The Brotherhood of Consolation | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and
Dagny, [email protected]

The Brotherhood of Consolation
by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
November, 1999 [Etext #1967]

FIRST EPISODE
MADAME DE LA CHANTERIE

I
THE MALADY OF THE AGE
On a fine evening in the month of September, 1836, a man about thirty
years of age was leaning on the parapet of that quay from which a
spectator can look up the Seine from the Jardin des Plantes to Notre-
Dame, and down, along the vast perspective of the river, to the Louvre.
There is not another point of view to compare with it in the capital of
ideas. We feel ourselves on the quarter-deck, as it were, of a gigantic
vessel. We dream of Paris from the days of the Romans to those of the
Franks, from the Normans to the Burgundians, the Middle- Ages, the
Valois, Henri IV., Louis XIV., Napoleon, and Louis-Philippe. Vestiges
are before us of all those sovereignties, in monuments that recall their
memory. The cupola of Sainte-Genevieve towers above the Latin
quarter. Behind us rises the noble apsis of the cathedral. The Hotel de
Ville tells of revolutions; the Hotel-Dieu, of the miseries of Paris. After

gazing at the splendors of the Louvre we can, by taking two steps, look
down upon the rags and tatters of that ignoble nest of houses huddling
between the quai de la Tournelle and the Hotel-Dieu,--a foul spot,
which a modern municipality is endeavoring at the present moment to
remove.
In 1836 this marvellous scene presented still another lesson to the eye:
between the Parisian leaning on the parapet and the cathedral lay the
"Terrain" (such was the ancient name of this barren spot), still strewn
with the ruins of the Archiepiscopal Palace. When we contemplate
from that quay so many commemorating scenes, when the soul has
grasped the past as it does the present of this city of Paris, then indeed
Religion seems to have alighted there as if to spread her hands above
the sorrows of both banks and extend her arms from the faubourg
Saint-Antoine to the faubourg Saint-Marceau. Let us hope that this
sublime unity may be completed by the erection of an episcopal palace
of the Gothic order; which shall replace the formless buildings now
standing between the "Terrain," the rue d'Arcole, the cathedral, and the
quai de la Cite.
This spot, the heart of ancient Paris, is the loneliest and most
melancholy of regions. The waters of the Seine break there noisily, the
cathedral casts its shadows at the setting of the sun. We can easily
believe that serious thoughts must have filled the mind of a man
afflicted with a moral malady as he leaned upon that parapet. Attracted
perhaps by the harmony between his thoughts and those to which these
diverse scenes gave birth, he rested his hands upon the coping and