Honore de Balzac

Catherine De Medici Honore de Balzac

The words "Madame la Royne-mere" had been lately added. The gilding was fresh. This additionshowed the recent changes produced by the sudden and violent death of Henri II., whichoverturned many fortunes at court and began that of the Guises. The back-shop opened on the river. In this room usually sat the respectable proprietor himselfand Mademoiselle Lecamus. In those days the wife of a man who was not noble had no right to thetitle of dame, "madame"; but the wives of the burghers of Paris were allowed to use that of"mademoiselle," in virtue of privileges granted and confirmed to their husbands by the several kingsto whom they had done service. Between this back-shop and the main shop was the well of acorkscrew-staircase which gave access to the upper story, where were the great ware-room and thedwelling-rooms of the old couple, and the garrets lighted by skylights, where slept the children, theservant-woman, the apprentices, and the clerks. This crowding of families, servants, and apprentices, the little space which each took up in thebuilding where the apprentices all slept in one large chamber under the roof, explains the enormouspopulation of Paris then agglomerated on one-tenth of the surface of the present city; also the queerdetails of private life in the middle ages; also, the contrivances of love which, with all due deferenceto historians, are found only in the pages of the romance-writers, without whom they would be lostto the world. At this period very great seigneurs, such, for instance, as Admiral de Coligny, occupiedthree rooms, and their suites lived at some neighboring inn. There were not, in those days, morethan fifty private mansions in Paris, and those were fifty palaces belonging to sovereign princes, orto great vassals, whose way of living was superior to that of the greatest German rulers, such as theDuke of Bavaria and the Elector of Saxony.