But the real interest both of _Les Deux Poetes_, and still more of
_Eve et David_, between which two, be it always remembered, comes in
the _Distinguished Provincial_, lies in the characters who gave their
name to the last part. In David, the man of one idea, who yet has room
for an honest love and an all-deserved friendship, Balzac could not go
wrong. David Sechard takes a place by himself among the sheep of the
_Comedie_. Some may indeed say that this phrase is unfortunate, that
Balzac's sheep have more qualities of the mutton than innocence. It is
not quite to be denied. But David is very far indeed from being a good
imbecile, like Cesar Birotteau, or a man intoxicated out of
common-sense by a passion respectable in itself, like Goriot. His
sacrifice of his mania in time is something--nay, it is very much; and
his disinterested devotion to his brother-in-law does not quite pass
the limits of sense.

But what shall we say of Eve? She is good of course, good as gold, as
Eugenie Grandet herself; and the novelist has been kind enough to
allow her to be happier. But has he quite interested us in her love
for David? Has he even persuaded us that the love existed in a form
deserving the name? Did not Eve rather take her husband to protect
him, to look after him, than either to love, honor, and obey in the
orthodox sense, or to love for love's sake only, as some still take
their husbands and wives even at the end of the nineteenth century?
This is a question which each reader must answer for himself; but few
are likely to refuse assent to the sentence, "Happy the husband who
has such a wife as Eve Chardon!"

The central part of _Illusions Perdues_, which in reason stands by
itself, and may do so ostensibly with considerably less than the
introduction explanatory which Balzac often gives to his own books, is