Repertory of the Comedie Humaine Part 1 | Page 5

such and such a masterpiece.
More modestly, it is a kind of table of contents, of a unique type; a
table of living contents!
Many Balzacians have dreamed of compiling such a civil record. I
myself have known of five or six who attempted this singular task. To
cite only two names out of the many, the idea of this unusual Vapereau
ran through the head of that keen and delicate critic, M. Henri Meilhac,
and of that detective in continued stories, Emile Gaboriau. I believe
that I also have among the papers of my eighteenth year some sheets
covered with notes taken with the same intention. But the labor was too
exhaustive. It demanded an infinite patience, combined with an
inextinguishable ardor and enthusiasm. The two faithful disciples of the
master who have conjoined their efforts to uprear this monument, could
not perhaps have overcome the difficulties of the undertaking if they
had not supported each other, bringing to the common work, M.
Christophe his painstaking method, M. Cerfberr his accurate memory,
his passionate faith in the genius of the great Honore, a faith that
carried unshakingly whole mountains of documents.
A pleasing chapter of literary gossip might be written about this
collaboration; a melancholy chapter, since it brings with it the memory
of a charming man, who first brought Messieurs Cerfberr and
Christophe together, and who has since died under mournful
circumstances. His name was Albert Allenet, and he was chief editor of
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,