of the demi-monde—­especially of the wonderful Esther of the ’Splendeurs et miseres’—­serving plainly, by the way, as a point of departure for Dumas fils.  Yet ‘Beatrix’ is an able rather than a truly great book, for it neither elevates nor delights us.  In fact, all the stories in this series are interesting rather than truly great; but all display Balzac’s remarkable analytic powers.  Love, false or true, is of course their main theme; wrought out to a happy issue in ‘La Bourse,’ a charming tale, or to a death of despair in ‘La Grenadiere’ The childless young married woman is contrasted with her more fortunate friend surrounded by little ones (’Memoires de deux jeunes mariees’), the heartless coquette flirts once too often (’Le Bal de Sceaux’), the eligible young man is taken in by a scheming mother (’Le Contrat du mariage’), the deserted husband labors to win back his wife (’Honorine’), the tempted wife learns at last the real nature of her peril (’Une Fille d’Eve’); in short, lovers and mistresses, husbands and wives, make us participants of all the joys and sorrows that form a miniature world within the four walls of every house.

The ‘Scenes of Provincial Life’ number only ten stories, but nearly all of them are masterpieces.  They are ‘Eugenie Grandet,’ ’Le Lys dans la vallee,’ ‘Ursule Mirouet,’ ‘Pierrette,’ ‘Le Cure de Tours,’ ’La Rabouilleuse,’ ‘La Vielle fille’ (The Old Maid), ’Le Cabinet des antiques’ (The Cabinet of Antiques), ‘L’Illustre Gaudissart’ (The Illustrious Gaudissart), and ‘La Muse du departement’ (The Departmental Muse).  Of these ‘Eugenie Grandet’ is of course easily first in interest, pathos, and power.  The character of old Grandet, the miserly father, is presented to us with Shakespearean vividness, although Eugenie herself has, less than the Shakespearean charm.  Any lesser artist would have made the tyrant himself and his yielding wife and daughters seem caricatures rather than living people.  It is only the Shakespeares and Balzacs who are able to make their Shylocks and lagos, their Grandets and Philippe Brideaus, monsters and human beings at one and the same time.  It is only the greater artists, too, who can bring out all the pathos inherent in the subjection of two gentle women to a tyrant in their own household.  But it is Balzac the inimitable alone who can portray fully the life of the provinces, its banality, its meanness, its watchful selfishness, and yet save us through the perfection of his art from the degradation which results from contact with low and sordid life.  The reader who rises unaffected from a perusal of ’Eugenie Grandet’ would be unmoved by the grief of Priam in the tent of Achilles, or of Othello in the death-chamber of Desdemona.