Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A - Z | Page 3

a courageous little review, La Jeune France, which he maintained for
some years with a perseverance worthy of the Man of Business in the
Comedie Humaine. I can see him yet, a feverish fellow, wan and
haggard, but with his face always lit up by enthusiasm, stopping me in
a theatre lobby to tell me about a plan of M. Cerfberr's; and almost
immediately we discovered that the same plan had been conceived by
M. Christophe. The latter had already prepared a cabinet of
pigeon-holes, arranged and classified by the names of Balzacian
characters. When two men encounter in the same enterprise as
compilers, they will either hate each other or unite their efforts. Thanks
to the excellent Allenet, the two confirmed Balzacians took to each
other wonderfully.
Poor Allenet! It was not long afterwards that we accompanied his body
to the grave, one gloomy afternoon towards the end of autumn--all of
us who had known and loved him. He is dead also, that other Balzacian
who was so much interested in this work, and for whom the _Comedie
Humaine_ was an absorbing thought, Honore Granoux. He was a
merchant of Marseilles, with a wan aspect and already an invalid when
I met him. But he became animated when speaking of Balzac; and with
what a mysterious, conspiratorlike veneration did he pronounce these
words: "The Vicomte"--meaning, of course, to the thirty-third degree
Balzacolatrites, that incomparable bibliophile to whom we owe the
history of the novelist's works, M. de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul!--"The
Vicomte will approve--or disapprove." That was the unvarying formula
for Granoux, who had devoted himself to the enormous task of
collecting all the articles, small or great, published about Balzac since
his entry as a writer. And just see what a fascination this devil of a
man--as Theophile Gautier once called him--exercises over his
followers; I am fully convinced that these little details of Balzacian
mania will cause the reader to smile. As for me, I have found them, and
still find them, as natural as Balzac's own remark to Jules Sandeau, who

was telling him about a sick sister: "Let us go back to reality. Who is
going to marry Eugenie Grandet?"
Fascination! That is the only word that quite characterizes the sort of
influence wielded by Balzac over those who really enjoy him; and it is
not to-day that the phenomenon began. Vallies pointed it out long ago
in an eloquent page of the Refractaires concerning "book victims."
Saint Beuve, who can scarcely be suspected of fondness towards the
editor-in-chief of the Revue Parisienne, tells a story stranger and more
significant than every other. At one time an entire social set in Venice,
and the most aristocratic, decided to give out among its members
different characters drawn from the _Comedie Humaine_; and some of
these roles, the critic adds, mysteriously, were artistically carried out to
the very end;--a dangerous experiment, for we are well aware that the
heroes and heroines of Balzac often skirt the most treacherous abysses
of the social Hell.
All this happened about 1840. The present year is 1887, and there
seems no prospect of the sorcery weakening. The work to which these
notes serve as an introduction may be taken as proof. Indeed, somebody
has said that the men of Balzac have appeared as much in literature as
in life, especially since the death of the novelist. Balzac seems to have
observed the society of his day less than he contributed to form a new
one. Such and such personages are truer to life in 1860 than in 1835.
When one considers a phenomenon of such range and intensity, it does
not suffice to employ words like infatuation, fashion, mania. The
attraction of an author becomes a psychological fact of prime
importance and subject to analysis. I think I can see two reasons for this
particular strength of Balzac's genius. One dwells in the special
character of his vision, the other in the philosophical trend which he
succeeded in giving to all his writing.
As to the scope of his vision, this Repertory alone will suffice to show.
Turn over the leaves at random and estimate the number of fictitious
deeds going to make up these two thousand biographies, each
individual, each distinct, and most of them complete--that is to say,
taking the character at his birth and leaving him only at his death.

Balzac not only knows the date of birth or of death, he knows as well
the local coloring of the time and the country and profession to which
the man belongs. He is thoroughly conversant with questions of
taxation and income and the agricultural conditions. He is not ignorant
of the fact that Grandet cannot make his fortune by the same methods
employed by Gobseck, his rival in avarice; nor Ferdinand