Honoré de Balzac

“ Through some odd freak explained by the proverb: “Extremes meet,” the materialist doctor and the Curé of Nemours quickly became friends. The old man was very fond of backgammon, a favorite game with churchmen, and the Abbé Chaperon and the doctor were evenly matched. So the game was the first link between them. Then Minoret was charitable, and the Curé of Nemours was the Fénelon of Gâtinais. Both were broadly educated; the man of God was the only one in all Nemours who could understand atheism. To be able to argue, two men must in the first place understand each other. ”

“ After having suffered a great deal, like all young people gifted with a strong will and who wish to hold a place in the brilliant society of Paris, the child of the Minorets created for himself a finer destiny than he had perhaps ever dreamt of at the outset ”

“ Until Doctor Minoret’s arrival, the simple soul left his light under a bushel without any regret; but maybe he was very pleased to turn them to account. Though when he came to Nemours he was rich in the possession of a fairly fine library and an income of two thousand francs, in 1829 the curé owned nothing more than the revenue from his cure, almost entirely distributed every year. An excellent counselor in delicate affairs or in troubles, many a person, who never went to church for consolation used to go to the presbytery to seek advice. ”

“ If such contrasts and such sympathies are not the elements of private life, must one not despair of society, which, especially in France, requires some kind of antagonism? It is from collision of character, not from conflict of ideas, that antipathies arise. The Abbé Chaperon was then the doctor’s first friend in Nemours. This ecclesiastic, then sixty years old, had been curé of Nemours since the revival of Catholic worship. ”

“ This remark, said about Doctor Minoret, was the harmless revenge of offended vanity, for the doctor formed for himself a society of persons who deserved to be classed opposite the heirs. Now, those of the bourgeois who thought themselves worthy of swelling the court of a man with a black ribbon, treasured up a ferment of jealousy against the doctor and his privileged friends, which, unfortunately, had its results. ”

“ The apothecary Lelièvre, a clever man, saw a speculation in what Minoret had only looked upon as a preparation to be placed in the pharmacopoeia, and loyally he had shared his profits with the doctor, who was a pupil of Rouelle’s in chemistry, as he had been Bordeu’s in medicine. One might have been a materialist for less. In 1778, period when la Nouvelle Héloïse reigned and people sometimes married for love, the doctor made a love match with the daughter of a famous harpsichord player, Valentin Mirouët, a celebrated musician, weak and delicate, who was killed by the Revolution. ”

“ The Abbé Chaperon disputed his expenditure with his servant with as much severity as Gobseck did with his, if however, this famous Jew ever had a servant. The good priest often sold the silver buckles from his shoes and breeches to give the value of them to the poor who caught him without a penny. When they saw him coming out of his church, with the ends of his breeches tied into the buttonholes, the devotees of the town then went to find the curé’s buckles at the watchmaker and jeweler’s of Nemours, and scolded their pastor when they brought them back to him. ”

“ The network of nobility encircled by the network of the bourgeoisie, this antagonism of two races, the one protected by immovable institutions, the other by the active patience of work and the wiles of trade, produced the revolution of 1789. ”

“ The doctor, without refusing to grant consultations in serious cases, especially for the poor, would not become physician to the little hospital at Nemours, and declared that he would no longer practise his profession.
“I have killed people enough,” he said laughingly to the Curé Chaperon, who, knowing him to be charitable, was pleading for the poor. ”

“ The newspapers, the encyclopedist and the books were an attraction to a former captain of the Royal-Swedish regiment, named Monsieur de Jordy, a Voltairean gentleman and an old bachelor who lived upon a pension of sixteen hundred francs and a life annuity. After having, through the medium of the curé, read the gazettes for several days, Monsieur de Jordy thought proper to go and thank the doctor. From the first visit, the old captain, formerly a professor in the military colleges, won the good graces of the old doctor, who hastened to return his call. ”

“ What pleasure is there in addressing pungent words to some one who does not feel them? The doctor and the priest both had too much good taste, and had seen too much of good society not to practise its precepts ”

“ In other words, every bourgeois is cousin to a bourgeois, and every nobleman, cousin to a nobleman. As it says in the sublime pages of the biblical genealogies, in a thousand years, three families, Shem, Ham and Japheth, can cover the globe with their children. A family can become a nation, and, unfortunately, a nation can once more become a single, simple family. ”

“ All the noble families of the eleventh century, now almost all extinct, except the royal race of the Capets, have necessarily all co-operated in the birth of a Rohan, a Montmorency, a Bauffremont, and a Mortemart of to-day; in fact they must all necessarily be in the blood of the last gentleman who is truly a gentleman. ”

“ The doctor’s heirs, pretty well deceived, had taken his desire to return as a rich man’s caprice, and were frantic at supposing him to have ties in Paris which would keep him there and rob them of their inheritance. Nevertheless, Minoret-Levrault’s wife seized this opportunity of writing to the doctor. The old man replied that as soon as peace was signed, once the roads were free of soldiers and communication re-established, he should come to live at Nemours. ”

“ His wife died of despair and ruined, leaving a daughter married to a Levrault-Minoret, a farmer at Montereau, who does very well; and their daughter has just married a Massin-Levrault,—notary’s clerk at Montargis, where the father is a locksmith.”
“So I am not lacking in heirs,” said the doctor gaily, who desired to take a stroll round Nemours in company with his nephew.
The Loing undulates through the town, bordered by terraced gardens and tidy houses whose aspect gives rise to the belief that prosperity must dwell there rather than elsewhere. ”

“ As for his other niece, the doctor, through his connections in Paris, obtained the collectorship of Nemours for Crémière and guaranteed the security. Although Minoret-Levrault was in need of nothing, Zélie, jealous of the uncle’s liberality to his two nieces, introduced her son to him, who was then ten years old, and whom she was going to send to a college in Paris, where, she said, education was very expensive. As he was physician at Fontanes, the doctor obtained a half-scholarship at the college of Louis-le-Grand for his great-nephew, who was placed in the fourth class. ”

“ He paid a flying visit with two of his patients, a hospital architect and an upholsterer, who undertook repairs, interior arrangements and the transport of the furniture. Madame Minoret-Levrault offered, as caretaker, the cook of the deceased old notary, who was accepted. When the heirs knew that their uncle or great-uncle Minoret was positively going to live at Nemours, their families were seized, in spite of the political events which at that time weighed upon Le Gâtinais and La Brie, with a devouring but almost legitimate curiosity. ”

“ Against this little Faubourg Saint-Germain were grouped half a score of rich men, former millers, retired merchants, in a word, a miniature bourgeoisie under whom revolved small retail dealers, working men and peasants. ”

“ In whatever country you go, change the names and you will recognize the fact, but without the poetry that feudalism imparted to it and that Walter Scott has reproduced with so much talent Let us look higher and examine human nature in history. ”