rtant as the most famous
military battle ever fought. Possibly the amount of early personal
biography in the book--yet a good deal romanced--led him to this
conviction. Possibly, too, the richness with which he adorned its
style helped to foster the opinion he held, which critics have not
ratified. Not even Lamartine, his eulogist, found much to say in
favour of the story. To the first part alone he gave his approval,
likening it to the Song of Solomon. The rest he thought vulgar, and
hinted that the heroine degenerates into a sort of hermaphrodite
character. Brunetiere's estimate, given in a parenthesis, is not much
more favourable. And Taine, when dipping into the book for examples of
Balzac's style, neutralizes his praise of one portion by his
depreciation of another.

Apart from the question of the novel's style, which is turgid because
the lyric note intrudes, the most legitimate objection to the book is
the sentimentalism which pervades it throughout, and palls on the
reader before he reaches the conclusion. Like Richardson in his
_Pamela_, but far to a greater extent than Richardson, Balzac has
placed the struggle on the physical plane. Madame de Mortsauf permits
de Vandenesse to make love to her, to caress her, and she accords him
everything with the single exception of that which would confer on her
husband the right to divorce her. The interest of the book therefore
is largely a material one. The moral issue is thrown into the
background. And de Vandenesse, moreover, is not a person that inspires
us with respect or even pity. He consoles himself with Lady Dudley,
while swearing high allegiance to his Henriette.

In sooth, the swain's position resembled the novelist's own. Honore
was also inditing oaths of fidelity to his "dear star," his
"earth-angel" in far-away Russia, while worshipping at shrines more
accessible. Lady Dudley may well have been, for all his denial, the
Countess Visconti, of whom Madame Hanska was jealous and on good
grounds, or else the Duchess de Castries, to whom he said that, in
writing the book, he had caught himself shedding tears. His
reminiscences of Madame de Berny aided him in composing the figure of
the heroine, whose death-bed scene was soon to become sober reality.
Madame de Berny died in July, having had a last pleasure in perusing
the story that immortalized her affection for the novelist. Balzac had
been intending to pay her a farewell visit; but he was then in the
midst of