[21] A villa on the Loire.
[22] The disastrous result of his lawsuit with the Revue des Deux Mondes.
[23] Madame de Berny, a devoted friend.
[24] An allusion to the pirated editions of his works.
[25] At Les Jardies.

CHAPTER V.
THE THINKER.

“Un écrivain doit se regarder comme un instituteur des hommes.”—Bonald.

Balzac, to borrow a Hindu expression, was “an artificer who built like a giant and finished like a jeweler.” The groundwork of the “Comédie Humaine” was grandly conceived and admirably executed; and though a few of the balconies of its superb superstructure are incomplete, yet as, happily, masterpieces are ever eternally young, it shows no signs of decay, and there is little danger of its falling in ruins.

For the decoration of this work, Balzac brought a subtle analysis of men, women, and things, and adorned it all with brilliant ideas and profound reflections, of which the saddest were dug from his own sufferings, and not, as a great writer has said, from the hearts of his mistresses.