The Works of Honoré de Balzac: About Catherine de' Medici, Seraphita, and Other Stories

UNIVERSITY EDITION AVIL PUBLISHING COMPANY PHILADELPHIA. COPYRIGHTED 1901 BY John D. Avil All Rights Reserved



This book (as to which it is important to remember the Sur if injustice is not to be done to the intentions of the author) has plenty of interest of more kinds than one; but it is perhaps more interesting because of the place it holds in Balzac's work than for itself. He had always considerable hankerings after the historical novel: his early and lifelong devotion to Scott would sufficiently account for that. More than one of the Œuvres de Jeunesse attempts the form in a more or less conscious way: the Chouans , the first successful book, definitely attempts it; but by far the most ambitious attempt is to be found in the book before us. It is most probable that it was of this, if of anything of his own, that Balzac was thinking when, in 1846, he wrote disdainfully to Madame Hanska about Dumas, and expressed himself towards Les Trois Mousquetaires (which had whiled him through a day of cold and inability to work) nearly as ungratefully as Carlyle did towards Captain Marryat. And though it is, let it be repeated, a mistake, and a rather unfair mistake, to give such a title to the book as might induce readers to regard it as a single and definite novel, of which Catherine is the heroine, though it is made up of three parts written at very different times, it has a unity which the introduction shows to some extent, and which a rejected preface given by M. de Lovenjoul shows still better.
To understand this, we must remember that Balzac, though not exactly an historical scholar, was a considerable student of history; and that, although rather an amateur politician, he was a constant thinker and writer on political subjects. We must add to these remembrances the fact of his intense interest in all such matters as Alchemy, the Elixir of Life, and so forth, to which the sixteenth century in general, and Catherine de' Medici in particular, were known to be devoted. All these interests of his met in the present book, the parts of which appeared in inverse order, and the genesis of which is important enough to make it desirable to incorporate some of the usual bibliographical matter in the substance of this preface. The third and shortest, Les Deux Rêves , a piece partly suggestive of the famous Prophecy of Cazotte and other legends of the Revolution (but with more retrospective than prospective view), is dated as early as 1828 (before the turning-point), and was actually published in a periodical in 1830. La Confidence des Ruggieri , written in 1836 (and, as I have noted in the general introduction, according to its author, in a single night) followed, and Le Martyr Calviniste , which had several titles, and was advertised as in preparation for a long time, did not come till 1841.