writing were drawn from him by a reflex self-pity that is
easily evoked. In genuine pathos, Hugo is vastly his superior.

Women occupy so preponderant a position in the _Comedy_ that one is
forced to ask one's self whether these numerous heroines are
reproduced with the same fidelity to nature as are his men. At any
rate, they are not all treated in the same manner. In his descriptions
of grand ladies the satiric intention is rarely absent. Why, it is
difficult to say, unless it was that he was unable to avoid the error
of introducing the pique of the plebeian suitor, and that the satire
was an effort to establish the balance in his favour. "When I used to
go into high society," he told Madame Hanska, "I suffered in every
part of me through which suffering could enter. It is only
misunderstood souls and those that are poor who know how to observe,
because everything jars on them, and observation results from
suffering." In his inmost thought he had no high opinion of women.
Notwithstanding his flattery of Madame Hanska, he was a firm upholder
of the old doctrine of male supremacy; and, at certain moments, he
slipped his opinion out, content afterwards to let Eve or another
suppose that his hard words were not spoken in earnest. One of his
would-be witticisms at the expense of the fair sex was: "The most
Jesuitical Jesuit among the Jesuits is a thousand times less
Jesuitical than the least Jesuitical woman." The form only of the
accusation was new. How often before and since the misogynist has
asserted that women have no conscience. Be it granted that Balzac's
grand dames often have very little, and some of his other women also.
They are creatures of instinct and passion susceptible only of being
influenced through their feelings. Yet, as regards the former,
Sainte-Beuve assures us that their portraits in the _Comedy_ resemble
the originals. He says: "Who especially has more delightfully hit off
the duchesses and viscountesses of the Restoration period!" Brunetiere
accepts this testimony of a contemporary who himself frequented the
_salons_ of the great. Some later critics, on the contrary, hold that
the novelist has given us stage-dames with heavy graces and a bizarre
free-and-easiness as being the nearest equivalent to aristocratic
nonchalance. One thing is certain, namely, that Balzac was personally
acquainted rather with that side of aristocratic society which was not
the better. It was the side bordering on licentio