SHORT-STORY MASTERPIECES

VOLUME II—FRENCH

DONE INTO ENGLISH AND WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY

J. BERG ESENWEIN EDITOR OF LIPPINCOTTS MAGAZINE

The Home Correspondence School Springfield, Massachusetts 1912

Copyright 1911 and 1912—J. B. Lippincott Company Copyright 1912—The Home Correspondence School All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS

VOLUME II

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THE MANY-SIDED BALZAC

Honoré Balzac, or de Balzac, as he loved to call himself—though really there was no “noble” blood in his veins—was baptized under the name of Balssa. He was born on May 20, 1799, at Tours. His mother, Laure Sallambier, was a Parisian; his father, a provincial from Languedoc. After completing his studies in Paris, Honoré began the study of law at the age of seventeen, but after eighteen months’ apprenticeship to an attorney and a second year and a half’s service to a notary, his literary ambition began to turn him away from the law. Already at the age of twenty he had conceived the idea of a drama on Cromwell, but after fifteen months’ labor, he read it to a company of friends who received it coldly. In 1822, he made his first essay at the novel, under the title, The Inheritress de Birague. From this time on he labored incessantly in producing the gigantic works which have immortalized his name.

Debt was always threatening to overwhelm Balzac, for in the days of his largest income his free life and passion for luxuries kept him constantly in danger of going down in the flood. Once, in 1825, when his first novels produced but[Pg 4] little return, he felt compelled to leave his vocation of letters to become bookseller, printer, and type-founder. But after three years of disaster, resulting in one hundred thousand francs of debt, he once more took up his pen, this time to succeed most splendidly—though it required ten years of strenuous, almost frenzied, production to clear him of his obligations.

The story of his loves is closely knit with his literary career, as are also the records of his minglings with the men of his day, but no such brief monograph as this can even refer adequately to the details of his personal life. Inspiration, observation, and labor were its dominant notes throughout. Two thousand distinct characters move as in life through his forty-seven volumes of more than sixteen thousand aggregate pages, all produced in twenty-five years of actual pen-craft. What a monument for the titan who in 1850 passed away in his prime!

There are two marked tendencies of extreme displayed by the short-story: The first, and the more modern, is a fondness for over-compression; that is, the practice of skeletonizing the story, of giving little more than a bare, swift outline of the action, and only so much accessory material as may be needed to round out a body decently[Pg 5] clothed upon with flesh. The story is everything, the setting almost nothing. It scarcely need be said that this tendency comes perilously near to robbing the short-story of the literary qualities which it should rightly display. A few of Maupassant’s compact and abrupt shorter fictions may serve to illustrate this characteristic—not to mention unhappy examples all too prevalent to-day.

The second tendency is quite in the other extreme. I speak of it now because most of Balzac’s shorter stories are of this type,—which gives much space to detail, the development of setting, and the building up of a well-rounded and fully-garbed body to carry the soul of the story. If the scenario-story is likely to swing to an extreme of compression, the leisurely type is prone to over-leisureliness, as is often seen in the shorter work of Mr. James, and the later little fictions by Mr. Howells, wherein, and so far properly too, the story is not made to be everything, but wherein—not so wisely—circumstances and air are accorded even more than due value. The effect is to draw the narrative away from the unity and compression characteristic of the short-story type, and range it with those other fictional forms which, while cognate to, are really something different from the short-story.

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Balzac’s short-stories—so to call them—were written from three to five years before Poe wrote “Berenice” (1835), which was his first short-story to anticipate and meet fully the requirements of the type as formulated by the author himself, in his criticism of Hawthorne’s “Tales,” in 1842. But Balzac drew more and more away from the impressionistic, unified, condensed short-story, for it was evidently not his ideal form, and took up the detailed psychological novel of manners. Even in the story given herewith in translation, we find a wealth of detail and an extent of time covered in the action which are not part and parcel of the true short-story, technically considered. But, lest these comments seem to cite these qualities in derogation of Balzac’s art be it noted that Balzac’s little fictions, with all their fullness, are greater than many technically perfect short-stories in their miraculous compression. Certainly it is only this dual element of fullness and consequent diffused final effect which prevented him from anticipating

Poe as the first conscious artist of the short-story—yet with this one reservation I reserve much, for compression and unity of final impression are the very twin arteries of this fictional form. Balzac’s short-stories approached technical perfection just as closely as did the short-stories of[Pg 7] those two American forerunners of Poe—Irving and Hawthorne.

It is illuminating to observe that Balzac’s full-method of short-story art was not the reflex of the successful novelist who was sure of his public and for that reason dared the expansive treatment. The truth is that of his successful novels only The Chouans had been written in 1829 before he began, in 1830, that brilliant series of shorter stories which place him among the masters.

The fictive art of Balzac is more clearly displayed in his short-stories than in his novels. By far the greater number of his novels are filled with a vast amount of contributory detail not always germane to the plot. As stories, they often mark time. The author’s great motive was to make faithful transcripts from life, to present realities, to penetrate into the deeps of the human soul and disclose its inner life, to delineate the high and the low places of the whole social system of his era. On this giant-journey he was often allured from the highway of his story by side-paths rich in interest, and the great realistic novelist did not any more hesitate to follow out these beckoning byways than did Victor Hugo in his equally great romances. The inevitable in each case was a far from unified type of fiction.

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In Balzac’s short-stories, however, we discern but very little of this tendency, fully expanded though they are, and that is why I have ventured to assert their artistic superiority to his novels. True, the genius of this greatest of French novelists can be fully appreciated only by those who make a study of his longer works with their tremendous sweep of character presentment, minuteness of setting, and depth of psychological inquiry. But for approximate singleness of effect—a great factor in the consideration of fictional merit—we must turn to his short-stories.

This contrast in method is due not merely to Balzac’s fondness for making excursions in his novels, but it is largely attributable to the nature of the nouvelle, or expanded short-story form. Any short-story, being complete in itself and not one of a series, necessarily bears a much less close relation to any other of its kind than does any one of Balzac’s novels to his other novels. Each of these is an integrated part of a great life-record which he was engaged in completing—but which, unhappily, was never consummated.

The themes of all Balzac’s short-stories are consistent with the artistic requirements of the nouvelle; that is to say, they are transcriptions of exceptional marginalia from common life, always dealing with the unusual, and occasionally[Pg 9] with the unique. Because of this quality, it seems evident that, as Brunetière has pointed out, Balzac elected to develop these incidents in short-story form rather than expand them into novels. Treated in the short-story, they stand for what they are—extraordinary happenings in common life (as distinguished from impossible “incidents” which are told in fantastic and ultra-romantic short-stories); in the novel, they would have been enlarged out of their true focus, and so have seemed to bear a more important, a more typical, relation to life as a whole than any such exceptional incidents ever do. Hence, again, Balzac has used in his short-stories less the realistic method of narration than the romantic. Pure realism as a method is suited to the novel, where life shows whole; but the short-story, which

presents a section, a phase, an incident of life, and by which we do not hope to gain a picture of an age, of a whole social system, or even of an entire individual life, is almost compelled to adopt the methods of romanticism even when laying its fictional foundations, as Balzac did, deep in the ground of reality.

In attempting to get a view of his broad genius we must remember our author’s versatility, not alone of gift but of temper; and since a consideration of his novels is not pertinent to this paper, let[Pg 10] us see if the many-sided Balzac is not clearly revealed in a varied half-dozen of his greatest short-stories.

Picture this powerful worker spending endless days and nights, months on end, roaming the streets of Paris, haunting purlieu and boulevard, absorbing with the thirsty passion of a universal analyst the knowledge of what man is. But he is more than a terrifically industrious observer, he is sincere, and he codifies his observations as The Connoisseur of Life.

This first phase of our social psychologist—and as such he blazed new trails in French literature—is well illustrated in one of his greatest stories (it seems trite to aver that it must be read to be appreciated!) which is a romantic nouvelle of about ten thousand words, “The Unknown Masterpiece.” It is well to note in this connection that the typical psychological-study differs from the character-study in that the former concerns itself with workings of the inner life, while the latter notes the effect of life on character, disposition, bearing, and conduct.

Nicolas Poussin, a poor and ambitious young artist, timidly visits François Porbus, another artist of ability, in his studio. There Master Frenhofer, an eccentric, wealthy old artist, is discoursing on his theories of art (set forth brilliantly[Pg 11] and at length in the story, and illustrating the marvellous sweep of Balzac’s knowledge). Frenhofer is obsessed by the conviction that the artists of the day do not make their subjects live, and illustrates by criticising the painting, “St. Mary the Egyptian,” which Porbus has about completed. “Your saint is not badly put together, but she is not alive. Because you have copied nature, you imagine that you are painters, and that you have discovered God’s secret! Bah! To be a great poet, it is not enough to know syntax, and to avoid errors in grammar.” “The mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it” (an illuminating passage when applied to Balzac’s own work). At length the old man seizes the brushes, and with a few strokes imparts vivacity to the figure, and makes the “Saint” stand out from the canvas.

Old Master Frenhofer himself has been laboring for ten years to perfect his painting of a woman, but despairs of adding the final touches, and determines to travel in search of a perfect model. In his enthusiasm for art, and hoping to gain Frenhofer’s secret, as well as instruction from the old painter, Nicolas asks his beautiful mistress and model, Gillette, to pose for the old man. A protracted struggle ensues between her abhorrence of the idea and her[Pg 12] wish to serve her lover. At last, however, she yields.

When Nicolas and Porbus are permitted to view Frenhofer’s completed canvas, they discover that in his long effort to perfect his work the old painter has entirely covered the original picture, and that not more than a shadowy human foot is to be seen; only the imaginative eye of the artist himself is able to see the figure!

The dénouement is a double one: As she feared would be the case, Gillette loses her love for Nicolas, who could sacrifice the sacredness of her beauty in order to advance his own career by capturing the secrets of a great master; and the old artist, after burning all his paintings, dies in despair upon discovering the truth, for he has lived all these years with his painting as the well-loved companion of his labors and his dreams.

A great story, illustrating Balzac as a connoisseur—a knower of life.

A second phase of Balzac’s genius is that of The Impressionistic Literary Artist. In his inner life some pictures were born, others were caught on the retina from his attentive journeyings afield. To produce in the reader precisely the impression which the originator feels, is impressionism, and this transfusion of spirit, tone, and[Pg 13] feeling, Balzac now and then accomplished, though not often.

One of the most striking of these impressionistic sketches, more atmospheric, more simply pictorial, than any of his others, is “A Passion in the Desert.”

A Provençal soldier of Napoleon tells the story over a bottle to a friend, and he retells it in a letter to a lady who had just seen a wonderful example of animal-training in a menagerie.

When General Desaix was in upper Egypt “a provincial soldier, having fallen into the hands of the Maugrabins, was taken by these Arabs into the deserts that lie beyond the cataracts of the Nile.” Freeing himself, he secures a carbine, a dagger, a horse, and some provisions, and makes away. But, eager to see camp once more, he rides his horse to death and finds himself alone in the desert.

At length he seeks shelter and sleep in a grotto, but awakens to find his asylum shared by a huge lioness. He considers well the possibilities while he waits for her to wake. When she opens her eyes her pretty, coquettish movements remind him of “a dainty woman.” The soldier expects immediate conflict and draws his dagger; but the lioness stares steadily at him for a moment, then walks slowly but confidently toward him.[Pg 14] Forcing himself to smile into her face, he reaches out his hand caressingly, and she accepts these overtures with seeming pleasure, even purrs like a cat, but the sound is so loud that it is not unlike the dying notes of a church organ. Believing himself safe for the present, the man rises and leaves the grotto; she follows, rubbing against his legs and uttering a wild, peculiar cry, whereupon he again goes through the petting motions usual with domestic animals, at the same time weighing the chance of killing her with one blow of his weapon. On her side, the lioness scrutinizes him kindly, yet prudently—then she licks his shoes.

Visions of what may happen when his unwelcome companion is hungry bring a shudder to the soldier. He tries to come and go, as an experiment, but her eyes never leave him for the fraction of a minute. Near the spring he sees the remains of his horse partly consumed—and understands her forbearance thus far. He determines to try to tame her ladyship and to win her affection. In these endeavors the day wears on until she becomes responsive enough to his voice to turn to him when he calls “Mignonne.”

The Provençal is now relying on his nimble feet to take him out of danger so soon as the lioness is asleep, and when the right moment[Pg 15] comes he walks quickly in the direction of the Nile. But he has gone only a short distance when he hears her in pursuit, uttering the same wild cry. Even in this extremity the Frenchman reflects humorously, “It may be that this young lioness has never met a man before; it is flattering to possess her first love!”

He accompanies his hostess back to the grotto, and from this moment feels that the desert has become friendly, human; and he sleeps. When he awakes he sees nothing of Mignonne until, upon ascending the hill, he discovers her bounding along in his direction. Her chops are bloody; but she manifests her pleasure in his society by beginning to play like a large puppy.

Several days go by filled with warring sensations for the Frenchman. Solitude reveals her mysteries, and he feels their charm. He studies the effects of the moon on the limitless sand; the wonderful light of the Orient; the terrifying spectacle of a storm on the plain where sand rises in death-dealing clouds. In the cool nights he imagines music in the heavens above. He ponders on his past life.

The magnetic will of the Provençal seems to control brute nature, or else she has not felt the pangs of hunger, for her amiability is unbroken, and he trusts her completely. Whatever she may[Pg 16] be doing, she stops short at the word “Mignonne.” One day when he shows acute interest in a flying eagle, the lioness is evidently jealous, and the Provençal now declares that “she has a soul.”

Here the lady who received the Provençal’s letter about his adventure wants to know how it ended. He replies that “it ended as all great passions do, by a misunderstanding,” and goes on to explain that he must have unintentionally hurt the lioness’s feelings, as one day she turned and caught his thigh in her teeth. Fearing she meant to kill him, the soldier plunged his dagger into her throat, but his remorse was immediate; he felt that he had murdered a friend.

The brief outlines of two stories must suffice to illustrate a third and more characteristic phase of Balzac’s genius—his sternness as The Recorder of Tragedy. Both are romantic themes treated with relentless realism of detail.

The first story bears the Spanish title, El Verdugo (“The Executioner”).

During the Napoleonic era, a certain Spanish town, Menda, is under French government. A suspicion that the Spanish Marquis de Légañès has made an attempt to raise the country in favor of Ferdinand VII has caused a battalion of French soldiers to be placed here, the garrison[Pg 17] of occupation being in command of one Victor Marchand. On the night of the feast-day of St. James, the English capture the town, but Clara, the daughter of the old Spanish nobleman, had warned the young French Commandant, Marchand, with whom she was in love, and he had escaped. The English suspect her father of having made Marchand’s escape possible, so the entire family of the Marquis is condemned to be hanged. The old noble offers to the English general all that he has if he will spare the life of his youngest son, and allow the rest to be beheaded instead of ignominiously hanged. Both requests are granted. The Marquis then goes to his youngest son, Juanito, and commands him that for this day he shall be the executioner. After heart-breaking protests, the lad is compelled

to yield. As his sister Clara places her head on the block, the young French officer, Victor, now friendly with the English, runs to her and tells her that if she will marry him her life will be saved. Her only reply is to her brother, “Now, Juanito,” and her head falls at the feet of her lover. When the day is done, the youngest son, Juanito, is alone. To save the family honor, he has been the executioner of the day.

Only a little less tragic is “The Conscript,” which is part sketch, part short-story.

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