same goal. I am fond of exceptional beings. I am one
myself. Moreover, I need them to give relief to my common characters;
and I never sacrifice them without necessity. But these common
characters interest me more than they interest you. I aggrandize them;
I idealize them in an inverse direction, in their ugliness or their
stupidity. I give to their deformity terrifying or grotesque
proportions. You could not do this. You are wise not to look at people
and things that would cause you nightmare. Idealize in that which is
pretty and beautiful. This is woman's task."

In spite of sheriff's summonses and stormy discussions with those to
whom he still had indebtedness, and in spite, too, of a tropical
summer, the would-be bride-groom toiled cheerfully on through 1846.
His Passy cottage was becoming, with the continually augmented
collection, quite a museum, and Bertall, the artist-caricaturist, was
in ecstasies over a china service estimated by its owner at some
thousands of francs. His good humour rendered him his former
conversational brilliancy, which had been somewhat damped during the
past twelvemonth, and, at one of Delphine Gay's dinners, where he met
Hugo and Lamartine, he replied to Jove's heavy artillery with a raking
fire from his own quick-firing guns. Lamartine was enchanted. Balzac
must go to the Chamber was his verdict. But Balzac, at present, was
content to correspond with his Eve and to occupy himself with the
restoration of the pictures she was helping him to buy. One of these,
the _Chevalier of Malta_, he had acquired on Gringalet's
recommendation when in Rome. It had been bistered over by the dealer
with a view to hiding a scratch, and there was also the dirt of age
upon it. Requisitioning a clever craftsman in picture-restoring, he
submitted the treasure to him. "It's a masterpiece," pronounced the
expert: "but what will it be worth when the dirt is off?" Three days
later the restorer came back with his drugs and implements. And,
first, he rubbed a corner with some cotton dipped in one of his
mixtures, which frothed the painting white. Then for an hour he
scrubbed the surface progressively until he had a lot of little cotton
balls all black. Afterwards, he began again, for the dirt was in
layers, and, at the conclusion of the scrubbing and brushing, the
chevalier emerged as life-like and fresh as when painted by the pupil
of Raphael--Albert Durer or another--three hundred years before. The
scratch was