"An old woman, the nurse, and a servant, stood beside the bed. A candle was burning on a table behind the head of the bed, another on a chest of drawers near the door. A silver vase was on the stand near the bed. The women and man were silent with a kind of terror, as they listened to the rattling breathing of the dying man.
"The candle at the head of the bed lit up brilliantly the portrait of a young man, fresh-coloured and smiling, which was hanging near the fireplace. . . .
"I lifted the coverlet and took Balzac's hand. It was covered with perspiration. I pressed it. He did not respond to the pressure. . . .
"I went downstairs again, carrying in my mind the memory of that livid face, and, crossing the drawing-room, I looked again at the bust —immovable, impassive, proud, and smiling faintly, and I compared death with immortality."
Balzac died that night, Sunday, August 17th, 1850, at half-past eleven, at the age of fifty-one.
The dying man's almost complete isolation is strange, and the servant's news that M. Surville had not yet gone to bed has a callous ring about it. Perhaps, however, the doctors had told Madame de Balzac and Madame Surville that Balzac was unconscious, and they had therefore withdrawn, utterly exhausted by the fatigues of the night before. In any case, it seems sad, though possibly of no moment to the dying man, that several of his nearest relations should have deserted him before the breath had left his body. Our respect for the elder Madame de Balzac is decidedly raised, because, though there had occasionally been disagreements between her and her son, the true mother feeling asserted itself at the last, and she alone watched with the paid attendants till the end came.
However, some one was busy about the arrangements, as Balzac's portrait was taken by Giraud directly after his death, and a cast was made of his beautifully-shaped hand. His body was taken into the Beaujon Chapel before burial, so that he passed for the last time, as Victor Hugo remarks, through that door, the key of which was more precious to him than all the beautiful gardens which had belonged to the old Farmer-General.
The funeral service was held on Wednesday, August 20th, at the Church of Sainte Philippe du Roule. The rain was descending in torrents, but the procession, followed by a large crowd, walked the whole way across Paris to the Cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise, where the interment took place. The pall-bearers were Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Monsieur Baroche, and Sainte-Beuve. At the grave Victor Hugo spoke, finishing with the words: "No, it is not the Unknown to him. I have said this before, and I shall never tire of repeating it: it is not darkness to him, it is Light! It is not the end, but the beginning; not nothingness, but eternity! Is not this the truth, I ask you who listen to me? Such coffins proclaim immortality. In the presence of certain illustrious dead, we understand the divine destiny of that intellect which has traversed earth to suffer and to be purified. Do we not say to ourselves here, to-day, that it is impossible for a great genius in this life to be other than a great spirit after death?"[*]
[*] "Funerailles de Balzac," in "Actes et Paroles," by Victor Hugo.
The Cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise had been one of Balzac's favourite haunts in the old half-starved days of the Rue Lesdiguieres. "Here I am back from Pere-la-Chaise," he wrote to his sister in 1820,[*] "and I have brought with me some good big inspiring reflections. Decidedly, the only fine epitaphs are these: La Fontaine, Messena, Moliere, a single name, which tells all and makes one dream." Probably Madame Surville remembered these words and repeated them to Madame Honore de Balzac, for the monument erected to Balzac is a broken column with his name inscribed on it.