these two originals--these "humorists," as our own ancestors would
have called them--with figures much, very much, more of the ordinary
world than themselves. The grasping worldliness of the _parvenue_
family of Camusot in one degree and the greed of the portress, Madame
Cibot, in the other, are admirably represented; the latter, in
particular, must always hold a very high place among Balzac's greatest
successes. She is, indeed a sort of companion sketch to Cousine Bette
herself in a still lower rank of life representing the diabolical in
woman; and perhaps we should not wrong the author's intentions if we
suspected that Diane de Maufrigneuse has some claims to make up the
trio in a sphere even more above Lisbeth's than Lisbeth's is above
Madame Cibot's own.

Different opinions have been held of the actual "bric-a-bracery" of
this piece--that is to say, not of Balzac's competence in the matter
but of the artistic value of his introduction of it. Perhaps his
enthusiasm does a little run away with him; perhaps he gives us a
little too much of it, and avails himself too freely of the license,
at least of the temptation, to digress which the introduction of such
persons as Elie Magus affords. And it is also open to any one to say
that the climax, or what is in effect the climax, is introduced
somewhat too soon; that the struggle, first over the body and then
over the property of Patroclus-Pons, is inordinately spun out, and
that, even granting the author's mania, he might have utilized it
better by giving us more of the harmless and ill-treated cousin's
happy hunts, and less of the disputes over his accumulated quarry.
This, however, means simply the old, and generally rather impertinent,
suggestion to the artist that he shall do with his art something
different from that which he has himself chosen to do. It is, or
should be, sufficient that _Le Cousin Pons_ is a very agreeable book,