Two Brothers (La Rabouilleuse,A Bachelor's Establishment, The Black Sheep) (1792,1839)
A beautiful young woman and a Napoleonic Wars veteran turned rake and mischief maker
control a rich man with intent to eventually possess his fortune.
Only an even more unscrupulous former soldier is able to avert the
loss of the inheritance. My personal favorite.
(Very Long, La Rabouilleuse, brthr10.txt)
Father Goriot (1819-1820)
A rich man gives everything to his daughters
and dies a miserable death once they have forsaken him kind of like King Lear does.
This is the most famous of all Balzac's novels.
(Long, Le Pere Goriot, frgrt.txt)
Eugenie Grandet (1819-1833)
The story of a miser and his formative influence
on his daughter. One of Balzac's greatest.
(Long, Eugenie Grandet, gngnd10.txt)
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau (1819-23)
Cesar Birotteau owns a perfume shop and like most merchants
he wants to acquire the outward accoutrements of success
like the ribbon of the legion of honor.
When he attains his goal,
he throws a big party at his home to celebrate,
even altering the architecture of his house to accomodate the
extravagant ball. These expenditures along with some bad speculations
drive him into bankruptcy, but being an ideal exemplar
of the businessman species, he makes good all his debts and
promptly dies.
(Very Long, Cesar Birotteau,rfbrt10.txt)
Adieu (1812,1819)
Years after the Napoleonic wars have ended a soldier
hunting in the forest with his companion
gets lost and comes across a small town where they encounter
a mad woman playing like a child. The soldier at once
recognizes her as the beautiful Comtesse de Vandieres
he had once known and protected and loved in an unrequited fashion
during the final days of the Napoleonic campaigns in Russia.
This great lady had followed her husband
and the French troops to Moscow only to meet disaster there
with the rest of the French when they were forced to retreat
in the dead of winter.
After the defeat and retreat she had been reduced first to
the state of a camp follower and finally to an almost animal
existence. In order to restore her to her former self
he uses seemingly modern psychological
methods (Freud?) and reconstructs a gigantic mock version of
the battle and defeat that he believes left her insane.
It seems to have a momentary effect, but the end result is tragic.
(Short, Adieu, adieu10.txt)
History of the Thirteen
A trilogy consisting of three works:
Ferragus, The Duchesse de Langeais, and The Girl With
the Golden Eyes.
The Message (1819)
A coach collapses and kills a young man.
As he is dieing the young man orders the narrator
to inform his lover of his death.
The narrator
delivers the news of her lover's death to the countess,
but at the very end of the story,
with the young lover's still warm (so to speak),
in a very subtle, brief and somewhat ambiguous aside,
the narrator himself seems to be made the subject of the countess's
amorous intentions.
Grief and love are apparently very short lived and fickle.
(Very Short, Le Message, msage10.txt)
Colonel Chabert (1818,1840)
Wounded in battle during the
Napoleonic wars Colonel Chabert disappears
only to resurface many years later in Paris,
but by this time his wife has created a new life for
herself and disavows him.
He accepts it all very stoically
and assumes the life of a wandering vagrant.
(Medium, Le Colonel Chabert, chbrt10.txt)
Facino Cane (1822)
A young writer living a life of poverty in a garret
for the love of knowledge is invited to a wedding
where he encounters an aged musician who sparks his
interest. The musician turns out to be the descendent
of Venetian royalty and relates his tale of woe
and lost treasure.
The young writer suggests they make
a trip to Venice to reclaim it,
but this suggestion comes a little too late.
(Very Short, Facino Cane, fcane10.txt)
Lost Illusions
(Very Long) A three part novel detailing the coming of age of Lucien de
Rubempre, a talented young man, who experiences a meteoric rise
and then a meteoric phoenix-like fall in the Parisian literary world.
The final part of his fall is chronicled in the multiple
part novel "The Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans".
The three parts consist of:
La Grenadiere (1819-30)
A woman and her children move into a small house
surrounded by a garden overlooking the Rhine.
The woman's health gradually declines and the secret behind her life
is gradually revealed.
Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere!
Makes you want to rent a vacation house by the Rhine.
(Very Short, La Grenadiere, grndr10.txt)
Massimilla Doni (1820)
Set in Italy this story is a
"celebration of a world where 'every passion comes with
its own excuse' and where the morning is taken
up with love, the evening with music and' --
a courteous admission -- 'the night with sleep'." (Robb,278)
(Medium, Massimilla Doni, msmdn10.txt)
The Lily of the Valley (1809,1823)
Incorporates a lot of childhood autobiography as
as Robb demonstrates in his biography.
One of Balzac's greatest.
(Long, Le Lys dans la valise, tlotv10.txt)
Melmoth Reconciled (Before 1822)
This tale has a Faustian plot.
A cashier for the banker Nucingen named Castanier
embezzles money from the
banker to support his mistress
and in order to extricate himself from the situation
exchanges lives with an evil English officer who has
supernatural powers and wants to die in sanctity.
Realizing he has made a mistake by making such an exchange
the cashier in turn exchanges lives with a banker named
Claparon.
(Short, Melmoth Reconciled, mlmth10.txt)
The Atheist's Mass (1820,1831)
About the great surgeon Desplein.
Born to a poor family, Desplein was assisted financially
in his education by a poor water carrier named
Bourgeat. Later on when Bourgeat is sick
Desplein nurses him as a son would.
Even though Desplein himself is an atheist,
he establishs a mass for Bourgeat
after his death and assists in it himself.
(Very Short, ,athms10.txt)
The Old Maid (1816-20)
Companion piece to "The Cabinet of Antiquities" below.
The first novel serialized in a French newspaper (roman feuilleton) (Robb, 278)
(Medium to Long, La vieille fille, omaid10.txt)
The Cabinet of Antiquities (1822-24)
Companion piece to "The Old Maid" above.
"What happens to young men from feudal oases in the provinces
when they enter the modern world?" (Robb, 330)
A young aristocratic rascal is sent to Paris
to get a start in life by his naive father who's
still living in the 18th century and his father's notary, Chesnel,
a realist devoted to his lord who would sacrifice every penny
he owns for his master's son.
The son goes on a two year spending spree culminating
in taking the bait that his father's enemy, du Croisier
offers him, forging the enemy's signature.
The young man's family figures that the only way they
can cap his spending and spiralling debt
is by going to Paris, grabbing him, and hiding him in the cellar
back at the family manor in the country,
while they try to pay off his debts.
But it's too late.
He's committed the forgery and the police eventually find him.
The young man's fate hangs in the balance for a few moments.
There is talk of suicide to save the family name
in that spirit of aristocratic noblesse
found before the French revolution,
but its clear that the young man has no intention
of committing suicide himself.
They'd have to kill him and put the knife in his hand.
Ultimately,
the young man is saved by the dedicated Royalist Chesnel who,
to save the great aristocratic house from disgrace and ruin,
plants evidence, recruits members of the judiciary and
aristocrats close to the king,
and even gets the wife of du Croisier who's pressing the suit
to perjure herself by getting the bishop to tell her that
it's only a minor sin to perjure yourself if you're
protecting royalty.
The quaint story within a story of judge Blondet,
the wise judge and devoted horticulturist and flower enthusiast,
is worth reading.
Although he is wiser than other judges and
was lenient during the
French revolution, his carreer dead ends when Napoleon,
prefers to appoint a minor member of the
aristocracy rather than a republican,
as he is said to have usually done by Balzac.
The judge's marriage to a woman twenty years younger than him
along with the all-consuming hobby of gardening also contributes
to the lack of movement in his carreer. His obsession with
gardening and lack of obsession with his wife also
provide him with an illegitimate child.
(Medium to Long, Le Cabinet des Antiques, clntq10.txt)
A Drama on the Seashore (1824)
The tragic story of how a fisherman carries out the punishment
of death on his dissolute son.
(Very Short, Un Drame au bord de la mer, seshr10.txt)
Madame Firmiani (1825)
An uncle from the provinces comes to Paris to find
out why his nephew has lost his fortune. He believes that Madame Firmiani
a woman high placed in society has caused him to waste it away.
It turns out that she has encouraged him, in a noble fashion,
to return it to the people from whom it was stolen by his father.
(Very Short, Madame Firmiani, frmni10.txt)
The Peasants (Sons of the Soil) (1823-26)
Wily peasants prove that they are
the true owners of the land. Marx liked this one.
A personal favorite.
(Very Long, Les Paysans, ssoil10.txt)
The Purse (1819)
The young painter Schinner after falling from scafolding in
his studio cultivates the friendship of his young neighbor and her mother who
came to help him, only to find out that they are using the daughter's
beauty to swindle money from people.
(Very Short, La Bourse, purse10.txt)
The Ball at Sceaux (The Rural Ball) (1819)
A "cautionary tale which shows that spoilt youngest
children always disappoint their parents and never in the
end get what they thought they wanted." (Robb, 27)
(Short, Le Bal de Sceaux, blsco10.txt)