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8: Military Daddies & Veteran Rogues - Balzac’s Major Genestas and Colonel Bridau
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chapter 8 Military Daddies & Veteran Rogues Balzac’s Major Genestas and Colonel Bridau In the lamplight of a country barn, an old veteran listened to his buddy’s tall tales. For almost fifteen years following Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, these two veteran friends had shared the same home, meager pension, and rural life in an isolated Alpine village. One brawny and quiet, the other animated and social, they are a handsome and complementary pair. Huddled around them and seated on bales of hay, a small crowd of old farmers and knitting widows listens carefully to their tales of Napoleon on campaign, the desert heat in Egypt, and the deadly snow in Russia. High in the loft above them, discreetly hidden in the hay, another Napoleonic pair listens in. A military major and a country doctor, they are careful not to disturb the gathering below. Like the storyteller and his mate, the major had served with Napoleon in the Egyptian and Russian Campaigns, while his friend the country doctor has led a di√erent campaign, tending to the orphans and villagers of this Alpine valley where he is a√ectionately known as the Napoleon of the people. Though they have just met, these Napoleonic friends quickly become an intimate pair, confiding in one another their combat trauma, tending to each other’s emotional wounds, and raising a son amid this extended family in their remote mountain village. In addition to its focus on political and rural life, Balzac’s The Country Doctor (1833) centers on two military pairs: the elderly veterans Gondrin and Goguelat and the Napoleonic friends Genestas and Benassis.∞ Like Balzac’s earlier military texts, this novel honors the mutual support and survival of Napoleonic veterans, pairs, and friends. But in its celebration of both filial and symbolic paternity, the novel also documents the formation of veteran families. Rooted in Napoleon’s paternal relationship to his soldiers and their fraternal relationships with each other, these veteran families constitute a new form of male military association, a√ection, and support during the Restoration and July Monarchy. Balzac’s The Country Doctor (1833) In the hopes of finding a cure for his ailing son, Major Genestas travels from his garrison in Grenoble to a mountain village bordering the Savoie and the Dauphiné, where Dr. Benassis has gained a reputation for his remarkable transformation of an impoverished valley.≤ As mayor, Benassis has established Balzac’s Major Genestas & Colonel Bridau 201 successful programs of hygiene, education, and economic growth that have revitalized his isolated canton, nearly tripled its population, and earned him the reputation as the ‘‘Napoleon of the people.’’≥ Traveling clandestinely as ‘‘Captain Bluteau,’’ Genestas is welcomed into Benassis’s home, confidence, and circle of country widows, orphans, and misfits, including two old veterans named Gondrin and Goguelat who tell Napoleonic tales during evenings in the doctor’s barn. Confiding in one another their equally painful past, Benassis recounts his failed love a√airs with Agathe and Évelina, the death of his son, and his penitential service to this impoverished valley, while Genestas describes his military service in Russia, the deaths of his wife Judith and best friend Renard, and the sickness of his son Adrien. Having entrusted Adrien to the care of the good doctor in the spring of 1829, Genestas returns in the winter of 1830 to discover that Benassis has died. On visiting the grave of the country doctor, Genestas pledges to retire and dedicate himself to this valley of his beloved friend. In preparation for the novel, Balzac consulted a Napoleonic o≈cer and bachelor named Captain Nicolas-Louis Périolas, whom he had met in 1828 through his friend Captain François-Michel Carraud and his wife Zulma.∂ Like Captain Carraud, Périolas was an instructor at the École Militaire de Saint-Cyr where he procured military texts for Balzac.∑ In his letters to Zulma Carraud, Balzac speaks a√ectionately of Périolas’s military advice and friendship: ‘‘It would be one of my life’s great joys to have M. Périolas near me; he has one of those rare characters that I have noticed and held in esteem, and of which there are very few. One day, on learning of my misfortunes, he extended the kind of sympathy that was like ten years of friendship . . . I am indebted to him for his valuable advice.’’∏ Even though Balzac once failed to appear at a meeting that Périolas had organized with...