the most cursory fashion. Therefore the perspective of
his life is difficult to arrange, and ordinary rules for gauging
character are at fault. We find it impossible to follow the principle,
that because Balzac possessed one characteristic, he could not also
show a diametrically opposite quality--that, for instance, because
tenderness, delicacy of feeling, and a high sense of reverence and of
honour were undoubtedly integral parts of his personality, the stories
told by his contemporaries of his occasional coarseness must
necessarily be false.

His own words, written to the Duchesse d'Abrantes in 1828, have no
doubt a great element of truth in them: "I have the most singular
character I know. I study myself as I might study another person, and
I possess, shut up in my five foot eight inches, all the incoherences,
all the contrasts possible; and those who think me vain, extravagant,
obstinate, high-minded, without connection in my ideas,--a fop,
negligent, idle, without application, without reflection, without any
constancy; a chatterbox, without tact, badly brought up, impolite,
whimsical, unequal in temper,--are quite as right as those who perhaps
say that I am economical, modest, courageous, stingy, energetic, a
worker, constant, silent, full of delicacy, polite, always gay. Those
who consider that I am a coward will not be more wrong than those who
say that I am extremely brave; in short, learned or ignorant, full of
talent or absurd, nothing astonishes me more than myself. I end by
believing that I am only an instrument played on by circumstances.
Does this kaleidoscope exist, because, in the soul of those who claim
to paint all the affections of the human heart, chance throws all
these affections themselves, so that they may be able, by the force of
their imagination, to feel what they paint? And is observation a sort
of memory suited to aid this lively imagination? I begin to think
so."[*]

[*] "Correspondance," vol. i. p. 77.

Certainly Balzac's character proves to the hilt the truth of the rule
that, with few exceptions in the world's history, the higher the
development, the more complex the organisation and the more violent
the clashing of the divers elements of the man's nature; so that his
soul resembles a field of battle, and he wears out quickly.
Nevertheless, because everything in Balzac seems contradictory, when
he is likened by one of his friends to the sea, which is one and
indivisible, we perceive