s novels, and partly
also because of the trouble he gave himself to establish among circles
outside his own immediate entourage the legend of his being a sort of
Sir Galahad, leading a perfectly chaste life and caring only for his
literary labours. Says Theophile Gautier:--

"He used to preach to us a strange literary hygiene. We ought to shut
ourselves up for two or three years, drink water, eat soaked lupines
like Protogenes, go to bed at six o'clock in the evening, and work
till morning . . . and especially to live in the most absolute
chastity. He insisted much on this last recommendation, very rigorous
for a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. According
to him, real chastity developed the powers of the mind to the highest
degree, and gave to those that practised it unknown faculties. We
timidly objected that the greatest geniuses had indulged in the love
passion, and we quoted illustrious names. Balzac shook his head and
replied: 'They would have done much more but for the women.' The only
concession he would make us, regretfully, was to see the loved one for
half-an-hour a year. Love letters he allowed. They formed a writer's
style."

George Sand speaks much to the same effect in her reminiscences. She
believed in the legend.

"Moderate in every other respect," she says, "he had the purest of
morals, having always dreaded wildness as the enemy of talent; and he
nearly always cherished women solely in his heart and in his head,
even in his youth. He pursued chastity on principle; and his relations
with the fair sex were those merely of curiosity. When he found a
curiosity equal to his own, he exploited this mine with the cynicism
of a father-confessor. But, when he met with health of mind and body,
he was as happy as a child to speak of real love and to rise into the
lofty regions of sentiment."

Unfortunately for the preceding testimony, a flat contradiction is
given to it not only by the recorded facts of the novelist's life, but
by his sister, who knew better than George Sand and Gautier that
Balzac's profession of sublimer sentiments did not exclude a more
mundane feeling and practice. Commenting on George Sand's generous
panegyric of her brother, she adds: "It is an error to speak of his
extreme moderation. He does not deserve this praise. Outside of his
work, which was first and foremost, he loved and tasted all the
pleasures of this world. I think he would have been the most conceited