The Human Comedy

by Honoré de Balzac

  “A ship was leaving for the Levant, and all the arrangements were made. Bianca aided in the preparations I dictated to my accomplice. To avoid suspicion, Bianca was to join us at Smyrna. In a single night, the hole was cut larger, and we descended into the secret treasury of Venice. What a night! I saw four full bins of gold; in the anteroom, silver was stacked in two great piles with a pathway between for crossing the room, and the coins stood five feet high against the walls. I thought the jailer would go mad, he was singing, leaping about, laughing, frolicking in the gold; I threatened to strangle him if he wasted time or made any more noise. In his joy, he failed at first to notice a table piled with diamonds. I threw myself on them nimbly enough to load up my sailor’s smock and my trouser pockets. Good Lord! And I didn’t take even a third of what was there. Beneath the table were gold ingots. I persuaded my companion to load gold into as many sacks as we could carry, pointing out that this was the only way to avoid detection abroad. ‘The pearls, the jewelry, the diamonds would mark us,’ I told him. Avid as we were, still we couldn’t take away more than two thousand pounds in gold, which already required six trips through the prison to load the gondola. The sentinel at the canal gate had been bribed with a sack holding ten pounds in gold. As for the two gondoliers, they believed they were simply doing a job for the republic.

  “We left at daybreak. When we were in the open sea, and I recalled the events of the night—when I remembered the sensations I had experienced, saw again that enormous treasury where, by my calculations, I had left behind thirty million in silver and twenty million in gold, several millions more in diamonds, pearls, and rubies—I was struck by a fit of madness. I had gold fever.

  “We disembarked at Smyrna and immediately set sail again for France. As we boarded the French ship, by God’s grace I was rid of my accomplice. At the time I didn’t grasp the full effect of this mishap, which delighted me. We had been so agitated, pressing on in a daze with barely a word between us, waiting until we should be safely far away to relax. It is not surprising that the strange fellow should have lost his head. But you will see how God eventually punished me. I did not rest easy until I had sold off two-thirds of my diamonds in London and Amsterdam, and converted my gold into commercial tender.

  “For five years, I hid out in Madrid; then, in 1770, I returned to Paris under a Spanish name and led a dazzling life. Bianca had died. Then, in the midst of my dissipations, and with a fortune of six million, I was stricken blind. I am convinced that the affliction is the consequence of my time in the dungeon, my work digging the tunnel—unless my capacity to see gold somehow was an abuse of the visual faculty that predestined me to lose my sight.

  “At the time, I was in love with a woman to whom I expected to bind my own destiny. I had told her the secret of my identity—she belonged to a powerful family—and I had great hopes for Louis XV’s evident favor toward me. I put my trust in that young woman, who was a friend of Madame du Barry. She urged me to consult a renowned oculist in London, but after several months’ stay in that city, she abandoned me in Hyde Park; she stripped me of my whole fortune and left me without resources—for, as I was obliged to hide my name, lest it deliver me to the vengeance of Venice, I could not call on anyone for help; I feared Venice.

  “My disability was exploited by spies that woman had set upon me. I’ll spare you tales of adventures worthy of Gil Blas. Your Revolution occurred. I was forced into the Quinze-Vingts shelter, where that woman had me committed after holding me for two years in the Bicêtre asylum as insane. I was never able to kill her as I couldn’t see and as I was too poor to pay someone to do it. If, before losing Benedetto Carpi, my Venetian jailer, I had asked him to set down the exact location of my dungeon cell, I could have recognized the treasury, acknowledged my crime, and returned to Venice when Napoleon abolished the republic there.

  “But now, never mind my blindness, let’s be off to Venice! I will find the prison door, I will see the gold through the walls, I will sense it beneath the waters that flow above it. The events that have overthrown Venice’s powers are such that the secret of the treasure trove must have died with Vendramino, Bianca’s brother, a doge who I had hoped would arrange my peace with the Council of Ten. I sent missives to the First Consul, I proposed a treaty with the Austrian emperor—they all dismissed me as a madman! Come now, let us leave for Venice: We leave as beggars and we’ll return as princes! We’ll buy back my properties and you will be my heir, the Prince of Varese!”

  Dazzled by this pronouncement, which in my imagination expanded into the dimensions of a poem, I gazed at the sight of his white head, and there before the dark water of the Bastille moats, water as still as that in the Venice canals, I made no answer. Facino Cane must surely have felt that I was judging him, as everyone else had done, with disdainful pity, for he waved his hand in a gesture that evoked all the philosophy of despair. The tale must have carried him back to his happy times in Venice; he seized his clarinet and dolefully played a Venetian song, a barcarolle for which he drew once more on his first talent, the talent of a patrician in love. It was something like the psalm “Super flumina Babylonis.” My eyes filled with tears. If a few late-night strollers happened along boulevard Bourdon just then, they probably stopped to listen to that ultimate prayer of the exile, the last longing for a lost name, touched with the memory of Bianca. But soon gold took the upper hand again, and that fateful passion stamped out the youthful gleam.

  “That treasure-house,” he whispered, “I can still see it, bright as a dream. I’m strolling through it, the diamonds sparkle, I am not so blind as you think: Gold and diamonds light my night, the night of the last Facino Cane—for my title will pass to the Memmi clan. Ah, Lord! The murderer’s punishment has begun so very early! Ave Maria . . .”

  He recited a few prayers that I did not hear.

  “We’ll go to Venice!” I cried when he stood up.

  “So I have found myself the right man!” he exclaimed, his face aflame.

  I gave him my arm and took him home. He shook my hand at the door of the Quinze-Vingts, just as several people from the wedding party passed by on their way home, shouting and carousing their heads off.

  “Shall we leave tomorrow?” asked the old man.

  “As soon as we’ve put together some money.”

  “But we can go on foot, I’ll beg alms along the way . . . I’m sturdy, and a person is young when he sees gold ahead.”

  Facino Cane died during the winter, after a two-month illness. The poor man had suffered a bad cold.

  Paris, March 1836

  Translated by Linda Asher

  ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMANKIND

  To Léon Gozlan, in sincere literary fellowship

  THERE are two very different parties to be found at nearly every Parisian ball or rout. First the official party, peopled by its invitees, a fine crowd of very bored people. Everyone poses for his neighbor. Most of the young women have come solely for the sake of one person. Once each is satisfied that for this person she is the most beautiful woman of all, and that a few others have formed the same opinion, then—after exchanging a few trivial sentences (“Will you be leaving soon for La Crampade?” “Didn’t Madame de Portenduère sing beautifully!” “Who is that little woman with so many diamonds?”) or tossing out a handful of epigrammatic remarks of the sort that cause fleeting pleasure and lasting wounds—the crowd thins, the indifferent guests go on their way, the candles burn down into their rings. But with this the mistress of the house holds back a few artists, people of good cheer, friends, saying, “Stay, we’re having a late supper among ourselves.” They gather in the little drawing room. Here the second, true party begins, a party in which, as under the ancien régime, everyone hears what is said, in which the conversation is shared in by all, in which each is obliged to display his wit and contribute to the public amusement. All is in high relief; openhearted laughter replaces the starchy airs that, in society, dull the prettiest faces. In short, where the rout ends, pleasure begins
. The rout, that dreary review of fashionable fineries, that parade of well-dressed self-infatuations, is one of those English inventions currently mechanifying the other nations. England seems determined to see the entire world bored just as she is, and just as bored as she. This second party is thus, in France, in a few houses, a welcome affirmation of the spirit that was once ours in this ebullient land. But alas, few houses thus affirm, and for a very simple reason: If people rarely take part in these suppers today, it is because there have never been, under any regime, fewer people settled, established, and secure than under the reign of Louis Philippe, in which the Revolution has begun a second time, legally. Everyone strives toward some goal or scurries after fortune. Time has become the dearest commodity on the market, and so no one can indulge in the prodigious prodigality of returning home a day after leaving, with no plans save to sleep late. Thus, that second party is found today only in the homes of women endowed with the means to open their salons; and since July 1830, such women can be counted on the fingers of one hand in Paris. Braving the mute opposition of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, two or three women, among them Madame la Marquise d’Espard and Mademoiselle des Touches, have declined to abandon the influence they once held over Paris and have not closed their doors.

  The salon of Mademoiselle des Touches, celebrated in Paris, is the last refuge for the lost art of French conversation, with its hidden profundity, its thousand digressions, its exquisite politesse. There you will still find manners of genuine grace, despite all the conventions of etiquette; you will find talk enjoyed with abandon, despite the innate reserve of the comme il faut set; above all, you will find noble and magnanimous ideas. There no one thinks of keeping his thoughts to himself with a mind to penning a drama, and in an anecdote no one sees a book to be written. In short, the hideous skeleton of a desperate, moribund literature never walks through the door when a felicitous jape is made or an interesting subject raised. The memory of one such evening has remained with me particularly, less for a tale told in confidence, by which the illustrious de Marsay laid bare one of the deepest recesses of the female heart, than for the observations his account inspired concerning the changes wrought in French womankind since the fateful July revolution.

  That evening, chance had assembled a small crowd whose indisputable talents have earned them reputations all across Europe. This is not an appeal to French national pride, for there were more than a few foreigners among us. But it was not in fact the most famous who shone brightest that evening. Ingenious repartee, subtle observations, sparkling gibes, pictures painted with brilliant clarity came thick and fast in a spontaneous, effervescent rush, offered up without arrogance or artifice, spoken with sincerity, and savored with delight. Above all, the guests shone by their refinement and their inventiveness, which were nothing short of artistic. You will find elegant manners elsewhere in Europe—you will find cordiality, bonhomie, sophistication—but only in Paris, in this salon, and in those of whom I’ve just spoken, does there flourish the special wit that gives all these social virtues a pleasing, multifaceted unity, a sort of fluvial momentum by which that profusion of musings, aphorisms, tales, and pages from history wend their way in an easy and untrammeled flow. Paris alone, the capital of taste, possesses the secret that makes of conversation a joust, in which every temperament is encapsulated in a quip, in which each has his say, all his experience condensed in a word, in which all find amusement, refreshment, and exercise. And only there, too, will you truly exchange your ideas; there you will not, like the dolphin in the fable, carry a monkey on your shoulders; there you will be understood, with no danger of wagering gold against pot metal. Secrets artfully betrayed, exchanges both light and deep, everything undulates, spins, changes luster and color with each passing sentence. Keen judgments and breathless narrations follow one upon the next. Every eye listens, every gesture is a question, every glance an answer. There, in a word, all is perspicuity and reflection. Never did the phenomenon of speech, to which, when carefully studied and skillfully wielded, an actor or storyteller owes his glory, cast so overpowering a spell on me. I was not the only one bewitched by this magic; it was a delicious evening for all of us. The conversation soon fell into an anecdotal mood, its precipitous course ferrying some curious confidences, several portraits, a thousand follies, making that delightful improvisation utterly untranslatable. But if these things are told with all their candor intact, all their natural forthrightness, all their illusory aimlessness, perhaps you will fully grasp the charm of a true French party, captured at the moment when the sweetest companionship makes everyone forget his own interests, his exclusive self-love, or, if you like, his pretensions.

  Toward two in the morning, our supper winding down, no one was left at the table but intimate friends, tempered by fifteen years’ frequentation, or people of great taste, well bred and worldly. By an unspoken, unquestioned convention, everyone renounced his importance at supper. Absolute equality was the order of the night, though there was no one who was not entirely proud to be who he was. Mademoiselle des Touches keeps her guests at the table until they go on their way, having often observed the great mental change that takes place when one is forced to move. Between the dining room and the drawing room, the spell is broken. According to Sterne, the ideas of a freshly shaved author are not what they were just a few minutes before. If Sterne is right, could we not make so bold as to claim that the mood of a crowd of tablemates is no longer their mood when they have returned to the drawing room? Gone is the headiness of the atmosphere; no more does the eye gaze over the gleaming disarray of dessert, bathed in the benevolence, the salutary idleness of mind that settles over a man with a nicely filled belly, comfortably ensconced in one of those well-cushioned chairs that can be had nowadays. Perhaps people speak more freely over dessert, in the company of fine wines, come that delicious moment when each can rest his elbow on the table and his head on his hand—and not only speak but listen as well. Digestion nearly always sharpens the mind, but it can be silent or voluble, depending on the temperament. Everyone finds his own pleasure. Let us take this preamble as necessary to prepare you for the charms of a story told by a famous man, now deceased, portraying the innocent Jesuitism of womankind with the finesse peculiar to those who have seen much of life, and which makes of statesmen such captivating raconteurs, when, like the Princes de Talleyrand and von Metternich, they consent to recount their experiences.

  De Marsay, named prime minister six months before, had already given evidence of superior abilities. Although his longtime acquaintances were not surprised to see him display all the varied talents and aptitudes of a statesman, one might well wonder if he knew himself to be a great politician from the start or if he evolved in the heat of circumstances. This very question had just been put to him, in a philosophical frame of mind, by a man of intelligence and discernment whom he had named as prefect, a veteran journalist whose admiration for de Marsay was untainted by that vinegary dash of disparagement by which, in Paris, one superior man exculpates himself for admiring another.

  “Was there, in your earlier existence, some deed, some thought, some desire that taught you the nature of your vocation?” asked Émile Blondet. “For surely, like Newton, we all have our apple, revealing our true calling as it falls.”

  “There was,” answered de Marsay. “I’ll tell you the story.”

  Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men—de Marsay’s private circle—everyone then sat back, each in his own pose, and fixed their eyes on the prime minister. Need it be said that the servants had all withdrawn, that the doors had been shut and the portieres pulled? So deep was the silence that the coachmen’s muted conversation could be heard from the courtyard, and the stamping and snorting of the horses, impatient to be back in their stables.

  “One quality alone makes a statesman, my friends,” said the minister, playing with his gold- and mother-of-pearl knife, “an unfailing self-mastery, a talent for grasping the full import of an event, however fortuitous it
may seem—in short, the possession of a cool-headed, disinterested self deep inside, who observes, as if from without, all the movements of our life, our passions, our emotions, and who in all things whispers to us the decree of a sort of moral multiplication table.”

  “Which explains why there are so few statesmen in France,” said old Lord Dudley.

  “Where the sentiments are concerned, this is a dreadful thing,” the minister resumed. “And so, when that phenomenon appears in a young man—think of Richelieu: a letter informs him that his benefactor Concini will be murdered the next morning at ten, and he sleeps until noon!—when that phenomenon occurs in a young man, say Pitt or Napoleon, then he is a monster. I myself became that monstrosity at a very early age, and all thanks to a woman.”

  “I would have thought,” said Madame de Montcornet, with a smile, “that we women unmade many more politicians than we made.”

  “The monster of which I speak is a monster only because he resists you,” replied de Marsay, archly bowing his head.

  “If this is to be a tale of amorous adventure,” said the Baronne de Nucingen, “may I ask that it not be interrupted by incidental reflections?”