In the scenes which follow, we are introduced to a lover watching the beautiful and virtuous object of his adoration as she descends an infamous street late in the evening, and enters one of the houses through a damp, moist, and fetid passage, feebly lighted by a trembling lamp, beneath which are seen the hideous face and skinny fingers of an old woman, as fitly placed as the witches in the blasted heath in ‘Macbeth.’ In this case, however, Balzac is in one of his wildest moods, and the hideous mysteries of a huge capital become the pretext for a piece of rather ludicrous melodrama. Paris is full enough of tragedies without the preposterous beggar Ferragus, who appears at balls as a distinguished diplomat, and manages to place on a young gentleman’s head of hair a slow poison (invented for the purpose), which brings him to an early grave. More impressive, because less extravagant, is that Maison Vauquer, every hole and corner of which is familiar to the real student of Balzac. It is situated, as everybody should know, in the Rue Neuve St.-Geneviève, just where it descends so steeply towards the Rue de l’Arbalète that horses have some trouble in climbing it. We know its squalid exterior, its creaking bell, the wall painted to represent an arcade in green marble, the crumbling statue of Cupid, with the half-effaced inscription —
‘Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître, — Il l’est, le fut, ou le doit être.’
We have visited the wretched garden with its scanty pot-herbs and scarecrow beds, and the green benches in the miserable arbour, where the lodgers who are rich enough to enjoy such a luxury indulge in a cup of coffee after dinner. The salon, with its greasy and worn-out furniture, every bit of which is catalogued, is as familiar as our own studies. We know the exact geography even of the larder and the cistern. We catch the odour of the damp, close office, where Madame Vauquer lurks like a human spider. She is the animating genius of the place, and we know the exact outline of her figure, and every article of her dress. The minuteness of her portrait brings out the horrors of the terrible process by which poor Goriot gradually sinks from one step to another of the social ladder, and simultaneously ascends from the first floor to the garrets. We can track his steps and trace his agony. Each station of that melancholy pilgrimage is painted, down to the minutest details, with unflinching fidelity.
Paris, says Balzac, is an ocean; however painfully you explore it and sound its depths, there are still virgin corners, unknown caves with their flowers, pearls, and monsters, forgotten by literary divers. The Maison Vauquer is one of these singular monstrosities. No one, at any rate, can complain that Balzac has not done his best to describe and analyse the character of the unknown social species which it contains. It absorbs our interest by the contrast of its vulgar and intensely commonplace exterior with the terrible passions and sufferings of which it is the appropriate scene.
The horrors of a great metropolis, indeed, give ample room for tragedy. Old Sandy Mackaye takes Alton Locke to the entrance of a London alley, and tells the sentimental tailor to write poetry about that. ‘Say how ye saw the mouth o’ hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry, the pawnbroker’s shop on the one side and the gin-palace at the other — two monstrous deevils, eating up men, women, and bairns, body and soul. Look at the jaws o’ the monsters, how they open and open to swallow in anither victim and anither. Write about that!’ The poor tailor complains that it is unpoetical, and Mackaye replies, ‘Hah! is there no the heaven above them here and the hell beneath them? and God frowning and the deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idee of the classic tragedy defined to be — man conquered by circumstances? Canna ye see it here?’ But the quotation must stop, for Mackaye goes on to a moral not quite according to Balzac. Balzac, indeed, was anything but a Christian socialist, or a Radical reformer; we don’t often catch sight in his pages of God frowning or the devil grinning; his world seems to be pretty well forgotten by the one, and its inhabitants to be quite able to dispense with the services of the other. Paris, he tells us in his most outrageous story, is a hell, which one day may have its Dante. The prolétaire lives in its lowest circle, and seldom comes into Balzac’s pages except as representing the half-seen horrors of the gulf reserved for that corrupt and brilliant society whose vices he loves to describe. A summary of his creed is given by a queer contrast to Mackaye, the accomplished and able De Marsay. People speak, he says, of the immorality of certain books; here is a horrible, foul, and corrupt book, always open and never to be shut; the great book of the world; and beyond that is another book a thousand times more dangerous, which consists of all that is whispered by one man to another, or discussed under ladies’ fans at balls. Balzac’s pages are flavoured, rather to excess, with this diabolical spice, composed of dark allusions to, or audacious revelations of these hideous mysteries. If he is wanting in the moral elevation necessary for a Dante, he has some of the sinister power which makes him a fit guide to the horrors of our modern Inferno.
Before accepting Balzac’s guidance into these mysterious regions, I must touch upon another peculiarity. Balzac’s genius for skilfully-combined photographic detail explains his strange power of mystification. A word is wanting to express that faint acquiescence or mimic belief which we generally grant to a novelist. Dr. Newman has constructed a scale of assent according to its varying degrees of intensity; and we might, perhaps, assume that to each degree there corresponds a mock assent accorded to different kinds of fiction. If Scott, for example, requires from his readers a shadow of that kind of belief which we grant to an ordinary historian, Balzac requires a shadow of the belief which Dr. Pusey gives to the Bible. This still remains distinctly below any genuine assent; for Balzac never wishes us really to forget, though he occasionally forgets himself, that his most lifelike characters are imaginary. But in certain subordinate topics he seems to make a higher demand on our faith. He is full of more or less fanciful heresies, and labours hard to convince us either that they are true or that he seriously holds them. This is what I mean by mystification, and one fears to draw a line as to which he was probably far from clear himself. Thus, for example, he is a devout believer in physiognomy, and not only in its obvious sense; he erects it into an occult science. Lavater and Gall, he says, ‘prove incontestably’ that ominous signs exist in our heads. Take, for example, the chasseur Michu, his white face injected with blood and compressed like a Calmuck’s; his ruddy, crisp hair; his beard cut in the shape of a fan; the noble forehead which surmounts and overhangs his sunburnt, sarcastic features; his ears well detached, and possessing a sort of mobility, like those of a wild animal; his mouth half open, and revealing a set of fine but uneven teeth; his thick and glossy whiskers; his hair, close in front, long on the sides and behind, with its wild, ruddy hue throwing into relief the strange and fatal character of the physiognomy; his short, thick neck, designed to tempt the hatchet of the guillotine: these details, so accurately photographed, not only prove that M. Michu was a resolute, faithful servant, capable of the profoundest secresy and the most disinterested attachment, but for the really skilful reader of mystic symbols foretell his ultimate fate — namely, that he will be the victim of a false accusation. Balzac, however, ventures into still more whimsical extremes. He accepts, in all apparent seriousness, the theory of his favourite, Mr. Shandy, that a man’s name influences his character. Thus, for example, a man called Minoret-Levrault must necessarily be ‘un éléphant sans trompe et sans intelligence,’ and the occult meaning of Z. Marcas requires a long and elaborate commentary. Repeat the word Marcas, dwelling on the first syllable, and dropping abruptly on the second, and you will see that the man who bears it must be a martyr. The zigzag of the initial implies a life of torment. What ill wind, he asks, has blown upon this letter, which in no language (Balzac’s acquaintance with German was probably limited) commands more than fifty words? The name is composed of seven letters, and seven is most characteristic of cabalistic numbers. If M. Gozlan’s narrative be authentic, Balzac was right to value this name highly, for he had spent many hours in seeking for it by a systematic perambulation of the str
eets of Paris. He was rather vexed at the discovery that the Marcas of real life was a tailor. ‘He deserved a better fate!’ said Balzac pathetically; ‘but it shall be my business to immortalise him.’
Balzac returns to this subject so often and so emphatically that one half believes him to be the victim of his own mystification. Perhaps he was the one genuine disciple of Mr. Shandy and Slawkenbergius, and believed sincerely in the occult influence of names and noses. In more serious matters it is impossible to distinguish the point at which his feigned belief passes into real superstition; he stimulates conviction so elaborately, that his sober opinions shade off imperceptibly into his fanciful dreamings. For a time he was attracted by mesmerism, and in the story of Ursule Mirouet he labours elaborately to infect his readers with a belief in what he calls ‘magnetism, the favourite science of Jesus, and one of the powers transmitted to the apostles.’ He assumes his gravest airs in adducing the cases of Cardan, Swedenborg, and a certain Duke of Montmorency, as though he were a genuine historical inquirer. He almost adopts the tone of a pious missionary in describing how his atheist doctor was led by the revelations of a clairvoyante to study Pascal’s ‘Pensées’ and Bossuet’s sublime ‘Histoire des Variations,’ though what those works have to do with mesmerism is rather difficult to see. He relates the mysterious visions caused by the converted doctor after his death, not less minutely, though more artistically, than De Foe described the terrible apparition of Mrs. Veal, and, it must be confessed, his story illustrates with almost equal force the doctrine, too often forgotten by spiritualists, that ghosts should not make themselves too common. When once they begin to mix in general society, they become intolerably prosaic.
The ostentatious belief which is paraded in this instance is turned to more artistic account in the wonderful story of the ‘Peau de Chagrin.’ Balzac there tries as conscientiously as ever to surmount the natural revolt of our minds against the introduction of the supernatural into life. The peau de chagrin is the modern substitute for the old-fashioned parchment on which contracts were signed with the devil. M. Valentin, its possessor, is a Faust of the boulevards; but our prejudices are softened by the circumstance that the peau de chagrin has a false air of scientific authenticity. It is discovered by a gentleman who spends a spare half-hour before committing suicide in an old curiosity shop, which occupies a sort of middle standing-ground between a wizard’s laboratory and the ordinary Wardour Street shop. There is no question of signing with one’s blood, but simply of accepting a curious substance with the property — rather a startling one, it is true — that its area diminishes in proportion to the amount of wishes gratified, and vanishes with the death of the possessor. The steady flesh-and-blood men of science treat it just as we feel certain that they would do. After smashing a hydraulic press in the attempt to compress it, and exhausting the power of chemical agents, they agree to make a joke of it. It is not so much more wonderful than some of those modern miracles, which leave us to hesitate between the two incredible alternatives that men of science are fallible, or that mankind in general, like Sir Walter Scott’s grandmother, are ‘awfu’ leears.’ Every effort is made to reduce the strain upon our credulity to that moderate degree of intensity which may fairly be required from the reader of a wild fiction. When the first characteristic wish of the proprietor — namely, that he may be indulged in a frantic orgie — has been gratified without any apparent intervention of the supernatural, we are left just in that proper equilibrium between scepticism and credulity which is the right mental attitude in presence of a marvellous story. Balzac, it is true, seems rather to flag in continuing his narrative. The symbolical meaning begins to part company with the facts. Stories of this kind require the congenial atmosphere of an ideal world, and the effort of interpreting such a poetical legend into terms of ordinary life is perhaps too great for the powers of any literary artist. At any rate M. Valentin drops after a time from the level of Faust to become the hero of a rather commonplace Parisian story. The opening scenes, however, are an admirable specimen of the skill by which our irrepressible scepticism may be hindered from intruding into a sphere where it is out of place; or rather — for one can hardly speak of belief in such a connection — of the skill by which the discord between the surroundings of the nineteenth century and a story of grotesque supernaturalism can be converted into a pleasant harmony. A similar effect is produced in one of Balzac’s finest stories, the ‘Recherche de l’Absolu.’ Every accessory is provided to induce us, so long as we are under the spell, to regard the discovery of the philosopher’s stone as a reasonable application of human energy. We are never quite clear whether Balthazar Claes is a madman or a commanding genius. We are kept trembling on the verge of a revelation till we become interested in spite of our more sober sense. A single diamond turns up in a crucible which was unluckily produced in the absence of the philosopher, so that he cannot tell what are the necessary conditions of repeating the process. He is supposed to discover the secret just as he is struck by a paralysis, which renders him incapable of revealing it, and dies whilst making desperate efforts to communicate the crowning success to his family. Balzac throws himself into the situation with such energy that we are irresistibly carried away by his enthusiasm. The impossibility ceases to annoy us, and merely serves to give additional dignity to the story.
One other variety of mystification may introduce us to some of Balzac’s most powerful stories. He indulges more frequently than could be wished in downright melodrama, or what is generally called sensational writing. In the very brilliant sketch of Nathan in ‘Une Fille d’Eve,’ he remarks that ‘the mission of genius is to search, through the accidents of the true, for that which must appear probable to all the world.’ The common saying, that truth is stranger than fiction, should properly be expressed as an axiom that fiction ought not to be so strange as truth. A marvellous event is interesting in real life, simply because we know that it happened. In a fiction we know that it did not happen; and therefore it is interesting only as far as it is explained. Anybody can invent a giant or a genius by the simple process of altering figures or piling up superlatives. The artist has to make the existence of the giant or the genius conceivable. Balzac, however, often enough forgets this principle, and treats us to purely preposterous incidents, which are either grotesque or simply childish. The history of the marvellous ‘Thirteen,’ for example, that mysterious band which includes statesmen, beggars, men of fortune, and journalists, and goes about committing the most inconceivable crimes without the possibility of discovery, becomes simply ludicrous. Balzac, as usual, labours to reconcile our minds to the absurdity; but the effort is beyond his powers. The amazing disease which he invents for the benefit of the villains in the ‘Cousine Bette’ can only be accepted as a broad joke. At times, as in the story of the ‘Grande Bretêche,’ where the lover is bricked up by the husband in the presence of the wife, he reminds us of Edgar Poe’s worst extravagances. There is, indeed, this much to be said for Balzac in comparison with the more recent school, who have turned to account all the most refined methods of breaking the ten commandments and the criminal code; the fault of the so-called sensation writer is, not that he deals in murder, bigamy, or adultery — every great writer likes to use powerful situations — but that he relies upon our interest in startling crimes to distract our attention from feebly-drawn characters and conventional details. Balzac does not often fall into that weakness. If his criminals are frequently of the most outrageous kind, and indulge even in practices unmentionable, the crime is intended at least to be of secondary interest. He tries to fix our attention on the passions by which they are caused, and to attract us chiefly by the legitimate method of analysing human nature — even, it must be confessed, in some of its most abnormal manifestations. Macbeth is not interesting because he commits half-a-dozen murders; but the murders are interesting because they are committed by Macbeth. We may generally say as much for Balzac’s villains; and it is the only justification for a free use of blood and br
utality. In applying these remarks, we come to the real secret of Balzac’s power, which will demand a fuller consideration.
It is common to say of all great novelists, and of Balzac in particular, that they display a wonderful ‘knowledge of the human heart.’ The chief objection to the phrase is that such knowledge does not exist. Nobody has as yet found his way through the complexities of that intricate machine, and described the springs and balances by which its movement is originated and controlled. Men of vivid imagination are in some respects less competent for such a work than their neighbours. They have not the cool, hard, and steady hand required for psychological dissection. Balzac gave a queer specimen of his own incapacity in an attempt to investigate the true history of a real murder, celebrated in its day, and supposed by everybody but Balzac to have been committed by one Peytel, who was put to death in spite of his pleading. His skill in devising motives for imaginary atrocities was a positive disqualification for dealing with facts and legal evidence. The greatest poet or novelist describes only one person, and that is himself; and he differs from his inferiors, not necessarily in having a more systematic knowledge, but in having wider sympathies, and so to speak, possessing a great number of characters. Cervantes was at once Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; Shakespeare was Hamlet and Mercutio and Othello and Falstaff; Scott was at once Dandie Dinmont and the Antiquary and the Master of Ravenswood; and Balzac embodies his different phases of feeling in Eugénie Grandet and Vautrin and the Père Goriot. The assertion that he knew the human heart must be interpreted to mean that he could sympathise with, and give expression to, a wide range of human passions; as his supposed knowledge of the world implies merely that he was deeply impressed by certain phenomena of the social medium in which he was placed. Nobody, I should be inclined to think, would have given a more unsound judgment than Balzac as to the characters of the men whom he met, or formed a less trustworthy estimate of the real condition of society. He was totally incapable of stripping the bare facts given by observation of the colouring which they received from his own idiosyncrasy. But nobody, within certain points, could express more vividly in outward symbols the effect produced upon keen sympathies and a powerful imagination by the aspect of the world around him.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1445