Translated and produced by David Desmond (balzac@dlrd.net) HONORÉ DE BALZAC BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION PARIS POULET-MALASSIS ET DE BROISE BOOKSELLERS-PUBLISHERS 9, rue des Beaux-Arts 1859 Translated by David Desmond I Around 1835, I lived in two small rooms in the Impasse du Doyenné, not far from the current location of the Pavillon Mollien. Although it was located in the center of Paris facing the Tuilleries and just a few steps from the Louvre, the location was deserted and wild, and it required a certain persistence for me to be found. However, one morning a young man with a distinguished look and a cordial and spiritual air approached my front door and excused himself while making his introduction; he was Jules Sandeau: he had come to recruit me on behalf of Balzac for La Chronique de Paris, a weekly journal that one will certainly remember, but which had not been as financially successful as it deserved. Balzac, Sandeau told me, had read Mademoiselle de Maupin, then very recently published, and he had very much admired its style; thus he wished to request my collaboration on the journal that he sponsored and directed. A date was set for us to get together, and from that date forward there was between us a friendship that only death could break. If I have told this story, it is not because it is flattering for me, but because it honors Balzac, who, already famous, sought out a young, obscure writer to collaborate in a spirit of of camaraderie and complete equality. At that time, it's true, Balzac was not yet the author of La Comédie Humaine, but he had completed, besides several novellas, La Physiologie du Mariage, La Peau de Chagrin, Louis Lambert, Seraphita, Eugénie Grandet, l'Histoire des Treize, Le Médecin de Campagne, Père Goriot, that is to say, in ordinary times, enough to solidify five or six reputations. His nascent glory, strengthened each month with new rays, shined with all of the splendors of the aurora; certainly he shined brightly like his contemporaries Lamartine, Victor Hugo, de Vigny, de Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Alexandre Dumas, Mérimée, George Sand, and many others; but at no time in his life did Balzac carry himself as the Grand Lama of literature, and he was always good company; he had pride, but he was entirely free of vanity. He lived at that time at the end of the Jardin du Luxembourg, near the Observatoire, on a little frequented road given the name of Cassini, without doubt because of its astronomical neighbor. On the garden wall which occupied almost the entire side, and at the end of which was found the house in which Balzac lived, one read: Labsolu, brick merchant. That strange sign, which is still there, if I am not wrong, is very striking; La Recherche de l'Absolu can have no other inspiration. This fateful name probably suggested to the author the idea of Balthasar Claës in the pursuit of his impossible dream.