Chapter XVIII: Part 18

Of all these stories, hardly one shows genuine greatness except the powerful tragic tale 'La Grande Bretèche,' which was subsequently incorporated in 'Autre étude de femme,' This story of a jealous husband's walling up his wife's lover in a closet of her chamber is as dramatic a piece of writing as Balzac ever did, and is almost if not quite as perfect a short story as any that has since been written in France. 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote' has been mentioned already on account of its importance in the evolution of Balzac's realism, but while a delightful novelette, it is hardly great, its charm coming rather from its descriptions of bourgeois life than from the working out of its central theme, the infelicity of a young wife married to an unfaithful artist. 'Modeste Mignon' is interesting, and more romantic than Balzac's later works were wont to be; but while it may be safely recommended to the average novel-reader, few admirers of its author would wish to have it taken as a sample of their master. 'Béatrix' is a powerful story in its delineation of the weakness of the young Breton nobleman, Calyste du Guénie. It derives a factitious interest from the fact that George Sand is depicted in 'Camille Maupin,' the _nom de plume_ of Mlle. des Touches, and perhaps Balzac himself in Claude Vignon, the critic. Less factitious is the interest derived from Balzac's admirable delineation of a doting mother and aunt, and from his realistic handling of one of the cleverest of his ladies of light reputation, Madame Schontz; his studies of such characters of the _demi-monde_--especially of the wonderful Esther of the 'Splendeurs et misères'--serving plainly, by the way, as a point of departure for Dumas _fils_. Yet 'Béatrix' is an able rather than a truly great book, for it neither elevates nor delights us. In fact, all the stories in this series are interesting rather than truly great; but all display Balzac's remarkable analytic powers. Love, false or true, is of course their main theme; wrought out to a happy issue in 'La Bourse,' a charming tale, or to a death of despair in 'La Grenadière' The childless young married woman is contrasted with her more fortunate friend surrounded by little ones ('Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées'), the heartless coquette flirts once too often ('Le Bal de Sceaux'), the eligible young man is taken in by a scheming mother ('Le Contrat du mariage'), the deserted husband labors to win back his wife ('Honorine'), the tempted wife learns at last the real nature of her peril ('Une Fille d'Éve'); in short, lovers and mistresses, husbands and wives, make us participants of all the joys and sorrows that form a miniature world within the four walls of every house.

The 'Scenes of Provincial Life' number only ten stories, but nearly all of them are masterpieces. They are 'Eugénie Grandet,' 'Le Lys dans la vallée,' 'Ursule Mirouet,' 'Pierrette,' 'Le Curé de Tours,' 'La Rabouilleuse,' 'La Vielle fille' (The Old Maid), 'Le Cabinet des antiques' (The Cabinet of Antiques), 'L'Illustre Gaudissart' (The Illustrious Gaudissart), and 'La Muse du département' (The Departmental Muse). Of these 'Eugénie Grandet' is of course easily first in interest, pathos, and power. The character of old Grandet, the miserly father, is presented to us with Shakespearean vividness, although Eugénie herself has, less than the Shakespearean charm. Any lesser artist would have made the tyrant himself and his yielding wife and daughters seem caricatures rather than living people. It is only the Shakespeares and Balzacs who are able to make their Shylocks and lagos, their Grandets and Philippe Brideaus, monsters and human beings at one and the same time. It is only the greater artists, too, who can bring out all the pathos inherent in the subjection of two gentle women to a tyrant in their own household. But it is Balzac the inimitable alone who can portray fully the life of the provinces, its banality, its meanness, its watchful selfishness, and yet save us through the perfection of his art from the degradation which results from contact with low and sordid life. The reader who rises unaffected from a perusal of 'Eugénie Grandet' would be unmoved by the grief of Priam in the tent of Achilles, or of Othello in the death-chamber of Desdemona.

'Le Lys dans la vallée' has been pronounced by an able French critic to be the worst novel he knows; but as a study of more or less ethereal and slightly morbid love it is characterized by remarkable power. Its heroine, Madame Mortsauf, tied to a nearly insane husband and pursued by a sentimental lover, undergoes tortures of conscience through an agonizing sense of half-failure in her duty. Balzac himself used to cite her when he was charged with not being able to draw a pure woman; but he has created nobler types. The other stories of the group are also decidedly more interesting. The distress of the abbé Birotteau over his landlady's treatment, and the intrigues of the abbé Troubert ('Le Curé de Tours') absorb us as completely as the career of Caesar himself in Mommsen's famous chapter. The woes of the little orphan subjected to the tyranny of her selfish aunt and uncle ('Pierrette'), the struggles of the rapacious heirs for the Mirouet fortune ('Ursule Mirouet,') a story which gives us one of Balzac's purest women, treats interestingly of mesmerism (and may be read without fear by the young), the siege of Mlle. Cormon's mature affections by her two adroit suitors ('Une Vielle fille'), the intrigues against the peace of the d'Esgrignons and the sublime devotion to their interests of the notary Chesnel ('Le Cabinet des antiques'), and finally the ignoble passions that fought themselves out around the senile Jean Jacques Rouget, under the direction of the diabolical ex-soldier Philippe Brideau ('La Rabouilleuse,' sometimes entitled 'Un Ménage de Garcon'), form the absorbing central themes of a group of novels--or rather stories, for few of them attain considerable length--unrivaled in the annals of realistic fiction.

The 'Scenes of Country Life,' comprising 'Les Paysans,' 'Le Médecin de campagne,' and 'Le Curé de village' (The Village Priest), take high rank among their author's works. Where Balzac might have been crudely naturalistic, he has preferred to be either realistic as in the first named admirable novel, or idealistic as in the two latter. Hence he has created characters like the country physician, Doctor Benassis, almost as great a boon to the world of readers as that philanthropist himself was to the little village of his adoption. If Madame Graslin of 'Le Curé de village' fails to reach the height of Benassis, her career has at least a sensational interest which his lacked; and the country curate, the good abbé Bonnet, surely makes up for her lack on the ideal side. This story, by the way, is important for the light it throws on the workings of the Roman Church among the common people; and the description of Madame Graslin's death is one of Balzac's most effective pieces of writing.

We are now brought to the 'Parisian Scenes,' and with the exception of 'Eugénie Grandet,' to the best-known masterpieces. There are twenty titles; but as two of these are collective in character, the number of novels and stories amounts to twenty-four, as follows:--'Le Père Goriot,' 'Illusions perdues,' 'Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes,' 'Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan' (The Secrets of the Princess of Cadignan), 'Histoire des treize' [containing 'Ferragus,' 'La Duchesse de Langeais,' and 'La Fille aux yeux d'or' (The Girl with the Golden Eyes)], 'Sarrasine,' 'Le Colonel Chabert,' 'L'lnterdiction' (The Interdiction), 'Les Parents pauvres' (Poor Relations, including 'La Cousine Bette' and 'Le Cousin Pons'), 'La Messe de l'athée' (The Atheist's Mass), 'Facino Cane,' 'Gobseck,' 'La Maison Nucingen,' 'Un Prince de la Bohème' (A Prince of Bohemia), 'Esquisse d'homme d'affaires' (Sketch of a Business man), 'Gaudissart II.' 'Les Comédiens sans le savoir' (The Unconscious Humorists), 'Les Employés' (The Employees), 'Histoire de César Birotteau,' and 'Les Petits bourgeois' (Little Bourgeois). Of these twenty-four titles six belong to novels, five of which are of great power, nine to novelettes and short stories too admirable to be passed over without notice, eight to novelettes and stories of interest and value which need not, however, detain us, and one, 'Les Petits bourgeois', to a novel of much promise unfortunately left incomplete. 'Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan' is remarkable chiefly as a study of the blind passion that often overtakes a man of letters. Daniel d'Arthez, the author, a fine character and a favorite with Balzac, succumbs to the wiles of the Princess of Cadignan (formerly the dashing and fascinating Duchesse de Maufrigneuse) and is happy in his subjection. The 'Histoire des treize' contains three novelettes, linked together through the fact that in each a band of thirteen young men, sworn to assist one another in conquering society, play an important part. This volume is the most frankly sensational of Balzac's works. 'La Duchesse de Langeais' however, is more than sensational: it gives perhaps Balzac's best description of the Faubourg St. Germain and one of his ablest analyses of feminine character, while in the description of General Montriveau's recognition of the Duchess in the Spanish convent the novelist's dramatic power is seen at its highest. 'La Fille aux yeux d'or,' which concludes the volume devoted to the mysterious brotherhood, may be considered, with 'Sarrasine,' one of the dark closets of the great building known as the 'Comédie humaine.' Both stories deal with unnatural passions, and the first is one of Balzac's most effective compositions. For sheer voluptuousness of style there is little in literature to parallel the description of the boudoir of the uncanny heroine. Very different from these stories is 'Le Colonel Chabert,' the record of the misfortunes of one of Napoleon's heroic soldiers, who after untold hardships returns to France to find his wife married a second time and determined to deny his existence. The law is invoked, but the treachery of the wife induces the noble old man to put an end to the proceedings, after which he sinks into an indigent and pathetic senility. Balzac has never drawn a more heart-moving figure, nor has he ever sounded more thoroughly the depths of human selfishness. But the description of the battle of Eylau and of Chabert's sufferings in retreat would alone suffice to make the story memorable. 'L'Interdiction' is the proper pendant to the history of this unfortunate soldier. In it another husband, the Marquis d'Espard, suffers from the selfishness of his wife, one of the worst characters in the range of Balzac's fiction. That she may keep him from alienating his property to discharge a moral obligation she endeavors to prove him insane. The legal complications which ensue bring forward one of Balzac's great figures, the judge of instruction, Popinot; but to appreciate him the reader must go to the marvelous book itself. 'Gobseck' is a study of a Parisian usurer, almost worthy of a place beside the description of old Grandet; while 'Les Employés' is a realistic study of bureaucratic life, which, besides showing a wonderful familiarity with the details of a world of which Balzac had little personal experience, contains several admirably drawn characters and a sufficient amount of incident. But it is time to leave these sketches and novels in miniature, and to pass by the less important 'Scenes' of this fascinating Parisian life, in order to consider in some detail the five novels of consummate power.

First of these in date of composition, and in popular estimation at least among English readers, comes, 'Le Père Goriot.' It is certainly trite to call the book a French "Lear," but the expression emphasizes the supreme artistic power that could treat the _motif_ of one of Shakespeare's plays in a manner that never forces a disadvantageous comparison with the great tragedy. The retired vermicelli-maker is not as grand a figure as the doting King of Britain, but he is as real. The French daughters, Anastasie, Countess de Restaud, and Delphine, Baroness de Nucingen, are not such types of savage wickedness as Regan and Goneril, but they fit the nineteenth century as well as the British princesses did their more barbarous day. Yet there is no Cordelia in 'Le Père Goriot,' for the pale Victorine Taillefer cannot fill the place of that noblest of daughters. This is but to say that Balzac's bourgeois tragedy lacks that element of the noble that every great poetic tragedy must have. The self-immolation of old Goriot to the cold-hearted ambitions of his daughters is not noble, but his parental passion touches the infinite, and so proves the essential kinship of his creator with the creator of Lear. This touch of the infinite, as in 'Eugénie Grandet,' lifts the book up from the level of a merely masterly study of characters or a merely powerful novel to that of the supreme masterpieces of human genius. The marvelously lifelike description of the vulgar Parisian boarding-house, the fascinating delineation of the character of that king of convicts, Vautrin, and the fine analysis of the ambitions of Rastignac (who comes nearer perhaps to being _the_ hero of the 'Comédie humaine' than any other of its characters, and is here presented to us at the threshold of his successful career) remain in the memory of every reader, but would never alone have sufficed to make Balzac's name worthy of immortality. The infinite quality of Goriot's passion would, however, have conferred this honor on his creator had he never written another book.

'Illusions perdues' and 'Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes' might almost be regarded as one novel in seven parts. More than any other of his works they show the sun of Balzac's genius at its meridian. Nowhere else does he give us plots so absorbing, nowhere else does he bring us so completely in contact with the world his imagination has peopled. The first novel devotes two of its parts to the provinces and one to Paris. The provincial stories centre around two brothers-in-law, David Séchard and Lucien de Rubempré, types of the practical and the artistic intellect respectively. David, after struggling for fame and fortune, succumbs and finds his recompense in the love of his wife Eve, Lucien's sister, one of Balzac's noble women. Lucien, on the other hand, after some provincial successes as a poet, tries the great world of Paris, yields to its temptations, fails ignominiously, and attempts suicide, but is rescued by the great Vautrin, who has escaped from prison and is about to renew his war on society disguised as a Spanish priest. Vautrin has conceived the idea that as he can take no part in society, he will have a representative in it and taste its pleasures through him. Lucien accepts this disgraceful position and plunges once more into the vortex, supported by the strong arm of the king of the convicts. His career and that of his patron form the subject of the four parts of the 'Splendeurs et misères' and are too complicated to be described here. Suffice it to say that probably nowhere else in fiction are the novel of character and the novel of incident so splendidly combined; and certainly nowhere else in the range of his work does Balzac so fully display all his master qualities. That the story is sensational cannot be denied, but it is at least worthy of being called the Iliad of Crime. Nemesis waits upon both Lucien and Vautrin, and upon the poor courtesan Esther whom they entrap in their toils, and when the two former are at last in custody, Lucien commits suicide. Vautrin baffles his acute judge in a wonderful interview; but with his cherished hope cut short by Lucien's death, finally gives up the struggle. Here the novel might have ended; yet Balzac adds a fourth part, in order to complete the career of Vautrin. The famous convict is transformed into a government spy, and engages to use his immense power against his former comrades and in defense of the society he has hitherto warred upon. The artistic propriety of this transformation may be questioned, but not the power and interest of the novel of which it is the finishing touch.

Many readers would put the companion novels 'La Cousine Bette' and 'Le Cousin Pons' at the head of Balzac's works. They have not the infinite pathos of 'Le Père Goriot,' or the superb construction of the first three parts of the 'Splendeurs et misères,' but for sheer strength the former at least is unsurpassed in fiction. Never before or since have the effects of vice in dragging down a man below the level of the lowest brute been so portrayed as in Baron Hulot; never before or since has female depravity been so illustrated as in the diabolical career of Valérie Marneffe, probably the worst woman in fiction. As for Cousine Bette herself, and her power to breed mischief and crime, it suffices to say that she is worthy of a place beside the two chief characters.

'Le Cousin Pons' is a very different book; one which, though pathetic in the extreme, may be safely recommended to the youngest reader. The hero who gives his name to the story is an old musician who has worn out his welcome among his relations, but who becomes an object of interest to them when they learn that his collection of bric-a-brac is valuable and that he is about to die. The intrigues that circulate around this collection and the childlike German, Schmucke, to whom Pons has bequeathed it, are described as only the author of 'Le Curé de Tours' could have succeeded in doing; but the book contains also an almost perfect description of the ideal friendship existing between Pons and Schmucke. One remembers them longer than one does Frazier, the scoundrelly advocate who cheats poor Schmucke; a fact which should be cited against those who urge that Balzac is at home with his vicious characters only.

The last novel of this group, 'César Birotteau,' is the least powerful, though not perhaps the least popular. It is an excellent study of bourgeois life, and therefore fills an important place in the scheme of the 'Comedy,' describing as it does the spreading ambitions of a rich but stupid perfumer, and containing an admirable study of bankruptcy. It may be dismissed with the remark that around the innocent Caesar surge most of the scoundrels that figure in the 'Comédie humaine,' and with the regret that it should have been completed while the far more powerful 'Les Petits bourgeois' was left unfinished.

We now come to the concluding parts of the 'Études de moeurs.' the 'Scenes' describing Political and Military Life. In the first group are five novels and stories: 'L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine' (The Under Side of Contemporary History, a fine story, but rather social than political), 'Une Ténébreuse affaire' (A Shady Affair), 'Un Épisode sous la Terreur,' 'Z. Marcas,' and 'Le Deputé d'Arcis' (The Deputy of Arcis). Of these the 'Episode' is probably the most admirable, although 'Z. Marcas' has not a little strength. The 'Deputé,' like 'Les Petits bourgeois,' was continued by M. Charles Rabou and a considerable part of it is not Balzac's; a fact which is to be regretted, since practically it is the only one of these stories that touches actual politics as the term is usually understood. The military scenes are only two in number, 'Les Chouans' and 'Une Passion dans le désert.' The former of these has been sufficiently described already; the latter is one of the best known of the short stories, but rather deserves a place beside 'La Fille aux yeux d'or.' Indeed, for Balzac's best military scenes we must go to 'Le Colonel Chabert' or to 'Adieu.'

We now pass to those subterranean chambers of the great structure we are exploring, the 'Études philosophiques.' They are twenty in number, four being novels, one a composite volume of tales, and the rest stories. The titles run as follows:--'La Peau de chagrin,' 'L'Élixir de longue vie' (The Elixir of Life), 'Melmoth réconcilié,' 'Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu' (The Anonymous Masterpiece), 'Gambara,' 'Massimila Doni,' 'Le Réquisitionnaire,' 'Adieu,' 'El Verdugo,' 'Les Marana,' 'L'Auberge rouge' (The Red Inn), 'Un Drame au bord de la mer' (A Seaside Drama), 'L'Enfant maudit' (A Child Accursed) 'Maître Cornélius' (Master Cornelius), 'Sur Catherine de Médicis,' 'La Recherche de l'absolu,' 'Louis Lambert,' 'Séraphita,' 'Les Proscrits,' and 'Jésus-Christ en Flandre.'

Of the novels, 'La Peau de chagrin' is easily first. Its central theme is the world-old conflict between the infinite desires and the finite powers of man. The hero, Raphael, is hardly, as M. Barrière asserts, on a level with Hamlet, Faust, and Manfred, but the struggle of his infinite and his finite natures is almost as intensely interesting as the similar struggles in them. The introduction of the talisman, the wild ass's skin that accomplishes all the wishes of its owner, but on condition that it is to shrink away in proportion to the intensity of those wishes, and that when it disappears the owner's life is to end, gave to the story a weird interest not altogether, perhaps, in keeping with its realistic setting, and certainly forcing a disastrous comparison with the three great poems named. But when all allowances are made, one is forced to conclude that 'La Peau de chagrin' is a novel of extraordinary power and absorbing interest; and that its description of its hero's dissipations in the libertine circles of Paris, and its portrayal of the sublime devotion of the heroine Pauline for her slowly perishing lover, are scarcely to be paralleled in literature. Far less powerful are the short stories on similar themes, entitled 'L'Élixir de longue vie,' and 'Melmoth réconcilié' (Melmoth Reconciled), which give us Balzac's rehandling of the Don Juan of Molière and Byron, and the Melmoth of Maturin.

Below the 'Peau de chagrin,' but still among its author's best novels, should be placed 'La Recherche de l'absolu,' which, as its title implies, describes the efforts of a chemist to "prove by chemical analysis the unity of composition of matter." In the pursuit of his philosophic will-o'-the-wisp, Balthazar Claës loses his fortune and sacrifices his noble wife and children. His madness serves, however, to bring into relief the splendid qualities of these latter; and it is just here, in its human rather than in its philosophic bearings, that the story rises to real greatness. Marguerite Claës, the daughter, is a noble heroine; and if one wishes to see how Balzac's characters and ideas suffer when treated by another though an able hand, one has but to read in conjunction with this novel the 'Maître Guérin' of the distinguished dramatist Émile Augier. A proper pendant to this history of a noble genius perverted is 'La Confidence des Ruggieri,' the second part of that remarkable composite 'Sur Catherine de Médicis,' a book which in spite of its mixture of history, fiction, and speculative politics is one of the most suggestive of Balzac's minor productions.

Concerning 'Séraphita' and 'Louis Lambert,' the remaining novels of this series, certain noted mystics assert that they contain the essence of Balzac's genius, and at least suggest the secret of the universe. Perhaps an ordinary critic may content himself with saying that both books are remarkable proofs of their author's power, and that the former is notable for its marvelous descriptions of Norwegian scenery.

Of the lesser members of the philosophic group, nearly all are admirable in their kind and degree. 'Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu' and 'Gambara' treat of the pains of the artistic life and temperament. 'Massimila Doni,' like 'Gambara,' treats of music, but also gives a brilliant picture of Venetian life. 'Le réquisitionnaire,' perhaps the best of Balzac's short stories, deals with the phenomenon of second sight, as 'Adieu' does with that of mental alienation caused by a sudden shock. 'Les Marana' is an absorbing study of the effects of heredity; 'L'Auberge rouge' is an analysis of remorse, as is also 'Un Drame au bord de la mer'; while 'L'Enfant maudit' is an analysis of the effects of extreme sensibility, especially as manifested in the passion of poetic love. Finally, 'Maître Cornelius' is a study of avarice, in which is set a remarkable portrait of Louis XI.; 'Les Proscrits' is a masterly sketch of the exile of Dante at Paris; and 'Jésus-Christ en Flandre' is an exquisite allegory, the most delicate flower, perhaps, of Balzac's genius.

It remains only to say a few words about the third division of the 'Comédie humaine,' viz., the 'Études analytiques.' Only two members of the series, the 'Physiologie du mariage' and the 'Petites misères de la vie conjugale,' were ever completed, and they are not great enough to make us regret the loss of the 'Pathology of Social Life' and the other unwritten volumes. For the two books we have are neither novels nor profound studies, neither great fiction nor great psychology. That they are worth reading for their suggestiveness with regard to such important subjects as marriage and conjugal life goes without saying, since they are Balzac's; but that they add greatly to his reputation, not even his most ardent admirer would be hardy enough to affirm.

And now in conclusion, what can one say about this great writer that will not fall far short of his deserts? Plainly, nothing, yet a few points may be accentuated with profit. We should notice in the first place that Balzac has consciously tried almost every form of prose fiction, and has been nearly always splendidly successful. In analytic studies of high, middle, and low life he has not his superior. In the novel of intrigue and sensation he is easily a master, while he succeeds at least fairly in a form of fiction at just the opposite pole from this, to wit, the idyl ('Le Lys dans la vallée'). In character sketches of extreme types, like 'Gobseck,' his supremacy has long been recognized, and he is almost as powerful when he enters the world of mysticism, whither so few of us can follow him. As a writer of novelettes he is unrivaled and some of his short stories are worthy to rank with the best that his followers have produced. In the extensive use of dialect he was a pioneer; in romance he has 'La Peau de chagrin' and 'La Recherche de l'absolu' to his credit; while some of the work in the tales connected with the name of Catherine de Medici shows what he could have done in historical fiction had he continued to follow Scott. And what is true of the form of his fiction is true of its elements. Tragedy, comedy, melodrama are all within his reach; he can call up tears and shudders, laughter and smiles at will. He knows the whole range of human emotions, and he dares to penetrate into the arcana of passions almost too terrible or loathsome for literature to touch.

In style, in the larger sense of the word, he is almost equally supreme. He is the father of modern realism and remains its greatest exponent. He retains always some of the good elements of romance,--that is to say, he sees the thing as it ought to be,--and he avoids the pitfalls of naturalism, being a painter and not a photographer. In other words, like all truly great writers he never forgets his ideals; but he is too impartial to his characters and has too fast a grip on life to fall into the unrealities of sentimentalism. It is true that he lacked the spontaneity that characterized his great forerunner, Shakespeare, and his great contemporary, George Sand; but this loss was made up by the inevitable and impersonal character of his work when once his genius was thoroughly aroused to action. His laborious method of describing by an accumulation of details postponed the play of his powers, which are at their height in the action of his characters; yet sooner or later the inert masses of his composition were fused into a burning whole. But if Balzac is primarily a dramatist in the creation and manipulation of his characters, he is also a supreme painter in his presentation of scenes. And what characters and what scenes has he not set before us! Over two thousand personages move through the 'Comédie humaine,' whose biographies MM. Cerfberr and Christophe have collected for us in their admirable 'Répertoire de la comédie humaine,' and whose chief types M. Paul Flat has described in the first series of his 'Essais sur Balzac.' Some of these personages are of course shadowy; but an amazingly large number live for us as truly as Shakespeare's heroes and heroines do. Nor will any one who has trod the streets of Balzac's Paris, or spent the summer with him at the chateau des Aigues ('Les Paysans'), or in the beautiful valleys of Touraine, ever forget the master's pictures.

Yet the Balzac who with intangible materials created living and breathing men and women and unfading scenes, has been accused of vitiating the French language and has been denied the possession of verbal style. On this point French critics must give the final verdict; but a foreigner may cite Taine's defense of that style, and maintain that most of the liberties taken by Balzac with his native language were forced on him by the novel and far-reaching character of his work. Nor should it be forgotten that he was capable at times of almost perfect passages of description, and that he rarely confounded, as novelists are too apt to do, the provinces of poetry and prose.

But one might write a hundred essays on Balzac and not exhaust him. One might write a volume on his women, a volume to refute the charge that his bad men are better drawn than his good, a volume to discuss Mr. Henry James's epigrammatic declaration that a five-franc piece may be fairly called the protagonist of the 'Comédie humaine.' In short one might go on defending and praising and even criticizing Balzac for a lifetime, and be little further advanced than when one began; for to criticize Balzac, is it not to criticize life itself?

THE MEETING IN THE CONVENT

From 'The Duchess of Langeais'

I

In a Spanish town on an island of the Mediterranean there is a convent of the Barefooted Carmelites, where the rule of the Order instituted by Saint Theresa is still kept with the primitive rigor of the reformation brought about by that illustrious woman. Extraordinary as this fact may seem, it is true. Though the monasteries of the Peninsula and those of the Continent were nearly all destroyed or broken up by the outburst of the French Revolution and the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, yet on this island, protected by the British fleets, the wealthy convent and its peaceful inmates were sheltered from the dangers of change and general spoliation. The storms from all quarters which shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century subsided ere they reached this lonely rock near the coast of Andalusia. If the name of the great Emperor echoed fitfully upon its shores, it may be doubted whether the fantastic march of his glory or the flaming majesty of his meteoric life ever reached the comprehension of those saintly women kneeling in their distant cloister.

A conventual rigor, which was never relaxed, gave to this haven a special place in the thoughts and history of the Catholic world. The purity of its rule drew to its shelter from different parts of Europe sad women, whose souls, deprived of human ties, longed for the death in life which they found here in the bosom of God. No other convent was so fitted to wean the heart and teach it that aloofness from the things of this world which the religious life imperatively demands. On the Continent may be found a number of such Houses, nobly planned to meet the wants of their sacred purpose. Some are buried in the depths of solitary valleys; others hang, as it were, in mid-air above the hills, clinging to the mountain slopes or projecting from the verge of precipices. On all sides man has sought out the poesy of the infinite, the solemnity of silence: he has sought God; and on the mountain-tops, in the abysmal depths, among the caverned cliffs he has found Him. Yet nowhere as on this European islet, half African though it be, can he find such differing harmonies all blending to lift the soul and quell its springs of anguish; to cool its fevers, and give to the sorrows of life a bed of rest.

The monastery is built at the extremity of the island at its highest part, where the rock by some convulsion of Nature has been rent sharply down to the sea, and presents at all points keen angles and edges, slightly eaten away at the water-line by the action of the waves, but insurmountable to all approach. The rock is also protected from assault by dangerous reefs running far out from its base, over which frolic the blue waters of the Mediterranean. It is only from the sea that the visitor can perceive the four principal parts of the square structure, which adheres minutely as to shape, height, and the piercing of its windows to the prescribed laws of monastic architecture. On the side towards the town the church hides the massive lines of the cloister, whose roof is covered with large tiles to protect it from winds and storms, and also from the fierce heat of the sun. The church, the gift of a Spanish family, looks down upon the town and crowns it. Its bold yet elegant façade gives a noble aspect to the little maritime city. Is it not a picture of terrestrial sublimity? See the tiny town with clustering roofs, rising like an amphitheatre from the picturesque port upward to the noble Gothic frontal of the church, from which spring the slender shafts of the bell-towers with their pointed finials: religion dominating life: offering to man the end and the way of living,--image of a thought altogether Spanish. Place this scene upon the bosom of the Mediterranean beneath an ardent sky; plant it with palms whose waving fronds mingle their green life with the sculptured leafage of the immutable architecture; look at the white fringes of the sea as it runs up the reef and they sparkle upon the sapphire of its wave; see the galleries and the terraces built upon the roofs of houses, where the inhabitants come at eve to breathe the flower-scented air as it rises through the tree-tops from their little gardens. Below, in the harbor, are the white sails. The serenity of night is coming on; listen to the notes of the organ, the chant of evening orisons, the echoing bells of the ships at sea: on all sides sound and peace,--oftenest peace.

Within the church are three naves, dark and mysterious. The fury of the winds evidently forbade the architect to build out lateral buttresses, such as adorn all other cathedrals, and between which little chapels are usually constructed. Thus the strong walls which flank the lesser naves shed no light into the building. Outside, their gray masses are shored up from point to point by enormous beams. The great nave and its two small lateral galleries are lighted solely by the rose-window of stained glass, which pierces with miraculous art the wall above the great portal, whose fortunate exposure permits a wealth of tracery and dentellated stone-work belonging to that order of architecture miscalled Gothic.

The greater part of the three naves is given up to the inhabitants of the town who come to hear Mass and the Offices of the Church. In front of the choir is a latticed screen, within which brown curtains hang in ample folds, slightly parted in the middle to give a limited view of the altar and the officiating priest. The screen is divided at intervals by pillars that hold up a gallery within the choir which contains the organ. This construction, in harmony with the rest of the building, continues, in sculptured wood, the little columns of the lateral galleries which are supported by the pillars of the great nave. Thus it is impossible for the boldest curiosity, if any such should dare to mount the narrow balustrade of these galleries, to see farther into the choir than the octagonal stained windows which pierce the apse behind the high altar.

At the time of the French expedition into Spain for the purpose of re-establishing the authority of Ferdinand VII., and after the fall of Cadiz, a French general who was sent to the island to obtain its recognition of the royal government prolonged his stay upon it that he might reconnoitre the convent and gain, if possible, admittance there. The enterprise was a delicate one. But a man of passion,--a man whose life had been, so to speak, a series of poems in action, who had lived romances instead of writing them; above all a man of deeds,--might well be tempted by a project apparently so impossible. To open for himself legally the gates of a convent of women! The Pope and the Metropolitan Archbishop would scarcely sanction it. Should he use force or artifice? In case of failure was he not certain to lose his station and his military future, besides missing his aim? The Duc d'Angoulême was still in Spain; and of all the indiscretions which an officer in favor with the commander-in-chief could commit, this alone would be punished without pity. The general had solicited his present mission for the purpose of following up a secret hope, albeit no hope was ever so despairing. This last effort, however, was a matter of conscience. The house of these Barefooted Carmelites was the only Spanish convent which had escaped his search. While crossing from the mainland, a voyage which took less than an hour, a strong presentiment of success had seized his heart. Since then, although he had seen nothing of the convent but its walls, nothing of the nuns, not so much as their brown habit; though he had heard only the echoes of their chanted liturgies,--he had gathered from those walls and from these chants faint indications that seemed to justify his fragile hope. Slight as the auguries thus capriciously awakened might be, no human passion was ever more violently roused than the curiosity of this French general. To the heart there are no insignificant events; it magnifies all things; it puts in the same balance the fall of an empire and the fall of a woman's glove,--and oftentimes the glove outweighs the empire. But let us give the facts in their actual simplicity: after the facts will come the feelings.

An hour after the expedition had landed on the island the royal authority was re-established. A few Spaniards who had taken refuge there after the fall of Cadiz embarked on a vessel which the general allowed them to charter for their voyage to London. There was thus neither resistance nor reaction. This little insular restoration could not, however, be accomplished without a Mass, at which both companies of the troops were ordered to be present. Not knowing the rigor of the Carmelite rule, the general hoped to gain in the church some information about the nuns who were immured in the convent, one of whom might be a being dearer to him than life, more precious even than honor. His hopes were at first cruelly disappointed. Mass was celebrated with the utmost pomp. In honor of this solemn occasion the curtains which habitually hid the choir were drawn aside, and gave to view the rich ornaments, the priceless pictures, and the shrines incrusted with jewels whose brilliancy surpassed that of the votive offerings fastened by the mariners of the port to the pillars of the great nave. The nuns, however, had retired to the seclusion of the organ gallery.

Yet in spite of this check, and while the Mass of thanksgiving was being sung, suddenly and secretly the drama widened into an interest as profound as any that ever moved the heart of man. The Sister who played the organ roused an enthusiasm so vivid that not one soldier present regretted the order which had brought him to the church. The men listened to the music with pleasure; the officers were carried away by it. As for the general, he remained to all appearance calm and cold: the feelings with which he heard the notes given forth by the nun are among the small number of earthly things whose expression is withheld from impotent human speech, but which--like death, like God, like eternity--can be perceived only at their slender point of contact with the heart of man. By a strange chance the music of the organ seemed to be that of Rossini,--a composer who more than any other has carried human passion into the art of music, and whose works by their number and extent will some day inspire an Homeric respect. From among the scores of this fine genius the nun seemed to have chiefly studied that of Moses in Egypt; doubtless because the feelings of sacred music are there carried to the highest pitch. Perhaps these two souls--one so gloriously European, the other unknown--had met together in some intuitive perception of the same poetic thought. This idea occurred to two officers now present, true _dilettanti_, who no doubt keenly regretted the Théatre Favart in their Spanish exile. At last, at the Te Deum, it was impossible not to recognize a French soul in the character which the music suddenly took on. The triumph of his Most Christian Majesty evidently roused to joy the heart of that cloistered nun. Surely she was a Frenchwoman. Presently the patriotic spirit burst forth, sparkling like a jet of light through the antiphonals of the organ, as the Sister recalled melodies breathing the delicacy of Parisian taste, and blended them with vague memories of our national anthems. Spanish hands could not have put into this graceful homage paid to victorious arms the fire that thus betrayed the origin of the musician.

"France is everywhere!" said a soldier.

The general left the church during the Te Deum; it was impossible for him to listen to it. The notes of the musician revealed to him a woman loved to madness; who had buried herself so deeply in the heart of religion, hid herself so carefully away from the sight of the world, that up to this time she had escaped the keen search of men armed not only with immense power, but with great sagacity and intelligence. The hopes which had wakened in the general's heart seemed justified as he listened to the vague echo of a tender and melancholy air, 'La Fleuve du Tage,'--a ballad whose prelude he had often heard in Paris in the boudoir of the woman he loved, and which this nun now used to express, amid the joys of the conquerors, the suffering of an exiled heart. Terrible moment! to long for the resurrection of a lost love; to find that love--still lost; to meet it mysteriously after five years in which passion, exasperated by the void, had been intensified by the useless efforts made to satisfy it.

Who is there that has not, once at least in his life, upturned everything about him, his papers and his receptacles, taxing his memory impatiently as he seeks some precious lost object; and then felt the ineffable pleasure of finding it after days consumed in the search, after hoping and despairing of its recovery,--spending upon some trifle an excitement of mind almost amounting to a passion? Well, stretch this fury of search through five long years; put a woman, a heart, a love in the place of the insignificant trifle; lift the passion into the highest realms of feeling; and then picture to yourself an ardent man, a man with the heart of lion and the front of Jove, one of those men who command, and communicate to those about them, respectful terror,--you will then understand the abrupt departure of the general during the Te Deum, at the moment when the prelude of an air, once heard in Paris with delight under gilded ceilings, vibrated through the dark naves of the church by the sea.

He went down the hilly street which led up to the convent, without pausing until the sonorous echoes of the organ could no longer reach his ear. Unable to think of anything but of the love that like a volcanic eruption rent his heart, the French general only perceived that the Te Deum was ended when the Spanish contingent poured from the church. He felt that his conduct and appearance were open to ridicule, and he hastily resumed his place at the head of the cavalcade, explaining to the alcalde and to the governor of the town that a sudden indisposition had obliged him to come out into the air. Then it suddenly occurred to him to use the pretext thus hastily given, as a means of prolonging his stay on the island. Excusing himself on the score of increased illness, he declined to preside at the banquet given by the authorities of the island to the French officers, and took to his bed, after writing to the major-general that a passing illness compelled him to turn over his command to the colonel. This commonplace artifice, natural as it was, left him free from all duties and able to seek the fulfilment of his hopes. Like a man essentially Catholic and monarchical, he inquired the hours of the various services, and showed the utmost interest in the duties of religion,--a piety which in Spain excited no surprise.

II

The following day, while the soldiers were embarking, the general went up to the convent to be present at vespers. He found the church deserted by the townspeople, who in spite of their natural devotion were attracted to the port by the embarkation of the troops. The Frenchman, glad to find himself alone in the church, took pains to make the clink of his spurs resound through the vaulted roof; he walked noisily, and coughed, and spoke aloud to himself, hoping to inform the nuns, but especially the Sister at the organ, that if the French soldiers were departing, one at least remained behind. Was this singular method of communication heard and understood? The general believed it was. In the Magnificat the organ seemed to give an answer which came to him in the vibrations of the air. The soul of the nun floated towards him on the wings of the notes she touched, quivering with the movements of the sound. The music burst forth with power; it glorified the church. This hymn of joy, consecrated by the sublime liturgy of Roman Christianity to the uplifting of the soul in presence of the splendors of the ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart terrified at its own happiness in presence of the splendors of a perishable love, which still lived, and came to move it once more beyond the tomb where this woman had buried herself, to rise again the bride of Christ.

The organ is beyond all question the finest, the most daring, the most magnificent of the instruments created by human genius. It is an orchestra in itself, from which a practiced hand may demand all things; for it expresses all things. Is it not, as it were, a coign of vantage, where the soul may poise itself ere it springs into space, bearing, as it flies, the listening mind through a thousand scenes of life towards the infinite which parts earth from heaven? The longer a poet listens to its gigantic harmonies, the more fully will he comprehend that between kneeling humanity and the God hidden by the dazzling rays of the Holy of Holies, the hundred voices of terrestrial choirs can alone bridge the vast distance and interpret to Heaven the prayers of men in all the omnipotence of their desires, in the diversities of their woe, with the tints of their meditations and their ecstasies, with the impetuous spring of their repentance, and the thousand imaginations of their manifold beliefs. Yes! beneath these soaring vaults the harmonies born of the genius of sacred things find a yet unheard-of grandeur, which adorns and strengthens them. Here the dim light, the deep silence, the voices alternating with the solemn tones of the organ, seem like a veil through which the luminous attributes of God himself pierce and radiate. Yet all these sacred riches now seem flung like a grain of incense on the frail altar of an earthly love, in presence of the eternal throne of a jealous and avenging Deity. The joy of the nun had not the gravity which properly belongs to the solemnity of the Magnificat. She gave to the music rich and graceful modulations, whose rhythms breathed of human gayety; her measures ran into the brilliant cadences of a great singer striving to express her love, and the notes rose buoyantly like the carol of a bird by the side of its mate. At moments she darted back into the past, as if to sport there or to weep there for an instant. Her changing moods had something discomposed about them, like the agitations of a happy woman rejoicing at the return of her lover. Then, as these supple strains of passionate emotion ceased, the soul that spoke returned upon itself; the musician passed from the major to the minor key, and told her hearer the story of her present. She revealed to him her long melancholy, the slow malady of her moral being,--every day a feeling crushed, every night a thought subdued, hour by hour a heart burning down to ashes. After soft modulations the music took on slowly, tint by tint, the hue of deepest sadness. Soon it poured forth in echoing torrents the well-springs of grief, till suddenly the higher notes struck clear like the voice of angels, as if to tell to her lost love--lost, but not forgotten--that the reunion of their souls must be in heaven, and only there: hope most precious! Then came the Amen. In that no joy, no tears, nor sadness, nor regrets, but a return to God. The last chord that sounded was grave, solemn, terrible. The musician revealed the nun in the garb of her vocation; and as the thunder of the basses rolled away, causing the hearer to shudder through his whole being, she seemed to sink into the tomb from which for a brief moment she had risen. As the echoes slowly ceased to vibrate along the vaulted roofs, the church, made luminous by the music, fell suddenly into profound obscurity.

The general, carried away by the course of this powerful genius, had followed her, step by step, along her way. He comprehended in their full meaning the pictures that gleamed through that burning symphony; for him those chords told all. For him, as for the Sister, this poem of sound was the future, the past, the present. Music, even the music of an opera, is it not to tender and poetic souls, to wounded and suffering hearts, a text which they interpret as their memories need? If the heart of a poet must be given to a musician, must not poetry and love be listeners ere the great musical works of art are understood? Religion, love, and music: are they not the triple expression of one fact, the need of expansion, the need of touching with their own infinite the infinite beyond them, which is in the fibre of all noble souls? These three forms of poesy end in God, who alone can unwind the knot of earthly emotion. Thus this holy human trinity joins itself to the holiness of God, of whom we make to ourselves no conception unless we surround him by the fires of love and the golden cymbals of music and light and harmony.

The French general divined that on this desert rock, surrounded by the surging seas, the nun had cherished music to free her soul of the excess of passion that consumed it. Did she offer her love as a homage to God? Did the love triumph over the vows she had made to Him? Questions difficult to answer. But, beyond all doubt, the lover had found in a heart dead to the world a love as passionate as that which burned within his own.