ld of battle, or
rather, the several smaller fields of battle became one large one.
Balzac's fiction reproduces the later phase in minute detail, and,
mostly, with a treatment suited to the subject.

Brunetiere, whose chapter on the _Comedy_ is written more gropingly
than the rest of his study of the novelist, makes use of an ingenious
comparison with intent to persuade that the stories had from the very
first a predestined organic union, with ramifications which the author
saw but obscurely and which were joined together more closely--as also
more consciously--during the lapse of years. "Thus," he says,
"brothers and sisters, in the time of their infancy or childhood, have
nothing in common except a certain family resemblance--and this not
always. But, as they advance in age, the features that individualized
them become attenuated, they return to the type of their progenitors,
and one perceives that they are children of the same father and
mother. Balzac's novels," he concludes, "have a connection of this
kind. In his head, they were, so to speak, contemporary."

The simile is not a happy one. It does not help to reconcile us to an
artificial approximation of books that are heterogeneous, unequal in
value, and, frequently, composed under influences far removed from the
after-thought that was given to them by a putative father. Balzac was
not well inspired in relating his novels to each other logically. Such
natural relationship as they possess is that of issuing from the same
brain, though acting under varying conditions and in different states
of development; and it is true that, if the story of this brain is
known, and its experiences understood, a certain classification might
be made--perhaps more than one--of its creations, on account of common
traits, resemblances of subject or treatment, which could serve to
link them together loosely. But, between this arrangement and the
artificial hierarchy of the _Comedy_, it is impossible to find a bridge
to pass over.

One of the real links betwixt the novels is the reappearance of the
same people in many of them, which thing is not in itself displeasing.
It has the advantage of allowing the author to display his men and
women in changed circumstances, to cast side-lights upon them, and to
reveal them more completely. However, here and there, we pay for the
privilege in meeting with bores whose further acquaintance we would
fain have been spared. And then, also, we are l