79. Charente: One of the 83 French départements founded in 1793, comprising the former province of Angoumois, with Angoulême as its administrative seat, in the south-west of France. Balzac chose to set the estate of Rastignac in this region. He had stayed in Angoulême with his friend Zulma Carraud and her husband in 1832.
80. bergère: An armchair with a canework back, sides and seat, and loose cushions.
81. thirty drawers: Balzac’s metaphor is inspired by Gall’s system of phrenology. See note 75.
82. Compagnie des Indes: ‘Company of the Indies’, one of the names of the prosperous trading company originally founded by Louis XIV and Colbert in 1664, and dissolved by the National Convention (which governed France 1792–5) on 24 August 1793. The company’s role was to manage French trade with India, eastern Africa, the East Indies and other territories in the Indian Ocean.
83. Vengeur … Warwick: The Vengeur started life as the Marseillois, a French 74-gun man-of-war that saw action against the English in the American War of Independence (France signed a treaty in 1778 backing the Americans). The ship was renamed the Vengeur de Peuple in 1794, and was part of the republican fleet commanded by Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse during the Revolutionary Wars. She was sunk by the HMS Brunswick during the Bataille du 13 Prairial an II (the Glorious First of June). The Warwick was a British ship captured in 1756 off Martinique by the French frigate the Atalante, then recaptured in 1761 by Admiral Alexander Hood commanding HMS Minerva.
84. morganatic: In German law, the term designated a marriage between a man and a woman of unequal rank, in which the offspring would have no succession rights. There is no French legal equivalent, but the term was used to describe the ‘secret marriages’ contracted within the Royal Family During the Ancien Régime, for example, that between Madame de Maintenon and Louis XIV. As such, the term came to be associated with illicit liaisons.
85. C-a-a-ro … non dubitare: A duet from Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio segreto (after David Garrick’s play The Clandestine Marriage), which was performed at the Théâtre-Italien in 1819–20.
86. porter: In French, a suisse or ‘Swiss’. Porters of grand houses were called this because their richly coloured uniforms looked like those worn by the Swiss Guard, who protected the French Royal Family before the Revolution.
87. coupé(s): A short, closed carriage with four wheels and two seats inside. The driver sat outside.
88. stallion … scent of equine love on the breeze: A reference to Virgil’s Georgics III.5.250–51. The section deals with the dangers of desire.
89. the Elysée: Then the residence of the Duc de Berry (son of the future Charles X). As Montriveau is a member of the Royal Guard, Madame de Beauséant says that he was there because he was on duty, implying that he was not there to meet the duchesse.
90. Ejusdem farinae: Latin, literally, ‘of the same flour’, a denigratory term implying ‘they’re all as bad as each other’. Louis XVIII had a reputation for wit.
91. five or six hundred thousand francs: There is some discrepancy as to the exact amount. Delphine says it is 700,000, Goriot 800,000, later rounding off the sum to ‘un bon petit million’.
92. Lamartine: Rather than a specific quotation, a reference to the poet’s style. Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) was a politician and poet. His Méditations poétiques (1820) established him as a pivotal figure in the French Romantic movement.
93. wield love like an axe: The Duchesse de Langeais is the eponymous heroine of a story by Balzac, whose original title, echoed here, was ‘Don’t touch the axe!’ See note 52.
94. Foriot: A fashionable ploy among French aristocracy and high society at the time was to wilfully mispronounce commoners’ names, pretending to be unable to remember them.
95. president of his section: In 1790, forty-eight revolutionary ‘sections’ replaced the old system of urban parishes.
96. intendant: The person who manages a nobleman’s household.
97. his kind: That is, forestallers, or the farmers and manufacturers who, from 1793, withheld necessary commodities from circulation and hoarded them. The subsequent threat of famine drove up prices drastically and provoked widespread rioting in Paris in 1795. The workers and lower classes suffered most – their destitution contrasting with the ostentatious wealth of a new class of rich profiteers (accapareurs), who became the public enemy.
98. Committee of Public Safety: The notorious Comité de salut public in fact dealt ruthlessly with profiteers, sending many to the guillotine.
99. royalist leanings: The novel is set in 1819, during the Bourbon Restoration, five years after Louis XVIII had ascended to the throne (following Napoleon’s abdication and exile to Elba in 1814, then escape, defeat at Waterloo and banishment to St Helena, a year later). Louis XVIII had the support of the right-wing ‘ultra-royalists’. Balzac wrote the novel in 1834–5.
100. veteran of ’93: 1793 was the year in which the Reign of Terror began. The sans-culottes ousted the politically élitist Girondins from the Convention, and the socially radical Jacobins (including Robespierre, Danton, Marat) took over the Committee of Public Safety.
101. when the Bourbons were reinstated: See note 99. From a royalist point of view, Goriot’s survival, through his revolutionary involvement (mentioned earlier), taints him.
102. Ariadne’s thread: A reference to the Greek myth where Ariadne helps Theseus to slay the Minotaur by giving him the magic ball of thread left her by Daedalus. He ties the end to the entrance door of the labyrinth and the thread leads him to the Minotaur. After slaying the monster, he finds his way out again by rolling the thread back into a ball.
103. ultima ratio mundi: Latin, ‘the world’s final sanction’. An echo of the famous motto Louis XIV had inscribed on the royal cannon: ultima ratio regum, ‘the final argument of kings’. That is, money prevails where other measures fail. There are interesting echoes here of views expressed by the republican thinker and writer Benjamin Constant in his 1819 speech De la liberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes:
Today [by contrast with the ancients], private individuals are stronger than political authorities; wealth is a force more readily available at all times, more readily applicable to all interests, and is consequently far more real, and more readily obeyed. Power threatens; wealth rewards. We can evade power by deceiving it, but to obtain the favours of wealth, we must serve it. Ultimately, the latter will prevail.
104. asymptotes: In mathematics, rather than being a parallel, as Balzac seems to imply here, an asymptote is actually a line which approaches a curve without ever reaching it.
105. Dolibans: Monsieur d’Oliban is the main character – a foolish father – in a play by Choudard-Desforges performed in 1790. In earlier versions of the text, Balzac wrote ‘Caliban’.
106. Rue Oblin: This road ran from the Rue Coquillière to the circular Corn Exchange building.
107. the Holy Roman Empire: The name by which the Empire of Germany was known from 800 to 1806, until the abdication of Emperor Francis II, following the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine, which recognized Napoleon as its protector.
III. AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIETY
108. cannons of elder: Being hollow stemmed, elder twigs are ideal for making blowpipes or pea-shooters.
109. There is talk … silence as to the rest: A witty misquotation from Corneille’s Cinna (IV. 1290).
110. twenty thousand livres per year: Balzac appears to suggest that a canny tailor recognizes that the clothes he provides allow a young man to make his fortune, and that his return may not ultimately be in money, but in reputation. As Robb observes in his biography (Balzac, p. 137), Balzac scatters flattering references to his own tailor, Buisson, throughout the Human Comedy, as a ‘novel way of paying bills “without spending any money” ’.
111. Rue Saint-Jacques … Rue des Saints-Pères: That is, the Latin Quarter, centred around the Sorbonne.
112. projected thoughts … catch us unawares: Balzac’s ideas on thought, w
ill and energy reflect his interest in Emanuel Swedenborg’s system of spiritual philosophy and Franz Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism (and are exposed in detail in his novels Louis Lambert and Séraphîta).
113. the cause of his death: Joachim Murat (1767–1815) came from the Lot region in south-west France. He served Napoleon effectively in the coup d’état of 1799 and was rewarded with the hand of his younger sister Caroline. Murat distinguished himself with daring acts of bravery in the most important battles of the age: Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, and was made King of Naples in 1808. However, after the battle of Borodino, he wavered in his loyalty to Napoleon and abandoned the retreating army, in an unsuccessful bid to save his kingdom from the Austrian troops. In October 1815 he made a last reckless bid to recover Naples, almost unaided, but was taken prisoner and shot.
114. the Midi: The south of France, or the area below an imaginary line dividing France east–west at Brive-la-Gaillarde and Valence (roughly corresponding to the old north–south language divisions of Oïl and Oc).
115. King of Sweden: The reference is to Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (1764–1844), one of Napoleon’s most controversial marshals, who was born in Pau, in the Pyrenees. He married Désirée Clary, Bonaparte’s former fiancée, and was elected Crown Prince and regent of Sweden in 1810. When France occupied Swedish Pomerania in 1812, he switched allegiances and joined the Sixth Coalition (Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Austria, German states) against Napoleon. He became King Charles XIV of Sweden in 1818, founding the present royal dynasty.
116. Cellini: The memoirs of the famous (and notorious) Florentine sculptor and goldsmith (1500–1571) were published in French in 1822. Berlioz was also an admirer: his opera Benvenuto Cellini was first performed in Paris in 1838.
117. in the nets at Saint-Cloud: Nets were cast into the Seine at Saint-Cloud to catch the corpses of the drowned as they floated downstream.
118. I’ve spent some time in the Midi: This is explained at note 164 to avoid revealing elements of plot.
119. the Code: See note 54.
120. T for thief: French convicts were branded with the initials ‘T.F.’ for Travaux Forcés (‘hard labour’).
121. Villèle … Manuel: That is, falsifying election results by ‘reading’ the wrong name on the ballot. 1819 was a general election year. Joseph Villèle was an ultra-royalist leader and (Restoration) government supporter; Jacques-Antoine Manuel was a republican lawyer and member of the opposing ‘Independent’ or liberal faction.
122. on the shelf: The French refers to the custom of calling a woman a catherinette if she reached twenty-five and was still single on St Catherine’s day (25 November). The term originated with seamstresses, who would make a special hat to wear to the bal des catherinettes.
123. Longchamp: Not a reference to the racecourse, which didn’t exist at the time the novel was written, but most likely to the fashionable custom of promenading carriages through the Bois de Boulogne, from Porte Maillot to Longchamp.
124. ten likely lads: A reference which brings to mind the Thirteen: ‘They were thirteen kings – anonymous, but really kings; more than kings: judges and executioners too, they had equipped themselves with wings in order to soar over society in its heights and depths, and disdained to occupy any place in it, because they had unlimited power over it’ (from Balzac’s preface to History of the Thirteen, tr. Hunt, 1974).
125. Aubry: During his time in charge of military operations on the Committee of Public Safety between April and August 1795, François Aubry relieved Bonaparte of the artillery command of the Italian army. However, he himself was deported to Cayenne (French Guiana) after the coup of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797).
126. I want … holding you to account: Slavery was first abolished in France in 1794 by the Convention, restored in 1802 by the Consulate (Bonaparte), and definitively abolished in 1848 by the Second Republic. Balzac’s younger brother Henri married a Creole woman and owned around thirty black slaves on the island of Mauritius. He returned to France in 1834, financially ruined.
127. a quint and a quatorze: In the card game Piquet, a quint is a sequence of five cards of the same suit counting as fifteen and a quatorze is a set of four aces, kings, queens, knaves or tens, counting as fourteen.
128. Cadran-Bleu … Ambigu-Comique: The Cadran-Bleu restaurant took its name from a sign with a clock-face showing four o’clock. Situated on the Boulevard du Temple, it was frequented by a bourgeois rather than fashionable clientele. The Ambigu-Comique, on the same road, was one of the largest theatres in Paris and attracted mainly working-class audiences to the melodramas it showed.
129. Some sniff out dowries … bound hand and foot: Vautrin suggests four methods of making money: marrying a rich woman, profit-taking on the liquidation of business concerns (just as Grandet turns his dead brother’s liquidation to his own account, in Eugénie Grandet), vote-rigging in an election, or selling a newspaper, whose subscribers are committed for a certain amount of time, and powerless to protest.
130. Taillefer … the Revolution: This story is told in Balzac’s ‘The Red Inn’ (included in Selected Short Stories, tr. Sylvia Raphael, Penguin Classics, 1977).
131. the Conservatoire: The Paris museum known as the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers was founded in 1794 and houses collections of machines, scientific instruments and inventions.
132. La Fayette: The Marquis de La Fayette (1757–1834) was a soldier and statesman, of Liberal ideals. He fought in the American Revolution (becoming a lifelong friend of George Washington), and was involved in drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in July 1789.
133. the prince: A reference to Talleyrand, the French statesman whose skilled diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) secured better-than-expected terms for France. Balzac was an admirer. See note 78.
134. primitive words: In grammar or philology, original or radical words, from which others are formed, as opposed to derivative words; or alternatively, the primeval stage of a parent language.
135. Lacedaemonia: The ancient Greek name for Sparta, whose ruling class turned from the arts, philosophy and literature towards war and diplomacy, to build up the most powerful army in Greece. The warrior class rewarded bravery with glory, and trained its young men to be ruthless and cunning.
136. the Restoration: See note 99.
137. the Duc d’Escars: Royalist general and renowned gastronomist, who was made a duke by Louis XVIII and became his senior maître d’hôtel. He reputedly died of indigestion in 1822.
138. Tantalus types: See note 209.
139. Cherubino: The Count’s desiring and desired adolescent page, in Beaumarchais’ satirical comedy Le Mariage de Figaro (Paris, 1784), upon which the Mozart comic opera, Le Nozze di Figaro (Vienna, 1786), was based.
140. Ssince … vell resseeft: Balzac is said to have modelled Nucingen’s Teutonic accent on that of the powerful banker James de Rothschild.
141. Alceste … Jeanie Deans: Alceste, the main character in Molière’s play The Misanthrope (1666), makes himself unpopular through his determination to flout social convention and be honest at all costs. Jeanie Deans is the principled heroine of Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian (translated into French in 1818 as La Prison d’Edimbourg), who sees her sister sentenced to death rather than tell a white lie.
142. Ecole de Droit: The law faculty of the Sorbonne university.
143. Jardin du Luxembourg: A large public park in the sixth arrondissement not far from the Sorbonne.
144. asks the reader … by killing a mandarin in China solely by force of will: The passage appears to come from Chateaubriand’s Le Génie du christianisme (1802), I.6.2, rather than Rousseau.
145. Gordian knot: ‘An intricate knot tied by Gordius, king of Gordium in Phrygia. The oracle declared that whoever should loosen it should rule Asia, and Alexander the Great overcame the difficulty by cutting through the knot with his sword’ (OED).
146. Cuvier’s lecture: The renown
ed naturalist Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) began his career in Paris as the protégé of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the dedicatee of this novel, but later in life became his rival. Their bitter clash of ideas in 1830 caused great controversy: both sought to explain the diversity of nature, but (roughly), Cuvier focused on function (and the differences between species), Saint-Hilaire on structure (and the similarities). Both positions found their way into Darwin’s theory of evolution. Balzac admired and was influenced by both men. He attended Cuvier’s lectures at the Natural History Museum in 1818. The Jardin des Plantes (botanical gardens) is in the fifth arrondissement, near the Gare d’Austerlitz. See also note 1.
147. the Ladies of the Petit Château: A clique of high-ranking noblewomen close to the king’s brother (who would become Charles X in 1824, on the death of the former king, Louis XVIII).
148. elegy … choleric: The concept of the four ‘complexions’ or ‘temperaments’ – melancholic, phlegmatic (or lymphatic), sanguine and choleric – was founded on that of the four humours (black bile, phlegm, red blood and yellow bile respectively). The elegy is a poetic form traditionally used to lament the dead (hence Balzac associates it with the watery and insipid temperament of a phlegmatic); the dithyramb is ‘a Greek choric hymn, originally in honour of Dionysus or Bacchus, vehement and wild in character; a Bacchanalian song’ (OED), and is thus fit to express the tempestuous and enthusiastic (choleric) sentiments of a Rastignac.
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