For months all Paris talked of the staircase at Les Jardies which Balzac, great architect that he was, had forgotten to put into the plans for his house. Under the caption, "Literary Indiscretions," the following humorous note appeared in La Caricature Provisoire;"M. de Balzac, after having successively inhabited the four corners of the globe and the twelve wards of Paris, seems to have definitely transferred his domicile to the midst of an isolated plain in the outskirts of Ville-d'Avray; he occupies a house which he has had built there for his own particular accommodation by a direct descendant of the marvellous architect to whom the world owes the cathedral of Cologne. This house, in which no doors or windows are to be found, and which is entered through a square hole cut in the roof, is furnished throughout with an oriental luxury of which even the pashas themselves would be incapable of forming an idea. The great novelist's private study has a floor inlaid with young girl's teeth and hung with superb cashmere rugs that have been sent him by all the crowned heads of the universe. As to the furniture, the chairs, sofas and divans, they are one and all stuffed with women's hair, both blonde and brunette, sent to the author of La Grenadiere by a number of women of thirty who did not hesitate a minute to despoil themselves of their most beautiful adornment,--a sacrifice all the more rare since they have passed the age at which the hair would grow again!"Balzac removed to Les Jardies as soon as the walls of the dwelling had been raised and the floorings laid, and he lived there before there was a piece of furniture in any of the rooms, aside from the few indispensable things. Leon Gozlan has amusingly related the manner in which the novelist supplied their lack by an effort of imagination. He wrote on the walls with charcoal what he intended the interior decoration of his house to be: "Here a wainscoting of Parian marble;here a stylobate of cedar wood; here a ceiling painted by Eugene Delacroix; here an Aubusson tapestry; here a mantelpiece of cipolino marble; here doors on the Trianon model; here an inlaid floor of rare tropical woods."Leon Gozlan says that "Balzac did not resent pleasantries at the expense of these imaginary furnishings," and he adds, "he laughed as heartily as I, if not more so, the day when I wrote, in characters larger than his own, on the wall of his bed-chamber, which was as empty as any of the others:
"HERE A PAINTING BY RAPHAEL, BEYOND ALL PRICE, AND THE LIKE OF WHICHHAS NEVER BEEN SEEN.'"Balzac laughed, but Gozlan did not understand that he found more pleasure in desiring things than in actually possessing them, for in the former case he was limited only by the extent of his own desires, which were almost infinite.
Among the various speculative schemes which Balzac dreamed of, in connection with Les Jardies, and which were to make his fortune,--a dairy, vineyards which were to produce Malaga and Tokay wine, the creation of a village, etc.,--particular mention should be made of his plans for the cultivation of pineapples, which we have upon the authority of Theophile Gautier:
"Here was the project," he tells us, "a hundred thousand square feet of pineapples were to be planted in the grounds of Les Jardies, metamorphosed into hothouses which would require only a moderate amount of heating, thanks to the natural warmth of the situation. The pineapples were expected to sell at five francs each, instead of a louis (twenty francs), which was the ordinary price; in other words, five hundred thousand francs for the season's crop; from this amount a hundred thousand francs would have to be deducted for the cost of cultivation, the glass frames, and the coal; accordingly, there would remain a net profit of four hundred thousand, which would constitute a splendid income for the happy possessor,--'without having to turn out a page of copy,' he used to say. This was nothing; Balzac had a thousand projects of the same sort; but the beautiful thing about this one was that we went together to the Boulevard Montmartre to look for a shop in which to sell these pineapples that were not yet even planted. The shop was to be painted black, with gold trimmings, and there was to be a sign proclaiming in enormous letters: PINEAPPLES FROM LES JARDIES.
"However, he yielded to our advice not to hire the shop until the following year, in order to save needless expense."When the first satisfaction of being a landed proprietor had passed, Balzac realised that he had added a new burden to those he already carried, and he confided to Mme. Carraud: "Yes, the folly is committed and it is complete! Don't talk of it to me; I must needs pay for it, and I am now spending my nights doing so!" Forty thousand francs had been added to his former debts, to say nothing of all sorts of trouble which Les Jardies was still destined to cost him.
