n there have been very different opinions. 1842
supplied _Albert Savarus_ (autobiographical largely), _Un Debut dans la
vie_, the very variously named and often rehandled _Rabouilleuse_ (which,
since Taine's exaltation of it, has often been taken as a Balzacian
quintessence), and _Autre etude de femme_, yet another rehandling of
earlier work. In 1843 came the introduction of the completed _Sur Catherine
de Medicis_, _Honorine_ and _La Muse du departement_ (almost as often
reconstructed as _La Femme de trente ans_), with _Comment aiment les jeunes
filles_ (a similar rehandling intended to start the collected _Splendeurs
et miseres des courtisanes_), and a further instalment of _Illusions
perdues_, _Les Souffrances d'un inventeur_. Three out of the next four
years were astonishingly fruitful. 1844 gave _Modeste Mignon_ (a book with
a place to itself, and said to be founded on a story actually written by
Madame Hanska), _Gaudissart II._, _A combien l'amour revient aux
vieillards_ (a second part of the _Splendeurs_), _Beatrix_ (one of the most
powerful if not of the most agreeable), and the first and very promising
part of _Les Paysans_. Only _Un Homme d'affaires_ came out in 1845, but
this was made up in 1846 by _Les Comediens sans le savoir_ (sketched
earlier), another part of the _Splendeurs_, _Ou menent les mauvais
chemins_, the first part of _Les Parents pauvres_, _La Cousine Bette_
(sometimes considered the topmost achievement of Balzac's genius), and the
final form of a work first issued fifteen years earlier and often
retouched, _Petites miseres de la vie conjugale_. 1847 was even richer,
with _Le Cousin Pons_ (the second part of _Les Parents pauvres_, and again
a masterpiece), the conclusion of the _Splendeurs_, _La Derniere
Incarnation de Vautrin_, _L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine_ (which had
been on and off the stocks for five years), and the unfinished _Depute
d'Arcis_. This was the last scene of the comedy that appeared in the life
of its author. The conclusion of the _Depute d'Arcis_, published in 1853,
and those of _Les Paysans_ and _Les Petits Bourgeois_ which appeared, the
first in this year, the second wholly in 1855, are believed or known to be
by Balzac's friend, Charles Rabou (1803-1871).

This immense and varied total stands to its author in a somewhat different
relation from that of any other work to any other writer. It has been well
said that the whole of Balzac's production was always in his hea