The Jealousies of a Country Town | Page 2

to take much notice, gone through metamorphoses of Bonapartism, Constitutional Liberalism, and what not. But still du Bousquier is alive, as well as all the minor assistants and spectators in the battle for the old maid's hand. Suzanne, that tactful and graceless Suzanne to whom we are introduced first of all, is very much alive; and for all her gracelessness, not at all disagreeable. I am only sorry that she sold the counterfeit presentment of the Princess Goritza after all.
Le Cabinet des Antiques, in its Alencon scenes, is a worthy pendant to La Vieille Fille. The old-world honor of the Marquis d'Esgrignon, the thankless sacrifices of Armande, the prisca fides of Maitre Chesnel, present pictures for which, out of Balzac, we can look only in Jules Sandeau, and which in Sandeau, though they are presented with a more poetical touch, have less masterly outline than here. One takes --or, at least, I take--less interest in the ignoble intrigues of the other side, except in so far as they menace the fortunes of a worthy house unworthily represented. Victurnien d'Esgrignon, like his companion Savinien de Portenduere (who, however, is, in every respect, a very much better fellow), does not argue in Balzac any high opinion of the fils de famille. He is, in fact, an extremely feeble youth, who does not seem to have got much real satisfaction out of the escapades, for which he risked not merely his family's fortune, but his own honor, and who would seem to have been a rake, not from natural taste and spirit and relish, but because it seemed to him to be the proper thing to be. But the beginnings of the fortune of the aspiring and intriguing Camusots are admirably painted; and Madame de Maufrigneuse, that rather doubtful divinity, who appears so frequently in Balzac, here acts the dea ex machina with considerable effect. And we end well (as we generally do when Blondet, whom Balzac seems more than once to adopt as mask, is the narrator), in the last glimpse of Mlle. Armande left alone with the remains of her beauty, the ruins of everything dear to her--and God.
These two stories were written at no long interval, yet, for some reason or other, Balzac did not at once unite them. La Vieille Fille first appeared in November and December 1836 in the Presse, and was inserted next year in the Scenes de la Vie de Province. It had three chapter divisions. The second part did not appear all at once. Its first installment, under the general title, came out in the Chronique de Paris even before the Vieille Fille appeared in March 1836; the completion was not published (under the title of _Les Rivalites en Province_) till the autumn of 1838, when the Constitutionnel served as its vehicle. There were eight chapter divisions in this latter. The whole of the Cabinet was published in book form (with Gambara to follow it) in 1839. There were some changes here; and the divisions were abolished when the whole book in 1844 entered the Comedie. One of the greatest mistakes which, in my humble judgment, the organizers of the edition definitive have made, is their adoption of Balzac's never executed separation of the pair and deletion of the excellent joint-title Les Rivalites.
George Saintsbury

I

AN OLD MAID
By HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Monsieur Eugene-Auguste-Georges-Louis Midy de la Greneraye Surville, Royal Engineer of the Ponts at Chausses.
As a testimony to the affection of his brother-in-law,
DE BALZAC.

AN OLD MAID


CHAPTER I
ONE OF MANY CHEVALIERS DE VALOIS
Most persons have encountered, in certain provinces in France, a number of Chevaliers de Valois. One lived in Normandy, another at Bourges, a third (with whom we have here to do) flourished in Alencon, and doubtless the South possesses others. The number of the Valesian tribe is, however, of no consequence to the present tale. All these chevaliers, among whom were doubtless some who were Valois as Louis XIV. was Bourbon, knew so little of one another that it was not advisable to speak to one about the others. They were all willing to leave the Bourbons in tranquil possession of the throne of France; for it was too plainly established that Henri IV. became king for want of a male heir in the first Orleans branch called the Valois. If there are any Valois, they descend from Charles de Valois, Duc d'Angouleme, son of Charles IX. and Marie Touchet, the male line from whom ended, until proof to the contrary be produced, in the person of the Abbe de Rothelin. The Valois-Saint-Remy, who descended from Henri II., also came to an end in the famous Lamothe-Valois implicated in the affair of the Diamond Necklace.
Each of these many chevaliers, if we may believe reports, was, like the Chevalier of Alencon, an old