In presenting the women whom we know, the novelist was usually consistent. As has been seen, he regarded the home of Madame Carraud at Frapesle as a haven of rest, and went there like a wood-pigeon regaining its nest. The suffering Felix de Vandenesse (Le Lys dans la Vallee) could not, therefore, find calm until he went to the chateau de Frapesle to recuperate. The novelist could easily give this minute description of Frapesle with its towers, as well as the chateau de Sache, the home of M. de Margonne, having spent so much of his time at both of these places.
The reader, having seen in the early pages of this book, Balzac’s relation to his mother, — in case Felix de Vandenesse represents Balzac himself — is not surprised to learn that the mother of Felix was cold and tyrannical, indifferent to his happiness, that he had but little or no money to spend, that his brother was the favorite, that he was sent away to school early in life and remained there eight years, that his mother often reproached him and repressed his tenderness, and that to escape all contact with her he buried himself in his reading.
Felix was in this unhappy state when he met Madame de Mortsauf, whose shoulders he kissed suddenly, and whose love for him later made him forget the miseries of childhood; in the same manner, Balzac made his first declaration to Madame de Berny. Madame de Mortsauf could easily be Madame de Berny with all her tenderness and sympathy, or she could be Madame Hanska. The intense maternal love of the heroine could represent either, but especially the latter. M. de Mortsauf could be either M. de Berny or M. de Hanski. Balzac left Madame de Berny and became enraptured with Madame de Castries, and had had a similar infatuation for Madame d’Abrantes, just as Felix made Madame de Mortsauf jealous by his devotion to Lady Arabelle Dudley. It will be remembered that Madame Hanska was suspicious of Balzac’s relations with an English lady, Countess Visconti, although the novelist states that he had written this work before he knew Madame Visconti. The novelist has doubtless combined traits of various women in a single character, but the fact still remains that he was depicting life as he knew it, even if he did not attempt exact portraiture.
While the famous Vicomtesse de Beauseant (La Femme abandonnee) has many characteristics of the Duchesse d’Abrantes, and some of those of Madame de Berny, and La Femme abandonnee was written the year Balzac severed his relations with his Dilecta. But it is especially in the gentleness and patience portrayed in Madame Firmiani, in the affection and self-sacrifice of Pauline de Villenoix for Louis Lambert, and the devotion of Pauline Gaudin to Raphael in La Peau de Chagrin that Madame de Berny is most strikingly represented. She was all this and more to Balzac. Furthermore, he may have obtained from her his historical color for Un Episode sous la Terreur, just as he was influenced by Madame Junot in writing stories of the Empire and Corsican vengeance.
It was perhaps to avoid recognition of the heroine and to revenge himself on Madame de Castries that he made the Duchesse de Langeais enter a convent and die, after her failure to master the Marquis de Montriveau, while for his part the hero soon forgot her.
Soon after introducing Madame de Mortsauf (Le Lys dans la Vallee), Balzac compares her to the fragrant heather gathered on returning from the Villa Diodati. After studying carefully his long period of association with Madame Hanska, one can see the importance which the Villa Diodati had in his life. This is only another incident, small though it be, showing how this woman impressed herself so deeply on the novelist that almost unconsciously he brought memories of his Predilecta into his work. It has been shown that she served as a model for some of his most attractive heroines; was honored, under different names, with the dedication of three works besides the one dedicated to her daughter; and was the originator of one of his most popular novels for young girls, while many traces of herself and her family connections are found throughout the whole Comedie humaine.
Though by far the most important of them all, she was only one of the many etrangeres he knew. As has been observed, he knew women of Russia, Poland, Germany, Austria, England, Italy and Spain, and had traveled in most of these countries; hence one is not surprised at the large number of foreign women who have appeared in his work. Among the most noted of these are Lady Brandon (La Grenadiere); Lady Dudley (Le Lys dans la Vallee); Madame Varese (Massimilla Doni); la Duchesse de Rhetore (Albert Savarus), who was in reality Madame Hanska, although presented as being Italian; Madame Claes (La Recherche de l’Absolu), of Spanish origin though born in Brussels; Paquita Valdes (La Fille aux Yeux d’Or); and the Corsican Madame Luigi Porta (La Vendetta).
In regard to Balzac’s various women friends, J. W. Sherer has very appropriately observed: “And the man was worthy of them: the student of his work knows what a head he had; the student of his life, what a heart.”
Glossary of Characters in ‘La Comédie humaine’
Readers can view information on characters in Balzac’s ‘The Human Comedy’ by clicking below on each character’s corresponding initial:
A B C D E F G H I J
K L M N O P Q R S
T U V W X Y Z
A
ABRAMKO, Polish Jew of gigantic strength, thoroughly devoted to the broker, Elie Magus, whose porter he was, and whose daughter and treasures he guarded with the aid of three fierce dogs, in 1844, in a old house on the Minimes road hard by the Palais Royale, Paris. Abramko had allowed himself to be compromised in the Polish insurrection and Magus was interested in saving him. Cousin Pons.
ADELE, sturdy, good-hearted Briarde servant of Denis Rogron and his sister, Sylvie, from 1824 to 1827 at Provins. Contrary to her employers, she displayed much sympathy and pity for their youthful cousin, Pierrette Lorrain. Pierrette.
ADELE, chambermaid of Madame du Val-Noble at the time when the latter was maintained so magnificently by the stockbroker, Jacques Falleix, who failed in 1929. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life.
ADOLPHE, slight, blonde young man employed at the shop of the shawl merchant, Fritot, in the Bourse quarter, Paris, at the time of the reign of Louis Philippe. Gaudissart II.
ADOLPHUS, head of the banking firm of Adolphus & Company of Manheim, and father of the Baroness Wilhelmine d’Aldrigger. The Firm of Nucingen.
AGATHE (Sister), nee Langeais, nun of the convent of Chelles, and, with her sister Martha and the Abbe de Marolles, a refugee under the Terror in a poor house of the Faubourg Saint-Martin, Paris. An Episode Under the Terror.
AIGLEMONT (General, Marquis Victor d’), heir of the Marquis d’Aiglemont and nephew of the dowager Comtesse de Listomere-Landon; born in 1783. After having been the lover of the Marechale de Carigliano, he married, in the latter part of 1813 (at which time he was one of the youngest and most dashing colonels of the French cavalry), Mlle. Julie de Chatillonest, his cousin, with whom he resided successively at Touraine, Paris and Versailles.* He took part in the great struggle of the Empire; but the Restoration freed him from his oath to Napoleon, restored his titles, entrusted to him a station in the Body Guard, which gave him the rank of general, and later made him a peer of France. Gradually he forsook his wife, whom he deceived on account of Madame de Serizy. In 1817 the Marquis d’Aiglemont became the father of a daughter (See Helene d’Aiglemont) who was his image physically and morally; his last three children came into the world during a liaison between the Marquise d’Aiglemont and the brilliant diplomat, Charles de Vandenesse. In 1827 the general, as well as his protege and cousin, Godefroid de Beaudenord, was hurt by the fraudulent failure of the Baron de Nucingen. Moreover, he sank a million in the Wortschin mines where he had been speculating with hypothecated securities of his wife’s. This completed his ruin. He went to America, whence he returned, six years later, with a new fortune. The Marquis d’Aiglemont died, overcome by his exertions, in 1833.** At the Sign of the Cat and Racket. The Firm of Nucingen. A Woman of Thirty.
* It appears that the residence of the Marquis d’Aiglemont at Versailles was located at number 57, on the present Avenue de Paris; until recently it was occupied by one of the authors of this work.
** Given erroneously i
n the original as 1835.
AIGLEMONT (Generale, Marquise Julie d’), wife of the preceding; born in 1792. Her father, M. de Chatillonest, advised her against, but gave her in marriage to her cousin, the attractive Colonel Victor d’Aiglemont, in 1813. Quickly disillusioned and attacked from another source by an “inflammation very often fatal, and which is spoken of by women only in confidence,” she sank into a profound melancholy. The death of the Comtesse de Listomere-Landon, her aunt by marriage, deprived her of valuable protection and advice. Shortly thereafter she became a mother and found, in the realization of her new duties, strength to resist the mutual attachment between herself and the young and romantic Englishman, Lord Arthur Ormond Grenville, a student of medicine who had nursed her and healed her bodily ailments, and who died rather than compromise her. Heart-broken, the marquise withdrew to the solitude of an old chateau situated between Moret and Montereau in the midst of a neglected waste. She remained a recluse for almost a year, given over utterly to her grief, refusing the consolations of the Church offered her by the old cure of the village of Saint-Lange. Then she re-entered society at Paris. There, at the age of about thirty, she yielded to the genuine passion of the Marquis de Vandenesse. A child, christened Charles, was born of this union, but he perished at an early age under very tragic circumstances. Two other children, Moina and Abel, were also the result of this love union. They were favored by their mother above the two eldest children, Helene and Gustave, the only ones really belonging to the Marquis d’Aiglemont. Madame d’Aiglemont, when nearly fifty, a widow, and having none of her children remaining alive save her daughter Moina, sacrificed all her own fortune for a dower in order to marry the latter to M. de Saint-Hereen, heir of one of the most famous families of France. She then went to live with her son-in-law in a magnificent mansion overlooking the Esplanade des Invalides. But her daughter gave her slight return for her love. Ruffled one day by some remarks made to her by Madame d’Aiglemont concerning the suspicious devotion of the Marquis de Vandenesse, Moina went so far as to fling back at her mother the remembrance of the latter’s own guilty relations with the young man’s father. Terribly overcome by this attack, the poor woman, who was a physical wreck, deaf and subject to heart disease, died in 1844. A Woman of Thirty.
AIGLEMONT (Helene d’), eldest daughter of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d’Aiglemont; born in 1817. She and her brother Gustave were neglected by her mother for Charles, Abel and Moina. On this account Helene became jealous and defiant. When about eight years old, in a paroxysm of ferocious hate, she pushed her brother Charles into the Bievre, where he was drowned. This childish crime always passed for a terrible accident. When a young woman — one Christmas night — Helene eloped with a mysterious adventurer who was being tracked by justice and who was, for the time being, in hiding at the home of the Marquis Victor d’Aiglemont, at Versailles. Her despairing father sought her vainly. He saw her no more till seven years later, and then only once, when on his return from America to France. The ship on which he returned was captured by pirates, whose captain, “The Parisian,” the veritable abductor of Helene, protected the marquis and his fortune. The two lovers had four beautiful children and lived together in the most perfect happiness, sharing the same perils. Helene refused to follow her father. In 1835, some months after the death of her husband, Madame d’Aiglemont, while taking the youthful Moina to a Pyrenees watering-place, was asked to aid a poor sufferer. It was her daughter, Helene, who had just escaped shipwreck, saving only one child. Both presently succumbed before the eyes of Madame d’Aiglemont. A Woman of Thirty.
AIGLEMONT (Gustave d’), second child of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d’Aiglemont, and born under the Restoration. His first appearance is while still a child, about 1827 or 1828, when returning in company with his father and his sister Helene from the presentation of a gloomy melodrama at the Gaite theatre. He was obliged to flee hastily from a scene, which violently agitated Helene, because it recalled the circumstances surrounding the death of his brother, some two or three years earlier. Gustave d’Aiglemont is next found in the drawing-room at Versailles, where the family is assembled, on the same evening of the abduction of Helene. He died at an early age of cholera, leaving a widow and children for whom the Dowager Marquise d’Aiglemont showed little love. A Woman of Thirty.
AIGLEMONT (Charles d’), third child of the Marquis and the Marquise d’Aiglemont, born at the time of the intimacy of Madame d’Aiglemont with the Marquis de Vandenesse. He appears but a single time, one spring morning about 1824 or 1825, then being four years old. He was out walking with his sister Helene, his mother and the Marquis de Vandenesse. In a sudden outburst of jealous hate, Helene pushed the little Charles into the Bievre, where he was drowned. A Woman of Thirty.
AIGLEMONT (Moina d’), fourth child and second daughter of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d’Aiglemont. (See Comtesse de Saint-Hereen.) A Woman of Thirty.
AIGLEMONT (Abel d’), fifth and last child of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d’Aiglemont, born during the relations of his mother with M. de Vandenesse. Moina and he were the favorites of Madame d’Aiglemont. Killed in Africa before Constantine. A Woman of Thirty.
AJUDA-PINTO (Marquis Miguel d’), Portuguese belonging to a very old and wealthy family, the oldest branch of which was connected with the Bragance and the Grandlieu houses. In 1819 he was enrolled among the most distinguished dandies who graced Parisian society. At this same period he began to forsake Claire de Bourgogne, Vicomtesse de Beauseant, with whom he had been intimate for three years. After having caused her much uneasiness concerning his real intentions, he returned her letters, on the intervention of Eugene de Rastignac, and married Mlle. Berthe de Rochefide. Father Goriot. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. In 1832 he was present at one of Madame d’Espard’s receptions, where every one there joined in slandering the Princesse de Cadignan before Daniel d’Arthez, then violently enamored of her. The Secrets of a Princess. Towards 1840, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, then a widower, married again — this time Mlle. Josephine de Grandlieu, third daughter of the last duke of this name. Shortly thereafter, the marquis was accomplice in a plot hatched by the friends of the Duchesse de Grandlieu and Madame du Guenic to rescue Calyste du Guenic from the clutches of the Marquise de Rochefide. Beatrix.
AJUDA-PINTO (Marquise Berthe d’), nee Rochefide. Married to the Marquis Miguel d’Ajuda-Pinto in 1820. Died about 1849. Beatrix.
AJUDA-PINTO (Marquise Josephine d’), daughter of the Duc and Duchesse Ferdinand de Grandlieu; second wife of the Marquis Miguel d’Ajuda-Pinto, her kinsman by marriage. Their marriage was celebrated about 1840. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life.
ALAIN (Frederic), born about 1767. He was clerk in the office of Bordin, procureur of Chatelet. In 1798 he lent one hundred crowns in gold to Monegod his life-long friend. This sum not being repaid, M. Alain found himself almost insolvent, and was obliged to take an insignificant position at the Mont-de-Piete. In addition to this he kept the books of Cesar Birotteau, the well-known perfumer. Monegod became wealthy in 1816, and he forced M. Alain to accept a hundred and fifty thousand francs in payment of the loan of the hundred crowns. The good man then devoted his unlooked-for fortune to philanthropies in concert with Judge Popinot. Later, at the close of 1825, he became one of the most active aides of Madame de la Chanterie and her charitable association. It was M. Alain who introduced Godefroid into the Brotherhood of the Consolation. The Seamy Side of History.
ALBERTINE, Madame de Bargeton’s chambermaid, between the years 1821 and 1824. Lost Illusions.
ALBON (Marquis d’), court councillor and ministerial deputy under the Restoration. Born in 1777. In September, 1819, he went hunting in the edge of the forest of l’Isle-Adam with his friend Philippe de Sucy, who suddenly fell senseless at the sight of a poor madwoman whom he recognized as a former mistress, Stephanie de Vandieres. The Marquis d’Albon, assisted by two passers by, M. and Mme. de Granville, resuscitated M. de Sucy. Then the marquis returned, at his friend’s entreat
y, to the home of Stephanie, where he learned from the uncle of this unfortunate one the sad story of the love of his friend and Madame de Vandieres. Farewell.
ALBRIZZI (Comtesse), a friend, in 1820, at Venice, of the celebrated melomaniac, Capraja. Massimilla Doni.
ALDRIGGER (Jean-Baptiste, Baron d’), born in Alsace in 1764. In 1800 a banker at Strasbourg, where he was at the apogee of a fortune made during the Revolution, he wedded, partly through ambition, partly through inclination, the heiress of the Adolphuses of Manheim. The young daughter was idolized by every one in her family and naturally inherited all their fortune after some ten years. Aldrigger, created baron by the Emperor, was passionately devoted to the great man who had bestowed upon him his title, and he ruined himself, between 1814 and 1815, by believing too deeply in “the sun of Austerlitz.” At the time of the invasion, the trustworthy Alsatian continued to pay on demand and closed up his bank, thus meriting the remark of Nucingen, his former head-clerk: “Honest, but stoobid.” The Baron d’Aldrigger went at once to Paris. There still remained to him an income of forty-four thousand francs, reduced at his death, in 1823, by more than half on account of the expenditures and carelessness of his wife. The latter was left a widow with two daughters, Malvina and Isaure. The Firm of Nucingen.
ALDRIGGER (Theodora-Marguerite-Wilhelmine, Baronne d’), nee Adolphus. Daughter of the banker Adolphus of Manheim, greatly spoiled by her parents. In 1800 she married the Strasbourg banker, Aldrigger, who spoiled her as badly as they had done and as later did the two daughters whom she had by her husband. She was superficial, incapable, egotistic, coquettish and pretty. At forty years of age she still preserved almost all her freshness and could be called “the little Shepherdess of the Alps.” In 1823, when the baron died, she came near following him through her violent grief. The following morning at breakfast she was served with small pease, of which she was very fond, and these small pease averted the crisis. She resided in the rue Joubert, Paris, where she held receptions until the marriage of her younger daughter. The Firm of Nucingen.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1551