hos. He flung himself on the life of society with a desperate
energy of inspection, and tried to make the vast array surrender to
his imagination. And across his vision of reality shot strange beams
and shafts of romantic illumination--sometimes vulgar theatrical
lights, sometimes gleams like those which add a new reality of wonder
to the etchings of Rembrandt. What he saw with the eyes of the senses
or those of the imagination he could evoke without the loss of any
fragment of its life, and could transfer it to the brain of his reader
as a vision from which escape is impossible.

The higher world of aristocratic refinement, the grace and natural
delicacy of virginal souls, in general eluded Balzac's observation.
He found it hard to imagine a lady; still harder--though he tried
and half succeeded--to conceive the mystery of a young girl's mind,
in which the airs of morning are nimble and sweet. The gross bourgeois
world, which he detested, and a world yet humbler were his special
sphere. He studied its various elements in their environment; a street,
a house, a chamber is as much to him as a human being, for it is part
of the creature's shell, shaped to its uses, corresponding to its
nature, limiting its action. He has created a population of persons
which numbers two thousand. Where Balzac does not fail, each of these
is a complete individual; in the prominent figures a controlling
passion is the centre of moral life--the greed of money, the desire
for distinction, the lust for power, some instinct or mania of animal
affection. The individual exists in a group; power circulates from
inanimate objects to the living actors of his tale; the environment
is an accomplice in the action; power circulates from member to member
of the group; finally, group and group enter into correspondence or
conflict; and still above the turmoil is heard the groundswell of
the tide of Paris.

The change from the Renes and Obermanns of melancholy romance was
great. But in the government of Louis-Philippe the bourgeoisie
triumphed; and Balzac hated the bourgeoisie. From 1830 to 1840 were
his greatest years, which include the _Peau de Chagrin_, _Eugenie
Grandet_, _La Recherche de l'Absolu_, _Le Pere Goriot_, and other
masterpieces. To name their titles would be to recite a Homeric
catalogue. At an early date Balzac conceived the idea of connecting
his tales in groups. They acquired their collective title, _La Comedie
Humaine_, in 1842. He wou