Maître Cornélius

La Comédie Humaine #81

by Honoré de Balzac, Katharine Prescott Wormeley (Translator)

By the French author, who, along with Flaubert, is generally regarded as a founding-father of realism in European fiction. His large output of works, collectively entitled The Human Comedy (La Comédie Humaine), consists of 95 finished works (stories, novels and essays) and 48 unfinished works. His stories are an attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in contemporary bourgeois France. They are placed in a variety of settings, with characters reappearing in multiple stories.

Genres: Classics, French Literature, France, Romance, Literature, Fiction

68 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1831

About the author

French writer Honoré de Balzac (born Honoré Balzac), a founder of the realist school of fiction, portrayed the panorama of society in a body of works, known collectively as La comédie humaine .

Honoré de Balzac authored 19th-century novels and plays. After the fall of Napoléon in 1815, his magnum opus, a sequence of almost a hundred novels and plays, entitled, presents life in the years.

Due to keen observation of fine detail and unfiltered representation, European literature regards Balzac. He features renowned multifaceted, even complex, morally ambiguous, full lesser characters. Character well imbues inanimate objects; the city of Paris, a backdrop, takes on many qualities. He influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles John Huffam Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and Jack Kerouac as well as important philosophers, such as Friedrich Engels. Many works of Balzac, made into films, continue to inspire.

An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac adapted with trouble to the teaching style of his grammar. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. Balzac finished, and people then apprenticed him as a legal clerk, but after wearying of banal routine, he turned his back on law. He attempted a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician before and during his career. He failed in these efforts From his own experience, he reflects life difficulties and includes scenes.

Possibly due to his intense schedule and from health problems, Balzac suffered throughout his life. Financial and personal drama often strained his relationship with his family, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime paramour; five months later, he passed away.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Balzac has set this story in the past, in the 15th century this time, when Henry VI was on the throne and the sophistication of Paris and political dramas of France were yet to come. He has used his story partly as a morality tale warning against mendacity and cruelty, but more significantly to show the absolute power of French kings. This monarch has the power of life and death; and he uses the lives of his subjects as playthings, to amuse himself in his old age when even the pleasures of the table are denied him. If you read this short story, watch for the moment when he learns how his daughter has been treated: his outrage is not the response of a compassionate parent nor one who feels guilt about having married his child off to a monster. His anger is about the offence to him – the crime of lese-majesty.

The story begins on All Saints Day 1479, in the Cathedral of Tours. From the shadows cast by its great columns a young nobleman is able to approach the woman he loves, the Countess Marie, daughter of the king and married off to a cruel and jealous husband, the Comte de Saint-Villiers. It was at church, says Balzac, that all social life took place in those days before operas and balls; there was nowhere else to meet, and it is here that with the help of friends the young man is able to steal a little time with her. In private she reveals the violence of her husband and the young man resolves to rescue her, no matter the danger.

His plan is to reach her through an adjoining house, but to do so he must disguise himself as an apprentice to the Fleming Maitre Cornelius Hoogworst, the king's silversmith and a most dangerous man. He is very wealthy, and while the townsfolk are not convinced about the justice of it, the King's provost Tristan Hermite has found guilty each of a series of apprentices who apparently succumbed to theft, and each was executed after torture. Since no one then was willing to risk working for Cornelius, he lived alone with his equally miserly old sister, and his only friend and visitor was the King.

Into this house of horrors goes the as-yet un-named hero, and succeeds in his tryst though of course the lady's virtue remains unsullied. The religious beliefs of the time ensure that she will not run away with her young man; and she will not have her husband killed. But pretty kisses and words of love - and hope of further success - makes her lover careless, and his midnight escape from his locked room at the house of Cornelius is revealed, coinciding with the theft of yet more treasure. The young man is arrested, identified as Georges d'Estoutville,and taken away for 'questioning'.

The threat to her lover gives Marie the courage to tell her father about her husband's cruelties and he is banished to Venice. The king (in want of some amusement) sets out to solve the mystery of the missing treasure.

Balzac is too good a story-teller to wrap up the story neatly. The love affair does not end as one might expect, and the source of the disappearing treasure is discovered - but not the treasure. Its whereabouts remains a tantalising mystery which perhaps still intrigues the good people of Tours!

[Sladjana · Rating 5 out of 5]

HONORÉ DE BALZAC-MAÎTRE CORNELIUS
✒"Jamais le vice ne s’était mieux étreint lui-même ; car l’avare, s’enfermant par imprudence dans le cachot souterrain où gît son or, a, comme Sardanapale, la jouissance de mourir au sein de sa fortune. Mais Cornélius, tout à la fois le voleur et le volé, n’ayant le secret ni de l’un ni de l’autre, possédait et ne possédait pas ses trésors : torture toute nouvelle, toute bizarre, mais continuellement terrible."
💰Francuska XV veka
💰U pozadini je ljubavna priča,pomalo trouglasta(nadam se da je u nekom drugom delu Ljudske komedije podrobnije opisana) ćerke kralja Luja XI
💰Imamo kralja,zeta nasilnika,zlatara Kornelijusa s čijim je stanom povezan dom nesrećne princeze.
💰Ovde je jaki duhovito predstavljena epizoda u kojoj kraj,već nadomak kraja svog života,ima ulogu detektiva
💰Ko potkrada gospara Kornelijusa,i gde nestaje svo zlato? I čije je naše zlato u apsolutističkoj monarhiji? I ko sme da maltretira ženu,ako joj je tata kralj?
💰U par poteza,Balzak majstorski slika portret društva
#7sensesofabook #balzac #classicliterature #knjige #literature #readingaddict #bookstagram

[Rabia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Son zamanlarda Balzac'a çok sardığım farkettim ama an itibariyle uzun süre Balzac'dan kitap okumaya ara veriyorum. Kısacık kitaplarındaki dil bile beynimi o kadar yoruyor ki, hikayesi anlamlı ve çok güzel olmasına rağmen asla odaklanamıyorum...

[Gláucia Renata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Publicado em 1831 faz parte dos Estudos Filosóficos dentro da Comédia Humana.
A ação se passa no ano de 1479 quando a França era regida por Luís XI, um dos personagens da história. Mestre Cornélius, um velho ambicioso e avarento é muito influente no reino e homem de confiança do soberano. Consegue engordar sua fortuna se apossando de bens de hóspedes do palácio e acusando terceiros que acabam sendo enforcados por isso. A novela vale pelo final.



Histórico de leitura
15/04/2019

"Em 1479, no dia de Todos os Santos, no momento em que esta história começa, terminavam as vésperas na catedral de Tours. O arcebispo Hélio de Bourdeilles levantava-se de sua cadeira para dar ele mesmo a bênção aos fiéis."

[myriam kisfaludi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moyen, histoire d’un avare sous Louis XI. Il se vole lui-même pendant des crises de somnambulisme et je retrouve jamais son trésor

[Classic reverie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Balzac's "Maitre Cornelius" is a short story taken in Louis XI time and deals with a mysterious house that is said to be evil and the death of several men who have entered it. The King takes an interest after his daughter's insistence who lives next door. I found this an enjoyable and it was surprising in several ways. This is another story that doesn't have the usual Human Comedy characters but it takes real characters of the past. Balzac is always a wonderful read. Two characters are driven to hold their possessions so tightly they might loss all. Greed and jealousy!

I didn’t read this edition but from a Delphi collection of his works which included the below.

“ORIGINALLY APPEARING IN 1831, Maître Cornélius is a novella, which opens on All Saints’ Day in 1479, by the cathedral of Tours, in Balzac’s beloved home town.“

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IN 1479, ON All Saints’ day, the moment at which this history begins, vespers were ending in the cathedral of Tours.
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Some statues seemed animated, some men seemed petrified. Here and there eyes shone in the flutings of the columns, the floor reflected looks, the marbles spoke, the vaults re-echoed sighs, the edifice itself seemed endowed with life.
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Love was still a religion, with its fine fanaticism, its naive superstitions, its sublime devotions, which sympathized with those of Christianity. The manners of that period will also serve to explain this alliance between religion and love. In the first place society had no meeting-place except before the altar. Lords and vassals, men and women were equals nowhere else. There alone
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could lovers see each other and communicate. The festivals of the Church were the theatre of former times; the soul of woman was more keenly stirred in a cathedral than it is at a ball or the opera in our day; and do not strong emotions invariably bring women back to love?


❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert ❌❌❌❌❌

I had truly thought that Cornelius had actually nothing stolen and wanted to be malicious in causing those innocent men to die. When it came out that he was walking in his sleep and taking his valuables and hiding them somewhere unknown to his awake self, I was truly surprised. I also thought the King would have had him executed but he was wise, in seeing the self torture of being afraid to sleep and not being able to find his jewels. The romance of Marie and Georges is a sideline to get to the main object, Malemasion. Marie's husband dies while banished and Marie has a baby boy after he leaves. I am guessing it is Georges' son.

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“He sleeps!” he replied, in so low a voice that the words could be heard by the young woman only, as sound is heard in its echo. The lady turned pale; her furtive glance left for a moment the vellum page of the prayer-book and turned to the old man whom the young man had designated. What terrible complicity was in that glance?
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When the young woman had cautiously examined the old seigneur, she drew a long breath and raised her forehead, adorned with a precious jewel, toward a picture of the Virgin; that simple movement, that attitude, the moistened glance, revealed her life with imprudent naivete; had she been wicked, she would certainly have dissimulated. The personage who thus alarmed the lovers was a little old man, hunchbacked, nearly bald, savage in expression, and wearing a long and discolored white beard cut in
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a fan-tail. The cross of Saint-Michel glittered on his breast; his coarse, strong hands, covered with gray hairs, which had been clasped, had now dropped slightly apart in the slumber to which he had imprudently yielded. The right hand seemed about to fall upon his dagger, the hilt of which was in the form of an iron shell. By the manner in which he had placed the weapon, this hilt was directly under his hand; if, unfortunately, the hand touched the iron, he would wake, no doubt, instantly, and glance at his
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wife. His sardonic lips, his pointed chin aggressively pushed forward, presented the characteristic signs of a malignant spirit, a sagacity coldly cruel, that would surely enable him to divine all because he suspected everything. His yellow forehead was wrinkled like those of men whose habit it is to believe nothing, to weigh all things, and who, like misers chinking their gold, search out the meaning and the value of human actions. His bodily frame, though deformed, was bony and solid, and seemed both vigorous
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and excitable; in short, you might have thought him a stunted ogre. Consequently, an inevitable danger awaited the young lady whenever this terrible seigneur woke. That jealous husband would surely not fail to see the difference between a worthy old burgher who gave him no umbrage, and the new-comer, young, slender, and elegant.
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Love may never have been more deeply felt than in those hearts, never more delightfully enjoyed, but certainly no passion was ever more perilous. It was easy to divine that to these two beings air, sound, foot-falls, etc., things indifferent to other men, presented hidden qualities, peculiar properties which they distinguished. Perhaps their love made them find faithful interpreters in the icy hands of the old priest to whom they confessed their sins, and from whom they received the

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Host at the holy table. Love profound! love gashed into the soul like a scar upon the body which we carry through life! When these two young people looked at each other, the woman seemed to say to her lover, “Let us love each other and die!” To which the young knight answered, “Let us love each other and not die.” In reply, she showed him a sign her old duenna and two pages. The duenna slept; the pages were young and seemingly careless of what might happen, either of good or evil, to their masters.
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“Do not be frightened as you leave the church; let yourself be managed.” The young nobleman had scarcely said these words in a low voice, when the hand of the old seigneur dropped upon the hilt of his dagger. Feeling the cold iron he woke, and his yellow eyes fixed themselves instantly on his wife. By a privilege seldom granted even to men of genius, he awoke with his mind as clear, his ideas as lucid as though he had not slept at all. The man had the mania of jealousy. The
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lover, with one eye on his mistress, had watched the husband with the other, and he now rose quickly, effacing himself behind a column at the moment when the hand of the old man fell; after which he disappeared, swiftly as a bird. The lady lowered her eyes to her book and tried to seem calm; but she could not prevent her face from blushing and her heart from beating with unnatural violence. The old lord saw the unusual crimson on the cheeks, forehead, even the eyelids of his wife. He looked about him cautiously,
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but seeing no one to distrust, he said to his wife: — “What are you thinking of, my dear?” “The smell of the incense turns me sick,” she replied. “It is particularly bad to-day?” he asked. In spite of this sarcastic query, the wily old man pretended to believe in this excuse; but he suspected some treachery and he resolved to watch his treasure more carefully than before.
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As he made his way to the lateral door which opened on the west side of the cloister, through which it was
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his custom to pass, a stream of persons detached itself from the flood which obstructed the great portals, and poured through the side aisle around the old lord and his party. The mass was too compact to allow him to retrace his steps, and he and his wife were therefore pushed onward to the door by the pressure of the multitude behind them. The husband tried to pass out first, dragging the lady by the arm, but at that instant he was pulled vigorously into the street, and his wife was torn from him by a stranger. The

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terrible hunchback saw at once that he had fallen into a trap that was cleverly prepared. Repenting himself for having slept, he collected his whole strength, seized his wife once more by the sleeve of her gown, and strove with his other hand to cling to the gate of the church; but the ardor of love carried the day against jealous fury. The young man took his mistress round the waist, and carried her off so rapidly, with the strength of despair, that the brocaded stuff of silk and gold tore noisily apart, and the sleeve alone
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remained in the hand of the old man.
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With the rapidity of lightning the abductor carried the countess into an open chapel and seated her behind the confessional on a
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wooden bench. By the light of the tapers burning before the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated, they looked at each other for a moment in silence, clasping hands, and amazed at their own audacity. The countess had not the cruel courage to reproach the young man for the boldness to which they owed this perilous and only instant of happiness. “Will you fly with me into the adjoining States?” said the young man, eagerly. “Two English horses
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are awaiting us close by, able to do thirty leagues at a stretch.” “Ah!” she cried, softly, “in what corner of the world could you hide a daughter of King Louis XI.?” “True,” replied the young man, silenced by a difficulty he had not foreseen. “Why did you tear me from my husband?” she asked in a sort of terror. “Alas!” said her lover, “I did not reckon on the trouble I should feel in being near you, in hearing you speak to me. I have made plans, — two or three plans, — and now that I see you all seems accomplished.” “But I am lost!” said the countess. “We are saved!” the young man cried in the blind enthusiasm of his love. “Listen to me carefully!” “This will cost me my life!” she said, letting the tears that rolled in
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her eyes flow down her cheeks. “The count will kill me, — to-night, perhaps! But go to the king; tell him the tortures that his daughter has endured these five years. He loved me well when I was little; he called me ‘Marie- full-of-grace,’ because I was ugly. Ah! if he knew the man to whom he gave me, his anger would be terrible. I have not dared complain, out of pity for the count. Besides, how could I reach the king? My confessor himself is a spy of Saint-Vallier. That is why I have consented to this guilty meeting, to obtain a defender, — some one to tell the truth to the king. Can I rely on — Oh!” she cried, turning pale and interrupting herself, “here comes the page!” The poor countess put her hands before her face as if to veil it.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in 1479, a nobleman, later revealed to be Georges d'Estouteville, who is in love with Marie, Countess Saint-Vallier, the daughter of King Louis XI who is married to a cruel and jealous husband, seeks to gain entry into her house at night by pretending to take on an apprenticeship under Maitre Cornelius, the king's silversmith who lives next to Count Saint-Vallier. Maitre Cornelius is a miser who has had multiple people executed for stealing treasures from his house, although they always protested their innocence. Georges does gain entry into the house and then climbs the roof to Marie's house where the couple have a night-time rendezvous before he goes back to Maitre Cornelius' house. Some jewels disappear from Maitre Cornelius' house overnight and Maitre Cornelius, who is friends with the king, accuses Georges and asks for him to be executed. While Georges is being brought to the king's palace, Marie and the Count visit the king and Marie secretly tells the king firstly that Georges is innocent and secondly that her husband has been abusing her. The king banishes the Count, then goes to Maitre Cornelius' house to investigate. He discovers that Maitre Cornelius has been sleepwalking and robbing from himself. Maitre Cornelius searches for all the missing treasures but never finds them.

This is a romance and a mystery rolled into one short story, and the mystery is much better than the romance. The romance is frankly ridiculous. How is it possible for Georges to climb from one house to another and have a night-time talk with Marie without her husband discovering? And if it was so easy for Marie to inform her father about her abuse, why couldn't she have done so earlier in the previous three years of her marriage?

The mystery was more engaging. The characters of Maitre Cornelius and the king and the interactions between them were vividly if hyperbolically drawn, and it was rather comic in a slapstick way to see Maitre Cornelius' agony at realising he had been robbing from himself, then desperately searching for his treasure but not being able to find it. The king does seem like a genuinely goodhearted person.

There's a suggestion at the end that some of the characters were based on real people, but I'm not sure which characters and to what extent they resembled the real people.

[Elior · Rating 4 out of 5]

It now occurs to me that by starting La Comédie Humaine in the method recommended by the chronological setting of the works one does not immediately see the Realist Balzac. In this novella length text featuring King Louis XI - 15th century - Balzac starts out writing a courtly romance and gradually shifts modes into a morality tale.

A young nobleman in Tours surreptitiously pledges his love to a woman wed to a fearful and powerful older man during a cathedral service (Balzac’s description of light and shadow in this scene is wonderful). As part of a daft plan to “rescue” her from her husband’s terrible clutches he adopts the guise of a commoner and gets taken on as an apprentice at the home of the king’s favored merchant and banker, which abuts the lady’s house. Balzac describes the history of this miserly and paranoid man, Master Cornelius, which includes a series of reported robberies from his house allegedly committed by past apprentices, all of whom were executed for theft, giving him quite the evil reputation in the suspicious town. Our foolishly Romantic hero is now next in line for this experience.

The lady turns out to be the daughter of King Louis XI, who quite easily resolves the husband difficulty once she informs him of it, but more interestingly shows much greater powers of perception by also solving the mystery of the robberies at Chez Cornelius. Cornelius is a sleepwalker, and when fearful for his treasures, as when he takes on a new apprentice, he “robs” himself in his sleep, hides what he takes, and returns to bed, unaware of any of this the next morning. He has no idea, when awake, where he hides the items thus taken, and is driven mad trying to find his own hiding place. He eventually commits suicide, destroyed by his avarice, which is an unconscious inner drive, as seen through his sleepwalking activity, which becomes through his lack of control over it a conscious external state of being.

An entertaining read for me, and worthy of being called a Philosophical Tale.

[enja reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stories within one short story, Maître Cornélius is an odd tale, a comparatively weak link with a somewhat questionable place in Balzac's Human Comedy, taking place at the tail end of the 15th century and figuring in more with his writings on Catherine de Medici than with his explorations of human psychology and sociology in the early to mid-19th century. It is the latter stories that I relish, and the former that I read simply to gain a deeper understanding of Balzac and his La Comédie humaine. Perhaps I must read more of those other stories to gain a deeper appreciation of this particular one.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Although known as the great exponent of realism, Balzac occasionally likes to write some fanciful, Romantic-inspired stories. This is one of them. Balzac does a little bait-and-switch here: he introduces us to a young man who falls in love with the pretty wife of a decrepit old hunchback and attempts to steal her away, but can only do so by pretending to be the apprentice of an alchemist named Cornelius. And here is where Balzac segues into the real story: the mysterious disappearances of Cornelius’ apprentices, and the stolen treasures that surround the mystery. It’s a piece of light, silly fluff that was a pleasant enough way to pass a lazy afternoon, but nothing more.

[Jeroen de Baaij · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maître Cornélius is een liefdesverhaal en een detectiveverhaal in één, dat plezierig leest en mooie beschrijvingen geeft van het Middeleeuwse Tours. Toch is het ook een boek met problemen. Zo breekt Balzac zeer abrupt het verhaal van Marie en Georges af zonder dat duidelijk wordt hoe dit precies eindigt. Ook het detective-deel heeft losse eindjes, waar slechts speculatief op wordt ingegaan. Misschien had Balzac van dit verhaal geen novelle moeten maken, maar een volwaardige roman. Nu blijven de karakters wat slap en is het verhaal niet compleet.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yet another Balzac story where people fall violently in love at first sight and risk their lives because of it. The story is rescued though by that element being more or less abandoned in favour of a picture of the title character, his sister and the king, and that part is excellent. He really does make a place come alive with his descriptive power.

[David Bisset · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella set in medieval France is a love story and a mystery. It is an enjoyable read.

[Lloyd Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful, page turner dealing with avarice, perfidy and calumny. The characters herein are fully human. 4 stars.

[Virginie Dolléans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dommage que la fin soit baclée.

[canan kertil · Rating 2 out of 5]

bu kitaptan sonra mumkun oldugunca balzactan uzak durmaya karar verdim

[Steve Schoenbeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent story, although I don't know that it ended up being the story that I thought Balzac was telling!

[Yves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un jeune homme tombe amoureux de Marie, la fille du roi Louis XI. Malheureusement elle est mariée avec le comte de Saint-Valliers, un vieillard tyrannique. Pour se rapprocher d'elle, le Georges se fera engager par le Maître Cornelius, grand argentier du roi, qui habite à côté de la maison des Saint-Valliers. Le problème est que Cornelius a fait exécuter tous ses apprentis pour cause de vol.

En lisant ce roman, j'avais l'impression de lire du Molière. Le style n'est pas aussi comique mais les revirements de situations sont quand même du même genre. On a droit à une intervention d'un roi ayant réponse à tout comme dans les pièces de théâtre de Molière. La lecture de ce roman était quand même très facile et agréable. C'est un Balzac que j'ai vraiment bien aimé.

[Barry Rosenhamer · Rating 2 out of 5]

began as an intense love story then, half way through changed characters and plot?

[David the Ñoldo · Rating 4 out of 5]

One part chivalrous romance novel and one part historical mystery. Nothing too extravagant or amazing, but overall enjoyable.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

(The Human Comedy #11/98)