Beatrix
by
Honore de Balzac

Part 7 out of 7



quite astounded, Raoul put fire into her heart by pretended reticences
which stirred the fibres of a curiosity she did not know she
possessed. Nathan hinted that La Palferine's wit was not so much the
cause of his success with women as his superiority in the art of love;
a statement which magnified the count immensely.

This is the place to record a new effect of that great law of
contraries, which produces so many crises in the human heart and
accounts for such varied eccentricities that we are forced to remember
it sometimes as well as its counterpart, the law of similitudes. All
courtesans preserve in the depths of their heart a perennial desire to
recover their liberty; to this they would sacrifice everything. They
feel this antithetical need with such intensity that it is rare to
meet with one of these women who has not aspired several times to a
return to virtue through love. They are not discouraged by the most
cruel deceptions. On the other hand, women restrained by their
education, by the station they occupy, chained by the rank of their
families, living in the midst of opulence, and wearing a halo of
virtue, are drawn at times, secretly be it understood, toward the
tropical regions of love. These two natures of woman, so opposed to
each other, have at the bottom of their hearts, the one that faint
desire for virtue, the other that faint desire for libertinism which
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first to have the courage to diagnose.
In one, it is a last reflexion of the ray divine that is not extinct;
in the other, it is the last remains of our primitive clay.

This claw of the beast was rapped, this hair of the devil was pulled
by Nathan with extreme cleverness. The marquise began to ask herself
seriously if, up to the present time, she had not been the dupe of her
head, and whether her education was complete. Vice--what is it?
Possibly only the desire to know everything.



XXVI

DISILLUSIONS--IN ALL BUT LA FONTAINE'S FABLES

The next day Calyste seemed to Beatrix just what he was: a perfect and
loyal gentleman without imagination or cleverness. In Paris, a man
called clever must have spontaneous brilliancy, as the fountains have
water; men of the world and Parisians in general are in that way very
clever. But Calyste loved too deeply, he was too much absorbed in his
own sentiments to perceive the change in Beatrix, and to satisfy her
need by displaying new resources. To her, he seemed pale indeed, after
the brilliancy of the night before, and he caused not the faintest
emotion to the hungry Beatrix. A great love is a credit opened to a
power so voracious that bankruptcy is sure to come sooner or later.

In spite of the fatigue of this day (the day when a woman is bored by
a lover) Beatrix trembled with fear at the thought of a possible
meeting between La Palferine and Calyste, a man of courage without
assertion. She hesitated to see the count again; but the knot of her
hesitation was cut by a decisive event.

Beatrix had taken the third of a box at the Opera, obscurely situated
on the lower tier for the purpose of not being much in sight. For the
last few days Calyste, grown bolder, had escorted the marquise to her
box, placing himself behind her, and timing their arrival at a late
hour so as to meet no one in the corridors. Beatrix, on these
occasions, left the box alone before the end of the last act, and
Calyste followed at a distance to watch over her, although old Antoine
was always there to attend his mistress. Maxime and La Palferine had
studied this strategy, which was prompted by respect for the
proprieties, also by that desire for concealment which characterizes
the idolators of the little god, and also, again, by the fear which
oppresses all women who have been constellations in the world and whom
love has caused to fall from their zodiacal eminence. Public
humiliation is dreaded as an agony more cruel than death itself. But,
by a manoeuvre of Maxime's, that blow to her pride, that outrage which
women secure of their rank in Olympus cast upon others who have fallen
from their midst, was now to descend on Beatrix.

At a performance of "Lucia," which ends, as every one knows, with one
of the finest triumphs of Rubini, Madame de Rochefide, whom Antoine
had not yet come to fetch, reached the peristyle of the opera-house by
the lower corridor just as the staircase was crowded by fashionable
women ranged on the stairs or standing in groups below it, awaiting
the announcement of their carriages. Beatrix was instantly recognized;
whispers which soon became a murmur arose in every group. In a moment
the crowd dispersed; the marquise was left alone like a leper. Calyste
dared not, seeing his wife on the staircase, advance to accompany her,
though twice she vainly cast him a tearful glance, a prayer, that he
would come to her. At that moment, La Palferine, elegant, superb,
charming, left two ladies with whom he had been talking, and came down
to the marquise.

"Take my arm," he said, bowing, "and walk proudly out. I will find
your carriage."

"Will you come home with me and finish the evening?" she answered,
getting into her carriage and making room for him.

La Palferine said to his groom, "Follow the carriage of madame," and
then he jumped into it beside her to the utter stupefaction of
Calyste, who stood for a moment planted on his two legs as if they
were lead. It was the sight of him standing thus, pale and livid, that
caused Beatrix to make the sign to La Palferine to enter her carriage.
Doves can be Robespierres in spite of their white wings. Three
carriages reached the rue de Chartres with thundering rapidity,--that
of Calyste, that of the marquise, and that of La Palferine.

"Oh! you here?" said Beatrix, entering her salon on the arm of the
young count, and finding Calyste, whose horse had outstripped those of
the other carriages.

"Then you know monsieur?" said Calyste, furiously.

"Monsieur le Comte de la Palferine was presented to me ten days ago by
Nathan," she replied; "but you, monsieur, /you/ have known me four
years!--"

"And I am ready, madame," said Charles-Edouard, "to make the Marquise
d'Espard repent to her third generation for being the first to turn
away from you."

"Ah! it was /she/, was it?" cried Beatrix; "I will make her rue it."

"To revenge yourself thoroughly," said the young man in her ear, "you
ought to recover your husband; and I am capable of bringing him back
to you."

The conversation, thus begun, went on till two in the morning, without
allowing Calyste, whose anger was again and again repressed by a look
from Beatrix, to say one word to her in private. La Palferine, though
he did not like Beatrix, showed a superiority of grace, good taste,
and cleverness equal to the evident inferiority of Calyste, who
wriggled in his chair like a worm cut in two, and actually rose three
times as if to box the ears of La Palferine. The third time that he
made a dart forward, the young count said to him, "Are you in pain,
monsieur?" in a manner which sent Calyste back to his chair, where he
sat as rigid as a mile-stone.

The marquise conversed with the ease of a Celimene, pretending to
ignore that Calyste was there. La Palferine had the cleverness to
depart after a brilliant witticism, leaving the two lovers to a
quarrel.

Thus, by Maxime's machinations, the fire of discord flamed in the
separate households of Monsieur and of Madame de Rochefide. The next
day, learning the success of this last scene from La Palferine at the
Jockey Club, where the young count was playing whist, Maxime went to
the hotel Schontz to ascertain with what success Aurelie was rowing
her boat.

"My dear," said Madame Schontz, laughing at Maxime's expression, "I am
at an end of my expedients. Rochefide is incurable. I end my career of
gallantry by perceiving that cleverness is a misfortune."

"Explain to me that remark."

"In the first place, my dear friend, I have kept Arthur for the last
week to a regimen of kicks on the shin and perpetual wrangling and
jarring; in short, all we have that is most disagreeable in our
business. 'You are ill,' he says to me with paternal sweetness, 'for I
have been good to you always and I love you to adoration.' 'You are to
blame for one thing, my dear,' I answered; 'you bore me.' 'Well, if I
do, haven't you the wittiest and handsomest young man in Paris to
amuse you?' said the poor man. I was caught. I actually felt I loved
him."

"Ah!" said Maxime.

"How could I help it? Feeling is stronger than we; one can't resist
such things. So I changed pedals. I began to entice my judicial wild-
boar, now turned like Arthur to a sheep; I gave him Arthur's sofa.
Heavens! how he bored me. But, you understand, I had to have Fabien
there to let Arthur surprise us."

"Well," cried Maxime, "go on; what happened? Was Arthur furious?"

"You know nothing about it, my old fellow. When Arthur came in and
'surprised' us, Fabien and me, he retreated on the tips of his toes to
the dining-room, where he began to clear his throat, 'broum, broum!'
and cough, and knock the chairs about. That great fool of a Fabien, to
whom, of course, I can't explain the whole matter, was frightened.
There, my dear Maxime, is the point we have reached."

Maxime nodded his head, and played for a few moments with his cane.

"I have known such natures," he said. "And the only way for you to do
is to pitch Arthur out of the window and lock the door upon him. This
is how you must manage it. Play that scene over again with Fabien;
when Arthur surprises you, give Fabien a glance Arthur can't mistake;
if he gets angry, that will end the matter; if he still says, 'broum,
broum!' it is just as good; you can end it a better way."

"How?"

"Why, get angry, and say: 'I believed you loved me, respected me; but
I see you've no feeling at all, not even jealousy,'--you know the
tirade. 'In a case like this, Maxime' (bring me in) 'would kill his
man on the spot' (then weep). 'And Fabien, he' (mortify him by
comparing him with that fellow), 'Fabien whom I love, Fabien would
have drawn a dagger and stabbed you to the heart. Ah, that's what it
is to love! Farewell, monsieur; take back your house and all your
property; I shall marry Fabien; /he/ gives me his name; /he/ marries
me in spite of his old mother--but /you/--'"

"I see! I see!" cried Madame Schontz. "I'll be superb! Ah! Maxime,
there will never be but one Maxime, just as there's only one de
Marsay."

"La Palferine is better than I," replied the Comte de Trailles,
modestly. "He'll make his mark."

"La Palferine has tongue, but you have fist and loins. What weights
you've carried! what cuffs you've given!"

"La Palferine has all that, too; he is deep and he is educated,
whereas I am ignorant," replied Maxime. "I have seen Rastignac, who
has made an arrangement with the Keeper of the Seals. Fabien is to be
appointed chief-justice at once, and officer of the Legion of honor
after one year's service."

"I shall make myself /devote/," said Madame Schontz, accenting that
speech in a manner which obtained a nod of approbation from Maxime.

"Priests can do more than even we," he replied sententiously.

"Ah! can they?" said Madame Schontz. "Then I may still find some one
in the provinces fit to talk to. I've already begun my role. Fabien
has written to his mother that grace has enlightened me; and he has
fascinated the good woman with my million and the chief-justiceship.
She consents that we shall live with her, and sends me her portrait,
and wants mine. If Cupid looked at hers he would die on the spot.
Come, go away, Maxime. I must put an end to my poor Arthur to-night,
and it breaks my heart."

Two days later, as they met on the threshold of the Jockey Club,
Charles-Edouard said to Maxime, "It is done."

The words, which contained a drama accomplished in part by vengeance,
made Maxime smile.

"Now come in and listen to Rochefide bemoaning himself; for you and
Aurelie have both touched goal together. Aurelie has just turned
Arthur out of doors, and now it is our business to get him a home. He
must give Madame du Ronceret three hundred thousand francs and take
back his wife; you and I must prove to him that Beatrix is superior to
Aurelie."

"We have ten days before us to do it in," said Charles-Edouard, "and
in all conscience that's not too much."

"What will you do when the shell bursts?"

"A man has always mind enough, give him time to collect it; I'm superb
at that sort of preparation."

The two conspirators entered the salon together, and found Rochefide
aged by two years; he had not even put on his corset, his beard had
sprouted, and all his elegance was gone.

"Well, my dear marquis?" said Maxime.

"Ah, my dear fellow, my life is wrecked."

Arthur talked for ten minutes, and Maxime listened gravely, thinking
all the while of his own marriage, which was now to take place within
a week.

"My dear Arthur," he replied at last; "I told you the only means I
knew to keep Aurelie, but you wouldn't--"

"What was it?"

"Didn't I advise you to go and sup with Antonia?"

"Yes, you did. But how could I? I love, and you, you only make love--"

"Listen to me, Arthur; give Aurelie three hundred thousand francs for
that little house, and I'll promise to find some one to suit you
better. I'll talk to you about it later, for there's d'Ajuda making
signs that he wants to speak to me."

And Maxime left the inconsolable man for the representative of a
family in need of consolation.

"My dear fellow," said d'Ajuda in his ear, "the duchess is in despair.
Calyste is having his trunks packed secretly, and he has taken out a
passport. Sabine wants to follow them, surprise Beatrix, and maul her.
She is pregnant, and it takes the turn of murderous ideas; she has
actually and openly bought pistols."

"Tell the duchess that Madame de Rochefide will not leave Paris, but
within a fortnight she will have left Calyste. Now, d'Ajuda, shake
hands. Neither you nor I have ever said, or known, or done anything
about this; we admire the chances of life, that's all."

"The duchess has already made me swear on the holy Gospels to hold my
tongue."

"Will you receive my wife a month hence?"

"With pleasure."

"Then every one, all round, will be satisfied," said Maxime. "Only
remind the duchess that she must make that journey to Italy with the
du Guenics, and the sooner the better."

For ten days Calyste was made to bear the weight of an anger all the
more invincible because it was in part the effect of a real passion.
Beatrix now experienced the love so brutally but faithfully described
to the Duchesse de Grandlieu by Maxime de Trailles. Perhaps no well-
organized beings exist who do not experience that terrible passion
once in the course of their lives. The marquise felt herself mastered
by a superior force,--by a young man on whom her rank and quality did
not impose, who, as noble as herself, regarded her with an eye both
powerful and calm, and from whom her greatest feminine arts and
efforts could with difficulty obtain even a smile of approval. In
short, she was oppressed by a tyrant who never left her that she did
not fall to weeping, bruised and wounded, yet believing herself to
blame. Charles-Edouard played upon Madame de Rochefide the same comedy
Madame de Rochefide had played on Calyste for the last six months.

Since her public humiliation at the Opera, Beatrix had never ceased to
treat Monsieur du Guenic on the basis of the following proposition:--

"You have preferred your wife and the opinion of the world to me. If
you wish to prove that you love me, sacrifice your wife and the world
to me. Abandon Sabine, and let us live in Switzerland, Italy, or
Germany."

Entrenched in that hard /ultimatum/, she established the blockade
which women declare by frigid glances, disdainful gestures, and a
certain fortress-like demeanor, if we may so call it. She thought
herself delivered from Calyste, supposing that he would never dare to
break openly with the Grandlieus. To desert Sabine, to whom
Mademoiselle des Touches had left her fortune, would doom him to
penury.

But Calyste, half-mad with despair, had secretly obtained a passport,
and had written to his mother begging her to send him at once a
considerable sum of money. While awaiting the arrival of these funds
he set himself to watch Beatrix, consumed by the fury of Breton
jealousy. At last, nine days after the communication made by La
Palferine to Maxime at the club, Calyste, to whom his mother had
forwarded thirty thousand francs, went to Madame de Rochefide's house
with the firm intention of forcing the blockade, driving away La
Palferine, and leaving Paris with his pacified angel. It was one of
those horrible alternatives in which women who have hitherto retained
some little respect for themselves plunge at once and forever into the
degradations of vice,--though it is possible to return thence to
virtue. Until this moment Madame de Rochefide had regarded herself as
a virtuous woman in heart, upon whom two passions had fallen; but to
adore Charles-Edouard and still let Calyste adore her, would be to
lose her self-esteem,--for where deception begins, infamy begins. She
had given rights to Calyste, and no human power could prevent the
Breton from falling at her feet and watering them with the tears of an
absolute repentance. Many persons are surprised at the glacial
insensibility under which women extinguish their loves. But if they
did not thus efface their past, their lives could have no dignity,
they could never maintain themselves against the fatal familiarity to
which they had once submitted. In the entirely new situation in which
Beatrix found herself, she might have evaded the alternatives
presented to her by Calyste had La Palferine entered the room; but the
vigilance of her old footman, Antoine, defeated her.

Hearing a carriage stop before the door, she said to Calyste, "Here
come visitors!" and she rushed forward to prevent a scene.

Antoine, however, as a prudent man, had told La Palferine that Madame
la marquise was out.

When Beatrix heard from the old servant who had called and the answer
he had given, she replied, "Very good," and returned to the salon,
thinking: "I will escape into a convent; I will make myself a nun."

Calyste, meantime, had opened the window and seen his rival.

"Who came?" he said to Beatrix on her return.

"I don't know; Antoine is still below."

"It was La Palferine."

"Possibly."

"You love him, and that is why you are blaming and reproaching me; I
saw him!"

"You saw him?"

"I opened the window."

Beatrix fell half fainting on the sofa. Then she negotiated in order
to gain time; she asked to have the journey postponed for a week,
under pretence of making preparations; inwardly resolving to turn
Calyste off in a way that she could satisfy La Palferine,--for such
are the wretched calculations and the fiery anguish concealed with
these lives which have left the rails along which the great social
train rolls on.

When Calyste had left her, Beatrix felt so wretched, so profoundly
humiliated, that she went to bed; she was really ill; the violent
struggle which wrung her heart seemed to reach a physical reaction,
and she sent for the doctor; but at the same time she despatched to La
Palferine the following letter, in which she revenged herself on
Calyste with a sort of rage:--

To Monsieur le Comte de la Palferine.

My Friend,--Come and see me; I am in despair. Antoine sent you
away when your arrival would have put an end to one of the most
horrible nightmares of my life and delivered me from a man I hate,
and whom I trust never to see again. I love you only in this
world, and I can never again love any one but you, though I have
the misfortune not to please you as I fain would--

She wrote four pages which, beginning thus, ended in an exaltation too
poetic for typography, in which she compromised herself so completely
that the letter closed with these words: "Am I sufficiently at your
mercy? Ah! nothing will cost me anything if it only proves to you how
much you are loved." And she signed the letter, a thing she had never
done for Conti or Calyste.

The next day, at the hour when La Palferine called, Beatrix was in her
bath, and Antoine begged him to wait. He, in his turn, saw Calyste
sent away; for du Guenic, hungry for love, came early. La Palferine
was standing at the window, watching his rival's departure, when
Beatrix entered the salon.

"Ah! Charles," she cried, expecting what had happened, "you have
ruined me!"

"I know it, madame," replied La Palferine, tranquilly. "You have sworn
to love me alone; you have offered to give me a letter in which you
will write your motives for destroying yourself, so that, in case of
infidelity, I may poison you without fear of human justice,--as if
superior men needed to have recourse to poison for revenge! You have
written to me: 'Nothing will cost me anything if it only proves to you
how much you are loved.' Well, after that, I find a contradiction
between those words and your present remark that I have ruined you. I
must know now if you have had the courage to break with du Guenic."

"Ah! you have your revenge upon him in advance," she cried, throwing
her arms around his neck. "Henceforth, you and I are forever bound
together."

"Madame," said the prince of Bohemia, coldly, "if you wish me for your
friend, I consent; but on one condition only."

"Condition!" she exclaimed.

"Yes; the following condition. You must be reconciled to Monsieur de
Rochefide; you must recover the honor of your position; you must
return to your handsome house in the due d'Anjou and be once more one
of the queens of Paris. You can do this by making Rochefide play a
part in politics, and putting into your own conduct the persistency
which Madame d'Espard has displayed. That is the situation necessary
for the woman to whom I do the honor to give myself."

"But you forget that Monsieur de Rochefide's consent is necessary."

"Oh, my dear child," said La Palferine, "we have arranged all that; I
have given my word of honor as a gentleman that you are worth all the
Schontzes of the quartier Saint-Georges, and you must fulfil my
pledge."

For the next week Calyste went every day to Madame de Rochefide's
door, only to be refused by Antoine, who said with a studied face,
"Madame is ill."

From there Calyste hurried to La Palferine's lodging, where the valet
answered, "Monsieur le comte is away, hunting." Each time this
happened the Breton baron left a letter for La Palferine.

On the ninth day Calyste received a line from La Palferine, making an
appointment to receive him. He hurried to his lodgings and found the
count, but in company with Maxime de Trailles, to whom the young
/roue/ no doubt wished to give proof of his /savoir-faire/ by making
him a witness of this scene.

"Monsieur le baron," began Charles-Edouard, tranquilly, "here are the
six letters you have done me the honor to write to me. They are, as
you see, safe and sound; they have not been unsealed. I knew in
advance what they were likely to contain, having learned that you have
been seeking me since the day when I looked at you from the window of
a house from which you had looked at me on the previous day. I thought
I had better ignore all mistaken provocations. Between ourselves, I am
sure you have too much good taste to be angry with a woman for no
longer loving you. It is always a bad means of recovering her to seek
a quarrel with the one preferred. But, in the present case, your
letters have a radical fault, a nullity, as the lawyers say. You have
too much good sense, I am sure, to complain of a husband who takes
back his wife. Monsieur de Rochefide has felt that the position of the
marquise was undignified. You will, therefore, no longer find Madame
de Rochefide in the rue de Chartres, but--six months hence, next
winter--in the hotel de Rochefide. You flung yourself rather
heedlessly into the midst of a reconciliation between husband and
wife,--which you provoked yourself by not saving Madame de Rochefide
from the humiliation to which she was subjected at the Opera. On
coming away, the marquise, to whom I had already carried certain
amicable proposals from her husband, took me up in her carriage, and
her first words were, 'Bring Arthur back to me!'"

"Ah! yes," cried Calyste, "she was right; I was wanting in true
devotion."

"Unhappily, monsieur, Rochefide was living with one of those atrocious
women, Madame Schontz, who had long been expecting him to leave her.
She had counted on Madame de Rochefide's failure in health, and
expected some day to see herself marquise; finding her castles in the
air thus scattered, she determined to revenge herself on husband and
wife. Such women, monsieur, will put out one of their own eyes to put
out two of their enemy. La Schontz, who has just left Paris, has put
out six! If I had had the imprudence to love the marquise, Madame
Schontz would have put out eight. You see now that you are in need of
an oculist."

Maxime could not help smiling at the change that came over Calyste's
face; which turned deadly pale as his eyes were opened to his
situation.

"Would you believe, Monsieur le baron, that that unworthy woman has
given her hand to the man who furnished the means for her revenge? Ah!
these women! You can understand now why Arthur and his wife should
have retired for a time to their delightful little country-house at
Nogent-sur-Marne. They'll recover their eyesight there. During their
stay in the country the hotel de Rochefide is to be renovated, and the
marquise intends to display on her return a princely splendor. When a
woman so noble, the victim of conjugal love, finds courage to return
to her duty, the part of a man who adores her as you do, and admires
her as I admire her, is to remain her friend although we can do
nothing more. You will excuse me, I know, for having made Monsieur le
Comte de Trailles a witness of this explanation; but I have been most
anxious to make myself perfectly clear throughout. As for my own
sentiments, I am, above all, desirous to say to you, that although I
admire Madame de Rochefide for her intellect, she is supremely
displeasing to me as a woman."

"And so end our noblest dreams, our celestial loves!" said Calyste,
dumfounded by so many revelations and disillusionments.

"Yes, in the serpent's tail," said Maxime, "or, worse still, in the
vial of an apothecary. I never knew a first love that did not end
foolishly. Ah! Monsieur le baron, all that man has of the divine
within him finds its food in heaven only. That is what justifies the
lives of us /roues/. For myself, I have pondered this question deeply;
and, as you know, I was married yesterday. I shall be faithful to my
wife, and I advise you to return to Madame du Guenic,--but not for
three months. Don't regret Beatrix; she is the model of a vain and
empty nature, without strength, coquettish for self-glorification
only, a Madame d'Espard without her profound political capacity, a
woman without heart and without head, floundering in evil. Madame de
Rochefide loves Madame de Rochefide only. She would have parted you
from Madame du Guenic without the possibility of return, and then she
would have left you in the lurch without remorse. In short, that woman
is as incomplete for vice as she is for virtue."

"I don't agree with you, Maxime," said La Palferine. "I think she will
make the most delightful mistress of a salon in all Paris."

Calyste went away, after shaking hands with Charles-Edouard and Maxime
and thanking them for having pricked his illusions.

Three days later, the Duchesse de Grandlieu, who had not seen her
daughter Sabine since the morning when this conference took place,
went to the hotel du Guenic early in the day and found Calyste in his
bath, with Sabine beside him working at some adornment for the future
/layette/.

"What has happened to you, my children?" asked the excellent duchess.

"Nothing but good, dear mamma," replied Sabine, raising her eyes,
radiant with happiness, to her mother; "we have been playing the fable
of 'The Two Pigeons,' that is all."

Calyste held out his hand to his wife, and pressed hers so tenderly
with a look so eloquent, that she said in a whisper to the duchess,--

"I am loved, mother, and forever!"




ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Ajuda-Pinto, Marquis Miguel d'
Father Goriot
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Secrets of a Princess

Bixiou, Jean-Jacques
The Purse
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Government Clerks
Modeste Mignon
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Firm of Nucingen
The Muse of the Department
Cousin Betty
The Member for Arcis
A Man of Business
Gaudissart II.
The Unconscious Humorists
Cousin Pons

Blondet (Judge)
Jealousies of a Country Town

Brossette, Abbe
The Peasantry

Cadine, Jenny
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists
The Member for Arcis

Cambremer, Pierre
A Seaside Tragedy

Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de
Letters of Two Brides
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Modeste Mignon
The Magic Skin
Another Study of Woman
A Start in Life
The Unconscious Humorists
The Member for Arcis

Casteran, De
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
Jealousies of a Country Town
The Peasantry

Chocardelle, Mademoiselle
A Prince of Bohemia
A Man of Business
Cousin Betty
The Member for Arcis

Conti, Gennaro
Lost Illusions

Espard, Jeanne-Clementine-Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, Marquise d'
The Commission in Lunacy
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Letters of Two Brides
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve

Ferdinand
The Chouans

Gaillard, Theodore
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Unconscious Humorists

Gaillard, Madame Theodore
Jealousies of a Country Town
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Unconscious Humorists

Galathionne, Prince and Princess (both not in each story)
The Secrets of a Princess
The Middle Classes
Father Goriot
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Daughter of Eve

Gerard, Francois-Pascal-Simon, Baron
A Bachelor's Establishment

Gobenheim
Cesar Birotteau

Grandlieu, Duchesse Ferdinand de
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
A Daughter of Eve

Grindot
Cesar Birotteau
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Start in Life
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty

Guenic, Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles, Baron du
The Chouans

Halga, Chevalier du
The Purse

Hannequin, Leopold
Albert Savarus
Cousin Betty
Cousin Pons

La Palferine, Comte de
A Prince of Bohemia
A Man of Business
Cousin Betty
The Imaginary Mistress

Lenoncourt, Duc de
The Lily of the Valley
Cesar Birotteau
Jealousies of a Country Town
The Gondreville Mystery

Lora, Leon de
The Unconscious Humorists
A Bachelor's Establishment
A Start in Life
Pierre Grassou
Honorine
Cousin Betty

Lousteau, Etienne
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
A Daughter of Eve
The Muse of the Department
Cousin Betty
A Prince of Bohemia
A Man of Business
The Middle Classes
The Unconscious Humorists

Maufrigneuse, Georges de
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
The Member for Arcis

Maufrigneuse, Berthe de
The Gondreville Mystery
The Member for Arcis

Portenduere, Vicomte Savinien de
The Ball at Sceaux
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Ursule Mirouet

Portenduere, Vicomtesse Savinien de
Ursule Mirouet
Another Study of Woman

Rochefide, Marquis Arthur de
Cousin Betty

Rochefide, Marquise de
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
Sarrasine
A Prince of Bohemia

Ronceret, Du
Jealousies of a Country Town

Ronceret, Fabien-Felicien du (or Duronceret)
Jealousies of a Country Town
Gaudissart II

Ronceret, Madame Fabien du
The Muse of the Department
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists

Simeuse, Admiral de
The Gondreville Mystery
Jealousies of a Country Town

Stidmann
Modeste Mignon
The Member for Arcis
Cousin Betty
Cousin Pons
The Unconscious Humorists

Touches, Mademoiselle Felicite des
Beatrix
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
Another Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve
Honorine
The Muse of the Department

Trailles, Comte Maxime de
Cesar Birotteau
Father Goriot
Gobseck
Ursule Mirouet
A Man of Business
The Member for Arcis
The Secrets of a Princess
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists

Vernisset, Victor de
The Seamy Side of History
Cousin Betty

Vignon, Claude
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Daughter of Eve
Honorine
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists







 


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