Honore de Balzac

Titles in Fiction category:

• Adieu

  "Come, deputy of the Centre, forward! Quick step! march! if we want to be in time to dine with the others. Jump, marquis! there, that's right! why, you can skip across a stubble-field like a deer!"

• Alkahest, The

  There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than those of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish buildings, so naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs of that excellent ...

• Magic Skin, The

  Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He mounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by the number 36, with ...

• Sons of the Soil

  To Monsieur P. S. B. Gavault.

• Two Brothers, The

  To Monsieur Charles Nodier, member of the French Academy, etc.

• Village Rector, The

  In the lower town of Limoges, at the corner of the rue de la Vieille- Poste and the rue de la Cite might have been seen, a generation ago, one of those shops which were scarcely changed from the period of the middle-ages. Large tiles seamed with a thousand cracks lay on the soil itself, w ...

Titles in Short Stories category:

• About the Monk Amador, Who was a Glorious Abbot of Turpenay

  One day that it was drizzling with rain--a time when the ladies remain gleefully at home, because they love the damp, and can have at their apron strings the men who are not disagreeable to them--the queen was in her chamber, at the castle of Amboise, against the window curtains. There, seated ...

• Atheist's Mass, The

  Bianchon, a physician to whom science owes a fine system of theoretical physiology, and who, while still young, made himself a celebrity in the medical school of Paris, that central luminary to which European doctors do homage, practised surgery for a long time before he took up medicine. ...

• Bertha the Penitent    

  I. How Bertha Remained a Maiden in the Married State

• Brothers-in-Arms, The

  At the commencement of the reign of King Henry, second of the name, who loved so well the fair Diana, there existed still a ceremony of which the usage has since become much weakened, and which has altogether disappeared, like an infinity of the good things of the olden times. This fine and nob ...

• Concerning a Poor Man Who was Called Le Vieux Par-Chemins

  The old chronicler who furnished the hemp to weave the present story, is said to have lived at the time when the affair occurred in the City of Rouen.

• Concerning a Provost Who Did Not Recognise Things

  In the good town of Bourges, at the time when that lord the king disported himself there, who afterwards abandoned his search after pleasure to conquer the kingdom, and did indeed conquer it, lived there a provost, entrusted by him with the maintenance of order, and called the provost-royal. Fr ...

• Continence of King Francis the First, The

  Every one knows through what adventure King Francis, the first of that name, was taken like a silly bird and led into the town of Madrid, in Spain. There the Emperor Charles V. kept him carefully locked up, like an article of great value, in one of his castles, in the which our defunct sire, of ...

• Danger of Being Too Innocent, The

  The Lord of Montcontour was a brave soldier of Tours, who in honour of the battle gained by the Duke of Anjou, afterwards our right glorious king, caused to be built at Vouvray the castle thus named, for he had borne himself most bravely in that affair, where he overcame the greatest of heretic ...

• Dear Night of Love, The

  In that winter when commenced that first taking up of arms by those of the religion, which was called the Riot of Amboise, an advocate, named Avenelles, lent his house, situated in the Rue des Marmousets for the interviews and conventions of the Huguenots, being one of them, without knowing, ho ...

• Despair in Love

  At the time when King Charles the Eighth took it into his head to decorate the castle of Amboise, they came with him certain workmen, master sculptors, good painters, and masons, or architects, who ornamented the galleries with splendid works, which, through neglect, have since been much spoile ...

• Devil's Heir, The

  There once was a good old canon of Notre Dame de Paris, who lived in a fine house of his own, near St. Pierre-aux-Boeufs, in the Parvis. This canon had come a simple priest to Paris, naked as a dagger without its sheath. But since he was found to be a handsome man, well furnished with everythin ...

• Fair Imperia, The

  The Archbishop of Bordeaux had added to his suite when going to the Council at Constance quite a good-looking little priest of Touraine whose ways and manner of speech was so charming that he passed for a son of La Soldee and the Governor. The Archbishop of Tours had willingly given him to his ...

• Fair Imperia Married, The

  I. How Madame Imperia was Caught by the Very Net She was Accustomed to Spread for Her Love-Birds

• False Courtesan, The

  That which certain people do not know, is a the truth concerning the decease of the Duke of Orleans, brother of King Charles VI., a death which proceeded from a great number of causes, one of which will be the subject of this narrative. This prince was for certain the most lecherous of all the ...

• High Constable's Wife, The    

  The high constable of Armagnac espoused from the desire of a great fortune, the Countess Bonne, who was already considerably enamoured of little Savoisy, son of the chamberlain to his majesty King Charles the Sixth.

• How the Chateau d'Azay Came to be Built

  Jehan, son of Simon Fourniez, called Simonnin, a citizen of Tours-- originally of the village of Moulinot, near to Beaune, whence, in imitation of certain persons, he took the name when he became steward to Louis the Eleventh--had to fly one day into Languedoc with his wife, having fallen into ...

• How the Pretty Maid of Portillon Convinced Her Judge

  The Maid of Portillon, who became as everyone knows, La Tascherette, was, before she became a dyer, a laundress at the said place of Portillon, from which she took her name. If any there be who do not know Tours, it may be as well to state that Portillon is down the Loire, on the same side as S ...

• In Which it is Demonstrated that Fortune is Always Feminine

  During the time when knights courteously offered to each other both help and assistance in seeking their fortune, it happened that in Sicily--which, as you are probably aware, is an island situated in the corner of the Mediterranean Sea, and formerly celebrated--one knight met in a wood another ...

• Innocence    

  By the double crest of my fowl, and by the rose lining of my sweetheart's slipper! By all the horns of well-beloved cuckolds, and by the virtue of their blessed wives! the finest work of man is neither poetry, nor painted pictures, nor music, nor castles, nor statues, be they carved never so we ...

• King's Sweetheart, The

  There lived at this time at the forges of the Pont-aux-Change, a goldsmith whose daughter was talked about in Paris on account of her great beauty, and renowned above all things for her exceeding gracefulness. There were those who sought her favours by the usual tricks of love and, but others o ...

• Maid of Thilouse, The

  The lord of Valennes, a pleasant place, of which the castle is not far from the town of Thilouse, had taken a mean wife, who by reason of taste or antipathy, pleasure or displeasure, health or sickness, allowed her good husband to abstain from those pleasures stipulated for in all contracts of ...

• Merry Jests of King Louis the Eleventh, The

  King Louis The Eleventh was a merry fellow, loving a good joke, and-- the interests of his position as king, and those of the church on one side--he lived jovially, giving chase to soiled doves as often as to hares, and other royal game. Therefore, the sorry scribblers who have made him out a h ...

• Merry Tattle of the Nuns of Poissy, The

  The Abbey of Poissy has been rendered famous by old authors as a place of pleasure, where the misconduct of the nuns first began, and whence proceeded so many good stories calculated to make laymen laugh at the expense of our holy religion. The said abbey by this means became fertile in proverb ...

• Message, The

  I have always longed to tell a simple and true story, which should strike terror into two young lovers, and drive them to take refuge each in the other's heart, as two children cling together at the sight of a snake by a woodside. At the risk of spoiling my story and of being taken for a ...

• Odd Sayings of Three Pilgrims

  When the pope left his good town of Avignon to take up his residence in Rome, certain pilgrims were thrown out who had set out for this country, and would have to pass the high Alps, in order to gain this said town of Rome, where they were going to seek the /remittimus/ of various sins. Then we ...

• Perseverance in Love

  During the first years of the thirteenth century after the coming of our Divine Saviour there happened in the City of Paris an amorous adventure, through the deed of a man of Tours, of which the town and even the king's court was never tired of speaking. As to the clergy, you will see by that w ...

• Recruit, The

  At times they saw him, by a phenomenon of vision or locomotion, abolish space in its two forms of Time and Distance; the former being intellectual space, the other physical space.

• Red Inn, The

  In I know not what year a Parisian banker, who had very extensive commercial relations with Germany, was entertaining at dinner one of those friends whom men of business often make in the markets of the world through correspondence; a man hitherto personally unknown to him. This friend, t ...

• Reproach, The

  The fair laundress of Portillon-les-Tours, of whom a droll saying has already been given in this book, was a girl blessed with as much cunning as if she had stolen that of six priests and three women at least. She did not want for sweethearts, and had so many that one would have compared them, ...

• Sermon of the Merry Vicar of Meudon, The

  When, for the last time, came Master Francis Rabelais, to the court of King Henry the Second of the name, it was in that winter when the will of nature compelled him to quit for ever his fleshly garb, and live forever in his writings resplendent with that good philosophy to which we shall alway ...

• Three Clerks of Saint Nicholas, The

  The Inn of the Three Barbels was formerly at Tours, the best place in the town for sumptuous fare; and the landlord, reputed the best of cooks, went to prepare wedding breakfasts as far as Chatelherault, Loches, Vendome, and Blois. This said man, an old fox, perfect in his business, neve ...

• Venial Sin, The

  How the Good Man Bruyn Took a Wife

  Messire Bruyn, he who completed the Castle of Roche-Corbon-les- Vouvray, on the banks of the Loire, was a boisterous fellow in his youth. When quite little, he squeezed young ladies, turned the house out of windows, and played the devil with everythi ...

• Vicar of Azay-le-Rideau, The

  In those days the priests no longer took any woman in legitimate marriage, but kept good mistresses as pretty as they could get; which custom has since been interdicted by the council, as everyone knows, because, indeed, it was not pleasant that the private confessions of people should be retol ...

About the Author

French journalist and writer, one of the creators of realism in literature. Balzac's huge production of novels and short stories are collected under the name La Comédie humaine, which originated from Dante's The Divine Comedy. Before his breakthrough as an author, Balzac wrote without success several plays and novels under different pseudonyms.

Honoré de Balzac was born in Tours. His father, Bernard François Balzac, had risen to the middle class, and married the daughter of his Parisian superior, Anna-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier; she was 31 years his junior. Bernard François Balzac had worked as a state prosecutor in Paris but was transferred to Tours because of his royalistic opinions during the French Revolution. In 1814 the family moved back to Paris.

Balzac spent the first four years of life in foster care, not so uncommon practice in France even in the 20th century. During his school years Balzac was an ordinary pupil. He studied at the Collège de Vendôme and the Sorbonne, and then worked in law offices. In 1819, when his family moved for financial reasons to the small town of Villeparisis, Balzac announced that he wanted to be a writer. He returned to Paris and was installed in a shabby room at 9 rue Lediguiéres, near the Bibliothéque de l'Arsenal. A few years later he described the place in La Peau de Chargin (1931), a fantastic tale owing much to E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). Balzac's first work was Cromwell. The tragedy on verse made the whole family dispirited.

By 1822 Balzac had produced several novels under pseudonyms, but he was ignored as a writer. Against his family's hopes, Balzac continued his career in literature, believing that the simplest road to success was writing. Unfortunately, he also tried his skills in business. Balzac ran a publishing company and the bought a printing house, which did not have much to print. When these commercial activities failed, Balzac was left with a heavy burden of debt. It plagued him to the end of his career.

After the period of failures, Balzac was 29 years old, and his efforts had been fruitless. Accepting the hospitality of General de Pommereul, he moved for a short time to Brittany in search of a local color for his new novel. In 1829 appeared La Dernier Chouan (later called Les Chouans), a historical work in the manner of Sir Walter Scott, which he published under his own name. Gradually Balzac began to gain notice as an author. Between the years 1830 and 1832 he published six novelettes titled Scènes de la Vie Privée.

In 1833 Balzac conceived the idea of linking together his old novels so that they would comprehend the whole society in a series of books. Eventually This plan led to 90 novels and novellas, which included eventually more than 2,000 characters. Balzac's huge and ambitious plan drew a picture of the customs, atmosphere, and habits of the bourgeois France. Balzac got down to the work with great energy, writing through the night, from fourteen to eighteen hours a day, and also finding time to pile up huge debts and fail in hopeless financial operations."I am not deep," the author once said, "but very wide."

Among the masterpieces of The Human Comedy are Le Pére Goriot, Les Illusions Perdues, Les Paysans, La Femme de Trente Ans, and Eugénie Grandet. In these books Balzac covered a world from Paris to Provinces. The primarly landscape is Paris, with its old aristocracy, new financial wealth, middle-class trade, demi-monde, professionals, servants, young intellectuals, clerks, criminals... In this social mosaic Balzac had recurrent characters, such as Eugène Rastignac, who came from an impoverished provincial family to Paris, mixed with the nobility, pursued wealth, had many mistresses, gambled, and was a successful politician. Henry de Marsay appeared in twenty-five different novels. There are many anecdotes about Balzac's relationship to his characters, who also lived in the author's imagination outside the novels. Once Balzac interrupted one of his friends, who was telling about his sister's illness, by saying: "That's all very well, but let's get back to reality: to whom are we going to marry Eugénie Grandet?"

Balzac worked often in the château at Le Saché, near Tours, although a great part of his work was done in Paris. From 1828-36 he lived at 1 rue Cassini, near the Observatory, on the edge of the city. In 1847 he moved to the Rue Fortunée. Energetically Balzac used to write 14 to 16 hours daily.

Balzac lived mostly in his villa in Sèvres during his later years. Among his friends was Eveline Hanska, a rich Polish lady, with whom he had corresponded for more than 15 years, and who had posed as a model for some of his feminine portraits (Mme Hulot in La Cousine Bette, 1847). In September 1848 Balzac travelled to Poland to meet her. His health had broken down, but they were married in 1850. Balzac died three months later in Paris, on August 18, 1850.

Author biographies courtesy of Author's Calendar. Used with permission.