ird, take the fatal step without so much as remembering the
condition attached thereto? If it be answered that Birotteau _was_
idiot enough to do such a thing, then it must be observed further that
one's sympathy is frozen by the fact. Such a man deserved such
treatment. And, again, even if French justice was, and perhaps is, as
much influenced by secret considerations as Balzac loves to represent
it, we must agree with that member of the Listomere society who
pointed out that no tribunal could possibly uphold such an obviously
iniquitous bargain. As for Troubert, the idea of the Jesuitical
ecclesiastic (though Balzac was not personally hostile to the Jesuits)
was a common one at the time, and no doubt popular, but the actual
personage seems to me nearer to Eugene Sue's Rodin in some ways than I
could have desired.

These things, however, are very much a case of "As You Like It" or "As
It Strikes You," and I have said that _Le Cure de Tours_ strikes some
good judges as of exceptional merit, while no one can refuse it merit
in a high degree. I should not, except for the opening, place it in
the very highest class of the _Comedie_, but it is high beyond all
doubt in the second.

The third part (The Two Brothers/A Bachelor's Establishment) of _Les
Celibataires_ takes very high rank among its companions. As in most of
his best books, Balzac has set at work divers favorite springs of
action, and has introduced personages of whom he has elsewhere given,
not exactly replicas--he never did that--but companion portraits. And
he has once more justified the proceeding amply. Whether he has not
also justified the reproach, such as it is, of those who say that to
see the most congenial expression of his fullest genius, you must go
to his bad characters and not to his good, readers shall determine for
themselves after reading the book.

It was the product of the year 1842, when the author was at the ripest
of his powers, and after which, with the exception of _Les Parents
Pauvres_, he produced not much of his very best save in continuations
and rehandlings of earlier efforts. He changed his title a good deal,
and in that MS. correction of a copy of the _Comedie_ which has been
taken, perhaps without absolutely decisive authority, as the basis of
the _Edition Definitive_, he adopted _La Rabouilleuse_ as his latest
favorite. This, besides its quaintness, has undoubted merit as fixing
the attention on one at least of the chief figure