ng
the Bishop of Jitomir (this is as characteristic of Balzac in one way
as what follows is in another) a Madame Eve de Balzac, born Countess
Rzevuska, or a Madame Honore de Balzac or a Madame de Balzac the elder"
came into existence.

It does not appear that Balzac was exactly unhappy during this huge
probation, which was broken by one short visit to Paris. The interest
of uncertainty was probably much for his ardent and unquiet spirit, and
though he did very little literary work for him, one may suspect that
he would not have done very much if he had stayed at Paris, for signs
of exhaustion, not of genius but of physical power, had shown themselves
before he left home. But it is not unjust or cruel to say that by the
delay "Madame Eve de Balzac" (her actual baptismal name was Evelina)
practically killed her husband. These winters in the severe climate of
Russian Poland were absolutely fatal to a constitution, and especially
to lungs, already deeply affected. At Vierzschovnia itself he had
illnesses, from which he narrowly escaped with life, before the
marriage; his heart broke down after it; and he and his wife did not
reach Paris till the end of May. Less than three months afterwards, on
the 18th of August, he died, having been visited on the very day of his
death in the Paradise of bric-a-brac which he had created for his Eve in
the Rue Fortunee--a name too provocative of Nemesis--by Victor Hugo,
the chief maker in verse as he himself was the chief maker in prose of
France. He was buried at Pere la Chaise. The after-fortunes of his house
and its occupants were not happy: but they do not concern us.

In person Balzac was a typical Frenchman, as indeed he was in most ways.
From his portraits there would seem to have been more force and address
than distinction or refinement in his appearance, but, as has been
already observed, his period was one ungrateful to the iconographer. His
character, not as a writer but as a man, must occupy us a little longer.
For some considerable time--indeed it may be said until the publication
of his letters--it was not very favorably judged on the whole. We may,
of course, dismiss the childish scandals (arising, as usual, from clumsy
or malevolent misinterpretation of such books as the _Physiologie de
Mariage_, the _Peau de Chagrin_, and a few others), which gave rise to
the caricatures of him such as that of which we read, representing him
in a monk's dress at a table covered with bott