The Quest of the Absolute

"La Recherche de l'Absolu" was published in 1834, with a
touching dedication to Madame Josephine Delannoy: "Madame, may
it please God that this, my book, may live when I am dead,
that the gratitude which is due from me to you, and which
equals, I trust, your motherlike generosity to me, may hope to
endure beyond the limits set to human love." The novel became
a part of the "Human Comedy" in 1845. The struggle of
Balthazar Claes in his quest for the Absolute, his disregard
of all else save his work, and the heroic devotion of
Josephine and Marguerite, are characteristic features of
Balzac's art; the sordidness of life and the mad passion for
the unattainable are admirably relieved, as in "Eugénie
Grandet" and "Old Goriot," by a certain nobility and purity of
motive. The novel is generally acknowledged one of Balzac's
masterpieces, both in vigour of portraiture and minuteness of
detail. Perhaps no one was ever better fitted to depict the
ruin wrought by a fixed idea than Balzac himself, who wasted
much of his laborious life in struggling to discover a short
cut to wealth.


_I.--Claes, the Alchemist_


In Douai, situated in the Rue de Paris, there is a house which stands
out from all the rest in the city by reason of its purely Flemish