However when he exchanges glances with Ronquerolles, the reader knows that he is one of the Thirteen and therefore unburdened by morals or scruples.
She had come from Cube to Madrid, and from there to Paris when Spain was occupied by French troops…Īnyway, in 1814 when he was 22 Henri de Marsay was an attractive youth with few cares. He also has a natural daughter Euphemie, born of his liaison with a Spanish lady in Havana who likewise knows nothing about her parentage. The direction in which this story leads is hinted at when – almost as an aside – Balzac reveals that Lord Dudley had more than one fling. Not only that, he also made the acquaintance of useful people in society so it didn’t seem to matter much that he did not know his father or even his mother. The Abbé de Moronis also took him to churches which were closed, to theatres where the courtesans were and to drawing-rooms where he learned about politics and government. Things might have turned out badly for the boy but when de Marsay abandoned the boy to his sister, a Demoiselle de Marsay, she did her best with the meagre allowance for his keep and by sheer good luck arranged for him to have a good education though not exactly an academic one. Dudley himself had never taken any interest in the product of his fling, and so it was that Henri had no father other than de Marsay, who, prior to his death was a gambler and a wastrel.
Before long de Marsay died and his mother remarried, to de Vordac she had lost interest in both her son and Lord Dudley (partly because of the war between France and England, and partly because fidelity was never fashionable in Paris). de Marsay who brought Henri up as his own (for the price of a life interest in the fund that Henri was to inherit). His circumstances were unfortunate for Lord Dudley had married his mother off to an old gentleman called M. Henri de Marsay, natural son of Lord Dudley and the Marquise de Vordac strolls out one day into the Tuileries in this Paris. (Notwithstanding, Balzac still thinks that Paris is the ‘crown of the world’ which leads civilisation. Only people transcend these negativities, and then only when they are young and innocent. The air is foul, the streets are dirty and it’s not a pretty picture of Paris at all. Everyone is striving to be better than his station, and the artist (who presumably includes Balzac himself) labours long and hard for little reward. Histoire de Treize: La fille aux Yeux d’Orīalzac starts with a rather gloomy view of Parisians: gloomy, pallid and dull, with no values other than a preoccupation with gold and pleasure.
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