what you had ordered them to do?"

The
Sandist-Philosophico-Republico-Communico-Pierre-Lerouxico-Geranico-Deisto
train (the epithets are Balzac's) stopped dead at the question. Then
Marliani, one of the guests, remarked that argument was impossible with
poets. Balzac bowed, and added:

"You hear what he says?"

"You are a dreadful satirist," retorted George Sand. "Go on with your
_Comedie Humaine_."

It was not necessary to give the recommendation. He was for ever going
on; and the further he went, the further his horizons receded. The
embracing lines were rather indiscriminate. He came to think himself
capable of reducing every domain to his scale. Men's ambitions,
however, are part of their motive power; and, had his been less
sweeping, the qualities of his work might have diminished with the
defects. "Four men," he cried in one of his vauntings, "have had an
immense life, Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell, and--I mean to be the
fourth! The first lived with the life of Europe; he inoculated himself
with armies! The second espoused the globe! The third incarnated in
himself a people! As for me! I shall have borne a whole society in my
head! It is just as well to live thus as every evening to say,
'Spades, hearts, trumps;' or to wonder why Madame such a one has done
such and such a thing."

_Modeste Mignon_, which was published in 1844 with the extra
attraction of some of Auber's music in it is one of Balzac's brighter