Part 4

Balzac lived then at Chaillot, rue des Batailles, a house from which one found an admirable view of the course of the Seine, the Champ de Mars, the École Militaire, the dome of the Invalides, a large proportion of Paris and further away the hills of Meudon. He had arranged there an interior that was luxurious enough, because he knew that in Paris nobody believed in an impoverished talent, and that perception often leads to reality. It was during this period that one hears of his tendencies toward elegance and dandyism, the famous blue coat with solid gold buttons, the walking stick with a turquoise head, the appearances at the Bouffes and at the Opera, and the more frequent visits into society where his sparkling flair made him much sought after, visits that were useful for more than one reason, for he met there more than one model. It was not easy to penetrate into his home, which was better guarded than the garden of the Hespérides. Two or three passwords were required. Balzac, for fear they might be divulged, changed them often. I remember these ones: to the porter one said: "Prune season has arrived," and he would let you cross the threshold; to the servant who ran to the stairs at the sound of the bell, it was necessary to whisper: "I bring lace from Belgium," and if you could assure the bedroom valet that "Madame Bertrand was in good health," you were finally introduced.

This childish behavior very much amused Balzac; it was necessary to ward off unwanted people and those who were even more disagreeable.

In La Fille aux Yeux d'Or is found a description of the salon in the rue des Batailles. It is of the most scrupulous fidelity, and one will not be displeased to see the lion's den painted by himself. There is not a detail to add or to subtract.

"Half of the sitting room described a delicately graceful circular line, opposite of which the other half was perfectly square, in the middle of which shined a fireplace of white marble and gold. One entered through a side door concealed by a rich tapestry and which faced a window. The horseshoe-shaped section of the room was decorated with a real Turkish divan, that is to say with a mattress placed on the ground, but a mattress as large as a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference covered in white cashmere, embellished with tufts of black and poppy-colored silk, arranged in a diamond pattern; the back of this immense bed was elevated several inches higher by the numerous cushions that enriched it further by their stylish compatibility. This sitting room was hung with a red fabric on which was mounted a muslin from the Indies that was fluted like a Corinthian column by piping that alternated between hollow and round and stopped at the top and bottom with a band of poppy-colored fabric, on which were drawn some black arabesques. Under the muslin, the poppy color became rose, an amorous color that repeated in the window curtains, which were of muslin from the Indies lined with rose-colored taffeta and ornamented with poppy and black fringes. Six silver arms each supporting two candles were attached to these wall coverings at equal distances, to illuminate the divan. The ceiling, from the center of which hung a lantern of matte silver, sparkled with whiteness, and the molding was gilded. The carpet resembled an Oriental shawl, it presented the designs and recalled the poetry of Persia, where the hands of slaves had created it. The furniture was covered in white cashmere, set off by black and poppy-colored accents. The clock, the candelabras, all were of white marble and gold. The only table in the room had a cashmere covering; elegant jardinières contained roses of every type, and white or red flowers."

I can add that upon the table was placed a magnificent writing desk in gold and malachite, the gift, without a doubt, of some admiring stranger.

It was with a childlike satisfaction that Balzac showed me this sitting room set in a square salon, and by necessity leaving empty spaces at the angles of the circular half. When I had admired the stylish splendors of this room sufficiently, splendors whose luxury would seem less today, Balzac opened a secret door and made me enter a shadowy passage that led around the semicircle; at one of the corners was placed a narrow iron bed, a kind of working camp bed; in the other, there was a table "with everything that is necessary to write," as M. Scribe said in his stage directions: it was there that Balzac took refuge to be free of all intrusions and all investigations.

Many thicknesses of fabric and paper padded the wall to block all noise from both sides. To be sure that no sounds could pass into the salon from outside, Balzac asked me to return to the room and shout as loudly as I could; one could still hear a little; it was necessary to add a few sheets of gray paper to entirely block the sound. These mysterious actions intrigued me immensely and I demanded to know their motivation. Balzac gave me a reason that Stendhal would have approved, but modern prudery prevents my repeating. The fact is that he was already developing in his mind the scene of Henry de Marsay and Paquita, and he was anxious to know if the cries of the victim in the salon could reach the ears of the other inhabitants of the house.

He gave me a splendid dinner in the same sitting room, for which he lit with his own hand all of the candles on the silver arms, as well as the lantern and the candelabras. The guests were the Marquis de B. and the painter L. B.: although very sober and abstemious by habit, Balzac from time to time did not fear to "indulge in a little good cheer"; he ate with a jovial gourmandism that inspired the appetite, and he drank in the manner of Pantagruel. Four bottles of the white wine of Vouvray, one of the headiest known, did not affect his powerful brain and gave only a greater sparkle to his gaiety. What good stories he told us at dessert! Rabelais, Beroalde de Verville, Eutrapel, le Pogge, Straparole, the Queen of Navarre and all of the doctors of the happy science would have recognized in him a disciple and a master!

Characteristic feature! At this splendid feast provided by Chevet there was no bread! But when one has excess then what is the point of necessities?

After dinner, our Amphytrion led us to the Italians in a superb presentation. The evening was already getting late, but Balzac did not want to miss "the descent of the staircase" spectacle, which, according to him, was eminently instructive.

Weighed down by the good food and fine wines, enveloped in the warm atmosphere of the room, I should say that the three of us slept the sleep of the just and only awakened to offer our final compliments.

Balzac was quite amused by this somnolent trio.

In the same apartment on the rue des Batailles, whose salon I described using Balzac's own words, I recall having seen a magnificent sketch of Louis Boulanger after a bas-relief of Léda and the Swan attributed to Michelangelo. It was the only picture that it contained, because the author of La Comédie Humaine did not yet have the taste for paintings and curiosities that he would later develop, and his luxury then, as we have seen, consisted more of sumptuousness than of art. His painter was Girodet. Some of his first stories show the influence of this admiration which led me to tease him with jibes that he accepted with good grace.

IV

One of the dreams of Balzac was of a heroic and devoted friendship, two souls, two courages, two intelligences blended into the same will. Pierre and Jaffier of Otway's Venice Preserv'd had impressed him greatly and he spoke of them many times. L'Histoire des Treize is nothing but this idea enlarged and complicated: one powerful unit composed of multiple beings acting unquestioningly toward an accepted and suitable goal. We know what gripping, mysterious and terrible effects he has drawn from this starting point in Ferragus, La Duchesse de Langeais, and La Fille aux Yeux d'Or; but real life and the intellectual life were not as clearly separated for Balzac as they were for certain authors, and his creations followed him outside of his study. He wanted to form an association after the fashion of that which united Ferragus, Montriveau, Ronquerolles, and their companions. Only it was not done in such bold strokes; a certain number of friends were to lend each other aid and relief at all times, and to work according to their strengths for the success or the fortune of the individual who would be selected, with the understanding that that person should in turn work for the others. Very much infatuated with his project, Balzac recruited some associates whom he put in contact with each other but took precautions as if it were a political society or a meeting of Carbonari. This needless mystery amused him considerably, and he pursued his activities with the utmost seriousness. When their numbers were complete, he assembled the adepts and made known the goal of the society. It need not be said that everyone was in agreement, and that the statutes were approved with enthusiasm. No one more than Balzac possessed the ability to agitate, to overexcite, to intoxicate the coolest heads, the most considered intellects. He had an eloquence that was overflowing, tumultuous, rousing, that carried you off: no objection was possible with him; he would immediately drown you in such a deluge of words that you were compelled to be silent. Besides he had an answer for everything; then he would cast upon you glances that were so sharp, so brilliant, so full of a mysterious power that he would infuse you with his own desire.

The association which counted among its members G. de C., L. G., L. D., J. S., Merle, who was called Handsome Merle, myself, and a few others who it is not necessary to name, was called Le Cheval Rouge. Why Le Cheval Rouge, you are going to say, rather than Le Lion d'Or or La Croix de Malte? The first meeting of the members took place at a restaurant on the Quai de l'Entrepôt, at the end of the Pont de la Tournelle, whose sign was a carrier’s horse, and this had given Balzac the idea of that somewhat bizarre, unintelligible, and cabalistic designation.

When it was necessary to organize a project, to agree on certain steps, Balzac, elected by acclamation grandmaster of the order, sent by one of the members to each horse (that was the slang name used by the members among themselves) a letter on which was drawn a small red horse with the words: "Stable, at such and such a day, at such and such a location”; the place changed each time, out of fear of awakening curiosity or suspicion. In the society, although we all knew each other and for a long time for the most part, we were to avoid speaking to each other or approaching each other except in the most distant manner to avoid any idea of complicity. Often, in the middle of a salon, Balzac would pretend to meet me for the first time, and by blinks of the eye and facial expressions such as actors make in their asides, he would call my attention to his finesse and seem to say to me: "See how well I play my game!"

What was the goal of Le Cheval Rouge? Did it wish to change the government, set forth a new religion, found a philosophical school, master men, seduce women? Far less than that. It sought to take control of the newspapers, take control of the theatres, sit in the seats of the Academy, receive an array of decorations, and end modestly as a peer of France, minister and millionaire. All this was easy, according to Balzac; we had only to work in harmony with each other, and by such modest ambition we should prove well the moderation of our characters. This devil of a man had such a powerful vision that he described to each of us, in the most minute details, the splendid and glorious life that the association would procure for us. As we listened to him, we believed ourselves already leaning, at the heart of a beautiful mansion, against the white marble of the fireplace, red ribbons around our necks, a shining badge over our hearts, receiving with an affable air the greatest politicians, artists and writers, who were shocked by our rapid and mysterious fortune. For Balzac, the future did not exist, everything was in the present; he drew it out of the mists and made it palpable; an idea was so vivid that it became real in a certain way: in speaking of a dinner, he ate it as he told its story; of a carriage, he felt the soft cushions under him and the steady ride; a perfect well-being, a profound jubilation were then shown on his face, although often he was hungry and walking over a rough pavement with worn-out shoes.

The whole association would push, praise, and extol, by articles, advertisements and conversations, any one of its members who had just published a book or staged a drama. Whoever showed himself to be hostile to one of the horses would provoke the kicks of the entire stable; Le Cheval Rouge would not forgive: the culpable became the target of insults, cutting remarks, pin pricks, taunts and other means of driving a man to despair, which are well known by the smaller newspapers.

I smile while betraying after so many years the innocent secret of this literary freemasonry, which had no other result than some persuasive words for a book whose success did not require them. But, at that time, we took the thing seriously, we imagined ourselves to be the Treize themselves in person, and I was surprised to find that obstacles still existed; but the world is so badly designed! What an important and mysterious air we had in challenging other men, poor conventional men who in no way doubted our power.

After four or five meetings, Le Cheval Rouge ceased to exist; most of the chevaux could not afford to pay for their oats in this symbolic manger, and the association which was going to seize total control was dissolved, because its members often lacked the fifteen francs to pay their share. Each one now dove back alone into the chaos of life, fighting his own fight, and it is this that explains why Balzac was not a member of the Academy and died a simple knight of the Legion of Honor.

The idea however was good, for Balzac, as he himself says of Nucingen, could not have a bad idea. Others who have succeeded have set to work without surrounding themselves with the same romantic fantasies.

Thrown off of one chimera, Balzac very quickly mounted a new one, and he set out for another voyage in the blue with that childlike innocence which in him was combined with the profoundest sagacity and the shrewdest intellect.

So many bizarre projects he has described to me, so many strange paradoxes he has defended to me, always with the same good faith! Sometimes he would maintain that one should live on nine sous a day, sometimes he would require one hundred thousand francs in order to be most comfortable. Once, when I asked him to reconcile the accounting, he responded to the objection that thirty thousand francs still remained unallocated. "Ah well! That is for the butter and the radishes. In what even slightly proper house does one not eat thirty thousand francs of radishes and butter?" I wish I could portray the look of sovereign disdain he cast on me as he gave that triumphal reason; that look said: "Decidedly Theo is nothing but a contemptible person, a skinned rat, a pitiful spirit; he understands nothing of a grand existence and he has all his life eaten only the salted butter of Brittany."

Les Jardies attracted a great deal of attention from the public when Balzac bought it with the honorable intention of making an investment for his mother. While riding on the railway that passes Ville-d'Avray, every passenger would look with curiosity at that little house, half cottage, half chalet, which rose in the middle of a clay slope.

This plot of land, in Balzac's opinion, was the best in the world; formerly, he asserted, a certain celebrated wine was grown there, and the grapes, thanks to an unparalleled exposure, baked like the grapes of Tokaj on the Bohemian hills. The sun, it is true, had the freedom to ripen the crop in this place, where there existed only a single tree. Balzac tried to enclose this property with walls, which became famous for obstinately collapsing or sliding all in one piece down the steep escarpment, and he dreamed of the most fabulous and the most exotic crops for this heavenly place. Here comes naturally the anecdote of the pineapples, which has been so often repeated that I would not tell it again except to add one truly characteristic trait. Here is the project: one hundred thousand feet of pineapples were planted within the boundaries of Les Jardies, transformed into greenhouses that required only limited heat due to the sunniness of the site. The pineapples were going to be sold for five francs instead of the one louis that they ordinarily cost, for a total of five hundred thousand francs; from this sum it was necessary to deduct one hundred thousand francs for the costs of cultivation, equipment, and coal; there remained therefore a net profit of four hundred thousand francs which would constitute a splendid profit for the happy proprietor, "without the least bit of writing," he added. That was nothing, Balzac had a thousand projects like this; but the beauty of this was that we sought together, on the Boulevard Montmartre, a shop for the sale of the pineapples that were still in the form of seeds. The shop was to be painted black with thin gold stripes, and carry on its sign, in enormous letters: "PINEAPPLES FROM LES JARDIES."

For Balzac, the one hundred thousand pineapples were already raising their plumes of serrated leaves above their great lozenged cones under immense glass roofs: he saw them; he swelled in the high temperature of the greenhouse, he breathed in the tropical scent through his passionately open nostrils; and when, having returned to his home, he watched, while leaning on the window, the snow descend silently onto the bare slopes, he still only gave up his illusion with difficulty.

Yet he followed my advice to hold off on renting the shop until the following year in order to avoid an unnecessary expense.

I write my reminiscences as they return to me, without trying to place in order things which are better left apart. Besides, as Boileau said, transitions are the great difficulty of poetry, and of newspaper articles too, I will add; but modern journalists have neither as much conscience nor even more importantly as much leisure as the legislator of Parnasse.

Madame de Girardin professed for Balzac a lively admiration that he appreciated and that he acknowledged with his frequent visits, he who was so justifiably stingy with his time and his working hours. Never did a woman possess to such a high degree as Delphine, as I permitted myself to call her familiarly when we were together, the ability to stir the minds of her guests. With her, we always found ourselves to be particularly eloquent and each left her salon enthralled with himself. There was no stone so hard that she could not make a spark fly from it, and with Balzac, as you would expect, it was not necessary to strike the stone for very long: he sparkled and then lit up right away. Balzac was not precisely what one would call a talker, but he was quick with a reply, throwing a fine and decisive word into a discussion, changing the thread of the discourse, touching everything with lightness, and never going past a half smile: he had a verve, an eloquence, and an irresistible brio; and, as each person became silent to listen to him, with him, to the general satisfaction, the conversation would quickly descend into a soliloquy. The starting point was soon forgotten and he passed from an anecdote into a philosophical reflection, from an observation on manners to a local description; as he spoke his complexion would redden, his eyes would develop a distinctive luminosity, his voice would take on different inflections, and sometimes he would roar with laughter, amused by comic images that he saw before he described them. He announced in this way, like a sort of fanfare, the entry of his characters and his humorous comments, and his hilarity was soon shared by his assistants. Although this was the age of dreamers with hair hanging loosely like a willow, of weepers in their garrets and of disillusioned Byronians, Balzac had that robust joy and power that one would attribute to Rabelais, and that Molière did not show except in his plays. His loud laugh coming from his sensual lips was that of a kindly god amused by the spectacle of the human marionettes, and who is distressed by nothing because he understands everything and grasps at once both sides of things. Neither the worries of an often precarious situation, nor the tedium of money, nor the fatigue of excessive work, nor the confinement of the study, nor the renunciation of all of the pleasures of life, nor even sickness could strike down this Herculean joviality, in my opinion one of the most striking characteristics of Balzac. He knocked out the hydras while laughing, happily tore the lions in two, and carried as if it were a hare the boar of Erymanthe on the mountainous muscles of his shoulders. At the least provocation this gaiety would burst forth and cause his strong chest to heave, which might surprise a person with a delicate constitution, but it had to be shared, no matter how much effort one made to remain serious. Do not believe however that Balzac was seeking to entertain his audience: he obeyed, affected by a kind of internal euphoria and painting with rapid strokes, with a comic intensity and an incomparable talent for satire, the bizarre phantasmagoria that danced in the dark chamber of his brain. I do not know how to better compare the impression produced by certain of his conversations than with that which one experiences while leafing through the strange drawings of Songes Drolatiques, by the master Alcofribas Nasier. These are of monstrous personages, composed of the most hybrid elements. Some have for a head a bellows in which the hole represents the eye, while others have an alembic flute for a nose; these ones walk with wheels in place of feet; those ones have the rounded belly of a cooking pot and wear a lid in place of a hat, but an intense life animates these fanciful beings, and one recognizes in their grimacing faces the vices, the follies and the passions of man. Some, although absurdly outside the realm of possibility, stop you like a portrait. One could give them a name.

When one listened to Balzac, a whole carnival of extravagant and real puppets frolicked before your eyes, wearing on their shoulders a colorful phrase, waving long sleeves of epithets, blowing their noses noisily with an adverb, smacking themselves with a bat of antitheses, pulling you by the tail of your coat, and whispering into your ear your secrets in a disguised and nasal voice, pirouetting, whirling in the midst of a sparkle of lights and of glitter. Nothing was more vertiginous, and at the end of one half hour, one felt, like the student after the speech of Méphistophélès, a millstone turning in the brain.