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Updated: May 11, 2025
It was amusing, Leon Gozlan tells us, to see the amazement of the actor Frederick Lemaitre when he came to see Balzac; and found himself expected to walk up the side of a hill, with the ground at each step slipping under his feet.
And standing still more erect, he adds, "Nor no more, neither!" When we are not chatting we read aloud. There is a very fine library at the factory, selected by Madame Valentine Gozlan from works of an educational or moral kind, for the use of the staff. Marie, whose imagination goes further afield than mine, and who has not my anxieties, directs the reading.
Balzac laughed, but Gozlan did not understand that he found more pleasure in desiring things than in actually possessing them, for in the former case he was limited only by the extent of his own desires, which were almost infinite.
Alfred de Vigny, Eugéne Sue, Victor Hugo, Leon Gozlan, Paul de Muset, Alexandre Dumas, and a host of others, are all popular, and, with the exception of a few works, unexceptionable on every ground of morality; but these, after all, are but the skirmishers before the army.
Monsieur Gozlan looks like a master of masters an aged collector of fortune, whose speculations are famous, whose wealth increases unaided, who makes as much profit as he likes and holds the district in the hollow of his hand. His vulgar movements flash with diamonds, and a bulky golden trinket hangs on his belly like a phallus.
Not understanding why the novelist, who would not explain, should be in dread of this humble functionary, and imagining that much study and labour had made his friend a little mad, Gozlan took no denial, and, button-holing Balzac, lugged him off into the leafy avenues.
At length, Gozlan, like Columbus' sailors, having more than enough of the tramp, refused to play follow-my-leader any longer; and only after a long palaver was he dragged up one last narrow street dubbed variously the Rue du Bouloi, du Coq Heron, and de la Jussienne throughout its course. Here, suddenly, Balzac stopped dead, and pointed to the word Marcas, inscribed over a door.
It was a man's name he wanted a name unusual, striking, suggestive of the extraordinary nature of the person he had created. "Why not try the names you see in the street?" said Gozlan incautiously. "The very thing," answered Balzac, whose face grew radiant. "Come along with me. We will seek together."
Either terrorised by the all-powerful Buloz, or jealous of one who insisted on his own abilities and literary supremacy with loud-voiced reiteration, Alexandre Dumas, Roger de Beauvoir, Frederic Soulie, Eugene Sue, Mery, and Balzac's future acquaintance Leon Gozlan, signed a declaration at the instance of Buloz, to the effect that it was the general custom that articles written for the Revue de Paris should be published also in the Revue Etrangere, and should thus avoid Belgian piracy.
"And you see the other strip down yonder farther than the wall?" "Yes." "Well, I intend to plant that with rare vegetables of the sort that used to be supplied to the King's table. That will bring me in another three thousand francs a year." Gozlan waited for what would come next. "And you see the plot right facing the southern sun?" "Yes."
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