Unconscious Comedians

by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Monsieur le Comte Jules de Castellane.

UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS
Leon de Lora, our celebratedlandscapepainter, belongs to one of the

noblest families of the Roussillon (Spanish originally) which,
although distinguished for the antiquity of its race, has been doomed

for a century to the proverbial poverty of hidalgos. Coming,
light-footed, to Paris from the department of the Eastern Pyrenees,

with the sum of eleven francs in his pocket for all viaticum, he had
in some degree forgotten the miseries and privations of his childhood

and his family amid the other privations and miseries which are never
lacking to "rapins," whose whole fortune consists of intrepid

vocation. Later, the cares of fame and those of success were other
causes of forgetfulness.

If you have followed the capricious and meandering course of these
studies, perhaps you will remember Mistigris, Schinner's pupil, one of

the heroes of "A Start in Life" (Scenes from Private Life), and his
brief apparitions in other Scenes. In 1845, this landscapepainter,

emulator of the Hobbemas, Ruysdaels, and Lorraines, resembles no more
the shabby, frisky rapin whom we then knew. Now an illustrious man, he

owns a charming house in the rue de Berlin, not far from the hotel de
Brambourg, where his friend Brideau lives, and quite close to the

house of Schinner, his early master. He is a member of the Institute
and an officer of the Legion of honor; he is thirty-six years old, has

an income of twenty thousand francs from the Funds, his pictures sell
for their weight in gold, and (what seems to him more extraordinary

than the invitations 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, where vegetate three veritable Loras: his father, his eldest

brother, and an old 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
the department. This cousin was the first to bethink himself of Leon.

But it was not until 1840 that Leon de Lora received a letter from
Monsieur Sylvestre Palafox-Castal-Gazonal (called simply Gazonal) to

which he replied that he was assuredly" target="_blank" title="ad.确实地；确信地">assuredly himself,--that is to say, the
son of the late Leonie Gazonal, wife of Comte Fernand Didas y Lora.

During the summer of 1841 cousin Sylvestre Gazonal went to inform the
illustrious unknown family of Lora that their little Leon had not gone

to the Rio de la Plata, as they supposed, but was now one of the
greatest geniuses of the French school of painting; a fact the family

did not believe. The eldest son, Don Juan de Lora assured his cousin
Gazonal that he was certainly the dupe of some Parisian wag.

Now the said Gazonal was intending to go to Paris to prosecute a
lawsuit which the prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees had arbitrarily

removed from the usual jurisdiction, transferring it to that of the
Council of State. The worthyprovincial determined to investigate this

act, and to ask his Parisian cousin the reason of such high-handed
measures. It thus happened that Monsieur Gazonal came to Paris, took

shabby lodgings in the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, and was amazed to
see the palace of his cousin in the rue de Berlin. Being told that the

painter was then travelling in Italy, he renounced, for the time
being, the intention of 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. This

suit concerned a question as to the current and level of a stream of
water and the necessity of removing a dam, in which dispute the

administration, instigated by the abutters on the river banks, had
meddled. The removal of the dam threatened the existence of Gazonal's

manufactory. In 1845, Gazonal considered his cause as wholly lost; the
secretary of the Master of Petitions, charged with the duty of drawing

up the report, had confided to him that the said report would
assuredly" target="_blank" title="ad.确实地；确信地">assuredly be against him, and his own lawyer confirmed the statement.

Gazonal, though commander of the National Guard in his own town and
one of the most capablemanufacturers of the department, found himself

of so little account in Paris, and he was, moreover, so frightened by
the costs of living and the dearness of even the most trifling things,

that he kept himself, all this time, secluded in his shabby lodgings.
The Southerner, deprived of his sun, execrated Paris, which he called

a manufactory of 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 to minotaurize him. In his moments of deepest sadness he
killed the prefect outright; in gayer mood he contented himself with

minotaurizing him.
One morning as he ate his breakfast and cursed his fate, he picked up

a newspaper savagely. The following lines, ending an article, struck
Gazonal as if the mysterious voice which speaks to gamblers before

they win had sounded in his ear: "Our celebratedlandscapepainter,
Leon de Lora, lately returned from Italy, will exhibit several

pictures at the Salon; thus the exhibition promises, as we see, to be
most brilliant." With the suddenness of action that distinguishes the

sons of the sunny South, Gazonal sprang from his lodgings to the
street, from the street to 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 he

invited him to breakfast the next day at the Cafe de Paris, but he was
now engaged in a matter which did not allow him to receive his cousin

at the present moment. Gazonal, like a true Southerner, recounted all
his troubles to the valet.

The next day at ten o'clock, Gazonal, much too well-dressed for the
occasion (he had put on his bottle-blue coat with brass buttons, a

frilled shirt, a white waistcoat and yellow gloves), awaited his
amphitryon a full hour, stamping his feet on the boulevard, after

hearing from the master of the cafe that "these gentlemen" breakfasted
habitually between eleven and twelve o'clock.

"Between eleven and half-past," he said when he related" target="_blank" title="a.叙述的；有联系的">related his adventures
to his cronies in the provinces, "two Parisians dressed in simple

frock-coats, looking like NOTHING AT ALL, called out when they saw me
on 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 little
Leon, taking me in his arms," related" target="_blank" title="a.叙述的；有联系的">related Gazonal on his return home. "The

breakfast was splendid. I thought I was going blind when I saw the
number of bits of gold it took to pay that bill. Those fellows must

earn their weight in gold, for I saw my cousin give the waiter THIRTY
SOUS--the price of a whole day's work!"

During this monstrous breakfast--advisedly so called in view of six
dozen Osten oysters, six cutlets a la Soubise, a chicken a la Marengo,

lobster mayonnaise, green peas, a mushroom pasty, washed down with
three bottles of Bordeaux, three bottles of Champagne, plus coffee and

liqueurs, to say nothing of relishes--Gazonal was magnificent in his
diatribes against Paris. The worthymanufacturer complained of the

length of the four-pound bread-loaves, the height of the houses, the
indifference of the passengers in the streets to one another, the

cold, the rain, the cost of hackney-coaches, all of which and much
else he bemoaned in so witty a manner that the two artists took a

mighty fancy to cousin Gazonal, and made him relate his lawsuit from
beginning to end.

"My lawsuit," he said in his Southern accent and rolling his r's, "is
a very simple thing; they want my manufactory. I've employed here in

Paris a dolt of a lawyer, to whom I give twenty francs every time he
opens an 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
had a carriage! On the other hand, that Council of State are a pack of

do-nothings, who leave their duties to little scamps every one of whom
is bought up by our prefect. That's my lawsuit! They want my

manufactory! Well, they'll get it! and they must manage the best they
can with my workmen, a hundred of 'em, who'll make them sing another

tune before they've done with them."
"Two years. Ha! that meddling prefect! he shall pay dear for this;