II. TWO CALLS ARE PAID

78.   Talleyrand-esque sayings: Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) was a talented statesman and survivor; he held political or diplomatic office under five successive regimes in his lifetime. His inexhaustible humour and ironic wit were legendary (and enjoyed by such exacting companions as Madame de Staël and Lord Brougham).

79.   Charente: One of the 83 French départements founded in 1793, comprising the former province of Angoumois, with Angoulême as its administrative seat, in the south-west of France. Balzac chose to set the estate of Rastignac in this region. He had stayed in Angoulême with his friend Zulma Carraud and her husband in 1832.

80.   bergère: An armchair with a canework back, sides and seat, and loose cushions.

81.   thirty drawers: Balzac’s metaphor is inspired by Gall’s system of phrenology. See note 75.

82.   Compagnie des Indes: ‘Company of the Indies’, one of the names of the prosperous trading company originally founded by Louis XIV and Colbert in 1664, and dissolved by the National Convention (which governed France 1792–5) on 24 August 1793. The company’s role was to manage French trade with India, eastern Africa, the East Indies and other territories in the Indian Ocean.

83.   Vengeur … Warwick: The Vengeur started life as the Marseillois, a French 74-gun man-of-war that saw action against the English in the American War of Independence (France signed a treaty in 1778 backing the Americans). The ship was renamed the Vengeur de Peuple in 1794, and was part of the republican fleet commanded by Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse during the Revolutionary Wars. She was sunk by the HMS Brunswick during the Bataille du 13 Prairial an II (the Glorious First of June). The Warwick was a British ship captured in 1756 off Martinique by the French frigate the Atalante, then recaptured in 1761 by Admiral Alexander Hood commanding HMS Minerva.

84.   morganatic: In German law, the term designated a marriage between a man and a woman of unequal rank, in which the offspring would have no succession rights. There is no French legal equivalent, but the term was used to describe the ‘secret marriages’ contracted within the Royal Family During the Ancien Régime, for example, that between Madame de Maintenon and Louis XIV. As such, the term came to be associated with illicit liaisons.

85.   C-a-a-ro … non dubitare: A duet from Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio segreto (after David Garrick’s play The Clandestine Marriage), which was performed at the Théâtre-Italien in 1819–20.

86.   porter: In French, a suisse or ‘Swiss’. Porters of grand houses were called this because their richly coloured uniforms looked like those worn by the Swiss Guard, who protected the French Royal Family before the Revolution.

87.   coupé(s): A short, closed carriage with four wheels and two seats inside. The driver sat outside.

88.   stallion … scent of equine love on the breeze: A reference to Virgil’s Georgics III.5.250–51. The section deals with the dangers of desire.

89.   the Elysée: Then the residence of the Duc de Berry (son of the future Charles X). As Montriveau is a member of the Royal Guard, Madame de Beauséant says that he was there because he was on duty, implying that he was not there to meet the duchesse.

90.   Ejusdem farinae: Latin, literally, ‘of the same flour’, a denigratory term implying ‘they’re all as bad as each other’. Louis XVIII had a reputation for wit.

91.   five or six hundred thousand francs: There is some discrepancy as to the exact amount. Delphine says it is 700,000, Goriot 800,000, later rounding off the sum to ‘un bon petit million’.

92.   Lamartine: Rather than a specific quotation, a reference to the poet’s style. Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) was a politician and poet. His Méditations poétiques (1820) established him as a pivotal figure in the French Romantic movement.

93.   wield love like an axe: The Duchesse de Langeais is the eponymous heroine of a story by Balzac, whose original title, echoed here, was ‘Don’t touch the axe!’ See note 52.

94.   Foriot: A fashionable ploy among French aristocracy and high society at the time was to wilfully mispronounce commoners’ names, pretending to be unable to remember them.

95.   president of his section: In 1790, forty-eight revolutionary ‘sections’ replaced the old system of urban parishes.

96.   intendant: The person who manages a nobleman’s household.

97.   his kind: That is, forestallers, or the farmers and manufacturers who, from 1793, withheld necessary commodities from circulation and hoarded them. The subsequent threat of famine drove up prices drastically and provoked widespread rioting in Paris in 1795. The workers and lower classes suffered most – their destitution contrasting with the ostentatious wealth of a new class of rich profiteers (accapareurs), who became the public enemy.

98.   Committee of Public Safety: The notorious Comité de salut public in fact dealt ruthlessly with profiteers, sending many to the guillotine.

99.   royalist leanings: The novel is set in 1819, during the Bourbon Restoration, five years after Louis XVIII had ascended to the throne (following Napoleon’s abdication and exile to Elba in 1814, then escape, defeat at Waterloo and banishment to St Helena, a year later). Louis XVIII had the support of the right-wing ‘ultra-royalists’. Balzac wrote the novel in 1834–5.

100. veteran of ’93: 1793 was the year in which the Reign of Terror began. The sans-culottes ousted the politically élitist Girondins from the Convention, and the socially radical Jacobins (including Robespierre, Danton, Marat) took over the Committee of Public Safety.

101. when the Bourbons were reinstated: See note 99. From a royalist point of view, Goriot’s survival, through his revolutionary involvement (mentioned earlier), taints him.

102. Ariadne’s thread: A reference to the Greek myth where Ariadne helps Theseus to slay the Minotaur by giving him the magic ball of thread left her by Daedalus. He ties the end to the entrance door of the labyrinth and the thread leads him to the Minotaur. After slaying the monster, he finds his way out again by rolling the thread back into a ball.

103. ultima ratio mundi: Latin, ‘the world’s final sanction’. An echo of the famous motto Louis XIV had inscribed on the royal cannon: ultima ratio regum, ‘the final argument of kings’. That is, money prevails where other measures fail. There are interesting echoes here of views expressed by the republican thinker and writer Benjamin Constant in his 1819 speech De la liberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes:

104. asymptotes: In mathematics, rather than being a parallel, as Balzac seems to imply here, an asymptote is actually a line which approaches a curve without ever reaching it.

105. Dolibans: Monsieur d’Oliban is the main character – a foolish father – in a play by Choudard-Desforges performed in 1790. In earlier versions of the text, Balzac wrote ‘Caliban’.

106. Rue Oblin: This road ran from the Rue Coquillière to the circular Corn Exchange building.

107. the Holy Roman Empire: The name by which the Empire of Germany was known from 800 to 1806, until the abdication of Emperor Francis II, following the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine, which recognized Napoleon as its protector.