As we have seen, Balzac himself was reacted upon by it to some extent;
but he yielded against his will, and the result in his case was a
bastard one. She whom he called his brother George survived him for
more than twenty years, and continued to the last to add to her
reputation, so that naturally the impetus she lent to the idealistic
movement was long before it was spent, if indeed one may say that the
impetus has altogether been lost. Adepts like Octave Feuillet, with
his _Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre_, and Victor Cherbuliez, with his
_Comte Kostia_, endeavoured to perpetuate idealism or at least to
recreate it in other forms. And then there were independents, like
Flaubert who, with _Madame Bovary_, passed realism by on his way to
naturalism. Yet it is worth remarking that Flaubert made a sort of
_volte face_ in 1869, and wrote his _Education Sentimentale_, in
which, under the pressure of simple circumstance, the hero descends
gradually from the soaring of youth's hopes and ambitions to the dull,
dun monotony of mature life, with nothing left him save the iron
circle of his environment. Here the disillusionment is that of all
Balzac's chief _dramatis personae_.
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