ich he has created to people its streets. Thus, in one
of his most audacious stories, where the horribly grotesque trembles on
the verge of the ridiculous, he strikes the key-note by an elegant
apostrophe to Paris. There are, he tells us, a few connoisseurs who
enjoy the Parisian flavour like the bouquet of some delicate wine. To
all Paris is a marvel; to them it is a living creature; every man, every
fragment of a house, is 'part of the cellular tissue of this great
courtesan, whose head, heart, and fantastic manners are thoroughly known
to them.' They are lovers of Paris; to them it is a costly luxury to
travel in Paris. They are incessantly arrested before the dramas, the
disasters, the picturesque accidents, which assail one in the midst of
this moving queen of cities. They start in the morning to go to its
extremities, and find themselves still unable to leave its centre at
dinner-time. It is a marvellous spectacle at all times; but, he
exclaims, 'O Paris! qui n'a pas admire tes sombres paysages, tes
echappees de lumiere, tes culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a
pas entendu tes murmures entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne
connait encore rien de ta vraie poesie, ni de tes bizarres et larges
contrastes.'

In the scenes which follow, we are introduced to a lover watching the
beautiful and virtuous object of his adoration as she descends an
infamous street late in the evening, and enters one of the houses
through a damp, moist, and fetid passage, feebly lighted by a trembling
lamp, beneath which are seen the hideous face and skinny fingers of an
old woman, as fitly placed as the witches in the blasted heath in
'Macbeth.' In this case, however, Balzac is in one of his wildest moods,
and the hideous mysteries of a huge capital become the pretext for a
piece of rather ludicrous melodrama. Paris is full enough of tragedies
without the preposterous beggar Ferragus, who appears at balls as a
distinguished diplomat, and manages to place on a young gentleman's head
of hair a slow poison (invented for the purpose), which brings him to an
early grave. More impressive, because less extravagant, is that Maison
Vauquer, every hole and corner of which is familiar to the real student
of Balzac. It is situated, as everybody should know, in the Rue Neuve
St.-Genevieve, just where it descends so steeply towards the Rue de
l'Arbalete that horses have some trouble in climbing it. We know its
squalid exterior, its creaking bell