The themes of all Balzac’s short-stories are consistent with the artistic requirements of the _nouvelle_; that is to say, they are transcriptions of _exceptional marginalia_ from common life, always dealing with the unusual, and occasionally with the unique. Because of this quality, it seems evident that, as Brunetière has pointed out, Balzac elected to develop these incidents in short-story form rather than expand them into novels. Treated in the short-story, they stand for what they are--extraordinary happenings in common life (as distinguished from impossible “incidents” which are told in fantastic and ultra-romantic short-stories); in the novel, they would have been enlarged out of their true focus, and so have seemed to bear a more important, a more typical, relation to life as a whole than any such exceptional incidents ever do. Hence, again, Balzac has used in his short-stories less the realistic method of narration than the romantic. Pure realism as a method is suited to the novel, where life shows whole; but the short-story, which presents a section, a phase, an incident of life, and by which we do not hope to gain a picture of an age, of a whole social system, or even of an entire individual life, is almost compelled to adopt the methods of romanticism even when laying its fictional foundations, as Balzac did, deep in the ground of reality. In attempting to get a view of his broad genius we must remember our author’s versatility, not alone of gift but of temper; and since a consideration of his novels is not pertinent to this paper, let us see if the many-sided Balzac is not clearly revealed in a varied half-dozen of his greatest short-stories. Picture this powerful worker spending endless days and nights, months on end, roaming the streets of Paris, haunting purlieu and boulevard, absorbing with the thirsty passion of a universal analyst the knowledge of what man is. But he is more than a terrifically industrious observer, he is sincere, and he codifies his observations as _The Connoisseur of Life_. This first phase of our social psychologist--and as such he blazed new trails in French literature--is well illustrated in one of his greatest stories (it seems trite to aver that it must be read to be appreciated!) which is a romantic _nouvelle_ of about ten thousand words, “The Unknown Masterpiece.” It is well to note in this connection that the typical psychological-study differs from the character-study in that the former concerns itself with _workings_ of the inner life, while the latter notes the _effect_ of life on character, disposition, bearing, and conduct.