The mention of obedience in a people irritated the hostess; but on her seething he poured a drop of cold water by asking jestingly:
"Would you, in a great danger, wish your servants to deliberate about what you had ordered them to do?"
The Sandist-Philosophico-Republico-Communico-Pierre-Lerouxico-Geranico-Deisto train (the epithets are Balzac's) stopped dead at the question. Then Marliani, one of the guests, remarked that argument was impossible with poets. Balzac bowed, and added:
"You hear what he says?"
"You are a dreadful satirist," retorted George Sand. "Go on with your Comedie Humaine."
It was not necessary to give the recommendation. He was for ever going on; and the further he went, the further his horizons receded. The embracing lines were rather indiscriminate. He came to think himself capable of reducing every domain to his scale. Men's ambitions, however, are part of their motive power; and, had his been less sweeping, the qualities of his work might have diminished with the defects. "Four men," he cried in one of his vauntings, "have had an immense life, Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell, and—I mean to be the fourth! The first lived with the life of Europe; he inoculated himself with armies! The second espoused the globe! The third incarnated in himself a people! As for me! I shall have borne a whole society in my head! It is just as well to live thus as every evening to say, 'Spades, hearts, trumps;' or to wonder why Madame such a one has done such and such a thing."
Modeste Mignon, which was published in 1844 with the extra attraction of some of Auber's music in it is one of Balzac's brighter and lighter books, and reproduces part of his own last love-story more objectively treated than in Albert Savarus. Its plot was suggested to him by a short tale which Madame Hanska composed, intending to submit it for his approval, but which she threw in the fire, afterwards sending him, in one of her epistles, an outline of what she had done. Since he utilized her invention, he paid her back by selecting as his point of departure the adventure of a well-educated girl of literary tastes, who, through reading the verses of the celebrated Canalis, at once a poet and a statesman, fell in love with him and expressed her (literary) admiration in a letter, though she had never seen him. There were other such cases in the first half of the nineteenth century besides that of the Polish Countess and the author of Eugenie Grandet. Disdaining to reply to a correspondent who did not appear to be a person with whom he could take liberties, Canalis delegated the task to his friend and secretary, La Briere, who answered under cover of the great man's name and ultimately found out and, incognito, beheld the lady. She was beautiful and he lost his heart to her. When later the subterfuge was discovered, Canalis, interested now, wanted to marry the lady, she being presumably rich. Through pique, Modeste, for a while, listened to his suit and smiled on him, albeit, in verity, she was touched by La Briere's sincere affection. The circumstances leading to the unmasking of Canalis' selfish character and to Modeste's marriage with La Briere are handled in a less Balzacian way than the introductory chapters, which, however, are more than usually tortuous. But the whole story is pleasing; and, in the discursive paragraphs, there is less dogmatism and a more delicate sense of contrasts than the novelist is wont to exhibit when astride a hobby-horse. The following passage has an aroma of Shelley's Defence of Poetry in it, which merits our attention. The divine in man says:
"In order to live, thou shalt bend thyself towards earth; in order to think thou shalt raise thyself heavenwards. We want the life of the soul as much as that of the body; whence there are two utilities. Thus it is certain that a book will not serve as foot-gear; an epic, from the utilitarian point of view, is not worth an economical soup from the kitchen of a Benevolent Society; and a self-acting boiler, rising a couple of inches on itself, procures calico a few pence a yard cheaper; but this machine and the improvements of industry do not breathe life into a nation, and will not tell the future that it has existed; whereas Egyptian art, Mexican art, Grecian art, Roman art, with their masterpieces accused of uselessness, have attested the existence of these peoples in the vast expanse of time, there where huge intermediary nations, destitute of great men, have disappeared without leaving their visiting cards on the globe. All works of genius are the epitome of a civilization, and presuppose an immense utility. Forsooth, a pair of boots will not outvie a stage-play in your eyes, and you will not prefer a windmill to the Church of Saint Ouen. So, a people is animated with the same sentiment as a man; and man's favourite idea is to survive himself mentally as he reproduces himself physically. The survival of a people is the work of its men of genius."
Beatrix, the other completed novel of the year, is a drawn-out, ill-composed work, which is not redeemed sufficiently by its minute description of Breton manners and its portrait of George Sand in Felicite des Touches. Six years separated the publication of the first part of the book from that of the conclusion, and, in the interval, the unity of plan suffered. Balzac devoted a good deal of labour to its execution. In all the conjugal ruses employed by Sabine de Grandlieu to detach Calyste, her husband, from Beatrix, he displays his peculiar talent, but the ultimate effect is poor.