Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.

"UNE TENEBREUSE AFFAIRE” [“A Murky Business”] by Honore de Balzac ( first published in 1841as a “scene from the political life” in Balzac’s “Human Comedy”). Sometimes translated as “A Gondreville Mystery”.

            As you will know from my review of Honore de Balzac’s The Chouans, I am now working my way through other of Balzac’s novels which I have previously neglected. With Une Tenebreuse Affaire, Balzac, by now fully involved in penning novels set in his own era, reverted to writing in this novel about [partly fictious] events which would have happened when Balzac was a baby. The novel takes place between 1803 and 1806. Napoleon is on the point of becoming emperor and building up his empire, but [as in Les Chouans] there are émigrés , still pining for the Ancien Regime, who are returning to France and plotting against Napoleon. The aristocratic woman Laurence de Cinq-Cynge is shielding four young émigrés. Two of these émigrés are her cousins, Paul-Marie and Marie-Paul Semeuse (who happen to be identical twins and who are both in love with Laurence). The other two are Robert and Adrien d’Hauteserre. The émigré Semeuse twins have been deprived of their chateau and estate by one of Napoleon’s senators, Malin. The police agent Corentin [who figured in Les Chouans], together with his assistant Peyrade, is trying to track down the unwanted émigrés. Largely thanks to the cleverness of Michu the bailiff, the aristocrats evade arrest. At which point Napoleon issues an amnesty for the émigrés, so long as they keep the peace.

            But the story resumes two years later. The police agent Corentin takes revenge for having been outwitted. Malin, the senator, is kidnapped by assailants who resemble Michu and the four émigrés who are supported by Laurence de Cinq-Cynge. They are arrested and tried and (particularly because Corentin has tricked Michu’s wife into implicating her husband) they are found guilty, despite the excellent defence prepared by their lawyers. Poor Miche is executed. But Laurence de Cinq-Cynge, thanks in part to the good offices of Talleyrand [the famous diplomat who was able to go along with any regime that happened to be ruling] she is able to visit Napoleon in person on the eve of the battle of Jena, and she begs for clemency. The four aristocrats have their prison sentences commuted to service in Napoleon’s army… and we are told that three of them die in various of Napoleon’s battles. The fourth, Adrien d’Hauteserre, survives and marries Laurence de Cinq-Cynge, and they live to see the Restoration when, after Napoleon fell, the monarchy returned.

            This novel is, however, in part a detective story. Who really kidnapped Malin, if it wasn’t the four émigrés? It turns out that it was disguised ruffians who worked for the Imperial (Napoleonic) Police and who had been organised by Corentin himself. We learn that, in the giddy political  manoeuvering of the time, Malin – who lived through the July Monarchy as the Comte de Gondreville – was up to his neck in a plot, contrived by Fouche, Sieyes, Talleyrand and Carnot [all historical figures], who wanted to restore the republic, rather than the monarchy, should Napoleon’s campaigns fail. Though the novel as a whole is largely fictional, the kidnapping of Malin was loosely based on a real case.

            If you are not au fait with French history, the synopsis of this novel I have given is very dry and misses the fact that much of this [relatively brief] novel is also romantic. Once again, as in Les Chouans, Balzac appears to have been influenced by Walter Scott.  Indeed in his papers he paid Scott the direct tribute of claiming that the character of Laurence de Cinq-Cynge was based on Diana Vernon, the strong-willed heroine of Scott’s novel Rob Roy. Naturally this novel has its melodramatic qualities – notably the secret vault in the forest, under a monastery ruins, in which Michu hides the émigrés, and where later Corentin has Malin imprisoned. There is also the romantic contrivance of selfless, idealistic identical twins both in love with the heroine. Nevertheless, despite the laborious time it takes before the main characters are introduced, Une Tenebreuse Affaire is sharper and more-to-the-point than Les Chouans. There is a comparatively tight structure in the outwitting of Corentin, the kidnapping and the particularly dramatic trial – with a satisfying denouement in Laurence de Cinq-Cynge’s quest for clemency and the result.

            Regarding the political implications of the novel, it is again more enlightening than Les Chouans. “Will you be sensible henceforward? Do you realise what the French Empire is to be?” Napoleon asks Laurence de Cinq-Cynge rhetorically when she seeks him out at Jena. Being “sensible” is the essential theme, for the novel shows how old-school aristocrats, no matter how noble and how much admired by Balzac, they have to come to terms with the fact that the old regime is over and the nouveau-riche are in the saddle. Malin, former Themidorean and possessor of an émigré’s estate, is the archetype of nouveau-riche (despised by Laurence de Cinq-Cynge and her cousins, despite the fact that Malin gave generous testimony for them). Laurence de Cinq-Cynge initially idealised Charlotte Corday – the young woman who assassinated the extremist revolutionary Marat – and hated Napoleon. But she has to swallow all her noble pride. Even so, she continues to hate the Restoration and the July Monarchy because she sees that it is the “trimmers” who prosper in that and any other regime after the revolution.

            Balzac himself appears to be on the side of the “trimmers” – people like the older  d’Hauteserres and the old Marquis who would rather let their aristocratic privileges go than being involved in a sort of civil war.  They must conform to Napoleon. Perhaps this is why, in his pragmatic way, Balzac puts in some favourable words for the likes of Fouche and Talleyrand  - arch-trimmers both. In a long aside on the administration of justice under Napoleon, Balzac also suggests that a trial should be interrogation by professionals rather than having emotion-swayed juries.

            The historical moment caught by this novel is one in which Napoleon is menaced both from the “right” (aristocratic plots) and by the “left” (republicans), yet the conspiracies are so contradictory that they never succeed. Presumably, had Balzac been so inclined, he could have written a novel about an unreconstructed republican learning to be “sensible”.

            While Une Tenebreuse Affaire is widely read in France, it is not regarded as one of Balzac’s greatest works and it is less read outside France