alone, and long
live every one!

Elsewhere he scribbles: "Farewell, _soror_! I hope to have a letter
_sororis_ to answer _sorori_, then to see _sororem_," etc. Later, after
his sister is married, he addresses her as "_the box that contains
everything pleasing; the elixir of virtue, grace, and beauty; the jewel,
the phenomenon of Normandy; the pearl of Bayeux, the fairy of St.
Lawrence, the virgin of the Rue Teinture, the guardian angel of Caen,
the goddess of enchantments, the treasure of friendship_."

We shall continue to quote, without the fear of our examples exceeding,
in the long run, our commentary. "Find me some widow, a rich heiress,"
he writes to his sister at Bayeux, whither her husband had taken her to
live. "You know what I mean. Only brag about me. Twenty-two years old, a
good fellow, good manners, a bright eye, fire, the best dough for a
husband that heaven has ever kneaded. I will give you five per cent. on
the dowry." "Since yesterday," he writes in another letter, "I have
given up dowagers and have come down to widows of thirty. Send all you
find to Lord Rhoone [this remarkable improvisation was one of his early
_noms de plume_]; that's enough--he is known at the city limits. Take
notice. They are to be sent prepaid, without crack or repair, and they
are to be rich and amiable. Beauty isn't required. The varnish goes, and
the bottom of the pot remains!"

Like many other young men of ability, Balzac felt the little rubs--or
the great ones--of family life. His mother figures largely in these
volumes (she survived her glorious son), and from the scattered
reflection of her idiosyncrasies the attentive reader constructs a
sufficiently vivid portrait. She was the old middle-class Frenchwoman
whom he has so often seen--devoted, active, meddlesome, parsimonious,
exacting veneration, and expending zeal. Honore tells his sister:

The other day, coming back from Paris much bothered, it never
occurred to me to thank _maman_ for a black coat which she had
had made for me; at my age one isn't particularly sensitive to
such a present. Nevertheless, it would not have cost me much to
seem touched by the attention, especially as it was a
sacrifice. But I forgot it. _Maman_ began to pout, and you know
what her aspect and her face amount to at those moments. I fell
from the clouds, and racked my brain to know what I had done.
Happily Laurence [his younger sister] cam