In considering the big plot of the social study, La Grande Brétêche—not perfectly translated “The Great House”—we are interestingly reminded of the similar motifs in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” and Mrs. Wharton’s “The Duchess at Prayer”—just as our author’s “A Seashore Drama” recalls the more artistic story of fatherly execution, “Mateo Falcone,” by Mèrimèe.
In La Grande Brétêche a company of friends are spending an evening together and one is asked to tell a story—a conventional opening enough.
He describes a house which has been deserted, the large and once beautiful gardens overgrown with weeds. Neglect and decay are everywhere. The story of the house is this—told with much Balzacian preliminary circumstance:
Monsieur de Merret one night came home quite late, and as he was about to enter his wife’s apartments he heard a closet door, opening into her room, close very quietly. He thought it was his wife’s maid, but just then the maid entered the room from another door. The husband sent the maid away and asked his wife who had gone into the closet. She answered him that no one was there.
He said, “I believe you. I will not open it. But see, here is your crucifix—swear before God that there is no one in there. I will believe you—I will never open that door.”
Madame de Merret took up the crucifix and said, “I swear it.”
Monsieur de Merret sent away the servants—all but one trusted one. He then sent for a mason, and had the closet securely walled in. At dawn the work was completed, the mason had gone, and Monsieur, on some pretext, left the house. As soon as he was gone, Madame de Merret called her maid, and together they began to tear down the wall—hoping to replace the bricks before Monsieur returned. They had just begun the work when Monsieur entered the room. For twenty days he remained in his wife’s apartment, and when a noise was heard in the closet and she wished to intercede for the dying man, her husband would answer:
“You swore on the cross that there was no one there.”
No need even for a Balzac to read a moral!
A fifth side of Balzac’s genius is sweeter to contemplate—that of The Idealistic Philosopher. Take time to read The Personal Opinions of Honoré de Balzac, edited by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, you who would know how the man interpreted himself, and you will find idealism lifting its lily crest from the field of ooze.