Honoré de Balzac: His Life and Writings | Page 9

reforming abuses, and governing a highly prosperous country. Finally,
he would end the interview with, "Adieu! I am going home to see if my
banker is waiting for me"; and would depart, quite consoled, with his
usual hearty laugh.
He lived, his sister tells us, to a great extent in a world of his own,
peopled by the imaginary characters in his books, and he would gravely
discuss its news, as others do that of the real world. Sometimes he was
delighted at the grand match he had planned for his hero; but often
affairs did not go so well, and perhaps it would give him much anxious
thought to marry his heroine suitably, as it was necessary to find her a
husband in her own set, and this might be difficult to arrange. When
asked about the past of one of his creations, he replied gravely that he
"had not been acquainted with Monsieur de Jordy before he came to
Nemours," but added that, if his questioner were anxious to know, he
would try to find out. He had many fancies about names, declaring that
those which are invented do not give life to imaginary beings, whereas
those really borne by some one endow them with vitality. Leon Gozlan
says that he was dragged by Balzac half over Paris in search of a
suitable name for the hero of a story to be published in the /Revue
Parisienne/. After they had trudged through scores of streets in vain,
Balzac, to his intense joy, discovered "Marcas" over a small tailor's

shop, to which he added, as "a flame, a plume, a star," the initial Z. Z.
Marcas conveyed to him the idea of a great, though unknown,
philosopher, poet, or silversmith, like Benvenuto Cellini; he went no
farther, he was satisfied--he had found "/the/ name of names."[*]
[*] "Balzac en Pantoufles," by Leon Gozlan.
Many are the amusing anecdotes told of Balzac's schemes for becoming
rich. Money he struggled for unceasingly, not from sordid motives, but
because it was necessary to his conception of a happy life. Without its
help he could never be freed from his burden of debt, and united to the
/grande dame/ of his fancy, who must of necessity be posed in elegant
toilette, on a suitable background of costly brocades and objects of art.
Nevertheless, in spite of all his efforts, and of a capacity and passion
for work which seemed almost superhuman, he never obtained freedom
from monetary anxiety. Viewed in this light, there is pathos in his many
impossible plans for making his fortune, and freeing himself from the
strain which was slowly killing him.
Some of his projected enterprises were wildly fantastic, and prove that
the great author was, like many a genius, a child at heart; and that, in
his eyes, the world was not the prosaic place it is to most men and
women, but an enchanted globe, like the world of "Treasure Island,"
teeming with the possibility of strange adventure. At one time he hoped
to gain a substantial income by growing pineapples in the little garden
at Les Jardies, and later on he thought money might be made by
transporting oaks from Poland to France. For some months he believed
that, by means of magnetism exercised on somnambulists, he had
discovered the exact spot at Pointe a Pitre where Toussaint- Louverture
hid his treasure, and afterwards shot the negroes he had employed to
bury it, lest they should betray its hiding-place. Jules Sandeau and
Theophile Gautier were chosen to assist in the enterprise of carrying off
the hidden gold, and were each to receive a quarter of the treasure,
Balzac, as leader of the venture, taking the other half. The three friends
were to start secretly and separately with spades and shovels, and, their
work accomplished, were to put the treasure on a brig which was to be
in waiting, and were to return as millionaires to France. This brilliant

plan failed, because none of the three adventurers had at the moment
money to pay his passage out; and no doubt, by the time that the
necessary funds were forthcoming, Balzac's fertile brain was engaged
on other enterprises.[*]
[*] "Portraits Contemporains--Honore de Balzac," by Theophile
Gautier.
The foundation of his pecuniary misfortunes was laid before his birth,
when his father, forty-five years old and unmarried, sank the bulk of his
fortune in life annuities, so that his son was in the unfortunate position
of starting life in very comfortable circumstances, and of finding
himself in want of money just when he most needed it.
Balzac's father was born in Languedoc in 1746, and we are told by his
son that he had been Secretary, and by Madame Surville, advocate, of
the Council under Louis XVI. Both these statements however appear