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      The Human Comedy, by Honore de Balzac
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Human Comedy, by Honore de Balzac

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: The Human Comedy
       Introductions and Appendix

Author: Honore de Balzac

Commentator: George Saintsbury

Release Date: March 8, 2010 [EBook #1968]
Last Updated: November 26, 2012

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUMAN COMEDY ***




Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger






</pre>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h1>
      THE HUMAN COMEDY
    </h1>
    <h2>
      INTRODUCTIONS AND APPENDIX
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      By Honore De Balzac
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <div class="mynote">
      <p>
        <b>Note:</b> This reposting is dedicated to Dagny, who, 10 years ago,
        was part of the "Balzac Team" which produced 113 eBooks for Project
        Gutenberg. I cannot locate her present email address to thank her for
        the extraordinarily fine work she did at a time when we had none of the
        present easy programs to help locate errors--and to notify her that all
        her Balzac files have been rechecked and reposted.
      </p>
      <p>
        DW
      </p>
    </div>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      Contents
    </h2>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_INTR"> <b>INTRODUCTIONS AND APPENDIX</b> </a>
          </p>
          <br />
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>HONORE DE BALZAC</b> </a>
          </p>
          <br />
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_APPE"> <b>APPENDIX</b> </a>
          </p>
          <br />
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> <b>COMEDIE HUMAINE</b> </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc2">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> SCENES DE LA VIE PRIVEE </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc2">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> SCENES DE LA VIE PROVINCE </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc2">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> SCENES DE LA VIE PARISIENNE </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc2">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> SCENES DE LA VIE POLITIQUE </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc2">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> SCENES DE LA VIE MILITAIRE </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc2">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> SCENES DE LA VIE DE CAMPAGNE </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc2">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> ETUDES PHILOSOPHIQUES </a>
          </p>
          <br />
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> <b>AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION</b> </a>
          </p>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
                             CONTENTS

    Honore de Balzac
    Introduction and brief biography by George Saintsbury.

    Appendix
    List of titles in French with English translations and grouped
    in the various classifications.

    Author's introduction
    Balzac's 1842 introduction to The Human Comedy.
</pre>
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      <br /> <br />
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    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <h2>
      HONORE DE BALZAC
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
                  <i>"Sans genie, je suis flambe!"</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      Volumes, almost libraries, have been written about Balzac; and perhaps of
      very few writers, putting aside the three or four greatest of all, is it
      so difficult to select one or a few short phrases which will in any way
      denote them, much more sum them up. Yet the five words quoted above, which
      come from an early letter to his sister when as yet he had not "found his
      way," characterize him, I think, better than at least some of the volumes
      I have read about him, and supply, when they are properly understood, the
      most valuable of all keys and companions for his comprehension.
    </p>
    <p>
      "If I have not genius, it is all up with me!" A very matter-of-fact person
      may say: "Why! there is nothing wonderful in this. Everybody knows what
      genius is wanted to make a name in literature, and most people think they
      have it." But this would be a little short-sighted, and only excusable
      because of the way in which the word "genius" is too commonly bandied
      about. As a matter of fact, there is not so very much genius in the world;
      and a great deal of more than fair performance is attainable and attained
      by more or less decent allowances or exhibitions of talent. In prose, more
      especially, it is possible to gain a very high place, and to deserve it,
      without any genius at all: though it is difficult, if not impossible, to
      do so in verse. But what Balzac felt (whether he was conscious in detail
      of the feeling or not) when he used these words to his sister Laure, what
      his critical readers must feel when they have read only a very little of
      his work, what they must feel still more strongly when they have read that
      work as a whole&mdash;is that for him there is no such door of escape and
      no such compromise. He had the choice, by his nature, his aims, his
      capacities, of being a genius or nothing. He had no little gifts, and he
      was even destitute of some of the separate and indivisible great ones. In
      mere writing, mere style, he was not supreme; one seldom or never derives
      from anything of his the merely artistic satisfaction given by perfect
      prose. His humor, except of the grim and gigantic kind, was not
      remarkable; his wit, for a Frenchman, curiously thin and small. The minor
      felicities of the literature generally were denied to him. <i>Sans genie,
      il etait flambe</i>; <i>flambe</i> as he seemed to be, and very reasonably
      seemed, to his friends when as yet the genius had not come to him, and
      when he was desperately striving to discover where his genius lay in those
      wonderous works which "Lord R'Hoone," and "Horace de Saint Aubin," and
      others obligingly fathered for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      It must be the business of these introductions to give what assistance
      they may to discover where it did lie; it is only necessary, before taking
      up the task in the regular biographical and critical way of the
      introductory cicerone, to make two negative observations. It did not lie,
      as some have apparently thought, in the conception, or the outlining, or
      the filling up of such a scheme as the <i>Comedie Humaine</i>. In the
      first place, the work of every great writer, of the creative kind,
      including that of Dante himself, is a <i>comedie humaine</i>. All humanity
      is latent in every human being; and the great writers are merely those who
      call most of it out of latency and put it actually on the stage. And, as
      students of Balzac know, the scheme and adjustment of his comedy varied so
      remarkably as time went on that it can hardly be said to have, even in its
      latest form (which would pretty certainly have been altered again), a
      distinct and definite character. Its so-called scenes are even in the mass
      by no means exhaustive, and are, as they stand, a very "cross," division
      of life: nor are they peopled by anything like an exhaustive selection of
      personages. Nor again is Balzac's genius by any means a mere vindication
      of the famous definition of that quality as an infinite capacity of taking
      pains. That Balzac had that capacity&mdash;had it in a degree probably
      unequaled even by the dullest plodders on record&mdash;is very well known,
      is one of the best known things about him. But he showed it for nearly ten
      years before the genius came, and though no doubt it helped him when
      genius had come, the two things are in his case, as in most, pretty
      sufficiently distinct. What the genius itself was I must do my best to
      indicate hereafter, always beseeching the reader to remember that all
      genius is in its essence and quiddity indefinable. You can no more get
      close to it than you can get close to the rainbow, and your most
      scientific explanation of it will always leave as much of the heart of the
      fact unexplained as the scientific explanation of the rainbow leaves of
      that.
    </p>
    <p>
      Honore de Balzac was born at Tours on the 16th of May, 1799, in the same
      year which saw the birth of Heine, and which therefore had the honor of
      producing perhaps the most characteristic writers of the nineteenth
      century in prose and verse respectively. The family was a respectable one,
      though its right to the particle which Balzac always carefully assumed,
      subscribing himself "<i>de</i> Balzac," was contested. And there appears
      to be no proof of their connection with Jean Guez de Balzac, the founder,
      as some will have him, of modern French prose, and the contemporary and
      fellow-reformer of Malherbe. (Indeed, as the novelist pointed out with
      sufficient pertinence, his earlier namesake had no hereditary right to the
      name at all, and merely took it from some property.) Balzac's father, who,
      as the <i>zac</i> pretty surely indicates, was a southerner and a native
      of Languedoc, was fifty-three years old at the birth of his son, whose
      Christian name was selected on the ordinary principle of accepting that of
      the saint on whose day he was born. Balzac the elder had been a barrister
      before the Revolution, but under it he obtained a post in the
      commissariat, and rose to be head of that department for a military
      division. His wife, who was much younger than himself and who survived her
      son, is said to have possessed both beauty and fortune, and was evidently
      endowed with the business faculties so common among Frenchwomen. When
      Honore was born, the family had not long been established at Tours, where
      Balzac the elder (besides his duties) had a house and some land; and this
      town continued to be their headquarters till the novelist, who was the
      eldest of the family, was about sixteen. He had two sisters (of whom the
      elder, Laure, afterwards Madame Surville, was his first confidante and his
      only authoritative biographer) and a younger brother, who seems to have
      been, if not a scapegrace, rather a burden to his friends, and who later
      went abroad.
    </p>
    <p>
      The eldest boy was, in spite of Rousseau, put out to nurse, and at seven
      years old was sent to the Oratorian grammar-school at Vendome, where he
      stayed another seven years, going through, according to his own account,
      the future experiences and performances of Louis Lambert, but making no
      reputation for himself in the ordinary school course. If, however, he
      would not work in his teacher's way, he overworked himself in his own by
      devouring books; and was sent home at fourteen in such a state of health
      that his grandmother (who after the French fashion, was living with her
      daughter and son-in-law), ejaculated: <i>"Voila donc comme le college nous
      renvoie les jolis enfants que nous lui envoyons!"</i> It would seem indeed
      that, after making all due allowance for grandmotherly and sisterly
      partiality, Balzac was actually a very good-looking boy and young man,
      though the portraits of him in later life may not satisfy the more
      romantic expectations of his admirers. He must have had at all times eyes
      full of character, perhaps the only feature that never fails in men of
      intellectual eminence; but he certainly does not seem to have been in his
      manhood either exactly handsome or exactly "distinguished-looking." But
      the portraits of the middle of the century are, as a rule, rather wanting
      in this characteristic when compared with those of its first and last
      periods; and I cannot think of many that quite come up to one's
      expectations.
    </p>
    <p>
      For a short time he was left pretty much to himself, and recovered
      rapidly. But late in 1814 a change of official duties removed the Balzacs
      to Paris, and when they had established themselves in the famous old <i>bourgeois</i>
      quarter of the Marais, Honore was sent to divers private tutors or private
      schools till he had "finished his classes" in 1816 at the age of seventeen
      and a half. Then he attended lectures at the Sorbonne where Villemain,
      Guizot, and Cousin were lecturing, and heard them, as his sister tells us,
      enthusiastically, though there are probably no three writers of any
      considerable repute in the history of French literature who stand further
      apart from Balzac. For all three made and kept their fame by spirited and
      agreeable generalizations and expatiations, as different as possible from
      the savage labor of observation on the one hand and the gigantic
      developments of imagination on the other, which were to compose Balzac's
      appeal. His father destined him for the law; and for three years more he
      dutifully attended the offices of an attorney and a notary, besides going
      through the necessary lectures and examinations. All these trials he seems
      to have passed, if not brilliantly, yet sufficiently.
    </p>
    <p>
      And then came the inevitable crisis, which was of an unusually severe
      nature. A notary, who was a friend of the elder Balzac's and owed him some
      gratitude offered not merely to take Honore into his office, but to allow
      him to succeed to his business, which was a very good one, in a few years
      on very favorable terms. Most fathers, and nearly all French fathers,
      would have jumped at this; and it so happened that about the same time M.
      de Balzac was undergoing that unpleasant process of compulsory retirement
      which his son has described in one of the best passages of the <i>Oeuvres
      de Jeunesse</i>, the opening scene of <i>Argow le Pirate</i>. It does not
      appear that Honore had revolted during his probation&mdash;indeed he is
      said, and we can easily believe it from his books, to have acquired a very
      solid knowledge of law, especially in bankruptcy matters, of which he was
      himself to have a very close shave in future. A solicitor, indeed, told
      Laure de Balzac that he found <i>Cesar Birotteau</i> a kind of <i>Balzac
      on Bankruptcy</i>; but this may have been only the solicitor's fun.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was no part of Honore's intentions to use this knowledge&mdash;however
      content he had been to acquire it&mdash;in the least interesting, if
      nearly the most profitable, of the branches of the legal profession; and
      he protested eloquently, and not unsuccessfully, that he would be a man of
      letters and nothing else. Not unsuccessfully; but at the same time with
      distinctly qualified success. He was not turned out of doors; nor were the
      supplies, as in Quinet's case only a few months later, absolutely withheld
      even for a short time. But his mother (who seems to have been less
      placable than her husband) thought that cutting them down to the lowest
      point might have some effect. So, as the family at this time (April 1819)
      left Paris for a house some twenty miles out of it, she established her
      eldest son in a garret furnished in the most Spartan fashion, with a
      starvation allowance and an old woman to look after him. He did not
      literally stay in this garret for the ten years of his astonishing and
      unparalleled probation; but without too much metaphor it may be said to
      have been his Wilderness, and his Wanderings in it to have lasted for that
      very considerable time.
    </p>
    <p>
      We know, in detail, very little of him during the period. For the first
      years, between 1819 and 1822, we have a good number of letters to Laure;
      between 1822 and 1829, when he first made his mark, very few. He began, of
      course, with verse, for which he never had the slightest vocation, and,
      almost equally of course, with a tragedy. But by degrees and apparently
      pretty soon, he slipped into what was his vocation, and like some, though
      not very many, great writers, at first did little better in it than if it
      had not been his vocation at all. The singular tentatives which, after
      being allowed for a time a sort of outhouse in the structure of the <i>Comedie
      Humaine</i>, were excluded from the octavo <i>Edition Definitive</i>
      five-and-twenty years ago, have never been the object of that exhaustive
      bibliographical and critical attention which has been bestowed on those
      which follow them. They were not absolutely unproductive&mdash;we hear of
      sixty, eighty, a hundred pounds being paid for them, though whether this
      was the amount of Balzac's always sanguine expectations, or hard cash
      actually handed over, we cannot say. They were very numerous, though the
      reprints spoken of above never extended to more than ten. Even these have
      never been widely read. The only person I ever knew till I began this
      present task who had read them through was the friend whom all his friends
      are now lamenting and are not likely soon to cease to lament, Mr. Louis
      Stevenson; and when I once asked him whether, on his honor and conscience,
      he could recommend me to brace myself to the same effort, he said that on
      his honor and conscience he must most earnestly dissuade me. I gather,
      though I am not sure, that Mr. Wedmore, the latest writer in English on
      Balzac at any length, had not read them through when he wrote.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now I have, and a most curious study they are. Indeed I am not sorry, as
      Mr. Wedmore thinks one would be. They are curiously, interestingly, almost
      enthrallingly bad. Couched for the most part in a kind of Radcliffian or
      Monk-Lewisian vein&mdash;perhaps studied more directly from Maturin (of
      whom Balzac was a great admirer) than from either&mdash;they often begin
      with and sometimes contain at intervals passages not unlike the Balzac
      that we know. The attractive title of <i>Jane la Pale</i> (it was
      originally called, with a still more Early Romantic avidity for <i>baroque</i>
      titles, <i>Wann-Chlore</i>) has caused it, I believe, to be more commonly
      read than any other. It deals with a disguised duke, a villainous Italian,
      bigamy, a surprising offer of the angelic first wife to submit to a sort
      of double arrangement, the death of the second wife and first love, and a
      great many other things. <i>Argow le Pirate</i> opens quite decently and
      in order with that story of the <i>employe</i> which Balzac was to
      rehandle so often, but drops suddenly into brigands stopping diligences,
      the marriage of the heroine Annette with a retired pirate marquis of vast
      wealth, the trial of the latter for murdering another marquis with a
      poisoned fish-bone scarf-pin, his execution, the sanguinary reprisals by
      his redoubtable lieutenant, and a finale of blunderbusses, fire, devoted
      peasant girl with <i>retrousse</i> nose, and almost every possible <i>tremblement</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      In strictness mention of this should have been preceded by mention of <i>Le
      Vicaire des Ardennes</i>, which is a sort of first part of <i>Argow le
      Pirate</i>, and not only gives an account of his crimes, early history,
      and manners (which seem to have been a little robustious for such a
      mild-mannered man as Annette's husband), but tells a thrilling tale of the
      loves of the <i>vicaire</i> himself and a young woman, which loves are
      crossed, first by the belief that they are brother and sister, and
      secondly by the <i>vicaire</i> having taken orders under this delusion. <i>La
      Derniere Fee</i> is the queerest possible cross between an actual fairy
      story <i>a la</i> Nordier and a history of the fantastic and inconstant
      loves of a great English lady, the Duchess of "Sommerset" (a piece of
      actual <i>scandalum magnatum</i> nearly as bad as Balzac's cool use in his
      acknowledged work of the title "Lord Dudley"). This book begins so well
      that one expects it to go on better; but the inevitable defects in
      craftsmanship show themselves before long. <i>Le Centenaire</i> connects
      itself with Balzac's almost lifelong hankering after the <i>recherche de
      l'absolu</i> in one form or another, for the hero is a wicked old person
      who every now and then refreshes his hold on life by immolating a virgin
      under a copper-bell. It is one of the most extravagant and "Monk-Lewisy"
      of the whole. <i>L'Excommunie</i>, <i>L'Israelite</i>, and <i>L'Heritiere
      de Birague</i> are mediaeval or fifteenth century tales of the most
      luxuriant kind, <i>L'Excommunie</i> being the best, <i>L'Israelite</i> the
      most preposterous, and <i>L'Heritiere de Birague</i> the dullest. But it
      is not nearly so dull as <i>Dom Gigadus</i> and <i>Jean Louis</i>, the
      former of which deals with the end of the seventeenth century and the
      latter with the end of the eighteenth. These are both as nearly unreadable
      as anything can be. One interesting thing, however, should be noted in
      much of this early work: the affectionate clinging of the author to the
      scenery of Touraine, which sometimes inspires him with his least bad
      passages.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is generally agreed that these singular <i>Oeuvres de Jeunesse</i> were
      of service to Balzac as exercise, and no doubt they were so; but I think
      something may be said on the other side. They must have done a little, if
      not much, to lead him into and confirm him in those defects of style and
      form which distinguish him so remarkably from most writers of his rank. It
      very seldom happens when a very young man writes very much, be it
      book-writing or journalism, without censure and without "editing," that he
      does not at the same time get into loose and slipshod habits. And I think
      we may set down to this peculiar form of apprenticeship of Balzac's not
      merely his failure ever to attain, except in passages and patches, a
      thoroughly great style, but also that extraordinary method of composition
      which in after days cost him and his publishers so much money.
    </p>
    <p>
      However, if these ten years of probation taught him his trade, they taught
      him also a most unfortunate avocation or by-trade, which he never ceased
      to practise, or to try to practise, which never did him the least good,
      and which not unfrequently lost him much of the not too abundant gains
      which he earned with such enormous labor. This was the "game of
      speculation." His sister puts the tempter's part on an unknown "neighbor,"
      who advised him to try to procure independence by <i>une bonne speculation</i>.
      Those who have read Balzac's books and his letters will hardly think that
      he required much tempting. He began by trying to publish&mdash;an attempt
      which has never yet succeeded with a single man of letters, so far as I
      can remember. His scheme was not a bad one, indeed it was one which has
      brought much money to other pockets since, being neither more nor less
      than the issuing of cheap one-volume editions of French classics. But he
      had hardly any capital; he was naturally quite ignorant of his trade, and
      as naturally the established publishers and booksellers boycotted him as
      an intruder. So his <i>Moliere</i> and his <i>La Fontaine</i> are said to
      have been sold as waste paper, though if any copies escaped they would
      probably fetch a very comfortable price now. Then, such capital as he had
      having been borrowed, the lender, either out of good nature or avarice,
      determined to throw the helve after the hatchet. He partly advanced
      himself and partly induced Balzac's parents to advance more, in order to
      start the young man as a printer, to which business Honore himself added
      that of typefounder. The story was just the same: knowledge and capital
      were again wanting, and though actual bankruptcy was avoided, Balzac got
      out of the matter at the cost not merely of giving the two businesses to a
      friend (in whose hands they proved profitable), but of a margin of debt
      from which he may be said never to have fully cleared himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had more than twenty years to live, but he never cured himself of this
      hankering after <i>une bonne speculation</i>. Sometimes it was ordinary
      stock-exchange gambling; but his special weakness was, to do him justice,
      for schemes that had something more grandiose in them. Thus, to finish
      here with the subject, though the chapter of it never actually finished
      till his death, he made years afterwards, when he was a successful and a
      desperately busy author, a long, troublesome, and costly journey to
      Sardinia to carry out a plan of resmelting the slag from Roman and other
      mines there. Thus in his very latest days, when he was living at
      Vierzschovnia with the Hanska and Mniszech household, he conceived the
      magnificently absurd notion of cutting down twenty thousand acres of oak
      wood in the Ukraine, and sending it <i>by railway</i> right across Europe
      to be sold in France. And he was rather reluctantly convinced that by the
      time a single log reached its market the freight would have eaten up the
      value of the whole plantation.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was perhaps not entirely chance that the collapse of the printing
      scheme, which took place in 1827, the ninth year of the Wanderings in the
      Wilderness, coincided with or immediately preceded the conception of the
      book which was to give Balzac passage into the Promised Land. This was <i>Les
      Chouans</i>, called at its first issue, which differed considerably from
      the present form, <i>Le Dernier Chouan ou la Bretagne en 1800</i> (later
      <i>1799</i>). It was published in 1829 without any of the previous
      anagrammatic pseudonyms; and whatever were the reasons which had induced
      him to make his bow in person to the public, they were well justified, for
      the book was a distinct success, if not a great one. It occupies a kind of
      middle position between the melodramatic romance of his nonage and the
      strictly analytic romance-novel of his later time; and, though dealing
      with war and love chiefly, inclines in conception distinctly to the
      latter. Corentin, Hulot, and other personages of the actual Comedy (then
      by no means planned, or at least avowed) appear; and though the influence
      of Scott is in a way paramount* on the surface, the underwork is quite
      different, and the whole scheme of the loves of Montauran and Mademoiselle
      de Verneuil is pure Balzac.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
  * Balzac was throughout his life a fervent admirer of Sir Walter,
    and I think Mr. Wedmore, in his passage on the subject, distinctly
    undervalues both the character and the duration of this esteem.
    Balzac was far too acute to commit the common mistake of thinking
    Scott superficial&mdash;men who know mankind are not often blind to
    each other's knowledge. And while Mr. Wedmore seems not to know
    any testimony later than Balzac's <i>thirty-eighth</i> year, it is in
    his <i>forty-sixth</i>, when all his own best work was done, except the
    <i>Parents Pauvres</i>, that he contrasts Dumas with Scott saying that
    <i>on relit Walter Scott</i>, and he does not think any one will
    re-read Dumas. This may be unjust to the one writer, but it is
    conclusive as to any sense of "wasted time" (his own phrase)
    having ever existed in Balzac's mind about the other.
</pre>
    <p>
      It would seem as if nothing but this sun of popular approval had been
      wanting to make Balzac's genius burst out in full bloom. Although we have
      a fair number of letters for the ensuing years, it is not very easy to
      make out the exact sequence of production of the marvelous harvest which
      his genius gave. It is sufficient to say that in the three years following
      1829 there were actually published the <i>Physiologie du Mariage</i>, the
      charming story of <i>La Maison du Chat-que-Pelote</i>, the <i>Peau de
      Chagrin</i>, the most original and splendid, if not the most finished and
      refined, of all Balzac's books, most of the short <i>Contes Philosophiques</i>,
      of which some are among their author's greatest triumphs, many other
      stories (chiefly included in the <i>Scenes de la Vie Privee</i>) and the
      beginning of the <i>Contes Drolatiques</i>.*
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
  * No regular attempt will after this be made to indicate the date of
    production of successive works, unless they connect themselves
    very distinctly with incidents in the life or with general
    critical observations. At the end of this introduction will be
    found a full table of the <i>Comedie Humaine</i> and the other works.
    It may perhaps be worth while to add here, that while the labors
    of M. de Lovenjoul (to whom every writer on Balzac must
    acknowledge the deepest obligation) have cleared this matter up
    almost to the verge of possibility as regards the published works,
    there is little light to be thrown on the constant references in
    the letters to books which never appeared. Sometimes they are
    known, and they may often be suspected, to have been absorbed into
    or incorporated with others; the rest must have been lost or
    destroyed, or, which is not quite impossible, have existed chiefly
    in the form of project. Nearly a hundred titles of such things are
    preserved.
</pre>
    <p>
      But without a careful examination of his miscellaneous work, which is very
      abundant and includes journalism as well as books, it is almost as
      impossible to come to a just appreciation of Balzac as it is without
      reading the early works and letters. This miscellaneous work is all the
      more important because a great deal of it represents the artist at quite
      advanced stages of his career, and because all its examples, the earlier
      as well as the later, give us abundant insight on him as he was "making
      himself." The comparison with the early works of Thackeray (in <i>Punch</i>,
      <i>Fraser</i>, and elsewhere) is so striking that it can escape no one who
      knows the two. Every now and then Balzac transferred bodily, or with
      slight alterations, passages from these experiments to his finished
      canvases. It appears that he had a scheme for codifying his "Physiologies"
      (of which the notorious one above mentioned is only a catchpenny exemplar
      and very far from the best) into a seriously organized work. Chance was
      kind or intention was wise in not allowing him to do so; but the value of
      the things for the critical reader is not less. Here are tales&mdash;extensions
      of the scheme and manner of the <i>Oeuvres de Jeunesse</i>, or attempts at
      the <i>goguenard</i> story of 1830&mdash;a thing for which Balzac's hand
      was hardly light enough. Here are interesting evidences of striving to be
      cosmopolitan and polyglot&mdash;the most interesting of all of which, I
      think, is the mention of certain British products as "mufflings."
      "Muffling" used to be a domestic joke for "muffin;" but whether some
      wicked Briton deluded Balzac into the idea that it was the proper form or
      not it is impossible to say. Here is a <i>Traite de la Vie Elegante</i>,
      inestimable for certain critical purposes. So early as 1825 we find a <i>Code
      des Gens Honnetes</i>, which exhibits at once the author's legal studies
      and his constant attraction for the shady side of business, and which
      contains a scheme for defrauding by means of lead pencils, actually
      carried out (if we may believe his exulting note) by some literary
      swindlers with unhappy results. A year later he wrote a <i>Dictionnaire
      des Enseignes de Paris</i>, which we are glad enough to have from the
      author of the <i>Chat-que-Pelote</i>; but the persistence with which this
      kind of miscellaneous writing occupied him could not be better exemplified
      than by the fact that, of two important works which closely follow this in
      the collected edition, the <i>Physiologie de l'Employe</i> dates from 1841
      and the <i>Monographie de la Presse Parisienne</i> from 1843.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is well known that from the time almost of his success as a novelist he
      was given, like too many successful novelists (<i>not</i> like Scott), to
      rather undignified and foolish attacks on critics. The explanation may or
      may not be found in the fact that we have abundant critical work of his,
      and that it is nearly all bad. Now and then we have an acute remark in his
      own special sphere; but as a rule he cannot be complimented on these
      performances, and when he was half-way through his career this critical
      tendency of his culminated in the unlucky <i>Revue Parisienne</i>, which
      he wrote almost entirely himself, with slight assistance from his friends,
      MM. de Belloy and de Grammont. It covers a wide range, but the literary
      part of it is considerable, and this part contains that memorable and
      disastrous attack on Sainte-Beuve, for which the critic afterwards took a
      magnanimous revenge in his obituary <i>causerie</i>. Although the thing is
      not quite unexampled it is not easily to be surpassed in the blind fury of
      its abuse. Sainte-Beuve was by no means invulnerable, and an anti-critic
      who kept his head might have found, as M. de Pontmartin and others did
      find, the joints in his armor. But when, <i>a propos</i> of the <i>Port
      Royal</i> more especially, and of the other works in general, Balzac
      informs us that Sainte-Beuve's great characteristic as a writer is <i>l'ennui,
      l'ennui boueux jusqu'a mi-jambe</i>, that his style is intolerable, that
      his historical handling is like that of Gibbon, Hume, and other dull
      people; when he jeers at him for exhuming "La mere Angelique," and scolds
      him for presuming to obscure the glory of the <i>Roi Soleil</i>, the thing
      is partly ludicrous, partly melancholy. One remembers that agreeable
      Bohemian, who at a symposium once interrupted his host by crying, "Man o'
      the hoose, gie us less o' yer clack and mair o' yer Jairman wine!" Only,
      in human respect and other, we phrase it: "Oh, dear M. de Balzac! give us
      more <i>Eugenie Grandets</i>, more <i>Pere Goriots</i>, more <i>Peaux de
      Chagrin</i>, and don't talk about what you do not understand!"
    </p>
    <p>
      Balzac was a great politician also, and here, though he may not have been
      very much more successful, he talked with more knowledge and competence.
      He must have given himself immense trouble in reading the papers, foreign
      as well as French; he had really mastered a good deal of the political
      religion of a French publicist. It is curious to read, sixty years after
      date, his grave assertion that "<i>La France a la conquete de Madagascar a
      faire</i>," and with certain very pardonable defects (such as his
      Anglophobia), his politics may be pronounced not unintelligent and not
      ungenerous, though somewhat inconsistent and not very distinctly traceable
      to any coherent theory. As for the Anglophobia, the Englishman who thinks
      the less of him for that must have very poor and unhappy brains. A
      Frenchman who does not more or less hate and fear England, an Englishman
      who does not regard France with a more or less good-humored impatience, is
      usually "either a god or a beast," as Aristotle saith. Balzac began with
      an odd but not unintelligible compound, something like Hugo's, of
      Napoleonism and Royalism. In 1824, when he was still in the shades of
      anonymity, he wrote and published two by no means despicable pamphlets in
      favor of Primogeniture and the Jesuits, the latter of which was reprinted
      in 1880 at the last <i>Jesuitenhetze</i> in France. His <i>Lettres sur
      Paris</i> in 1830-31, and his <i>La France et l'Etranger</i> in 1836, are
      two considerable series of letters from "Our Own Correspondent," handling
      the affairs of the world with boldness and industry if not invariably with
      wisdom. They rather suggest (as does the later <i>Revue Parisienne</i>
      still more) the political writing of the age of Anne in England, and
      perhaps a little later, when "the wits" handled politics and society,
      literature and things in general with unquestioned competence and an easy
      universality.
    </p>
    <p>
      The rest of his work which will not appear in this edition may be
      conveniently despatched here. The <i>Physiologie du Mariage</i> and the <i>Scenes
      de la Vie Conjugale</i> suffer not merely from the most obvious of their
      faults but from defect of knowledge. It may or may not be that marriage,
      in the hackneyed phrase, is a net or other receptacle where all the
      outsiders would be in, and all the insiders out. But it is quite clear
      that Coelebs cannot talk of it with much authority. His state may or may
      not be the more gracious: his judgment cannot but lack experience. The
      "Theatre," which brought the author little if any profit, great annoyance,
      and a vast amount of trouble, has been generally condemned by criticism.
      But the <i>Contes Drolatiques</i> are not so to be given up. The famous
      and splendid <i>Succube</i> is only the best of them, and though all are
      more or less tarred with the brush which tars so much of French
      literature, though the attempt to write in an archaic style is at best a
      very successful <i>tour de force</i>, and represents an expenditure of
      brain power by no means justifiable on the part of a man who could have
      made so much better use of it, they are never to be spoken of
      disrespectfully. Those who sneer at their "Wardour Street" Old French are
      not usually the best qualified to do so; and it is not to be forgotten
      that Balzac was a real countryman of Rabelais and a legitimate inheritor
      of <i>Gauloiserie</i>. Unluckily no man can "throw back" in this way,
      except now and then as a mere pastime. And it is fair to recollect that as
      a matter of fact Balzac, after a year or two, did not waste much more time
      on these things, and that the intended ten <i>dizains</i> never, as a
      matter of fact, went beyond three.
    </p>
    <p>
      Besides this work in books, pamphlets, etc., Balzac, as has been said, did
      a certain amount of journalism, especially in the <i>Caricature</i>, his
      performances including, I regret to say, more than one puff of his own
      work; and in this, as well as by the success of the <i>Chouans</i>, he
      became known about 1830 to a much wider circle, both of literary and of
      private acquaintance. It cannot indeed be said that he ever mixed much in
      society; it was impossible that he should do so, considering the vast
      amount of work he did and the manner in which he did it. This subject,
      like that of his speculations, may be better finished off in a single
      passage than dealt with by scattered indications here and there. He was
      not one of those men who can do work by fits and starts in the intervals
      of business or of amusement; nor was he one who, like Scott, could work
      very rapidly. It is true that he often achieved immense quantities of work
      (subject to a caution to be given presently) in a very few days, but then
      his working day was of the most peculiar character. He could not bear
      disturbance; he wrote best at night, and he could not work at all after
      heavy meals. His favorite plan (varied sometimes in detail) was therefore
      to dine lightly about five or six, then to go to bed and sleep till
      eleven, twelve, or one, and then to get up, and with the help only of
      coffee (which he drank very strong and in enormous quantities) to work for
      indefinite stretches of time into the morning or afternoon of the next
      day. He speaks of a sixteen hours' day as a not uncommon shift or spell of
      work, and almost a regular one with him; and on one occasion he avers that
      in the course of forty-eight hours he took but three of the rest, working
      for twenty-two hours and a half continuously on each side thereof. In such
      spells, supposing reasonable facility of composition and mechanical power
      in the hand to keep going all the time, an enormous amount can of course
      be accomplished. A thousand words an hour is anything but an extraordinary
      rate of writing, and fifteen hundred by no means unheard of with persons
      who do not write rubbish.
    </p>
    <p>
      The references to this subject in Balzac's letters are very numerous; but
      it is not easy to extract very definite information from them. It would be
      not only impolite but incorrect to charge him with unveracity. But the
      very heat of imagination which enabled him to produce his work created a
      sort of mirage, through which he seems always to have regarded it; and in
      writing to publishers, editors, creditors, and even his own family, it was
      too obviously his interest to make the most of his labor, his projects,
      and his performance. Even his contemporary, though elder, Southey, the
      hardest-working and the most scrupulously honest man of letters in England
      who could pretend to genius, seems constantly to have exaggerated the idea
      of what he could perform, if not of what he had performed in a given time.
      The most definite statement of Balzac's that I remember is one which
      claims the second number of <i>Sur Catherine de Medicis</i>, "La
      Confidence des Ruggieri," as the production of a single night, and not one
      of the most extravagant of his nights. Now, "La Confidence des Ruggieri"
      fills, in the small edition, eighty pages of nearer four hundred than
      three hundred words each, or some thirty thousand words in all. Nobody in
      the longest of nights could manage that, except by dictating it to
      shorthand clerks. But in the very context of this assertion Balzac assigns
      a much longer period to the correction than to the composition, and this
      brings us to one of the most curious and one of the most famous points of
      his literary history.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some doubts have, I believe, been thrown on the most minute account of his
      ways of composition which we have, that of the publisher Werdet. But there
      is too great a consensus of evidence as to his general system to make the
      received description of it doubtful. According to this, the first draft of
      Balzac's work never presented it in anything like fulness, and sometimes
      it did not amount to a quarter of the bulk finally published. This being
      returned to him from the printer in "slip" on sheets with very large
      margins, he would set to work on the correction; that is to say, on the
      practical rewriting of the thing, with excisions, alterations, and above
      all, additions. A "revise" being executed, he would attack this revise in
      the same manner, and not unfrequently more than once, so that the expenses
      of mere composition and correction of the press were enormously heavy (so
      heavy as to eat into not merely his publisher's but his own profits), and
      that the last state of the book, when published, was something utterly
      different from its first state in manuscript. And it will be obvious that
      if anything like this was usual with him, it is quite impossible to judge
      his actual rapidity of composition by the extent of the published result.
    </p>
    <p>
      However this may be (and it is at least certain that in the years above
      referred to he must have worked his very hardest, even if some of the work
      then published had been more or less excogitated and begun during the
      Wilderness period), he certainly so far left his eremitical habits as to
      become acquainted with most of the great men of letters of the early
      thirties, and also with certain ladies of more or less high rank, who were
      to supply, if not exactly the full models, the texts and starting-points
      for some of the most interesting figures of the <i>Comedie</i>. He knew
      Victor Hugo, but certainly not at this time intimately; for as late as
      1839 the letter in which he writes to Hugo to come and breakfast with him
      at Les Jardies (with interesting and minute directions how to find that
      frail abode of genius) is couched in anything but the tone of a familiar
      friendship. The letters to Beyle of about the same date are also
      incompatible with intimate knowledge. Nodier (after some contrary
      expressions) he seems to have regarded as most good people did regard that
      true man of letters and charming tale-teller; while among the younger
      generation Theophile Gautier and Charles de Bernard, as well as Goslan and
      others, were his real and constant friends. But he does not figure
      frequently or eminently in any of the genuine gossip of the time as a
      haunter of literary circles, and it is very nearly certain that the
      assiduity with which some of his heroes attend <i>salons</i> and clubs had
      no counterpart in his own life. In the first place he was too busy; in the
      second he would not have been at home there. Like the young gentleman in
      <i>Punch</i>, who "did not read books but wrote them," though in no
      satiric sense, he felt it his business not to frequent society but to
      create it.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was, however, aided in the task of creation by the ladies already
      spoken of, who were fairly numerous and of divers degrees. The most
      constant, after his sister Laure, was that sister's schoolfellow, Madame
      Zulma Carraud, the wife of a military official at Angouleme and the
      possessor of a small country estate at Frapesle, near Tours. At both of
      these places Balzac, till he was a very great man, was a constant visitor,
      and with Madame Carraud he kept up for years a correspondence which has
      been held to be merely friendly, and which was certainly in the vulgar
      sense innocent, but which seems to me to be tinged with something of that
      feeling, midway between love and friendship, which appears in Scott's
      letters to Lady Abercorn, and which is probably not so rare as some think.
      Madame de Berny, another family friend of higher rank, was the prototype
      of most of his "angelic" characters, but she died in 1836. He knew the
      Duchesse d'Abrantes, otherwise Madame Junot, and Madame de Girardin,
      otherwise Delphine Gay; but neither seems to have exercised much influence
      over him. It was different with another and more authentic duchess, Madame
      de Castries, after whom he dangled for a considerable time, who certainly
      first encouraged him and probably then snubbed him, and who is thought to
      have been the model of his wickeder great ladies. And it was comparatively
      early in the thirties that he met the woman whom, after nearly twenty
      years, he was at last to marry, getting his death in so doing, the Polish
      Madame Hanska. These, with some relations of the last named, especially
      her daughter, and with a certain "Louise"&mdash;an <i>Inconnue</i> who
      never ceased to be so&mdash;were Balzac's chief correspondents of the
      other sex, and, as far as is known, his chief friends in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      About his life, without extravagant "pudding" of guesswork or of mere
      quotation and abstract of his letters, it would be not so much difficult
      as impossible to say much; and accordingly it is a matter of fact that
      most lives of Balzac, including all good ones, are rather critical than
      narrative. From his real <i>debut</i> with <i>Le Dernier Chouan</i> to his
      departure for Poland on the long visit, or brace of visits, from which he
      returned finally to die, this life consisted solely of work. One of his
      earliest utterances, "<i>Il faut piocher ferme</i>," was his motto to the
      very last, varied only by a certain amount of traveling. Balzac was always
      a considerable traveler; indeed if he had not been so his constitution
      would probably have broken down long before it actually did; and the
      expense of these voyagings (though by his own account he generally
      conducted his affairs with the most rigid economy), together with the
      interruption to his work which they occasioned, entered no doubt for
      something into his money difficulties. He would go to Baden or Vienna for
      a day's sight of Madame Hanska; his Sardinian visit has been already
      noted; and as a specimen of others it may be mentioned that he once
      journeyed from Paris to Besancon, then from Besancon right across France
      to Angouleme, and then back to Paris on some business of selecting paper
      for one of the editions of his books, which his publishers would probably
      have done much better and at much less expense.
    </p>
    <p>
      Still his actual receipts were surprisingly small, partly, it may be,
      owing to his expensive habits of composition, but far more, according to
      his own account, because of the Belgian piracies, from which all popular
      French authors suffered till the government of Napoleon the Third managed
      to put a stop to them. He also lived in such a thick atmosphere of bills
      and advances and cross-claims on and by his publishers, that even if there
      were more documents than there are it would be exceedingly difficult to
      get at facts which are, after all, not very important. He never seems to
      have been paid much more than 500 pounds for the newspaper publication
      (the most valuable by far because the pirates could not interfere with its
      profits) of any one of his novels. And to expensive fashions of
      composition and complicated accounts, a steady back-drag of debt and the
      rest, must be added the very delightful, and to the novelist not useless,
      but very expensive mania for the collector. Balzac had a genuine taste
      for, and thought himself a genuine connoisseur in, pictures, sculpture,
      and objects of art of all kinds, old and new; and though prices in his day
      were not what they are in these, a great deal of money must have run
      through his hands in this way. He calculated the value of the contents of
      the house, which in his last days he furnished with such loving care for
      his wife, and which turned out to be a chamber rather of death than of
      marriage, at some 16,000 pounds. But part of this was Madame Hanska's own
      purchasing, and there were offsets of indebtedness against it almost to
      the last. In short, though during the last twenty years of his life such
      actual "want of pence" as vexed him was not due, as it had been earlier,
      to the fact that the pence refused to come in, but only to imprudent
      management of them, it certainly cannot be said that Honore de Balzac, the
      most desperately hard worker in all literature for such time as was
      allotted him, and perhaps the man of greatest genius who was ever a
      desperately hard worker, falsified that most uncomfortable but truest of
      proverbs&mdash;"Hard work never made money."
    </p>
    <p>
      If, however, he was but scantily rewarded with the money for which he had
      a craving (not absolutely, I think, devoid of a touch of genuine avarice,
      but consisting chiefly of the artist's desire for pleasant and beautiful
      things, and partly presenting a variety or phase of the grandiose
      imagination, which was his ruling characteristic), Balzac had plenty of
      the fame, for which he cared quite as much as he cared for money. Perhaps
      no writer except Voltaire and Goethe earlier made such a really European
      reputation; and his books were of a kind to be more widely read by the
      general public than either Goethe's or Voltaire's. In England (Balzac
      liked the literature but not the country, and never visited England,
      though I believe he planned a visit) this popularity was, for obvious
      reasons, rather less than elsewhere. The respectful vogue which French
      literature had had with the English in the eighteenth century had ceased,
      owing partly to the national enmity revived and fostered by the great war,
      and partly to the growth of a fresh and magnificent literature at home
      during the first thirty years of the nineteenth in England. But Balzac
      could not fail to be read almost at once by the lettered; and he was
      translated pretty early, though not perhaps to any great extent. It was in
      England, moreover, that by far his greatest follower appeared, and
      appeared very shortly. For it would be absurd in the most bigoted admirer
      of Thackeray to deny that the author of <i>Vanity Fair</i>, who was in
      Paris and narrowly watching French literature and French life at the very
      time of Balzac's most exuberant flourishing and education, owed something
      to the author of <i>Le Pere Goriot</i>. There was no copying or imitation;
      the lessons taught by Balzac were too much blended with those of native
      masters, such as Fielding, and too much informed and transformed by
      individual genius. Some may think&mdash;it is a point at issue not merely
      between Frenchmen and Englishmen, but between good judges of both nations
      on each side&mdash;that in absolute veracity and likeness to life, in
      limiting the operation of the inner consciousness on the outward
      observation to strictly artistic scale, Thackeray excelled Balzac as far
      as he fell short of him in the powers of the seer and in the gigantic
      imagination of the prophet. But the relations of pupil and master in at
      least some degree are not, I think, deniable.
    </p>
    <p>
      So things went on in light and in shade, in homekeeping and in travel, in
      debts and in earnings, but always in work of some kind or another, for
      eighteen years from the turning point of 1829. By degrees, as he gained
      fame and ceased to be in the most pressing want of money, Balzac left off
      to some extent, though never entirely, those miscellaneous writings&mdash;reviews
      (including puffs), comic or general sketches, political diatribes,
      "physiologies" and the like&mdash;which, with his discarded prefaces and
      much more interesting matter, were at last, not many years ago, included
      in four stout volumes of the <i>Edition Definitive</i>. With the exception
      of the <i>Physiologies</i> (a sort of short satiric analysis of this or
      that class, character, or personage), which were very popular in the reign
      of Louis Philippe in France, and which Albert Smith and others introduced
      into England, Balzac did not do any of this miscellaneous work extremely
      well. Very shrewd observations are to be found in his reviews, for
      instance his indication, in reviewing La Touche's <i>Fragoletta</i>, of
      that common fault of ambitious novels, a sort of woolly and "ungraspable"
      looseness of construction and story, which constantly bewilders the reader
      as to what is going on. But, as a rule, he was thinking too much of his
      own work and his own principles of working to enter very thoroughly into
      the work of others. His politics, those of a moderate but decided Royalist
      and Conservative, were, as has been said, intelligent in theory, but in
      practice a little distinguished by that neglect of actual business detail
      which has been noticed in his speculations.
    </p>
    <p>
      At last, in the summer of 1847, it seemed as if the Rachel for whom he had
      served nearly if not quite the full fourteen years already, and whose
      husband had long been out of the way, would at last grant herself to him.
      He was invited to Vierzschovnia in the Ukraine, the seat of Madame Hanska,
      or in strictness of her son-in-law, Count Georges Mniszech; and as the
      visit was apparently for no restricted period, and Balzac's pretensions to
      the lady's hand were notorious, it might have seemed that he was as good
      as accepted. But to assume this would have been to mistake what perhaps
      the greatest creation of Balzac's great English contemporary and
      counterpart on the one side, as Thackeray was his contemporary and
      counterpart on the other, considered to be the malignity of widows. What
      the reasons were which made Madame Hanska delay so long in doing what she
      did at last, and might just as well, it would seem, have done years
      before, is not certainly known, and it would be quite unprofitable to
      discuss them. But it was on the 8th of October 1847 that Balzac first
      wrote to his sister from Vierzschovnia, and it was not till the 14th of
      March 1850 that, "in the parish church of Saint Barbara at Berditchef, by
      the Count Abbe Czarski, representing the Bishop of Jitomir (this is as
      characteristic of Balzac in one way as what follows is in another) a
      Madame Eve de Balzac, born Countess Rzevuska, or a Madame Honore de Balzac
      or a Madame de Balzac the elder" came into existence.
    </p>
    <p>
      It does not appear that Balzac was exactly unhappy during this huge
      probation, which was broken by one short visit to Paris. The interest of
      uncertainty was probably much for his ardent and unquiet spirit, and
      though he did very little literary work for him, one may suspect that he
      would not have done very much if he had stayed at Paris, for signs of
      exhaustion, not of genius but of physical power, had shown themselves
      before he left home. But it is not unjust or cruel to say that by the
      delay "Madame Eve de Balzac" (her actual baptismal name was Evelina)
      practically killed her husband. These winters in the severe climate of
      Russian Poland were absolutely fatal to a constitution, and especially to
      lungs, already deeply affected. At Vierzschovnia itself he had illnesses,
      from which he narrowly escaped with life, before the marriage; his heart
      broke down after it; and he and his wife did not reach Paris till the end
      of May. Less than three months afterwards, on the 18th of August, he died,
      having been visited on the very day of his death in the Paradise of
      bric-a-brac which he had created for his Eve in the Rue Fortunee&mdash;a
      name too provocative of Nemesis&mdash;by Victor Hugo, the chief maker in
      verse as he himself was the chief maker in prose of France. He was buried
      at Pere la Chaise. The after-fortunes of his house and its occupants were
      not happy: but they do not concern us.
    </p>
    <p>
      In person Balzac was a typical Frenchman, as indeed he was in most ways.
      From his portraits there would seem to have been more force and address
      than distinction or refinement in his appearance, but, as has been already
      observed, his period was one ungrateful to the iconographer. His
      character, not as a writer but as a man, must occupy us a little longer.
      For some considerable time&mdash;indeed it may be said until the
      publication of his letters&mdash;it was not very favorably judged on the
      whole. We may, of course, dismiss the childish scandals (arising, as
      usual, from clumsy or malevolent misinterpretation of such books as the <i>Physiologie
      de Mariage</i>, the <i>Peau de Chagrin</i>, and a few others), which gave
      rise to the caricatures of him such as that of which we read, representing
      him in a monk's dress at a table covered with bottles and supporting a
      young person on his knee, the whole garnished with the epigraph: Scenes de
      la Vie Cachee. They seem to have given him, personally, a very unnecessary
      annoyance, and indeed he was always rather sensitive to criticism. This
      kind of stupid libel will never cease to be devised by the envious,
      swallowed by the vulgar, and simply neglected by the wise. But Balzac's
      peculiarities, both of life and of work, lent themselves rather fatally to
      a subtler misconstruction which he also anticipated and tried to remove,
      but which took a far stronger hold. He was represented&mdash;and in the
      absence of any intimate male friends to contradict the representation, it
      was certain to obtain some currency&mdash;as in his artistic person a
      sardonic libeler of mankind, who cared only to take foibles and vices for
      his subjects, and who either left goodness and virtue out of sight
      altogether, or represented them as the qualities of fools. In private life
      he was held up as at the best a self-centered egotist who cared for
      nothing but himself and his own work, capable of interrupting one friend
      who told him of the death of a sister by the suggestion that they should
      change the subject and talk of "something real, of <i>Eugenie Grandet</i>,"
      and of levying a fifty per cent commission on another who had written a
      critical notice of his, Balzac's, life and works.*
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
  * Sandeau and Gautier, the victims in these two stories, were
    neither spiteful, nor mendacious, nor irrational, so they are
    probably true. The second was possibly due to Balzac's odd notions
    of "business being business." The first, I have quite recently
    seen reason to think, may have been a sort of reminiscence of one
    of the traits in Diderot's extravagant encomium on Richardson.
</pre>
    <p>
      With the first of these charges he himself, on different occasions, rather
      vainly endeavored to grapple, once drawing up an elaborate list of his
      virtuous and vicious women, and showing that the former outnumbered the
      latter; and, again, laboring (with that curious lack of sense of humor
      which distinguishes all Frenchmen but a very few, and distinguished him
      eminently) to show that though no doubt it is very difficult to make a
      virtuous person interesting, he, Honore de Balzac, had attempted it, and
      succeeded in it, on a quite surprising number of occasions.
    </p>
    <p>
      The fact is that if he had handled this last matter rather more lightly
      his answer would have been a sufficient one, and that in any case the
      charge is not worth answering. It does not lie against the whole of his
      work; and if it lay as conclusively as it does against Swift's, it would
      not necessarily matter. To the artist in analysis as opposed to the
      romance-writer, folly always, and villainy sometimes, does supply a much
      better subject than virtuous success, and if he makes his fools and his
      villains lifelike and supplies them with a fair contrast of better things,
      there is nothing more to be said. He will not, indeed, be a Shakespeare,
      or a Dante, or even a Scott; but we may be very well satisfied with him as
      a Fielding, a Thackeray, or a Balzac. As to the more purely personal
      matter I own that it was some time before I could persuade myself that
      Balzac, to speak familiarly, was a much better fellow than others, and I
      myself, have been accustomed to think him. But it is also some time since
      I came to the conclusion that he was so, and my conversion is not to be
      attributed to any editorial retainer. His education in a lawyer's office,
      the accursed advice about the <i>bonne speculation</i>, and his constant
      straitenings for money, will account for his sometimes looking after the
      main chance rather too narrowly; and as for the Eugenie Grandet story
      (even if the supposition referred to in a note above be fanciful) it
      requires no great stretch of charity or comprehension to see in it nothing
      more awkward, very easily misconstrued, but not necessarily in the least
      heartless or brutal attempt of a rather absent and very much self-centered
      recluse absorbed in one subject, to get his interlocutor as well as
      himself out of painful and useless dwelling on sorrowful matters.
      Self-centered and self-absorbed Balzac no doubt was; he could not have
      lived his life or produced his work if he had been anything else. And it
      must be remembered that he owed extremely little to others; that he had
      the independence as well as the isolation of the self-centered; that he
      never sponged or fawned on a great man, or wronged others of what was due
      to them. The only really unpleasant thing about him that I know, and even
      this is perhaps due to ignorance of all sides of the matter, is a slight
      touch of snobbishness now and then, especially in those late letters from
      Vierzschovnia to Madame de Balzac and Madame Surville, in which, while
      inundating his mother and sister with commissions and requests for
      service, he points out to them what great people the Hanskas and Mniszechs
      are, what infinite honor and profit it will be to be connected with them,
      and how desirable it is to keep struggling engineer brothers-in-law and
      ne'er-do-well brothers in the colonies out of sight lest they should
      disgust the magnates.
    </p>
    <p>
      But these are "sma' sums, sma' sums," as Bailie Jarvie says; and smallness
      of any kind has, whatever it may have to do with Balzac the man, nothing
      to do with Balzac the writer. With him as with some others, but not as
      with the larger number, the sense of <i>greatness</i> increases the longer
      and the more fully he is studied. He resembles, I think, Goethe more than
      any other man of letters&mdash;certainly more than any other of the
      present century&mdash;in having done work which is very frequently, if not
      even commonly, faulty, and in yet requiring that his work shall be known
      as a whole. His appeal is cumulative; it repeats itself on each occasion
      with a slight difference, and though there may now and then be the same
      faults to be noticed, they are almost invariably accompanied, not merely
      by the same, but by fresh merits.
    </p>
    <p>
      As has been said at the beginning of this essay, no attempt will be made
      in it to give that running survey of Balzac's work which is always useful
      and sometimes indispensable in treatment of the kind. But something like a
      summing up of that subject will here be attempted because it is really
      desirable that in embarking on so vast a voyage the reader should have
      some general chart&mdash;some notes of the soundings and log generally of
      those who have gone before him.
    </p>
    <p>
      There are two things, then, which it is more especially desirable to keep
      constantly before one in reading Balzac&mdash;two things which, taken
      together, constitute his almost unique value, and two things which not a
      few critics have failed to take together in him, being under the
      impression that the one excludes the other, and that to admit the other is
      tantamount to a denial of the one. These two things are, first, an immense
      attention to detail, sometimes observed, sometimes invented or imagined;
      and secondly; a faculty of regarding these details through a mental lens
      or arrangement of lenses almost peculiar to himself, which at once
      combines, enlarges, and invests them with a peculiar magical halo or
      mirage. The two thousand personages of the <i>Comedie Humaine</i> are, for
      the most part, "signaled," as the French official word has it, marked and
      denoted by the minutest traits of character, gesture, gait, clothing,
      abode, what not; the transactions recorded are very often given with a
      scrupulous and microscopic accuracy of reporting which no detective could
      outdo. Defoe is not more circumstantial in detail of fact than Balzac;
      Richardson is hardly more prodigal of character-stroke. Yet a very large
      proportion of these characters, of these circumstances, are evidently
      things invented or imagined, not observed. And in addition to this the
      artist's magic glass, his Balzacian speculum, if we may so say (for none
      else has ever had it), transforms even the most rigid observation into
      something flickering and fanciful, the outline as of shadows on the wall,
      not the precise contour of etching or of the camera.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is curious, but not unexampled, that both Balzac himself when he
      struggled in argument with his critics and those of his partisans who have
      been most zealously devoted to him, have usually tried to exalt the first
      and less remarkable of these gifts over the second and infinitely more
      remarkable. Balzac protested strenuously against the use of the word
      "gigantesque" in reference to his work; and of course it is susceptible of
      an unhandsome innuendo. But if we leave that innuendo aside, if we adopt
      the sane reflection that "gigantesque" does not exceed "gigantic," or
      assert as constant failure of greatness, but only indicates that the
      magnifying process is carried on with a certain indiscriminateness, we
      shall find none, I think, which so thoroughly well describes him.
    </p>
    <p>
      The effect of this singular combination of qualities, apparently the most
      opposite, may be partly anticipated, but not quite. It results
      occasionally in a certain shortcoming as regards <i>verite vraie</i>,
      absolute artistic truth to nature. Those who would range Balzac in point
      of such artistic veracity on a level with poetical and universal realists
      like Shakespeare and Dante, or prosaic and particular realists like
      Thackeray and Fielding, seem not only to be utterly wrong but to pay their
      idol the worst of all compliments, that of ignoring his own special
      qualifications. The province of Balzac may not be&mdash;I do no think it
      is&mdash;identical, much less co-extensive, with that of nature. But it is
      his own&mdash;a partly real, partly fantastic region, where the lights,
      the shades, the dimensions, and the physical laws are slightly different
      from those of this world of ours, but with which, owing to the things it
      has in common with that world, we are able to sympathize, which we can
      traverse and comprehend. Every now and then the artist uses his observing
      faculty more, and his magnifying and distorting lens less; every now and
      then he reverses the proportion. Some tastes will like him best in the one
      stage; some in the other; the happier constituted will like him best in
      both. These latter will decline to put <i>Eugenie Grandet</i> above the <i>Peau
      de Chagrin</i>, or <i>Le Pere Goriot</i> above the wonderful handful of
      tales which includes <i>La Recherche de l'Absolu</i> and <i>Le
      Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu</i>, though they will no doubt recognize that even
      in the first two named members of these pairs the Balzacian quality, that
      of magnifying and rendering grandiose, is present, and that the martyrdom
      of Eugenie, the avarice of her father, the blind self-devotion of Goriot
      to his thankless and worthless children, would not be what they are if
      they were seen through a perfectly achromatic and normal medium.
    </p>
    <p>
      This specially Balzacian quality is, I think, unique. It is like&mdash;it
      may almost be said to <i>be</i>&mdash;the poetic imagination, present in
      magnificent volume and degree, but in some miraculous way deprived and
      sterilized of the specially poetical quality. By this I do not of course
      mean that Balzac did not write in verse: we have a few verses of his, and
      they are pretty bad, but that is neither here nor there. The difference
      between Balzac and a great poet lies not in the fact that the one fills
      the whole page with printed words, and the other only a part of it&mdash;but
      in something else. If I could put that something else into distinct words
      I should therein attain the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, the
      <i>primum mobile</i>, the <i>grand arcanum</i>, not merely of criticism
      but of all things. It might be possible to coast about it, to hint at it,
      by adumbrations and in consequences. But it is better and really more
      helpful to face the difficulty boldly, and to say that Balzac, approaching
      a great poet nearer perhaps than any other prose writer in any language,
      is distinguished from one by the absence of the very last touch, the
      finally constituting quiddity, which makes a great poet different from
      Balzac.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, when we make this comparison, it is of the first interest to remember&mdash;and
      it is one of the uses of the comparison, that it suggests the remembrance
      of the fact&mdash;that the great poets have usually been themselves
      extremely exact observers of detail. It has not made them great poets; but
      they would not be great poets without it. And when Eugenie Grandet starts
      from <i>le petit banc de bois</i> at the reference to it in her
      scoundrelly cousin's letter (to take only one instance out of a thousand),
      we see in Balzac the same observation, subject to the limitation just
      mentioned, that we see in Dante and Shakespeare, in Chaucer and Tennyson.
      But the great poets do not as a rule <i>accumulate</i> detail. Balzac
      does, and from this very accumulation he manages to derive that singular
      gigantesque vagueness&mdash;differing from the poetic vague, but ranking
      next to it&mdash;which I have here ventured to note as his distinguishing
      quality. He bewilders us a very little by it, and he gives us the
      impression that he has slightly bewildered himself. But the compensations
      of the bewilderment are large.
    </p>
    <p>
      For in this labyrinth and whirl of things, in this heat and hurry of
      observation and imagination, the special intoxication of Balzac consists.
      Every great artist has his own means of producing this intoxication, and
      it differs in result like the stimulus of beauty or of wine. Those persons
      who are unfortunate enough to see in Balzac little or nothing but an
      ingenious piler-up of careful strokes&mdash;a man of science taking his
      human documents and classing them after an orderly fashion in portfolio
      and deed-box&mdash;must miss this intoxication altogether. It is much more
      agreeable as well as much more accurate to see in the manufacture of the
      <i>Comedie</i> the process of a Cyclopean workshop&mdash;the bustle, the
      hurry, the glare and shadow, the steam and sparks of Vulcanian forging.
      The results, it is true, are by no means confused or disorderly&mdash;neither
      were those of the forges that worked under Lipari&mdash;but there
      certainly went much more to them than the dainty fingering of a literary
      fretwork-maker or the dull rummagings of a realist <i>a la Zola</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      In part, no doubt, and in great part, the work of Balzac is dream-stuff
      rather than life-stuff, and it is all the better for that. What is better
      than dreams? But the coherence of his visions, their bulk, their solidity,
      the way in which they return to us and we return to them, make them such
      dream-stuff as there is all too little of in this world. If it is true
      that evil on the whole predominates over good in the vision of this
      "Voyant," as Philarete Chasles so justly called him, two very respectable,
      and in one case very large, though somewhat opposed divisions of mankind,
      the philosophic pessimist and the convinced and consistent Christian
      believer, will tell us that this is at least not one of the points in
      which it is unfaithful to life. If the author is closer and more faithful
      in his study of meanness and vice than in his studies of nobility and
      virtue, the blame is due at least as much to his models as to himself. If
      he has seldom succeeded in combining a really passionate with a really
      noble conception of love, very few of his countrymen have been more
      fortunate in that respect. If in some of his types&mdash;his journalists,
      his married women, and others&mdash;he seems to have sacrificed to
      conventions, let us remember that those who know attribute to his
      conventions such a power if not altogether such a holy influence that two
      generations of the people he painted have actually lived more and more up
      to his painting of them.
    </p>
    <p>
      And last of all, but also greatest, has to be considered the immensity of
      his imaginative achievement, the huge space that he has filled for us with
      vivid creation, the range of amusement, of instruction, of (after a
      fashion) edification which he has thrown open for us all to walk in. It is
      possible that he himself and others more or less well-meaningly, though
      more or less maladroitly, following his lead, may have exaggerated the
      coherence and the architectural design of the <i>Comedie</i>. But it has
      coherence and it has design; nor shall we find anything exactly to
      parallel it. In mere bulk the <i>Comedie</i> probably, if not certainly,
      exceeds the production of any novelist of the first class in any kind of
      fiction except Dumas, and with Dumas, for various and well-known reasons,
      there is no possibility of comparing it. All others yield in bulk; all in
      a certain concentration and intensity; none even aims at anything like the
      same system and completeness. It must be remembered that owing to
      shortness of life, lateness of beginning, and the diversion of the author
      to other work, the <i>Comedie</i> is the production, and not the sole
      production, of some seventeen or eighteen years at most. Not a volume of
      it, for all that failure to reach the completest perfection in form and
      style which has been acknowledged, can be accused of thinness, of scamped
      work, of mere repetition, of mere cobbling up. Every one bears the marks
      of steady and ferocious labor, as well as of the genius which had at last
      come where it had been so earnestly called and had never gone away again.
      It is possible to overpraise Balzac in parts or to mispraise him as a
      whole. But so long as inappropriate and superfluous comparisons are
      avoided and as his own excellence is recognized and appreciated, it is
      scarcely possible to overestimate that excellence in itself and for
      itself. He stands alone; even with Dickens, who is his nearest analogue,
      he shows far more points of difference than of likeness. His vastness of
      bulk is not more remarkable than his peculiarity of quality; and when
      these two things coincide in literature or elsewhere, then that in which
      they coincide may be called, and must be called, Great, without hesitation
      and without reserve.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
                                                    GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
</pre>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_APPE" id="link2H_APPE">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      APPENDIX
    </h2>
    <p>
      THE BALZAC PLAN OF THE COMEDIE HUMAINE
    </p>
    <p>
      The form in which the Comedie Humaine was left by its author, with the
      exceptions of <i>Le Depute d'Arcis</i> (incomplete) and <i>Les Petits
      Bourgeois</i>, both of which were added, some years later, by the Edition
      Definitive.
    </p>
    <p>
      The original French titles are followed by their English equivalents.
      Literal translations have been followed, excepting a few instances where
      preference is shown for a clearer or more comprehensive English title.
    </p>
    <div class="mynote">
      <p>
        [Note from Team Balzac, the Etext preparers: In some cases more than one
        English translation is commonly used for various translations/editions.
        In such cases the first translation is from the Saintsbury edition
        copyrighted in 1901 and that is the title referred to in the personages
        following most of the stories. We have added other title translations of
        which we are currently aware for the readers' convenience.]
      </p>
      <br />
    </div>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <h1>
      COMEDIE HUMAINE
    </h1>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      SCENES DE LA VIE PRIVEE
    </h2>
    <p>
      SCENES FROM PRIVATE LIFE
    </p>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1680/1680-h/1680-h.htm"> <b>At
          the Sign of the Cat and Racket</b></a> (<i>La Maison du Chat-qui
          Pelote</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1305/1305-h/1305-h.htm"> <b>The
          Ball at Sceaux</b></a> (<i>Le Bal de Sceaux</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1196/1196-h/1196-h.htm"> <b>The
          Purse</b></a> (<i>La Bourse</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1374/1374-h/1374-h.htm"> <b>Vendetta</b></a>
          (<i>La Vendetta</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1357/1357-h/1357-h.htm"> <b>Madame
          Firmiani</b></a> (<i>Mme. Firmiani</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1810/1810-h/1810-h.htm"> <b>A
          Second Home</b></a> (<i>Une Double Famille</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1411/1411-h/1411-h.htm"> <b>Domestic
          Peace</b></a> (<i>La Paix du Menage</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1369/1369-h/1369-h.htm"> <b>Paz</b></a>
          (<i>La Fausse Maitresse</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1373/1373-h/1373-h.htm"> <b>Study
          of a Woman</b></a> (<i>Etude de femme</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1714/1714-h/1714-h.htm"> <b>Another
          Study of Woman</b></a> (<i>Autre etude de femme</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1710/1710-h/1710-h.htm"> <b>The
          Grand Breteche</b></a> (<i>La Grande Breteche</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1898/1898-h/1898-h.htm"> <b>Albert
          Savarus</b></a> (<i>Albert Savarus</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1941/1941-h/1941-h.htm"> <b>Letters
          of Two Brides</b></a> (<i>Memoires de deux Jeunes Mariees</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1481/1481-h/1481-h.htm"> <b>A
          Daughter of Eve</b></a> (<i>Une Fille d'Eve</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1950/1950-h/1950-h.htm"> <b>A
          Woman of Thirty</b></a> (<i>La Femme de Trente Ans</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1729/1729-h/1729-h.htm"> <b>The
          Deserted Woman</b></a> (<i>La Femme abandonnee</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1428/1428-h/1428-h.htm"> <b>La
          Grenadiere</b></a> (<i>La Grenadiere</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1189/1189-h/1189-h.htm"> <b>The
          Message</b></a> (<i>Le Message</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1389/1389-h/1389-h.htm"> <b>Gobseck</b></a>
          (<i>Gobseck</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1556/1556-h/1556-h.htm"> <b>The
          Marriage Contract</b></a> (<i>Le Contrat de Mariage</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1403/1403-h/1403-h.htm"> <b>A
          Start in Life</b></a> (<i>Un Debut dans la vie</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1482/1482-h/1482-h.htm"> <b>Modeste
          Mignon</b></a> (<i>Modeste Mignon</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1957/1957-h/1957-h.htm"> <b>Beatrix</b></a>
          (<i>Beatrix</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1683/1683-h/1683-h.htm"> <b>Honorine</b></a>
          (<i>Honorine</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1954/1954-h/1954-h.htm"> <b>Colonel
          Chabert</b></a> (<i>Le Colonel Chabert</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1220/1220-h/1220-h.htm"> <b>The
          Atheist's Mass</b></a> (<i>La Messe de l'Athee</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1410/1410-h/1410-h.htm"> <b>The
          Commission in Lunacy</b></a> (<i>L'Interdiction</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1230/1230-h/1230-h.htm"> <b>Pierre
          Grassou</b></a> (<i>Pierre Grassou</i>)<br />
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
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    <h2>
      SCENES DE LA VIE PROVINCE
    </h2>
    <p>
      SCENES FROM PROVINCIAL LIFE
    </p>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          Ursule Mirouet (<i>Ursule Mirouet</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1715/1715-h/1715-h.htm"> <b>Eugenie
          Grandet</b></a> (<i>Eugenie Grandet</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1704/1704-h/1704-h.htm"> <b>Pierrette</b></a>
          (<i>Les Celibataires, Pierrette</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1345/1345-h/1345-h.htm"> <b>The
          Vicar of Tours</b></a> (<i>Le Cure de Tours</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1380/1380-h/1380-h.htm"> <b>The
          Two Brothers, (The Black Sheep)</b></a> (<i>Un Menage de Garcon, La
          Rabouilleuse</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1474/1474-h/1474-h.htm"> <b>The
          Illustrious Gaudissart</b></a> (<i>L'illustre Gaudissart, Parisians in
          the Country</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1912/1912-h/1912-h.htm"> <b>The
          Muse of the Department</b></a> (<i>La Muse du departement</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1352/1352-h/1352-h.htm"> <b>The
          Old Maid, Jealousies of a Country Town</b></a> (<i>La Vieille Fille,
          Les Rivalites</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1405/1405-h/1405-h.htm"> <b>The
          Collection of Antiquities</b></a> (<i>Le Cabinet des antiques</i>)<br />
          <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1569/1569-h/1569-h.htm"> <b>The
          Lily of the Valley</b></a> (<i>Le Lys dans la Vallee</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1443/1443-h/1443-h.htm"> <b>Two
          Poets, Lost Illusions:&mdash;I.</b></a> (<i>Les Deux Poetes, Illusions
          Perdues:&mdash;I.</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1559/1559-h/1559-h.htm"> <b>A
          Distinguished Provincial at Paris</b></a> (<i>Un Grand homme de
          province a Paris, 1re partie</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1639/1639-h/1639-h.htm"> <b>Eve
          and David</b></a> (<i>Eve et David</i>)<br />
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
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    <h2>
      SCENES DE LA VIE PARISIENNE
    </h2>
    <p>
      SCENES FROM PARISIAN LIFE
    </p>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1660/1660-h/1660-h.htm"> <b>Scenes
          from a Courtesan's Life, Esther Happy</b></a> (<i>Splendeurs et
          Miseres des Courtisanes</i><br /> What Love Costs an Old Man (<i>A
          combien l'amour revient aux vieillards</i>)<br /> The End of Evil Ways
          (<i>Ou menent les mauvais Chemins</i>)<br /> Vautrin's Last Avatar (La
          derniere Incarnation de Vautrin)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1812/1812-h/1812-h.htm"> <b>A
          Prince of Bohemia</b></a> (<i>Un Prince de la Boheme</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1813/1813-h/1813-h.htm"> <b>A Man
          of Business</b></a> (<i>Un Homme d'affaires</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1475/1475-h/1475-h.htm"> <b>Gaudissart
          II</b></a> (<i>Gaudissart II.</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1242/1242-h/1242-h.htm"> <b>Unconscious
          Comedians, The Unconscious Humorists</b></a> (<i>Les Comediens sans le
          savoir</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1649/1649-h/1649-h.htm"> <b>Ferragus,
          The Thirteen</b></a> (Ferragus, Histoire des Treize)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/469/469-h/469-h.htm"> <b>The
          Duchesse de Langeais</b></a> (<i>La Duchesse de Langeais</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1659/1659-h/1659-h.htm"> <b>Girl
          with the Golden Eyes</b></a> (<i>La Fille aux yeux d'or</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1237/1237-h/1237-h.htm"> <b>Father
          Goriot, Old Goriot</b></a> (<i>Le Pere Goriot</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1942/1942-h/1942-h.htm"> <b>Rise
          and Fall of Cesar Birotteau</b></a> (<i>Grandeur et Decadence de Cesar
          Birotteau</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1294/1294-h/1294-h.htm"> <b>The
          Firm of Nucingen</b></a> (<i>La Maison Nucingen</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1344/1344-h/1344-h.htm"> <b>Secrets
          of the Princesse de Cadignan</b></a> (<i>Les Secrets de la princesse
          de Cadignan</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1343/1343-h/1343-h.htm"> <b>Bureaucracy,
          The Government Clerks</b></a> (<i>Les Employes</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1826/1826-h/1826-h.htm"> <b>Sarrasine</b></a>
          (<i>Sarrasine</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1737/1737-h/1737-h.htm"> <b>Facino
          Cane</b></a> (<i>Facino Cane</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1749/1749-h/1749-h.htm"> <b>Cousin
          Betty, Poor Relations:&mdash;I.</b></a> (<i>La Cousine Bette, Les
          Parents Pauvres:&mdash;I.</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1856/1856-h/1856-h.htm"> <b>Cousin
          Pons, Poor Relations:&mdash;II.</b></a> (<i>Le Cousin Pons, Les
          Parents Pauvres:&mdash;II.</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1641/1641-h/1641-h.htm"> <b>The
          Lesser Bourgeoisie, The Middle Classes</b></a> (<i>Les Petits
          Bourgeois</i>)<br />
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
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    <h2>
      SCENES DE LA VIE POLITIQUE
    </h2>
    <p>
      SCENES FROM POLITICAL LIFE
    </p>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1678/1678-h/1678-h.htm"> <b>An
          Historical Mystery, The Gondreville Mystery</b></a> (<i>Une Tenebreuse
          Affaire</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1456/1456-h/1456-h.htm"> <b>An
          Episode Under the Terror</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</a> (<i>Un Episode sous
          la Terreur</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1967/1967-h/1967-h.htm"> <b>Brotherhood
          of Consolation, Seamy Side of History</b></a> (<i>Mme. de la
          Chanterie, L'Envers de l'Histoire Contemporaine)</i><br /> Initiated,
          The Initiate (<i>L'Initie</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1841/1841-h/1841-h.htm"> <b>Z.
          Marcas</b></a> (<i>Z. Marcas</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1871/1871-h/1871-h.htm"> <b>The
          Deputy of Arcis, The Member for Arcis</b></a> (<i>Le Depute d'Arcis</i>)<br />
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
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    <h2>
      SCENES DE LA VIE MILITAIRE
    </h2>
    <p>
      SCENES FROM MILITARY LIFE
    </p>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1921/1921-h/1921-h.htm"> <b>The
          Chouans</b></a> (<i>Les Chouans</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1555/1555-h/1555-h.htm"> <b>A
          Passion in the Desert</b></a> (<i>Une Passion dans le desert</i>)<br />
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
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    <h2>
      SCENES DE LA VIE DE CAMPAGNE
    </h2>
    <p>
      SCENES FROM COUNTRY LIFE
    </p>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1350/1350-h/1350-h.htm"> <b>The
          Country Doctor</b></a> (<i>Le Medecin de Campagne</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1899/1899-h/1899-h.htm"> <b>The
          Village Rector, The Country Parson</b></a> (<i>Le Cure de Village</i>)<br />
          <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1417/1417-h/1417-h.htm"> <b>Sons
          of the Soil, The Peasantry</b></a> (<i>Les Paysans</i>)<br />
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
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    <h2>
      ETUDES PHILOSOPHIQUES
    </h2>
    <p>
      PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
    </p>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1307/1307-h/1307-h.htm"> <b>The
          Magic Skin</b></a> (<i>La Peau de Chagrin</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1453/1453-h/1453-h.htm"> <b>The
          Alkahest, The Quest of the Absolute</b></a> (<i>La Recherche de
          l'Absolu</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1940/1940-h/1940-h.htm"> <b>Christ
          in Flanders</b></a> (<i>Jesus-Christ en Flandre</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1277/1277-h/1277-h.htm"> <b>Melmoth
          Reconciled</b></a> (<i>Melmoth reconcilie</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23060/23060-h/23060-h.htm"> <b>The
          Unknown Masterpiece, The Hidden Masterpiece</b></a> (<i>Le
          Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1455/1455-h/1455-h.htm"> <b>The
          Hated Son</b></a> (<i>L'Enfant Maudit</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1873/1873-h/1873-h.htm"> <b>Gambara</b></a>
          (<i>Gambara</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1811/1811-h/1811-h.htm"> <b>Massimilla
          Doni</b></a> (<i>Massimilla Doni</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1437/1437-h/1437-h.htm"> <b>Juana,
          The Maranas</b></a> (<i>Les Marana</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5873/5873-h/5873-h.htm"> <b>Farewell</b></a>
          (<i>Adieu</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1426/1426-h/1426-h.htm"> <b>The
          Recruit, The Conscript</b></a> (<i>Le Requisitionnaire</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1425/1425-h/1425-h.htm"> <b>El
          Verdugo</b></a> (<i>El Verdugo</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1427/1427-h/1427-h.htm"> <b>A
          Drama on the Seashore, A Seaside Tragedy</b></a> (<i>Un Drame au bord
          de la mer</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1433/1433-h/1433-h.htm"> <b>The
          Red Inn</b></a> (<i>L'Auberge rouge</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1215/1215-h/1215-h.htm"> <b>The
          Elixir of Life</b></a> (<i>L'Elixir de longue vie</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1454/1454-h/1454-h.htm"> <b>Maitre
          Cornelius</b></a> (<i>Maitre Cornelius</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1854/1854-h/1854-h.htm"> <b>Catherine
          de' Medici, The Calvinist Martyr</b></a> (<i>Sur Catherine de Medicis,
          Le Martyr calviniste</i>)<br /> The Ruggieri's Secret, (<i>La
          Confidence des Ruggieri</i>)<br /> The Two Dreams (<i>Les Deux Reves</i>)
          <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1943/1943-h/1943-h.htm"> <b>Louis
          Lambert</b></a> (<i>Louis Lambert</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1884/1884-h/1884-h.htm"> <b>The
          Exiles</b></a> (<i>Les Proscrits</i>)<br /> <a
          href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1432/1432-h/1432-h.htm"> <b>Seraphita</b></a>
          (<i>Seraphita</i>)<br />
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
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    <h2>
      AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
    </h2>
    <p>
      In giving the general title of "The Human Comedy" to a work begun nearly
      thirteen years since, it is necessary to explain its motive, to relate its
      origin, and briefly sketch its plan, while endeavoring to speak of these
      matters as though I had no personal interest in them. This is not so
      difficult as the public might imagine. Few works conduce to much vanity;
      much labor conduces to great diffidence. This observation accounts for the
      study of their own works made by Corneille, Moliere, and other great
      writers; if it is impossible to equal them in their fine conceptions, we
      may try to imitate them in this feeling.
    </p>
    <p>
      The idea of <i>The Human Comedy</i> was at first as a dream to me, one of
      those impossible projects which we caress and then let fly; a chimera that
      gives us a glimpse of its smiling woman's face, and forthwith spreads its
      wings and returns to a heavenly realm of phantasy. But this chimera, like
      many another, has become a reality; has its behests, its tyranny, which
      must be obeyed.
    </p>
    <p>
      The idea originated in a comparison between Humanity and Animality.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is a mistake to suppose that the great dispute which has lately made a
      stir, between Cuvier and Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, arose from a scientific
      innovation. Unity of structure, under other names, had occupied the
      greatest minds during the two previous centuries. As we read the
      extraordinary writings of the mystics who studied the sciences in their
      relation to infinity, such as Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, and others, and
      the works of the greatest authors on Natural History&mdash;Leibnitz,
      Buffon, Charles Bonnet, etc., we detect in the <i>monads</i> of Leibnitz,
      in the <i>organic molecules</i> of Buffon, in the <i>vegetative force</i>
      of Needham, in the correlation of similar organs of Charles Bonnet&mdash;who
      in 1760 was so bold as to write, "Animals vegetate as plants do"&mdash;we
      detect, I say, the rudiments of the great law of Self for Self, which lies
      at the root of <i>Unity of Plan</i>. There is but one Animal. The Creator
      works on a single model for every organized being. "The Animal" is
      elementary, and takes its external form, or, to be accurate, the
      differences in its form, from the environment in which it is obliged to
      develop. Zoological species are the result of these differences. The
      announcement and defence of this system, which is indeed in harmony with
      our preconceived ideas of Divine Power, will be the eternal glory of
      Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier's victorious opponent on this point of
      higher science, whose triumph was hailed by Goethe in the last article he
      wrote.
    </p>
    <p>
      I, for my part, convinced of this scheme of nature long before the
      discussion to which it has given rise, perceived that in this respect
      society resembled nature. For does not society modify Man, according to
      the conditions in which he lives and acts, into men as manifold as the
      species in Zoology? The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man
      of business, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant, a
      sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not so easy to
      define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass, the crow, the shark,
      the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus social species have always existed, and
      will always exist, just as there are zoological species. If Buffon could
      produce a magnificent work by attempting to represent in a book the whole
      realm of zoology, was there not room for a work of the same kind on
      society? But the limits set by nature to the variations of animals have no
      existence in society. When Buffon describes the lion, he dismisses the
      lioness with a few phrases; but in society a wife is not always the female
      of the male. There may be two perfectly dissimilar beings in one
      household. The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy of a prince, and
      the wife of a prince is often worthless compared with the wife of an
      artisan. The social state has freaks which Nature does not allow herself;
      it is nature <i>plus</i> society. The description of social species would
      thus be at least double that of animal species, merely in view of the two
      sexes. Then, among animals the drama is limited; there is scarcely any
      confusion; they turn and rend each other&mdash;that is all. Men, too, rend
      each other; but their greater or less intelligence makes the struggle far
      more complicated. Though some savants do not yet admit that the animal
      nature flows into human nature through an immense tide of life, the grocer
      certainly becomes a peer, and the noble sometimes sinks to the lowest
      social grade. Again, Buffon found that life was extremely simple among
      animals. Animals have little property, and neither arts nor sciences;
      while man, by a law that has yet to be sought, has a tendency to express
      his culture, his thoughts, and his life in everything he appropriates to
      his use. Though Leuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Spallanzani, Reaumur, Charles
      Bonnet, Muller, Haller and other patient investigators have shown us how
      interesting are the habits of animals, those of each kind, are, at least
      to our eyes, always and in every age alike; whereas the dress, the
      manners, the speech, the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a
      citizen, a priest, and a pauper are absolutely unlike, and change with
      every phase of civilization.
    </p>
    <p>
      Hence the work to be written needed a threefold form&mdash;men, women, and
      things; that is to say, persons and the material expression of their
      minds; man, in short, and life.
    </p>
    <p>
      As we read the dry and discouraging list of events called History, who can
      have failed to note that the writers of all periods, in Egypt, Persia,
      Greece, and Rome, have forgotten to give us a history of manners? The
      fragment of Petronius on the private life of the Romans excites rather
      than satisfies our curiosity. It was from observing this great void in the
      field of history that the Abbe Barthelemy devoted his life to a
      reconstruction of Greek manners in <i>Le Jeune Anacharsis</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      But how could such a drama, with the four or five thousand persons which
      society offers, be made interesting? How, at the same time, please the
      poet, the philosopher, and the masses who want both poetry and philosophy
      under striking imagery? Though I could conceive of the importance and of
      the poetry of such a history of the human heart, I saw no way of writing
      it; for hitherto the most famous story-tellers had spent their talent in
      creating two or three typical actors, in depicting one aspect of life. It
      was with this idea that I read the works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott,
      the modern troubadour, or finder (<i>trouvere=trouveur</i>), had just then
      given an aspect of grandeur to a class of composition unjustly regarded as
      of the second rank. Is it not really more difficult to compete with
      personal and parochial interests by writing of Daphnis and Chloe, Roland,
      Amadis, Panurge, Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace, Robinson
      Crusoe, Gil Blas, Ossian, Julie d'Etanges, My Uncle Toby, Werther,
      Corinne, Adolphe, Paul and Virginia, Jeanie Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe,
      Manfred, Mignon, than to set forth in order facts more or less similar in
      every country, to investigate the spirit of laws that have fallen into
      desuetude, to review the theories which mislead nations, or, like some
      metaphysicians, to explain what <i>Is</i>? In the first place, these
      actors, whose existence becomes more prolonged and more authentic than
      that of the generations which saw their birth, almost always live solely
      on condition of their being a vast reflection of the present. Conceived in
      the womb of their own period, the whole heart of humanity stirs within
      their frame, which often covers a complete system of philosophy. Thus
      Walter Scott raised to the dignity of the philosophy of History the
      literature which, from age to age, sets perennial gems in the poetic crown
      of every nation where letters are cultivated. He vivified it with the
      spirit of the past; he combined drama, dialogue, portrait, scenery, and
      description; he fused the marvelous with truth&mdash;the two elements of
      the times; and he brought poetry into close contact with the familiarity
      of the humblest speech. But as he had not so much devised a system as hit
      upon a manner in the ardor of his work, or as its logical outcome, he
      never thought of connecting his compositions in such a way as to form a
      complete history of which each chapter was a novel, and each novel the
      picture of a period.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was by discerning this lack of unity, which in no way detracts from the
      Scottish writer's greatness, that I perceived at once the scheme which
      would favor the execution of my purpose, and the possibility of executing
      it. Though dazzled, so to speak, by Walter Scott's amazing fertility,
      always himself and always original, I did not despair, for I found the
      source of his genius in the infinite variety of human nature. Chance is
      the greatest romancer in the world; we have only to study it. French
      society would be the real author; I should only be the secretary. By
      drawing up an inventory of vices and virtues, by collecting the chief
      facts of the passions, by depicting characters, by choosing the principal
      incidents of social life, by composing types out of a combination of
      homogeneous characteristics, I might perhaps succeed in writing the
      history which so many historians have neglected: that of Manners. By
      patience and perseverance I might produce for France in the nineteenth
      century the book which we must all regret that Rome, Athens, Tyre,
      Memphis, Persia, and India have not bequeathed to us; that history of
      their social life which, prompted by the Abbe Barthelemy, Monteil
      patiently and steadily tried to write for the Middle Ages, but in an
      unattractive form.
    </p>
    <p>
      This work, so far, was nothing. By adhering to the strict lines of a
      reproduction a writer might be a more or less faithful, and more or less
      successful, painter of types of humanity, a narrator of the dramas of
      private life, an archaeologist of social furniture, a cataloguer of
      professions, a registrar of good and evil; but to deserve the praise of
      which every artist must be ambitious, must I not also investigate the
      reasons or the cause of these social effects, detect the hidden sense of
      this vast assembly of figures, passions, and incidents? And finally,
      having sought&mdash;I will not say having found&mdash;this reason, this
      motive power, must I not reflect on first principles, and discover in what
      particulars societies approach or deviate from the eternal law of truth
      and beauty? In spite of the wide scope of the preliminaries, which might
      of themselves constitute a book, the work, to be complete, would need a
      conclusion. Thus depicted, society ought to bear in itself the reason of
      its working.
    </p>
    <p>
      The law of the writer, in virtue of which he is a writer, and which I do
      not hesitate to say makes him the equal, or perhaps the superior, of the
      statesman, is his judgment, whatever it may be, on human affairs, and his
      absolute devotion to certain principles. Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bossuet,
      Leibnitz, Kant, Montesquieu, <i>are</i> the science which statesmen apply.
      "A writer ought to have settled opinions on morals and politics; he should
      regard himself as a tutor of men; for men need no masters to teach them to
      doubt," says Bonald. I took these noble words as my guide long ago; they
      are the written law of the monarchical writer. And those who would confute
      me by my own words will find that they have misinterpreted some ironical
      phrase, or that they have turned against me a speech given to one of my
      actors&mdash;a trick peculiar to calumniators.
    </p>
    <p>
      As to the intimate purpose, the soul of this work, these are the
      principles on which it is based.
    </p>
    <p>
      Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and capabilities;
      society, far from depraving him, as Rousseau asserts, improves him, makes
      him better; but self-interest also develops his evil tendencies.
      Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being&mdash;as I have pointed out in
      the Country Doctor (<i>le Medecin de Campagne</i>)&mdash;a complete system
      for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the most powerful
      element of social order.
    </p>
    <p>
      In reading attentively the presentment of society cast, as it were, from
      the life, with all that is good and all that is bad in it, we learn this
      lesson&mdash;if thought, or if passion, which combines thought and
      feeling, is the vital social element, it is also its destructive element.
      In this respect social life is like the life of man. Nations live long
      only by moderating their vital energy. Teaching, or rather education, by
      religious bodies is the grand principle of life for nations, the only
      means of diminishing the sum of evil and increasing the sum of good in all
      society. Thought, the living principle of good and ill, can only be
      trained, quelled, and guided by religion. The only possible religion is
      Christianity (see the letter from Paris in "Louis Lambert," in which the
      young mystic explains, <i>a propos</i> to Swedenborg's doctrines, how
      there has never been but one religion since the world began). Christianity
      created modern nationalities, and it will preserve them. Hence, no doubt,
      the necessity for the monarchical principle. Catholicism and Royalty are
      twin principles.
    </p>
    <p>
      As to the limits within which these two principles should be confined by
      various institutions, so that they may not become absolute, every one will
      feel that a brief preface ought not to be a political treatise. I cannot,
      therefore, enter on religious discussions, nor on the political
      discussions of the day. I write under the light of two eternal truths&mdash;Religion
      and Monarchy; two necessities, as they are shown to be by contemporary
      events, towards which every writer of sound sense ought to try to guide
      the country back. Without being an enemy to election, which is an
      excellent principle as a basis of legislation, I reject election regarded
      as <i>the only social instrument</i>, especially so badly organized as it
      now is (1842); for it fails to represent imposing minorities, whose ideas
      and interests would occupy the attention of a monarchical government.
      Elective power extended to all gives us government by the masses, the only
      irresponsible form of government, under which tyranny is unlimited, for it
      calls itself law. Besides, I regard the family and not the individual as
      the true social unit. In this respect, at the risk of being thought
      retrograde, I side with Bossuet and Bonald instead of going with modern
      innovators. Since election has become the only social instrument, if I
      myself were to exercise it no contradiction between my acts and my words
      should be inferred. An engineer points out that a bridge is about to fall,
      that it is dangerous for any one to cross it; but he crosses it himself
      when it is the only road to the town. Napoleon adapted election to the
      spirit of the French nation with wonderful skill. The least important
      members of his Legislative Body became the most famous orators of the
      Chamber after the Restoration. No Chamber has ever been the equal of the
      <i>Corps Legislatif</i>, comparing them man for man. The elective system
      of the Empire was, then, indisputably the best.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some persons may, perhaps, think that this declaration is somewhat
      autocratic and self-assertive. They will quarrel with the novelist for
      wanting to be an historian, and will call him to account for writing
      politics. I am simply fulfilling an obligation&mdash;that is my reply. The
      work I have undertaken will be as long as a history; I was compelled to
      explain the logic of it, hitherto unrevealed, and its principles and moral
      purpose.
    </p>
    <p>
      Having been obliged to withdraw the prefaces formerly published, in
      response to essentially ephemeral criticisms, I will retain only one
      remark.
    </p>
    <p>
      Writers who have a purpose in view, were it only a reversion to principles
      familiar in the past because they are eternal, should always clear the
      ground. Now every one who, in the domain of ideas, brings his stone by
      pointing out an abuse, or setting a mark on some evil that it may be
      removed&mdash;every such man is stigmatized as immoral. The accusation of
      immorality, which has never failed to be cast at the courageous writer,
      is, after all, the last that can be brought when nothing else remains to
      be said to a romancer. If you are truthful in your pictures; if by dint of
      daily and nightly toil you succeed in writing the most difficult language
      in the world, the word <i>immoral</i> is flung in your teeth. Socrates was
      immoral; Jesus Christ was immoral; they both were persecuted in the name
      of the society they overset or reformed. When a man is to be killed he is
      taxed with immorality. These tactics, familiar in party warfare, are a
      disgrace to those who use them. Luther and Calvin knew well what they were
      about when they shielded themselves behind damaged worldly interests! And
      they lived all the days of their life.
    </p>
    <p>
      When depicting all society, sketching it in the immensity of its turmoil,
      it happened&mdash;it could not but happen&mdash;that the picture displayed
      more of evil than of good; that some part of the fresco represented a
      guilty couple; and the critics at once raised a cry of immorality, without
      pointing out the morality of another position intended to be a perfect
      contrast. As the critic knew nothing of the general plan I could forgive
      him, all the more because one can no more hinder criticism than the use of
      eyes, tongues, and judgment. Also the time for an impartial verdict is not
      yet come for me. And, after all, the author who cannot make up his mind to
      face the fire of criticism should no more think of writing than a traveler
      should start on his journey counting on a perpetually clear sky. On this
      point it remains to be said that the most conscientious moralists doubt
      greatly whether society can show as many good actions as bad ones; and in
      the picture I have painted of it there are more virtuous figures than
      reprehensible ones. Blameworthy actions, faults and crimes, from the
      lightest to the most atrocious, always meet with punishment, human or
      divine, signal or secret. I have done better than the historian, for I am
      free. Cromwell here on earth escaped all punishment but that inflicted by
      thoughtful men. And on this point there have been divided schools. Bossuet
      even showed some consideration for great regicide. William of Orange, the
      usurper, Hugues Capet, another usurper, lived to old age with no more
      qualms or fears than Henri IV. or Charles I. The lives of Catherine II.
      and of Frederick of Prussia would be conclusive against any kind of moral
      law, if they were judged by the twofold aspect of the morality which
      guides ordinary mortals, and that which is in use by crowned heads; for,
      as Napoleon said, for kings and statesmen there are the lesser and the
      higher morality. My scenes of political life are founded on this profound
      observation. It is not a law to history, as it is to romance, to make for
      a beautiful ideal. History is, or ought to be, what it was; while romance
      ought to be "the better world," as was said by Mme. Necker, one of the
      most distinguished thinkers of the last century.
    </p>
    <p>
      Still, with this noble falsity, romance would be nothing if it were not
      true in detail. Walter Scott, obliged as he was to conform to the ideas of
      an essentially hypocritical nation, was false to humanity in his picture
      of woman, because his models were schismatics. The Protestant woman has no
      ideal. She may be chaste, pure, virtuous; but her unexpansive love will
      always be as calm and methodical as the fulfilment of a duty. It might
      seem as though the Virgin Mary had chilled the hearts of those sophists
      who have banished her from heaven with her treasures of loving kindness.
      In Protestantism there is no possible future for the woman who has sinned;
      while, in the Catholic Church, the hope of forgiveness makes her sublime.
      Hence, for the Protestant writer there is but one Woman, while the
      Catholic writer finds a new woman in each new situation. If Walter Scott
      had been a Catholic, if he had set himself the task of describing truly
      the various phases of society which have successively existed in Scotland,
      perhaps the painter of Effie and Alice&mdash;the two figures for which he
      blamed himself in his later years&mdash;might have admitted passion with
      its sins and punishments, and the virtues revealed by repentance. Passion
      is the sum-total of humanity. Without passion, religion, history, romance,
      art, would all be useless.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some persons, seeing me collect such a mass of facts and paint them as
      they are, with passion for their motive power, have supposed, but wrongly,
      that I must belong to the school of Sensualism and Materialism&mdash;two
      aspects of the same thing&mdash;Pantheism. But their misapprehension was
      perhaps justified&mdash;or inevitable. I do not share the belief in
      indefinite progress for society as a whole; I believe in man's improvement
      in himself. Those who insist on reading in me the intention to consider
      man as a finished creation are strangely mistaken. <i>Seraphita</i>, the
      doctrine in action of the Christian Buddha, seems to me an ample answer to
      this rather heedless accusation.
    </p>
    <p>
      In certain fragments of this long work I have tried to popularize the
      amazing facts, I may say the marvels, of electricity, which in man is
      metamorphosed into an incalculable force; but in what way do the phenomena
      of brain and nerves, which prove the existence of an undiscovered world of
      psychology, modify the necessary and undoubted relations of the worlds to
      God? In what way can they shake the Catholic dogma? Though irrefutable
      facts should some day place thought in the class of fluids which are
      discerned only by their effects while their substance evades our senses,
      even when aided by so many mechanical means, the result will be the same
      as when Christopher Columbus detected that the earth is a sphere, and
      Galileo demonstrated its rotation. Our future will be unchanged. The
      wonders of animal magnetism, with which I have been familiar since 1820;
      the beautiful experiments of Gall, Lavater's successor; all the men who
      have studied mind as opticians have studied light&mdash;two not dissimilar
      things&mdash;point to a conclusion in favor of the mystics, the disciples
      of St. John, and of those great thinkers who have established the
      spiritual world&mdash;the sphere in which are revealed the relations of
      God and man.
    </p>
    <p>
      A sure grasp of the purport of this work will make it clear that I attach
      to common, daily facts, hidden or patent to the eye, to the acts of
      individual lives, and to their causes and principles, the importance which
      historians have hitherto ascribed to the events of public national life.
      The unknown struggle which goes on in a valley of the Indre between Mme.
      de Mortsauf and her passion is perhaps as great as the most famous of
      battles (<i>Le Lys dans la Vallee</i>). In one the glory of the victor is
      at stake; in the other it is heaven. The misfortunes of the two
      Birotteaus, the priest and the perfumer, to me are those of mankind. La
      Fosseuse (<i>Medecin de Campagne</i>) and Mme. Graslin (<i>Cure de Village</i>)
      are almost the sum-total of woman. We all suffer thus every day. I have
      had to do a hundred times what Richardson did but once. Lovelace has a
      thousand forms, for social corruption takes the hues of the medium in
      which it lives. Clarissa, on the contrary, the lovely image of impassioned
      virtue, is drawn in lines of distracting purity. To create a variety of
      Virgins it needs a Raphael. In this respect, perhaps literature must yield
      to painting.
    </p>
    <p>
      Still, I may be allowed to point out how many irreproachable figures&mdash;as
      regards their virtue&mdash;are to be found in the portions of this work
      already published: Pierrette Lorrain, Ursule Mirouet, Constance Birotteau,
      La Fosseuse, Eugenie Grandet, Marguerite Claes, Pauline de Villenoix,
      Madame Jules, Madame de la Chanterie, Eve Chardon, Mademoiselle
      d'Esgrignon, Madame Firmiani, Agathe Rouget, Renee de Maucombe; besides
      several figures in the middle-distance, who, though less conspicuous than
      these, nevertheless, offer the reader an example of domestic virtue:
      Joseph Lebas, Genestas, Benassis, Bonnet the cure, Minoret the doctor,
      Pillerault, David Sechard, the two Birotteaus, Chaperon the priest, Judge
      Popinot, Bourgeat, the Sauviats, the Tascherons, and many more. Do not all
      these solve the difficult literary problem which consists in making a
      virtuous person interesting?
    </p>
    <p>
      It was no small task to depict the two or three thousand conspicuous types
      of a period; for this is, in fact, the number presented to us by each
      generation, and which the Human Comedy will require. This crowd of actors,
      of characters, this multitude of lives, needed a setting&mdash;if I may be
      pardoned the expression, a gallery. Hence the very natural division, as
      already known, into the Scenes of Private Life, of Provincial Life, of
      Parisian, Political, Military, and Country Life. Under these six heads are
      classified all the studies of manners which form the history of society at
      large, of all its <i>faits et gestes</i>, as our ancestors would have
      said. These six classes correspond, indeed, to familiar conceptions. Each
      has its own sense and meaning, and answers to an epoch in the life of man.
      I may repeat here, but very briefly, what was written by Felix Davin&mdash;a
      young genius snatched from literature by an early death. After being
      informed of my plan, he said that the Scenes of Private Life represented
      childhood and youth and their errors, as the Scenes of Provincial Life
      represented the age of passion, scheming, self-interest, and ambition.
      Then the Scenes of Parisian Life give a picture of the tastes and vice and
      unbridled powers which conduce to the habits peculiar to great cities,
      where the extremes of good and evil meet. Each of these divisions has its
      local color&mdash;Paris and the Provinces&mdash;a great social antithesis
      which held for me immense resources.
    </p>
    <p>
      And not man alone, but the principal events of life, fall into classes by
      types. There are situations which occur in every life, typical phases, and
      this is one of the details I most sought after. I have tried to give an
      idea of the different districts of our fine country. My work has its
      geography, as it has its genealogy and its families, its places and
      things, its persons and their deeds; as it has its heraldry, its nobles
      and commonalty, its artisans and peasants, its politicians and dandies,
      its army&mdash;in short, a whole world of its own.
    </p>
    <p>
      After describing social life in these three portions, I had to delineate
      certain exceptional lives, which comprehend the interests of many people,
      or of everybody, and are in a degree outside the general law. Hence we
      have Scenes of Political Life. This vast picture of society being finished
      and complete, was it not needful to display it in its most violent phase,
      beside itself, as it were, either in self-defence or for the sake of
      conquest? Hence the Scenes of Military Life, as yet the most incomplete
      portion of my work, but for which room will be allowed in this edition,
      that it may form part of it when done. Finally, the Scenes of Country Life
      are, in a way, the evening of this long day, if I may so call the social
      drama. In that part are to be found the purest natures, and the
      application of the great principles of order, politics, and morality.
    </p>
    <p>
      Such is the foundation, full of actors, full of comedies and tragedies, on
      which are raised the Philosophical Studies&mdash;the second part of my
      work, in which the social instrument of all these effects is displayed,
      and the ravages of the mind are painted, feeling after feeling; the first
      of the series, <i>The Magic Skin</i>, to some extent forms a link between
      the Philosophical Studies and Studies of Manners, by a work of almost
      Oriental fancy, in which life itself is shown in a mortal struggle with
      the very element of all passion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Besides these, there will be a series of Analytical Studies, of which I
      will say nothing, for one only is published as yet&mdash;The Physiology of
      Marriage.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the course of time I purpose writing two more works of this class.
      First the Pathology of Social Life, then an Anatomy of Educational Bodies,
      and a Monograph on Virtue.
    </p>
    <p>
      In looking forward to what remains to be done, my readers will perhaps
      echo what my publishers say, "Please God to spare you!" I only ask to be
      less tormented by men and things than I have hitherto been since I began
      this terrific labor. I have had this in my favor, and I thank God for it,
      that the talents of the time, the finest characters and the truest
      friends, as noble in their private lives as the former are in public life,
      have wrung my hand and said, Courage!
    </p>
    <p>
      And why should I not confess that this friendship, and the testimony here
      and there of persons unknown to me, have upheld me in my career, both
      against myself and against unjust attacks; against the calumny which has
      often persecuted me, against discouragement, and against the too eager
      hopefulness whose utterances are misinterpreted as those of overwhelming
      conceit? I had resolved to display stolid stoicism in the face of abuse
      and insults; but on two occasions base slanders have necessitated a reply.
      Though the advocates of forgiveness of injuries may regret that I should
      have displayed my skill in literary fence, there are many Christians who
      are of opinion that we live in times when it is as well to show sometimes
      that silence springs from generosity.
    </p>
    <p>
      The vastness of a plan which includes both a history and a criticism of
      society, an analysis of its evils, and a discussion of its principles,
      authorizes me, I think, in giving to my work the title under which it now
      appears&mdash;<i>The Human Comedy</i>. Is this too ambitious? Is it not
      exact? That, when it is complete, the public must pronounce.
    </p>
    <p>
      PARIS, July 1842
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">





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