The Human Comedy: Chronicles of 19th-Century France

Mr. Maxime est exposé à la risée des valets View in lightbox

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Mr. Maxime est exposé à la risée des valets

Paul Gavarni (French, 1804–1866) Mr. Maxime est exposé à la risée des valets... (Mr. Maxime is exposed to the servants’ mockery...), 1838 Lithograph Gift of Eugene L. Garbaty, 1951.79.127

Maxime may have saved his mistress’ honor by beating a hasty retreat to the roof when her husband came home. Now he is in a pinch—stuck on the roof on a cold night in February while his mistress and her husband sleep inside. Balzac used a similar plot twist in his 1832 novel La femme de trente ans (A Woman of Thirty), but for the purposes of tragedy, not comedy. In the novel, the young lover left out in the cold catches pneumonia and dies.

Mr. Maxime est exposé à la risée des valets sur un toit où il a passé la nuit, en frac et en petits souliers ... , au mois de février.

Mr. Maxime is exposed to the servants’ mockery, on a roof where he spent the night, still in his tailcoat and in shoes that pinch… during the month of February.