Among the host of enemies thus aroused were those who, not content with denying his genius, advanced their artillery into private life, and painted him in the possession of every vice in the criminal statutes; and it is from the falsehoods of these guerrilleros that all the stupidities which have been told concerning him found their primal gestation. Not only his morality, his honesty, his sobriety, were attacked, but even his name was denied to him. The _de_ was declared not only an affectation, but a theft; and when some one said to him, in allusion thereto, “But you are no connection of the De Balzac d’Entragues,” “Ah! am I not?” he answered placidly. “Well, then, so much the worse for them.” ----- Footnote 1: _Balzac_, by Madame de Surville. Calmann Lévy, Paris. Footnote 2: _Correspondance de H. de Balzac._ Calmann Lévy, Paris, 1877. Footnote 3: The present title is _Jane la Pâle_. Footnote 4: _Les Rivalités._. Footnote 5: _Le Médecin de Campagne._ Footnote 6: _Ursule Mirouët._ Footnote 7: _Gobseck._ Footnote 8: _Le Père Goriot._ Footnote 9: _Honoré de Balzac_, par Théophile Gautier. Un volume in-18, chez Poulet-Malanis, 1859. Footnote 10: _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or._ Footnote 11: See _La Canne de M. de Balzac_, par Madame de Girardin. Dumont, 1838. Footnote 12: The cholera. Footnote 13: Stomachic disorders, caused by the abuse of coffee. CHAPTER II. THE COMÉDIE HUMAINE. “One would say he had read the inscription on the gates of Busyrane,—‘Be bold;’ and on the second gate,—‘Be bold, be bold, and evermore be bold;’ and then again had paused well at the third gate,—‘Be not too bold.’”—EMERSON, _Plato._ The general plan and outline of the “Comédie Humaine” originated in a comparison between humanity and animal existence. That which Buffon had achieved in zoölogy, Balzac proposed to accomplish in moral science, and the habits and customs as well as the vices and virtues of his contemporaries found in him a secretary whose inventory offers to posterity an elaborate insight into the every-day life of France in the nineteenth century, and realizes for their future curiosity that work which the ancient monarchies have neglected to bequeath to us as their own civilizations. But the pictures of two or three thousand of the most striking figures of an epoch required, in a general history of society, not only frames but galleries, and the work therefore is divided into, Scènes de la Vie Privée. Scènes de la Vie de Province. Scènes de la Vie Parisienne. Scènes de la Vie Politique. Scènes de la Vie Militaire. Scènes de la Vie de Campagne.