These
portions of Balzac's confidences, which reflect upon his character
seriously, and besmirch him more than those against whom they were
spoken, cannot be overlooked in a biography. They have to be included
in our judgment of him, and, in a measure, concern the tragic close of
his love romance.
We are fonder of him in the expansive moods when his naive wonder at
his own performances carries him into self-panegyric, which, not
infrequently, we can endorse, though with some discount. Thus, for
instance, the _Bourgeois of Paris_ he declared to be one of those
masterpieces that leave everything else behind. "It is grand, it is
terrifying in verve, in philosophy, in novelty, in painting, in
style." And yet there was Eugene Sue selling the _Wandering Jew_ to a
newspaper for a hundred thousand francs, while the _Philosophy of
Conjugal Life_, a publication of his own in Hetzel's _Diable a Paris_,
fetched only eight hundred; and the _Peasants_ was paid for only at
the rate of sixty centimes a line. His _Modeste Mignon_ which appeared
in the _Debats_, sold rather dearer, six thousand francs being given,
and for the _Bourgeois_, nine thousand. The explanation of Sue's
getting more than he he imagined to be because Sue lived in grander
style than himself with flunkeys to open the door and overawe the
publishers who flocked to the successful writer, whereas he, living in
a cottage, had to cool his heels in an office ante-chamber, and was
exploited on account of his neediness.
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