Part 2

It is due to this analysis that this dreamer has defined almost all the great principles of the psychological changes incident to our time. He saw clearly, while democracy was establishing itself with us on the ruins of the ancient regime, the novelty of the sentiments which these transfers from class to class were certain to produce. He fathomed every complication of heart and mind in the modern woman by an intuition of the laws which control her development. He divined the transformation in the lives of artists, keeping pace with the change in the national situation; and to this day the picture he has drawn of journalism in _Lost Illusions_ ("A Distinguished Provincial at Paris") remains strictly true. It seems to me that this same power of locating causes, which has brought about such a wealth of ideas in his work, has also brought about the magic of it all. While other novelists describe humanity from the outside, he has shown man to us both from within and without. The characters which crowd forth from his brain are sustained and impelled by the same social waves which sustain and impel us. The generative facts which created them are the same which are always in operation about us. If many young men have taken as a model a Rastignac, for instance, it is because the passions by which this ambitious pauper was consumed are the same which our age of unbridled greed multiplies around disinherited youth. Add to this that Balzac was not content merely to display the fruitful sources of a modern intellect, but that he cast upon them the glare of the most ardent imagination the world has ever known. By a rare combination this philosopher was also a man, like the story-tellers of the Orient, to whom solitude and the over-excitement of night-work had communicated a brilliant and unbroken hallucination. He was able to impart this fever to his readers, and to plunge them into a sort of _Arabian Nights_ country, where all the passions, all the desires of real life appear, but expanded to the point of fantasy, like the dreams brought on by laudanum or hasheesh. Why, then, should we not understand the reason that, for certain readers, this world of Balzac's is more real than the actual world, and that they devoted their energies to imitating it?

It is possible that to-day the phenomenon is becoming rarer, and that Balzac, while no less admired, does not exercise the same fascinating influence. The cause for this is that the great social forces which he defined have almost ended their work. Other forces now shape the oncoming generations and prepare them for further sensitive influences. It is none the less a fact that, to penetrate the central portions of the nineteenth century in France, one must read and reread the _Comedie Humaine_. And we owe sincere thanks to Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe for this _Repertory_. Thanks to them, we shall the more easily traverse the long galleries, painted and frescoed, of this enormous palace,--a palace still unfinished, inasmuch as it lacks those Scenes of Military Life whose titles awaken dreams within us: _Forced Marches_; _The Battle of Austerlitz_; _After Dresden_. Incontestably, Tolstoy's _War and Peace_ is an admirable book, but how can we help regretting the loss of the painting of the Grand Army and of our Great Emperor, by Balzac, our Napoleon of letters?

PAUL BOURGET.

REPERTORY OF THE COMEDIE HUMAINE

A

ABRAMKO, Polish Jew of gigantic strength, thoroughly devoted to the broker, Elie Magus, whose porter he was, and whose daughter and treasures he guarded with the aid of three fierce dogs, in 1844, in a old house on the Minimes road hard by the Palais Royale, Paris. Abramko had allowed himself to be compromised in the Polish insurrection and Magus was interested in saving him. [Cousin Pons.]

ADELE, sturdy, good-hearted Briarde servant of Denis Rogron and his sister, Sylvie, from 1824 to 1827 at Provins. Contrary to her employers, she displayed much sympathy and pity for their youthful cousin, Pierrette Lorrain. [Pierrette.]

ADELE, chambermaid of Madame du Val-Noble at the time when the latter was maintained so magnificently by the stockbroker, Jacques Falleix, who failed in 1929. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.]

ADOLPHE, slight, blonde young man employed at the shop of the shawl merchant, Fritot, in the Bourse quarter, Paris, at the time of the reign of Louis Philippe. [Gaudissart II.]

ADOLPHUS, head of the banking firm of Adolphus & Company of Manheim, and father of the Baroness Wilhelmine d'Aldrigger. [The Firm of Nucingen.]

AGATHE (Sister), nee Langeais, nun of the convent of Chelles, and, with her sister Martha and the Abbe de Marolles, a refugee under the Terror in a poor house of the Faubourg Saint-Martin, Paris. [An Episode Under the Terror.]

AIGLEMONT (General, Marquis Victor d'), heir of the Marquis d'Aiglemont and nephew of the dowager Comtesse de Listomere-Landon; born in 1783. After having been the lover of the Marechale de Carigliano, he married, in the latter part of 1813 (at which time he was one of the youngest and most dashing colonels of the French cavalry), Mlle. Julie de Chatillonest, his cousin, with whom he resided successively at Touraine, Paris and Versailles.* He took part in the great struggle of the Empire; but the Restoration freed him from his oath to Napoleon, restored his titles, entrusted to him a station in the Body Guard, which gave him the rank of general, and later made him a peer of France. Gradually he forsook his wife, whom he deceived on account of Madame de Serizy. In 1817 the Marquis d'Aiglemont became the father of a daughter (See Helene d'Aiglemont) who was his image physically and morally; his last three children came into the world during a _liaison_ between the Marquise d'Aiglemont and the brilliant diplomat, Charles de Vandenesse. In 1827 the general, as well as his protege and cousin, Godefroid de Beaudenord, was hurt by the fraudulent failure of the Baron de Nucingen. Moreover, he sank a million in the Wortschin mines where he had been speculating with hypothecated securities of his wife's. This completed his ruin. He went to America, whence he returned, six years later, with a new fortune. The Marquis d'Aiglemont died, overcome by his exertions, in 1833.** [At the Sign of the Cat and Racket. The Firm of Nucingen. A Woman of Thirty.]

* It appears that the residence of the Marquis d'Aiglemont at Versailles was located at number 57, on the present Avenue de Paris; until recently it was occupied by one of the authors of this work.

** Given erroneously in the original as 1835.

AIGLEMONT (Generale, Marquise Julie d'), wife of the preceding; born in 1792. Her father, M. de Chatillonest, advised her against, but gave her in marriage to her cousin, the attractive Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont, in 1813. Quickly disillusioned and attacked from another source by an "inflammation very often fatal, and which is spoken of by women only in confidence," she sank into a profound melancholy. The death of the Comtesse de Listomere-Landon, her aunt by marriage, deprived her of valuable protection and advice. Shortly thereafter she became a mother and found, in the realization of her new duties, strength to resist the mutual attachment between herself and the young and romantic Englishman, Lord Arthur Ormond Grenville, a student of medicine who had nursed her and healed her bodily ailments, and who died rather than compromise her. Heart-broken, the marquise withdrew to the solitude of an old chateau situated between Moret and Montereau in the midst of a neglected waste. She remained a recluse for almost a year, given over utterly to her grief, refusing the consolations of the Church offered her by the old cure of the village of Saint-Lange. Then she re-entered society at Paris. There, at the age of about thirty, she yielded to the genuine passion of the Marquis de Vandenesse. A child, christened Charles, was born of this union, but he perished at an early age under very tragic circumstances. Two other children, Moina and Abel, were also the result of this love union. They were favored by their mother above the two eldest children, Helene and Gustave, the only ones really belonging to the Marquis d'Aiglemont. Madame d'Aiglemont, when nearly fifty, a widow, and having none of her children remaining alive save her daughter Moina, sacrificed all her own fortune for a dower in order to marry the latter to M. de Saint-Hereen, heir of one of the most famous families of France. She then went to live with her son-in-law in a magnificent mansion overlooking the Esplanade des Invalides. But her daughter gave her slight return for her love. Ruffled one day by some remarks made to her by Madame d'Aiglemont concerning the suspicious devotion of the Marquis de Vandenesse, Moina went so far as to fling back at her mother the remembrance of the latter's own guilty relations with the young man's father. Terribly overcome by this attack, the poor woman, who was a physical wreck, deaf and subject to heart disease, died in 1844. [A Woman of Thirty.]

AIGLEMONT (Helene d'), eldest daughter of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d'Aiglemont; born in 1817. She and her brother Gustave were neglected by her mother for Charles, Abel and Moina. On this account Helene became jealous and defiant. When about eight years old, in a paroxysm of ferocious hate, she pushed her brother Charles into the Bievre, where he was drowned. This childish crime always passed for a terrible accident. When a young woman--one Christmas night--Helene eloped with a mysterious adventurer who was being tracked by justice and who was, for the time being, in hiding at the home of the Marquis Victor d'Aiglemont, at Versailles. Her despairing father sought her vainly. He saw her no more till seven years later, and then only once, when on his return from America to France. The ship on which he returned was captured by pirates, whose captain, "The Parisian," the veritable abductor of Helene, protected the marquis and his fortune. The two lovers had four beautiful children and lived together in the most perfect happiness, sharing the same perils. Helene refused to follow her father. In 1835, some months after the death of her husband, Madame d'Aiglemont, while taking the youthful Moina to a Pyrenees watering-place, was asked to aid a poor sufferer. It was her daughter, Helene, who had just escaped shipwreck, saving only one child. Both presently succumbed before the eyes of Madame d'Aiglemont. [A Woman of Thirty.]

AIGLEMONT (Gustave d'), second child of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d'Aiglemont, and born under the Restoration. His first appearance is while still a child, about 1827 or 1828, when returning in company with his father and his sister Helene from the presentation of a gloomy melodrama at the Gaite theatre. He was obliged to flee hastily from a scene, which violently agitated Helene, because it recalled the circumstances surrounding the death of his brother, some two or three years earlier. Gustave d'Aiglemont is next found in the drawing-room at Versailles, where the family is assembled, on the same evening of the abduction of Helene. He died at an early age of cholera, leaving a widow and children for whom the Dowager Marquise d'Aiglemont showed little love. [A Woman of Thirty.]

AIGLEMONT (Charles d'), third child of the Marquis and the Marquise d'Aiglemont, born at the time of the intimacy of Madame d'Aiglemont with the Marquis de Vandenesse. He appears but a single time, one spring morning about 1824 or 1825, then being four years old. He was out walking with his sister Helene, his mother and the Marquis de Vandenesse. In a sudden outburst of jealous hate, Helene pushed the little Charles into the Bievre, where he was drowned. [A Woman of Thirty.]

AIGLEMONT (Moina d'), fourth child and second daughter of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d'Aiglemont. (See Comtesse de Saint-Hereen.) [A Woman of Thirty.]

AIGLEMONT (Abel d'), fifth and last child of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d'Aiglemont, born during the relations of his mother with M. de Vandenesse. Moina and he were the favorites of Madame d'Aiglemont. Killed in Africa before Constantine. [A Woman of Thirty.]

AJUDA-PINTO (Marquis Miguel d'), Portuguese belonging to a very old and wealthy family, the oldest branch of which was connected with the Bragance and the Grandlieu houses. In 1819 he was enrolled among the most distinguished dandies who graced Parisian society. At this same period he began to forsake Claire de Bourgogne, Vicomtesse de Beauseant, with whom he had been intimate for three years. After having caused her much uneasiness concerning his real intentions, he returned her letters, on the intervention of Eugene de Rastignac, and married Mlle. Berthe de Rochefide. [Father Goriot. Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] In 1832 he was present at one of Madame d'Espard's receptions, where every one there joined in slandering the Princesse de Cadignan before Daniel d'Arthez, then violently enamored of her. [The Secrets of a Princess.] Towards 1840, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, then a widower, married again--this time Mlle. Josephine de Grandlieu, third daughter of the last duke of this name. Shortly thereafter, the marquis was accomplice in a plot hatched by the friends of the Duchesse de Grandlieu and Madame du Guenic to rescue Calyste du Guenic from the clutches of the Marquise de Rochefide. [Beatrix.]

AJUDA-PINTO (Marquise Berthe d'), nee Rochefide. Married to the Marquis Miguel d'Ajuda-Pinto in 1820. Died about 1849. [Beatrix.]

AJUDA-PINTO (Marquise Josephine d'), daughter of the Duc and Duchesse Ferdinand de Grandlieu; second wife of the Marquis Miguel d'Ajuda-Pinto, her kinsman by marriage. Their marriage was celebrated about 1840. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.]

ALAIN (Frederic), born about 1767. He was clerk in the office of Bordin, procureur of Chatelet. In 1798 he lent one hundred crowns in gold to Monegod his life-long friend. This sum not being repaid, M. Alain found himself almost insolvent, and was obliged to take an insignificant position at the Mont-de-Piete. In addition to this he kept the books of Cesar Birotteau, the well-known perfumer. Monegod became wealthy in 1816, and he forced M. Alain to accept a hundred and fifty thousand francs in payment of the loan of the hundred crowns. The good man then devoted his unlooked-for fortune to philanthropies in concert with Judge Popinot. Later, at the close of 1825, he became one of the most active aides of Madame de la Chanterie and her charitable association. It was M. Alain who introduced Godefroid into the Brotherhood of the Consolation. [The Seamy Side of History.]

ALBERTINE, Madame de Bargeton's chambermaid, between the years 1821 and 1824. [Lost Illusions.]

ALBON (Marquis d'), court councillor and ministerial deputy under the Restoration. Born in 1777. In September, 1819, he went hunting in the edge of the forest of l'Isle-Adam with his friend Philippe de Sucy, who suddenly fell senseless at the sight of a poor madwoman whom he recognized as a former mistress, Stephanie de Vandieres. The Marquis d'Albon, assisted by two passers by, M. and Mme. de Granville, resuscitated M. de Sucy. Then the marquis returned, at his friend's entreaty, to the home of Stephanie, where he learned from the uncle of this unfortunate one the sad story of the love of his friend and Madame de Vandieres. [Farewell.]

ALBRIZZI (Comtesse), a friend, in 1820, at Venice, of the celebrated melomaniac, Capraja. [Massimilla Doni.]

ALDRIGGER (Jean-Baptiste, Baron d'), born in Alsace in 1764. In 1800 a banker at Strasbourg, where he was at the apogee of a fortune made during the Revolution, he wedded, partly through ambition, partly through inclination, the heiress of the Adolphuses of Manheim. The young daughter was idolized by every one in her family and naturally inherited all their fortune after some ten years. Aldrigger, created baron by the Emperor, was passionately devoted to the great man who had bestowed upon him his title, and he ruined himself, between 1814 and 1815, by believing too deeply in "the sun of Austerlitz." At the time of the invasion, the trustworthy Alsatian continued to pay on demand and closed up his bank, thus meriting the remark of Nucingen, his former head-clerk: "Honest, but stoobid." The Baron d'Aldrigger went at once to Paris. There still remained to him an income of forty-four thousand francs, reduced at his death, in 1823, by more than half on account of the expenditures and carelessness of his wife. The latter was left a widow with two daughters, Malvina and Isaure. [The Firm of Nucingen.]

ALDRIGGER (Theodora-Marguerite-Wilhelmine, Baronne d'), nee Adolphus. Daughter of the banker Adolphus of Manheim, greatly spoiled by her parents. In 1800 she married the Strasbourg banker, Aldrigger, who spoiled her as badly as they had done and as later did the two daughters whom she had by her husband. She was superficial, incapable, egotistic, coquettish and pretty. At forty years of age she still preserved almost all her freshness and could be called "the little Shepherdess of the Alps." In 1823, when the baron died, she came near following him through her violent grief. The following morning at breakfast she was served with small pease, of which she was very fond, and these small pease averted the crisis. She resided in the rue Joubert, Paris, where she held receptions until the marriage of her younger daughter. [The Firm of Nucingen.]

ALDRIGGER (Malvina d'), elder daughter of the Baron and Baroness d'Aldrigger, born at Strasbourg in 1801, at the time when the family was most wealthy. Dignified, slender, swarthy, sensuous, she was a good type of the woman "you have seen at Barcelona." Intelligent, haughty, whole-souled, sentimental and sympathetic, she was nevertheless smitten by the dry Ferdinand du Tillet, who sought her hand in marriage at one time, but forsook her when he learned of the bankruptcy of the Aldrigger family. The lawyer Desroches also considered asking the hand of Malvina, but he too gave up the idea. The young girl was counseled by Eugene de Rastignac, who took it upon himself to see that she got married. Nevertheless, she ended by being an old maid, withering day by day, giving piano lessons, living rather meagrely with her mother in a modest flat on the third floor, in the rue du Mont-Thabor. [The Firm of Nucingen.]

ALDRIGGER (Isaure d'), second daughter of the Baron and Baronne d'Aldrigger, married to Godefroid de Beaudenord (See that name.) [The Firm of Nucingen.]

ALINE, a young Auvergne chambermaid in the service of Madame Veronique Graslin, to whom she was devoted body and soul. She was probably the only one to whom was confided all the terrible secrets pertaining to the life of Madame Graslin. [The Country Parson.]

ALLEGRAIN* (Christophe-Gabriel), French sculptor, born in 1710. With Lauterbourg and Vien, at Rome, in 1758, he assisted his friend Sarrasine to abduct Zambinella, then a famous singer. The prima-donna was a eunuch. [Sarrasine.]

* To the sculptor Allegrain who died in 1795, the Louvre Museum is indebted for a "Narcisse," a "Diana," and a "Venus entering the Bath."

ALPHONSE, a friend of the ruined orphan, Charles Grandet, tarrying temporarily at Saumur. In 1819 he acquitted himself most creditably of a mission entrusted to him by that young man. He wound up Charles' business at Paris, paying all his debts by a single little sale. [Eugenie Grandet.]

AL-SARTCHILD, name of a German banking-house, where Gedeon Brunner was compelled to deposit the funds belonging to his son Frederic and inherited from his mother. [Cousin Pons.]

ALTHOR (Jacob), a Hambourg banker, who opened up a business at Havre in 1815. He had a son, whom in 1829 M. and Mme. Mignon desired for a son-in-law. [Modeste Mignon.]

ALTHOR (Francisque), son of Jacob Althor. Francisque was the dandy of Havre in 1829. He wished to marry Modeste Mignon but forsook her quickly enough when he found out that her family was bankrupt. Not long afterwards he married Mlle. Vilquin the elder. [Modeste Mignon.]

AMANDA, Parisian modiste at the time of Louis Philippe. Among her customers was Marguerite Turquet, known as Malaga, who was slow in paying bills. [A Man of Business.]

AMAURY (Madame), owner, in 1829, of a pavilion at Sauvic, near Ingouville, which Canalis leased when he went to Havre to see Mlle. Mignon [Modeste Mignon.]

AMBERMESNIL (Comtesse de l') went in 1819, when about thirty-six years old, to board with the widow, Mme. Vauquer, rue Nueve Sainte-Genevieve, now Tournefort, Paris. Mme. de l'Ambermesnil gave it out that she was awaiting the settlement of a pension which was due her on account of being the widow of a general killed "on the battlefield." Mme. Vauquer gave her every attention, confiding all her own affairs to her. The comtesse vanished at the end of six months, leaving a board bill unsettled. Mme. Vauquer sought her eagerly, but was never able to obtain a trace of this adventuress. [Father Goriot.]

AMEDEE, nickname bestowed on Felix de Vandenesse by Lady Dudley when she thought she saw a rival in Madame de Mortsauf. [The Lily of the Valley.]

ANCHISE (Pere), a surname given by La Palferine to a little Savoyard of ten years who worked for him without pay. "I have never seen such silliness coupled with such intelligence," the Prince of Bohemia said of this child; "he would go through fire for me, he understands everything, and yet he does not see that I cannot help him." [A Prince of Bohemia.]

ANGARD--At Paris, in 1840, the "professor" Angard was consulted, in connection with the Doctors Bianchon and Larabit, on account of Mme. Hector Hulot, who it was feared was losing her reason. [Cousin Betty.]

ANGELIQUE (Sister), nun of the Carmelite convent at Blois under Louis XVIII. Celebrated for her leanness. She was known by Renee de l'Estorade (Mme. de Maucombe) and Louise de Chaulieu (Mme. Marie Gaston), who went to school at the convent. [Letters of Two Brides.]

ANICETTE, chambermaid of the Princesse de Cadignan in 1839. The artful and pretty Champagne girl was sought by the sub-prefect of Arcis-sur-Aube, by Maxime de Trailles, and by Mme. Beauvisage, the mayor's wife, each trying to bribe and enlist her on the side of one of the various candidates for deputy. [The Member for Arcis.]

ANNETTE, Christian name of a young woman of the Parisian world, under the Restoration. She had been brought up at Ecouen, where she had received the practical counsels of Mme. Campan. Mistress of Charles Grandet before his father's death. Towards the close of 1819, a prey to suspicion, she must needs sacrifice her happiness for the time being, so she made a weary journey with her husband into Scotland. She made her lover effeminate and materialistic, advising with him about everything. He returned from the Indies in 1827, when she quickly brought about his engagement with Mlle. d'Aubrion. [Eugenie Grandet.]

ANNETTE, maid servant of Rigou at Blangy, Burgundy. She was nineteen years old, in 1823, and had held this place for more than three years, although Gregoire Rigou never kept servants for a longer period than this, however much he might and did favor them. Annette, sweet, blonde, delicate, a true masterpiece of dainty, piquant loveliness, worthy to wear a duchess' coronet, earned nevertheless only thirty francs a year. She kept company with Jean-Louis Tonsard without letting her master once suspect it; ambition had prompted this young woman to flatter her employer as a means of hoodwinking this lynx. [The Peasantry.]

ANSELME, Jesuit, living in rue des Postes (now rue Lhomond). Celebrated mathematician. Had some dealings with Felix Phellion, whom he tried to convert to his religious belief. This rather meagre information concerning him was furnished by a certain Madame Komorn. [The Middle Classes.]