t of Hugo and perhaps
more sincere, may pass without comment in so far as it concerns the
outer man. On the moral side its exactitude may be questioned, both
for what it omits and what it asserts. The omissions are considerable.
The assertions deal too exclusively with that conduct which people
generally exhibit in their most amicable relations with each other.
Balzac's kindness of heart came out in not a few experiences of his
life; but deeper than these ephemeral bursts of generosity were
selfishnesses that were enormous and persistent. The impulsive energy,
the huge boyishness, the appetites physical and mental that age never
trained nor chastened were phenomena that all his friends noted,
though the manifestations differed.

Some lines of Gozlan's in his _Balzac in Slippers_, form a good sequel
to Werdet's account of the Gargantuan dinner. "Balzac drank nothing
but water," says Gozlan, but this must have been on Fridays; "and ate
but little meat. On the other hand, he consumed great quantities of
fruit. . . . His lips palpitated, his eyes lit up with happiness, at
the sight of a pyramid of pears or fine peaches. Not one remained to
go and relate the rout of the others. He devoured them all. He was
superb in vegetable Pantagruelism, with his cravat taken off, his
shirt unbuttoned at the neck, his fruit-knife in hand, laughing,
drinking water, carving into the pulp of a doyenne pear. I should like
to add--and talking. But Balzac talked only little. He let others
talk, laughed at intervals, silently, in the savage manner of
Leather-stocking, or else, he burst out like a bomb, if the sentence
pleased him. It needed to be pretty broad, and was never too broad. He
melted with pleasure, especially at a silly pun inspired by his wines,
which were delicious."

Another portrait drawn of the novelist by a contemporary, interpreting
the inner man, but less flattering to the great delineator of
character, is not free from satire and narrowness; but some of the
traits it outlines are closely and accurately observed. In his
_Histoire du Quarante et Unieme (Academy) Fauteuil_, Arsene Houssaye
wrote: "Monsieur de Balzac--that haughty rebel who would fain have
been a founder, that refined Rabelais who discovered a woman where
Rabelais had discovered only a bottle--Monsieur de Balzac dreamed of
the gigantic, yet without being an architect of Cyclopean times.
Consequently, when he tried to build his temple of Solomon, he had
neither