All my friends
in Paris, either rightly or wrongly, base some hope upon me. I shall
have as my credentials: Yourself, if that is agreeable to you; the
Revue de Paris, the Temps, the Debats, the Voleur, one other minor
journal, and my own actions from now on."
But, in spite of all his projects, Balzac was destined never to be a
candidate from any district,--and so much the better for the advancement
of French thought.
Chapter 6.
Dandyism.
After the publication of the Physiology and The Magic Skin, which
followed The Chouans and Scenes from Private Life, Balzac found himself
enrolled among the fashionable novelists. The public did not understand
his ideas, they were incapable of grasping the grandeur of the vast
edifice which he already dreamed of raising to his own glory, but they
enjoyed his penetrating analysis of the human heart, his understanding
of women, and his picturesque, alluring and dramatic power of
narrative. He excited the curiosity of his women readers, who
recognised themselves in his heroines as in so many faithful mirrors;
and the consequence was that he was besieged by a host of feminine
letters.
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