"My dear de Belloy," (he wrote back)—"Not a halfpenny; much work, your six hours a day, in three shifts, that's what awaits you at Sevres, if you are in the mind to come and realize things which are not vague plans but definite arrangements, and the relative result of which will depend on the brilliant wit that you have had the fatal imprudence to cast to the winds. I am at the grindstone, and forswear any one that will not tackle it. I have put my neck in the big collar because the other one was irksome. Your devoted Mar tyr " ine " ried man " about"
he concluded, punning on his nickname. Like his fellow mortals, he was often most merry when he was most sad.
CHAPTER IX
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1839, 1840
Sometimes, notwithstanding his affected indifference, Balzac was provoked by the pleasantries, the fleerings and floutings of satirists and caricaturists, who, finding so many weak points in his armour—so much that was ridiculous in his exaggerations, might be excused for choosing him as a quarry for their wit, if not for the wit's grossness. In 1839, the Gazette des Ecoles inserted in one of its numbers a lithograph exhibiting the novelist in the debtors' prison at Clichy, clad in his monk's gown, and sitting at a table on which there were bottles of wine and a champagne glass. In his left hand he grasped a pipe that he was smoking, and his right arm was round a young woman's waist. Beneath the lithograph was the inscription: "The Reverend Father Dom Seraphitus, Mysticus Goriot, of the Regular Order of Clichy Friars, taken in by all those he has himself taken in, receives amidst his forced solitude the consolations of Sancta Seraphita (Scenes of the Hidden Life, sequel to those of Private Life)."
The last sentence being open to the interpretation that the subject of the caricature was a dishonest man, a complaint was lodged with the Procureur-General against the proprietor of the paper, and was supported by the newly-constituted Men of Letters Society.
This Society, of which Balzac may be considered almost the founder, came into existence during his journey to Italy in the preceding year. On his return, he at once became a member; and, for a while, took a prominent part in all its deliberations, being elected on the committee, as also Victor Hugo, with whom thenceforward his relations were, at least outwardly, most cordial. In the first lawsuit engaged by the Society against the Memorial de Rouen for the purpose of defending the principle of literary property, he pleaded with all the force of his talent, and composed a Literary Code and some Notes on Literary Ownership containing not a few excellent suggestions. His, too, was the initiative for the drawing up of a petition to the King, with a view to the establishment of literary prizes to be bestowed on well-deserving authors every ten years. The King, or rather his advisers, rewarded this zeal but ill. At one of the committee meetings Balzac was prevented from attending by a three days' confinement in a dirty lock-up at Sevres, the cause being the old one which had partly driven him from Paris—his unwillingness to go, as he humorously put it, into the vineyards of his village, and, dressed in uniform, to see that truants from Paris were not eating the grapes.
His rural retreat, indeed, was scarcely the safe asylum he had fondly hoped it would be. Allusion has already been made to one defect—that of the walls which, unlike those of Jericho, did not wait for the trumpeters' blast before they fell down. They had an incurable preference for tumbling down of themselves. Constructed on a subsoil of sandy nature, their foundations yielded at every spell of rain. In vain, architect after architect was applied to, and one mode or another was recommended of relaying and buttressing. At the next downpour, the servant would disturb his master with the news: "The walls have toppled over again, sir, into the neighbours' gardens." And the neighbours' gardens were planted with all kinds of edible vegetables, which were crushed and pounded out of shape and succulence, so that the owner of Les Jardies had claims for damage continually sent in, until, in sheer despair, pledging his credit more deeply, he purchased the land beyond, content, at length, that his walls should be able to carry on their freaks in his own demesne, without let or hindrance or objection from any one. It is said that the land on which Les Jardies stood was so much on the incline that Frederick Lemaitre, who once ventured over there, was compelled to take a couple of stones and place them at each step under his feet in order to approach the house. This was, no doubt, one of the actor's jokes. It is probable that, in selecting the site, Balzac had in his thought the facility the place would afford for reconnoitering when any one came to his doors. The domestics were directed to keep a sharp look-out; and, as soon as a figure was seen approaching that appeared to be a creditor or of the State functionary tribe, the blinds of the abode were lowered, the dog Turk was dungeoned, and every trace of there being inhabitants vanished. After ringing uselessly, the unwelcome visitor generally retreated under the impression that the place was deserted. Then, when the last echo of his steps had died away in the distance, the blinds were drawn up again, Turk, barking with joy, was released from his captivity, and, like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty, Les Jardies re-awoke to its normal activity. How ever the tiers of planted beds perched one above the other—a modern example of the hanging gardens of Babylon—were made to resist the solicitations of the walls was a puzzle to Balzac's familiars. As for trees, only one, a walnut, managed, by dint of perpetual acrobatism, to conserve a stable equilibrium.
Most of the fiction published by Balzac in 1839—A Provincial Great Man in Paris, the Secrets of the Princess de Cadignan, and the Village Cure—was written with great verve, and may be classed in the list of his important work. The second of the three just mentioned, which is the shortest, gives us the story of a woman who, after losing her fourteenth lover, succeeds in getting a fifteenth, d'Arthez, to believe her virtuous and a sort of saint maligned by envy. There is cleverness and to spare in the way the wiles of this sly jade are related, and falsehood shown as a fine art in the service of passional love. Balzac was thoroughly at home in treating such a theme. Both d'Arthez and the Princess are prominent characters in certain others of his books. The former appears in the Provincial Great Man in Paris, which the author calls an audacious and frightfully exact painting of the inner morals of the French capital.