I
Around 1835, I lived in two small rooms in the Impasse du Doyenné, not far from the current location of the Pavillon Mollien. Although it was located in the center of Paris facing the Tuilleries and just a few steps from the Louvre, the location was deserted and wild, and it required a certain persistence for me to be found. However, one morning a young man with a distinguished look and a cordial and spiritual air approached my front door and excused himself while making his introduction; he was Jules Sandeau: he had come to recruit me on behalf of Balzac for La Chronique de Paris, a weekly journal that one will certainly remember, but which had not been as financially successful as it deserved. Balzac, Sandeau told me, had read Mademoiselle de Maupin, then very recently published, and he had very much admired its style; thus he wished to request my collaboration on the journal that he sponsored and directed. A date was set for us to get together, and from that date forward there was between us a friendship that only death could break.
If I have told this story, it is not because it is flattering for me, but because it honors Balzac, who, already famous, sought out a young, obscure writer to collaborate in a spirit of of camaraderie and complete equality. At that time, it's true, Balzac was not yet the author of La Comédie Humaine, but he had completed, besides several novellas, La Physiologie du Mariage, La Peau de Chagrin, Louis Lambert, Seraphita, Eugénie Grandet, l'Histoire des Treize, Le Médecin de Campagne, Père Goriot, that is to say, in ordinary times, enough to solidify five or six reputations. His nascent glory, strengthened each month with new rays, shined with all of the splendors of the aurora; certainly he shined brightly like his contemporaries Lamartine, Victor Hugo, de Vigny, de Musset, Sainte‑Beuve, Alexandre Dumas, Mérimée, George Sand, and many others; but at no time in his life did Balzac carry himself as the Grand Lama of literature, and he was always good company; he had pride, but he was entirely free of vanity.
He lived at that time at the end of the Jardin du Luxembourg, near the Observatoire, on a little frequented road given the name of Cassini, without doubt because of its astronomical neighbor. On the garden wall which occupied almost the entire side, and at the end of which was found the house in which Balzac lived, one read: Labsolu, brick merchant. That strange sign, which is still there, if I am not wrong, is very striking; La Recherche de l'Absolu can have no other inspiration. This fateful name probably suggested to the author the idea of Balthasar Claës in the pursuit of his impossible dream.
When I saw him for the first time, Balzac, one year older than the century, was around thirty‑six, and his face was one of those that one would never forget. In his presence, one is reminded of Shakespeare's lines about Julius Caesar: "Before him, nature stands up boldly and says to the world, 'This is a man!'"
My heart beat strongly because never had I approached without trembling a master of thought, and all the speeches I had prepared on the way stayed in my throat, allowing nothing to pass other than a stupid phrase like this: "The temperature is nice today." Heinrich Heine, when he went to visit Goethe, could find nothing to say except that the plums that have fallen from the trees on the route from Iéna to Weimar are excellent for thirst, which made the Jupiter of German poetry laugh gently. Balzac, seeing my embarrassment, soon put me at my ease, and during breakfast I became calm enough to examine him in detail.
He wore, in the form of a dressing gown, a robe of white cashmere or flannel held at the waist by a cord, in which, some time later, he was painted by Louis Boulanger. What whim had pushed him to choose, ahead of any other, this costume that he never took off? Could it be that it symbolized in his eyes the cloistered life to which his labors condemned him, and, Benedictine of the novel, he had thus taken the robe? This robe always suited him marvelously. He boasted, showing me the intact sleeves, to have never sullied its purity with the least stain of ink, "because," he said, "the true writer should always be neat while at his work."
His robe, thrown back, revealed the neck of an athlete or a bull, round as a section of a column, without apparent muscles, and of a satiny whiteness which contrasted with the deeper hue of his face. At this time, Balzac, in the prime of his life, gave the impression of a robust health, little in harmony with the romantic pallors then in fashion. The pure Tourainian blood left his cheeks a bright purple and warmly colored his lips, thick and sinuous, easy to laugh; a light mustache and a small beard just below his lower lip accentuated the contours of his mouth, without concealing them; the nose, square at the end, divided into two lobes, pierced by very open nostrils, of a character entirely original and unique; Balzac, in posing for his bust, told the sculptor, David d'Angers, "Be careful about my nose, my nose is a world!" The forehead was beautiful, vast, noble, much whiter than the face, with no creases other than a perpendicular furrow along the ridge of the nose; there was a very pronounced ridge above the eyebrows; the hair, abundant, long, strong and black, stood up in back like a lion's mane. As for the eyes, there have never existed anything comparable. They had a life, a light, an inconceivable magnetism. Despite the nightly vigils, their whites were pure, limpid, bluish, like that of a child or a virgin, and encased two black diamonds that shined at times with rich reflections of gold: they were eyes to make eagles avert their gaze, to penetrate walls and hearts, to strike down a furious wild beast, the eyes of the sovereign, the seer, the conqueror.
Mme. Emile de Girardin, in her novel entitled La Canne de M. de Balzac, speaks of these shining eyes:
"Tancred then perceived at the front of the club, turquoise, gold, marvelous carvings; and behind all of that two large black eyes more brilliant than the stones."