The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac (best ereader for graphic novels TXT) 📕

To Constance-Victoire.

Here, madame, is one of those books which come into the mind,

whence no one knows, giving pleasure to the author before he can

foresee what reception the public, our great present judge, will

accord to it. Feeling almost certain of your sympathy in my

pleasure, I dedicate the book to you. Ought it not to belong to

you as the tithe formerly belonged to the Church in memory of God,

who makes all things bud and fruit in the fields and in the

intellect?

A few lumps of clay, left by Moliere at the feet of his colossal

statue of Tartuffe, have here been kneaded by a hand more daring

than able; but, at whatever distance I may be from the greatest of

comic writers, I shall still be glad to have used these crumbs in

showing the modern Hypocrite in action. The chief encouragement

that I have had in this difficult undertaking was in finding it

apart from all religious questions,--questions which ought to be

kept out of it for the sake of one so pious as yourself; and also

because of what a great writer has lately called our present

"indifference in matters of religion."

May the double signification of your names be for my book a

prophecy! Deign to find here the respectful gratitude of him who

ventures to call himself the most devoted of your servants.

                                                 De Balzac.

The tourniquet Saint-Jean, the narrow passage entered through a

turnstile, a description of which was said to be so wearisome in the

study entitled "A Double Life" (Scenes from Private Life), that naive

relic of old Paris, has at the present moment no existence except in

our said typography. The building of the Hotel-de-Ville, such as we

now see it, swept away a whole section of the city.

In 1830, passers along the street could still see the turnstile

painted on the sign of a wine-merchant, but even that house, its last

asylum, has been demolished. Alas! old Paris is disappearing with

frightful rapidity. Here and there, in the course of this history of

Parisian life, will be found preserved, sometimes the type of the

dwellings of the middle ages, like that described in "Fame and Sorrow"

(Scenes from Private Life), one or two specimens of which exist to the

present day; sometimes a house like that of Judge Popinot, rue du

Fouarre, a specimen of the former bourgeoisie; here, the remains of

Fulbert's house; there, the old dock of the Seine as it was under

Charles IX. Why should not the historian of French society, a new Old

Mortality, endeavor to save these curious expressions of the past, as

Walter Scott's old man rubbed up the tombstones? Certainly, for the

last ten years the outcries of literature in this direction have not

been superfluous; art is beginning to disguise beneath its floriated

ornaments those ignoble facades of what are called in Paris "houses of

product," which one of our poets has jocosely compared to chests of

drawers.

Let us remark here, that the creation of the municipal commission "del

ornamento" which superintends at Milan the architecture of street

facades, and to which every house owner is compelled to subject his

plan, dates from the seventeenth century. Consequently, we see in that

charming capital the effects of this public spirit on the part of

nobles and burghers, while we admire their buildings so full of

character and originality. Hideous, unrestrained speculation which,

year after year, changes the uniform level of storeys, compresses a

whole apartment into the space of what used to be a salon, and wages

war upon gardens, will infallibly react on Parisian manners and

morals. We shall soon be forced to live more without than within. Our

sacred private life, the freedom and liberty of home, where will they

be?--reserved for those who can muster fifty thousand francs a year!

In fact, few millionaires now allow themselves the luxury of a house

to themselves, guarded by a courtyard on a street and protected from

public curiosity by a shady garden at the back.

By levelling fortunes, that section of the Code which regulates

testamentary bequests, has produced these huge stone phalansteries, in

which thirty families are often lodged, returning a rental of a

hundred thousand francs a year. Fifty years hence we shall be able to

count on our fingers the few remaining houses which resemble that

occupied, at the moment our narrative begins, by the Thuillier family,

--a really curious house which deserves the honor of an exact

description, if only to compare the life of the bourgeoisie of former

times with that of to-day.

The situation and the aspect of this house, the frame of our present

Scene of manners and morals, has, moreover, a flavor, a perfume of the

lesser bourgeoisie, which may attract or repel attention according to

the taste of each reader.

In the first place, the Thuillier house did not belong to either

Monsieur or Madame Thuillier, but to Mademoiselle Thuillier, the

sister of Monsieur Thuillier.

This house, bought during the first six months which followed the

revolution of July by Mademoiselle Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte Thuillier,

a spinster of full age, stands about the middle of the rue

Saint-Dominique d'Enfer, to the right as you enter by the rue d'Enfer,

so that the main building occupied by Monsieur Thuillier faces south.

The progressive movement which is carrying the Parisian population to

the heights along the right bank of the Seine had long injured the

sale of property in what is called the "Latin quarter," when reasons,

which will be given when we come to treat of the character and habits

of Monsieur Thuillier, determined his sister to the purchase of real

estate. She obtained this property for the small sum of forty-six

thousand francs; certain extras amounted to six thousand more; in all,

the price paid was fifty-two thousand francs. A description of the

property given in the style of an advertisement, and the results

obtained by Monsieur Thuillier's exertions, will explain by what means

so many fortunes increased enormously after July, 1830, while so many

others sank.

Toward the street the house presents a facade of rough stone covered

with plaster, cracked by weather and lined by the mason's instrument

into a semblance of blocks of cut stone. This frontage is so common

in Paris and so ugly that the city ought to offer premiums to

house-owners who would build their facades of cut-stone blocks.

Seven windows lighted the gray front of this house which was raised

three storeys, ending in a mansard roof covered with slate. The

porte-cochere, heavy and solid, showed by its workmanship and style

that the front building on the street had been erected in the days of

the Empire, to utilize a part of the courtyard of the vast old mansion,

built at an epoch when the quarter d'Enfer enjoyed a certain vogue.

On one side was the porter's lodge; on the other the staircase of the

front building. Two wings, built against the adjoining houses, had

formerly served as stables, coach-house, kitchen and offices to the

rear dwelling; but since 1830, they had been converted into warerooms.

The one on the right was let to a certain M. Metivier, jr., wholesale

dealer in paper; that on the left to a bookseller named Barbet. The

offices of each were above the warerooms; the bookseller occupying the

first storey, and the paper-dealer the second storey of the house on

the street. Metivier, jr., who was more of a commission merchant in

paper than a regular dealer, and Barbet, much more of a money lender

and discounter than a bookseller, kept these vast warerooms for the

purpose of storing,--one, his stacks of paper, bought of needy

manufacturers, the other, editions of books given as security for

loans.

The shark of bookselling and the pike of paper-dealing lived on the

best of terms, and their mutual operations, exempt from the turmoil of

retail business, brought so few carriages into that tranquil courtyard

that the concierge was obliged to pull up the grass between the paving

stones. Messrs. Barbet and Metivier paid a few rare visits to their

landlords, and the punctuality with which they paid their rent classed

them as good tenants; in fact, they were looked upon as very honest

men by the Thuillier circle.

As for the third floor on the street, it was made into two apartments;

one of which was occupied by M. Dutocq, clerk of the justice of peace,

a retired government employee, and a frequenter of the Thuillier

salon; the other by the hero of this Scene, about whom we must content

ourselves at the present moment by fixing the amount of his rent,

--namely, seven hundred francs a year,--and the location he had chosen

in the heart of this well-filled building, exactly three years before

the curtain rises on the present domestic drama.

The clerk, a bachelor of fifty, occupied the larger of the two

apartments on the third floor. He kept a cook, and the rent of the

rooms was a thousand francs a year. Within two years of the time of

her purchase, Mademoiselle Thuillier was receiving seven thousand two

hundred francs in rentals, for a house which the late proprietor had

supplied with outside blinds, renovated within, and adorned with

mirrors, without being able to sell or let it. Moreover, the

Thuilliers themselves, nobly lodged, as we shall see, enjoyed also a

fine garden,--one of the finest in that quarter,--the trees of which

shaded the lonely little street named the rue Neuve-Saint-Catherine.

Standing between the courtyard and the garden, the main building,

which they inhabited, seems to have been the caprice of some enriched

bourgeois in the reign of Louis XIV.; the dwelling, perhaps, of a

president of the parliament, or that of a tranquil savant. Its noble

free-stone blocks, damaged by time, have a certain air of

Louis-the-Fourteenth grandeur; the courses of the facade define the

storeys; panels of red brick recall the appearance of the stables at

Versailles; the windows have masks carved as ornaments in the centre

of their arches and below their sills. The door, of small panels in

the upper half and plain below, through which, when open, the garden

can be seen, is of that honest, unassuming style which was often

employed in former days for the porter's lodges of the royal chateaux.

This building, with five windows to each course, rises two storeys

above the ground-floor, and is particularly noticeable for a roof of

four sides ending in a weather-vane, and broken here and there by

tall, handsome chimneys, and oval windows. Perhaps this structure is

the remains of some great mansion; but after examining all the

existing old maps of Paris, we find nothing which bears out this

conjecture. Moreover, the title-deeds of property under Louis XIV. was

Petitot, the celebrated painter in miniature, who obtained it

originally from President Lecamus. We may therefore believe that

Lecamus lived in this building while he was erecting his more famous

mansion in the rue de Thorigny.

So Art and the legal robe have passed this way in turn. How many

instigations of needs and pleasures have led to the interior

arrangement of the dwelling! To right, as we enter a square hall

forming a closed vestibule, rises a stone staircase with two windows

looking on the garden. Beneath the staircase opens a door to the

cellar. From this vestibule we enter the dining-room, lighted from the

courtyard, and the dining-room communicates at its side with the

kitchen, which forms a continuation of the wing in which are the

warerooms of Metivier and Barbet. Behind the staircase extends, on the

garden side, a fine study or office with two large windows. The first

and second floor form two complete apartments, and the servants'

quarters are shown by the oval windows in the four-sided roof.

A large porcelain stove heats the square vestibule, the two glass

doors of which, placed opposite to each other, light it. This room,

paved in black and white marble, is especially noticeable for a

ceiling of