Part 60

[NOTE.--Balzac left Paris early in September, and reached his much longed for Wierzchownia by October 1, 1847.

The rest of this sad story will be found in the Memoir to this edition, pp. 318-349; and in the Correspondence, vol. xxiv. of the Édition Définitive, pp. 561-662.--TR.]

APPENDIX.

I.

_Pages_104, 112, 113: _regarding Madame de Berny_.

Letters to Madame Carraud, written at the same time as the letters from Geneva. (Édition Définitive, pp. 191, 178.)

GENEVA, January 30, 1834.

"Do not accuse me of ingratitude, my dearest flower of friendship! I have thought of you much. I have even talked of you with pride, congratulating myself in having a second conscience in you.

"Go to Frapesle? of course I will. _Mon Dieu!_ you are angelically good to have thought of her whom all my friends (I mean my sister and Borget) call my good angel. [Madame Carraud had invited Madame de Berny, who was ill, to stay at her house with Balzac.] If I have not written to you, or to our Borget, it is because I am so little my own master here. Keep this secret at the bottom of your heart; but I think my future is fixed, and that, according to Borget's earnest wish, I shall never share my crown, if crown there be.

"After April, yes, I can go to Frapesle.... Some day, _cara_, you will know, when reading the 'Études de Mœurs' and the 'Études Philosophiques' in your chimney-corner at Frapesle, why I write to you now so disconnectedly. I am congested with ideas that crowd upon me, I hunger for repose; and besides, I am weary of my position as bird upon a branch.... It is written above that I shall never have complete happiness, freedom, liberty, all, except in prospect. But, dear, I can at least say this, with all the tenderest effusions of my heart, that in my long and painful way four noble beings have constantly held out their hands to me, encouraged, loved, and pitied me; that you are one of those hearts that have in mine the unalterable privilege of priority over all my affections....

"If Frapesle were only on my way back to Paris! but neither Frapesle nor Angoulême now for me! I return, three days hence, to Paris, through that wearisome Bourgogne, to resume my yoke of misery, after refusing from hands of love money that would have freed me in a moment; but I will owe my gold to no one but myself, my liberty to none but me....

"Yes, be sure of it, I will go to Frapesle, and I think I shall obtain the company of Madame de Berny.... That life is so much to mine! Oh! no one can form a true idea of that deep affection which sustains my efforts and soothes at every moment my wounds. You know something of it--you who know friendship so well, you so kind and affectionate...."

Now, is it possible that Balzac wrote those words with the same pen, the ink not dry upon it, that is supposed to have written the insinuation made on pages 112, 113? No, never!

A few months earlier, August, 1833, he had said to Madame Carraud: "You are right, dear noble soul, in loving Madame de Berny. In each of you are striking resemblances of thought; the same love of the right, the same enlightened liberality, the same love of progress, same desires for the good of the masses, same elevation of soul and thought, same delicacy in your natures. And for that I love you much."

II.

_Page_ 476: _relating to the letters Madame Hanska, then Madame de Balzac, gave to MM. Lévy in_ 1876_ for their Édition Définitive of the Works_.

In various foot-notes to "Lettres à l'Étrangère," and also in "Un Roman d'Amour," an effort is made to represent Madame de Balzac as having suppressed parts of these letters for some purpose not legitimate. "These letters," it is said, "copied by the hand of Madame de Balzac, were given to M. Michel Lévy to be placed, in 1876, in Balzac's general 'Correspondance.' But she who was then no more than the widow of a man of genius did not, it must be owned, deliver the authentic and integral text of those letters."

Ten of the letters that Madame de Balzac gave to M. Michel Lévy appear also in "Lettres à l'Étrangère." I have carefully compared these, and I find certain differences, but nothing that does not come within the legitimate province of an editor. These differences are mainly as follows: 1. Unpleasant comments on persons then living are omitted; also certain painful details about his family and hers which ought never to have seen the light. 2. Some affectionate expressions to herself are omitted, and some, apparently from other letters, are added. 3. Additions, also apparently from other letters, and one at least from Balzac's other writings, are made. _Possibly_ the passage about Louis XIV. (page 476) is one of these; it may have been added by Madame de Balzac as being more just to his real opinion. 4. Passages have been transposed; probably through some confusion of the sheets in copying or in printing. But there is nothing omitted, changed, or added that gives the least colour to the idea conveyed of suppression or insincerity.

The letters can be compared by every one. Their dates, and the pages on which they appeared in the Édition Définitive are as follows:--

(1) August 11, 1835, p. 217. (2) October, 1836, p. 239. (3) January 20, 1838, p. 273. (4) March 26, 1838, p. 284. (5) April 8, 1838, p. 290. (6) April 17, 1838, p. 290. (7) April 22, 1838, p. 291. (8) May 20, 1838, p. 294. (9) June 15, 1838, p. 303. (10) July, 1838, p. 309.

III.

_Page_ 544. _The Peytel affair_.

In 1831, a young man named Sébastien-Bénoist Peytel came to Paris to try his fortunes in literature; he lived among the journalists and writers who are described in "Un Grand homme de province à Paris." After a time he became part-proprietor of the paper called "Le Voleur," to which Balzac himself contributed from time to time. Balzac describes him as hot-headed, gifted with great mental and physical strength, ambitious, proud, and passionate, carried away at times by the force of his own words, but good essentially. He had an eye that always looked a man in the face; and he was not tricky or deceitful.

During this time he seems to have been the friend of all the young writers and artists, especially of Gavarni. He was a lover of art, antiquities, and bric-à-brac, and having inherited some property from his father, he spent money on forming a collection.

After a while, however, his attempts at literature and journalism not satisfying him, he became a notary, first at Lyon, then at Belley, near Bourg. But before leaving Paris he married a young girl named Félicie Alcazar, described as a Creole, with a mother and four sisters but no father, and with relations who mingled in good society. M. de Lamartine was so far intimate with Peytel that he acted as father or guardian to Félicie Alcazar on the occasion of the marriage, signed the contract, and took the bride to the mayor's office and to the church.

The marriage was not happy from the start. The wife disliked and even hated the husband, and showed it. He, on the contrary, appears to have been attached to her, and he led an irreproachable life.

One night, at eleven o'clock, as the husband and wife and their man-servant were returning from Bourg to Belley along the highroad, the wife and servant were murdered by means of a pistol-shot and a hammer belonging to the carriage. There were no witnesses to the deed, but the husband immediately gave himself up, or, as Balzac puts it, "accepted the responsibility of the homicide."

The explanation Peytel gave, and which his friends afterwards adopted, was that he suddenly on this drive discovered criminal relations between his wife and the servant, Louis Rey, and in a moment of ungovernable fury he had killed the man with the hammer. The latter had endeavoured to escape, but he pursued him; the man then turned to shoot him, but the shot killed the wife instead.

The authorities, on the other hand, charged Peytel with murdering his wife to obtain her money, and killing the man as witness of the crime; they also brought charges against him of past dishonesty. Prejudice was strong against him in Belley because he was a stranger. "No matter how the affair took place," said one who knew the town; "Peytel is a dead man."

Up to this time, the matter taking place in the provinces, Peytel's friends seem to have thought but little of it, supposing that he would certainly, under the circumstances, be acquitted. He himself felt so sure of this that he wrote to Gavarni to come and take him to Switzerland. On the contrary, he was condemned, and the condemnation roused his friends in Paris to the highest pitch. Balzac and Gavarni took up the case and studied it; Lamartine wrote the following letter to Peytel in prison:--

PARIS, November 12, 1838.

Your deplorable situation fills all minds here; no one doubts that unforeseen revelations, to which time and circumstances always lead, will completely justify the details that you yourself have given, and cause pity and universal interest to take the place of the prejudices you speak of. Meantime, monsieur, I am glad to be able to assure you that those prejudices have no access to the mind of any one here, and that if you need to add other proof than your unhappiness and despair, you will find it here in the unanimous assertion of the purity of your antecedents and the irreproachability of your life.

Receive, with the expression of my sorrowful sympathy, the assurance of my distinguished sentiments.

DE LAMARTINE.

Balzac and Gavarni went to Belley, Bourg, and Maçon, employed counsel, and brought the matter before the Court of Cassation (Appeals). Balzac wrote, and published in the "Siècle," a long argument of the case (see Édition Définitive, vol. xxii., pp. 579-625), to which a brother-in-law of the murdered woman replied, rather weakly. Balzac rejoined in the "Presse," prefacing his second statement with the following words to the editor:--

October 2, 1839.

"Monsieur, I am obliged to make use of the newspapers, who have published my letter on the Peytel affair, to thank collectively all those persons who have addressed congratulations to me; and to assure those who have sent me startling testimony in favour of Peytel that their declarations will be received if the Court of Cassation grants a new trial."

The following very curious letter relating to this subject, from M. Moreau Christophe, inspector-general of prisons, to Gavarni, is worth preserving.

PARIS, September 29, 1839.

My dear Monsieur Gavarni: you ask my opinion of the Peytel affair. What shall I say to you? When there is a woman, that is, love, in a crime, it is a tangle, the thread of which escapes the most clear-sighted. They think they hold the thread because they have got hold of the skein. The material of a fact does not constitute the truth of it. Why do you talk of judiciary trials [_débats judiciaires]_? A judiciary trial is to my eyes a legal lie. The accused lies to the lawyer, the lawyer lies to the judge, the newspapers lie to the public. How do you expect truth to come to light through that criss-cross of lies? She is just as much hidden from us at the Palais as if she were down at the bottom of her well. It is only behind the bolts, after condemnation, that truth can be found. And even then one must be very expert to find her. That was where I discovered the truth about the Laroncière affair, and several other love tangles, about which you think you know through the newspapers, whereas you know nothing at all.

That was how you yourself discovered the truth in the depths of Peytel's dungeon. Balzac has brought startling lights out of that dungeon. But,--shall I say it?--in spite of the immense dialectic and legal talent he has just displayed in the "Siècle" in defence of your unhappy friend, I fear that under his pen truth is impregnated with an atmosphere of romance. Lawyers sometimes fade the cause they plead. Besides, it is too late. Moreover, instead of saving the man who did the act, a subsequent revelation will only the more surely lose him, when he adds to the blood of the victim after the act a stain, however just, upon her memory. That is Peytel's case. Truth cannot save him now. A lie will kill him.

MOREAU CHRISTOPHE.

French legal arguments never commend themselves to the Anglo-Saxon mind; there seems to be a radical divergence of comprehension as to how truth can be got at, and Balzac's argument is certainly not convincing. But with the events of the past year before our minds we cannot be sure that prejudice and injustice on the other side may not have justified it.

The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal, and Peytel was executed as stated in the text. A history of this case is given in "Le Notaire Assassin," by Paul d'Orcières. Paris. 1884.

IV.

_Page_ 693. _Concerning the letters of_ 1846.

In "Un Roman d'Amour," which (as stated in the Preface to this volume) is the authority given on page 1 of "Lettres à l'Étrangère," to vouch for the authenticity of those letters, the following statement is made (page 94):--

"He [Balzac] lost in November, 1846, a daughter, born at six months. The birth of this child gave occasion for one of those great hidden dramas of which the celebrated novelist was the hero; and the rapid progress of his heart disease was due in part to this terrible adventure."

Now, a man of Balzac's emotional excitability--plainly shown in his walking distraught about Paris on reading one page of a letter without waiting to read the next (see letter to Madame Hanska of January 5, 1846)--could not have passed through such a crisis without some sign of it appearing in his letters.

I have therefore studied with great care those for the year 1846 given in his Correspondence. The letters addressed to Madame Hanska are all here, in this volume, for the reader to judge.

Balzac returned, about October 15, from Wiesbaden, where Madame Hanska, it is said, pledged herself definitively to marry him as soon as matters could be arranged with the Russian government.

From October to December there are five letters to M. and Mme. Mniszech, all very lively and gay. Here are a few quotations from them:--

_October:_ "To-morrow our great and dear Atala [his family name for Madame Hanska] will receive a letter from me. But I charge you none the less to assure her that there is not a fibre in my heart that is not for her, and that I am, as I have been for thirteen years, the sole moujik of Paulowska, who will be hers for time and for eternity."

"Anna's dear mother is, as you know, the only affection I have in all my life. She has been my only consolation in my griefs, my toils, my misfortunes; she has sufficed to appease all, to counterbalance all."

_November:_ "I thank you with all my heart for the punctuality with which you give me news of our great and good Atala Notify me, I entreat you, of the day when I must stop sending letters to Dresden. I imagine that the doctor will not forbid your dear, beloved mother to read. In which case I shall write to her every day. As soon as she wrote me she should stay in Dresden till the end of November I sent all the newspapers and 'La Cousine Bette' there to amuse the dear invalid."

"Père Bilboquet [his name for himself], believe it, is buying nothing more; he is only thinking of paying and worrrking [_trrravailller_] in the market-place of Literature; yes, I have given myself the task of earning 40,000 francs in six months. Oh! how I wish! could see my troupe in their fine carriage ... This is stolen from the quantity of _copy_ I have to do.

"DUC DE BILBOQUET,

"Peer of France and other regions."

The letters to Madame Hanska of October 18, 19, 20 are unusually cheerful and hopeful about his future; and those of November 20, 21, 22, 23 are full of his work, and mention his intention to join her December 6 at Leipzig. In point of fact, he did join her in the course of that month, and she returned with him to Paris some time in January, 1847. She remained in Paris till the following April, when she returned to Wierzchownia, where Balzac followed her in September.

Now, if the reader has read the letters to Madame Hanska during this year (1846) attentively he will see, not only that there is no symptom of any such crisis with its attendant circumstances in Balzac's life, but that there was actually no time for it.

To this record I must add that in 1889 M. le Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul proposed to sell me the papers of Balzac in his possession; and in giving me a general list and description of them he wrote:--

"A cloud of letters exist, but they tell nothing; they are not the letters of women who had a part, either great or small, in his time or in his thoughts."

Warped minds, that is, degenerate minds judging all things by a standard of evil, may persuade themselves that this outspoken, impulsive man is the deceitful, double-faced being that they represent him. But will any sober, reflecting, common-sense, true judge of human nature, in presence of these letters, agree with that opinion? No.

It is surely an important duty to rescue a great name, and a great nature, from undeserved obloquy, and I hope the readers of this volume will second my effort by studying the truth of this matter and maintaining it.

KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY.

End of Project Gutenberg's Letters to Madame Hanska, by Honoré de Balzac