, that its
emotiveness tends to the negation, not to the affirmation, of action.
One cannot but recollect to the novelist's disadvantage, as applying
to this reference, the following statement he made to Madame Hanska
for another purpose: "I have never in my life confused the thoughts of
my heart with those of my head, and, excepting a few lines written
only for you to read (for instance, Madame de Chaulieu's jealous
letter), I have never expressed in my books anything of my heart. It
would have been the most infamous sacrilege." Unconsciously insincere,
like the majority of people in their justificative confessions, Balzac
often allowed his heart to intrude where it had no business to be
present. Nevertheless in his realist pictures he exercised himself
with all the cold delight of the anatomist, and with none of the warm
emotion that might have become communicative. This Brunetiere
implicitly admits when he says that most of Balzac's novels are, so to
speak, inquiries,--collections of documents.
The year 1838 closed questioningly for the hermit at Les Jardies. The
yoke of his treaty with the publishing syndicate was hardly twelve
moons old; and, however, it galled his neck to the extent of his
cogitating how he might pay off the earnest money he had received, and
be his own man again.
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