The effect of the generalized picture, for example, supporting the play of action, is one in which Balzac particularly delights. He constantly uses it, he makes it serve his purpose with a very high hand. It becomes more than a support, it becomes a kind of propulsive force applied to the action at the start. Its value is seen at its greatest in such books as Le Cure de Village, Pere Goriot, La Recherche de l'Absolu, Eugenie Grandet--most of all, perhaps, in this last. Wherever, indeed, his subject requires to be lodged securely in its surroundings, wherever the background is a main condition of the story, Balzac is in no hurry to precipitate the action; that can always wait, while he allows himself the leisure he needs for massing the force which is presently to drive the drama on its way. Nobody gives such attention as Balzac does in many of his books, and on the whole in his best, to the setting of the scene; he clearly considers these preparatory pictures quite as important as the events which they are to enclose. And so, in Pere Goriot, all the potent life of the Maison Vauquer is deliberately collected and hoarded up to the point where it is enough, when it is let loose, to carry the story forward with a strong sweep. By the time the story itself is reached the Maison Vauquer is a fully created impression, prepared to the last stroke for the drama to come. Anything that may take place there will have the whole benefit of its setting, without more ado; all the rank reality of the house and its inmates is immediately bestowed on the action. When the tale of Goriot comes to the front it is already more than the tale of a certain old man and his woes. Goriot, on the spot, is one of Maman Vauquer's boarders, and the mere fact is enough, by now, to differentiate him, to single him out among miserable old men. Whatever he does he carries with him the daily experience of the dingy house and the clattering meals and the frowzy company, with Maman Vauquer, hard and hungry and harassed--Mrs. Todgers would have met her sympathetically, they would have understood each other--at the head of it. Into Goriot's yearnings over his fashionable daughters the sounds and sights and smells of his horrible home have all been gathered; they deepen and strengthen his poor story throughout. Balzac's care in creating the scene, therefore, is truly economical; it is not merely a manner of setting the stage for the drama, it is a provision of character and energy for the drama when it begins.