566
PARTISAN REVIEW
King, a Van Dyke bought from Van Dyke by Mme. Hanska's great–
great-great-grandmother, a Rembrandt-what pictures! The Coun–
tess wishes the three Canalettos to go to my collection. There are
two Van Huysums whose value could not be met though one cov–
ered them with diamonds. What treasures there are in these great
Polish families!"
Because of this half-baked realism, too fabulous for life, too
prosaic for literature, we often get very much the same kind of
pleasure from Balzac's books that we get from life. It is not mere
legerdemain when Balzac, wanting a list of eminent doctors or
emi–
nent artists, hodgepodges the names of real men with those of char–
acters in his books, saying: "He had the genius of a Claude Bernard,
a Bichat, a Desplein, a Bianchon," as panorama painters mingle
figures in actual relief with painted urns and melons in their fore–
grounds. Quite often these real persons look none the more real for
it. The livingness of his characters is due to Balzac's art, but the
satisfaction this affords him is non-artistic. He speaks about 'them
as though they were real people, and really celebrated: "the dis–
tinguished late Minister de Marsay, the only great statesman produced
by the July Revolution, the only man who could have saved France"
-now with the bland conceit of a parvenu who, not content with
owning fine pictures, must continually be proclaiming the name of
the artist and the price he had been offered for the picture, now
with the artlessness of a child who having christened its dolls thinks
they have really come alive. He carries this to the point of calling
them, all of a sudden, and when so far not much has been said of
them, by their Christian names; be it Princesse de Cadignan ("Diane
did not look twenty-five") , Mme. de Serizy ("No one could have
followed Leontine; she flew" ) , or Mme. du Bartas (" 'Biblical?' re–
plied Fifine, astonished"). We see this familiarity as slightly vulgar
but quite without that snobbery which made Mme. de Nucingen
refer to Mlle. de Grandlieu as Clothilde-"to give herself the quality,"
as Balzac says, "of being on terms of Christian names with her, as
if she, born a Goriot, frequented that society."
Sainte-Beuve blames Balzac for having magnified the Abbe
Troubert, who finally becomes a sort of Richelieu, etc. Balzac did
the same thing with Vautrin and many others. This is not merely a
