Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (84 page)
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Authors: Honore de Balzac
A
S
time went on the Alsatian changed his mind about Papa Séchard, who in his turn took a liking to the Alsatian, finding in him a kindred spirit, with no notion of reading or writing, and easy to make drunk. The erstwhile ‘bear’ taught the erstwhile cuirassier to tend the vineyard and sell the produce: he trained him, with the idea of leaving his children a man who had his head screwed on right. For, in these latter days, he entertained great and childish fears for the future of his property. He had taken the miller Courtois into his confidence:
‘You’ll see,’ he said, ‘what will happen to my children once I’m underground. Lord save me! I go all a-tremble when I think of their future.’
In March, 1829, old Séchard died, leaving about two hundred
thousand francs in real property. Added to La Verberie, this made a magnificent estate which Kolb had been running very competently for the last two years.
David and his wife found nearly three hundred thousand gold coins in their father’s coffers. Public opinion, as always, so much exaggerated old Séchard’s hoard that it was valued at a million all over the Charente region. From this inheritance, with their own fortune added to it, Eve and David drew an income of about thirty thousand francs a year, for they waited some time before investing their funds and were able to buy Government stock after the July Revolution.
It was not until then that the whole Charente area and David Séchard came to realize the extent of tall Cointet’s fortune. Tall Cointet, several times a millionaire, after being a Deputy, is now a Peer of France and, so they say, will be Minister of Commerce in the next cabinet. In 1842 he married the daughter of one of the most influential statesmen under the present dynasty, Mademoiselle Popinot, the daughter of Monsieur Anselme Popinot, a Parliamentary Deputy of Paris and Mayor of a Paris
arrondissement.
David Séchard’s invention was assimilated into French manufacture as food is assimilated into the body of a giant. Thanks to the introduction of other materials than rag-stuff, France is able to manufacture paper at a cheaper rate than any other European country. But Holland paper, as David Séchard predicted, no longer exists. Sooner or later, no doubt, it will be necessary to set up a Royal Paper Factory on the same lines as the Gobelins tapestry, Sevres porcelain, the Royal Soap-Works and the Royal Printing-Press, which up to now have survived the attacks made on them by middle-class vandals.
David Séchard has a loving wife, two sons and a daughter. He has had the good taste never to talk about his experiments. Eve has had the good sense to make him renounce the disastrous vocation of inventor, that of a Moses consumed in the burning bush of Horeb. He cultivates literature as a relaxation while living the happy, leisurely life of a landowner developing his estate. Having said good-bye once and for all
to glory, he has sensibly taken his place in the class of dreamers and collectors. He is given to entomology and research into the as yet secret metamorphoses of insects only known to science in their final transformation.
Everyone has heard of Petit-Claud’s success as Attorney-General. He is a worthy rival of the famous Vinet of Provins, and his ambition is to become First President of the Royal Court of Appeal in Poitiers.
Cérizet has often been sentenced for political offences, but he has been talked about a lot. As the boldest of the Liberal Party’s forlorn hopes, he bears the nickname of Plucky Cérizet. Constrained by Petit-Claud’s successor to sell his Angoulême printing-office, he turned to the provincial stage in search of a new career which his talent for acting might make a brilliant one. His relations with a young actress drove him to Paris in quest of medical treatment, and there he tried to cash in on his favour with the Liberal Party.
As for Lucien, his return to Paris belongs to the domain of the
Scenes of Parisian Life.
1835–1843.
1
.
Séchard.
The root-word is
sec:
dry. ‘Séchard’ could thus be translated as soaker.
1
. goldfinch:
chardonneret –
a pun on Lucien’s plebeian surname, Chardon.
1
. ‘Whisht!: hush!
1
. Tulloye:
tue l’oie:
kill the goose.
1
. The explanation of this situation is to be found in
The Petition of Lunancy
(1836). The Marquise was trying to get her husband declared insane because he was anxious to repair an injury done by his ancestors.
1
. The tragic love affair between Montriveau and this lady is the subject of the novel entitled
La Duchesse de Langeais.
1
. Recounted in
The Lily of the Valley
(1835–6).
1
. In the editions of 1837 and 1839, Part One had continued to this point.
1
. See Introduction, p. xv.
1
. ‘Cénacle’, in French, is used in the special sense of a literary or artistic confraternity.
1
. See Introduction, p. xv.
1
. I.e., to that part of the river to which corpses drifted and were fished up by the police.
1
. The adjective
finot
in French means artful and cunning.
1
. The Chancellor Dambray, nicknamed Cruzoé (i.e. Crusoé, the French form of Crusoe) because, one day when Louis XVIII was expecting a visit from his favourite, Zoé du Cayla, Dambray knocked and Louis called out ‘Come in, Zoé.’ To the Opposition Press Dambray was henceforth known as Cruzoé (
Cru Zoé,
i.e. mistaken for Zoé).
1
. Du Bruel’s
nom de plume.
1
. A jibe against Victor d’Arlincourt, a pretentious but insipid historical novelist of the time (see above, page 233–4) and Sosthène de La Rochefoucauld, the Director of Fine-Arts, a much ridiculed figure.
2
. Pasquier was unpopular with the Ultras for his liberal tendency. ‘Monarchical calves’ is an impudent reference to the obesity of Louis XVIII.
1
. Women of easy virtue, supposedly called
lorettes
because they lived in the neighbourhood of the church of Notre-Dame de Lorette.
1
. Janot was a type of uncouth clown in eighteenth century French comedy.
1
. Professional applauders having been first employed in Imperial Rome, this ironical euphemism for
claqueurs
was in current usage at the time.
1
. Readers will already know that
chardon
is the common noun for a thistle.
1
. In the text,
chardonneret
(gold-finch); more word-play on Lucien’s patronymic.
1
. In
Béatrix,
published only a few weeks before, Mademoiselle des Touches plays a prominent part, and Balzac calls attention to some disconcertingly masculine traits in her. Hence the term ‘hermaphrodite’.
1
. For this chapter-heading Balzac had in mind a novel by Alfred de Musset:
The Confession of a Child of the Age
(1836).
1
. A paid magistrate who deals with minor civil and criminal cases: not to be confused with the English ‘justice of the peace’.
1
. Electric ray or numbfish: the nickname given to Esther van Gobseck (destined to be Lucien’s next mistress) because of her electrifying beauty. See
Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans.
1
. Peyronnet had begun his career as a provincial advocate. He was one of the most unpopular Conservative ministers.
1
. Lauzun: a seventeenth century nobleman, courtier and, to some extent, adventurer; a man of wit but no stability. For a time in favour with Louis XIV, he fell into disgrace and was imprisoned for ten years.
1
. The theory that Rousseau committed suicide has long been exploded.
1
. As
Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans
makes clear, Herrera, who was the master-criminal Vautrin in disguise, had already made an unsuccessful attempt to capture Eugène de Rastignac (see
Old Goriot
). Hence his interest in the Rastignac domain.