aborated with true Balzacian gusto and insight. We expect to see
virtue triumphant, and Pauline united to the excellent Ferdinand. When
they both die of poison, and Gertrude becomes repentant, we feel that
the denouement is not satisfactory. The jealousy of the woman and the
hatred of the man have not blended properly.

But there can be no doubt at all that if Balzac had lived, he might
have turned out a successful playwright. When he began his career as a
dramatic writer he was like a musician taking up an unfamiliar
instrument, an organist who was trying the violin, or a painter
working in an unknown medium. His last written play was his best.
Fortunately, the plot did not deal with any of those desperate love
passions which Balzac in his novels has analyzed and described with
such relentless and even brutal frankness. It is filled throughout
with a genial humanity, as bright and as expressive as that which
fills the atmosphere of _She Stoops to Conquer_ or _A School for
Scandal_. The characters are neither demons, like Cousin Betty, nor
reckless debauchees, like Gertrude in _The Stepmother_. The whole
motif is comic. Moliere himself might have lent a touch of his refined
and fragrant wit to the composition; and the situation is one which
the author could realize from experience, but had only learned to
regard from a humorous standpoint in the ripeness of his premature old
age. Balzac makes money rule in his stories, as the most potent factor
of social life. He describes poverty as the supreme evil, and wealth
as the object of universal aspiration. In line with this attitude
comes _Mercadet_ with his trials and schemes. Scenes of ridiculous
surprises succeed each other till by the return of the absconder with
a large fortune, the greedy, usurious creditors are at last paid in
full, and poetic justice is satisfied by the marriage of Julie to the
poor man of her choice.

EPIPHANIUS WILSON.

INTRODUCTION

BY

J. WALKER MCSPADDEN

The greatest fame of Balzac will rest in the future, as in the past,
upon his novels and short stories. These comprise the bulk of his work
and his most noteworthy effort--an effort so pronounced as to hide all
side-excursions. For this reason his chief side-excursion--into the
realms of drama--has been almost entirely overlooked. Indeed, many of
his readers are unaware that he ever wrote plays, wh