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Updated: June 6, 2025
Received at first in the drawing-room, lighted dimly by a candle placed on a richly carved oval table that stood in the centre of the room, he saw there an old woman, but not, as he asserts, the brother-in-law, Monsieur Surville. No member of Balzac's own family was present in the house that evening. Even the wife remained in her apartments.
Balzac's crime was proclaimed, he was hiding papers in his box and refused to show them. The master straightway ordered this bad pupil to surrender these secret and forbidden writings. Honore could not do otherwise than obey, for the box would be broken open if he did not unlock it of his own accord; so, with trembling hands, he despoiled himself of his treasures.
An abyss opened into which fell the words of his delirium!" And the same Wilfred "trusted to his perspicacity to discover the parcels of truth rolled by the old servant in the torrent of his divagations." During the years of Balzac's greatest literary activity, which were also those of his bitterest polemics, his opponents made much capital out of the caprices of his pen.
Having partly a bibliographic value, and partly confirming the statements above as to Balzac's influence, the following details concerning theatrical adaptations of some of his novels may serve as a supplement to this chapter.
Exceedingly pious, with a bias to mysticism, she possessed a library of books bearing on such doctrines, which were read by her son and afterwards utilized by him in his fiction. Honore was the second child of his parents. The first dying in infancy through the poorness of Madame Balzac's milk, he was sent to a house on the outskirts of the town and suckled by a foster-mother.
Who has ever known so much about his own creations as Balzac? and who has ever felt that Balzac's people had the freedom of a bigger world than that very solid and definite habitation he made for them? There must be another explanation, and I think one may discern where it lies, though it would take me too far to follow it.
However, an engagement soon took place, and it seemed as though the great desire of Balzac's heart would in a short time be within his reach, and that happiness would shine upon him at last.
The place is still devoted to like uses. In the Lost Illusions, whose part-sequel David Sechard reproduces Balzac's life as a printer, there is a description of the ground floor: "a huge room, lighted on the street-side by an old stained-glass window and on the inner yard-side by a casement."
Now is Vautrin's opportunity. He informs Goriot who Victorine is, and, since she had given her affections to the young Rastignac, he, like a good fellow, renounces his own matrimonial project and assists the old father in marrying the lovers happily. The part of Goriot was acted by Vernet, who did entire justice to Balzac's great creation.
We can imagine Balzac's joy at this offer, and the enthusiasm with which he would take up his abode in Paris, and feel that he was about to earn his living, nay, more, that he would no doubt become enormously rich, and would then have leisure to give up his time to literature. What however decided him to become first publisher and then printer we do not know.
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