Nor should it be forgotten that this close student of human nature, whose work appears so often severely mundane, and most strong when its roots go down into the earth, sometimes seeming to prefer the rankness and slime of human growths,—­can on occasion soar into the empyrean, into the mystic region of dreams and ideals and all manner of subtle imaginings.  Witness such fiction as “The Magic Skin,” “Seraphita,” and “The Quest of the Absolute.”  It is hard to believe that the author of such creations is he of “Pere Goriot” or “Cousine Bette.”  But it is Balzac’s wisdom to see that such pictures are quite as truly part of the Human Comedy:  because they represent man giving play to his soul—­exercising his highest faculties.  Nor does the realistic novelist in such efforts have the air of one who has left his true business in order to disport himself for once in an alien element.  On the contrary, he seems absolutely at home:  for the time, this is his only affair, his natural interest.

And so with illustrations practically inexhaustible, which the long list prodigally offers.  But the scope and variety have been already suggested; the best rule with Balzac is, each one to his taste, always remembering that in a writer so catholic, there is a peculiar advantage in an extended study.  Nor can from twenty to twenty-five of his best books be read without a growing conviction that here is a man of genius who has done a unique thing.

It is usual to refer to Balzac as the first great realist of the French, indeed, of modern fiction.  Strictly, he is not the first in France, as we have seen, since Beyle preceded him; nor in modern fiction, for Jane Austen, so admirably an artist of verity, came a generation before.  But, as always when a compelling literary force appears, Balzac without any question dominates in the first half of the nineteenth century:  more than this, he sets the mold of the type which marks the second half.  In fact, the modern Novel means Balzac’s recipe.  English fiction, along with that of Europe, shares this influence.  We shall see in dealing with Dickens how definitely the English writer adopted the Balzac method as suited to the era and sympathetic to Dickens’ own nature.

As to the accuracy with which he gave a representation of contemporary life—­thus deserving the name realist—­considerable may be said in the way of qualification.  Much of it applies with similar force to Zola, later to be hailed as a king among modern realists in the naturalistic extreme to which he pushed the movement.  Balzac, through his remarkable instinct for detail and particularity, did introduce into nineteenth century fiction an effect of greater truth in the depiction of life.  Nobody perhaps had—­nobody has since—­presented mis-en-scene as did he.  He builds up an impression by hundreds of strokes, each seemingly insignificant, but adding to a totality that becomes impressive.  Moreover, again and again in his psychologic analysis there are home-thrusts which bring the blood to the face of any honest person.  His detail is thus quite as much subjective as external.  It were a great mistake to regard Balzac as merely a writer who photographed things outside in the world; he is intensely interested in the things within—­and if objectivity meant realism exclusively, he would be no realist at all.