Situations of the 'Pere Goriot' kind are, in some sense, more appropriate for heroines than for heroes. Self-sacrifice is, for the present at least, considered by a large part of mankind as the complete duty of woman. The feminine martyr can indulge without loss of our esteem in compliances which would be degrading in a man. Accordingly Balzac finds the amplest materials for his favourite situation in the torture of innocent women. The great example of his skill in this department is Eugenie Grandet, in which the situation of the Pere Goriot is inverted. Poor Eugenie is the victim of a domestic tyrant, who is, perhaps, Balzac's most finished portrait of the cold-blooded and cunning miser. The sacrifice of a woman's life to paternal despotism is unfortunately even commoner in real life than in fiction; and when the lover, from whom the old miser has divided her during his life, deserts her after his death, we feel that the mournful catastrophe is demanded by the sombre prologue. The book may indeed justify, to some extent, one of the ordinary criticisms upon Balzac, that he showed a special subtlety in describing the sufferings of women. The question as to the general propriety of that criticism is rather difficult for a male critic. I confess to a certain scepticism, founded partly on the general principle that hardly any author can really describe the opposite sex, and partly on an antipathy which I cannot repress to Balzac's most ambitious feminine portraits. Eugenie Grandet is perhaps the purest of his women; but then Eugenie Grandet is simply stupid, and interesting from her sufferings rather than her character. She reminds us of some patient animal of the agricultural kind, with bovine softness of eyes and bovine obstinacy under suffering. His other women, though they are not simply courtesans, after the fashion of some French writers, seem, as it were, to have a certain perceptible taint; they breathe an unwholesome atmosphere. In one of his extravagant humours, he tells us that the most perfect picture of purity in existence is the Madonna of the Genoese painter, Piola, but that even that celestial Madonna would have looked like a Messalina by the side of the Duchesse de Manfrigneuse. If the duchess resembled either personage in character, it was certainly not the Madonna. And Balzac's best women give us the impression that they are courtesans acting the character of virgins, and showing admirable dramatic skill in the performance. They may keep up the part so obstinately as to let the acting become earnest; but even when they don't think of breaking the seventh commandment, they are always thinking about not breaking it. When he has done his best to describe a thoroughly pure woman, such as Henrietta in the 'Lys dans la Vallee,' he cannot refrain from spoiling his performance by throwing in a hint at the conclusion that, after all, she had a strong disposition to go wrong, which was only defeated by circumstances.