shment of his
"respectable relative," as he styled the pawnbroker, and thus secured
the coveted object.

In his intercourse with his own family, Madame Hanska was a
continuously troubling factor. The prospect of his alliance with this
foreign aristocrat had less charm for Madame Balzac and Laure than for
Honore. They probably perceived the chimera he was pursuing, and could
not be expected to show enthusiasm. This attitude on their side and a
certain hauteur on his, partly caused by offended dignity, widened the
breach between him and them. "I have now no family," he told "The
Stranger," "and am glad that the coldness should be established before
I am completely happy; for later the reason of it would have been
attributed to you, or to what would have been termed my uppishness.
The isolation, which you wish, will be likewise my dearest desire. My
sister," he proceeded, "has suppressed for ever the literary question
betwixt us, with her blue-stocking whims. I cannot talk to her of my
affairs, nor yet of my mother's. She asserts that her husband is a
greater man than I am." Madame de Berny, he added, had foreseen his
mother's and sister's transformation when she told him he was a flower
that had sprung up on a dunghill! If Madame de Berny told him this, it
was no doubt in a fit of anger against them for endeavouring to sever
the liaison, an endeavour they were perfectly justified in. These
portions of Balzac's confidences, which reflect upon his character
seriously, and besmirch him more than those against whom they were
spoken, cannot be overlooked in a biography. They have to be included
in our judgment of him, and, in a measure, concern the tragic close of
his love romance.

We are fonder of him in the expansive moods when his naive wonder at
his own performances carries him into self-panegyric, which, not
infrequently, we can endorse, though with some discount. Thus, for
instance, the _Bourgeois of Paris_ he declared to be one of those
masterpieces that leave everything else behind. "It is grand, it is
terrifying in verve, in philosophy, in novelty, in painting, in
style." And yet there was Eugene Sue selling the _Wandering Jew_ to a
newspaper for a hundred thousand francs, while the _Philosophy of
Conjugal Life_, a publication of his own in Hetzel's _Diable a Paris_,
fetched only eight hundred; and the _Peasants_ was paid for only at
the rate of sixty centimes a line. His _Modeste Mignon_ which appeared
in the _De