Honoré de Balzac

HONORÉ DE BALZAC
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION
PARIS
POULET‑MALASSIS ET DE BROISE
BOOKSELLERS‑PUBLISHERS
9, rue des Beaux‑Arts
1859
Translated by David Desmond
Around 1835, I lived in two small rooms in the Impasse du Doyenné, not far from the current location of the Pavillon Mollien. Although it was located in the center of Paris facing the Tuilleries and just a few steps from the Louvre, the location was deserted and wild, and it required a certain persistence for me to be found. However, one morning a young man with a distinguished look and a cordial and spiritual air approached my front door and excused himself while making his introduction; he was Jules Sandeau: he had come to recruit me on behalf of Balzac for La Chronique de Paris , a weekly journal that one will certainly remember, but which had not been as financially successful as it deserved. Balzac, Sandeau told me, had read Mademoiselle de Maupin , then very recently published, and he had very much admired its style; thus he wished to request my collaboration on the journal that he sponsored and directed. A date was set for us to get together, and from that date forward there was between us a friendship that only death could break.
If I have told this story, it is not because it is flattering for me, but because it honors Balzac, who, already famous, sought out a young, obscure writer to collaborate in a spirit of of camaraderie and complete equality. At that time, it's true, Balzac was not yet the author of La Comédie Humaine , but he had completed, besides several novellas, La Physiologie du Mariage , La Peau de Chagrin , Louis Lambert , Seraphita , Eugénie Grandet , l'Histoire des Treize , Le Médecin de Campagne , Père Goriot , that is to say, in ordinary times, enough to solidify five or six reputations. His nascent glory, strengthened each month with new rays, shined with all of the splendors of the aurora; certainly he shined brightly like his contemporaries Lamartine, Victor Hugo, de Vigny, de Musset, Sainte‑Beuve, Alexandre Dumas, Mérimée, George Sand, and many others; but at no time in his life did Balzac carry himself as the Grand Lama of literature, and he was always good company; he had pride, but he was entirely free of vanity.