If Balzac had had his way, the real Paris would have become a little more like the visionary Paris of his novels. He thought a spiral staircase should be built, leading down from the Luxembourg Gardens into the catacombs, whose verminous labyrinth stretched from there indiscriminately beneath the plush hôtels of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the slums of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. This forthright scheme of urban integration was pure metaphor, or else an inspired advertisement for the astounding construction of the Comédie Humaine, where all that is most arrogant and wealthy in Paris is obliged to cohabit with all that is most vile, the peers, ministers and salonardes from one side of the tracks with the jailbirds, usurers and tarts from the other.

LRB 7 July 1994 | PDF Download