But there can be no doubt at all that if Balzac had lived, he might have turned out a successful playwright. When he began his career as a dramatic writer he was like a musician taking up an unfamiliar instrument, an organist who was trying the violin, or a painter working in an unknown medium. His last written play was his best. Fortunately, the plot did not deal with any of those desperate love passions which Balzac in his novels has analyzed and described with such relentless and even brutal frankness. It is filled throughout with a genial humanity, as bright and as expressive as that which fills the atmosphere of _She Stoops to Conquer_ or _A School for Scandal_. The characters are neither demons, like Cousin Betty, nor reckless debauchees, like Gertrude in _The Stepmother_. The whole motif is comic. Moliere himself might have lent a touch of his refined and fragrant wit to the composition; and the situation is one which the author could realize from experience, but had only learned to regard from a humorous standpoint in the ripeness of his premature old age. Balzac makes money rule in his stories, as the most potent factor of social life. He describes poverty as the supreme evil, and wealth as the object of universal aspiration. In line with this attitude comes _Mercadet_ with his trials and schemes. Scenes of ridiculous surprises succeed each other till by the return of the absconder with a large fortune, the greedy, usurious creditors are at last paid in full, and poetic justice is satisfied by the marriage of Julie to the poor man of her choice. EPIPHANIUS WILSON. INTRODUCTION BY J. WALKER MCSPADDEN The greatest fame of Balzac will rest in the future, as in the past, upon his novels and short stories. These comprise the bulk of his work and his most noteworthy effort--an effort so pronounced as to hide all side-excursions. For this reason his chief side-excursion--into the realms of drama--has been almost entirely overlooked. Indeed, many of his readers are unaware that he ever wrote plays, while others have passed them by with the idea that they were slight, devoid of interest, and to be classified with the _Works of Youth_. Complete editions--so-called--of Balzac's works have fostered this belief by omitting the dramas; and it has remained for the present edition to include, for the first time, this valuable material, not alone for its own sake, but also in order to show the many-sided author as he was, in all his efficiencies and occasional deficiencies.