s of the book, while
_Un Menage de garcon_ only obliquely indicates the real purport of the
novel. Jean-Jacques Rouget is a most unfortunate creature, who
anticipates Baron Hulot as an example of absolute dependence on things
of the flesh, _plus_ a kind of cretinism, which Hulot, to do him
justice, does not exhibit even in his worst degradation. But his
"bachelor establishment," though undoubtedly useful for the purposes
of the story, might have been changed for something else, and his
personality have been considerably altered, without very much
affecting the general drift of the fiction.

Flore Brazier, on the other hand, the _Rabouilleuse_ herself, is
essential, and with Maxence Gilet and Philippe Bridau forms the centre
of the action and the passion of the book. She ranks, indeed, with
those few feminine types, Valerie Marneffe, La Cousine Bette, Eugenie
Grandet, Beatrix, Madame de Maufrigneuse, and perhaps Esther Gobseck,
whom Balzac has tried to draw at full length. It is to be observed
that though quite without morals of any kind, she is not _ab initio_
or intrinsically a she-fiend like Valerie or Lisbeth. She does not do
harm for harm's sake, nor even directly to gratify spite, greed, or
other purely unsocial and detestable passions. She is a type of
feminine sensuality of the less ambitious and restless sort. Given a
decent education, a fair fortune, a good-looking and vigorous husband
to whom she had taken a fancy, and no special temptation, and she
might have been a blameless, merry, "sonsy" _commere_, and have died
in an odor of very reasonable sanctity. Poverty, ignorance, the
Rougets (father and son), Maxence Gilet, and Philippe Bridau came in
her way, and she lived and died as Balzac has shown her. He has done
nothing more "inevitable;" a few things more complete and
satisfactory.

Maxence Gilet is a not much less remarkable sketch, though it is not
easy to say that he is on the same level. Gilet is the man of distinct
gifts, of some virtues, or caricatures of virtues, who goes to the
devil through idleness, fulness of bread, and lack of any worthy
occupation. He is extraordinarily unconventional for a French figure
in fiction, even for a figure drawn by such a French genius as Balzac.
But he is also hardly to be called a great type, and I do not quite
see why he should have succumbed before Philippe as he did.

Philippe himself is more complicated, and, perhaps, more questionable.
He is certainly one