But Balzac essayed to write the whole Comedy of Humanity (he called his books the Comedie Humaine). He takes his characters one after the other, beginning with Parisian life, and then taking up the life of the provinces, political life, military life, and in each presenting a series of characters that accurately represent the historical types of his own age in France. He is a Frenchman, his characters and his ideals are French, and he omits the innocent lovely rose of English purity: he writes no idylls. But a person with broad mind and catholic tastes cannot help feeling the masterly touch. His personal history is that of a worker. Before he was thirty he had published a dozen novels to which he did not attach his name. They were for practice. Then he came out with The Chouans, which attracted some attention. In the next few years he wrote and gave to the world some ninety compositions long and short, mostly full-fledged books. His friends had told him he had no talent, and his native town never honoured him; but by industry alone he overcame all difficulties, and by sheer force of character took his place among the great novelists of his age. Most of the money he earned was devoted to paying off his debts; and when that was accomplished and he had married the lady he loved, he died. Not all of Balzac’s novels will be liked by the English reader, and they differ immensely in subject, character, and interest. The most popular of his stories, perhaps, because it treats of the rotten though dramatic life of Paris, is Père Goriot, the story of a simple old man whose daughters become fashionable, and to whose passions he is made to minister, while his own comforts in life are heartlessly sacrificed. Rivaling Père Goriot as Balzac’s masterpiece is Eugenie Grandet, a story of country life utterly devoid of the excitement with which the Parisian story abounds. Eugenie is the daughter of a rich miser, who deprives her and her mother almost of the necessities of life. She meets and learns to love her cousin, Charles Grandet. He goes to the West Indies where he begins to build his fortunes with the savings Eugenie has given him. But the girl’s mother dies, and then her father, and she is left a rich heiress. Not knowing this, Charles writes asking her to release him that he may marry an heiress. Eugenie never thinks of her own sacrifice, but gives him his liberty, and even secretly pays his father’s debts lest they hamper him in his career. She ends her life in works of philanthropy. It is a simple story, but told with the hard exactness of fate and truth, and it is this profound truth that makes it appeal to us so powerfully. Many are very fond of The Country Doctor. The first half of the book tells the simple life and good works of this remarkable man; but the intense interest of the story is in the recital of the romantic early life of this strange man--his own story of himself which fills the second half of the book.