han in fiction; and when the
lover, from whom the old miser has divided her during his life, deserts
her after his death, we feel that the mournful catastrophe is demanded
by the sombre prologue. The book may indeed justify, to some extent, one
of the ordinary criticisms upon Balzac, that he showed a special
subtlety in describing the sufferings of women. The question as to the
general propriety of that criticism is rather difficult for a male
critic. I confess to a certain scepticism, founded partly on the general
principle that hardly any author can really describe the opposite sex,
and partly on an antipathy which I cannot repress to Balzac's most
ambitious feminine portraits.

Eugenie Grandet is perhaps the purest of his women; but then Eugenie
Grandet is simply stupid, and interesting from her sufferings rather
than her character. She reminds us of some patient animal of the
agricultural kind, with bovine softness of eyes and bovine obstinacy
under suffering. His other women, though they are not simply courtesans,
after the fashion of some French writers, seem, as it were, to have a
certain perceptible taint; they breathe an unwholesome atmosphere. In
one of his extravagant humours, he tells us that the most perfect
picture of purity in existence is the Madonna of the Genoese painter,
Piola, but that even that celestial Madonna would have looked like a
Messalina by the side of the Duchesse de Manfrigneuse. If the duchess
resembled either personage in character, it was certainly not the
Madonna. And Balzac's best women give us the impression that they are
courtesans acting the character of virgins, and showing admirable
dramatic skill in the performance. They may keep up the part so
obstinately as to let the acting become earnest; but even when they
don't think of breaking the seventh commandment, they are always
thinking about not breaking it. When he has done his best to describe a
thoroughly pure woman, such as Henrietta in the 'Lys dans la Vallee,' he
cannot refrain from spoiling his performance by throwing in a hint at
the conclusion that, after all, she had a strong disposition to go
wrong, which was only defeated by circumstances. Indeed, the ladies who
in his pages have broken loose from all social restraints, differ only
in external circumstances from their more correct sisters. Coralie, in
the 'Illusions Perdues,' is not so chaste in her conduct as the
immaculate Henriette, but is not a whit less delicate