ag Supporter of the Terror, which began in 1793.
ah Allusion, from Greek mythology, to the thread given by Ariadne to Theseus, which enabled him to find his way back out of the labyrinth after having slain the Minotaur.
ai “The world’s ultimate argument”; variation on Ultimo ratio regnum (“the King’s ultimate argument”), which Louis XIV had engraved on his cannon.
aj D’Oliban was a foolish father in a comedy by Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Choudard-Desforges (1746-1806).
ak Pastiche of Pierre Corneille’s tragedy Cinna (c. 1641; act 4, scene 4).
al To have the inside position.
am Charles-Jean Bernadotte, a marshal under Napoleon, in 1818 became king of Sweden as Charles XIV He was born in Pau in southern France.
an Vautrin almost reveals his identity as the criminal “Trompe-la-Mort.”
ao Cellini was a famous Florentine goldsmith (1500-1571); his Memoirs, published in 1728, reveal his enormous resourcefulness and self-confidence.
ap Dragnets were set across the Seine at Saint-Cloud to catch the drifting bodies of the drowned.
aq The Code Napoleon, the French civil code enacted in 1804 and still extant (though revised).
ar Travaux forces (“hard labor”). In the early nineteenth century, French convicts were branded between the shoulders with these letters; the practice was suspended in 1832.
as That is, deliberately counting a vote cast for a left-wing politician (JacquesAntoine Manuel, a left-wing deputy) as one cast for his right-wing rival (the Count of Villèle, Manuel’s ultra- Royalist adversary).
at That is, are still unmarried. The expression appears in act 2, scene 5 of Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre. “Dian” refers to Diana, virgin goddess of Roman mythology.
au Racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne.
av François Aubry (1750-1802), minister of war, opposed Napoleon early in his command; he was later deported and died in exile.
aw Restaurant on the boulevard du Temple.
ax Popular theater on the boulevard Saint-Martin.
ay MarieJoseph, marquis de La Fayette (1757-1834), French statesman and military general, hero of the American War of Independence.
az That is, Talleyrand (see note p. 61); he was created Prince de Benevento in 1806.
ba Jean-Francois de Pérusse, duc de Cars (sometimes spelled Descars or D’Escars) (1747-1822), master of the royal household, whose sole duty was to devise dishes to please Louis XVIII. He died of indigestion.
bb Theater on the boulevard Montmartre, known for comedies.
bc The Duchess of Berri (or Berry), widow of King Charles X’s second son, Charles Ferdinand (1778-1820). The Duchess of Carigliano is a fictional character.
bd Page to Countess Almaviva in Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s comic play Marriage of Figaro (1784).
be Alceste is a reference to the protagonist of Le Misanthrope (1666), by Molière (pen name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) and to the uncompromisingly puritanical protagonists of The Heart of Midlothian (1818), by Sir Walter Scott (translated into French that same year).
bf The Hôpital des Capucins (see the footnote on p. 11).
bg The King’s intimate circle.
bh The Comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791), orator of the Revolution, known for his excessive lifestyle.
bi The French writer Jean de la Bruyère (1645-1696) paints a verbal portrait of an absentminded man (“Le Distrait”) in his best-known work, Caractères (1688), even if the particular trait to which Balzac alludes is not to be found there.
bj Patron saint of hunters.
bk Marshall Turenne (1611-1675), a military leader who served under Louis XIV; during the Thirty Years’ War he may have enlisted the help of mercenaries.
bl Pierre and Jaffier are two inseparable male characters in Thomas Otway’s dramatic tragedy Venice Preserv’d ( 1682) .
bm Former site of the headquarters of the Paris police.
bn In Le Calife de Bagdad (1800), a one-act comic opera by François-Adrien Boieldieu, the calif Isaoun goes by the magical name of II Bondocani as he roams the streets of the city at night incognito.
bo Pierre Coignard was an escaped convict who evaded arrest for more than a decade by joining the army under the pseudonym Comte de Sainte-Hélène; he was rearrested in 1818 by François-Eugène Vidocq, chief of police of all of France.
bp Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) was a zoologist who taught at the Museum of Natural History at the Jardin des Plantes. Balzac attended his lectures in 1819.
bq In 1812 the widow Morin, Jeanne-Marie-Victorine Tarin, attempted to murder the Parisian lawyer Jean-Antoine Ragoulleau, and was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor for it.
br The shepherd Argus of Roman mythology had 100 eyes.
bs See the footnote on p. 94.
bt Abraham-Louis Bréguet (1747-1823) was a Swiss watchmaker who pioneered the slim watches we know today, which would have been very expensive at the time. He is also mentioned in Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet (1833).
bu From Gétry’s opera Richard Cœur de Lion (1784).
bv Conflation of the name of the premier Bordeaux wine producer (Château Lafite) with that of the financier and prime minister under Louis-Philippe, Jacques Laffitte.
bw Various cries of Paris street vendors.
bx Jean-Baptiste Marty (1779-1863) acted in popular melodramas. Le Mont Sauvage is one such play, by René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt (1773-1844), based on the hugely popular sentimental novel Le Solitaire, by Charles-Victor Prévôt, vicomte d’Arlincourt (1789-1856).
by Madame Vauquer not only mistakes Chateaubriand for the author of Le Solitaire but also gives as his first name that of one of his most famous characters, Atala.
bz Sentimental novel published in 1787; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was a disciple of philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
ca Where public executions were held; later renamed Place de l’Hôtel de Ville.
cb That is, the Jardin des Plantes.
cc The Theatre de la Gaîté on the boulevard du Temple, where Madame Vauquer has seen Le Mont Sauvage.
cd In time (Italian).
ce Nickname (meaning “silk thread”) for Sélérier, who reappears in Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (A Harlot High and Loru, 1847), in prison along with Vautrin.
cf References to the faded beauty of Mademoiselle Michonneau. Ninon de Lenclos (1620-1705) was a famous courtesan; Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764) was the mistress of Louis XIV.
cg Headquarters of the French crime squad.
ch Reference to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762).
ci Cheap restaurant frequented by students and also by Lucien de Rubempré, hero of Balzac’s Illusions perdues (Lost Illusions, 1843).
cj His own kind of pleasure lures each one (Latin); from Virgil, Eclogues 2.65.
ck Expensive restaurant on the boulevard des Italiens.
cl Today the rue Laffitte.
cm King of Lydia (now part of Turkey), renowned for his riches.
cn Caius Marius (155-86 B.C.) was a Roman general who, after many military successes, was defeated by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-’78 B.C.) and fled to Africa.
co Reference to The Lament of Tasso, by George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), which describes the tribulations of the great sixteenth-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso; it was translated into French in 1830.
cp He was beheaded.
cq Having come back from Elba, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.
cr Actually two years in the original, but as Stéphane Vachon points out in Mémoire de la critique, Eugène has known Delphine for only two months.
cs The Duchess of La Vallière (1644-1700), mistress of Louis XIV; the Duc de Vermandois was one of the children she bore the King.
ct See the footnote on p. 197.
cu Debtors’ prison.
cv Goriot suggests that for a sum of money he might serve in the army in place of someone called up; it is an absurd idea, given his
advanced age.
cw Moses in Egypt, an opera by Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), was a favorite of Balzac’s; it was first performed in Paris in 1822.
cx Reference to the Duchesse de Montpensier, cousin of Louis XIV. Having at first agreed to her marriage to the Duc de Lauzun, Louis then retracted his consent and imprisoned Lauzun for ten years.
cy Cotton that was burned and then applied to the skin, usually in an attempt to cauterize a wound.
cz Funerals in France were categorized according to expense. Balzac’s father had a third-class funeral in 1829.
da First words of the Bible’s Psalm 129, meaning “out of the depths.”
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