"Balzac, on the other hand, was impelled by the noble ambition to make discoveries, and to do good work in which he took pleasure. But his own life was hidden. Unknown and misunderstood in his own Paris, which he had discovered, he saw petty chroniclers obtain the first prizes without being made ill by it. And when, at the age of fifty-one, he had succeeded in making a home for himself, into which he was about to bring his first and only wife, he died on the day of the publication of the banns. A fine death after a life of renunciation!" =Hard to Disentangle.=--The teacher said: "With age, as is well known, one arrives at a different view of life than one had formerly. Then, on account of its wealth and variety, life is almost immeasurable, and above all, very difficult to disentangle. "At the age of forty I came home after an absence of many years. On my arrival I received a dunning letter from an antiquarian bookseller. Curiously enough, without my being able to explain why, this debt caused me no further uneasiness of conscience. But then a friend came and advised me to settle the matter, as the bookseller was spreading an evil report about me. I went and paid the trifling account, but the bookseller looked so uneasy and strange, was so polite and grateful, that I began to reflect about him. When I came home I remembered this: twenty years previously I had entrusted him with an antique work of art to sell. After I had visited the man several times in his shop and the article had not been sold, I felt ashamed to go any more, began to think of something else, and forgot the matter. His present thankfulness showed that he had not forgotten it; we were then quits, if he did not still owe me something. "Now I felt ashamed on his account, and determined not to mention the matter. But then it occurred to me that I owed his predecessor a sum of money for books. I went again, found him showing the same uneasy manner as before, and asked for his predecessor's address. He was in America. I asked whether he had relatives here in the town. He had none. I went home and thought to myself, 'Then we must drop that matter also.' In this way, in old age, one must alternate pay and let go; now as a debtor, now as creditor. But who strikes the balance of accounts? The goddess of justice, and she is neither deaf nor blind."