_ article.[150] Nevertheless, he does not
feel that any disgust forbids while a clear duty calls: and he hopes to
show that it is not always necessary to weary of quails as in the
Biblical, partridges as in the old _fabliau_, and pigeons in the Dumas
_fils_ (_v. inf._) version of the Parable of Satiety.

[Sidenote: Limitations of Subject.]

In no case, however, not even in that of Victor Hugo, is the easement
given by the general plan of the book, in regard to biographical and
other not strictly literary details, more welcome. We shall say nothing
on the point whether the author of the _Comedie Humaine_ should be
called M. de Balzac or M. Balzac or M. Balssa; nothing about his family,
his friends, his enemies, his strangely long-deferred, and, when it
came, as strangely ill-fated marriage; little, though something
necessarily, about his tastes, his commercial and other enterprises, and
so forth; and not very much--something here also becoming obligatory--on
his manner of producing the immense and wonderful work which he has left
us. Those who are curious about such things will find ample satisfaction
in the labours of M. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, of MM. Christophe and
Cerfbeer, and of others.[151] Here he is, for us, Honore de Balzac,
author of the _Juvenilia_ (saved from, as it is understood, a larger
bulk still) in ten volumes; of the mighty "Comedy" itself, and, more
incidentally, of the considerable epistolary and miscellaneous
production referred to above. The manner in which this enormous output
was put out has perhaps too much to do with its actual character to be
passed over in total silence. It represents thirty years' working time
almost entirely spent upon it,[152] the alternatives being the
above-mentioned commercial speculations (which were almost invariably
unfortunate, and involved him, during the whole of his career, in
complicated indebtedness) and a good deal of travel, very frequently
connected with these speculations. Of the society which formed so large
a part of the life of the time and of which he wrote so often, Balzac
saw little. He worked at enormous stretches, and he rewrote his work, in
MS., in proof and in temporarily final print, with insatiable and
indefatigable industry. To no writer could the commonplace extravagance
about burning the candle at both ends be applied so truly as to Balzac.
Only, his candle was shaped like a wheel with no felloes, and he burnt
it at the end of every spoke a