The Unknown Masterpiece

by Honoré de Balzac

  It had occasioned him no surprise, therefore, albeit a certain anxiety, on December 31, 1830, to be walking, during one of our midwinter thaws, close behind a woman whose clothes indicated a profound, radical, long-standing, indeed inveterate poverty, no prettier than so many others he saw every evening at the Théâtre des Bouffons, at the Opéra, in the salons, and certainly not so young as Madame de Manerville, from whom he had obtained the promise of a rendezvous this very day and who may still have been expecting him. Still there was something so tender yet so fierce in the intense glances the creature kept darting at him—so much suffering, so many stifled pleasures! And she had blushed so furiously when, emerging from a shop where she had remained a quarter of an hour, her eyes met those of the Milanese nobleman who had waited for her a few steps away!... There were, in fact, so many yets that the count, overcome by one of those furious temptations for which there is no name in any language, even in the vocabulary of orgy, had set off in pursuit of this woman in just the way an old Parisian hunts down shopgirls. As he walked along, sometimes behind, sometimes ahead of her, he scrutinized every detail of her person and attire, hoping to dislodge the absurd and insensate desire which had taken possession of his brain; he soon realized that this examination was affording him a deeper pleasure than the kind he had tasted the day before in contemplating, under the ripples of a perfumed bath, the irreproachable forms of a cherished mistress. From time to time this unknown creature would lower her head and give him the sidelong glance of a tethered goat; then, realizing she was still pursued, she walked faster as though to escape. Yet when a crush of carriages or some other incident brought Andrea close, he saw her flinch under his gaze without anything in her features betraying annoyance. These sure signs of an emotional struggle provided the ultimate spur to the unruly dreams which were exciting him, and he raced down the rue Froidmanteau which, after many false starts, the woman suddenly entered, imagining she had eluded her pursuer. He was indeed astonished by this maneuver. Night had fallen. Two heavily rouged creatures drinking cassis at a wineshop counter caught sight of the young woman and called to her. She stopped on the threshold, answered their friendly compliments by a few soft-spoken words, and continued on her way. Andrea, still walking behind her, saw her vanish into one of the darkest doorways on this street, the name of which was still unknown to him. The repellent aspect of the house the heroine of his fantasy had just entered gave him a feeling close to nausea. Stepping back to examine the premises, he found a nasty-looking fellow at his side, and asked him what kind of place this was. The man, clasping a knotty stick in his right hand and resting his left on his hip, answered with a single word: “Joker!” But as he continued staring at the Italian under the streetlamp, his countenance assumed a conciliatory expression.

  “Oh, excuse me, monsieur,” he went on, suddenly changing his tone. “There’s a restaurant, too, a sort of table d’hôte, but the cooking’s terrible—they put cheese in the soup! Perhaps that’s what monsieur is looking for? It’s easy to see from his clothes that monsieur is Italian; Italians are quite fond of velvet—and of cheese. If monsieur would like me to show him a better restaurant, my aunt lives nearby, and she’s very fond of foreigners.”

  Andrea pulled his cloak up to his mustache and hurried out of the street, repelled by this unpleasant individual whose garments and gestures closely matched the wretched house into which the unknown woman had just vanished. He was relieved to return to the innumerable comforts of his lodgings, and spent the rest of the evening at the Marquise d’Espard’s in an attempt to purge the contamination of this folly which had so tyrannically preoccupied him for a good part of the day. Yet after he had gone to bed, in the stillness of the night, the day’s vision returned, even more distinct and vivid than in reality. The unknown woman was still walking ahead of him: occasionally, as she stepped over a gutter, she raised her skirt and showed a shapely leg; her hips shifted nervously at every step. Once again Andrea longed to speak to her, and—he, Marcosini, a Milanese nobleman!—dared not. Then she entered the dark doorway which swallowed her up, and he chided himself for not having followed her. “For after all,” he said to himself, “if she was avoiding me and wanted to put me off the scent, that means she’s attracted to me. With women of her kind, resistance is a proof of love. If I had gone a little further with this business, I might have encountered something really disgusting, but at least I’d be able to sleep in peace.” The count was in the habit of analyzing his keenest sensations, as men involuntarily do whose brains are as active as their hearts, and he was amazed to see the unknown woman of the rue Froidmanteau again, not in the ideal majesty of visions but in all the nakedness of her distressing reality. Yet if his fantasy had stripped this woman of her livery of wretchedness, she would have been spoiled for him, for he wanted her, he desired her, he loved her with her muddy stockings, her down-at-the-heel shoes, her battered straw bonnet! He wanted her in that very house he had seen her enter! “Am I enslaved by vice?” he asked himself, with some alarm. “I haven’t come to that—not yet! I’m twenty-three years old, and I’m hardly an old roué.” The very energy of his obsession reassured him a little. This strange struggle, this reflection, and this love of the chase might with good reason surprise some persons accustomed to the ways of Paris; but it must be borne in mind that Count Andrea Marcosini was not a Frenchman.

  Raised by two abbés who, on the instructions of a pious father, rarely granted him any freedom whatever, Andrea had not loved a cousin at eleven, nor at twelve seduced his mother’s chambermaid; he had not frequented those academies where the most advanced instruction is not the kind provided by the State. Moreover, he had lived in Paris only a few years: he was therefore still open to those sudden and intense impressions against which French education and manners form so powerful a shield. In southern countries, grand passions are frequently generated by no more than a glance. A Gascon nobleman of the count’s acquaintance who had learned to temper a powerful sensibility by powerful reflection, accumulating a thousand little defenses against sudden paroxysms of head and heart, had advised Marcosini to indulge at least once a month in some magisterial orgy in order to dispel these tempests of the soul which, in the absence of such precautions, are likely to explode malapropos. Andrea recalled this advice. “Well,” he resolved, “I’ll begin tomorrow, January first!”

  This explains why Count Andrea Marcosini was wavering so timidly about entering the rue Froidmanteau. The man of fashion embarrassed the lover and hesitated a long while, but after making a final appeal to his courage, the lover walked quite resolutely to the doorway he recognized without difficulty. Here he stopped once more. Was this woman really all he imagined? Wasn’t he about to commit some enormous gaffe? Then he remembered the Italian table d’hôte, and eagerly seized a middle term which would serve both his desire and his repugnance. He would enter the place in order to dine there! Andrea opened the door and walked down a dark hallway at the end of which he found, after some fumbling, a damp and slippery staircase which to an Italian grand seigneur must have seemed little more than a ladder. Climbing the stairs by the light of a small lamp set on the floor and following a strong smell of cooking, he pushed a half-open door and found himself in a low room dingy with smoke and dirt, where a woman out of Leonardo’s caricatures was setting a table for some twenty diners, none as yet present. After a glance around this dim room where the paper dangled in strips from the walls, the count chose a seat near the stove that was hissing and smoking in one corner. Alerted by the sounds this first guest made as he came in and took off his cloak, the maître d’hôtel suddenly appeared. Imagine a tall, thin, wizened chef, endowed with a perfectly enormous nose, darting feverish glances around the room in an attempt to appear conscientious. Catching sight of Andrea, every item of whose appearance suggested great wealth, Signor Giardini bowed respectfully. The count indicated his desire to dine regularly in the company of his compatriots, to take a certain number of meal tickets in advance, and managed to give the
conversation a friendly turn in order to arrive more readily at his real goal. No sooner had he mentioned the unknown woman he was interested in than Signor Giardini made a grotesque gesture and cast a sly glance at his guest, allowing a smile to pass over his lips.

  “Basta!” he exclaimed. “Capisco! Vossignoria has been brought here by two appetites. Signora Gambara hasn’t wasted her time if she’s managed to interest a gentleman as generous as you appear to be. In few words I shall tell you all we know about this poor woman, who is truly to be pitied! The husband is a native of Cremona, I believe, and comes here from Germany, where he intended to create new music and new musical instruments among i Tedeschi! Is that not pitiable?” Giardini inquired with a shrug of the shoulders. “Signor Gambara, who takes himself for a great composer, does not strike me as great in other respects. Galant’uomo though he may be, full of wit and knowledge, on occasion quite agreeable, particularly when he has taken a few glasses of wine—a rare occasion, by reason of his dreadful poverty—he busies himself night and day composing imaginary operas and symphonies instead of trying to earn an honest living. His poor wife is reduced to doing needlework for all sorts of people, some really beyond the pale! What else can she do? She loves her husband like a father and looks after him like a baby! Any number of young men have dined with us to pay their court to the signora, yet none has achieved success,” he announced, emphasizing this last word. “Signora Marianna is a virtuous woman, too virtuous for her own good! Men give nothing for nothing today. And so the poor woman will starve to death! And how do you think the husband rewards such devotion? ... Bah! With not even a smile. Bread and water is all they eat, for not only does this poor devil not earn a sou, he even spends whatever money his wife earns on instruments which he carves and lengthens and shortens and takes apart and puts together until the only sounds they make scare away the cats; then he’s happy! And yet you’ll see—he’s the gentlest and kindest of men, anything but idle, always working. The truth is, he’s mad and doesn’t know it. I’ve seen him filing and forging those instruments of his and eating black bread with an appetite I myself would envy, though I serve the best table in Paris. Yes, eccellenza, a quarter of an hour from now you’ll learn the sort of man I am. I’ve introduced refinements into Italian cooking which will astound you. I am a Neapolitan, eccellenza, which means I am a born chef. But what use is instinct without knowledge? Knowledge! I’ve spent thirty years acquiring knowledge, and you see where it’s brought me. Mine is the story of all men of talent! My discoveries, my experiments have ruined three restaurants in succession, in Naples, in Parma, in Rome. Today, now that I’m reduced to making a trade of my art, I indulge my ruling passions more than ever before. I serve these poor refugees some of my favorite dishes—and that’s how I ruin myself! Nonsense, you’ll say? I’m well aware of the fact; but what can I do? Talent is too much for me: I cannot resist creating a dish which tempts me. These guests of mine always know what’s being served, they can tell if it’s me or my wife who handles the saucepans. And what’s the result? Out of the sixty guests I would see around my table every dinner in the days when I founded this wretched restaurant, no more than twenty come today, and most of those dine on credit, thanks to me! The Piedmontese and the Savoyards have left, but the connoisseurs, the people of taste, the true Italians have stayed with me. And for them I would make any sacrifice! I often give them a dinner for twenty-five sous a head that costs me twice as much to make!”

  Signor Giardini’s aria was so redolent of naïve Neapolitan cunning that the delighted count imagined he was back at a puppet theater.

  “If that’s the case, my dear host,” he replied to the chef quite familiarly, “since chance and your confidences have revealed the secret of your daily sacrifices, permit me to double the sum I pay you.” As he spoke these words, Andrea spun a forty-franc piece on the stove, out of which munificence Signor Giardini religiously returned two francs fifty centimes, not without various discreet gestures which delighted the young nobleman.

  “In a few minutes,” Giardini continued, “you will see your donnina. I’ll seat you next to the husband, and if you want to be in his good graces, talk music. I’ve invited both of them, poor souls! Because of the New Year, I’ve created a special dish in which I believe I’ve surpassed myself...”

  Signor Giardini’s voice was drowned out by the noisy greetings of the guests who arrived quite capriciously, in pairs and singly, following the custom of the table d’hôte. Giardini chose to stand near the count, in order to point out his regular customers. He was determined by his comic turns to bring a smile to the lips of a man whom his Neapolitan instincts identified as a rich patron ripe for plucking.

  “That man,” he said, “is a poor composer who’d like to abandon ballads for opera, but he can’t manage it. He complains about directors, about music dealers, about everyone except himself, and of course he has no crueler enemy. You see what a florid complexion he has, what chubby self-satisfaction, how little effort there is in his features—appropriate for ballads but nothing else. The man who’s with him, the one who looks like a match seller, is one of our greatest musical celebrities, Gigelmi, the greatest orchestra conductor in all Italy; but he’s gone deaf and now he’s ending his days in misery, deprived of the very thing that made his life so beautiful. Oh! Here comes our great Ottoboni, the most naïve old man on earth, but suspected of being the wildest of all those lunatics conspiring to regenerate Italy. I wonder how such a lovable old man could ever be banished?”

  Here Giardini glanced at the count, who, realizing he was being interrogated as to his political allegiances, withdrew into an impassivity altogether Italian.

  “A man obliged to cook for the world must deny himself political opinions, eccellenza,” the chef announced as he continued. “But at the sight of this good man, who resembles a sheep much more than a lion, everyone would say just what I think about him to the Austrian ambassador himself! For that matter, these are times when liberty is no longer proscribed—her turn will come again! Or so these good souls believe,” he whispered in the count’s ear, “and why should I dash their hopes? Though I, eccellenza, I myself have nothing against absolutism: every great talent is absolutist! Well, though Ottoboni has genius, he takes incredible pains for the education of Italy, composes pamphlets to enlighten children and the laboring classes, and apparently has no difficulty smuggling this literature into Italy, making every effort to reawaken the conscience of our poor country, which prefers pleasure to freedom, perhaps with good reason!”

  The count’s expression remained so impassive that the chef could discover no clue to his true political opinions.

  “Ottoboni,” resumed Giardini, “is a saintly man, always ready to help others, beloved by all the refugees, for as you know, eccellenza, a liberal may possess virtues! Ah! There’s a journalist,” he said, indicating a man dressed in the absurd costume once attributed to poets in attics, for his suit was threadbare, his boots cracked, his hat greasy, and his overcoat in a state of deplorable decay. “That poor man, eccellenza, is full of talent and...incorruptible! He’s living in the wrong period: he tells everyone the truth, and no one can bear him. He covers the theater for two obscure papers, though he’s educated enough to write for the big dailies. Poor fellow! The others aren’t worth your notice; vossignoria will soon discover who they are,” he said, realizing that at the sight of the composer’s wife the count was no longer listening to him.

  Seeing Andrea, Signora Marianna gave a start and her cheeks turned bright red.

  “Here he is,” Giardini murmured, squeezing the count’s arm and indicating a very tall man. “You see how pale he is, how serious, poor fellow! His hobbyhorse didn’t run today.”

  Andrea’s amorous fantasies were suddenly disturbed by the spell Gambara’s presence cast upon any artistic nature. The composer was in his early forties, but though his broad forehead from which the hair had receded was furrowed by shallow wrinkles, though a network of blue veins tinged the tran
sparent skin over his hollow temples, though his heavy-lidded dark eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, the lower part of his face, with its calm lines and gentle contours, gave him every appearance of youth. Even a casual observer could see that this man’s passions had been sacrificed to intellect, which alone had aged in some tremendous struggle. Andrea quickly glanced at Marianna, who was watching him. At the sight of her lovely Italian head, its perfect proportions and splendid coloring attesting to one of those organisms in which every human impulse is harmoniously balanced, he measured the abyss separating these two beings chance had united. Pleased by the portent of this disparity between husband and wife, Andrea abandoned any attempt to oppose the sentiment that might raise a barrier between the lovely Marianna and himself. Already, perceiving the calm and steadfast sorrow in Gambara’s melancholy gaze, he entertained a kind of respectful pity for this husband whose sole blessing was his wife. Having expected, from Giardini’s description, the sort of grotesque personage so often encountered in German legends and opera libretti, here was a simple and reserved man whose manners and bearing, quite free of eccentricity, possessed a nobility all their own. Without presenting a trace of luxury, his clothes were more seemly than his extreme poverty warranted, and his immaculate linen testified to the affectionate care that ministered to every detail of his life. With moist eyes, Andrea glanced warmly at Marianna, who did not blush, and her half smile expressed the pride such mute homage inspired. Too beguiled to miss the least indication of a response, the count imagined himself loved, now that he saw how well he was understood. Henceforth he devoted himself to the conquest of the husband rather than of the wife, training all his batteries on poor Gambara who, suspecting nothing, was gulping down Signor Giardini’s bocconi without even tasting them. The count opened the conversation with some banal question, but from Gambara’s first reply he realized that the man’s intelligence, possibly blind on one point, was extremely clear-sighted on all others, and decided that his strategy must not be to flatter this inspired simpleton’s obsessions but rather to attempt to understand his ideas.