connection as above referred to, Lucien has little to do except as an
opportunity for the display of virtue by his sister and David Sechard;
and the parts in which they appear are among the most interesting of
Balzac's work. The "Idyllic" charm of this marriage for love, combined
as it is with exhibitions of the author's power in more than one of
the ways in which he loved best to show it, has never escaped
attention from Balzac's most competent critics. He himself had
speculated in print and paper before David Sechard was conceived; he
himself had for all "maniacs," all men of one idea, the fraternal
enthusiasm of a fellow-victim. He could never touch a miser without a
sort of shudder of interest; and that singular fancy of his for
describing complicated legal and commercial undertakings came in too.
Nor did he spare, in this wide-ranging book, to bring in other
favorite matters of his, the _hobereau_--or squireen--aristocracy, the
tittle-tattle of the country town and so forth.

The result is a book of multifarious interest, not hampered, as some
of its fellows are, by an uncertainty on the author's part as to what
particular hare he is coursing. Part of the interest, after the
description of the printing office and of old Sechard's swindling of
his son, is a doubling, it is true, upon that of _La muse du
Departement_, and is perhaps a little less amusingly done; but it is
blended with better matters. Sixte du Chatelet is a considerable
addition to Balzac's gallery of the aristocracy in transition--of the
Bonaparte _parvenus_ whom perhaps he understood even better than the
old nobility, for they were already in his time becoming adulterated
and alloyed; or than the new folk of business and finance, for they
were but in their earliest stages. Nor is the rest of the society of
Madame de Bargeton inferior.