An English setting was likewise given by Scribe to his play of Helene, suggested by Balzac's Honorine, which was staged at the Gymnase in 1846. Helene is a young orphan who draws and paints for her living, and has the good fortune to have all her canvases bought at advantageous prices by a rich dealer named Crosby. But suddenly she learns that the dealer is acting in behalf of a certain Lord Clavering, and, fearing some underhand designs, she refuses to keep the money that has been paid her. Smitten by her disinterestedness as well as by her beauty, Lord Clavering would gladly marry her, but is bound by his word plighted to Lord Dunbar's daughter. However, the latter elopes with another nobleman, and Clavering marries Helene. This pretty theme, developed by the actress Rose Cheri, made a huge hit.
Nearly as great was the actress's success at the same theatre in 1849, when she played the principal role in Clairville's Madame Marneffe a version of Cousin Bette, but very much modified, since Bette is eliminated altogether, and Valerie Marneffe, instead of being a depraved creature, is merely a clever woman of the world, who avenges her father's ruin on the Baron Hulot and Crevel, they being mainly responsible for it. When Balzac was at Wierzchownia, on his last visit, he wrote to his mother asking her to go to the theatrical agent's in order to receive his third of the receipts produced by the piece. These author's royalties must have helped his purse considerably.
In the year after the novelist's death, the applauded representation of Mercadet, at the Gymnase, stimulated other managers of theatres to go on exploiting his Comedy. In September, the Shagreen Skin, arranged by Judicis, was played at the Ambigu-Comique, with tableaux of almost literal imitation, yet bringing to life again, in the denouement, the chief dramatis personae, and making the whole drama a dream.
At the Comedie Francaise, in 1853, Barriere and de Beauplan produced a five-act prose play drawn from the Lily in the Valley. The novel was an awkward one to dramatize, there being very few elements in it capable of yielding situations for the stage. So the result was poor. A better thing was made in 1859 by de Keraniou out of the Sceaux Ball. On it he based an agreeable piece entitled Noblesse Oblige, with a delicately interpreted love scene in it which met with appreciative audiences at the Odeon.
One more example, that of Cousin Pons, may be given to close the list of these adaptation, which are fully treated in Edmond Bire's interesting book dealing with certain aspects of Balzac's life and work. Cousin Pons was staged at the Cluny Theatre in 1873. Alphonse de Launay, the author of the play, keeps to his text fairly well; but he adds a love episode which thrusts the friendship of the two musicians into the second place. Moreover, after the death of Pons, Schmucke lives to inherit his fortune and the Camusots are checkmated.
CHAPTER XVII
CONCLUSION: THE MAN AND HIS PORTRAITS
It may be affirmed, without thereby disparaging the Comedie Humaine, that Balzac's personality is even more interesting than his work; and this is a sufficient excuse for returning to it in a last chapter and trying, at the risk of repetition, to make its presentment completer by way of supplement and summary.