Works of Honore De Balzac

  THE WORKS OF

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC

  (1799 – 1850)

  Contents

  THE HUMAN COMEDY

  THE HISTORY OF ‘LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE’

  AVANT-PROPOS (PREFACE)

  STUDIES OF MANNERS IN THE 19TH CENTURY

  Scenes from Private Life

  AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET

  THE BALL AT SCEAUX

  LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES

  THE PURSE

  MODESTE MIGNON

  A START IN LIFE

  ALBERT SAVARUS

  VENDETTA

  A SECOND HOME

  DOMESTIC PEACE

  MADAME FIRMIANI

  STUDY OF A WOMAN

  THE IMAGINARY MISTRESS

  A DAUGHTER OF EVE

  THE MESSAGE

  THE GRAND BRETECHE

  LA GRENADIERE

  THE DESERTED WOMAN

  HONORINE

  BEATRIX

  GOBSECK

  A WOMAN OF THIRTY

  FATHER GORIOT

  COLONEL CHABERT

  THE ATHEIST’S MASS

  THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

  THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT

  ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN

  Scenes from Provincial Life

  URSULE MIROUET

  EUGENIE GRANDET

  The Celibates

  PIERRETTE

  THE VICAR OF TOURS

  THE TWO BROTHERS

  Parisians in the Country

  THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART

  THE MUSE OF THE DEPARTMENT

  The Jealousies of a Country Town

  THE OLD MAID

  THE COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES

  Lost Illusions

  TWO POETS

  A DISTINGUISHED PROVINCIAL AT PARIS

  EVE AND DAVID

  Scenes from Parisian Life

  The Thirteen

  FERRAGUS

  THE DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS

  GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES

  RISE AND FALL OF CÉSAR BIROTTEAU

  THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN

  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

  ESTHER HAPPY: HOW A COURTESAN CAN LOVE

  WHAT LOVE COSTS AN OLD MAN

  THE END OF EVIL WAYS

  VAUTRIN’S LAST AVATAR

  SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN

  FACINO CANE

  SARRASINE

  PIERRE GRASSOU

  The Poor Relations

  COUSIN BETTY

  COUSIN PONS

  A MAN OF BUSINESS

  A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

  GAUDISSART II

  BUREAUCRACY

  UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS

  THE LESSER BOURGEOISIE

  The Seamy Side of History

  MADAME DE LA CHANTERIE

  THE INITIATE

  Scenes from Political Life

  AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR

  AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY

  The Deputy of Arcis

  THE ELECTION

  LETTERS EXPLANATORY

  MONSIEUR DE SALLENAUVE

  Z. MARCAS

  Scenes from Military Life

  THE CHOUANS

  A PASSION IN THE DESERT

  Scenes from Country Life

  SONS OF THE SOIL

  THE COUNTRY DOCTOR

  THE VILLAGE RECTOR

  THE LILY OF THE VALLEY

  PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

  THE MAGIC SKIN

  CHRIST IN FLANDERS

  MELMOTH RECONCILED

  THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE

  GAMBARA

  MASSIMILLA DONI

  THE ALKAHEST

  THE HATED SON

  FAREWELL

  JUANA

  THE RECRUIT

  EL VERDUGO

  A DRAMA ON THE SEASHORE

  MAITRE CORNELIUS

  THE RED INN

  Catherine de’ Medici

  THE CALVINIST MARTYR

  THE SECRETS OF THE RUGGIERI

  THE TWO DREAMS

  THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

  THE EXILES

  LOUIS LAMBERT

  SERAPHITA

  ANALYTICAL STUDIES

  PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE

  LITTLE MISERIES OF CONJUGAL LIFE

  Pathology of Social Life

  TRAITÉ DE LA VIE ÉLÉGANTE

  THÉORIE DE LA DÉMARCHE

  TRAITÉ DES EXCITANTS MODERNES

  OTHER WORKS

  The Short Stories

  DROLL STORIES

  THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE

  The Plays

  INTRODUCTION TO BALZAC’S DRAMAS by J. Walker McSpadden

  VAUTRIN

  THE RESOURCES OF QUINOLA

  PAMELA GIRAUD

  THE STEPMOTHER

  MERCADET

  RESOURCES

  The Criticism

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC by Henry James

  A LETTER, 1883 by Robert Louis Stevenson

  BALZAC by John Cowper Powys

  BALZAC’S NOVELS by Leslie Stephen

  BALZAC by William Ernest Henley

  BALZAC AS A DRAMATIST by Epiphanius Wilson

  THE NOVEL by D. H. Lawrence

  The Biographies

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC by Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC, HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS by Mary F. Sandars

  BALZAC AND MADAME HANSKA by Elbert Hubbard

  BALZAC by Frederick Lawton

  WOMEN IN THE LIFE OF BALZAC by Juanita Helm Floyd

  Glossary of Characters in ‘La Comédie humaine’

  © Delphi Classics 2012

  Version 1

  THE WORKS OF

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC

  By Delphi Classics, 2012

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  THE HUMAN COMEDY

  Rue Nationale, Tours, the birthplace of Balzac

  Rue Nationale, Tours, today

  Balzac’s father Bernard-François Balssa, was one of eleven children from a poor family in Tarn, in the south of France. The author’s mother, Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, came from a family of haberdashers in Paris. Her family’s wealth was a considerable factor in the match. She was eighteen at the time of the wedding and Bernard-François fifty.

  Balzac’s sister Laure was a life-long companion and muse to the author

  THE HISTORY OF ‘LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE’

  This is the title of Balzac’s monumental series of interlinked novels and stories, which depict French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy, from 1815 to 1848. The series comprises 91 finished works and 46 unfinished works, with some only existing as titles. The term La Comédie humaine alludes to Dante’s Divine Comedy, suggesting a comprehensive and epic story, though Balzac’s works are more concerned with worldly, human concerns from a realist standpoint, than the theological concerns of the medieval poet.

  La Comédie humaine was the result of a long and gradual evolution. Balzac’s first works were written without any overall plan, but by 1830 the author began to group his first novels (e.g. Sarrasine, Gobseck) into a series entitled Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes from Private Life).

  With the publication of Eugénie Grandet in 1833, Balzac envisioned a second series entitled Scènes de la vie de province (Scenes from Provincial Life). It was at this time that he devised the idea of having characters reappear from novel to novel, and the first novel to use this technique was Le Père Goriot in 1834. The idea may seem simple now to modern readers, but having characters reappearing in novels over a time period creates an impression as though they have lives of their own. Readers can appreciate the continuing development o
f characters, giving a more life-like impression. The technique has since been used by hundreds of writers, with early examples being found in the works of Thackeray, Trollope, Proust, Zola and many others. The decision to use previous characters was also a very shrewd one in terms of commercial sales. Readers would want to buy works featuring characters they were familiar with, especially in novels that were popular and being widely discussed at the time.

  In 1834, Balzac announced in a letter to Madame Hanska his decision to reorganise the works into three larger groups, allowing him to include his La physiologie du mariage (a philosophical essay on divorce) and to separate his fantasy stories, such as La Peau de chagrin and Louis Lambert, into their own Philosophical Studies section. The overall three groups were:

  Etudes de Moeurs au XIXe siècle (Studies of Manners in the 19th Century)

  Etudes philosophiques (Philosophical Studies)

  Etudes analytiques (Analytical Studies)

  Balzac intended the Etudes de Moeurs to study the effects of society, considering differences in genders, social classes, ages and professions. The Etudes philosophiques would explore the causes of these effects and the final Etudes analytiques section would study the principles behind these phenomena.

  By 1836, the Etudes de Moeurs was already divided into six parts:

  Scènes de la vie privée

  Scènes de la vie de province

  Scènes de la vie parisienne

  Scènes de la vie politique

  Scènes de la vie militaire

  Scènes de la vie de campagne

  In 1839, for the first time Balzac mentioned in a letter to his publisher the expression La Comédie humaine and the title is recorded in the contract he signed in 1841. The first actual publication of La Comédie humaine in 1842 was preceded by an important Avant-Propos (Preface) describing Balzac’s intentions and the overall structure of La Comédie humaine. The Avant-Propos is also included in this edition of Balzac’s works, following this introduction.

  Sadly, Balzac’s intended collection was never finished. In 1845, he wrote a complete catalogue of the ensemble which included works he had started or envisioned, but never finished. In some cases, Balzac moved a novel or tale around between different sections, making a definitive ordering of La Comédie humaine a difficult task, particularly due to the unwritten or incomplete texts. The structure provided in this collection represents the last version recorded by Balzac.

  Advertising poster for the first printing of the complete series, 1842

  AVANT-PROPOS (PREFACE)

  Translated by Ellen Marriage

  In giving the general title of “The Human Comedy” to a work begun nearly thirteen years since, it is necessary to explain its motive, to relate its origin, and briefly sketch its plan, while endeavoring to speak of these matters as though I had no personal interest in them. This is not so difficult as the public might imagine. Few works conduce to much vanity; much labor conduces to great diffidence. This observation accounts for the study of their own works made by Corneille, Moliere, and other great writers; if it is impossible to equal them in their fine conceptions, we may try to imitate them in this feeling.

  The idea of The Human Comedy was at first as a dream to me, one of those impossible projects which we caress and then let fly; a chimera that gives us a glimpse of its smiling woman’s face, and forthwith spreads its wings and returns to a heavenly realm of phantasy. But this chimera, like many another, has become a reality; has its behests, its tyranny, which must be obeyed.

  The idea originated in a comparison between Humanity and Animality.

  It is a mistake to suppose that the great dispute which has lately made a stir, between Cuvier and Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, arose from a scientific innovation. Unity of structure, under other names, had occupied the greatest minds during the two previous centuries. As we read the extraordinary writings of the mystics who studied the sciences in their relation to infinity, such as Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, and others, and the works of the greatest authors on Natural History — Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles Bonnet, etc., we detect in the monads of Leibnitz, in the organic molecules of Buffon, in the vegetative force of Needham, in the correlation of similar organs of Charles Bonnet — who in 1760 was so bold as to write, “Animals vegetate as plants do” — we detect, I say, the rudiments of the great law of Self for Self, which lies at the root of Unity of Plan. There is but one Animal. The Creator works on a single model for every organized being. “The Animal” is elementary, and takes its external form, or, to be accurate, the differences in its form, from the environment in which it is obliged to develop. Zoological species are the result of these differences. The announcement and defence of this system, which is indeed in harmony with our preconceived ideas of Divine Power, will be the eternal glory of Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier’s victorious opponent on this point of higher science, whose triumph was hailed by Goethe in the last article he wrote.

  I, for my part, convinced of this scheme of nature long before the discussion to which it has given rise, perceived that in this respect society resembled nature. For does not society modify Man, according to the conditions in which he lives and acts, into men as manifold as the species in Zoology? The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man of business, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass, the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus social species have always existed, and will always exist, just as there are zoological species. If Buffon could produce a magnificent work by attempting to represent in a book the whole realm of zoology, was there not room for a work of the same kind on society? But the limits set by nature to the variations of animals have no existence in society. When Buffon describes the lion, he dismisses the lioness with a few phrases; but in society a wife is not always the female of the male. There may be two perfectly dissimilar beings in one household. The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy of a prince, and the wife of a prince is often worthless compared with the wife of an artisan. The social state has freaks which Nature does not allow herself; it is nature plus society. The description of social species would thus be at least double that of animal species, merely in view of the two sexes. Then, among animals the drama is limited; there is scarcely any confusion; they turn and rend each other — that is all. Men, too, rend each other; but their greater or less intelligence makes the struggle far more complicated. Though some savants do not yet admit that the animal nature flows into human nature through an immense tide of life, the grocer certainly becomes a peer, and the noble sometimes sinks to the lowest social grade. Again, Buffon found that life was extremely simple among animals. Animals have little property, and neither arts nor sciences; while man, by a law that has yet to be sought, has a tendency to express his culture, his thoughts, and his life in everything he appropriates to his use. Though Leuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Spallanzani, Reaumur, Charles Bonnet, Muller, Haller and other patient investigators have shown us how interesting are the habits of animals, those of each kind, are, at least to our eyes, always and in every age alike; whereas the dress, the manners, the speech, the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a citizen, a priest, and a pauper are absolutely unlike, and change with every phase of civilization.

  Hence the work to be written needed a threefold form — men, women, and things; that is to say, persons and the material expression of their minds; man, in short, and life.

  As we read the dry and discouraging list of events called History, who can have failed to note that the writers of all periods, in Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, have forgotten to give us a history of manners? The fragment of Petronius on the private life of the Romans excites rather than satisfies our curiosity. It was from observing this great void in the field of history that the Abbe Barthelemy devoted his life to a reconstruction of Greek manners in Le Jeune Anacharsis.

  But how could such a drama, with the four or
five thousand persons which society offers, be made interesting? How, at the same time, please the poet, the philosopher, and the masses who want both poetry and philosophy under striking imagery? Though I could conceive of the importance and of the poetry of such a history of the human heart, I saw no way of writing it; for hitherto the most famous story-tellers had spent their talent in creating two or three typical actors, in depicting one aspect of life. It was with this idea that I read the works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott, the modern troubadour, or finder (trouvere=trouveur), had just then given an aspect of grandeur to a class of composition unjustly regarded as of the second rank. Is it not really more difficult to compete with personal and parochial interests by writing of Daphnis and Chloe, Roland, Amadis, Panurge, Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace, Robinson Crusoe, Gil Blas, Ossian, Julie d’Etanges, My Uncle Toby, Werther, Corinne, Adolphe, Paul and Virginia, Jeanie Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe, Manfred, Mignon, than to set forth in order facts more or less similar in every country, to investigate the spirit of laws that have fallen into desuetude, to review the theories which mislead nations, or, like some metaphysicians, to explain what Is? In the first place, these actors, whose existence becomes more prolonged and more authentic than that of the generations which saw their birth, almost always live solely on condition of their being a vast reflection of the present. Conceived in the womb of their own period, the whole heart of humanity stirs within their frame, which often covers a complete system of philosophy. Thus Walter Scott raised to the dignity of the philosophy of History the literature which, from age to age, sets perennial gems in the poetic crown of every nation where letters are cultivated. He vivified it with the spirit of the past; he combined drama, dialogue, portrait, scenery, and description; he fused the marvelous with truth — the two elements of the times; and he brought poetry into close contact with the familiarity of the humblest speech. But as he had not so much devised a system as hit upon a manner in the ardor of his work, or as its logical outcome, he never thought of connecting his compositions in such a way as to form a complete history of which each chapter was a novel, and each novel the picture of a period.