pect is remarkable in quite a new way. His
badness is perhaps as obvious as before; there is nothing fresh to
discover about that. His greatness, however, wears a different look;
it is no longer the plain and open surface that it was. It has depths
and recesses that did not appear till now, enticing to criticism,
promising plentiful illustration of the ideas that have been gathered
by the way. One after another, the rarer, obscurer effects of fiction
are all found in Balzac, behind his blatant front. He illustrates
everything, and the only difficulty is to know where to begin.

The effect of the generalized picture, for example, supporting the
play of action, is one in which Balzac particularly delights. He
constantly uses it, he makes it serve his purpose with a very high
hand. It becomes more than a support, it becomes a kind of propulsive
force applied to the action at the start. Its value is seen at its
greatest in such books as Le Cure de Village, Pere Goriot, La
Recherche de l'Absolu, Eugenie Grandet--most of all, perhaps, in this
last. Wherever, indeed, his subject requires to be lodged securely in
its surroundings, wherever the background is a main condition of the
story, Balzac is in no hurry to precipitate the action; that can
always wait, while he allows himself the leisure he needs for massing
the force which is presently to drive the drama on its way. Nobody
gives such attention as Balzac does in many of his books, and on the
whole in his best, to the setting of the scene; he clearly considers
these preparatory pictures quite as important as the events which they
are to enclose.

And so, in Pere Goriot, all the potent life of the Maison Vauquer is
deliberately collected and hoarded up to the point where it is enough,
when it is let loose, to carry the story forward with a strong sweep.
By the time the story itself is reached the Maison Vauquer is a fully
created impression, prepared to the last stroke for the drama to come.
Anything that may take place there will have the whole benefit of its
setting, without more ado; all the rank reality of the house and its
inmates is immediately bestowed on the action. When the tale of Goriot
comes to the front it is already more than the tale of a certain old
man and his woes. Goriot, on the spot, is one of Maman Vauquer's
boarders, and the mere fact is enough, by now, to differentiate him,
to single him out among miserable old men. Whatever he does he carries
with h