“We are very bourgeoise,” said aunt Sophie, when speaking of Mme. George Sand, “although our minds are emancipated by liberalism more than by education, and from regarding public acts more than private actions. Juliette, remember the name of this writer, George Sand,” she added. “She will have a great influence on your generation, and you will certainly be enthusiastic about her when you are of age. No matter what is said of her, Mme. George Sand has remained very womanly, and she will never really be understood except by women; but the greater part of the things she has written, outside of her stories of peasant life, are suited to younger minds than ours, which she must delight, and which she certainly reflects. It is easier for us to understand Mme. de Staël and her Corinne.” And my aunts initiated me in the beauty, so dissimilar, of Mme. de Staël’s Corinne and Mme. George Sand’s La Petite Fadette. I found, to their delight, the two books equally admirable, though in a different way. It is true they read them aloud to me, pointing out what I should admire; but my aunts, in spite of my affection for them, and the great confidence I felt in their intelligence, would never have made me enthusiastic about them if I had not myself felt their power.
My grandmother, who adored Balzac, used frequently to read to me long extracts from his works, which I found tedious. She had finally renounced trying to make me like her dear, her great, her unique novel-writer. I sometimes vexed her by saying:
“He is neither Homeric nor Virgilian enough.”
My aunts detested Balzac.
“He is a creator of unwholesome characters,” said aunt Anastasie; “the heroes of Monsieur de Balzac can easily enter into one’s life and lead one to live in the same manner in which they live themselves. They are so real that you think you have known them; they take possession of me when I read one of his novels. I cannot free my mind of people whom I do not like, whose acts I blame, and who impose themselves on my judgment, as an ugly fashion is sometimes imposed on well-dressed women. I am convinced that Balzac will form even more characters than those he has painted. I fear that my sister Pélagie acts under his influence oftener than she is aware. If you let yourself be captured by that man’s power, he possesses you, and he is an ill-doer who leads you to doubt, to be sceptical about people and things.”
“Take care, my niece, of Monsieur de Balzac, later in life,” added aunt Constance, “he is the most dangerous of all writers of the present day. He will create contemporaries for you, whom I do not envy you; egoists, people athirst for position. Remember what your old aunt has said to you—even write it down: Balzac will engender brains, but never consciences nor hearts. To Balzac, virtue is an imbecility. Eugénie Grandet and Le Père Gariot revolt me. I do not even make an exception of the Lys dans la Vallée.”
Ah! if grandmother, who was a fanatic about him, had been there, what passion she would have thrown into those discussions about Monsieur de Balzac with her sisters. I told my aunts that when I left Chauny grandmother was reading Les deux Jeunes Mariées for the fifth time.
Aunt Sophie dictated to me a criticism of de Balzac’s works, which I read to grandmother on my return. She became angry and made me reply to her sister in her name. I had thus two contradictory lessons on de Balzac and I remember them both.
De Balzac was a whole world to grandmother. Through him, and with him, one could exclude the banality of social intercourse from one’s existence. One lived with his heroes as if they were friends; they were flesh and blood. One talked with them, saw them; they peopled one’s existence, they came and visited one.
I wrote pages on pages to aunt Sophie about de Balzac. She replied to grandmother, and then began a correspondence between the two sisters on the literature of the day, which was communicated to me whenever it could be, and which instructed me about many works of the time that were vibrating with interest.