“Without knowing it, whether he will or not, whether he consents or not, the author of this strange and immense work is of the mighty race of revolutionary writers.  Balzac goes directly to his object.  He assails modern society face to face.  From all he forces something:  from some illusions, from others hope, from these a cry of pain, from those a mask.  He unvails vice and dissects passion.  He penetrates and sounds the heart, the soul, the sentiments, the brain, the abyss that each man has within him.  And by a gift of his free and vigorous nature, by a privilege of the intelligences of our times,—­who, having seen revolutions nearly and with their own eyes, perceive better the end of humanity and comprehend better the course of Providence,—­Balzac came forth serene and smiling from those redoubtable studies which produced melancholy in Moliere and misanthropy in Rousseau.

“This is what he has accomplished among us.  Such is the work he has left us, lofty and solid, a pile of granite, a monumental edifice, from whose summit his renown will henceforth shine.  Great men make their own pedestals:  the future charges itself with their statues.

“His death has struck Paris with stupor.  But a few months since he returned to France.  Feeling that he was about to die, he desired to see his country, like one who on the eve of a long voyage comes to embrace his mother.

“His life was brief, but crowded; fuller of labors than of days.

“Alas, the powerful and indefatigable laborer, the philosopher, the thinker, the poet, the man of genius, lived among us the life of storms, of struggles, of quarrels, of combats, common in all times to all great men.  Today, behold him here at peace.  He leaves collisions and hostilities.  The same day he enters on glory and the tomb.  Henceforth he will shine above all the clouds over our heads, among the stars of our country.

“And you all who are here, are you not tempted to envy him?

“Gentlemen, whatever be our sorrow in the presence of such a loss, let us resign ourselves to these catastrophes.  Let us accept them in their poignancy and severity.  It is good perhaps, and necessary, in an epoch like ours, that from time to time a great death should communicate a religious book to minds devoured by doubt and skepticism.  Providence knows what it does when it thus puts a whole people face to face with the supreme mystery, and gives it Death to meditate upon, which is at once the great equality and the great liberty.

“Providence knows what it does, for here is the highest of instructions.  There can be in all hearts only austere and serious thoughts when a sublime spirit majestically makes its entrance upon the other life; when one of those beings whom the visible wings of genius have long sustained above the crowd, suddenly puts forth those other wings that we cannot see, and disappears in the unknown!