The decade from 1830 to 1840 is the most prolific period of Balzac’s genius in the creation of individual works; that from 1840 to 1850 is his great period of philosophical co-ordination and arrangement.  In the first he hewed out materials for his house; in the second he put them together.  This statement is of course relatively true only, for we owe to the second decade three of his greatest masterpieces:  ’Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes,’ and ‘La Cousine Bette’ and ‘Le Cousin Pons,’ collectively known as ‘Les Parents pauvres’ (Poor Relations).  And what a period of masterful literary activity the first decade presents!  For the year 1830 alone the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul gives seventy-one entries, many of slight importance, but some familiar to every student of modern literature, such as ‘El Verdugo,’ ’La Maison du chat-qui-pelote,’ ‘Gobseck,’ ‘Adieu,’ ‘Une Passion dans le desert’ (A Passion in the Desert), ‘Un Episode sous la Terreur’ (An Episode of the Terror).  For 1831 there are seventy-six entries, among them such masterpieces as ‘Le Reequisitionnaire’ (The Conscript), ‘Les Proscrits’ (The Outlaws), ‘La Peau de chagrin,’ and ‘Jesus-Christ en Flandre.’  In 1832 the number of entries falls to thirty-six, but among them are ’Le Colonel Chabert,’ ‘Le Cure de Tours’ (The Priest of Tours), ’La Grande Breteche,’ ‘Louis Lambert,’ and ‘Les Marana.’  After this year there are fewer short stories.  In 1833 we have ‘Le Medecin de campagne’ (The Country Doctor), and ‘Eugenie Grandet,’ with parts of the ’Histoire des treize’ (Story of the Thirteen), and of the ‘Contes drolatiques’ (Droll Tales).  The next year gives us ‘La Recherche de l’absolu’ (Search for the Absolute) and ‘Le Pere Goriot’ (Old Goriot) and during the next six there were no less than a dozen masterpieces.  Such a decade of accomplishment is little short of miraculous, and the work was done under stress of anxieties that would have crushed any normal man.

But anxieties and labors were lightened by a friendship which was an inspiration long before it ripened into love, and were rendered bearable both by Balzac’s confidence in himself and by his ever nearer view of the goal he had set himself.  The task before him was as stupendous as that which Comte had undertaken, and required not merely the planning and writing of new works but the utilization of all that he had previously written.  Untiring labor had to be devoted to this manipulation of old material, for practically the great output of the five years 1829-1834 was to be co-ordinated internally, story being brought into relation with story and character with character.  This meant the creation and management of an immense number of personages, the careful investigation of the various localities which served for environments, and the profound study of complicated social and political problems.  No wonder, then, that the second decade of his maturity shows a falling off in abundance, though not in intensity of creative power; and that the gradual breaking down of his health, under the strain of his ceaseless efforts and of his abnormal habits of life, made itself more and more felt in the years that followed the great preface which in 1842 set forth the splendid design of the ‘Comedie humaine.’