armour-so much that was ridiculous in his exaggerations, might be excused for choosing him as a quarry for their wit, if not for the wit's grossness. In 1839, the Gazette des Ecoles inserted in o

ription: "The Reverend Father Dom Seraphitus, Mysticus Goriot, of the Regular Order of Clichy Friars, taken in by all those he has himself tak

was a dishonest man, a complaint was lodged with the Procureur-General against the pro

nst the Memorial de Rouen for the purpose of defending the principle of literary property, he pleaded with all the force of his talent, and composed a Literary Code and some Notes on Literary Ownership containing not a few excellent suggestions. His, too, was the initiative for the drawing up of a petition to the King, with a view to the establishment of literary prizes to be bestowed on well-deserving authors every ten yea

claims for damage continually sent in, until, in sheer despair, pledging his credit more deeply, he purchased the land beyond, content, at length, that his walls should be able to carry on their freaks in his own demesne, without let or hindrance or objection from any one. It is said that the land on which Les Jardies stood was so much on the incline that Frederick Lemaitre, who once ventured over there, was compelled to take a couple of stones and place them at each step under his feet in order to approach the house. This was, no doubt, one of the actor's jokes. It is probable that, in selecting the site, Balzac had in his thought the facility the place would afford for reconnoitering when any one came to his doors. The domestics were directed to keep a sharp look-out; and, as soon as a figure was seen approaching that appeared to

of a woman who, after losing her fourteenth lover, succeeds in getting a fifteenth, d'Arthez, to believe her virtuous and a sort of saint maligned by envy. There is cleverness and to spare in the way the wiles of this sly jade are related, and falsehood shown as a fine art in the service of passional love. B

fforts. Though his literary talent, for the time being, has no value in cash, it procures him the friendship of Madame de Bargeton, a grand dame of Angouleme; or, more properly speaking, it is the pretext and justification; for Lucien really owes the lady's favour to his Apollo-like beauty. Subsequently the poet, desirous of shining in Paris, quits his native place with a sum of money scraped together by his sister and brother-in-law, and goes to the capital, accompanied by Madame de Bargeton. His liaison there with the lady is but of short duration. In compensation, however, he becomes acquainted with a new literary world, into which he enters with his meagre stock of poems, plus a novel; and, after a number of adventures, turns journalist, a metamorphosis that supplies the author with a

anin, who was the author of it, praised, some dozen years later, where now he cursed. There was exaggeration in his panegyric, pronounced in 1850 under the impulse dictating generosity to the memory of a dead foe; and there was exaggeration also in his polemic indited under the smart of Balzac's gibes against the press. However, the closing words of the article, save for the tone, can hardly be gainsaid: "Never,

of Balzac in his a

through the Cure of the district. None the less, she is aware that the act has been committed indirectly through the young man's love for her. Smitten with remorse, after the execution, she quits Limoges, and, removing into the country, endeavours there by a life of charity and devotion to religion to redeem her lapse from her wifely duty. Then, finally, she dies in presence of the Archbishop, of Bianchon the great doctor, and of the Procureur-General and other witnesses, whom she has sent for to listen to her confession of moral complicity, the death scene being narrated with much theatrical emphasis. On to this melodramatic subject, wilfully rendered obscure, and really incomprehensible, the novelist did his best to tack various illustrations of Catholic repentance. He intended the book to be the glorification of Catholicism, the refutation of Protestantism, the embodiment of virtues private and social in people who bowed themselves to his ideal of faith; the story he used simply as a thread to connect these things together. Consequently, the action is intermittent

e Legitimist, absolutist, ultra-orthodox worshipper of every old-time privilege and doctrine, yet continually saying and doing things that savour more of the democratic than the aristocratic. Towards the disintegration of monarchic attachments, his fiction contri

n; he has as much wit as poetry in him. His conversation is most delightful, with some resemblance to that of Humboldt, but superior and allowing more dialogue. He is full of bourgeois ideas. He execrates Racine, and treats him as a sorry sort of man. On this point he is quite mad. His wife he has thrown over for J--; and gives for such conduct reasons of signal meanness (she bore

his stories, they are rarely estimable characters. For Lucien de Rubempre he has only little sympathy. The three specimens of Lucien's verse given in the novel he pro

he staff of the theatrical journal Le Voleur. The Court of Cassation was appealed to in vain and the sentence was carried out at Bourg on the 28th of October. As long as there seemed the slightest chance of preventing the execution, Balzac continued his efforts to save the notary, though blamed by his family and friends for his interference, which they set down as quixotic. Presumably Peytel ha

newspapers necessitated a change in the roman feuilleton; and the Presse and Siecle, which had inaugurated the reform, and to both of which Balzac contributed fiction, laid down the principle that they would prin

r result. Author and editor combined, he made the three numbers of his review, which were all he was able to bring out, at any rate the equal of the older established monthlies. In the three appeared his Z. Marcas, and A Prince of Bohemia, the former a resuscitation of the Louis Lambert species of hero transformed into a politician. The Russian Letters, likewise political, furnish a very exact and comprehensive sketch of the general state of mind in Europe at the commencement of the Forties. One article of criticism praised to the skies Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme published in the previous year. A letter he had addressed to Stendhal in April 1839 was more moderate in its tone, though eulogi

flights of eulogy-and I met with them in every paragraph-I could not help thinking how my friends would look when they saw them." "The reason for this augmented enthusiasm must be sought," says Sainte-Beuve, "in the fact that Stendhal lent or gave Balzac a sum of five thousand francs in the inter

Yet not entirely. His qualities and his defects alike led him frequently to break from restraint and to follow his own bent, maugre the complaints of readers,

accept it on approval, but was less fortunate with regard to the fifteen thousand francs which Balzac had asked for on account. The roles were discussed and partially distributed. Henry Monnier and Frederick Lemaitre were to be chief actors on the men's side, Mesdames Theodore and Albert on the women's. On the 25th of the month, the author presented himself with his manuscript before the reading committee; and, to his intense annoyance and dismay, was compelled to put it back int

ho went to Les Jardies and lived there for some little time as a paid secretary, would be rung up at night, when his employer usually worked-rung up not once nor twice, but several times, to hear himsel

for that theatre should be acted is an impenetrable mystery. But then Harel himself was an oddity, and he may have felt bowels of compassion for a confrere so original. The story goes

anticipating a little) to so miserable an end. In the concluding act of the play, the young man discovers that he has a family, and a father who is a noble; and he marries the girl he loves. But Vautrin is arrested, and, although he has been the instrument of his protege's happiness, he is led off to prison once more. The theme, as tr

r's, No. 104 Rue de Richelieu, and sent for Gautier. "I am going to read to Harel to-morrow," he announced, "a grand five-act drama." "Ah!" replied Gautier; "so I suppose you want us to hear it and to give you our opinion." "The play is not yet written," answered Balzac coolly. "You shall do one act; Ourliac, a second; Laurent Jan, a third; de Belloy, a fourth; and I, the fifth. There are not so many lines in one act. With all of us working together, we shall be able

ble failure. I have done wrong, I believe, to appeal to the public. Morituri te salutant Caesar." The first portion of the performance was received, on the whole, favourably, though there was no enthusiasm; but, when Frederick Lemaitre, who was entrusted with the role of Vautrin, came on to the stage, in the fourth act, dressed as a Mexican general, and wearing his forelock of hair in a way that appeared to imitate a like peculiarity in the King, there was an outcry among the

g the garden over there?" the latter said, looking out of the window. "Yes." "I am about to establish there a dairy, with an installation of the best kind, the cows of which will bring me in three thousand francs a year." Gozlan stared. "And you see the other strip down yonder farther than the wall?" "Yes." "Well, I intend to plant that with rare vegetables of the sort that used to be supplied to the King's table. That will bring me in another three thousand francs a year." Gozlan waited for what would come next. "And

or Marseilles, just as he was on the point of embarking for the other side of the Atlantic. He had been reading Fenimore Cooper again; and the descriptions given by this painter of Nature always aroused his roaming instincts. He envied especially Cooper's power and skill in reproducing the details of a landscape. Once, in a pastry-cook's shop that he had entered with Gozlan to devour a plate of macaroni, he brandished a book of Cooper's, which he had been carrying under his arm, while he recounted his fruitless efforts to get experts in botany to tell him ho

intending to beg from Rothschild; then flourished his big debt at the end, quoting fantastic sums, variable as the barometer, which would oblige him sooner or later, notwithstanding his constant devotion to the Countess, whom he loved more than he loved God, to barter himself away to some agreeable young woman who should be willing to bestow her person upon him, plus a couple of hundred thousand francs. Once or twice there was really a question of his making a match through the goo

ose face grew radiant. "Come along with me. We will seek together." Realizing too late into what an adventure he had allowed himself to be entangled, Gozlan tried in vain to escape. Protests were of no use. Balzac dragged him off; and, with noses in the air and absorbed gaze, the two men promenaded along the Rue Saint-Honore and a number of other streets, knocking up against the people they met and provoking a good deal of profane language from these latter, who regarded them as a couple of imbeciles. At length, Gozlan, like Columbus' sailors, having more than enough of the tramp, refused to play follow-my-leader any longer; and only after

uitable for a young girl's perusal, the heroine, a simple Breton maid, being the victim of an avaricious Provins family, the Rogrons, who under cover of the law, inflict on her such terrible ill-treatment that she ultimately dies from it. Pierrette first appeared as a serial in the Siecle. In the final edition of the noveli

creating the illusion of a wealth which he had not; who deceives himself as well as others; who is neither entirely a rogue nor entirely honest; but who, after all, reaches relative tranquillity and competency more through accident than purpose. The piece was not performed in its author's life-time; but friends were acquainted with it already in 1840, when Gautier and the rest of the inner circle were summoned to Les Jardies to hear the hermit read it, differing considerably then from the arrangement that was ultimately played.

glish,

Duke of Orleans for the purpose of honouring the arts. In the afternoon the guests were shown round the domain, and expected to admire its beauties. Hugo was extremely sober in his praises until they came to the famous walnut-tree. Encouraged by the notice accorded to his favourite, the master of Les Jardies repeated to Hugo what he had already affirmed to Gozlan, to wit, that the tree was worth fifteen hundred francs to him (to Gozlan he had said two th

paid. In total, his desire to abide under his own vine and under his own fig-tree had cost him a sum that he estimated between one hundred thousand and one hundred and twenty thousand francs. Deduction made for his Falstaffian speech, the amount was probably about e

eper." Not understanding why the novelist, who would not explain, should be in dread of this humble functionary, and imagining that much study and labour had made his friend a little mad, Gozlan took no denial, and, button-holing Balzac, lugged him off into the leafy avenues. And there, sure enough, after a while, they saw the bugbear, who, as soon as he perceived the two pedestrians, bo