This officer, who is stationed not far from the village close to the Grande-Chartreuse, pays a few days' visit to a Doctor Benassis there, under pretext of consulting him professionally. While on the visit he is initiated into the transformation that has been wrought by the doctor in the habits of the people and their homes and surroundings--a regeneration accomplished quietly and gradually, vanquishing hostility and lethargy and converting the peasant's distrust into love. The placing of the Commandant's adopted child under the doctor's care, and Benassis' death, which occurs shortly after, form rather a lame conclusion to the love stories, which are mysteriously withheld to tempt the reader to go on with his perusal. For all its dogmatism in religion and politics, its long arguments in defence of the author's favourite opinions, and its defective construction, the novel, if one can call it a novel, is one of Balzac's best creations. The pictures of country scenes are presented with close fidelity to nature and also with real artistic arrangement. There are, moreover, delineations of rustic character that are truer to life than many of the more celebrated ones in the rest of the novelist's fiction; and, in the episode entitled the Napoleon of the people,--the narration of an old soldier of the First Empire,--there is a topical realism that makes one regret the never-achieved _Battle_. Add to these excellences the writer's having put into his work, for the nonce, a sincere aspiration towards the idea; and, despite flaws, the whole can be pronounced admirable. It was just about the time the _Country Doctor_ was published that he began to dwell upon the advantages he might secure by connecting the characters in his novels and forming them into a representative society. Excited by the perspective this plan offered if all its possibilities were realized, he hurried to his sister's house in the Faubourg Poissonniere. "Salute me," he exclaimed joyfully: "I'm on the point of becoming a genius!" And he commenced to explain his thought, which seemed to him so vast and pregnant with consequence as to inspire him with awe. "How fine it will be if I can manage the thing," he continued, striding up and down the drawing-room, too restless to stay in one place. "I shan't mind now being treated as a mere teller of tales, and can go on hewing the stones of my edifice, enjoying, beforehand, the amazement of my short-sighted critics, when they contemplate the structure complete." At length, Honore sat down and more tranquilly discussed the fortunes of the individuals already born from his brain, or, as yet in process of birth. He judged them and determined their fate.