men, in whom necessity, determination, and good sense
were more marked than talent, went straight and stead-
fastly onward in the path laid down for modest ambitions,
Godefroid waxed rebellious, longed to shine, insisted on
facing the brightest light, and so dazzled his eyes. He
tried to "get on," but all his efforts ended in demonstrating
his incapacity. At last, clearly perceiving too great a dis-
crepancy between his desires and his prospects, he con-
288 BALZAC'S WORKS
ceived a hatred of social superiority; he became a Liberal,
and tried to make himself famous by a book; but he
learned, to his cost, to regard talent much as he regarded
rank. Having tried by turns the profession of notary, the
bar, and literature, he now aimed at the higher branch of
the law.
At this juncture his father died. His mother, content in
her old age with two thousand francs a year, gave up almost
her whole fortune to his use. Possessor now, at five-and-
twenty, of ten thousand francs a year, he thought himself
rich, and he was so as compared with the past. Hitherto
his life had been a series of acts with no will behind them,
or of impotent willing; so, to keep pace with the age, to
act, to become a personage, he tried to get into some circle
of society by the help of his money.
At first he fell in with journalism, which has always an
open hand for any capital that comes in its way. Now, to
own a newspaper is to be a Personage; it means employing
talent and sharing its successes without dividing its labors.
Nothing is more tempting to second-rate men than thus to
rise by the brains of others. Paris has had a few parvenus
of this type, whose success is a disgrace both to the age and
to those who have lent a lifting shoulder.
In this class of society Godefroid was soon cut out by
the vulgar cunning of some and the extravagance of others,
by the money of ambitious capitalists or the manoeuvring of
editors; then he was dragged into the dissipations that a
literary or political life entails, the habits of critics behind
the scenes, and the amusements needed by men who work
their brains hard. Thus he fell into bad company ; but he
there learned that he was an insignificant-lpoking person,
and that he had one shoulder higher than the other without
redeeming this malformation by any distinguished ill-nature
or wit. Bad manners are a form of self-payment which
actors snatch by telling the truth.
Short, badly made, devoid of wit or of any strong bent,
all seemed at an end for a young man at a time when for
THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 289
success in any career the highest gifts of mind are as
nothing without luck, or the tenacity which commands
luck.
The Revolution of 1830 poured oil on Godefroid's
wounds; he found the courage of hope, which is as good
as that of despair. Like many another obscure journalist,
he got an appointment where his Liberal ideas, at logger-
heads with the demands of a newly-established power, made
him but a refractory instrument. Veneered only with
Liberalism, he did not know, as superior men did, how to
hold his own. To obey the Ministry was to him to sur-
render his opinions. And the Government itself seemed to
him false to the laws that had given rise to it. Godefroid
declared in favor of movement when what was needed was
tenacity; he came back to. Paris almost poor, but faithful to
the doctrines of the opposition.
Alarmed by the licentiousness of the press, and yet more
by the audacity of the republican party, he sought in retire-
ment the only life suited to a being of incomplete faculties,
devoid of such force as might defy the rough jolting of
political life, weary too of repeated failures, of suffering
and struggles which had won him no glory; and friendless,
because friendship needs conspicuous qualities or defects,
while possessing feelings that were sentimental rather than
deep. Was it not, in fact, the only prospect open to a
young man who had already been several times cheated by
pleasure, and who had grown prematurely old from friction
in a social circle that never rests nor lets others rest.
His mother, who was quietly dying in the peaceful vil-
lage of Auteuil, sent to her son to come to her, as much
for the sake of having him with her as to start him in tbe
road where he might find the calm and simple happiness
that befits such souls. She had at last taken Godefroid's
measure when she saw that at eight-and-twenty he had re-
duced his whole fortune to four thousand francs a year; his
desires blunted, his fancied talents extinct, his energy nulli-
fied^ his ambition crushed, and his hatred for every one who
(L)— Vol. 17
290 BALZAO'S WORKS
rose by legitimate effort increased by his many disappoint-
ments.
She tried to arrange a marriage for Godefroid with the
only daughter of a retired merchant, thinking that a wife
might be a guardian to his distressful mind, but the old
father brought the mercenary spirit that abides in those who
have been engaged in trade to bear on the question of settle-
ments. At the end of a year of attentions and intimacy,
G-odefroid's suit was rejected. In the first place, in the
opinion of these case-hardened traders, the young man must
necessarily have retained a deep-dyed immorality from his
former pursuits; and then, even during this past year, he
had drawn upon his capital both to dazzle the parents and
to attract the daughter. This not unpardonable vanity gave
the finishing touch; the family had a horror of unthrift;
and their refusal was final when they heard that Grodefroid
had sacrificed in six years a hundred and fifty thousand
francs of his capital.
The blow fell all the harder on his aching heart because
the girl was not at all good-looking. Still, under his
mother's influence, Godefroid had credited the object of
his addresses with a sterling character and the superior ad-
vantages of a sound judgment; he was accustomed to her
face, he had studied its expression, he liked the young
lady's voice, manners, and look. Thus, after staking the
last hope of his life on this attachment, he felt the bitterest
despair.
His mother dying, he found himself — he whose require-
ments had always followed the tide of fashion — with five
thousand francs for his whole fortune, and the certainty of
never being able to repair any future loss, since he saw him-
self incapable of the energy which is imperatively demanded
for the grim task of making a fortune.
But a man who is weak, aggrieved, and irritable cannot
submit to be extinguished at a blow. While still in mourn-
ing, Godefroid wandered through Paris in search of some-
thing to "turn up"; he dined in public rooms, he rashly
THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 291
introduced himself to strangers, he mingled in society, and
met with nothing but opportunities for expenditure. As he
wandered about the boulevards, he was so miserable that
the sight of a mother with a young daughter to marry gave
him as keen a pang as that of a young man going on horse-
back to the Bois, of a parvenu in a smart carriage, or of an
oflS-cial with a ribbon in his buttonhole. The sense of his
own inadequacy told him that he could not pretend even
to the more respectable of second-class positions, nor to the
easiest form of office-work. And he had spirit enough to
be constantly vexed, and sense enough to bewail himself in
bitter self -accusation.
Incapable of contending with life, conscious of certain
superior gifts, but devoid of the will that brings them into
play, feeling himself incomplete, lacking force to undertake
any great work, or to resist the temptations of those tastes
he had acquired from education or recklessness in his past
life, he was a victim to three maladies, any one of them
enough to disgust a man with life when he has ceased to
exercise his religious faith. Indeed, Godefroid wore the
expression so common now among men that it has become
the Parisian type: it bears the stamp of disappointed or
smothered ambitions, of mental distress, of hatred lulled
by the apathy of a life amply tilled up by the superficial
and daily spectacle of Paris, of satiety seeking stimulants,
of repining without tale-nt, of the affectation of force; the
venom of past failure which makes a man smile at scoffing,
and scorn all that is elevating, misprize the most necessary
authorities, enjoy their dilemmas, and disdain all social
forms.
This Parisian disease is to the active and persistent coali-
tion of energetic malcontents what the soft wood is to the
sap of a tree; it preserves it, covers it, and hides it.
Weary of himself, Godefroid one morning resolved to
give himself some reason for living. He had met a former
schoolfellow, who had proved to be the tortoise of the fable
292 BALZAC'S WORKS
while he himself had been the hare. In the course of such
a conversation as is natural to old companions while walk-
ing in the sunshine on the Boulevard des Italiens, he was
amazed to find that success had attended this man, who,
apparently far less gifted than himself with talent and for-
tune, had simply resolved each day to do as he had resolved
the day before. The brain-sick man determined to imitate
this simplicity of purpose.
"Life in the world is like the earth," his friend had said;
"it yields in proportion to our labors."
Godefroid was in debt. As his first penance, his first
duty, he required himself to live in seclusion and pay his
debts out of his income. For a man who was in the habit
of spending six thousand francs when he had five, it was no
light thing to reduce his expenses to two thousand francs.
He read the advertisement-sheets every morning, hoping to
find a place of refuge where he might live on a fixed sum,
and where he might enjoy the solitude necessary to a man
who wanted to study and examine himself, and discern a
vocation. The manners and customs of the boarding-houses
in the Quartier Latin were an offence to his taste; a private
asylum, he thought, would be unhealthy; and he was fast
drifting back into the fatal uncertainty of a will-less man,
when the following advertisement caught his eye:
"Small apartments, at seventy francs a month ; might suit
a clerk in orders. Quiet habits expected. Board included;
and the rooms will be inexpensively furnished on mutual
agreement. Inquire of M. Millet, grocer. Rue Chanoinesse,
by Notre-Dame, for all further particulars."
Attracted by the artless style of this paragraph, and the
aroma of simplicity it seemed to bear, Godefroid presented
himself at the grocer's shop at about four in the afternoon,
and was told that at that hour Madame de la Chanterie was
dming, and could see no one at meal-times. The lady
would be visible in the evening after seven, or between
ten and twelve in the moroing. While he talked, Mon-
THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 293
sieur Millet took stock of Godefroid, and proceeded to
put him through his first examination — "Was Monsieur
single? Madame wished for a lodger of regular habits.
The house was locked up by eleven at latest."
"Well," said he in conclusion, "you seem to me, Mon-
sieur, to be of an age to suit Madame de la Chanterie's
views. ' '
"What age do you suppose I am?" asked Godefroid.
"Somewhere about forty," replied the grocer.
This plain answer cast Godefroid into the depths of
misanthropy and dejection. He went to dine on the Quai
de la Tournelle, and returned to gaze at Notre-Dame just
as the fires of the setting sun were rippling and breaking in
wavelets on the buttresses of the great nave. The quay was
already in shadow, while the towers still glittered in the
glow, and the contrast struck Godefroid as he tasted all
the bitterness which the grocer's brutal simplicity had
stirred within him.
Thus the young man was oscillating between the whis-
perings of despair and the appealing tones of religious har-
mony aroused in his mind by the Cathedral bells, when, in
the darkness, and silence, and calm moooshine, the priest's
speech fell on his ear. Though tar from devout — like most
men of the century — his feelings were touched by these
words, and he went back to the Rue Chanoinesse, where
He had but just decided not to go.
The priest and Godefroid were equally surprised on turn-
ing into the Rue Massillou, opposite the north door of the
Cathedral, at the spot where it ends by the Rue de la Co-
lombe, and is called Rue des Marraousets. When Gode-
froid stopped under the arched doorway of the house where
Madame de la Chanterie lived, the priest turned round to
examine him by the light of a hanging oil-lamp, which will,
very likely, be one of the last to disappear in the heart
of old Paris.
"Do you wish to see Madame de la Chanterie, Mon-
sieur?" asked the priest.
294 BALZAO'S WORKS
"Yes," replied Godefroid. "The words I have just
heard you utter to that workman prove to me that this
house, if you dwell in it, must be good for the soul."
"Then you witnessed my failure," said the priest, lifting
the knocker, "for I did not succeed." -
"It seems to me that it was the workman who failed.
He had begged sturdily enough for money."
"Alas!" said the priest, "one of the greatest misfortunes
attending revolutions in France is that each, in its turn,
offers a fresh premium to the ambitions of the lower classes.
To rise above his status and make a fortune, which, in these
days, is considered the social guarantee, the workman throws
himself into monstrous plots, which, if they fail, must bring
those who dabble in them before the bar of human justice.
This is what good-nature sometimes ends in."
The porter now opened a heavy gate, and tlie priest said
to Godefroid —
"Then you have come about the rooms to let?"
"Yes, Monsieur."
The priest and Godefroid then crossed a fairly wide
courtyard, beyond which stood the black mass of a tall
bouse, flanked by a square tower even higher than the
roof, and amazingly old. Those who know the history of
Paris are aware that the soil has risen so much round the
Cathedral that there is not a trace to be seen of the twelve
steps which originally led up to it. Hence what was the
ground floor of this house must now form the cellars.
There is a short flight of outer steps to the door of the
tower, and inside it an ancient Vise or stairs, winding in
a spiral round a newel carved to imitate a vine-stock. This
style, resembling that of the Louis XII. staircases at Blois,
dates as far back as the fourteenth century.
Struck by these various signs of antiquity, Godefroid
could not help exclaiming —
"This tower was n t built yesterday!"
"It is said to have withstood the attacks of the Normans
and to have formed part of a primeval palace of the kings
THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 295
of Paris; but according to more probable traditions, it was
the residence of Fulbert, the famous Canon, and the uncle
of Heloise. "
As he spoke the priest opened the door of the apartment,
which seemed to be the ground floor, and which, in fact, is
now but just above the ground of both the outer and the
inner courtyard — for there is a small second court.
In the first room a servant sat knitting by the light of
a small lamp; she wore a cap devoid of any ornament but
its gauffered cambric frills. She stuck one of the needles
through her hair, but did not lay down her knitting as she
rose to open the door of a drawing-room looking out on the
inner court. This room was lighted up. The woman's
dress suggested to Godefroid that of some Gray Sisters.
"Madame, I have found you a tenant," said the priest,
showing in Godefroid, who saw in the room three men,
sitting in armchairs near Madame de la Chanterie,
The three gentlemen rose: th^ mistress of the house
also; and when the priest had pushed forward a chair for
the stranger, and he had sat down in obedience to a sign
from Madame de la Chanterie and an old-fashioned bidding
to "Be seated," the Parisian felt as if he were far indeed
from Paris, in remote Brittany, or the backwoods of Canada,
There are, perhaps, degrees of silence. Godefroid, struck
already by the tranquillity of the Rue Massillon and Rue
Chanoinesse, where a vehicle passes perhaps twice in a
month, struck too by the stillness of the courtyard and the
tower, may have felt himself at the very heart of silence, in
this drawing-room, hedged round by so many old streets,
old courtyards, and old walls.
This part of the Island, called the Cloister, preserves the
character common to all cloisters; it is damp, and cold, and
monastic; silence reigns there unbroken, even during the
noisiest hours of the day. It may also be remarked that
this part of the Cit^, lying between the body of the Cathe-
dral and the river, is to the north and under the shadow of
Notre-Dame. The east wind loses itself there, unchecked
296 BALZAC'S WORKS
by any obstacle, and the fogs from the Seine are to some
extent entrapped by the blackened walls of the ancient
metropolitan church.
So no one will be surprised at the feeling that came over
Godefroid on finding himself in this ancient abode, and in
the presence of four persons as silent and as solemn as every
thing around them. He did not look about him; his curi-
osity centred in Madame de la Chanterie, whose name even
had already puzzled him.
This lady was evidently a survival from another century,
not to say another world. She had a rather sweet face, with
a soft, coldly-colored complexion, an aquiline nose, a benign
brow, hazel eyes, and a double chin, the whole framed in
curls of silver hair. Her dress could only be described by
the old name oi fourreau (literally a sheath, a tightly -fitting
dress), so literally was she cased in it, in the fashion of the
eighteenth century. The material — silk of carmelite gray,
finely and closely striped with green — seemed to have come
down from the same date; the body, cut low, was hidden
under a mantilla of richer silk, flounced with black lace,
and fastened at the bosom with a brooch containing a mini-
ature. Her feet, shod in black velvet boots, rested on a
little stool. Madame de la Chanterie, like her maidservant,
was knitting stockings, and had a knitting pin stuck through
her waving hair under her lace cap.
"Have you seen Monsieur Millet?" she asked Godefroid
in the head voice peculiar to dowagers of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, as if to invite him to speak, seeing that he
was almost thunderstruck.
"Yes, Madame."
"1 am afraid the rooms will hardly suit you," she went
on, observing that her proposed tenant was dressed with
elegance in clothes that were new and smart.
Godefroid, in fact, was wearing patent leather boots,
yellow gloves, handsome shirt-studs, and a neat watch
chain passed through the buttonhole of a black silk
waistcoat sprigged with blue.
THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 297
Madame de la Chanterie took a small silver whistle out
of her pocket and blew it. The woman-servant came in.
"Manon, child, show this gentleman the rooms. Will
you, my dear friend, accompany him?" she said to the
priest. "And if by any chance the rooms should suit
you," she added, rising and looking at Godefroid, "we
will afterward discuss the terms."
Godefroid bowed and went out. He heard the iron rattle
of a bunch of keys which Manon took out of a drawer, and
saw her light a candle in a large brass candlestick.
Manon led the way without speaking a word. When he
found himself on the stairs again, climbing to the upper
floors, he doubted the reality of things; he felt dreaming
though awake, and saw the whole world of fantastic romance
such as he had read of in his hours of idleness. And any
Parisian dropped here, as he was, out of the modern city,
with its luxurious houses and furniture, its glittering res-
taurants and theatres, and all the stirring heart of Paris,
would have felt as he did. The single candle carried by
the servant lighted the winding stair but dimly; spiders had
hung it with their dusty webs.
Manon's dress consisted of a skirt broadly plaited and
made of coarse woollen stujS; the bodice was cut square at
the neck, behind and before, and all her clothes seemed to
move in a piece. Having reached the second floor, which
had been the third, Manon stopped, turned the springs of
an antique lock, and opened a door painted in coarse imita-
tion of knotted mahogany.
"There!" said she, leading the way.
Who had lived in these rooms ? A miser, an artist who
had died of want, a cynic indifferent to the world, or a pious
man who was alien to it? Any one of the four seemed
possible, as the visitor smelled the very odor of poverty,
saw the greasy stains on wall-papers covered with a layer of
smoke, the blackened ceilings, the windows with their small
dusty panes, the brown-tiled floor, the wainscot sticky with
a deposit of fog. A damp chill came down the fireplaces,
298 BALZAC'S WORKS
faced with carved stonework that had been painted, and with
mirrors framed in the seventeenth century. The rooms were
at the angle of a square, as the house stood, inclosing the
inner courtyard, but this Godefroid could not see, as it
was dark.
"Who used to live here?" Godefroid asked of the priest.
"A Councillor to the Parlement, Madame's granduncle,
a Monsieur de Boisfrelon. He had been quite childish ever
since the Revolution, and died in 1832 at the age of ninety-
six; Madame could not bear the idea of seeing a stranger
in the rooms so soon ; still, she cannot endure the loss of
rent. . . ."
"Oh, and Madame will have the place cleaned and fur-
nished, to be all Monsieur could wish," added Manon.
"It will only depend on how you wish to arrange the
rooms," said the priest. "They can be made into a nice
sitting-room and a large bedroom and dressing-room, and
the two small rooms round the corner are large enough for
a spacious study. That is how my rooms are arranged below
this, and those on the next floor.
"Yes," said Manon; "Monsieur Alain's rooms are just
like these, only that they look out on the tower."
"I think I had better see the rooms again by daylight,"
said Godefroid shyly,
"Perhaps so," said Manon.
The priest and Godefroid went downstairs again, leaving
Manon to lock up, and she then followed to light them
down. Then, when he was in the drawing-room, Godefroid,
having recovered himself, could, while talking to Madame
de la Chanterie, study the place, the personages, and the
surroundings.
The window-curtains of this drawing-room were of old
red satin; there was a cornice- valance, and the curtains were
looped with silk cord ; the red tiles of the floor showed be-
yond an ancient tapestry carpet that was too small to cover
it entirely. The woodwork was painted stone-color. The
ceiling, divided down the middle by a joist starting from the
THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 299
chimney, looked like an addition lately conceded to modern
luxury; the easy-chairs were of wood painted white, with
tapestry seats. A shabby clock, standing between two gilt
candlesticks, adorned the chimney-shelf. An old table with
stag's feet stood by Madame de la Chanterie, and on it were
her balls of wool in a wicker basket. A clockwork lamp
threw light on the picture.
The three men, sitting as rigid, motionless, and speech-
less as Bonzes, had, like Madame de la Chanterie, evidently
ceased speaking on hearing the stranger return. Their faces
were perfectly cold and reserved, as befitted the room, the
house, and the neighborhood.
Madame de la Chanterie agreed that Godefroid's observa-
tions were just, and said that she had postponed doing any-
thing till she was informed of the intentions of her lodger,
or rather of her boarder; for if the lodger could conform to
the ways of the household, he was to board with them — but
their ways were so unlike those of Paris life! Here, in the
Rue Chanoinesse, they kept country hours; every one, as a
rule, had to be in by ten at night; noise was not to be
endured; neither women nor children were admitted, so that
their regular habits might not be interfered with. No one,
perhaps, but a priest could agree to such a rule. At any
rate, Madame de la Chanterie wished for some one who liked
plain living and had few requirements; she could only
afford the most necessary furniture in the rooms. Monsieur
Alain was satisfied, however — and she bowed to one of the
gentlemen — and she would do the same for the new lodger
as for the old.
"But," said the priest, "I do not think that Monsieur is
quite inclined to come and join us in our convent."
"Indeed; why not?" said Monsieur Alain. "We are
all quite content, and we all get on very well."
"Madame," said Godefroid, rising, "I will have the