The fictive art of Balzac is more clearly displayed in his short-stories than in his novels. By far the greater number of his novels are filled with a vast amount of contributory detail not always germane to the plot. As stories, they often mark time. The author’s great motive was to make faithful transcripts from life, to present realities, to penetrate into the deeps of the human soul and disclose its inner life, to delineate the high and the low places of the whole social system of his era. On this giant-journey he was often allured from the highway of his story by side-paths rich in interest, and the great realistic novelist did not any more hesitate to follow out these beckoning byways than did Victor Hugo in his equally great romances. The inevitable in each case was a far from unified type of fiction. In Balzac’s short-stories, however, we discern but very little of this tendency, fully expanded though they are, and that is why I have ventured to assert their artistic superiority to his novels. True, the genius of this greatest of French novelists can be fully appreciated only by those who make a study of his longer works with their tremendous sweep of character presentment, minuteness of setting, and depth of psychological inquiry. But for approximate singleness of effect--a great factor in the consideration of fictional merit--we must turn to his short-stories. This contrast in method is due not merely to Balzac’s fondness for making excursions in his novels, but it is largely attributable to the nature of the _nouvelle_, or expanded short-story form. Any short-story, being complete in itself and not one of a series, necessarily bears a much less close relation to any other of its kind than does any one of Balzac’s novels to his other novels. Each of these is an integrated part of a great life-record which he was engaged in completing--but which, unhappily, was never consummated.