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

those who engineered the insurrection of 1830 and destroyed the elements of a durable social community in France. The arrogance of the court nobility was a cause of alienation between the throne and the provincial nobility, and the latter alienated the middle-classes by wounding all their susceptibilities. It follows that to introduce a man from L’Houmeau, the son of a chemist, into Madame de Bargeton’s circle constituted in itself a minor revolution. And who had started such ideas? Lamartine and Victor Hugo, Casimir Delavigne and Canalis, Villemain and Monsieur Aignan, Soumet and Tissot, Etienne and D’Avrigny, Benjamin Constant and Lamennais, Victor Cousin and Michaud: in short, all the older and younger literary celebrities, Liberals as well as Royalists. Madame de Bargeton was enamoured of art and letters, an extravagance of taste, a mania which Angoulême openly deplored; but some justification for it must be offered by sketching the life of this woman who was born for celebrity but whom an inevitable train of circumstances maintained in obscurity: her influence was to determine Lucien’s destinies.
    Monsieur de Bargeton was the great-grandson of an alderman of Bordeaux, Mirault by name, who in the reign ofLouis XIII had risen to noble status by virtue of his long-exercised function. Under Louis XIV his son, now Mirault de Bargeton, became an officer in the Household Guards and made such a lucrative marriage that, in the time of Louis XV, his son became purely and simply Monsieur de Bargeton. This Monsieur de Bargeton, grandson of the worshipful alderman, was so intent on behaving like a model nobleman that he squandered all the family property and checked its advance towards prosperity. Two of his brothers, great-uncles of the present-day Monsieur de Bargeton, reverted to commerce, so that there are still Miraults in business in Bordeaux. Since the Bargeton estate, situated in the province of Angoulême in dependency on the fief of La Rochefoucauld, was entailed, as well as a mansion in Angoulême which was called Bargeton House, the grandson of Monsieur de Bargeton the Squanderer inherited these two properties. In 1789 he lost all his effective feudal rights and had nothing more than the income from his land, which amounted to about ten thousand francs a year. If his grandfather had followed the glorious example set by Bargeton the First and Bargeton the Second, Bargeton the Fifth, who may be styled Bargeton the Silent, could have become the Marquis de Bargeton. He might have married into some great family and risen to be a duke and peer like so many others; whereas in 1805 he was very flattered to marry Mademoiselle Marie-Louise-Anaïs de Nègrepelisse, the daughter of a country gentleman who had long since been lost sight of in his manor-house although he belonged to the younger branch of one of the most ancient families in southern France. There was a Nègrepelisse among the hostages who stood surety for Saint Louis; but the chief of the elder branch bears the illustrious name of d’Espard, acquired under Henri IV through marriage with the heiress of that family. This gentleman, the younger son of a younger son, drew his subsistence from the property of his wife, a small estate near Barbezieux, which he exploited very successfully indeed by taking his own corn to market, distilling his own brandy and taking no heed of ridicule so long as he could fill his moneybags and enlarge his domain from time to time.
    Circumstances which are unusual enough in the depths of the provinces had inspired in Madame de Bargeton a taste for music and literature. During the Revolution, a certain Abbé Niollant, the brightest pupil of the Abbé Roze, went into hiding in the little castle of Escarbas, bringing his musical compositions with him. He had amply paid for the old squire’s hospitality by educating his daughter Anaïs, Naïs for short; without this lucky chance she would have been left to herself or, by a still greater