him. But he became animated when speaking of Balzac; and with what a
mysterious, conspiratorlike veneration did he pronounce these words:
"The Vicomte"--meaning, of course, to the thirty-third degree
Balzacolatrites, that incomparable bibliophile to whom we owe the
history of the novelist's works, M. de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul!--"The
Vicomte will approve--or disapprove." That was the unvarying formula
for Granoux, who had devoted himself to the enormous task of
collecting all the articles, small or great, published about Balzac
since his entry as a writer. And just see what a fascination this
_devil of a man_--as Theophile Gautier once called him--exercises over
his followers; I am fully convinced that these little details of
Balzacian mania will cause the reader to smile. As for me, I have
found them, and still find them, as natural as Balzac's own remark to
Jules Sandeau, who was telling him about a sick sister: "Let us go
back to reality. Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?"

Fascination! That is the only word that quite characterizes the sort
of influence wielded by Balzac over those who really enjoy him; and it
is not to-day that the phenomenon began. Vallies pointed it out long
ago in an eloquent page of the _Refractaires_ concerning "book
victims." Saint Beuve, who can scarcely be suspected of fondness
towards the editor-in-chief of the _Revue Parisienne_, tells a story
stranger and more significant than every other. At one time an entire
social set in Venice, and the most aristocratic, decided to give out
among its members different characters drawn from the _Comedie
Humaine_; and some of these roles, the critic adds, mysteriously, were
artistically carried out to the very end;--a dangerous experiment, for
we are well aware that the heroes and heroines of Balzac often skirt
the most treacherous abysses of the social Hell.