This book has an unusual plot. The first half is set in Paris and gives us the history of the Brideau family. There are two sons: one an artist and an honorable man, the other a soldier and a scoundrel. Balzac is not one for moral ambiguity. This soldier, Phillippe Brideau, has fought with Napoleon and then, after returning home, becomes a gambler and a playboy who goes on to ruin his family’s finances.
The second half is set in a provincial town, Issoudun. Balzac leads off with a fascinating chapter about the history of this actual town in the center of France.
With all due respect to Paris, Issoudun is one of the most historic towns in France….[E]xcavations recently conducted by a learned local archaeologist … have discovered a fifth century basilica beneath the famous tower of Issoudun. The very materials out of which this church was constructed bear the marks of an ancient civilization, for its stones come from a Roman temple which it replaced.
The Issoudun part of the book tells of another branch of the same family, the final descendant of which is a dim witted middle aged man, who happens to be worth a fortune. His housekeeper and another former soldier (also a villain) have this heir firmly in their control by means of emotional blackmail. They scheme to get his millions.
The final part of the book is a battle of wits between the two soldier villains. The Parisian branch of the family hopes that Phillippe can somehow come between the blackmailers and the heir so as to bring the inheritance to them. We root for Phillippe, the scoundrel from the first part of the book, because he is struggling to break the hold the housekeeper and her sweetheart, Maxence Gilet, have on the old scion. His own crimes are set aside for the time being. But Balzac does nothing to suggest that Phillippe has reformed in any way—he’s managed to give up drink and gambling, but only so that he can pursue his plan of action at full strength. He’s purged the self-destructive side of his character so that he can focus full time on destroying others, the fact that he is working to outfox schemers almost as evil as himself notwithstanding.
The struggle between Phillippe and Max forms the climax of The Black Sheep. What could be more entertaining than two arch-villians going at each other? It’s like Frankenstein vs. the Wolf Man, or Godzilla vs. Mothra.
Rest assured, though, that there is a lot more going on here than the battle of wits between Phillippe and Max. There are numerous friends and relations that come and go—I would estimate that there are at least 50 characters that we meet in The Black Sheep, each with a history, a personality, and a role to play. The action covers a period of about 20 years and we learn much about the events that shaped France in the first decades of the 19th century. We learn how Napoleonic loyalists fared during the Bourbon restoration and how military widows could be pensioned by means of becoming lottery administrators. We dip into the world of the theater and gain some acquaintance with the art world, where placing a picture in the annual Salon could make an artist’s reputation. I don’t know much about this period, and I didn't stop to look up the references to various politicians and artists. I was well entertained by what remained, but someone who knows about France in the 1820s would probably get that much more out of the book.
I was curious about the title—The Black Sheep. Because “sheep” can be singular or plural in English, I wasn’t sure whether it referred to a single animal or two, given that there are two roughly equal villains in the story. After thinking about it I realized it had to be just one—Max Gilet isn’t actually a member of the family, and you can’t be a black sheep without a family. But in the meantime I checked the original French title—La Rabouilleuse. Google translate was stumped, so I looked the term up in an online French dictionary and found this:
Agiter, troubler l'eau d'une rivière ou d'un étang pour effrayer les écrevisses ou les poissons qui, dans leur fuite, se laissent prendre plus facilement.
It’s a regional term from “Centre de la France”; it translates this way:
Agitate, disturb the water of a river or a pond to frighten the crayfish or the fish which, in their flight, allow themselves to be taken more easily.
This left me momentarily more confused than ever, until I remembered that the housekeeper from the second part of the book is often referred to as “The Fisherwoman” due to the circumstances that led to her inclusion in the family household back when she was a young girl. We first meet her when the father of the dim-witted heir comes across her as he drives his carriage through the country:
With the help of a stout branch whose twigs were splayed out in the shape of a racket, she was stirring and muddying the water of the stream. Frightened by an operation they did not understand, the crayfish quickly swam upstream, and in their confusion got caught up in nets which the fisherman had placed a convenient distance away. Flore Brazier was holding her branch in her hand, with all the grace of innocence.
So here is our rabouilleuse, who retains her beauty but not her innocence. It changes our perception of the novel a bit—during the final contest between Phillippe and Max, Flore is very much central to the story. Phillippe eventually marries Flore after he vanquishes Max, so she is an essential link between the two villains, the fulcrum of their struggle. But we can understand why translators have avoided "The Fisherwoman" as a title, which is what Flore is called by the townspeople of Issoudun. Fisherwoman is a sort of dingy, smelly term with no poetry whatsoever, whereas La Rabouilleuse is delicate and conjures a scene. So instead, we get a sheep.
