The _Firm of Nucingen_ is a scathing satire of the world of
stock-jobbing, where the money of the small investor is robbed with
impunity under cover of legality. Balzac's Jewish banker, who thrives
on others' ruin is a type that exists to-day, as then, without any
adequate effort made by law to suppress him. Less happy in indicating
a remedy than in branding an evil, the novelist naively held that
France had only to adopt his doctrine of absolute rule for the
suppression to become a fact. An unprejudiced reading of history
should have informed him that _regimes_ have always so far existed for
the benefit of their creators, and that, although constitutional
monarchies and republics have not yet found out a system capable of
defending the interests of all individual citizens, and perhaps never
will, absolute monarchy has shown to satiety its inability to defend
the interests of more than a few.
In perusing such a book as the foregoing, one is led to ask why it was
so inoperative on the life of the country. One reason perhaps is that
Balzac wrote from his head rather than from his heart. Whatever may
be, in other respects, the superiority of the Realistic over the
Romantic school of fiction, it is inferior in this, viz.
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