hardly of apology, may be offered. It was in the scheme of the
_Comedie Humaine_ to survey social life in its entirety by a minute
analysis of its most diverse constituents. It included all the
pursuits and passions, was large and patient, and unafraid. And the
patience, the curiosity, of the artist which made Cesar Birotteau and
his bankrupt ledgers matters of high import to us, which did not
shrink from creating a Vautrin and a Lucien de Rubempre, would have
been incomplete had it stopped short of a Marquise de San-Real, of a
Paquita Valdes. And in the great mass of the _Comedie Humaine_, with
its largeness and reality of life, as in life itself; the figure of
Paquita justifies its presence.

Considering the _Histoire des Treize_ as a whole, it is of engrossing
interest. And I must confess I should not think much of any boy who,
beginning Balzac with this series, failed to go rather mad over it. I
know there was a time when I used to like it best of all, and thought
not merely _Eugenie Grandet_, but _Le Pere Goriot_ (though not the
_Peau de Chagrin_), dull in comparison. Some attention, however, must
be paid to two remarkable characters, on whom it is quite clear that
Balzac expended a great deal of pains, and one of whom he seems to
have "caressed," as the French say, with a curious admixture of
dislike and admiration.

The first, Bourignard or Ferragus, is, of course, another, though a
somewhat minor example--Collin or Vautrin being the chief--of that
strange tendency to take intense interest in criminals, which seems to
be a pretty constant eccentricity of many human minds, and which laid
an extraordinary grasp on the great French writers of Balzac's time. I
must confess, though it may sink me very low in some eyes, that I have
never been able to fully appreciate the attractions of crime and