Cousin Pons

Sylvain Pons, an elderly, ugly and kind-hearted musician who was once a minor composer, has two passions: good dinners, for which he depends on invitations from his rich relatives, and his collection of paintings and fine objects, bought cheaply over a lifetime. His relatives despise him and close their doors to him, until they discover that his collection is worth a fortune, and then, as Pons falls ill in the care of his devoted friend, the German pianist Schmucke, a crowd of greedy schemers gathers around his bed.

Published in 1847, this was one of the last novels Balzac completed, written together with Cousin Bette under the title The Poor Relations. It is a moving tale of friendship and a ferocious satire of greed. It is given here in Ellen Marriage's translation. It pairs well with Father Goriot.

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was born in Tours, trained as a lawyer and failed as a printer and publisher, leaving debts that pursued him all his life. To pay them he wrote at night, fuelled by enormous quantities of coffee, producing nearly a hundred novels and stories in twenty years.

He gathered them into The Human Comedy, a vast portrait of French society with characters who reappear from book to book; Eugénie Grandet is one of its best-known parts. After eighteen years of letters he married the Polish countess Ewelina Hańska, months before his death.