Free Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) by Honoré de Balzac Page A

well-famed: during the last three centuries they had of necessity established themselves along the Charente and its tributaries, where waterfalls were available. At Ruelle the State had set up its most important foundry for naval cannons. Haulage, post-houses, inns, wheelwrights’ workshops, public transport services, all the industries which depend on roads and waterways clustered round the base of Angoulême in order to avoid the difficulties presented by access to the town itself. Naturally tanneries, laundries and all water-side trades remained within reach of the Charente, which was also lined with brandy warehouses, depots for all raw materials conveyed by water and in fact for all kinds of goods in transit. And so the suburbof L’Houmeau became a busy and prosperous town, a second Angoulême, arousing resentment in the upper town where the administration, the Bishop’s palace, the courts of justice and the aristocracy remained. For this reason L’Houmeau, despite its increasing activity and importance, was a mere appendage of Angoulême. The nobility and the political authority held sway on high, commerce and finance down below: two social zones, everywhere and constantly hostile to each other; as a consequence, it is difficult to guess which of the two towns more cordially hates its rival. This state of things had remained fairly quiescent during the Empire; nine years of Restoration government had aggravated it. Most of the houses in Upper Angoulême are inhabited either by noble families or by long-established middle-class families living on their investments and constituting a sort of autochtonous nation to which strangers are never admitted. It is a rare occurrence if, even after living in the place for a couple of hundred years and contracting a marriage alliance with one of the original families, a family which has migrated from some neighbouring province is received into the fold: the native population still considers it a newcomer. Prefects, Receivers-General and civil service officials who have succeeded one another for forty years have tried to civilize these ancient families perched on their rock like so many watchful ravens: these families have attended their receptions and eaten their dinners, but they have persistently refused to welcome them to their own houses. Disdainful, disparaging, jealous and miserly, these houses intermarry and close their ranks to prevent anyone entering or leaving; they know nothing of the creations of modern luxury; in their view, to send a child to Paris is to seal its doom. Such prudence illustrates the antiquated manners and customs of these families, far gone in unintelligent royalism, fanatically devout though not genuinely pious, all of them as rigid in their way of life as the town itself and the rock on which it is built. And yet Angoulême enjoys a great reputation in the adjacent provinces for the education young people receive there. Neighbouring towns send their daughters to its boarding-schools and convents. Itis easy to imagine the influence exerted by class-consciousness in Angoulême and L’Houmeau. Business people are rich, the aristocracy is generally impoverished. Each vents its spite on the other by an equal show of contempt. Even the middle classes in Angoulême join in this antagonism. A shopkeeper in the upper town cannot put enough scorn into his voice when he refers to a merchant of the suburb as a man from L’Houmeau. The Restoration, when it defined the status of the French nobility and awakened its hopes of something which only a general social upheaval could bring about, widened the moral gulf which, far more than the difference of locality, divided Angoulême from L’Houmeau. The aristocratic society of Angoulême, at that time at one with the Government, became more exclusive than anywhere else in France. Anyone living in L’Houmeau was virtually a pariah. Hence the deep, underground hatreds which were to inspire a terrible unanimity in