A sure grasp of the purport of this work will make it clear that I attach to common, daily facts, hidden or patent to the eye, to the acts of individual lives, and to their causes and principles, the importance which historians have hitherto ascribed to the events of public national life.  The unknown struggle which goes on in a valley of the Indre between Mme. de Mortsauf and her passion is perhaps as great as the most famous of battles (Le Lys dans la Vallee).  In one the glory of the victor is at stake; in the other it is heaven.  The misfortunes of the two Birotteaus, the priest and the perfumer, to me are those of mankind.  La Fosseuse (Medecin de Campagne) and Mme. Graslin (Cure de Village) are almost the sum-total of woman.  We all suffer thus every day.  I have had to do a hundred times what Richardson did but once.  Lovelace has a thousand forms, for social corruption takes the hues of the medium in which it lives.  Clarissa, on the contrary, the lovely image of impassioned virtue, is drawn in lines of distracting purity.  To create a variety of Virgins it needs a Raphael.  In this respect, perhaps literature must yield to painting.

Still, I may be allowed to point out how many irreproachable figures —­as regards their virtue—­are to be found in the portions of this work already published:  Pierrette Lorrain, Ursule Mirouet, Constance Birotteau, La Fosseuse, Eugenie Grandet, Marguerite Claes, Pauline de Villenoix, Madame Jules, Madame de la Chanterie, Eve Chardon, Mademoiselle d’Esgrignon, Madame Firmiani, Agathe Rouget, Renee de Maucombe; besides several figures in the middle-distance, who, though less conspicuous than these, nevertheless, offer the reader an example of domestic virtue:  Joseph Lebas, Genestas, Benassis, Bonnet the cure, Minoret the doctor, Pillerault, David Sechard, the two Birotteaus, Chaperon the priest, Judge Popinot, Bourgeat, the Sauviats, the Tascherons, and many more.  Do not all these solve the difficult literary problem which consists in making a virtuous person interesting?

It was no small task to depict the two or three thousand conspicuous types of a period; for this is, in fact, the number presented to us by each generation, and which the Human Comedy will require.  This crowd of actors, of characters, this multitude of lives, needed a setting —­if I may be pardoned the expression, a gallery.  Hence the very natural division, as already known, into the Scenes of Private Life, of Provincial Life, of Parisian, Political, Military, and Country Life.  Under these six heads are classified all the studies of manners which form the history of society at large, of all its faits et gestes, as our ancestors would have said.  These six classes correspond, indeed, to familiar conceptions.  Each has its own sense and meaning, and answers to an epoch in the life of man.  I may repeat here, but very briefly, what was written by Felix Davin—­a young genius snatched from