In the extravagance of the plot and the description of the hero, which occupies a good quarter of the tale, one might suspect satire upon the Byronism which was sweeping Europe, except for the romantic seriousness of the whole. Another long interpolated essay is an arraignment, mordant in brilliance, of the cruelty, stupidity, and license of Parisian life, in which one detects echoes from Rousseau: in such an “unnatural” milieu excesses of evil are only to be expected. Such romantic social philosophy concerned Balzac here more than the psychology of either woman. That the golden-eyed girl, sold by her mother at the age of twelve and a passive partner throughout, should first learn complete love from the hero, is barely credible. That after a decade in which she has suffered neither physical nor nervous ill-health she should be so instantly changed as to prefer death to her former life might be questioned by the modern psychologist. The lesbian Marquise is hardly better accounted for. Her cool purchase and long imprisonment of the girl, whose physical beauty is the only tie suggested between them, make poor preparation for her heartbreak and sudden desire for convent life because she has lost “that which seemed the infinite.” Possibly her half-Spanish, half-royal blood are intended to account for both her lesbianism and her vagaries of temperament, for gossip credited the Spanish ruling dynasty as well as the house of Orléans with tendencies toward homosexuality. In _Cousin Bette_ (1846), Balzac, with a realism in sharp contrast to both his earlier tales and in keeping with literary trends of the intervening dozen years, presents rather casually the half-realized infatuation of the thwarted spinster, Bette, for Madame Marneffe, the human instrument she employs to satisfy her much stronger passion for revenge upon the family who have humiliated her. Valérie Marneffe, who “spent her days upon a sofa, turning the lantern of her detective spirit on the obscurest depths of souls, sentiments and intrigues ... had discovered the true nature of this ardent creature burning with wasted passion, and meant to attach her to herself.”[20] Both women have had lovers, Bette having striven in vain to hold a Polish artist several years her junior. But “in this new affection she had found food ... far more satisfying than her insane passion for Wenceslas, who had always been cold to her.”[21] Little of physical intimacy is implied between the two women beyond frequent kisses, and since Balzac is not particularly reticent about such details, it is not safe to assume any such relation as existed in _The Girl with the Golden Eyes_. But later in the book he speaks of such attachments as “the strongest emotion known, that of a woman for a woman.”[22]