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THE THIRTEEN
THE THIRTEEN HONORE DE BALZAC INTRODUCTION
The /Histoire des Treize/ consists--or rather is built up--of three
stories: /Ferragus/ or the /Rue Soly/ /La Duchesse de Langeais/ or
/Ne touchez-paz a la hache/ and /La Fille aux Yeux d'Or/.
To tell the truth there is more power than taste throughout the
/Histoire des Treize/ and perhaps not very much less unreality than
power. Balzac is very much better than Eugene Sue though Eugene Sue
also is better than it is the fashion to think him just now. But he is
here to a certain extent competing with Sue on the latter's own
ground. The notion of the "Devorants"--of a secret society of men
devoted to each other's interests entirely free from any moral or
legal scruple possessed of considerable means in wealth ability and
position all working together by fair means or foul for good ends
or bad--is no doubt rather seducing to the imagination at all times;
and it so happened that it was particularly seducing to the
imagination of that time. And its example has been powerful since; it
gave us Mr. Stevenson's /New Arabian Nights/ only as it were the
other day.
But there is something a little schoolboyish in it; and I do not know
that Balzac has succeeded entirely in eliminating this something. The
pathos of the death under persecution of the innocent Clemence does
not entirely make up for the unreasonableness of the whole situation.
Nobody can say that the abominable misconduct of Maulincour--who is a
hopeless "cad"--is too much punished though an Englishman may think
that Dr. Johnson's receipt of three or four footmen with cudgels
applied repeatedly and unsparingly would have been better than
elaborately prepared accidents and duels which were too honorable for
a Peeping Tom of this kind; and poisonings which reduced the avengers
to the level of their victim. But the imbroglio is of itself stupid;
these fathers who cannot be made known to husbands are mere stage
properties and should never be fetched out of the theatrical lumber-
room by literature.
/La Duchesse de Langeais/ is I think a better story with more
romantic attraction free from the objections just made to /Ferragus/
and furnished with a powerful if slightly theatrical catastrophe. It
is as good as anything that its author has done of the kind subject
to those general considerations of probability and otherwise which
have been already hinted at. For those who are not troubled by any
such critical reflections both no doubt will be highly
satisfactory.
The third of the series /La Fille aux Yeux d'Or/ in some respects
one of Balzac's most brilliant effects has been looked at askance by
many of his English readers. At one time he had the audacity to think
of calling it /La Femme aux Yeux Rouges/. To those who consider the
story morbid or one may say /bizarre/ one word of justification
hardly of apology may be offered. It was in the scheme of the
/Comedie Humaine/ to survey social life in its entirety by a minute
analysis of its most diverse constituents. It included all the
pursuits and passions was large and patient and unafraid. And the
patience the curiosity of the artist which made Cesar Birotteau and
his bankrupt ledgers matters of high import to us which did not
shrink from creating a Vautrin and a Lucien de Rubempre would have
been incomplete had it stopped short of a Marquise de San-Real of a
Paquita Valdes. And in the great mass of the /Comedie Humaine/ with
its largeness and reality of life as in life itself; the figure of
Paquita justifies its presence.
Considering the /Histoire des Treize/ as a whole it is of engrossing
interest. And I must confess I should not think much of any boy who
beginning Balzac with this series failed to go rather mad over it. I
know there was a time when I used to like it best of all and thought
not merely /Eugenie Grandet/ but /Le Pere Goriot/ (though not the
/Peau de Chagrin/) dull in comparison. Some attention however must
be paid to two remarkable characters on whom it is quite clear that
Balzac expended a great deal of pains and one of whom he seems to
have "caressed" as the French say with a curious admixture of
dislike and admiration.
The first Bourignard or Ferragus is of course another though a
somewhat minor example--Collin or Vautrin being the chief--of that
strange tendency to take intense interest in criminals which seems to
be a pretty constant eccentricity of many human minds and which laid
an extraordinary grasp on the great French writers of Balzac's time. I
must confess though it may sink me very low in some eyes that I have
never been able to fully appreciate the attractions of crime and
criminals fictitious or real. Certain pleasant and profitable things
no doubt retain their pleasure and their profit to some extent when
they are done in the manner which is technically called criminal; but
they seem to me to acquire no additional interest by being so. As the
criminal of fact is in the vast majority of cases an exceedingly
commonplace and dull person the criminal of fiction seems to me only
or usually to escape these curses by being absolutely improbable and
unreal. But I know this is a terrible heresy.
Henri de Marsay is a much more ambitious and a much more interesting
figure. In him are combined the attractions of criminality beauty
brains success and last of all dandyism. It is a well-known and
delightful fact that the most Anglophobe Frenchmen--and Balzac might
fairly be classed among them--have always regarded the English dandy
with half-jealous half-awful admiration. Indeed our novelist it
will be seen found it necessary to give Marsay English blood. But
there is a tradition that this young Don Juan--not such a good fellow
as Byron's nor such a /grand seigneur/ as Moliere's--was partly
intended to represent Charles de Remusat who is best known to this
generation by very sober and serious philosophical works and by his
part in his mother's correspondence. I do not know that there ever
were any imputation on M. de Remusat's morals; but in memoirs of the
time he is I think accused of a certain selfishness and /hauteur/
and he certainly made his way partly by journalism partly by
society to power very much as Marsay did. But Marsay would certainly
not have written /Abelard/ and the rest or have returned to
Ministerial rank in our own time. Marsay in fact more fortunate than
Rubempre and of a higher stamp and flight than Rastignac makes with
them Balzac's trinity of sketches of the kind of personage whose part
in his day and since every young Frenchman has aspired to play and
some have played. It cannot be said that "a moral man is Marsay"; it
cannot be said that he has the element of good-nature which redeems
Rastignac. But he bears a blame and a burden for which we Britons are
responsible in part--the Byronic ideal of the guilty hero coming to
cross and blacken the old French model of unscrupulous good humor. It
is not a very pretty mixture or a very worthy ideal; but I am not so
sure that it is not still a pretty common one.
The association of the three stories forming the /Histoire des Treize/
is in book form original inasmuch as they filled three out of the
four volumes of /Etudes des Moeurs/ published in 1834-35 and
themselves forming part of the first collection of /Scenes de la Vie
Parisienne/. But /Ferragus/ had appeared in parts (with titles to
each) in the /Revue de Paris/ for March and April 1833 and part of
/La Duchesse de Langeais/ in the /Echo de la Jeune France/ almost
contemporaneously. There are divisions in this also. /Ferragus/ and
/La Duchesse/ also appeared without /La Fille aux Yeux d'Or/ in 1839
published in one volume by Charpentier before their absorption at the
usual time in the /Comedie/.
George Saintsbury
THE THIRTEEN
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
In the Paris of the Empire there were found Thirteen men equally
impressed with the same idea equally endowed with energy enough to
keep them true to it while among themselves they were loyal enough to
keep faith even when their interests seemed to clash. They were strong
enough to set themselves above all laws; bold enough to shrink from no
enterprise; and lucky enough to succeed in nearly everything that they
undertook. So profoundly politic were they that they could dissemble
the tie which bound them together. They ran the greatest risks and
kept their failures to themselves. Fear never entered into their
calculations; not one of them had trembled before princes before the
executioner's axe before innocence. They had taken each other as they
were regardless of social prejudices. Criminals they doubtless were
yet none the less were they all remarkable for some one of the virtues
which go to the making of great men and their numbers were filled up
only from among picked recruits. Finally that nothing should be
lacking to complete the dark mysterious romance of their history
nobody to this day knows who they were. The Thirteen once realized all
the wildest ideas conjured up by tales of the occult powers of a
Manfred a Faust or a Melmoth; and to-day the band is broken up or
at any rate dispersed. Its members have quietly returned beneath the
yoke of the Civil Code; much as Morgan the Achilles of piracy gave
up buccaneering to be a peaceable planter; and untroubled by qualms
of conscience sat himself down by the fireside to dispose of blood-
stained booty acquired by the red light of blazing towns.
After Napoleon's death the band was dissolved by a chance event which
the author is bound for the present to pass over in silence and its
mysterious existence as curious it may be as the darkest novel by
Mrs. Radcliffe came to an end.
It was only lately that the present writer detecting as he fancied
a faint desire for celebrity in one of the anonymous heroes to whom
the whole band once owed an occult allegiance received the somewhat
singular permission to make public certain of the adventures which
befell that band provided that while telling the story in his own
fashion he observed certain limits.
The aforesaid leader was still an apparently young man with fair hair
and blue eyes and a soft thin voice which might seem to indicate a
feminine temperament. His face was pale his ways mysterious. He
chatted pleasantly and told me that he was only just turned of forty.
He might have belonged to any one of the upper classes. The name which
he gave was probably assumed and no one answering to his description
was known in society. Who is he do you ask? No one knows.
Perhaps when he made his extraordinary disclosures to the present
writer he wished to see them in some sort reproduced; to enjoy the
effect of the sensation on the multitude; to feel as Macpherson might
have felt when the name of Ossian his creation passed into all
languages. And in truth that Scottish advocate knew one of the
keenest or at any rate one of the rarest sensations in human
experience. What was this but the incognito of genius? To write an
/Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem/ is to take one's share in the glory
of a century but to give a Homer to one's country--this surely is a
usurpation of the rights of God.
The writer is too well acquainted with the laws of narration to be
unaware of the nature of the pledge given by this brief preface; but
at the same time he knows enough of the history of the Thirteen to
feel confident that he shall not disappoint any expectations raised by
the programme. Tragedies dripping with gore comedies piled up with
horrors tales of heads taken off in secret have been confided to him.
If any reader has not had enough of the ghastly tales served up to the
public for some time past he has only to express his wish; the author
is in a position to reveal cold-blooded atrocities and family secrets
of a gloomy and astonishing nature. But in preference he has chosen
those pleasanter stories in which stormy passions are succeeded by
purer scenes where the beauty and goodness of woman shine out the
brighter for the darkness. And to the honor of the Thirteen such
episodes as these are not wanting. Some day perhaps it may be thought
worth while to give their whole history to the world; in which case it
might form a pendant to the history of the buccaneers--that race apart
so curiously energetic so attractive in spite of their crimes.
When a writer has a true story to tell he should scorn to turn it
into a sort of puzzle toy after the manner of those novelists who
take their reader for a walk through one cavern after another to show
him a dried-up corpse at the end of the fourth volume and inform him
by way of conclusion that he has been frightened all along by a door
hidden somewhere or other behind some tapestry; or a dead body left
by inadvertence under the floor. So the present chronicler in spite
of his objection to prefaces felt bound to introduce his fragment by
a few remarks.
/Ferragus/ the first episode is connected by invisible links with
the history of the Thirteen for the power which they acquired in a
natural manner provides the apparently supernatural machinery.
Again although a certain literary coquetry may be permissible to
retailers of the marvelous the sober chronicler is bound to forego
such advantage as he may reap from an odd-sounding name on which many
ephemeral successes are founded in these days. Wherefore the present
writer gives the following succinct statement of the reasons which
induced him to adopt the unlikely sounding title and sub-title.
In accordance with old-established custom /Ferragus/ is a name taken
by the head of a guild of /Devorants/ /id est Devoirants/ or
journeymen. Every chief on the day of his election chooses a pseudonym
and continues a dynasty of /Devorants/ precisely as a pope changes his
name on his accession to the triple tiara; and as the Church has its
Clement XIV. Gregory XII. Julius II. or Alexander VI. so the
workmen have their Trempe-la-Soupe IX. Ferragus XXII. Tutanus XIII.
or Masche-Fer IV. Who are the /Devorants/ do you ask?
The /Devorants/ are one among many tribes of /compagnons/ whose origin
can be traced to a great mystical association formed among the workmen
of Christendom for the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem.
/Compagnonnage/ is still a popular institution in France. Its
traditions still exert a power over little enlightened minds over men
so uneducated that they have not learned to break their oaths; and the
various organizations might be turned to formidable account even yet
if any rough-hewn man of genius arose to make use of them for his
instruments would be for the most part almost blind.
Wherever journeymen travel they find a hostel for /compagnons/ which
has been in existence in the town from time immemorial. The /obade/
as they call it is a kind of lodge with a "Mother" in charge an old
half-gypsy wife who has nothing to lose. She hears all that goes on in
the countryside; and either from fear or from long habit is devoted
to the interests of the tribe boarded and lodged by her. And as a
result this shifting population subject as it is to an unalterable
law of custom has eyes in every place and will carry out an order
anywhere without asking questions; for the oldest journeyman is still
at an age when a man has some beliefs left. What is more the whole
fraternity professes doctrines which if unfolded never so little are
both true enough and mysterious enough to electrify all the adepts
with patriotism; and the /compagnons/ are so attached to their rules
that there have been bloody battles between different fraternities on
a question of principle. Fortunately however for peace and public
order; if a /Devorant/ is ambitious he takes to building houses
makes a fortune and leaves the guild.
A great many curious things might be told of their rivals the
/Compagnons du Devior/ of all the different sects of workmen their
manners and customs and brotherhoods and of the resemblances between
them and the Freemasons; but there these particulars would be out of
place. The author will merely add that before the Revolution a
Trempe-la-Soupe had been known in the King's service which is to say
that he had the tenure of a place in His Majesty's galleys for one
hundred and one years; but even thence he ruled his guild and was
religiously consulted on all matters and if he escaped from the hulks
he met with help succor and respect wherever he went. To have a
chief in the hulks is one of those misfortunes for which Providence is
responsible; but a faithful lodge of /devorants/ is bound as before
to obey a power created by and set above themselves. Their lawful
sovereign is in exile for the time being but none the less is he
their king. And now any romantic mystery hanging about the words
/Ferragus/ and the /devorants/ is completely dispelled.
As for the Thirteen the author feels that on the strength of the
details of this almost fantastic story he can afford to give away yet
another prerogative though it is one of the greatest on record and
would possibly fetch a high price if brought into a literary auction
mart; for the owner might inflict as many volumes on the public as La
Contemporaine.[*]
[*] A long series of so-called Memoirs which appeared about 1830.
The Thirteen were all of them men tempered like Byron's friend
Trelawney the original (so it is said) of /The Corsair/. All of them
were fatalists men of spirit and poetic temperament; all of them were
tired of the commonplace life which they led; all felt attracted
towards Asiatic pleasures by all the vehement strength of newly
awakened and long dormant forces. One of these chancing to take up
/Venice Preserved/ for the second time admired the sublime friendship
between Pierre and Jaffir and fell to musing on the virtues of
outlaws the loyalty of the hulks the honor of thieves and the
immense power that a few men can wield if they bring their whole minds
to bear upon the carrying out of a single will. It struck him that the
individual man rose higher than men. Then he began to think that if a
few picked men should band themselves together; and if to natural
wit and education and money they could join a fanaticism hot enough
to fuse as it were all those separate forces into a single one then
the whole world would be at their feet. From that time forth with a
tremendous power of concentration they could wield an occult power
against which the organization of society would be helpless; a power
which would push obstacles aside and defeat the will of others; and
the diabolical power of all would be at the service of each. A hostile
world apart within the world admitting none of the ideas recognizing
none of the laws of the world; submitting only to the sense of
necessity obedient only from devotion; acting all as one man in the
interests of the comrade who should claim the aid of the rest; a band
of buccaneers with carriages and yellow kid gloves; a close
confederacy of men of extraordinary power of amused and cool
spectators of an artificial and petty world which they cursed with
smiling lips; conscious as they were that they could make all things
bend to their caprice weave ingenious schemes of revenge and live
with the life in thirteen hearts to say nothing of the unfailing
pleasure of facing the world of men with a hidden misanthropy a sense
that they were armed against their kind and could retire into
themselves with one idea which the most remarkable men had not--all
this constituted a religion of pleasure and egoism which made fanatics
of the Thirteen. The history of the Society of Jesus was repeated for
the Devil's benefit. It was hideous and sublime.
The pact was made; and it lasted precisely because it seemed
impossible. And so it came to pass that in Paris there was a
fraternity of thirteen men each one bound body and soul to the
rest and all of them strangers to each other in the sight of the
world. But evening found them gathered together like conspirators and
then they had no thoughts apart; riches like the wealth of the Old
Man of the Mountain they possessed in common; they had their feet in
every salon their hands in every strong box their elbows in the
streets their heads upon all pillows they did not scruple to help
themselves at their pleasure. No chief commanded them nobody was
strong enough. The liveliest passion the most urgent need took
precedence--that was all. They were thirteen unknown kings; unknown
but with all the power and more than the power of kings; for they were
both judges and executioners they had taken wings that they might
traverse the heights and depths of society scorning to take any place
in it since all was theirs. If the author learns the reason of their
abdication he will communicate it.
And now the author is free to give those episodes in the History of
the Thirteen which by reason of the Parisian flavor of the details or
the strangeness of the contrasts possessed a peculiar attraction for
him.
Paris
THE THIRTEEN
I.
FERRAGUS
CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS
By HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Hector Berlioz.
CHAPTER I
MADAME JULES
Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy;
also there are noble streets streets simply respectable young
streets on the morality of which the public has not yet formed an
opinion; also cut-throat streets streets older than the age of the
oldest dowagers estimable streets streets always clean streets
always dirty working laboring and mercantile streets. In short the
streets of Paris have every human quality and impress us by what we
must call their physiognomy with certain ideas against which we are
defenceless. There are for instance streets of a bad neighborhood in
which you could not be induced to live and streets where you would
willingly take up your abode. Some streets like the rue Montmartre
have a charming head and end in a fish's tail. The rue de la Paix is
a wide street a fine street yet it wakens none of those gracefully
noble thoughts which come to an impressible mind in the middle of the
rue Royale and it certainly lacks the majesty which reigns in the
Place Vendome.
If you walk the streets of the Ile Saint-Louis do not seek the reason
of the nervous sadness that lays hold upon you save in the solitude of
the spot the gloomy look of the houses and the great deserted
mansions. This island the ghost of /fermiers-generaux/ is the Venice
of Paris. The Place de la Bourse is voluble busy degraded; it is
never fine except by moonlight at two in the morning. By day it is
Paris epitomized; by night it is a dream of Greece. The rue
Traversiere-Saint-Honore--is not that a villainous street? Look at the
wretched little houses with two windows on a floor where vice crime
and misery abound. The narrow streets exposed to the north where the
sun never comes more than three or four times a year are the
cut-throat streets which murder with impunity; the authorities of the
present day do not meddle with them; but in former times the
Parliament might perhaps have summoned the lieutenant of police and
reprimanded him for the state of things; and it would at least have
issued some decree against such streets as it once did against the
wigs of the Chapter of Beauvais. And yet Monsieur Benoiston de
Chateauneuf has proved that the mortality of these streets is double
that of others! To sum up such theories by a single example: is not
the rue Fromentin both murderous and profligate!
These observations incomprehensible out of Paris will doubtless be
understood by musing men of thought and poesy and pleasure who know
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