Corresponding to the character of the _regime_ was the practical nature of the public works executed--the railway system with its transformation of trade, the fortification of the capital, the commencement of popular education, and the renovation of decayed or incompleted edifices. Unfortunately, the rapidity of the development and the rush of speculation prevented any co-ordinating method in the effort, so that the epoch was poor in its architectural achievement compared with what had been produced in the past. Even other branches of art were greatest in satire. Daumier's _Robert Macaire_ sketches and the _Mayeux_ of Travies had large material supplied them in the various types of citizen, greedy of pleasure and gold. The _mot_: "Enrichissez-vous," attributed to Guizot, was the axiom of the time, accepted as the _nec plus ultra_ by the vast majority of people. It invaded all circles with its lowering expedience; and he who was to depict its effects most puissantly did not escape its thrall. * * * * * When Balzac began to write, no French novelist had a reputation as such that might be considered great. Up to the epoch of the Restoration, the novel had been declared to be an inferior species of literature, and no author had dreamed of basing his claims to fame on fiction. Lesage had been and was still appreciated rather on the ground of his satire; and the Abbe Prevost, his slightly younger contemporary, received but little credit in his lifetime for the _Manon Lescaut_ that posterity was to prize. Throughout the eighteenth century, he was chiefly regarded as a literary hack who had translated Richardson's _Pamela_ and done things of a similar kind to earn his livelihood. Rousseau too was esteemed less for his _Nouvelle Heloise_ than for his political disquisitions. No novelist since 1635 had ever been elected to the French Academy on account of his stories. Jules Sandeau was the first to break the tradition by his entrance among the Immortals in 1859, to be followed in 1862 by Octave Feuillet.