Balzac was especially a novelist of his own period, and the life of
his romances is the life he saw going on around him. The principal
character in _The Stepmother_ is a Napoleonist general typical of many
who must have lived in the first half of the nineteenth century. The
ruling passion of General de Grandchamp is hatred for those who
deserted the cause or forsook the standard of the First Consul. This
antipathy is exaggerated by Balzac into murderous hatred, and is the
indirect cause of death to the General's daughter, Pauline, and her
lover, the son of a soldier of the First Empire, who, by deserting
Napoleon, had fallen under the Comte de Grandchamp's ban. The
situation is, however, complicated by the guilty passion which
Gertrude, the stepmother of Pauline and wife of the General's old age,
feels for the lover of Pauline. The main interest of the drama lies in
the struggle between these two women, every detail of which is
elaborated with true Balzacian gusto and insight. We expect to see
virtue triumphant, and Pauline united to the excellent Ferdinand. When
they both die of poison, and Gertrude becomes repentant, we feel that
the denouement is not satisfactory. The jealousy of the woman and the
hatred of the man have not blended properly.

But there can be no doubt at all that if Balzac had lived, he might
have turned out a successful playwright. When he began his career as a
dramatic writer he was like a musician taking up an unfamiliar
instrument, an organist who was trying the violin, or a painter
working in an unknown medium. His last written play was his best.
Fortunately, the plot did not deal with any of those desperate love
passions which Balzac in his novels has analyzed and described with
such relentless and even brutal frankness. It is filled throughout
with a genial humanity, as bright and as expressive as that which
fills the atmosphere of _She Stoops to Conquer_ or _A School for