The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed." -- Vautrin in Père Goriot
L'auberge rouge (1831) is a fascinating story in Balzac's La Comédie humaine. Published roughly 4 years before Père Goriot it tells the backstory of two characters that we encounter in the latter work, Jean-Frederic Taillefer and his daughter, Victorine. This work is set in "I know not what year," but it takes place sometime after the events of Goriot, which is set in 1819 Paris.
In Père Goriot Victorine is one of the boarders at Madame Vauquer's pension, the disowned daughter of the wealthy Jean-Frederic Taillefer. Her cruel father plans to remove her from his will in favor of Victorine's brother, Frederic. Victorine is sad but pretty (the Romantic heroine that she is) and could potentially, if Fate turns in her favor, become one of the richest women in all of Paris. Meanwhile, Eugene Rastignac, a young law student at the boarding house, becomes enamored with the greedy daughters of Père Goriot, considered very fine women in society. Due to his low status, Eugene finds it difficult to penetrate high society, and relies on the connection of his rich, celebrated cousin, Mme. de Beauséant, also pleading with his family for money to help him rise like the cream he supposes he is. Vautrin, one of the first homosexual characters in French literature, has an eye for Rastignac, but also sees something of himself in the young student, both possessing a desire to make it to the top no matter the cost. The scheming criminal Vautrin, a Mephistophelean character, tries to appeal to Eugene's ambition, encouraging him to woo Victorine, potential heiress of a great fortune, and he (Vautrin) will arrange that Victorine's brother is killed in a duel (all unbeknownst to Victorine). Eugene is swayed by Vautrin's vision, but his youthful conscience and idealism are too strong. He resists Vautrin, though the criminal still sees the death of Victorine's brother through, establishing her as a very well-to-do figure in Parisian society.
In The Red Inn Victorine is heiress to her father's fortune and she and her father are no longer estranged. In fact, she dotes on him -- and why not? He's the man to whom she owes her wealth and status. The father meanwhile still struggles with the death of his son. The father, a very minor character in Goriot is here a central character. Part of the beauty of Balzac's Human Comedy is that we not only find different characters at different points of their lives, but they are viewed through different lenses, here respectable there a scoundrel, here a minor character and there a major character. It is one of the most admirable qualities of the Human Comedy, and something 19th century and early 20th century writers (like Marcel Proust) most appreciated in Balzac.
By changing the perspective through which we see various characters, bringing them back and sending them away again, we recognize them as having more depth than would be the case if we had them with us for 300 pages and then never encountered them again. It is for this reason that some of Balzac's characters feel -- as Proust posits -- more real than many real-life people.
Like Balzac's Sarrasine, The Red Inn is a frame story. A Parisian banker, worldly because his occupation leads him to do business with people in other corners of the world (globalization in 19th century literature), is having a dinner party at which he entertains, among other guests "a stout worthy German, a man of taste and erudition, above all a man of pipes. . . . the type of the sons of that pure and noble Germany, so fertile in honorable natures, whose peaceful manners and morals have never been lost, even after seven invasions." With a stroke of humor, found everywhere in Balzac, he proceeds to tell us that the German man's "name was Hermann, which is that of most Germans whom authors bring upon their scene." A young girl, familiar with the tales of Hoffman and the stories of Walter Scott (a Balzac favorite) encourages Monsieur Hermann to tell the guests a frightening story, and so he tells a tale about two young medical students, one of whom he became familiar with when incarcerated in Germany sometime around the year 1799.
Before the German begins his tale the narrator's attention is seized by a strange, enigmatic man, a man who becomes increasingly agitated (to no one's notice but the narrator's) as the German's story unfolds. Not unlike "Sarrasine" again, the reader is drawn in to learn more about this mysterious character. We learn about him both through the narrator's observations and the German's story about murder and ill-gotten fortunes.
Drawing on the true story of a former army surgeon whose friend had been wrongly executed, with the drama of the story-within-the-story developing at a place called "L'auberge rouge" -- the setting of various murders (possibly including rape and cannibalism, perpetrated by the owners and one of their employees), which was in the headlines at the end of 1831 -- Balzac used current events to add to the realism of his tale. Though his Red Inn in this story was set in Germany, just the name The Red Inn was sure to inspire fear and intrigue in his audience.
This story has elements of Poe (though pre-Poe), to be certain, but the themes are entirely Balzacian. As in Sarrasine and Goriot, it matters not from where a fortune comes from so long as one is rich. It is a world of corruption, of everyone for his/herself. It is the way that Balzac and many others saw the Paris of that day. And if one were to tweak it, it could very well be the story of 21st century America or any other major city. Once it's been made, the means of acquiring one's fortune matter not. Young and relatively inexperienced like Balzac's Rastignac, the narrator of this story is a man of virtue yet to be corrupted by the corrupt society in which he finds himself. When he falls in love with Victorine he must decide whether or not he wants the family's blood money on his hands. His contemporaries who he turns to for advice are not so concerned with ethics as the narrator, and all that glitters in their eyes is gold. "Like Virtue's self," one of the narrator's capitalist friends says, encouraging the narrator in his pursuit of Victorine (and her fortune) "a crime has its degrees."