The mention of obedience in a people irritated the hostess; but on her seething he poured a drop of cold water by asking jestingly: "Would you, in a great danger, wish your servants to deliberate about 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."