Richard Wagner might have been a Gambara; and mark how Balzac treats the vibratory theory of sound, when it was practically unknown. Where did he gather his wisdom? Another story of his, hitherto untranslated, Sarrasin, will not bear recounting. Its psychology is morbid; yet it is stamped with probability. The great male soprano Farinelli could have been the hero. Nevertheless, the tale is not a pleasant one. George Moore eloquently describes how, in chase of the exotic, he pursued certain books, like a pike after minnows, along the quays of Paris. And like a pike he rudely knocked his nose one day against the bottom. The real lover of Balzac, pike-like, accepts Sarrasin, just as he accepts Seraphita. They are many octaves apart, yet both sound a distinct note in the scale of this great human symphony. However, Sarrasin is but semi-musical, so need not be discussed here. “O mighty poet! Thy works are not as other men’s, simply and merely great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun, the sea, the stars, and the flowers; like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert; that the further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident!” Thomas De Quincey, master of the sonorous singing word, wrote this—he meant Shakespeare. It will also fit Balzac. And I know of no other name except Balzac’s, that I dare bracket with Shakespeare’s except Beethoven’s. ALPHONSE DAUDET