was something essentially sinister both in his genius and his
character.

/Le Medecin de Campagne/ was an early book; it was published in 1833,
a date of which there is an interesting mark in the selection of the
name "Evelina," the name of Madame Hanska, whom Balzac had just met,
for the lost Jansenist love of Benassis; and it had been on the stocks
for a considerable time. It is also noteworthy, as lying almost
entirely outside the general scheme of the /Comedie Humaine/ as far as
personages go. Its chief characters in the remarkable, if not
absolutely impeccable, /repertoire/ of MM. Cerfberr and Christophe
(they have, a rare thing with them, missed Agathe the forsaken
mistress) have no references appended to their articles, except to the
book itself; and I cannot remember that any of the more generally
pervading /dramatis personae/ of the Comedy makes even an incidental
appearance here. The book is as isolated as its scene and subject--I
might have added, as its own beauty, which is singular and unique, nor
wholly easy to give a critical account of. The transformation of the
/cretin/-haunted desert into a happy valley is in itself a commonplace
of the preceding century; it may be found several times over in
Marmontel's /Contes Moraux/, as well as in other places. The extreme
minuteness of detail, effective as it is in the picture of the house
and elsewhere, becomes a little tedious even for well-tried and
well-affected readers, in reference to the exact number of cartwrights
and harness-makers, and so forth; while the modern reader pure and
simple, though schooled to endure detail, is schooled to endure it
only of the ugly. The minor characters and episodes, with the
exception of the wonderful story or legend of Napoleon by Private
Goguelat, and the private himself, are neither of the first interest,
nor always carefully worked out: La Fosseuse, for instance, is a very