Moreover, the minor characters of
_Madame Bovary_ may well owe something to the _Comedy_. These doctors,
chemists, cures, prefectoral councillors and country squires would
possibly never have been depicted but for their having already existed
for twenty years in the predecessor's gallery of portraits.
There is no need to call the de Goncourts and Guy de Maupassant
imitators because they bear a strong stamp of Balzac's influence. They
have greater art, a finer style, and, above all, more pathos than the
earlier master was capable of. But they are true disciples, as
likewise Feuillet in his later manner with _Monsieur de Camors_. De
Maupassant's short stories, exemplifying his severely objective
treatment at his best, are Balzac's purified of their lingering
romanticism, and his _Bel Ami_ is a modernized Lucien de Rubempre.
And, if the resemblances are closer between works of the de Goncourts
less known, such as _Charles Demailly_, or _Manette Salomon_ and the
_Lost Illusions_, _Peter Grassou_, the _Muse of the County_, yet the
means employed by the two brothers to endow with life and form _Renee
Mauperin_ and _Germinie Lacerteux_, fixing a background, stamping the
outlines, filling in details, adding particularities, all this was
Balzacian method, insufficient forsooth, in the domain of psychology,
but furnishing idiosyncrasy in plentiful variations.
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