us and ambitious
heroes, Gautier cries:[*] "O Corinne, who on the Cape of Messina
allowest thy snowy arm to hang over the ivory lyre, while the son of
Albion, clothed in a superb new cloak, and with elegant boots
perfectly polished, gazes at thee, and listens in an elegant pose:
Corinne, what wouldst thou have said to such heroes? They have
nevertheless one little quality which Oswald lacked--they live, and
with so strong a life that we have met them a thousand times."
Balzac's own words, speaking of his play "La Maratre,"[+] might also
serve for a motto for his novels: "I dream of a drawing-room comedy,
where everything is calm, quiet, and amiable. The men play whist
placidly by the light of candles with little green shades. The women
talk and laugh while they work at their embroidery. They all take tea
together. To sum up, everything announces good order and harmony.
Well, underneath are agitating passions; the drama stirs, it prepares
itself secretly, till it blazes forth like the flame of a
conflagration."

[*] "Portraits Contemporains: Honore de Balzac," by Theophile Gautier.

[+] "Historiettes et Souvenirs d'un Homme de Theatre," by H. Hostein.

Balzac is essentially a Realist, in his use of the novel as a vehicle
for the description of real struggling life; with money and position,
the principal desiderata of modern civilisation, powerful as
determining factors in the moulding of men's actions. Life, as
portrayed in the old-fashioned novel, where the hero and heroine and
their love affairs were the sole focus of attraction, and the other
characters were grouped round in subordinate positions, while every
one declined in interest as he advanced in years, was not life as
Balzac saw it; and he pictures his hero's agony at not having a penny
with which to pay his cab fare, with as much graphic intensity, as he
tells of the same young gentleman's despair when his inamorata is
indifferent to him.

Nevertheless, if we compare Balzac with the depressing writers of the
so-called Realist School, we shall find that his conception of life
differed greatly from theirs. In Flaubert's melancholy books, even
perfection of style and painstaking truth of detail do not dissipate
the deadly dulness of an unreal world, where no one rises above the
low level of self-gratification; while Zola considers man so
completely in his physical aspect, that he ends by degrading him below
the animal world. Balzac, on the other hand, believe