y of the house
and some other members of the fair sex vied with each other in
eagerness to serve the guests. One of the younger ladies hurried to
the kitchen for refreshment. In the meantime, the novelist's identity
was revealed to the _chatelaine_. A lively conversation was
immediately engaged in, and, when the impromptu Abigail returned with
the refreshment, the first words she heard were: "Well, Monsieur
Balzac, so you think--" Full of surprise and joy she started, dropped
the tray she had in her hands, and everything was broken. "Glory I
have known and seen," adds the narrator; "wasn't that glory?"

It was more. It was power wielded for good or evil, like that of every
other great man, be he statesman, or priest, or artist. The conviction
of possessing this power caused Balzac to complain with sincere
indignation of those who charged him with being an immoral writer.
"The reproach of immorality," he said in his preface to the second
edition of _Pere Goriot_, "which has ever been launched at the
courageous author, is the last that remains to be made, when nothing
else can be urged against a poet. If you are true in your portrayal,
if, by dint of working night and day you succeed in writing the most
difficult language in the world, the epithet immoral is cast in your
face. Socrates was immoral, Jesus Christ was immoral. Both were
persecuted in the name of the societies they overthrew or reformed.
When the world wishes to destroy any one, it taxes him with
immorality."

This argument is beside the question. It does not settle whether the
apologist's influence upon the men and women of his generation and
beyond--an influence which, in his lifetime, was incontestable, and
may be deemed potent still, to judge by the extent to which his books
are read--was and is good or bad. Balzac's personality is here only
indirectly involved. His individual character might have been better
or worse without the conclusion to be drawn being affected. Good men's
influence is not always good, nor bad men's influence always bad.
Intention may be inoperative, and effect may be involuntary.

Balzac claimed the right to speak of all conduct, to represent all
conduct in his fiction; and we shall see, farther on, that he imposed
his claim upon those who followed him in literature. But, if he
anticipated reality--and this is acknowledged--if he led society to
imitate his fiction, if his exceptional representations tended, with
him and after h