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Updated: June 11, 2025
"And this money will be made without a page of copy," said poor Balzac. This shop was to be painted black with lines of gold, and was to have on it in huge letters the announcement, "Ananas des Jardies"; but Gautier managed to persuade Balzac in order to avoid useless expense, not to hire it till the next year, when the pineapples would have had time to grow.
Don't talk of it to me; I must needs pay for it, and I am now spending my nights doing so!" Forty thousand francs had been added to his former debts, to say nothing of all sorts of trouble which Les Jardies was still destined to cost him.
It is said that the land on which Les Jardies stood was so much on the incline that Frederick Lemaitre, who once ventured over there, was compelled to take a couple of stones and place them at each step under his feet in order to approach the house. This was, no doubt, one of the actor's jokes.
After the catastrophe of Vautrin, he still pursued his dramatic ambitions with Pamela Giraud and Mercadet, but failed to find any theatre that would consent to produce them. What was worse, the year 1840 was, beyond all others, a frightful one for Balzac. He faced his creditors like a stag at bay; and all the while he found the burden of Les Jardies becoming constantly heavier.
With great difficulty, by publishing books and articles in quick succession, he had prevented the sale of Les Jardies by his creditors. As he had no money to pay cab fares this entailed rushing from Passy to Paris on foot, often in pouring rain; with the result that he became seriously ill, and found it necessary to recruit in Touraine and Brittany.
Balzac removed to Les Jardies as soon as the walls of the dwelling had been raised and the floorings laid, and he lived there before there was a piece of furniture in any of the rooms, aside from the few indispensable things. Leon Gozlan has amusingly related the manner in which the novelist supplied their lack by an effort of imagination.
It was a dreadful condition of things, the upturned ground, the empty chambers, the chill of new plaster, and an irritating sense of things not finished and pushed along in haste; but he was exultant, and distracted his own attention by admiring the beauty of the surrounding landscape. How delightful it was to live at Les Jardies!
However, perhaps Balzac was discouraged by the sight of the snow falling silently on his slope, or possibly his desire to make a fabulous sum of money by a successful play had for a time blotted out all other ambitions; at any rate, we hear no more of the pineapples of Les Jardies.
I want a woman who shall be able to be what the events of my life may demand of her the wife of an ambassador, or a housewife at Les Jardies. But don't speak of this; it's a secret. She must be an ambitious, clever girl." This project, however, was not carried out; Balzac had no time to marry. But his friendship with Mme.
They made the circuit of the property, and Victor Hugo remained politely cold before the dithyrambic praises which Balzac lavished on his garden. He smiled only once, and that was at sight of a walnut tree, the only tree that the owner of Les Jardies had acquired from the community.
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