lations of the worlds to God? In what way can they shake the Catholic
dogma? Though irrefutable facts should some day place thought in the
class of fluids which are discerned only by their effects while their
substance evades our senses, even when aided by so many mechanical
means, the result will be the same as when Christopher Columbus detected
that the earth is a sphere, and Galileo demonstrated its rotation. Our
future will be unchanged. The wonders of animal magnetism, with which
I have been familiar since 1820; the beautiful experiments of Gall,
Lavater's successor; all the men who have studied mind as opticians have
studied light--two not dissimilar things--point to a conclusion in favor
of the mystics, the disciples of St. John, and of those great thinkers
who have established the spiritual world--the sphere in which are
revealed the relations of God and man.

A sure grasp of the purport of this work will make it clear that I
attach to common, daily facts, hidden or patent to the eye, to the acts
of individual lives, and to their causes and principles, the importance
which historians have hitherto ascribed to the events of public national
life. The unknown struggle which goes on in a valley of the Indre
between Mme. de Mortsauf and her passion is perhaps as great as the most
famous of battles (_Le Lys dans la Vallee_). In one the glory of the
victor is at stake; in the other it is heaven. The misfortunes of the
two Birotteaus, the priest and the perfumer, to me are those of mankind.
La Fosseuse (_Medecin de Campagne_) and Mme. Graslin (_Cure de Village_)
are almost the sum-total of woman. We all suffer thus every day. I have
had to do a hundred times what Richardson did but once. Lovelace has a
thousand forms, for social corruption takes the hues of the medium
in which it lives. Clarissa, on the contrary, the lovely image of
impassioned virtue, is drawn in lines of distracting purity. To create
a variety of Virgins it needs a Raphael. In this respect, perhaps
literature must yield to painting.

Still, I may be allowed to point out how many irreproachable figures--as
regards their virtue--are to be found in the portions of this work
already published: Pierrette Lorrain, Ursule Mirouet, Constance
Birotteau, La Fosseuse, Eugenie Grandet, Marguerite Claes, Pauline
de Villenoix, Madame Jules, Madame de la Chanterie, Eve Chardon,
Mademoiselle d'Esgrignon, Madame Firmiani, Agathe Rouget, Renee de
Maucombe; besides sev