Maître Cornélius

THE HUMAN COMEDY – Honoré de Balzac XVth volume of works of Honoré de Balzac edited by widow André Houssiaux, publisher, Hebert and Co, successors, 7 rue Perronet – Paris (1874)

Philosophical studies

 

MAITRE CORNELIUS (1831)

Work dedicated by Honoré de Balzac TO COUNT GEORGES MNISZECH Some JALOUX could believe to see one of the oldest and most illustrious names in the world shine on this page. sarmatsBut you and a few others too, my dear Count, will know that I am trying to pay my debt to Talent, Remembrance and Friendship.

Analysis and History This short story was published in the Revue de Paris in 1831. It belongs to that rich and rather mixed phase of Balzac’s output that immediately followed the period of his first successes: Physiologie du mariage and La Peau de chagrin . Balzac’s work was not yet organized; it was already polarized between the two series that were then taking shape, one descriptive and the other philosophical, but at the same time it was still close to the ambitions and projects that Balzac had conceived in the last years of his difficult, hard-working youth. Maître Cornélius is one of those works in which, as in certain episodes of La Femme de trente ans or L’Elixir de longue vie, we recognize traces of another Balzac who had not quite disappeared. The Balzac who comes back to life in Master Cornelius was the man who, in 1828, after the collapse of his printing works and type foundry, conceived the project of a history of France told through a series of novels, which was to be the French equivalent of Walter Scott’s series of historical novels. Balzac’s work at the time shows that the 15th and 16th centuries were to be the two key periods in this vast fresco. Maître Cornélius belongs to one of these two periods, as the new one is set during the reign of Louis XI. It is all the more evocative of Walter Scott’s name as the main historical figure is King Louis XI himself, whom Walter Scott described in one of his best-known novels, Quentin Durward. It is all the more reminiscent of the “historical novels” Balzac had dreamed of, as it is contemporaneous with a famous historical novel that had just been published, Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, which described events of the same period. This resurgence was not a particularly happy one. Balzac invented a romantic plot for his novella, the main character of which is a young gentleman from a very wealthy family, in love with the Countess de Saint-Vallier, a natural daughter of Louis XI. As an apprentice, he enters the house next door, that of the rich old miser Cornelius, the king’s silversmith and friend, to enter the fortress-like house where the old and jealous Count de Saint-Vallier locks up his young wife. He manages to reach his mistress at night through chimneys and rooftops. At the same time, however, the gold, jewels and precious stones that old Cornelius had piled up disappeared. Cornelius accuses his apprentice, unaware that the stolen thief is none other than himself, plundering his riches during his sleepwalking spells. Cornelius suspects his apprentice, and Louis XI suspects Cornelius his silversmith. Self-destruction remains the only way out for Cornelius, who cuts his own throat with a razor and takes the secret of the vanished gold with him. The reader doesn’t really believe in this adventure, even if he accepts its implausibilities: he guesses all too well that everything will work out in the end. The best part of the story is the portrait of King Louis XI and his entourage in his château at Plessis-lez-Tours. We glimpse, all too quickly, the rehabilitation of Louis XI, which, like Catherine de Médicis, was one of Balzac’s youthful projects. The link with the thesis set out in Romans et contes philosophiques is obvious, though not always well understood. These tales don’t just show the power of an accepted, fundamental idea, imposing itself on an entire life and potentially leading to acts that seem atrocious. They must also show that the idea can be an inner force, often unconscious, that acts within us like an “inner being” we don’t know, like a kind of stranger who dictates uncontrollable acts to us. For Balzac, thought is a material force, a kind of fluid that acts within us in unknown ways, sometimes giving us a mysterious force, sometimes intuitions, appeals, sometimes producing upheavals or fatal lightning strikes, phenomena that escape our methods of analysis. Catalepsy, somnambulism, magnetism and clairvoyance are “borderline cases” that reveal a system of unknown connections within us. An entire section of the Philosophical Studies survey is devoted to the presentation of these pathological cases. Maître Cornélius is a case of somnambulism. During some of his crises, old Cornelius buries his treasures himself, and when he wakes up he thinks he’s been robbed. He dies of despair at these inexplicable thefts. Balzac explains these sleepwalking attacks as the unconscious action of an obsessive idea. That’s why Félix Davin says: “It’s the idea of avarice killing the miser in the person of the old silversmith.

Source analysis: Preface from the ^24th volume of La Comédie Humaine published by France Loisirs in 1987, based on the full text published under the auspices of the Société des Amis d’Honoré de Balzac, 45, rue de l’Abbé-Grégoire – 75006 Paris. Short story written by the author at the Château de Saché in November and December 1831.

The characters Marie de Saint-Vallier: Countess of Saint-Vallier, natural daughter of King Louis XI. Georges d’Estouteville: Gentleman in love with Marie de Saint-Vallier. Cornélius: Silversmith to King Louis XI. Louis XI: King of France.