At a little distance was another habitation, in which the kitchen and servants’ rooms were situated; and the whole establishment was surrounded by a high wall, which, being built on the incline of a hillock, was devastated by every storm, and fell five times into his neighbor’s grounds; until Balzac, wearied by constant summons and complaints, bought the surrounding property, that his cherished wall might lie at ease where it chose.
The interior of Les Jardies was fully in keeping with the character of its owner. The reception-room was but scantily furnished, and the bare walls were ornamented with a promise of Gobelin tapestry traced in charcoal.
On the ceiling was written, “Fresco by Delacroix.” On the wall of his study he wrote, “Here is a regal Venetian mirror,” while a corner of his bedroom assured the visitor that he was looking at one of Raphael’s priceless Madonnas.
In this way Balzac furnished his home with magnificent dreams, while he dined, perhaps, as did that creation of Dickens, who cut his bread into imaginary omelets, and sliced it into tenderloins.
Before Balzac’s advent, the plot of ground on which Les Jardies was built had been a vineyard, on which the warm sun had lain all day, and ripened the clustering grapes. The knowledge of this fact preoccupied him greatly. If grapes had grown there, he argued, why should not anything else? Why should not pine-apples?
Now pine-apples were dear in Paris, costing from ten to fifteen francs apiece; and no sooner did this idea present itself than it was grappled, seized, and caressed by Balzac, who immediately saw an annual harvest of an hundred thousand pine-apples, which had bloomed in hot-houses as yet unbuilt.
These pine-apples would, he thought, sell at least for five francs apiece; the attendant expenses could not be over a hundred thousand francs; and by a simple mathematical process, with which no one was more familiar, he foresaw a princely revenue of four hundred thousand francs more.
These four hundred thousand francs danced with such charm and grace before him that he lost no time in looking for a shop in which to sell his unplanted fruit. He soon found a suitable one on the Boulevard Montmartre, which he would have immediately hired, painted in black and yellow, and decorated with an enormous sign, bearing for epigraph Pine-apples from Les Jardies, had he not been forcibly dissuaded by friends less enthusiastic than he.
In this way scheme succeeded scheme, and one project was abandoned only for another. His latest idea he always considered his best, unless he was agreed with, when he would reverse all his arguments to prove that a precedent one was better still. At one time he thought that through a mathematical combination he had discovered a system which would enable him to break the bank at Baden; at another he proposed to cut down a forest in Poland, and supply Paris with timber, and would have done so had not his brother-in-law proved to him that the expenses for transportation would far exceed any possible profit.
To make money, to become a millionaire, and to lead the life of a prince was his constant aim and ambition.