Honoré de Balzac: Premium Collection. Honore de Balzac
“Magnificent collection of pictures in her house; go and see them by all means,” answers another. “Nothing finer.” You have questioned one of the species Connoisseur. He leaves you to go to Perignon’s or Tripet’s. To him, Madame Firmiani is a collection of painted canvases.
A Woman: “Madame Firmiani? I don’t wish you to visit her.” This remark is rich in meanings. Madame Firmiani! dangerous woman! a siren! dresses well, has taste; gives other women sleepless nights. Your informant belongs to the genus Spiteful.
An Attache to an embassy: “Madame Firmiani? Isn’t she from Antwerp? I saw her ten years ago in Rome; she was very handsome then.” Individuals of the species Attache have a mania for talking in the style of Talleyrand. Their wit is often so refined that the point is imperceptible; they are like billiard-players who avoid hitting the ball with consummate dexterity. These individuals are usually taciturn, and when they talk it is only about Spain, Vienna, Italy, or Petersburg. Names of countries act like springs in their mind; press them, and the ringing of their changes begins.
“That Madame Firmiani sees a great deal of the faubourg Saint-Germain, doesn’t she?” This from a person who desires to belong to the class Distinguished. She gives the “de” to everybody,—to Monsieur Dupin senior, to Monsieur Lafayette; she flings it right and left and humiliates many. This woman spends her life in striving to know and do “the right thing”; but, for her sins, she lives in the Marais, and her husband is a lawyer,—a lawyer before the Royal courts, however.
“Madame Firmiani, monsieur? I do not know her.” This man belongs to the species Duke. He recognizes none but the women who have been presented at court. Pray excuse him, he was one of Napoleon’s creations.
“Madame Firmiani? surely she used to sing at the Opera-house.” Species Ninny. The individuals of this species have an answer for everything. They will tell lies sooner than say nothing.
Two old ladies, wives of former magistrates: The First (wears a cap with bows, her face is wrinkled, her nose sharp, voice hard, carries a prayer-book in her hand): “What was that Madame Firmiani’s maiden name?”—The Second (small face red as a crab-apple, gentle voice): “She was a Cadignan, my dear, niece of the old Prince de Cadignan, consequently cousin to the present Duc de Maufrigneuse.”
Madame Firmiani is a Cadignan. She might have neither virtue, nor wealth, nor youth, but she would still be a Cadignan; it is like a prejudice, always alive and working.
An Original: “My dear fellow, I’ve seen no galoshes in her antechamber; consequently you can visit her without compromising yourself, and play cards there without fear; if there are any scoundrels in her salons, they are people of quality and come in their carriages; such persons never quarrel.”
Old man belonging to the genus Observer: “If you call on Madame Firmiani, my good friend, you will find a beautiful woman sitting at her ease by the corner of her fireplace. She will scarcely rise to receive you,—she only does that for women, ambassadors, dukes, and persons of great distinction. She is very gracious, she possesses charm; she converses well, and likes to talk on many topics. There are many indications of a passionate nature about her; but she has, evidently, so many adorers that she cannot have a favorite. If suspicion rested on two or three of her intimates, we might say that one or other of them was the “cavaliere servente”; but it does not. The lady is a mystery. She is married, though none of us have seen her husband. Monsieur Firmiani is altogether mythical; he is like that third post-horse for which we pay though we never behold it. Madame has the finest contralto voice in Europe, so say judges; but she has never been heard to sing more than two or three times since she came to Paris. She receives much company, but goes nowhere.”
The Observer speaks, you will notice, as an Oracle. His words, anecdotes, and quotations must be accepted as truths, under pain of being thought without social education or intelligence, and of causing him to slander you with much zest in twenty salons where he is considered indispensable. The Observer is forty years of age, never dines at home, declares himself no longer dangerous to women, wears a maroon coat, and has a place reserved for him in several boxes at the “Bouffons.” He is sometimes confounded with the Parasite; but he has filled too many real functions to be thought a sponger; moreover he possesses a small estate in a certain department, the name of which he has never been known to utter.
“Madame Firmiani? why, my dear fellow, she was Murat’s former mistress.” This man belongs to the Contradictors,—persons who note errata in memoirs, rectify dates, correct facts, bet a hundred to one, and are certain about everything. You can easily detect them in some gross blunder in the course of a single evening. They will tell you they were in Paris at the time of Mallet’s conspiracy, forgetting that half an hour earlier they had described how they had crossed the Beresina. Nearly all Contradictors are “chevaliers” of the Legion of honor; they talk loudly, have retreating foreheads, and play high.
“Madame Firmiani a hundred thousand francs a year? nonsense, you are crazy! Some people will persist in giving millions with the liberality of authors, to whom it doesn’t cost a penny to dower their heroines. Madame Firmiani is simply a coquette, who has lately ruined a young man, and now prevents him from making a fine marriage. If she were not so handsome she wouldn’t have a penny.”
Ah, that one—of course you recognize him—belongs to the species Envious. There is no need to sketch him; the species is as well known as that of the felis domestica. But how explain the perennial vigor of envy?—a vice that brings nothing in!
Persons in society, literary men, honest folk,—in short, individuals of all species,—were promulgating in the month of January, 1824, so many different opinions about Madame Firmiani that it would be tedious to write them down. We have merely sought to show that a man seeking to understand her, yet unwilling or unable to go to her house, would (from the answers to his inquiries) have had equal reason to suppose her a widow or wife, silly or wise, virtuous or the reverse, rich or poor, soulless or full of feeling, handsome or plain,—in short, there were as many Madame Firmianis as there are species in society, or sects in Catholicism. Frightful reflection! we are all like lithographic blocks, from which an indefinite number of copies can be drawn by criticism,—the proofs being more or less like us according to a distribution of shading which is so nearly imperceptible that our reputation depends (barring the calumnies of friends and the witticisms of newspapers) on the balance struck by our criticisers between Truth that limps and Falsehood to which Parisian wit gives wings.
Madame Firmiani, like other noble and dignified women who make their hearts a sanctuary and disdain the world, was liable, therefore, to be totally misjudged by Monsieur de Bourbonne, an old country magnate, who had reason to think a great deal about her during the winter of this year. He belonged to the class of provincial Planters, men living on their estates, accustomed to keep close accounts of everything and to bargain with the peasantry. Thus employed, a man becomes sagacious in spite of himself, just as soldiers in the long run acquire courage from routine. The old gentleman, who had come to Paris from Touraine to satisfy his curiosity about Madame Firmiani, and found it not at all assuaged by the Parisian gossip which he heard, was a man of honor and breeding. His sole heir was a nephew, whom he greatly loved, in whose interests he planted his poplars. When a man thinks without annoyance about his heir, and watches the trees grow daily finer for his future benefit, affection grows too with every blow of the spade around her roots. Though this phenomenal feeling is not common, it is still to be met with in Touraine.
This cherished nephew, named Octave de Camps, was a descendant of the famous Abbe de Camps, so well known to bibliophiles and learned men,—who, by the bye, are not at all the same thing. People in the provinces have the bad habit of branding with a sort of decent reprobation any young man who sells his inherited estates. This antiquated prejudice has interfered very much with the stock-jobbing which the present government encourages for its own interests. Without consulting his uncle, Octave had lately sold an estate belonging to him to the Black Band. The chateau de Villaines would have been pulled down were it not for the remonstrances which the old uncle made to the representatives of the “Pickaxe company.” To increase the old man’s wrath, a distant relative (one of those cousins of small means and much astuteness about whom shrewd