The second tendency is quite in the other extreme. I speak of it now because most of Balzac’s shorter stories are of this type,--which gives much space to detail, the development of setting, and the building up of a well-rounded and fully-garbed body to carry the soul of the story. If the scenario-story is likely to swing to an extreme of compression, the leisurely type is prone to over-leisureliness, as is often seen in the shorter work of Mr. James, and the later little fictions by Mr. Howells, wherein, and so far properly too, the story is not made to be everything, but wherein--not so wisely--circumstances and air are accorded even more than due value. The effect is to draw the narrative away from the unity and compression characteristic of the short-story type, and range it with those other fictional forms which, while cognate to, are really something different from the short-story. Balzac’s short-stories--so to call them--were written from three to five years before Poe wrote “Berenice” (1835), which was his first short-story to anticipate and meet fully the requirements of the type as formulated by the author himself, in his criticism of Hawthorne’s “Tales,” in 1842. But Balzac drew more and more away from the impressionistic, unified, condensed short-story, for it was evidently not his ideal form, and took up the detailed psychological novel of manners. Even in the story given herewith in translation, we find a wealth of detail and an extent of time covered in the action which are not part and parcel of the true short-story, technically considered. But, lest these comments seem to cite these qualities in derogation of Balzac’s art be it noted that Balzac’s little fictions, with all their fullness, are greater than many technically perfect short-stories in their miraculous compression. Certainly it is only this dual element of fullness and consequent diffused final effect which prevented him from anticipating Poe as the first _conscious_ artist of the short-story--yet with this one reservation I reserve much, for compression and unity of final impression are the very twin arteries of this fictional form. Balzac’s short-stories approached technical perfection just as closely as did the short-stories of those two American forerunners of Poe--Irving and Hawthorne. It is illuminating to observe that Balzac’s full-method of short-story art was not the reflex of the successful novelist who was sure of his public and for that reason dared the expansive treatment. The truth is that of his successful novels only _The Chouans_ had been written in 1829 before he began, in 1830, that brilliant series of shorter stories which place him among the masters.