Facino Cane was a blind old violinist who encountered Balzac, if there is any truth in the story, one evening at a restaurant where he was playing for the members of a wedding-party. Something in the old man's dignified aspect moved the novelist deeply, and, accosting him, Balzac drew forth gradually the narration of his life. Facino was, in reality, a Venetian nobleman, at present reduced to dire poverty and obliged to dwell in the Hospice of the Quinze-Vingts.[*] In his youth he had been imprisoned within the Doge's Palace, and, while there, had accidentally come upon the secret treasures it contained. After his escape from confinement, his dream had been to meet with some one who would help him to gain possession of this wealth, without taking advantage of his blindness. And now he confided his plan to Balzac with undiminished faith in the possibility of its accomplishment. The pathos of the old man's situation is created with sober touches. Among the novelist's minor tales, this is one of the simplest and best.
[*] Hospital founded by Saint Louis for three hundred noblemen whose sight had been destroyed by the Saracens.
In his reminiscences, Theophile Gautier mentions, apropos of Facino Cane, that Balzac himself was persuaded he knew the exact spot, near the Pointe-a-Pitre, where Toussaint Louverture, the black dictator of Santo Domingo, had his booty buried by negroes of that island, whom he then shot. To Sandeau and Gautier the novelist explained, with such eloquence and precision, his scheme for obtaining the interred wealth that they were wrought up to the point of declaring themselves ready to set out, armed with pick-axe and spade, and to put into action Edgar Allen Poe's yarn of the Gold Bug. When money was the theme, Balzac's tongue was infinitely persuasive.
One is tempted to wonder whether his returning to Italy in the spring of 1837, and his visit to Venice, after Florence and Milan, were not an indirect consequence of his Facino Cane story. It is certain that he regarded the ancient land of the Caesars as a possible El Dorado; and, curiously enough, he came back this time, if not with Sindbad's diamonds, yet with some prospect of becoming a Silver King. Throughout the remainder of the twelvemonth, a plan, connected with this prospect, was simmering in his head, a plan which, we shall see, was less chimerical than most of those that he concocted.
While he was at Milan, the Italian sculptor Puttinati modelled his bust, which pleased him so much that he gave him a order for a group representing Seraphita showing the path heavenward to Wilfrid and Minna. At Venice, he began Massimilla Doni, one of his philosophic novels, in which the love episode is interwoven with mysticism and music, and Rossini's Mose is analysed with skill. His best production of the year was Cesar Birotteau. The subject he had borne in his mind for a long while, but had feared to start on it on account of the difficulty of treating it imaginatively. At last, tempted by an offer of twenty thousand francs if he would complete it by a fixed date, he sat down to the task and wrote the novel in three weeks.
The Grandeur (or Rise) and Fall of Cesar Birotteau, to give the book its fuller title, has neither plot nor progress of love-passion. Its value—which is great—is almost entirely dependent on a number of little things that make up an imposing whole. The subject is a commonplace one. Birotteau, who is a dealer in perfumes, and has invented a Sultana cosmetic and a Carminative Water, has reached a position of influence and substance. Urged by his wife's desire to shine in society, he allows himself to be inveigled into an expenditure that compromises his fortune and reduces him to insolvency. Although retaining the esteem of his fellow-citizens, who are convinced of his integrity, Cesar is stricken to the heart, less by the loss of his money than by his failure to meet his engagements. In vain, his wife and daughter hire themselves out in order to aid in remedying the disaster for which they are largely responsible. In vain, friends rally round him, until, little by little, the debts are paid, the perfumer is rehabilitated, and is honoured even by the King. On the very evening when, in the society of his family and friends and his daughter's betrothed, he regains the feeling of independence and freedom, death overtakes him. Joy succeeding to the strain is too much for him.
In the background of the novel is a tableau of the Restoration epoch which is admirable; and the intricacies of finance and law, which form so considerable a part of the story, are handled with an ease and fancy that no other writer of fiction has quite equalled. We have a romance of ledgers and day-books, in a business atmosphere that amazingly well reveals the bent and moral worth of the various characters. Cesarine, Villerault, Popinot have traits which one smiles to recognize. And Birotteau's development both of qualities and foibles is free from caricature, yet pleases much.
As was the case with Eugenie Grandet, Balzac does not seem to have cared for this masterpiece. The rapidity with which he composed it, and the fatigue he had undergone, caused him to regard it with some irritation. He did not realize that it was all elaborated in his brain before he put in on paper. Probably also he spoke of it under the disappointment he experienced from his continued failures in play-writing. Twice, during the twelvemonth, he tackled pieces which he described to Madame Hanska. One of them, the Premiere Demoiselle, refashioned as the School for Husbands and Wives, treated the unsavoury theme of an adulterous husband who keeps his mistress in his own house; and the other, Joseph Prudhomme, much better in conception, dealt with the not uncommon incident of a girl's making a respectable marriage after a first betrayal, and her bringing up in secret the child born out of wedlock. Certain situations arising from the plot were both original and affecting. But in neither undertaking did he manage to go on to the end. Heine, whom he consulted in his difficulties, advised him to abandon further efforts in writing for the stage. "You had better remain in your galleys," he said. "Those who are used to Brest cannot accustom themselves to Toulon."
The advice was not palatable to a man of his temperament. He wanted all domains to open before him; and poured out his soul in lamentations, even while exhausting himself in fresh attempts. Now that Madame de Berny was dead, his Eve was the chief recipient of these jeremiads. "Are you not tired of hearing me vary my song in all moods?" he asked her. "Does not this unceasing egotism of a man struggling in a narrow circle bore you? Tell me, for, by your letter, you appear to me inclined to throw me over as a sorry pauper that knows only his paternoster, and always says the same thing."
To him, as to ambitious men in every century, reflection came now and again, whispering what folly it was to spend life in the sole pursuit of glory. Just now the whisperings must have been more insistent, for he had thoughts of going to live in some sylvan retreat on the banks of the Cher or the Loire, right away from Paris. A visit to Sache, after an illness, afforded him the excuse for searching; and, as he still proposed to write—for his pleasure,—it was congruent he should meditate a sort of Heloise and Abelard idyll—two lovers drawn to the cloister, and telling in epistles to each other the history of their vocation.[*]