The brief outlines of two stories must suffice to illustrate a third and more characteristic phase of Balzac’s genius—his sternness as The Recorder of Tragedy. Both are romantic themes treated with relentless realism of detail.
The first story bears the Spanish title, El Verdugo (“The Executioner”).
During the Napoleonic era, a certain Spanish town, Menda, is under French government. A suspicion that the Spanish Marquis de Légañès has made an attempt to raise the country in favor of Ferdinand VII has caused a battalion of French soldiers to be placed here, the garrison of occupation being in command of one Victor Marchand. On the night of the feast-day of St. James, the English capture the town, but Clara, the daughter of the old Spanish nobleman, had warned the young French Commandant, Marchand, with whom she was in love, and he had escaped. The English suspect her father of having made Marchand’s escape possible, so the entire family of the Marquis is condemned to be hanged. The old noble offers to the English general all that he has if he will spare the life of his youngest son, and allow the rest to be beheaded instead of ignominiously hanged. Both requests are granted. The Marquis then goes to his youngest son, Juanito, and commands him that for this day he shall be the executioner. After heart-breaking protests, the lad is compelled to yield. As his sister Clara places her head on the block, the young French officer, Victor, now friendly with the English, runs to her and tells her that if she will marry him her life will be saved. Her only reply is to her brother, “Now, Juanito,” and her head falls at the feet of her lover. When the day is done, the youngest son, Juanito, is alone. To save the family honor, he has been the executioner of the day.
Only a little less tragic is “The Conscript,” which is part sketch, part short-story.
Madame de Dey, aged thirty-eight, is the widow of a lieutenant-general. She is possessed of a great soul and an attractive personality. During the Reign of Terror she takes refuge in the village of Carentan. Motives of policy influence her to open her house every evening to the principal citizens, Revolutionary authorities, and the like. Her only relative in the world is her son, aged twenty, whom she adores. The Mayor, and others in authority in the town, aspire to marry her, but her heart is bound up in her boy. Suddenly her salon is closed without explanation. Two nights pass, and gossip finds all sorts of reasons—she is hiding a lover; or her son; or a priest. The third day in the morning an old merchant insists upon seeing her. She shows him a letter written by her son in prison, saying he hopes to escape within three days and will come to her house. This is the third day, and she is greatly agitated. The merchant tells her that people are suspicious, and that she must surely receive as usual that night. Then he goes out and spreads plausible tales of her recent extreme illness and marvelous cure. That night many come to see for themselves, and, notwithstanding her terrible anxiety, she keeps up until they all go—except the Public Prosecutor, who is one of her suitors. He tells her he knows she is expecting her son Auguste, and that if he comes she must get him away early in the morning, as he, the Prosecutor, must come then with a “denunciation,” to search her house. While they talk, a young man arrives and is taken to the room prepared for Auguste. When she discovers him to be only a conscript sent there by the Mayor, her grief is great. After spending the night awake in her room, still listening for her boy’s arrival, she is found at daybreak dead—at the hour when, unknown to his mother, her son was shot at Morbihan.
No view of Balzac, the short-story writer, would be complete without considering him as The Social Philosopher—by far his preponderating character also as a novelist.
There are not lacking undiscerning folk who judge Balzac’s short-stories by the tone of his Contes Drolatiques. It is far from true, however, that Balzac preferred to deal with the corrupt side of life. In reality, he was a great moralist, with robust convictions of right and wrong, and a nicely balanced moral judgment. Yet this contradictory spirit did wallow in filthy imaginations all too often, committed personal follies, pictured the courtesan and the pander, marital infidelity and sordidness in countless manifestations. But let it be remembered that he chose to depict a society which was not only the product of his age, but the outcome of a national life. No one could be more fearless in exposing vice, and while it may be questioned whether the world greatly profits morally by such vivid picturings, it cannot be doubted that Balzac’s social philosophy was not that of the literary pander. His soul had altitude, as one has said, as well as latitude.
Balzac was keenly sensitive to criticism of his moral influence, and himself answered the charge of being a creator of vicious feminine types:
“The author cannot end these remarks without publishing here the result of a conscientious examination which his critics have forced him to make in relation to the number of virtuous women and criminal women whom he has placed on the literary stage. As soon as his first terror left him time to reflect, his first care was to collect his corps d’armée, in order to see if the balance which ought to be found between those two elements of his written world was exact, relatively to the measure of vice and virtue which enters into the composition of our present morals. He found himself rich by thirty-odd virtuous women against twenty-two criminal women, whom he here takes the liberty of ranging in order of battle, in order that the immense results already obtained may not be disputed. To this he adds that he has not counted-in a number of virtuous women whom he has left in the shade—where so many of them are in real life.” (Here followed tabulated lists of his prominent women characters, as arranged by himself).