Thenceforward Balzac, though hardly ever faultless except in short stories, was almost always great, and showed what may be called a diffused greatness, to which there are few parallels in the history of the novel. Some of the tales are simply wonderful. I cannot think of any one else, even Merimee, who could have done _La Grande Breteche_--the story of a lover who, rather than betray his mistress, allows himself to suffer, without a word, the fate of a nun who has broken her vows--as Balzac has done it. _La Recherche de l'Absolu_ is one, and _Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu_ is another, of the greatest known masterpieces in the world of their kind. _La Fille aux Yeux d'Or_ and _Une Passion dans le Desert_ have not the least need of their "indexable" qualities to validate them. In the most opposite styles _Jesus Christ en Flandre_ and _La Messe de l'Athee_ have their warmest admirers. In fact it is scarcely too much to say that, in the whole list of nearer two than one score--as they were published in the old collection from _Le Bal de Sceaux_ to _Maitre Cornelius_--scarcely any are bad or insignificant, few mediocre, and not a few equal, or hardly inferior, to those specially pointed out just now. As so often happens, the short story estopped Balzac from some of his usual delinquencies--over-detail, lingering treatment, etc.,--and encouraged his virtues--intensity, grandeur, and idiosyncratic tone. [Sidenote: The _Contes Drolatiques_.] Of his one considerable collection of such stories--the _Contes Drolatiques_--it is not possible to speak quite so favourably as a whole; yet the reduction of favour need not be much. Of its greatest thing, _La Succube_, there have hardly been two opinions among competent and unprejudiced judges. "Pity and terror" are there well justified of their manipulator. The sham Old French, if not absolutely "according to Cocker" (or such substitute for Cocker as may be made and provided by scholarly authority), is very much more effective than most such things. Not a few of the stories are good and amusing in themselves, though of course the votaries of prunes and prism should keep clear of them. The book has perhaps only one serious fault, that of the inevitable and no doubt invited suggestion of, and comparison with, Rabelais. In some points this will hold not so badly, for Balzac had narrative power of the first order when he gave it scope; the deficiencies of mere style which sometimes affect his modern French do not appear so much in this _pastiche_, and he could make broad jokes well enough. But--and this "but" is rather a terrible one--the saving and crowning grace of Pantagruelist humour is not in him, except now and then in its grimmer and less catholic variety or manifestation. And this absence haunts one in these _Contes Drolatiques_, though it is to some extent compensated by the presence of a "sentiment" rare elsewhere in Balzac. [Sidenote: Notes on select larger books: _Eugenie Grandet_.]