengal rose,-
now had the tints of a porce-
lain cup through which a feeble light showed faintly. The beau-
tiful hair of which this woman was once so proud was shaven; a
## p. 1382 (#176) ###########################################
1382
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1
white band bound her brows and was wrapped around her face.
Her eyes, circled with dark shadows due to the austerities of her
life, glanced at moments with a feverish light, of which their
habitual calm was but the mask. In a word, of this woman
nothing remained but her soul.
"Ah! you will leave this tomb you, who are my life! You
belonged to me; you were not free to give yourself — not even
to God. Did you not promise to sacrifice all to the least of my
commands?
