espeare's practice of
intermingling the humorous with the tragic. Even the comic is not
entirely absent, Madame Vauquer especially supplying interludes. The
novelist himself chuckled as he put into her mouth a mispronunciation
of the word _tilleul_,[*] and explained to Madame Hanska, whose
foreign accent in speaking French suggested it, that he chose the fat
landlady so that Eve should not be jealous.

[*] English linden, or lime-tree.

Balzac's too great absorption in his writing forced him more than once
in this year to go into the country and recuperate his health. During
the earlier months he spent a short time with the Carrauds at
Frapesle, which was a favourite sojourn of his, and, later on, at
Sache, a pleasant retreat in his native Touraine. His iron
constitution was not able always to resist the demands continually
made upon it; and his abuse of coffee only aggravated the evil. To
Laure he acknowledged, while at Sache, that this beverage refused to
excite his brain for any time longer than a fortnight; and even the
fortnight was paid for by horrible cramps in the stomach, followed by
fits of depression, which he suffered when suddenly deprived of his
beloved drink. In his _Treatise of Modern Stimulants_ he describes its
peculiar operation upon himself. "This coffee," he says, "falls into
your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas
begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the
battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive full
gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a
magnificent, deploying charge; the artillery of logic hurry up with
their train and ammunition; the shafts of wit start up like
sharp-shooters. Similes arise; the paper is covered with ink; for the
struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just
as a battle with powder."

When he tells us how Doctor Minoret, Ursule Mirouet's guardian, used
to regale his friends with a cup of Moka mixed with Bourbon coffee,
and roasted Martinique, which the Doctor insisted on personally
preparing in a silver coffee-pot, it is his own custom that he is
detailing. His Bourbon he bought only in the Rue Mont Blanc (now the
Chaussee d'Antin), the Martinique, in the Rue des Vieilles Audriettes,
the Moka at a grocer's in the Rue de l'Universite. It was half a day's
journey to fetch them.

The _Tigers_ or _Lions_, of the Loge Infernale at the Opera, have
alread