The Celibates | Page 2

Abbe Troubert, which has served as a
model for many similar things, has, if it has often been equaled, not
often been surpassed.
I cannot, however, help thinking that there is more than a little
exaggeration in more than one point of the story. The Abbe Birotteau is
surely a little too much of a fool; the Abbe Troubert an Iago a little too
much wanting in verisimilitude; and the central incident of the clause
about the furniture too manifestly improbable. Taking the first and the
last points together, is it likely that any one not quite an idiot should, in

the first place, remain so entirely ignorant of the value of his property;
should, in the second, though, ignorant or not, he attached the greatest
possible /pretium affectionis/ to it, contract to resign it for such a
ridiculous consideration; and should, in the third, take the fatal step
without so much as remembering the condition attached thereto? If it
be answered that Birotteau /was/ idiot enough to do such a thing, then it
must be observed further that one's sympathy is frozen by the fact.
Such a man deserved such treatment. And, again, even if French justice
was, and perhaps is, as much influenced by secret considerations as
Balzac loves to represent it, we must agree with that member of the
Listomere society who pointed out that no tribunal could possibly
uphold such an obviously iniquitous bargain. As for Troubert, the idea
of the Jesuitical ecclesiastic (though Balzac was not personally hostile
to the Jesuits) was a common one at the time, and no doubt popular, but
the actual personage seems to me nearer to Eugene Sue's Rodin in some
ways than I could have desired.
These things, however, are very much a case of "As You Like It" or
"As It Strikes You," and I have said that /Le Cure de Tours/ strikes
some good judges as of exceptional merit, while no one can refuse it
merit in a high degree. I should not, except for the opening, place it in
the very highest class of the /Comedie/, but it is high beyond all doubt
in the second.
The third part (The Two Brothers/A Bachelor's Establishment) of /Les
Celibataires/ takes very high rank among its companions. As in most of
his best books, Balzac has set at work divers favorite springs of action,
and has introduced personages of whom he has elsewhere given, not
exactly replicas--he never did that--but companion portraits. And he
has once more justified the proceeding amply. Whether he has not also
justified the reproach, such as it is, of those who say that to see the
most congenial expression of his fullest genius, you must go to his bad
characters and not to his good, readers shall determine for themselves
after reading the book.
It was the product of the year 1842, when the author was at the ripest of
his powers, and after which, with the exception of /Les Parents
Pauvres/, he produced not much of his very best save in continuations
and rehandlings of earlier efforts. He changed his title a good deal, and
in that MS. correction of a copy of the /Comedie/ which has been taken,

perhaps without absolutely decisive authority, as the basis of the
/Edition Definitive/, he adopted /La Rabouilleuse/ as his latest favorite.
This, besides its quaintness, has undoubted merit as fixing the attention
on one at least of the chief figures of the book, while /Un Menage de
garcon/ only obliquely indicates the real purport of the novel.
Jean-Jacques Rouget is a most unfortunate creature, who anticipates
Baron Hulot as an example of absolute dependence on things of the
flesh, /plus/ a kind of cretinism, which Hulot, to do him justice, does
not exhibit even in his worst degradation. But his "bachelor
establishment," though undoubtedly useful for the purposes of the story,
might have been changed for something else, and his personality have
been considerably altered, without very much affecting the general drift
of the fiction.
Flore Brazier, on the other hand, the /Rabouilleuse/ herself, is essential,
and with Maxence Gilet and Philippe Bridau forms the centre of the
action and the passion of the book. She ranks, indeed, with those few
feminine types, Valerie Marneffe, La Cousine Bette, Eugenie Grandet,
Beatrix, Madame de Maufrigneuse, and perhaps Esther Gobseck, whom
Balzac has tried to draw at full length. It is to be observed that though
quite without morals of any kind, she is not /ab initio/ or intrinsically a
she-fiend like Valerie or Lisbeth. She does not do harm for harm's sake,
nor even directly to gratify spite, greed, or other purely unsocial and
detestable passions. She is a type of feminine sensuality of the less
ambitious and restless sort. Given a decent education, a fair fortune, a