LA DUCHESSE D'ABRANTES
"She has ended like the Empire."
Another of Balzac's literary friends was Madame Laure Junot, the Duchesse d'Abrantes. She was an intimate friend of Madame de Girardin and it was in the salon of the latter's mother, Madame Sophie Gay, that Balzac met her.
The Duchesse d'Abrantes, widow of Marechal Junot, had enjoyed under the Empire all the splendors of official life. Her salon had been one of the most attractive of her epoch. Being in reduced circumstances after the downfall of the Empire and having four children (Josephine, Constance, Napoleon and Alfred) to support, her life was a constant struggle to obtain a fortune and a position for her children. But as she had no financial ability, and had acquired very extravagant habits, the money she was constantly seeking no sooner entered her hands than it vanished. Wishing to renounce none of her former luxuries, she insisted upon keeping her salon as in former days, trying to conceal her poverty by her gaiety; but it was a sorrowful case of /la misere doree/.
Feeling that luxury was as indispensable to her as bread, and finding her financial embarrassment on the increase, she decided to support herself by means of her pen. She might well have recalled the wise words of Madame de Tencin when she warned Marmontel to beware of depending on the pen, since nothing is more casual. The man who makes shoes is sure of his pay; the man who writes a book or a play is never sure of anything.
Though the Generale Junot belonged to a society far different from Balzac's they had many things in common which brought him frequently to her salon. Balzac realized the necessity of frequenting the salon, saying that the first requisite of a novelist is to be well-bred; he must move in society as much as possible and converse with the aristocratic /monde/. The kitchen, the green-room, can be imagined, but not the salon; it is necessary to go there in order to know how to speak and act there.
Though Balzac visited various salons, he presented a different appearance in the drawing-room of Madame d'Abrantes. The glories of the Empire overexcited him to the point of giving to his relations with the Duchesse a vivacity akin to passion. The first evening, he exclaimed: "This woman has seen Napoleon as a child, she has seen him occupied with the ordinary things of life, then she has seen him develop, rise and cover the world with his name! She is for me a saint come to sit beside me, after having lived in heaven with God!: This love of Balzac for Napoleon underwent more than one variation, but at this time he had erected in his home in the rue de Cassini a little altar surmounted by a statue of Napoleon, with this inscription: "What he began with the sword, I shall achieve with the pen."
When Balzac first met the Duchesse d'Abrantes, she was about forty years of age. It is probably she whom he describes thus, under the name of Madame d'Aiglemont, in /La Femme de trente Ans/:
"Madame d'Aiglemont's dress harmonized with the thought that dominated her person. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet of broad plaits, without ornament of any kind, for she seemed to have bidden farewell forever to elaborate toilets. Nor were any of the small arts of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. Only her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether conceal the dainty grace of her figure. Then, too, the luxury of her long gown consisted in an extremely distinguished cut; and if it is permissible to look for expression in the arrangement of materials, surely the numerous straight folds of her dress invested her with a great dignity. Moreover, there may have been some lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so much a part of old childish habit, that her careless grace absolves this vestige of vanity. All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine to make up the sum of a woman's beauty or ugliness, her charm or lack of charm, can not be indicated, especially when the soul is the bond of all the details and imprints on them a delightful unity. Her manner was in perfect accord with her figure and her dress. Only in certain women at a certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it sorrow, is it happiness that gives to the woman of thirty, to the happy or unhappy woman, the secret of this eloquence of carriage? This will always be an enigma which each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories. The way in which she leaned both elbows on the arm of her chair, the toying of her inter-clasped fingers, the curve of her throat, the freedom of her languid but lithesome body which reclined in graceful exhaustion, the unconstraint of her limbs, the carelessness of her pose, the utter lassitude of her movements, all revealed a woman without interest in life. . . ."
Balzac's parents having moved from Villeparisis to Versailles, he had an excellent opportunity of seeing the Duchess while visiting them, as she was living at that time in the Grand-Rue de Montreuil No. 65, in a pavilion which she called her /ermitage/. In /La Femme de trente Ans/, Balzac has described her retreat as a country house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil, on the road which leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud. This house, built originally for the short-lived loves of some great lord, was situated so that the owner could enjoy all the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates.