If it requires twenty-four volumes for the Studies of Manners, it will
not require more than fifteen for the Philosophic Studies, and it will
not require more than nine for the Analytic Studies. In this way, man,
society and humanity will have been described, judged and analysed,
without repetition, resulting in a work which will stand as the
Thousand and One Nights of the Occident.
"When the whole is completed, my edifice achieved, my pediment
sculptured, my scaffolding cleared away, my final touches given, it
will be proved that I was either right or wrong. But after having been
a poet, after having demonstrated an entire social system, I shall
revert to science in an Essay on the Human Powers. And around the base
of my palatial structure, with boyish glee I shall trace the immense
arabesque of my Hundred Droll Tales."
Think of the courage that it needed not to recoil before this
superhuman task, planned with such amplitude and precision! Yet, aside
from a few rare days of discouragement, Balzac did not feel that it was
beyond his powers.
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