[*] It is an interesting coincidence that the Duchess whose star was waning had been in love with the fascinating Austrian ambassador, Comte de Metternich, and the Duchess who was to take her place, was just recovering from an amorous disappointment in connection with his son when she met Balzac.
Knowing Balzac’s complicated life, one can understand how, having gone to Corsica in quest of his Eldorado just before the poor Duchess breathed her last, he could write to Madame Hanska on his return to Paris: “The newspapers have told you of the deplorable end of the poor Duchesse d’Abrantes. She has ended like the Empire. Some day I will explain her to you, — some good evening at Wierzschownia.”
Balzac wished to keep his visits to Madame d’Abrantes a secret from his sister, Madame Surville, and some obscurity and a “mysterious pavilion” is connected with their manner of communication. For a while she visited him frequently in his den. He enjoyed her society, and though oppressed by work, was quite ready to fix upon an evening when they could be alone.
It was not without pain that she saw his affection for her becoming less ardent while hers remained fervent. She wrote him tender letters inviting him to dine with her, or to meet some of her friends, assuring him that in her ermitage he might feel perfectly at home, and that she regarded him as one of the most excellent friends Heaven had preserved for her.
“Heaven grant that you are telling me the truth, and that indeed I may always be for you a good and sincere friend. . . . My dear Honore, every one tells me that you no longer care for me. . . . I say that they lie. . . . You are not only my friend, but my sincere and good friend. I have kept for you a profound affection, and this affection is of a nature that does not change. . . . Here is Catherine, here is my first work. I am sending it to you, and it is the heart of a friend that offers it to you. May it be the heart of a friend that receives it! . . . My soul is oppressed on account of this, but it is false, I hope.”
Balzac continued to visit her occasionally, and there exists a curious specimen of his handwriting written (October, 1835) in the album of her daughter, Madame Aubert. He sympathized with the unfortunate Duchess who, raised to so high a rank, had fallen so low, and tried to cheer her in his letters:
“You say you are ill and suffering, and without any hope that finer weather will do you any good. Remember that for the soul there arises every day a fresh springtime and a beautiful fresh morning. Your past life has no words to express it in any language, but it is scarcely a recollection, and you cannot judge what your future life will be by that which is past. How many have begun to lead a fresh, lovely, and peaceful life at a much more advanced age than yours! We exist only in our souls. You cannot be sure that your soul has come to its highest development, nor whether you receive the breath of life through all your pores, nor whether as yet you see with all your eyes.”
Being quite a linguist, Madame d’Abrantes began her literary career by translations from the Portuguese, Spanish and Italian, and by writing novels, in the construction of which, Balzac advised her. As she had no business ability, he was of great assistance to her also in arranging for the publication of her work:
“In the name of yourself, I entreat you, do not enter into any engagement with anybody whatsoever; do not make any promise, and say that you have entrusted your business to me on account of my knowledge of business matters of this kind, and of my unalterable attachment to yourself personally. I believe I have found what I may call living money, seventy thousand healthy francs, and some people, who will jump out of themselves, to dispose in a short time of ‘three thousand d’Abrantes,’ as they say in their slang. Besides, I see daylight for a third and larger edition. If Mamifere (Mame) does not behave well, say to him, ‘My dear sir, M. de Balzac has my business in his charge still as he had on the day he presented you to me; you must feel he has the priority over the preference you ask for.’ This done, wait for me. I shall make you laugh when I tell you what I have concocted. If Everat appears again, tell him that I have been your attorney for a long time past in these affairs, when they are worth the trouble; one or two volumes are nothing. But twelve or thirteen thsousand francs, oh! oh! ah! ah! things must not be endangered. Only manoeuver cleverly, and, with that finesse which distinguishes Madame the Ambassadress, endeavor to find out from Mame how many volumes he still has on hand, and see if he will be able to oppose the new edition by slackness of sale or excessive price.
”Your entirely devoted.”
(H. DE BALZAC.)
Such assistance was naturally much appreciated by a woman so utterly ignorant of business matters. But if Balzac aided the Duchess, he caused her publishers much annoyance, and more than once he received a sharp letter rebuking him for interfering with the affairs of Madame d’Abrantes.
It was doubtless due to the suggestion of Balzac that Madame d’Abrantes wrote her Memoires. He was so thrilled by her vivid accounts of recent history, that he was seized with the idea that she had it in her power to do for a brilliant epoch what Madame Roland attempted to do for one of grief and glory. He felt that she had witnessed such an extraordinary multiplicity of scenes, had known a remarkable number of heroic figures and great characters, and that nature had endowed her with unusual gifts.
A few years before her death, La Femme abandonnee was dedicated:
“To her Grace the Duchesse d’Abrantes,
“from her devoted servant,
“HONORÉ DE BALZAC.”
If such was the role played by Balzac in the life of Madame d’Abrantes, how is she reflected in the Comedie humaine?
It is a well known fact that Balzac not only borrowed names from living people, but that he portrayed the features, incidents and peculiarities of those with whom he was closely associated. In the Avant-propos de la Comedie humaine, he writes: “In composing types by putting together traits of homogeneous natures, I might perhaps attain to the writing of that history forgotten by so many historians, — the history of manners.”
In fact, he too might have said: “I take my property wherever I find it;” accordingly one would naturally look for characteristics of Madame d’Abrantes in his earlier works.
According to M. Joseph Turquain, Mademoiselle des Touches, in Beatrix, generally understood to be George Sand, has also some of the characteristics of Madame d’Abrantes. Balzac describes Mademoiselle des Touches as being past forty and un peu homme, which reminds one that the Countess Dash describes Madame d’Abrantes as being rather masculine, with an organe de rogome, and a virago when past forty. Calyste became enamored of Beatrix after having loved Mademoiselle des Touches, while Balzac became infatuated with Madame de Castries after having been in love with Madame d’Abrantes, in each case, the blonde after the brunette.
Mademoiselle Josephine, the elder and beloved daughter of Madame d’Abrantes, entered the Convent of the Sisters of Charity of Saint-Vincent de Paul, contrary to the desires of her mother. In writing to the Duchess (1831), Balzac asks that Sister Josephine may not forget him in her prayers, for he is remembering her in his books. Balzac may have had her in mind a few years later when he said of Mademoiselle de Mortsauf in Le Lys dans la Vallee: “The girl’s clear sight had, though only of late, seen to the bottom of her mother’s heart. . . .” for Mademoiselle Josephine entered the convent for various reasons, one being in order to relieve the financial strain and make marriage possible for her younger sister, another perhaps being to atone for the secret she probably suspected in the heart of her mother, and which she felt was not complimentary to the memory of her father. And also, in La Recherche de l’Absolu: “There comes a moment, in the inner life of families, when the children become, either voluntarily or involuntarily, the judges of their parents.”
In writing the introduction to the Physiologie du Mariage, Balzac states that here he is merely the humble secretary of two women. He is doubtless referring to Madame d’Abrantes as one of the two when he says:
“Some days later the author found himself in the company of two ladies. The
first had been one of the most humane and most intellectual women of the court of Napoleon. Having attained a high social position, the Restoration surprised her and caused her downfall; she had become a hermit. The other, young, beautiful, was playing at that time, in Paris, the role of a fashionable woman. They were friends, for the one being forty years of age, and the other twenty-two, their aspirations rarely caused their vanity to appear on the same scene. ‘Have you noticed, my dear, that in general women love only fools?’ — ’What are you saying, Duchess?’“[*]
[*] M. Turquain states that Madame Hamelin is one of these women and that the Duchesse d’Abrantes in incontestably the other. For a different opinion, see the chapter on Madame Gay. The italics are the present writer’s.
In La Femme abandonnee, Madame de Beauseant resembles the Duchess as portrayed in this description:
“All the courage of her house seemed to gleam from the great lady’s brilliant eyes, such courage as women use to repel audacity or scorn, for they were full of tenderness and gentleness. The outline of that little head, . . . the delicate, fine features, the subtle curve of the lips, the mobile face itself, wore an expression of delicate discretion, a faint semblance of irony suggestive of craft and insolence. It would have been difficult to refuse forgiveness to those two feminine failings in her in thinking of her misfortunes, of the passion that had almost cost her her life. Was it not an imposing spectacle (still further magnified by reflection) to see in that vast, silent salon this woman, separated from the entire world, who for three years had lived in the depths of a little valley, far from the city, alone with her memories of a brilliant, happy, ardent youth, once so filled with fetes and constant homage, now given over to the horrors of nothingness? The smile of this woman proclaimed a high sense of her own value.”
In the postscript to the Physiologie du Mariage, Balzac mentions a gesture of one of these “intellectual” women, who interrupts herself to touch one of her nostrils with the forefinger of her right hand in a coquettish manner. In La Femme abandonnee, Madame de Beauseant has the same gesture. Another gesture of Madame de Beauseant in La Femme abandonnee indicates that Balzac had in mind the Duchesse d’Abrantes: “. . . Then, with her other hand, she made a gesture as if to pull the bell-rope. The charming gesture, the gracious threat, no doubt, called up some sad thought, some memory of her happy life, of the time when she could be wholly charming and graceful, when the gladness of her heart justified every caprice, and gave one more charm to her slightest movement. The lines of her forehead gathered between her brows, and the expression of her face grew dark in the soft candle-light. . . .” The Duchesse d’Abrantes had on two occasions rung to dismiss her lovers, M. de Montrond and General Sebastiani. Balzac had doubtless heard her relate these incidents, and they are contained in the Journal intime, which she gave him.[*]
[*] Madame d’Abrantes presented several objects of a literary nature to Balzac, among others, a book of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a few leaves of which he presented to Madame Hanska for her collection of autographs.
In La Femme abandonnee, Balzac describes Madame de Beauseant as having taken refuge in Normandy, “after a notoriety which women for the most part envy and condemn, especially when youth and beauty in some way excuse the transgression.” Can it be that the novelist thus condones the fault of this noted character because he wishes to pardon the liaison of Madame d’Abrantes with the Comte de Metternich?
Is it then because so many traces of Madame d’Abrantes are found in La Femme abandonnee, and allusions are made to minute episodes known to them alone, that he dedicated it to her?
Was Balzac thinking of the Duchesse d’Abrantes when, in Un Grand Homme de Province a Paris, speaking of Lucien Chardon, who had just arrived in Paris at the beginning of the Restoration, he writes: “He met several of those women who will be spoken of in the history of the nineteenth century, whose wit, beauty and loves will be none the less celebrated than those of queens in times past.”
In depicting Maxime de Trailles, the novelist perhaps had in mind M. de Montrond, about whom the Duchess had told him. Again, many characteristics of her son, Napoleon d’Abrantes, are seen in La Palferine, one of the characters of the Comedie humaine.
If Madame de Berny is Madame de Mortsauf in Le Lys dans la Vallee, Madame d’Abrantes has some traits of Lady Dudley, of whom Madame de Mortsauf was jealous. The Duchess gave him encouragement and confidence, and Balzac might have been thinking of her when he made the beautiful Lady Dudley say: “I alone have divined all that you were worth.” After Balzac’s affection for Madame de Berny was rekindled, Madame d’Abrantes, who was jealous of her, had a falling out with him.
It was probably Madame Junot who related to Balzac the story of the necklace of Madame Regnault de Saint-Jean d’Angely, to which allusion is made in his Physiologie du Mariage, also an anecdote which is told in the same book abut General Rapp, who had been an intimate friend of General Junot. At this time Balzac knew few women of the Empire; he did not frequent the home of the Countess Merlin until later. While Madame d’Abrantes was not a duchess by birth, Madame Gay was not a duchess at all, and Madame Hamelin still further removed from nobility.
It is doubtless to Madame d’Abrantes that he owes the subject of El
Verdugo, which he places in the period of the war with Spain; to her
also was due the information about the capture of Senator Clement de
Ris, from which he writes Une tenebreuse Affaire.
M. Rene Martineau, in proving that Balzac got his ideas for Une tenebreuse Affaire from Madame d’Abrantes, states that this is all the more remarkable, since the personage of the senator is the only one which Balzac has kept just as he was, without changing his physiognomy in the novel. The senator was still living at the time Madame d’Abrantes wrote her account of the affair, his death not having occurred until 1827. In her Memoires, Madame d’Abrantes refers frequently to the kindness of the great Emperor, and it is doubtless to please her that Balzac, in the denouement of Une tenebreuse Affaire, has Napoleon pardon two out of the three condemned persons. Although the novelist may have heard of this affair during his sojourns in Touraine, it is evident that the origin of the lawsuit and the causes of the conduct of Fouche were revealed to him by Madame Junot.
Who better than Madame d’Abrantes could have given Balzac the background for the scene of Corsican hatred so vividly portrayed in La Vendetta? Balzac’s preference for General Junot is noticeable when he wishes to mention some hero of the army of the Republic or of the Empire; the Duc and Duchesse d’Abrantes are included among the noted lodgers in Autre Etude de Femme. It is doubtless to please the Duchess that Balzac mentions also the Comte de Narbonne (Le Medecin de Campagne).
Impregnating his mind with the details of the Napoleonic reign, so vividly portrayed in Le Colonel Chabert, Le Medecin de Campagne, La Femme de trente Ans and others, she was probably the direct author of several observations regarding Napoleon that impress one as being strikingly true. Balzac read to her his stories of the Empire, and though she rarely wept, she melted into tears at the disaster of the Beresina, in the life of Napoleon related by a soldier in a barn.
The Generale Junot had a great influence over Balzac; she enlightened him also about women, painting them not as they should be, but as they are.[*]
[*] M. Joseph Turquain states that when the correspondence of Madame d’Abrantes and Balzac, to which he has had access, is published, one will be able to determine exactly the role she has played in the formation of the talent of the writer, and in the development of his character. His admirable work has been very helpful in the preparation of this study of Madame d’Abrantes.
During the last years of the life of Madame d’Abrantes, a somber tint spread over her gatherings, which gradually became less numerous. Her financial condition excited little sympathy, and her friends became estranged from her as the result of her poverty. Under her gaiety and in spite of her courage, this distress became more apparent with time. Her health
became impaired; yet she continued to write when unable to sit up, so great was her need for money. From her high rank she had fallen to the depth of misery! When evicted from her poverty-stricken home by the bailiff, her maid at first conveyed her to a hospital in the rue de Chaillot, but there payment was demanded in advance. That being impossible, the poor Duchess, ill and abandoned by all her friends, was again cast into the street. Finally, a more charitable hospital in the rue des Batailles took her in. Thus, by ironical fate, the widow of the great Batailleur de Junot, who had done little else during the past fifteen years than battle for life, was destined to end her days in the rue des Batailles.
LA PRINCESSE BELGIOJOSO. — MADAME MARBOUTY. — LA COMTESSE D’AGOULT. — GEORGE SAND.
“The Princess (Belgiojoso) is a woman much apart from other women, not very attractive, twenty-nine years old, pale, black hair, Italian-white complexion, thin, and playing the vampire. She has the good fortune to displease me, though she is clever; but she poses too much. I saw her first five years ago at Gerard’s; she came from Switzerland, where she had taken refuge.”
The Princesse Belgiojoso had her early education entrusted to men of broad learning whose political views were opposed to Austria. She was reared in Milan in the home of her young step-father, who had been connected with the Conciliatore. His home was the rendezvous of the artistic and literary celebrities of the day; but beneath the surface lay conspiracy. At the age of sixteen she was married to her fellow townsman, the rich, handsome, pleasure-loving, musical Prince Belgiojoso, but the union was an unhappy one. Extremely patriotic, she plunged into conspiracy.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1536