er cousin.

CONCLUSION

"I live by my friendships only."

Many people write their romances, others live them; Honore de Balzac
did both. This life so full of romantic fiction mingled with stern
reality, where the burden of debt is counter-balanced by dramatic
passion, where hallucination can scarcely be distinguished from fact,
where the weary traveler is ever seeking gold, rest, or love, ever
longing to be famous and to be loved, where the hero, secluded as in a
monastery, suddenly emerges to attend an opera, dressed in the most
gaudy attire, where he lacks many of the comforts of life, yet
suddenly crosses half the continent, allured by the fascinations of a
woman, this life is indeed a _roman balzacien par excellence_!

He tried to shroud his life, especially his association with women, in
mystery. Now since the veil is partially lifted, one can see how great
was the role they played. It has been said that twelve thousand
letters were written to Balzac by women, some to express their
admiration, some to recognize themselves in a delightful personage he
had created, others to thank him or condemn him for certain attitudes
he had sustained towards woman.

For him to have so thoroughly understood the feminine mind and
temperament, to have given to this subtle chameleon its various hues,
to have portrayed woman with her many charms and caprices, and to have
described woman in her various classes and at all ages, he must have
observed her, or rather, he must have known her. He very justly says
in his _Avant-propos_:

"When Buffon described the lion, he dismissed the lioness with a
few phrases; but in society the wife is not always the female of
the male. There may be two perfectly dissimilar beings in one
household. The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy of a
prince and the wife of a prince is often worthless compared with
the wife of an artisan. The social state has freaks which are not
found in the natural world; it is nature _plus_ society. The
description of the social species would thus be at least double
that of the animal species, merely in view of the two sexes."

Thus, he made a special study of woman, penetrated, like a father
confessor, into her innermost secrets, and if he has not painted the
duchesses with the delicacy due them, it was not because he did not
know or had not studied them, but probably because he was picturing
them with his Rabe