the brain, the abyss that each man has within
him. And by a gift of his free and vigorous nature, by a privilege of the
intelligences of our times,--who, having seen revolutions nearly and with
their own eyes, perceive better the end of humanity and comprehend better
the course of Providence,--Balzac came forth serene and smiling from
those redoubtable studies which produced melancholy in Moliere and
misanthropy in Rousseau.

"This is what he has accomplished among us. Such is the work he has left
us, lofty and solid, a pile of granite, a monumental edifice, from whose
summit his renown will henceforth shine. Great men make their own
pedestals: the future charges itself with their statues.

"His death has struck Paris with stupor. But a few months since he
returned to France. Feeling that he was about to die, he desired to see
his country, like one who on the eve of a long voyage comes to embrace
his mother.

"His life was brief, but crowded; fuller of labors than of days.

"Alas, the powerful and indefatigable laborer, the philosopher, the
thinker, the poet, the man of genius, lived among us the life of storms,
of struggles, of quarrels, of combats, common in all times to all great
men. Today, behold him here at peace. He leaves collisions and
hostilities. The same day he enters on glory and the tomb. Henceforth
he will shine above all the clouds over our heads, among the stars of our
country.

"And you all who are here, are you not tempted to envy him?

"Gentlemen, whatever be our sorrow in the presence of such a loss, let us
resign ourselves to these catastrophes. Let us accept them in their
poignancy and severity. It is good perhaps, and necessary, in an epoch
like ours, that from time to time a great death should communicate a
religious book to minds devoured by doubt and skepticism. Providence
knows what it does when it thus puts a whole people face to face with the
supreme mystery, and gives it Death to meditate upon, which is at once
the great equality and the great liberty.

"Providence knows what it does, for here is the highest of instructions.
There can be in all hearts only austere and serious thoughts when a
sublime spirit majestically makes its entrance upon the other life; when
one of those beings whom the visible wings of genius have long sustained
above the crowd, suddenly puts forth those other wings that we cannot
see, and disappears in the unknown!

"No, it is not the unknown! No, I have al