No More Learning

Cocks are crowing a merry mid-larf,?
I wat the wild fule boded day;
Give me my faith and trouth again,
And let me fare me on my way. ”
6. «Thy faith and trouth thou shall na get,
Nor our true love shall never twin,
Till ye tell me what comes of women
A wat that dy's in strong traveling. ”
7.
« Their beds are made in the heavens high,
Down at the foot of our good Lord's knee,
Well set about wi' gilly-flowers,
A wat sweet company for to see.
8.
«O cocks are crowing a merry mid-larf,
A wat the wild fule boded day;
The salms of Heaven will be sung,
And ere now I'll be missed away. ”
9. Up she has taen a bright long wand,
And she has straked her trouth thereon ;*
She has given it him out at the shot-window,
Wi mony a sad sigh and heavy groan.
1
10.
“I thank you, Margret, I thank you, Margret,
And I thank you heartilie;
Gin ever the dead come for the quick,
Be sure, M gret, I'll come again for thee. ”
Part, separate. She does not yet know he is dead.
? Probably the distorted name of a town; a - - in. «Cocks are crowing in
merry and the wild-fowl announce the dawn. ”
3 That die in childbirth.
Margaret thus gives him back his troth-plight by (stroking” it upon the
wand, much as savages and peasants believe they can rid themselves of a
disease by rubbing the affected part with a stick or pebble and finging the
latter into the road.


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THE BALLAD
1347
11.
It's hose and shoon an goundi alane
She clame the wall and followed him,
Until she came to a green forest,
On this she lost the sight of him.
12.
“Is there any room at your head, Sanders ?
Is there any room at your feet ?
Or any room at your twa sides?
Where fain, fain woud I sleep. ”
13.
«There is nae room at my head, Margret,
There is nae room at my feet;
There is room at my twa sides,
For ladys for to sleep.
14.
“Cold meal’ is my covering owre,
But an: my winding sheet:
My bed it is full low, I say,
Among hungry worms I sleep.
15.
«Cold meal is my covering owre,
But an my winding sheet:
The dew it falls nae sooner down
Than ay it is full weet. ”
*Gown.
2 Mold, earth.
3But and also.


## p. 1348 (#138) ###########################################

1348
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
(1799-1850)
BY WILLIAM P. TRENT
A
SONORÉ DE BALZAC, by common consent the greatest of French
novelists and to many of his admirers the greatest of all
writers of prose fiction, was born at Tours, May 16th, 1799.
Neither his family nor his place of birth counts for much in his artis-
tic development; but his sister Laure, afterwards Madame Surville, —
to whom we owe a charming sketch of her brother and many of his
most delightful letters, — made him her hero through life, and gave
him a sympathy that was better than any merely literary environ-
ment. He was a sensitive child, little comprehended by his parents
or teachers, which probably accounts for the fact that few writers
have so well described the feelings of children so situated (See Le
lys dans la vallée (The Lily in the l'alley) and Louis Lambert'l.
He was not a good student, but undermined his health by desultory
though enormous reading and by writing a precocious Treatise on the
Will, which an irate master burned and the future novelist after-
wards naïvely deplored. When brought home to recuperate, he turned
from books to nature, and the effects of the beautiful landscape of
Touraine upon his imagination are to be found throughout his writ-
ings, in passages of description worthy of a nature-worshiper like
Senancour himself. About this time a vague desire for fame seems
to have seized him. - a desire destined to grow into an almost mor-
bid passion; and it was a kindly Providence that soon after (1814)
led his family to quit the stagnant provinces for that nursery of
ambition, Paris. Here he studied under new masters, heard lectures
at the Sorbonne, read in the libraries, and finally, at the desire of
his practical father, took a three years' course in law.
He was now at the parting of the ways, and he chose the one
nearest his heart. After much discussion, it was settled that he
should not be obliged to return to the provinces with his family, or
to enter upon the regular practice of law, but that he might try his
luck as a writer on an allowance purposely fixed low enough to test
his constancy and endurance. Two years was the period of probation
allotted, during which time Balzac read still more widely and walked
the streets studying the characters ḥe met, all the while endeavoring
to grind out verses for a tragedy on Cromwell. This, when com-
pleted, was promptly and justly damned by his family, and he was


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P


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HONORÉ DE BALZAC.
B


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|


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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1 349
name.
temporarily forced to retire from Paris. He did not give up his
aspirations, however, and before long he was back in his attic, this
time supporting himself by his pen. Novels, not tragedies, were
what the public most wanted, so he labored indefatigably to supply
their needs and his own necessities; not relinquishing, however, the
hope that he might some day watch the performance of one of his
own plays. His perseverance was destined to be rewarded, for he
lived to write five dramas which fill a volume of his collected
works; but only one, the posthumous comedy Mercadet,' was even
fairly successful. Yet hat Balzac had dramatic genius his matured
novels abundantly prove.
The ten romances, however, that he wrote for cheap booksellers
between 1822 and 1829 displayed so little genius of any sort that he
was afterwards unwilling to cover their deficiencies with his great
They have been collected as youthful works ('Euvres de
jeunesse'), and are useful to a complete understanding of the evolu-
tion of their author's genius; but they are rarely read even by his
most devoted admirers. They served, however, to enable him to get
through his long and heart-rending period of apprenticeship, and they
taught him how to express himself; for this born novelist was not a
born writer and had to labor painfully to acquire a style which only
at rare moments quite fitted itself to the subject he had in hand.
Much more interesting than these early sensational romances were
the letters he wrote to his sister Laure, in which he grew eloquent
over his ambition and gave himself needed practice in describ-
ing the characters with whom he came in contact. But he had not
the means to wait quietly and ripen, so he embarked in a publish-
ing business which brought him into debt. Then, to make up his
losses, he became partner in a printing enterprise which failed in
1827, leaving him still more embarrassed financially, but endowed
with a fund of experience which he turned to rich account as a nov-
elist. Henceforth the sordid world of debt, bankruptcy, usury, and
speculation had no mystery for him, and he laid it bare in novel
after novel, utilizing also the knowledge he had gained of the law,
and even pressing into service the technicalities of the printing office
(See Illusions perdues' (Lost Illusions)]. But now at the age of
twenty-eight he had over 100,000 francs to pay, and had written
nothing better than some cheap stories; the task of wiping out his
debts by his writings seemed therefore a more hopeless one than
Scott's. Nothing daunted, however, he set to work, and the year
that followed his second failure in business saw the composition of
the first novel he was willing to acknowledge, Les Chouans. ' This
romance of Brittany in 1799 deserved the praise it received from
press and public, in spite of its badly jointed plot and overdrawn


## p. 1350 (#144) ###########################################

1350
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
characters. It still appeals to many readers, and is important to the
(Comédie humaine' as being the only novel of the Military Scenes. ”
The Physiology of Marriage' followed quickly (1829-30), and despite
a certain pruriency of imagination, displayed considerable powers of
analysis, powers destined shortly to distinguish a story which ranks
high among its author's works, La Maison du chat-qui-pelote
(1830). This delightful novelette, the queer title of which is nearly
equivalent to At the Sign of the Cat and the Racket,' showed in
its treatment of the heroine's unhappy passion the intuition and pen-
etration of the born psychologist, and in its admirable description of
bourgeois life the pictorial genius of the genuine realist. In other
words the youthful romancer was merged once for all in the matured
novelist. The years of waiting and observation had done their work,
and along the streets of Paris now walked the most profound analyst
of human character that had scrutinized society since the days when
William Shakespeare, fresh from Stratford, trod the streets and lanes
of Elizabethan London.
The year 1830 marks the beginning not merely of Balzac's success
as the greatest of modern realists, but also of his marvelous literary
activity. Novel after novel is begun before its predecessor is finished;
short stories of almost perfect workmanship are completed; sketches
are dashed off that will one day find their appropriate place in larger
compositions, as yet existing only in the brain of the master. Nor is
it merely a question of individual works: novels and stories are to
form different series, -'Scenes from Private Life, Philosophical
Novels and Tales,'— which are themselves destined to merge into
(Studies of Manners in the Nineteenth Century,' and finally into the
(Comédie humaine) itself. Yet it was more than a swarm of stories
that was buzzing in his head; it was a swarm of individuals often
more truly alive to him than the friends with whom he loved to con-
verse about them. And just because he knew these people of his
brain, just because he entered into the least details of their daily
lives, Balzac was destined to become much more than a mere philos-
opher or student of society; to wit, a creator of characters, endowed
with that "absolute dramatic vision” which distinguishes Homer and
Shakespeare and Chaucer. But because he was also something of a
philosopher and student of sociology, he conceived the stupendous
idea of linking these characters with one another and with their
several environments, in order that he might make himself not
merely the historian but also the creator of an entire society. In
other words, conservative though he was, Balzac had the audacity to
range himself by the side of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and to espouse
the cause of evolution even in its infancy. The great ideas of the
mutability of species and of the influence of environment and heredity


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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1351
were, he thought, as applicable to sociology as to zoology, and as
applicable to fiction as to either. So he meditated the Comédie
humaine) for several years before he announced it in 1842, and from
being almost the rival of Saint-Hilaire he became almost the antici-
pator of Darwin.
But this idea of evolution was itself due to the evolution of his
genius, to which many various elements contributed: his friendships
and enmities with contemporary authors, his intimacies with women
of refinement and fashion, his business struggles with creditors and
publishers, his frequent journeys to the provinces and foreign coun-
tries; and finally his grandiose schemes to surround himself with
luxury and the paraphernalia of power, not so much for his own sake
as for the sake of her whose least smile was a delight and an inspira-
tion. About each of these topics an interesting chapter might be
written, but here a few words must suffice.
After his position as an author was more or less assured, Balzac's
relations with the leaders of his craft — such as Victor Hugo, Théo-
phile Gautier, and George Sand — were on the whole cordial. He
had trouble with Sainte-Beuve, however, and often felt that his
brother-writers begrudged his success. His constant attacks on con-
temporary journalists, and his egotistic and erratic manners naturally
prejudiced the critics, so that even the marvelous romance entitled
(La Peau de chagrin' (The Magic Skin: 1831), — a work of superb
genius, — speedily followed as it was by Eugénie Grandet' and Le
Père Goriot,' did not win him cordial recognition. One or two of
his friendships, however, gave him a knowledge of higher social
circles than he was by birth entitled to, a fact which should be
remembered in face of the charge that he did not know high
life, although it is of course true that a writer like Balzac, possessing
the intuition of genius, need not frequent salons or live in hovels in
order to describe them with absolute verisimilitude.
With regard to Balzac's debts, the fact should be noted that he
might have paid them off more easily and speedily had he been
more prudent. He cut into the profits of his books by the costly
changes he was always making in his proof-sheets, — changes which
the artist felt to be necessary, but against which the publishers nat-
urally protested. In reality he wrote his books on his proof-sheets,
for he would cut and hack the original version and make new inser-
tions until he drove his printers wild. Indeed, composition never
became easy to him, although under a sudden inspiration he could
sometimes dash off page after page while other men slept. He had,
too, his affectations; he must even have a special and peculiar garb
in which to write. All these eccentricities and his outside distractions
and ambitions, as well as his noble and pathetic love affair, entered


## p. 1352 (#146) ###########################################

1352
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
into the warp and woof of his work with effects that can easily be
detected by the careful student, who should remember, however,
that the master's foibles and peculiarities never for one moment set
him outside the small circle of the men of supreme genius. He
belongs to them by virtue of his tremendous grasp of life in its
totality, his superhuman force of execution and the inevitableness of
his art at its best.
The decade from 1830 to 1840 is the most prolific period of Bal-
zac's genius in the creation of individual works; that from 1840 to
1850 is his great period of philosophical co-ordination and arrange-
ment. In the first he hewed out materials for his house; in the
second he put them together. This statement is of course relatively
true only, for we owe to the second decade three of his greatest
masterpieces: "Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes,' and La Cousine
Bette and Le Cousin Pons, collectively known as Les Parents
pauvres (Poor Relations). And what a period of masterful literary
activity the first decade presents! For the year 1830 alone the
Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul gives seventy-one entries, many
of slight importance, but some familiar to every student of modern
literature, such as El Verdugo,' La Maison du chat-qui-pelote,'
(Gobseck,'(Adieu,' Une Passion dans le désert' (A Passion in the
Desert), Un Épisode sous la Terreur” (An Episode of the Terror).
For 1831 there are seventy-six entries, among them such masterpieces
as "Le Réquisitionnaire) (The Conscript), “Les Proscrits) (The Out-
laws), 'La Peau de chagrin,' and 'Jésus-Christ en Flandre. ? In 1832
the number of entries falls to thirty-six, but among them are "Le Colo-
nel Chabert, Le Curé de Tours' (The Priest of Tours), La Grande
Bretèche,' (Louis Lambert,' and 'Les Marana. After this year there
are fewer short stories. In 1833 we have Le Médecin de campagne
(The Country Doctor), and Eugénie Grandet,' with parts of the
(Histoire des treize) (Story of the Thirteen), and of the Contes
drolatiques (Droll Tales). The next year gives us "La Recherche
de l'absolu' (Search for the Absolute) and Le Père Goriot” (Old
Goriot) and during the next six there were no less than a dozen
masterpieces. Such a decade of accomplishment is little short of
miraculous, and the work was done under stress of anxieties that
would have crushed any normal man.
But anxieties and labors were lightened by a friendship which
was an inspiration long before it ripened into love, and were rendered
bearable both by Balzac's confidence in himself and by his ever
nearer view of the goal he had set himself. The task before him was
as stupendous as that which Comte had undertaken, and required not
merely the planning and writing of new works but the utilization of
all that he had previously written. Untiring labor had to be devoted
1


## p. 1353 (#147) ###########################################

HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1353
to this manipulation of old material, for practically the great output
of the five years 1829–1834 was to be co-ordinated internally, story
being brought into relation with story and character with character.
This meant the creation and management of an immense number of
personages, the careful investigation of the various localities which
served for environments, and the profound study of complicated
social and political problems. No wonder, then, that the second
decade of his maturity shows a falling off in abundance, though not
in intensity of creative power: and that the gradual breaking down
of his health, under the strain of his ceaseless efforts and of his
abnormal habits of life, made itself more and more felt in the years
that followed the great preface which in 1842 set forth the splendid
design of the Comédie humaine. "
This preface, one of the most important documents in literary
history, must be carefully studied by all who would comprehend
Balzac in his entirety. It cannot be too often repeated that Balzac's
scientific and historical aspirations are important only in so far as
they caused him to take a great step forward in the development of
his art. The nearer the artist comes to reproducing for us life in its
totality, the higher the rank we assign him among his fellows.
Tried by this canon, Balzac is supreme. His interweaving of charac-
ters and events through a series of volumes gives a verisimilitude to
his work unrivaled in prose fiction, and paralleled only in the work
of the world-poets. In other words, his use of co-ordination upon a
vast scale makes up for his lack of delicacy and sureness of touch,
as compared with what Shakespeare and Homer and Chaucer have
taught us to look for. Hence he is with them even if not of them.
This great claim can be made for the Balzac of the Comédie
humaine only; it could not be made for the Balzac of any one mas-
terpiece like "Le Père Goriot,' or even for the Balzac of all the
masterpieces taken in lump and without co-ordination. Balzac by
co-ordination has in spite of his limitations given us a world, just as
Shakespeare and Homer have done; and so Taine was profoundly
right when he put him in the same category with the greatest of all
writers. When, however, he added St. Simon to Shakespeare, and
proclaimed that with them Balzac was the greatest storehouse of doc-
uments that we have on human nature, he was guilty not merely of
confounding genres of art, but also of laying stress on the philosophic
rather than on the artistic side of fiction. Balzac does make himself
a great storehouse of documents on human nature, but he also does
something far more important, he sets before us a world of living
men and women.
To have brought this world into existence, to have given it order
in the midst of complexity, and that in spite of the fact that death


## p. 1354 (#148) ###########################################

1354
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1
overtook him before he could complete his work, would have been
sufficient to occupy a decade of any other man's life; but he, though
harassed with illness and with hopes of love and ambition deferred,
was strong enough to do more. The year 1840 saw the appearance
of Pierrette,' and the establishment of the ill-fated Revue parisi-
enne. ' The following year saw Ursule Mirouet,' and until 1848 the
stream of great works is practically unbroken. The “Splendeurs et
misères) and the Parents pauvres) have been named already, but
to these must be added Un Ménage de garçon' (A Bachelor's House-
keeping), Modeste Mignon, and Les Paysans (The Peasants). The
three following years added nothing to his work and closed his life,
but they brought him his crowning happiness. On March 14th, 1850,
he was married to Mme. Hanska, at Berditchef; on August 18th, 1850,
he died at Paris.
Madame Evelina de Hanska came into Balzac's life about 1833, just
after he had shaken off the unfortunate influence of the Duchesse
de Castries, The young Polish countess was much impressed, we
are told, by reading the Scènes de la vie privée) (Scenes of Private
Life), and was somewhat perplexed and worried by Balzac's appar-
ent change of method in “La Peau de chagrin. She wrote to him
over the signature «L'Étrangère » (A Foreigner), and he answered
in a series of letters recently published in the Revue de Paris.
Not long after the opening of this correspondence the two met, and
a firm friendship was cemented between them. The lady was about
thirty, and married to a Russian gentleman of large fortune, to
whom she had given an only daughter. She was in the habit of
traveling about Europe to carry on this daughter's education, and
Balzac made it his pleasure and duty to see her whenever he could,
sometimes journeying as far as Vienna. In the interim he would
write her letters which possess great charm and importance to the
student of his life. The husband made no objection to the intimacy,
trusting both to his wife and to Balzac; but for some time before
the death of the aged nobleman, Balzac seems to have distrusted
himself and to have held slightly aloof from the woman whom he
was destined finally to love with all the fervor of his nature. Madame
Hanska became free in the winter of 1842–3, and the next summer
Balzac visited St. Petersburg to see her. His love soon became an
absorbing passion, but consideration for her daughter's future with-
held the lady's consent to a betrothal till 1846. It was a period of
weary waiting, in which our sympathies are all on one side; for if
ever a man deserved to be happy in a woman's love, it was Balzac.
His happiness came, but almost too late to be enjoyed. His last
two years, which he spent in Poland with Madame de Hanska, were
oppressed by illness, and he returned to his beloved Paris only to die.


## p. 1355 (#149) ###########################################

HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1355
>
The struggle of thirty years was over, and although his immense
genius was not yet fully recognized, his greatest contemporary,
Victor Hugo, was magnanimous enough to exclaim on hearing that
he was dying, “Europe is on the point of losing a great mind. ”
Balzac's disciples feel that Europe really lost its greatest writer since
Shakespeare.
In the definitive edition of Balzac's writings in twenty-four vol-
umes, seventeen are occupied by the various divisions of the Comédie
humaine. The plays take up one volume; and the correspondence,
not including of course the letters to “L'Étrangère,” another; the
ontes drolatiques make still another; and finally we have four
volumes filled with sketches, tales, reviews, and historical and polit-
ical articles left uncollected by their author.
The Contes) are thirty in number, divided into dixains, each
with its appropriate prologue and epilogue. They purport to have
been collected in the abbeys of Touraine, and set forth by the Sieur
de Balzac for the delight of Pantagruelists and none others. Not
merely the spirit but the very language of Rabelais is caught with
remarkable verve and fidelity, so that from the point of view of style
Balzac has never done better work. A book which holds by Rabelais
on the one hand and by the Queen of Navarre on the other is not
likely, however, to appeal to that part of the English and American
reading public that expurgates its Chaucer, and blushes at the men-
tion of Fielding and Smollett. Such readers will do well to avoid the
Contes drolatiques;' although, like Don Juan,' they contain a great
deal of what was best in their author,- of his frank, ebullient, sens-
uous nature, lighted up here at least by a genuine if scarcely deli-
cate humor. Of direct suggestion of vice Balzac was, naturally, as
incapable as he was of smug puritanism; but it must be confessed
that as a raconteur his proper audience, now that the monastic orders
have passed away, would be a group of middle-aged club-men.
The Comédie humaine' is divided into three main sections: first
and most important, the Études de mours) (Studies of Manners),
second the Études philosophiques) (Philosophic Studies), and finally
the Études analytiques? (Analytic Studies). These divisions, as M.
Barrière points out in his L'Euvre de H. de Balzac' (The Work
of Balzac), were intended to bear to one another the relations that
moral science, psychology, and metaphysics do to one another with
regard to the life of man, whether as an individual or as a member
of society. No single division was left complete at the author's
death; but enough was finished and put together to give us the sense
of moving in a living, breathing world, no matter where we make
our entry. This, as we have insisted, is the real secret of his great-
To think, for example, that the importance of Séraphita' lies
ness.


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1356
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The group
in the fact that it gives Balzac's view of Swedenborgianism, or that
the importance of Louis Lambert' lies in its author's queer theories
about the human will, is entirely to misapprehend his true position
in the world of literature. His mysticism, his psychology, his theories
of economics, his reactionary devotion to monarchy, and his idealiza-
tion of the Church of Rome, may or may not appeal to us, and have
certainly nothing that is eternal or inevitable about them; but in his
knowledge of the human mind and heart he is as inevitable and
eternal as any writer has ever been, save only Shakespeare and
Homer.
The Études de maurs were systematically divided by their
author into "Scenes of Private Life, Scenes of Provincial Life,'
(Scenes of Country Life,' (Scenes of Parisian Life,' (Scenes of Politi-
cal Life,' and 'Scenes of Military Life,' — the last three divisions rep-
resenting more or less exceptional phases of existence.
relating to Paris is by far the most important and powerful, but
the provincial stories show almost as fine workmanship, and furnish
not a few of the well-known masterpieces. Less interesting, though
still important, are the Scenes of Private Life,' which consist of
twenty-four novels, novelettes, and tales, under the following titles:
(Béatrix,) (Albert Savarus,' 'La Fausse maîtresse) (The False Mis-
tress), Le Message (The Message), 'La Grande Bretèche,' 'Étude
de femme) (Study of Woman), Autre étude de femme(Another
Story of Woman), Madame Firmiani, (Modeste Mignon,' 'Un Début
dans la vie' (An Entrance upon Life), Pierre Grassou,' Mémoires
de deux jeunes mariées. (Recollections of a Young Couple), La
Maison du chat-qui-pelote, Le Bal de Sceaux) (The Ball of Sceaux),
"Le Contrat de mariage (The Marriage Contract), 'La Vendetta,'
"La Paix du ménage) (Household Peace), Une Double famille) (A
Double Family), “Une Fille d'Éve) (A Daughter of Eve), “Honorine,'
La Femme abandonnée (The Abandoned Wife), 'La Grenadière,'
"La Femme de trente ans) (The Woman of Thirty).
Of all these stories, hardly one shows genuine greatness except the
powerful tragic tale "La Grande Bretèche,' which was subsequently
incorporated in 'Autre étude de femme. ' This story of a jealous hus-
band's walling up his wife's lover in a closet of her chamber is as
dramatic a piece of writing as Balzac ever did, and is almost if not
quite as perfect a short story as any that has since been written in
France. 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote) has been mentioned already
on account of its importance in the evolution of Balzac's realism, but
while a delightful novelette, it is hardly great, its charm coming
rather from its descriptions of bourgeois life than from the working
out of its central theme, the infelicity of a young wife married to an
unfaithful artist. Modeste Mignon' is interesting, and more romantic


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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1357
than Balzac's later works were wont to be; but while it may be
safely recommended to the average novel-reader, few admirers of its
author would wish to have it taken as a sample of their master.
(Béatrix) is a powerful story in its delineation of the weakness of the
young Breton nobleman, Calyste du Guénic. It derives a factitious
interest from the fact that George Sand is depicted in (Camille
Maupin,' the nom de plume of Mlle. des Touches, and perhaps Balzac
himself in Claude Vignon, the critic. Less factitious is the interest
derived from Balzac's admirable delineation of a doting mother and
aunt, and from his realistic handling of one of the cleverest of
his ladies of light reputation, Madame Schontz; his studies of such
characters of the demi-monde -- especially of the wonderful Esther of
the “Splendeurs et misères) — serving plainly, by the way, as a point
of departure for Dumas fils. Yet (Béatrix) is an able rather than a
truly great book, for it neither elevates nor delights us. In fact, all
the stories in this series are interesting rather than truly great; but
all display Balzac's remarkable analytic powers. Love, false or true,
is of course their main theme; wrought out to a happy issue in 'La
Bourse,' a charming tale, or to a death of despair in 'La Grena-
dière. ) The childless young married woman is contrasted with her
more fortunate friend surrounded by little ones (Mémoires de deux
jeunes mariées'), the heartless coquette Airts once too often ('Le Bal
de Sceaux'), the eligible young man is taken in by a scheming
mother (Le Contrat du mariage'), the deserted husband labors to
win back his wife (Honorine'), the tempted wife learns at last the
real nature of her peril (Une Fille d'Éve'); in short, lovers and
mistresses, husbands and wives, make us participants of all the joys
and sorrows that form a miniature world within the four walls of
every house.
The Scenes of Provincial Life' number only ten stories, but
nearly all of them are masterpieces. They are Eugénie Grandet,'
Le Lys dans la vallée, Ursule Mirouet,' Pierrette,' Le Curé de
Tours,' 'La Rabouilleuse,' 'La Vielle fille' (The Old Maid), Le
Cabinet des antiques? (The Cabinet of Antiques), L'Illustre Gaudis-
sart” (The Illustrious Gaudissart), and 'La Muse du département(The
Departmental Muse). Of these “Eugénie Grandet' is of course easily
first in interest, pathos, and power. The character of old Grandet,
the miserly father, is presented to us with Shakespearean vividness,
although Eugénie herself has less than the Shakespearean charm.
Any lesser artist would have made the tyrant himself and his yield-
ing wife and daughters seem caricatures rather than living people.
It is only the Shakespeares and Balzacs who are able to make their
Shylocks and lagos, their Grandets and Philippe Brideaus, monsters
and human beings at one and the same time. It is only the greater


## p. 1358 (#152) ###########################################

1358
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
artists, too, who can bring out all the pathos inherent in the subjec-
tion of two gentle women to a tyrant in their own household. But
it is Balzac the inimitable alone who can portray fully the life of
the provinces, its banality, its meanness, its watchful selfishness, and
yet save us through the perfection of his art from the degradation
which results from contact with low and sordid life. The reader who
rises unaffected from a perusal of Eugénie Grandet' would be
unmoved by the grief of Priam in the tent of Achilles, or of Othello
in the death-chamber of Desdemona.
'Le Lys dans la vallée' has been pronounced by an able French
critic to be the worst novel he knows; but as a study of more or
less ethereal and slightly morbid love it is characterized by remark-
able power.
Its heroine, Madame Mortsauf, tied to a nearly insane
husband and pursued by a sentimental lover, undergoes tortures of
conscience through an agonizing sense of half-failure in her duty.
Balzac himself used to cite her when he was charged with not being
able to draw a pure woman; but he has created nobler types. The
other stories of the group are also decidedly more interesting. The
distress of the
bbé Birotteau over his landlady's treatment, and
the intrigues of the abbé Troubert (“Le Curé de Tours') absorb us
as completely as the career of Cæsar himself in Mommsen's famous
chapter. The woes of the little orphan subjected to the tyranny of
her selfish aunt and uncle (Pierrette'), the struggles of the rapa-
cious heirs for the Mirouet fortune ( Ursule Mirouet,' a story which
gives us one of Balzac's purest women, treats interestingly of mes-
merism (and may be read without fear by the young), the siege of
Mlle. Cormon's mature affections by her two adroit suitors ('Une
Vielle fille'), the intrigues against the peace of the d'Esgrignons
and the sublime devotion to their interests of the notary Chesnel
(“Le Cabinet des antiques”), and finally the ignoble passions that
fought themselves out around the senile Jean Jacques Rouget, under
the direction of the diabolical ex-soldier Philippe Brideau (“La
Rabouilleuse,' sometimes entitled “Un Ménage de Garcon'), form
the absorbing central themes of a group of novels, or rather stories,
for few of them attain considerable length — unrivaled in the annals
of realistic fiction.
The Scenes of Country Life,' comprising Les Paysans,' Le
Médecin de campagne,' and 'Le Curé de village (The Village
Priest), take high rank among their author's works. Where Balzac
might have been crudely naturalistic, he has preferred to be either
realistic as in the first named admirable novel, or idealistic as in the
two latter. Hence he has created characters like the country physi-
cian, Doctor Benassis, almost as great a boon to the world of readers
as that philanthropist himself was to the little village of his adoption.


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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1359
If Madame Graslin of 'Le Curé de village) fails to reach the height
of Benassis, her career has at least a sensational interest which his
lacked; and the country curate, the good abbé Bonnet, surely makes
up for her lack on the ideal side. This story, by the way, is import-
ant for the light it throws on the workings of the Roman Church
among the common people; and the description of Madame Graslin's
death is one of Balzac's most effective pieces of writing.
We are now brought to the Parisian Scenes, and with the excep-
tion of Eugénie Grandet,' to the best-known masterpieces. There
are twenty titles; but as two of these are collective in character, the
number of novels and stories amounts to twenty-four, as follows:
Le Père Goriot,' Illusions perdues,' 'Splendeurs et misères des
courtisanes,' "Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan (The Secrets
of the Princess of Cadignan), Histoire des treize' (containing Fer-
ragus,' 'La Duchesse de Langeais,' and 'La Fille aux yeux d'or (The
Girl with the Golden Eyes)], (Sarrasine,' 'Le Colonel Chabert, L'In-
terdiction' (The Interdiction), Les Parents pauvres) (Poor Relations,
including La Cousine Bette) and Le Cousin Pons'), 'La Messe de
l'athée (The Atheist's Mass), Facino Cane,' 'Gobseck,' 'La Maison
Nucingen,' 'Un Prince de la Bohème) (A Prince of Bohemia), “Es-
quisse d'homme d'affaires? (Sketch of a Business man), "Gaudissart
11. ,' 'Les Comédiens sans le savoir' (The Unconscious Humorists),
Les Employés? (The Employees), “Histoire de César Birotteau,' and
Les Petits bourgeois(Little Bourgeois). Of these twenty-four titles
six belong to novels, five of which are of great power, nine to novel-
ettes and short stories too admirable to be passed over without notice,
eight to novelettes and stories of interest and value which need not,
however, detain us, and one, Les Petits bourgeois,' to a novel of
much promise unfortunately left incomplete. "Les Secrets de la
princesse de Cadignan' is remarkable chiefly as a study of the blind
passion that often overtakes a man of letters. Daniel d'Arthez, the
author, a fine character and a favorite with Balzac, succumbs to the
wiles of the Princess of Cadignan (formerly the dashing and fascinat-
ing Duchesse de Maufrigneuse) and is happy in his subjection. The
Histoire des treize contains three novelettes, linked together through
the fact that in each a band of thirteen young men, sworn to assist
one another in conquering society, play an important part. This vol-
ume is the most frankly sensational of Balzac's works. La Duchesse
de Langeais,' however, is more than sensational: it gives perhaps
Balzac's best description of the Faubourg St. Germain and one of
his ablest analyses of feminine character, while in the description
of General Montriveau's recognition of the Duchess in the Spanish
convent the novelist's dramatic power is seen at its highest. La
Fille aux yeux d'or,' which concludes the volume devoted to the


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1360
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
ever
mysterious brotherhood, may be considered, with (Sarrasine,' one of
the dark closets of the great building known as the Comédie hu-
maine. Both stories deal with unnatural passions, and the first is one
of Balzac's most effective compositions. For sheer voluptuousness of
style there is little in literature to parallel the description of the
boudoir of the uncanny heroine. Very different from these stories
is Le Colonel Chabert,' the record of the misfortunes of one of
Napoleon's heroic soldiers, who after untold hardships returns to
France to find his wife married a second time and determined to
deny his existence. The law is invoked, but the treachery of the
wife induces the noble old man to put an end to the proceedings,
after which he sinks into an indigent and pathetic senility. Balzac
has never drawn a more heart-moving figure, nor has he
sounded more thoroughly the depths of human selfishness. But the
description of the battle of Eylau and of Chabert's sufferings in
retreat would alone suffice to make the story memorable. L'Inter-
diction is the proper pendant to the history of this unfortunate sol-
dier. In it another husband, the Marquis d'Espard, suffers from the
selfishness of his wife, one of the worst characters in the range of
Balzac's fiction. That she may keep him from alienating his property
to discharge a moral obligation she endeavors to prove him insane.
The legal complications which ensue bring forward one of Balzac's
great figures, the judge of instruction, Popinot; but to appreciate him
the reader must go to the marvelous book itself. (Gobseck' is a
study of a Parisian usurer, almost worthy of a place beside the
description of old Grandet; while (Les Employés) is a realistic study
of bureaucratic life, which, besides showing a wonderful familiarity
with the details of a world of which Balzac had little personal expe-
rience, contains several admirably drawn characters and a sufficient
amount of incident. But it is time to leave these sketches and
novels in miniature, and to pass by the less important "Scenes of
this fascinating Parisian life, in order to consider in some detail the
five novels of consummate power.
First of these in date of composition, and in popular estimation at
least among English readers, comes, “Le Père Goriot. ' It is certainly
trite to call the book a French “Lear, but the expression empha-
sizes the supreme artistic power that could treat the motif of one of
Shakespeare's plays in a manner that never forces a disadvantageous
comparison with the great tragedy. The retired vermicelli-maker is
not as grand a figure as the doting King of Britain, but he is as real.
The French daughters, Anastasie, Countess de Restaud, and Delphine,
Baroness de Nucingen, are not such types of savage wickedness as
Regan and Goneril, but they fit the nineteenth century as well as
the British princesses did their more barbarous day. Yet there is no


## p. 1361 (#155) ###########################################

HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1361
Cordelia in Le Père Goriot,' for the pale Victorine Taillefer cannot
fill the place of that noblest of daughters. This is but to say that
Balzac's bourgeois tragedy lacks that element of the noble that every
great poetic tragedy must have. The self-immolation of old Goriot
to the cold-hearted ambitions of his daughters is not noble, but his
parental passion touches the infinite, and so proves the essential kin-
ship of his creator with the creator of Lear. This touch of the
infinite, as in “Eugénie Grandet, lifts the book up from the level of
a merely masterly study of characters or a merely powerful novel to
that of the supreme masterpieces of human genius. The marvelously
lifelike description of the vulgar Parisian boarding-house, the fasci-
nating delineation of the character of that king of convicts, Vautrin,
and the fine analysis of the ambitions of Rastignac (who comes
nearer perhaps to being the hero of the Comédie humaine) than any
other of its characters, and is here presented to us at the threshold
of his successful career) remain in the memory of every reader, but
would never alone have sufficed to make Balzac's name worthy of
immortality. The infinite quality of Goriot's passion would, how-
ever, have conferred this honor on his creator had he never written
another book.
(Illusions perdues) and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes)
might almost be regarded as one novel in seven parts. More than
any other of his works they show the sun of Balzac's genius at its
meridian. Nowhere else does he give us plots so absorbing, nowhere
else does he bring us so completely in contact with the world his
imagination has peopled. The first novel devotes two of its parts to
the provinces and one to Paris. The provincial stories centre around
two brothers-in-law, David Séchard and Lucien de Rubempré, types
of the practical and the artistic intellect respectively. David, after
struggling for fame and fortune, succumbs and finds his recompense
in the love of his wife Eve, Lucien's sister, one of Balzac's noble
women. Lucien, on the other hand, after some provincial successes
a poet, tries the great world of Paris, yields to its temptations,
fails ignominiously, and attempts suicide, but is rescued by the great
Vautrin, who has escaped from prison and is about to renew his war
on society disguised as a Spanish priest. Vautrin has conceived the
idea that as he can take no part in society, he will have a repre-
sentative in it and taste its pleasures through him.
Lucien accepts
this disgraceful position and plunges once more into the vortex, sup-
ported by the strong arm of the king of the convicts. His career
and that of his patron form the subject of the four parts of the
(Splendeurs et misères, and are too complicated to be described
here. Suffice it to say that probably nowhere else in fiction are the
novel of character and the novel of incident so splendidly combined;
as
III-86


## p. 1362 (#156) ###########################################

1362
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
4
1
1
and certainly nowhere else in the range of his work does Balzac so
fully display all his master qualities. That the story is sensational
cannot be denied, but it is at least worthy of being called the Iliad
of Crime. Nemesis waits upon both Lucien and Vautrin, and upon
the poor courtesan Esther whom they entrap in their toils, and
when the two former are at last in custody, Lucien commits suicide.
Vautrin baffles his acute judge in a wonderful interview; but with
his cherished hope cut short by Lucien's death, finally gives up the
struggle. Here the novel might have ended; yet Balzac adds a
fourth part, in order to complete the career of Vautrin. The famous
convict is transformed into a government spy, and engages to use
his immense power against his former comrades and in defense of
the society he has hitherto warred upon. The artistic propriety of
this transformation may be questioned, but not the power and inter-
est of the novel of which it is the finishing touch.
Many readers would put the companion novels La Cousine Bette)
and Le Cousin Pons) at the head of Balzac's works. They have not
the infinite pathos of Le Père Goriot, or the superb construction of
the first three parts of the “Splendeurs et misères,' but for sheer
strength the former at least is unsurpassed in fiction. Never before
or since have the effects of vice in dragging down a man below the
level of the lowest brute been so portrayed as in Baron Hulot; never
before or since has female depravity been so illustrated as in the
diabolical career of Valérie Marneffe, probably the worst woman in
fiction. As for Cousine Bette herself, and her power to breed mis-
chief and crime, it suffices to say that she is worthy of a place
beside the two chief characters.
Le Cousin Pons) is a very different book; one which, though
pathetic in the extreme, may be safely recommended to the youngest
reader. The hero who gives his name to the story is an old musician
who has worn out his welcome among his relations, but who becomes
an object of interest to them when they learn that his collection of
bric-a-brac is valuable and that he is about to die. The intrigues
that circulate around this collection and the childlike German,
Schmucke, to whom Pons has bequeathed it, are described as only
the author of Le Curé de Tours) could have succeeded in doing;
but the book contains also an almost perfect description of the ideal
friendship existing between Pons and Schmucke. One remembers
them longer than one does Frazier, the scoundrelly advocate who
cheats poor Schmucke; a fact which should be cited against those
who urge that Balzac is at home with his vicious characters only.
The last novel of this group, César Birotteau,' is the least power-
ful, though not perhaps the least popular. It is an excellent study
of bourgeois life, and therefore fills an important place in the scheme


## p. 1363 (#157) ###########################################

HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1363
of the Comedy,' describing as it does the spreading ambitions of
a rich but stupid perfumer, and containing an admirable study of
bankruptcy. It may be dismissed with the remark that around the
innocent Cæsar surge most of the scoundrels that figure in the
(Comédie humaine,' and with the regret that it should have been
completed while the far more powerful Les Petits bourgeois) was
left unfinished.
We now come to the concluding parts of the 'Études de mæurs,'
the (Scenes describing Political and Military Life.
In the first group
are five novels and stories: L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine
(The Under Side of Contemporary History, a fine story, but rather
social than political), Une Ténébreuse affaire (A Shady Affair),
(Un Épisode sous la Terreur,' (Z. Marcas,' and Le Deputé d'Arcis)
(The Deputy of Arcis). Of these the Episode is probably the most
admirable, although (Z. Marcas) has not a little strength. The
(Deputé, like (Les Petits bourgeois,' was continued by M. Charles
Rabou and a considerable part of it is not Balzac's; a fact which is
to be regretted, since practically it is the only one of these stories
that touches actual politics as the term is usually understood. The
military scenes are only two in number, Les Chouans) and Une
Passion dans le désert. ) The former of these has been sufficiently
described already; the latter is one of the best known of the short
stories, but rather deserves a place beside La Fille aux yeux d'or. '
Indeed, for Balzac's best military scenes we must go to Le Colonel
Chabert) or to (Adieu. ”
We now pass to those subterranean chambers of the great struct-
ure we are exploring, the Études philosophiques. ' They are twenty
in number, four being novels, one a composite volume of tales, and
the rest stories. The titles run as follows:- 'La Peau de chagrin,'
(L'Élixir de longue vie) (The Elixir of Life), Melmoth réconcilié,'
Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (The Anonymous Masterpiece), Gam-
bara, Massimila Doni, Le Réquisitionnaire, Adieu,'El Verdugo,'
Les Marana, L'Auberge rouge (The Red Inn), «Un Drame au
bord de la mer? (A Seaside Drama), L'Enfant maudit (A Child
Accursed), Maître Cornélius? (Master Cornelius), Sur Catherine de
Médicis,' (La Recherche de l'absolu,' Louis Lambert,' Séraphita,'
'Les Proscrits,' and Jésus-Christ en Flandre. '
Of the novels, La Peau de chagrin' is easily first. Its central
theme is the world-old conflict between the infinite desires and the
finite powers of man. The hero, Raphael, is hardly, as M. Barrière
asserts, on a level with Hamlet, Faust, and Manfred, but the struggle
of his infinite and his finite natures is almost as intensely interesting
as the similar struggles in them. The introduction of the talisman,
the wild ass's skin that accomplishes all the wishes of its owner, but


## p. 1364 (#158) ###########################################

1364
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1
1
on condition that it is to shrink away in proportion to the intensity
of those wishes, and that when it disappears the owner's life is to
end, gave to the story a weird interest not altogether, perhaps, in
keeping with its realistic setting, and certainly forcing a disastrous
comparison with the three great poems named. But when all allow-
ances are made, one is forced to conclude that "La Peau de chagrin'
is a novel of extraordinary power and absorbing interest; and that
its description of its hero's dissipations in the libertine circles of
Paris, and its portrayal of the sublime devotion of the heroine Pauline
for her slowly perishing lover, are scarcely to be paralleled in liter-
ature. Far less powerful are the short stories on similar themes,
entitled “L'Élixir de longue vie,' and Melmoth réconcilié) (Melmoth
Reconciled), which give us Balzac's rehandling of the Don Juan of
Molière and Byron, and the Melmoth of Maturin.
Below the Peau de chagrin,' but still among its author's best
novels, should be placed La Recherche de l'absolu,' which, as its
title implies, describes the efforts of a chemist to ‘prove by chem-
ical analysis the unity of composition of matter. " In the pursuit of
his philosophic will-o'-the-wisp, Balthazar Claës loses his fortune and
sacrifices his noble wife and children. His madness serves, however,
to bring into relief the splendid qualities of these latter; and it is
just here, in its human rather than in its philosophic bearings, that
the story rises to real greatness. Marguerite Claës, the daughter, is
a noble heroine; and if one wishes to see how Balzac's characters
and ideas suffer when treated by another though an able hand, one
has but to read in conjunction with this novel the Maître Guérin'
of the distinguished dramatist Émile Augier. A proper pendant to
this history of a noble genius perverted is (La Confidence des Rug-
gieri,' the second part of that remarkable composite Sur Catherine
de Médicis, a book which in spite of its mixture of history, fiction,
and speculative politics is one of the most suggestive of Balzac's
minor productions.
Concerning Séraphita' and Louis Lambert,' the remaining novels
of this series, certain noted mystics assert that they contain the
essence of Balzac's genius, and at least suggest the secret of the
universe. Perhaps an ordinary critic may content himself with say-
ing that both books are remarkable proofs of their author's power,
and that the former is notable for its marvelous descriptions of Nor-
wegian scenery.
Of the lesser members of the philosophic group, nearly all are
admirable in their kind and degree. (Le Chef-d'ouvre inconnu' and
(Gambara' treat of the pains of the artistic life and temperament.
(Massimila Doni, like (Gambara,' treats of music, but also gives a
brilliant picture of Venetian life. Le réquisitionnaire,' perhaps the
1
1
1
1


## p. 1365 (#159) ###########################################

HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1365
best of Balzac's short stories, deals with the phenomenon of second
sight, as Adieu' does with that of mental alienation caused by a
sudden shock. "Les Marana' is an absorbing study of the effects of
heredity; L'Auberge rouge) is an analysis of remorse, as is also
(Un Drame au bord de la mer); while (L'Enfant maudit' is an
analysis of the effects of extreme sensibility, especially as manifested
in the passion of poetic love. Finally, Maître Cornélius' is a study
of avarice, in which is set a remarkable portrait of Louis XI. ; Les
Proscrits) is a masterly sketch of the exile of Dante at Paris; and
Jésus-Christ en Flandre) is an exquisite allegory, the most delicate
flower, perhaps, of Balzac's genius.
It remains only to say a few words about the third division of the
(Comédie humaine, viz. , the Études analytiques. Only two mem-
bers of the series, the Physiologie du mariage and the Petites
misères de la vie conjugale,' were ever completed, and they are not
great enough to make us regret the loss of the Pathology of Social
Life) and the other unwritten volumes. For the two books we have
are neither novels nor profound studies, neither great fiction nor great
psychology. That they are worth reading for their suggestiveness
with regard to such important subjects as marriage and conjugal life
goes without saying, since they are Balzac's; but that they add
greatly to his reputation, not even his most ardent admirer would be
hardy enough to affirm.
And now in conclusion, what can one say about this great writer
that will not fall far short of his deserts ? Plainly, nothing, yet a few
points may be accentuated with profit. We should notice in the first
place that Balzac has consciously tried almost every form of prose
fiction, and has been nearly always splendidly successful. In analytic
studies of high, middle, and low life he has not his superior. In the
novel of intrigue and sensation he is easily a master, while he suc-
ceeds at least fairly in a form of fiction at just the opposite pole
from this, to wit, the idyl ('Le Lys dans la vallée'). In character
sketches of extreme types, like (Gobseck, his supremacy has long
been recognized, and he is almost as powerful when he enters the
world of mysticism, whither so few of us can follow him. As a
writer of novelettes he is unrivaled and some of his short stories are
worthy to rank with the best that his followers have produced. In
the extensive use of dialect he was a pioneer; in romance he has
La Peau de chagrin and La Recherche de l'absolu' to his credit;
while some of the work in the tales connected with the name of
Catherine de' Medici shows what he could have done in historical fic-
tion had he continued to follow Scott. And what is true of the form
of his fiction is true of its elements. Tragedy, comedy, melodrama


## p. 1366 (#160) ###########################################

1366
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
are all within his reach; he can call up tears and shudders, laughter
and smiles at will. He knows the whole range of human emotions,
and he dares to penetrate into the arcana of passions almost too
terrible or loathsome for literature to touch.
In style, in the larger sense of the word, he is almost equally
supreme. He is the father of modern realism and remains its great-
est exponent. He retains always some of the good elements of
romance, – that is to say, he sees the thing as it ought to be, — and
he avoids the pitfalls of naturalism, being a painter and not a photog-
rapher. In other words, like all truly great writers he never forgets
his ideals; but he is too impartial to his characters and has too fast
a grip on life to fall into the unrealities of sentimentalism. It is
true that he lacked the spontaneity that characterized his great fore-
runner, Shakespeare, and his great contemporary, George Sand; but
this loss was made up by the inevitable and impersonal character of
his work when once his genius was thoroughly aroused to action.
His laborious method of describing by an accumulation of details
postponed the play of his powers, which are at their height in the
action of his characters; yet sooner or later the inert masses of his
composition were fused into a burning whole. But if Balzac is pri-
marily a dramatist in the creation and manipulation of his charac-
ters, he is also a supreme painter in his presentation of scenes.
And what characters and what scenes has he not set before us!
Over two thousand personages move through the Comédie humaine,'
whose biographies MM. Cerfberr and Christophe have collected for
us in
their admirable (Répertoire de la comédie humaine,' and
whose chief types M. Paul Flat has described in the first series of
his Essais sur Balzac. ) Some of these personages are of course
shadowy; but an amazingly large number live for us as truly as
Shakespeare's heroes and heroines do. Nor will anyone who has
trod the streets of Balzac's Paris, or spent the summer with him at
the chateau des Aigues (“Les Paysans'), or in the beautiful valleys
of Touraine, ever forget the master's pictures.
Yet the Balzac who with intangible materials created living and
breathing men and women and unfading scenes, has been accused
of vitiating the French language and has been denied the possession
of verbal style. On this point French critics must give the final
verdict;
but a foreigner may cite Taine's defense of that style, and
maintain that most of the liberties taken by Balzac with his native
language were forced on him by the novel and far-reaching character
of his work. Nor should it be forgotten that he was capable at times
of almost perfect passages of description, and that he rarely con-
founded, as novelists are too apt to do, the provinces of poetry and
prose.


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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1367
But one might write a hundred essays on Balzac and not exhaust
him. One might write a volume on his women, a volume to refute
the charge that his bad men are better drawn than his good, a
volume to discuss Mr. Henry James's epigrammatic declaration that
a five-franc piece may be fairly called the protagonist of the
(Comédie humaine. In short one might go on defending and prais-
ing and even criticizing Balzac for a lifetime, and be little further
advanced than when one began; for to criticize Balzac, is it not to
criticize life itself?
W. P. Zent-
-
THE MEETING IN THE CONVENT
From "The Duchess of Langeais)
I
N A Spanish town on an island of the Mediterranean there is a
convent of the Barefooted Carmelites, where the rule of the
Order instituted by Saint Theresa is still kept with the prim-
itive rigor of the reformation brought about by that illustrious
woman. Extraordinary as this fact may seem, it is true. Though
the monasteries of the Peninsula and those of the Continent were
nearly all destroyed or broken up by the outburst of the French
Revolution and the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, yet on this
island, protected by the British fleets, the wealthy convent and
its peaceful inmates were sheltered from the dangers of change
and general spoliation. The storms from all quarters which
shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century subsided
ere they reached this lonely rock near the coast of Andalusia.
If the name of the great Emperor echoed fitfully upon its shores,
it may be doubted whether the fantastic march of his glory or
the flaming majesty of his meteoric life ever reached the compre-
hension of those saintly women kneeling in their distant cloister.
A conventual rigor, which was never relaxed, gave to this
haven a special place in the thoughts and history of the Catholic
world. The purity of its rule drew to its shelter from different
parts of Europe sad women, whose souls, deprived of human
ties, longed for the death in life which they found here in the
bosom of God. No other convent was so fitted to wean the
heart and teach it that aloofness from the things of this world


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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
3
which the religious life imperatively demands. On the Continent
may be found a number of such Houses, nobly planned to meet
the wants of their sacred purpose. Some are buried in the
depths of solitary valleys; others hang, as it were, in mid-air
above the hills, clinging to the mountain slopes or projecting
from the verge of precipices. On all sides man has sought out
the poesy of the infinite, the solemnity of silence: he has sought
God; and on the mountain-tops, in the abysmal depths, among
the caverned cliffs he has found Him. Yet nowhere as on this
European islet, half African though it be, can he find such differ-
ing harmonies all blending to lift the soul and quell its springs
of anguish; to cool its fevers, and give to the sorrows of life a
bed of rest.
The monastery is built at the extremity of the island at its
highest part, where the rock by some convulsion of Nature has
been rent sharply down to the sea, and presents at all points
keen angles and edges, slightly eaten away at the water-line by
the action of the waves, but insurmountable to all approach.
The rock is also protected from assault by dangerous reefs run-
ning far out from its base, over which frolic the blue waters of
the Mediterranean. It is only from the sea that the visitor can
perceive the four principal parts of the square structure, which
adheres minutely as to shape, height, and the piercing of its
windows to the prescribed laws of monastic architecture. On
the side towards the town the church hides the massive lines of
the cloister, whose roof is covered with large tiles to protect it
from winds and storms, and also from the fierce heat of the sun.
The church, the gift of a Spanish family, looks down upon the
town and crowns it. Its bold yet elegant façade gives a noble
aspect to the little maritime city. Is it not a picture of terres-
trial sublimity? See the tiny town with clustering roofs, rising
like an amphitheatre from the picturesque port upward to the
noble Gothic frontal of the church, from which spring the slen-
der shafts of the bell-towers with their pointed finials: religion
dominating life: offering to man the end and the way of liv-
ing,- image of a thought altogether Spanish. Place this scene
upon the bosom of the Mediterranean beneath an ardent sky;
plant it with palms whose waving fronds mingle their green life
with the sculptured leafage of the immutable architecture; look
at the white fringes of the sea as it runs up the reef and they
sparkle upon the sapphire of its wave; see the galleries and the


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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
1369
terraces built upon the roofs of houses, where the inhabitants
come at eve to breathe the flower-scented air as it rises through
the tree-tops from their little gardens. Below, in the harbor,
are the white sails. The serenity of night is coming on; listen
to the notes of the organ, the chant of evening orisons, the
echoing bells of the ships at sea: on all sides sound and peace,
oftenest peace.
Within the church are three naves, dark and mysterious. The
fury of the winds evidently forbade the architect to build out lat-
eral buttresses, such as adorn all other cathedrals, and between
which little chapels are usually constructed. Thus the strong
walls which flank the lesser naves shed no light into the building.
Outside, their gray masses are shored up from point to point by
enormous beams. The great nave and its two small lateral gal-
leries are lighted solely by the rose-window of stained glass,
which pierces with miraculous art the wall above the great por-
tal, whose fortunate exposure permits a wealth of tracery and
dentellated stone-work belonging to that order of architecture
miscalled Gothic.
The greater part of the three naves is given up to the inhabi-
tants of the town who come to hear Mass and the Offices of the
Church. In front of the choir is a latticed screen, within which
brown curtains hang in ample folds, slightly parted in the middle
to give a limited view of the altar and the officiating priest. The
screen is divided at intervals by pillars that hold up a gallery
within the choir which contains the organ. This construction, in
harmony with the rest of the building, continues, in sculptured
wood, the little columns of the lateral galleries which are sup-
ported by the pillars of the great nave. Thus it is impossible
for the boldest curiosity, if any such should dare to mount the
narrow balustrade of these galleries, to see farther into the choir
than the octagonal stained windows which pierce the apse behind
the high altar.
At the time of the French expedition into Spain for the pur-
pose of re-establishing the authority of Ferdinand VII. , and
after the fall of Cadiz, a French general who was sent to the
island to obtain its recognition of the royal government pro-
longed his stay upon it that he might reconnoitre the convent and
gain, if possible, admittance there. The enterprise was a delicate
But a man of passion, a man whose life had been, so to
speak, a series of poems in action, who had lived romances
one.


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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
instead of writing them; above all a man of deeds,— might well
be tempted by a project apparently so impossible. To open for
himself legally the gates of a convent of women! The Pope and
the Metropolitan Archbishop would scarcely sanction it. Should
he use force or artifice ?