A little earlier than this he had found time for an enormous amount of work which would seem completely out of his province, and had written letter after letter in the Siecle, and spent 10,000 francs, in defence of Peytel, a notary of Belley, who had been condemned to death on August 26th, 1839, for the murder of his wife and servant. Peytel appealed against his sentence, and Balzac, who had met him several times, espoused his cause with vehemence. There did not seem to be much satisfactory defence available for the prisoner, who admitted the fact that while driving in a carriage not far from Belley, he had shot both his wife and the coachman. Balzac, however, was urgent in upholding Peytel's contention that his crime had been homicide, not murder, and brought forward the plea of "no premeditation." His energetic efforts were of no avail: Peytel was executed at Bourg on November 28th, 1839, and Balzac, who had espoused his cause with quixotic enthusiasm, was genuinely sorry. He wrote to Madame Hanska in September: "I am extremely agitated by a horrible case, the case of Peytel. I have seen this poor fellow three times. He is condemned; I start in two hours for Bourg." On November 30th he continues: "You will perhaps have heard that after two months of unheard-of efforts to save him from his punishment Peytel went two days ago to the scaffold, like a Christian, said the priest; I say, like an innocent man."[*]
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
Another disappointment this year was the fact that Balzac considered it his duty, after presenting himself as candidate for the Academie and paying many of the prescribed visits, to retire in favour of Victor Hugo. As early as 1833 he had aspired to become some day "un des Quarante," and he then said half jokingly to his sister: "When I shall work at the dictionary of the Academy!"[*] He was never destined to receive the honour of admittance to this august body, though after his first attempt in 1839, when he himself withdrew, he again tried his fortune in 1843 and in 1849. His normal condition of monetary embarrassment was one reason for his failure, and no doubt some of the members of l'Academie Francaise disapproved of certain of his books, and perhaps did not admire his style. At any rate, as his enemy Saint-Beuve expressed it concisely: "M. de Balzac est trop gros pour nos fauteuils," and while men who are now absolutely unknown entered the sacred precincts without difficulty, the door remained permanently closed to the greatest novelist of the age.
[*] "Balzac, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres," par Mme. L. Surville (nee de
Balzac).
CHAPTER XII
1840 - 1843
"Vautrin"—La Revue Parisienne—Societe des Gens-de-Lettres
—Balzac leaves Les Jardies, and goes to the Rue Basse, Passy
—Death of M. de Hanski—"Les Ressources de Quinola"—"La
Comedie Humaine"—Balzac goes to St. Petersburg to meet Madame
Hanska—Her reasons for deferring the marriage.
The sad fate of "L'Ecole des Menages" did not long discourage Balzac. At the beginning of 1840 he made an engagement to provide Harel, the speculative manager of the Theatre Porte-St-Martin, with a drama. The play was accepted before it was written; and in order to be near the theatre Balzac established himself in the fifth floor of the house of Buisson, his tailor, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu. His proceedings were, as usual, eccentric. One day Gautier, who tells the story, was summoned in a great hurry, and found his friend clad in his monk's habit, walking up and down his elegant attic, and shivering with impatience.
"'Here is Theo at last,' he cried, when he saw me. 'You idler! dawdle! sloth! gee up, do make haste! You ought to have been here an hour ago! To-morrow I am going to read to Harel a grand drama in five acts.'
"'And you want my advice,' I answered, settling myself comfortably in an armchair, ready to submit to a long reading.