Posed in the third act, the dilemma was solved in the
fourth by Cromwell's decision to condemn the King, notwithstanding his
generosity. At the close of the play, the Queen escaped from England,
crying aloud for vengeance, which she intended to seek in all
quarters. France would combat the English, would defeat and crush them
in the end.
"I mean my tragedy to be the breviary of peoples and kings," he
proudly informed his sister. "It is impossible for you not to find the
plan superb. How the interest grows from scene to scene! The incident
of Cromwell's sons is most happily invented. Charles's magnanimity in
restoring to Cromwell his sons is finer than that of Augustus
pardoning Cinna." In blowing his own trumpet Balzac was early an
adept.
To stimulate his imagination and reflection, he transferred his daily
walk from the Jardin des Plantes to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. "There
I make," he explained, "studies of grief useful for my _Cromwell_.
Real grief is so hard to depict; it requires so much simplicity." His
garret had still its charm. "The time I spend in it will be sweet to
look back upon," he said. "To live as I like, to work in my own way,
to go to sleep conjuring up the future, which I imagine beautiful, to
have Rousseau's Julie as a sweetheart, La Fontaine and Moliere as
friends, Racine as a master, and Pere Lachaise as a promenade ground!
Ah! if it could only last for ever!" His dreaming led him on to wider
anticipations even than those of literary glory.
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