ce,
which another writer would have to tackle somehow after disposing of
the brief episode of Charles's visit, Balzac has it all in hand, he
can finish off his book without long delay. His deliberate approach to
the action, through the picture of the house and its inmates, has
achieved its purpose; it has given him the effect which the action
most demands and could least acquire by itself, the effect of time.

And there is no doubt that the story immensely gains by being treated
in Balzac's way, rather than as the life of a disappointed girl,
studied from within. In that case the subject of the book might easily
seem to be wearing thin, for the fact is that Eugenie has not the
stuff of character to give much interest to her story, supposing it
were seen through her eyes. She is good and true and devoted, but she
lacks the poetry, the inner resonance, that might make a living drama
of her simple emotions. Balzac was always too prosaic for the creation
of virtue; his innocent people--unless they may be grotesque as well
as innocent, like Pons or Goriot--live in a world that is not worth
the trouble of investigation. The interest of Eugenie would infallibly
be lowered, not heightened, by closer participation in her romance; it
is much better to look at it from outside, as Balzac does for the most
part, and to note the incidents that befell her, always provided that
the image of lagging time can be fashioned and preserved. As for that,
Balzac has no cause to be anxious; it is as certain that he can do
what he will with the subject of a story, handle it aright and compel
it to make its impression, as that he will fail to understand the
sensibility of a good-natured girl.

I cannot imagine that the value of the novelist's picture, as
preparation for his drama, could be proved more strikingly than it is
proved in this book, where so much is expected of it. Eugenie Grandet
is typical of a natural bent on the part of any prudent writer of
fiction, the instinct to relieve the climax of the story by taxing it
as little as possible when it is reached. The climax ought to
complete, to add the touch that makes the book whole and organic; that
is its task, and that only. It should be free to do what it must
without any unnecessary distraction, and nothing need distract it that
can be dealt with and despatched at an earlier stage. The climax in
Grandet is not a dramatic point, not a single incident; it lies in the
slow chill that ver