Unconscious Comedians , livre ebook

The Floating Press - De Balzac Honore ,
traduit par Prescott Wormeley Katharine

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

51 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

In this novella from Honore de Balzac, the skilled artisan Palafox Gazonal arrives in Paris to settle some important business and perhaps make a splash in the city's thriving art scene. However, Gazonal is used to the slower-paced life in the provinces and finds himself confused -- and even disgusted -- with some of the customs and practices that are commonplace in Paris. It's another of Balzac's insightful analyses of the artist and his role in society.

Sujets

Short story

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juin 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776538317
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0064€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS
* * *
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated by
KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY

*
Unconscious Comedians First published in 1846 Epub ISBN 978-1-77653-831-7 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-832-4 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Unconscious Comedians Addendum
*
To Monsieur le Comte Jules de Castellane.
Unconscious Comedians
*
Leon de Lora, our celebrated landscape painter, belongs to one of thenoblest families of the Roussillon (Spanish originally) which, althoughdistinguished for the antiquity of its race, has been doomed for acentury to the proverbial poverty of hidalgos. Coming, light-footed,to Paris from the department of the Eastern Pyrenees, with the sum ofeleven francs in his pocket for all viaticum, he had in some degreeforgotten the miseries and privations of his childhood and his familyamid the other privations and miseries which are never lacking to"rapins," whose whole fortune consists of intrepid vocation. Later, thecares of fame and those of success were other causes of forgetfulness.
If you have followed the capricious and meandering course of thesestudies, perhaps you will remember Mistigris, Schinner's pupil, oneof the heroes of "A Start in Life" (Scenes from Private Life), and hisbrief apparitions in other Scenes. In 1845, this landscape painter,emulator of the Hobbemas, Ruysdaels, and Lorraines, resembles no morethe shabby, frisky rapin whom we then knew. Now an illustrious man, heowns a charming house in the rue de Berlin, not far from the hotel deBrambourg, where his friend Brideau lives, and quite close to the houseof Schinner, his early master. He is a member of the Institute andan officer of the Legion of honor; he is thirty-six years old, has anincome of twenty thousand francs from the Funds, his pictures sell fortheir weight in gold, and (what seems to him more extraordinary than theinvitations he receives occasionally to court balls) his name and fame,mentioned so often for the last sixteen years by the press of Europe,has at last penetrated to the valley of the Eastern Pyrenees, wherevegetate three veritable Loras: his father, his eldest brother, and anold paternal aunt, Mademoiselle Urraca y Lora.
In the maternal line the painter has no relation left except a cousin,the nephew of his mother, residing in a small manufacturing town in thedepartment. This cousin was the first to bethink himself of Leon. Butit was not until 1840 that Leon de Lora received a letter from MonsieurSylvestre Palafox-Castal-Gazonal (called simply Gazonal) to which hereplied that he was assuredly himself,—that is to say, the son of thelate Leonie Gazonal, wife of Comte Fernand Didas y Lora.
During the summer of 1841 cousin Sylvestre Gazonal went to inform theillustrious unknown family of Lora that their little Leon had notgone to the Rio de la Plata, as they supposed, but was now one of thegreatest geniuses of the French school of painting; a fact the familydid not believe. The eldest son, Don Juan de Lora assured his cousinGazonal that he was certainly the dupe of some Parisian wag.
Now the said Gazonal was intending to go to Paris to prosecute a lawsuitwhich the prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees had arbitrarily removed fromthe usual jurisdiction, transferring it to that of the Council of State.The worthy provincial determined to investigate this act, and to askhis Parisian cousin the reason of such high-handed measures. It thushappened that Monsieur Gazonal came to Paris, took shabby lodgings inthe rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, and was amazed to see the palace ofhis cousin in the rue de Berlin. Being told that the painter was thentravelling in Italy, he renounced, for the time being, the intentionof asking his advice, and doubted if he should ever find his maternalrelationship acknowledged by so great a man.
During the years 1843 and 1844 Gazonal attended to his lawsuit. Thissuit concerned a question as to the current and level of a streamof water and the necessity of removing a dam, in which dispute theadministration, instigated by the abutters on the river banks, hadmeddled. The removal of the dam threatened the existence of Gazonal'smanufactory. In 1845, Gazonal considered his cause as wholly lost; thesecretary of the Master of Petitions, charged with the duty of drawingup the report, had confided to him that the said report would assuredlybe against him, and his own lawyer confirmed the statement. Gazonal,though commander of the National Guard in his own town and one of themost capable manufacturers of the department, found himself of so littleaccount in Paris, and he was, moreover, so frightened by the costs ofliving and the dearness of even the most trifling things, that he kepthimself, all this time, secluded in his shabby lodgings. The Southerner,deprived of his sun, execrated Paris, which he called a manufactoryof rheumatism. As he added up the costs of his suit and his living,he vowed within himself to poison the prefect on his return, or tominotaurize him. In his moments of deepest sadness he killed the prefectoutright; in gayer mood he contented himself with minotaurizing him.
One morning as he ate his breakfast and cursed his fate, he picked upa newspaper savagely. The following lines, ending an article, struckGazonal as if the mysterious voice which speaks to gamblers before theywin had sounded in his ear: "Our celebrated landscape painter, Leon deLora, lately returned from Italy, will exhibit several pictures at theSalon; thus the exhibition promises, as we see, to be most brilliant."With the suddenness of action that distinguishes the sons of the sunnySouth, Gazonal sprang from his lodgings to the street, from the streetto a street-cab, and drove to the rue de Berlin to find his cousin.
Leon de Lora sent word by a servant to his cousin Gazonal that heinvited him to breakfast the next day at the Cafe de Paris, but he wasnow engaged in a matter which did not allow him to receive his cousin atthe present moment. Gazonal, like a true Southerner, recounted all histroubles to the valet.
The next day at ten o'clock, Gazonal, much too well-dressed for theoccasion (he had put on his bottle-blue coat with brass buttons,a frilled shirt, a white waistcoat and yellow gloves), awaited hisamphitryon a full hour, stamping his feet on the boulevard, afterhearing from the master of the cafe that "these gentlemen" breakfastedhabitually between eleven and twelve o'clock.
"Between eleven and half-past," he said when he related his adventuresto his cronies in the provinces, "two Parisians dressed in simplefrock-coats, looking like nothing at all , called out when they saw meon the boulevard, 'There's our Gazonal!'"
The speaker was Bixiou, with whom Leon de Lora had armed himself to"bring out" his provincial cousin, in other words, to make him pose.
"'Don't be vexed, cousin, I'm at your service!' cried out that littleLeon, taking me in his arms," related Gazonal on his return home. "Thebreakfast was splendid. I thought I was going blind when I saw thenumber of bits of gold it took to pay that bill. Those fellows mustearn their weight in gold, for I saw my cousin give the waiter thirtysous —the price of a whole day's work!"
During this monstrous breakfast—advisedly so called in view of sixdozen Osten oysters, six cutlets a la Soubise, a chicken a la Marengo,lobster mayonnaise, green peas, a mushroom pasty, washed down withthree bottles of Bordeaux, three bottles of Champagne, plus coffee andliqueurs, to say nothing of relishes—Gazonal was magnificent in hisdiatribes against Paris. The worthy manufacturer complained of thelength of the four-pound bread-loaves, the height of the houses, theindifference of the passengers in the streets to one another, the cold,the rain, the cost of hackney-coaches, all of which and much else hebemoaned in so witty a manner that the two artists took a mighty fancyto cousin Gazonal, and made him relate his lawsuit from beginning toend.
"My lawsuit," he said in his Southern accent and rolling his r's, "is avery simple thing; they want my manufactory. I've employed here in Parisa dolt of a lawyer, to whom I give twenty francs every time he opensan eye, and he is always asleep. He's a slug, who drives in his coach,while I go afoot and he splashes me. I see now I ought to have hada carriage! On the other hand, that Council of State are a pack ofdo-nothings, who leave their duties to little scamps every one ofwhom is bought up by our prefect. That's my lawsuit! They want mymanufactory! Well, they'll get it! and they must manage the best theycan with my workmen, a hundred of 'em, who'll make them sing anothertune before they've done with them."
"Two years. Ha! that meddling prefect! he shall pay dear for this; I'llhave his life if I have to give mine on the scaffold—"
"Which state councillor presides over your section?"
"A former newspaper man,—doesn't pay ten sous in taxes,—his name isMassol."
The two Parisians exchanged glances.
"Who is the commissioner who is making the report?"
"Ha! that's still more queer; he's Master of Petitions, professor ofsomething or other at the Sorbonne,—a fellow who writes things inreviews, and for whom I have the profoundest contempt."
"Claude Vignon," said Bixiou.
"Yes, that's his name," replied Gazonal. "Massol and Vignon—there youhave Social Reason, in which there's no reason at all."
"There must be some way out of it," said Leon de Lora. "You see