"One of these days I may buy one, then you shall come to breakfast, and I'll give you an omelette and a beefsteak. For the present, I shall have to put up with something less expensive. I must be near my music lessons. Thanks all the same, dearest."
She sought a reason for the expression of thoughtfulness which had suddenly come over his face.
"I don't know how it is, but I never see Paris without thinking of Balzac. You don't know Balzac; one of these days you must read him. The moment I begin to notice Paris, I think, feel, see and speak Balzac. That dark woman yonder, with her scornful face, fills my mind with Balzacian phrases—the celebrated courtesan, celebrated for her diamonds and her vices, and so on. The little woman in the next carriage, the Princess de Saxeville, would delight him. He would devote an entire page to the description of her coat of arms—three azure panels, and so on. And I should read it, for Balzac made all the world beautiful, even snobbery. All interesting people are Balzacians. The moment I know that a man is an admirer of Balzac, a sort of Freemasonry is established between us, and I am interested in him, as I should be in a man who had loved a woman whom I had loved."
"But I shouldn't like a woman because I knew that you had loved her."
"You are a woman; but men who have loved the same woman will seek each other from the ends of the earth, and will take an intense pleasure in their recollections. I don't know whether that aphorism is to be found in Balzac; if not, it is an accident that prevented him from writing it, for it is quite Balzacian—only he would give it a turn, an air of philosophic distinction to which it would be useless for me to pretend."
"I wonder if I should like him. Tell me about him."
"You would be more likely than most women to appreciate him. Supposing you put the matter to the test. You would not accept these horses, maybe you will not refuse a humbler present—an edition of Balzac. There's a very good one in fifty-two volumes."
"So many as that?"
"Yes; and not one too many—each is a masterpiece. In this enormous work there are something like two thousand characters, and these appear in some books in principal, in other books in subordinate, parts. Balzac speaks of them as we should of real people. A young lady is going to the opera and to a ball afterwards, and he says—
"'It is easy to imagine her delight and expectation, for was she not going to meet the delicious Duchesse de la Maufregneuse, and her friend the celebrated Madame d'Espard, Coralis, Lucien de Rubempré and Rastignac.'