stic harmony and reserve may be seen in Hugo's Valjean, which was
undoubtedly suggested by Balzac's Vautrin. In the play of _Vautrin_,
the main character, instead of appearing sublime, becomes absurd, and
the action is utterly destitute of that plausibility and coherence
which should make the most improbable incidents of a play hang
together with logical sequence.

Balzac in the _Resources of Quinola_ merely reproduces David Sechard,
though he places him in the reign of Philip the Second of Spain. He
went far out of his way to make Fontanares the first inventor of the
steamboat; the improbability of such a supposition quite forfeits the
interest of the spectators and, in attempting to effect a love
denouement, he disgusts us by uniting the noble discoverer with the
vile Faustine. Even the element of humor is wanting in his portrayal
of Quinola--who is a combination of the slave in a Latin comedy and
the fool, or Touchstone of Shakespeare. This play is, however,
ingenious, powerful and interesting in many passages.

_Pamela Giraud_ is fantastic and painful in its plot. Balzac's ideal
woman, the Pauline of the _Peau de Chagrin_, is here placed in a
situation revolting even to a Parisian audience; but the selfish
worldliness of the rich and noble is contrasted with the pure
disinterestedness of a poor working girl in all of Balzac's strongest,
most searching style. The denouement is well brought about and
satisfactory, but scarcely atones for the outrageous nature of the
principal situation.

Balzac was especially a novelist of his own period, and the life of
his romances is the life he saw going on around him. The principal
character in _The Stepmother_ is a Napoleonist general typical of many
who must have lived in the first half of the nineteenth century. The
ruling passion of General de Grandchamp is hatred for those who
deserted the cause or forsook the standard of the First Consul. This
antipathy is exaggerated by Balzac into murderous hatred, and is the
indirect cause of death to the General's daughter, Pauline, and her
lover, the son of a soldier of the First Empire, who, by deserting
Napoleon, had fallen under the Comte de Grandchamp's ban. The
situation is, however, complicated by the guilty passion which
Gertrude, the stepmother of Pauline and wife of the General's old age,
feels for the lover of Pauline. The main interest of the drama lies in
the struggle between these two women, every detail of which is
el