"Work crowned by the French Academy" is a significant line borne by the title-page of the original edition of Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe's monumental work. The motto indicates the high esteem in which the French authorities hold this very necessary adjunct to the great Balzacian structure. And even without this word of approval, the intelligent reader needs but a glance within the pages of the /Repertory of the Comedie Humaine/ to convince him at once of its utility.

In brief, the purpose of the /Repertory/ is to give in alphabetical sequence the names of all the characters forming this Balzacian society, together with the salient points in their lives. It is, of course, well known that Balzac made his characters appear again and again, thus creating out of his distinct novels a miniature world. To cite a case in point, Rastignac, who comes as near being the hero of the /Comedie/ as any other single character, makes his first appearance in /Father Goriot/, as a student of law; then appearing and disappearing fitfully in a score of principal novels, he is finally made a minister and peer of France. Without the aid of the /Repertory/ it would be difficult for any save a reader of the entire /Comedie/ to trace out his career. But here it is arranged in temporal sequence, thus giving us a concrete view of the man and his relation to this society.

In reading any separate story, when reference is made in passing to a character, the reader will find it helpful and interesting to turn to the /Repertory/ and find what manner of man it is that is under advisement. A little systematic reading of this nature will speedily render the reader a "confirmed Balzacian."

A slight confusion may arise in the use of the /Repertory/ on account of the subdivision of titles. This is the fault neither of Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe nor of the translator, but of Balzac himself, who was continually changing titles, dividing and subdividing stories, and revamping and working other changes in his books. /Cousin Betty/ and /Cousin Pons/ were placed together by him under the general title of /Poor Relations/. Being separate stories, we have retained the separate titles. Similarly, the three divisions of /Lost Illusions/ were never published together until 1843--in the first complete edition of the /Comedie/; before assuming final shape its parts had received several different titles. In the present text the editor has deemed it best to retain two of the parts under /Lost Illusions/, while the third, which presents a separate Rubempre episode, is given as /A Distinguished Provincial at Paris/. The three parts of /The Thirteen/--/Ferragus/, /The Duchess of Langeais/, and /The Girl with the Golden Eyes/--are given under the general title. The fourth part of /Scenes from a Courtesan's Life/, /Vautrin's Last Avatar/, which until the Edition Definitive had been published separately, is here merged into its final place. But the three parts of /The Celibates/--/Pierrette/, /The Vicar of Tours/ and /A Bachelor's Establishment/, being detached, are given separately. Other minor instances occur, but should be readily cleared up by reference to the Indices, also to the General Introduction given elsewhere.

In the preparation of this English text, great care has been exercised to gain accuracy--a quality not found in other versions now extant. In one or two instances, errors have been discovered in the original French, notably in dates--probably typographical errors--which have been corrected by means of foot-notes. A few unimportant elisions have been made for the sake of brevity and coherence. Many difficulties confront the translator in the preparation of material of this nature, involving names, dates and titles. Opportunities are constantly afforded for error, and the work must necessarily be painstaking in order to be successful. We desire here to express appreciation for the valuable assistance of Mr. Norman Hinsdale Pitman.

To Balzac, more than to any other author, a Repertory of characters is applicable; for he it was who not only created an entire human society, but placed therein a multitude of personages so real, so distinct with vitality, that biographies of them seem no more than simple justice. We can do no more, then, than follow the advice of Balzac--to quote again from the original title-page--and "give a parallel to the civil register."

J. WALKER McSPADDEN

Are you a confirmed /Balzacian/?--to employ a former expression of Gautier in /Jeune France/ on the morrow following the appearance of that mystic Rabelaisian epic, /The Magic Skin/. Have you experienced, while reading at school or clandestinely some stray volume of the /Comedie Humaine/, a sort of exaltation such as no other book had aroused hitherto, and few have caused since? Have you dreamed at an age when one plucks in advance all the fruit from the tree of life--yet in blossom--I repeat, have you dreamed of being a Daniel d'Arthez, and of covering yourself with glory by the force of your achievements, in order to be requited, some day, for all the sufferings of your poverty-stricken youth, by the sublime Diane, Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Princesse de Cadignan?

Or, perchance, being more ambitious and less literary, you have desired to see--like a second Rastignac, the doors of high society opened to your eager gaze by means of the golden key suspended from Delphine de Nucingen's bracelet?

Romancist, have you sighed for the angelic tenderness of a Henriette de Mortsauf, and realized in your dreams the innocent emotions excited by culling nosegays, by listening to tales of grief, by furtive hand-clasps on the banks of a narrow river, blue and placid, in a valley where your friendship flourishes like a fair, delicate lily, the ideal, the chaste flower?

Misanthrope, have you caressed the chimera, to ward off the dark hours of advancing age, of a friendship equal to that with which the good Schmucke enveloped even the whims of his poor Pons? Have you appreciated the sovereign power of secret societies, and deliberated with yourself as to which of your acquaintances would be most worthy to enter The Thirteen? In your mind's eye has the map of France ever appeared to be divided into as many provinces as the /Comedie Humaine/ has stories? Has Tours stood for Birotteau, La Gamard, for the formidable Abbe Troubert; Douai, Claes; Limoges, Madame Graslin;

Besancon, Savarus and his misguided love; Angouleme, Rubempre;

Sancerre, Madame de la Baudraye; Alencon, that touching, artless old maid to whom her uncle, the Abbe de Sponde, remarked with gentle irony: "You have too much wit. You don't need so much to be happy"?

Oh, sorcery of the most wonderful magician of letters the world has seen since Shakespeare! If you have come under the spell of his enchantments, be it only for an hour, here is a book that will delight you, a book that would have pleased Balzac himself--Balzac, who was more the victim of his work than his most fanatical readers, and whose dream was to compete with the civil records. This volume of nearly six hundred pages is really the civil record of all the characters in the /Comedie Humaine/, by which you may locate, detail by detail, the smallest adventures of the heroes who pass and repass through the various novels, and by which you can recall at a moment's notice the emotions once awakened by the perusal of such and such a masterpiece.

More modestly, it is a kind of table of contents, of a unique type; a table of living contents!

Many Balzacians have dreamed of compiling such a civil record. I myself have known of five or six who attempted this singular task. To cite only two names out of the many, the idea of this unusual Vapereau ran through the head of that keen and delicate critic, M. Henri Meilhac, and of that detective in continued stories, Emile Gaboriau. I believe that I also have among the papers of my eighteenth year some sheets covered with notes taken with the same intention. But the labor was too exhaustive. It demanded an infinite patience, combined with an inextinguishable ardor and enthusiasm. The two faithful disciples of the master who have conjoined their efforts to uprear this monument, could not perhaps have overcome the difficulties of the undertaking if they had not supported each other, bringing to the common work, M.

Christophe his painstaking method, M. Cerfberr his accurate memory, his passionate faith in the genius of the great Honore, a faith that carried unshakingly whole mountains of documents.

A pleasing chapter of literary gossip might be written about this collaboration; a melancholy chapter, since it brings with it the memory of a charming man, who first brought Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe together, and who has since died under mournful circumstances. His name was Albert Allenet, and he was chief editor of a courageous little review, /La Jeune France/, which he maintained for some years with a perseverance worthy of the Man of Business in the /Comedie Humaine/. I can see him yet, a feverish fellow, wan and haggard, but with his face always lit up by enthusiasm, stopping me in a theatre lobby to tell me about a plan of M. Cerfberr's; and almost immediately we discovered that the same plan had been conceived by M.

Christophe. The latter had already prepared a cabinet of pigeon-holes, arranged and classified by the names of Balzacian characters. When two men encounter in the same enterprise as compilers, they will either hate each other or unite their efforts. Thanks to the excellent Allenet, the two confirmed Balzacians took to each other wonderfully.

Poor Allenet! It was not long afterwards that we accompanied his body to the grave, one gloomy afternoon towards the end of autumn--all of us who had known and loved him. He is dead also, that other Balzacian who was so much interested in this work, and for whom the /Comedie Humaine/ was an absorbing thought, Honore Granoux. He was a merchant of Marseilles, with a wan aspect and already an invalid when I met him. But he became animated when speaking of Balzac; and with what a mysterious, conspiratorlike veneration did he pronounce these words:

"The Vicomte"--meaning, of course, to the thirty-third degree Balzacolatrites, that incomparable bibliophile to whom we owe the history of the novelist's works, M. de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul!--"The Vicomte will approve--or disapprove." That was the unvarying formula for Granoux, who had devoted himself to the enormous task of collecting all the articles, small or great, published about Balzac since his entry as a writer. And just see what a fascination this /devil of a man/--as Theophile Gautier once called him--exercises over his followers; I am fully convinced that these little details of Balzacian mania will cause the reader to smile. As for me, I have found them, and still find them, as natural as Balzac's own remark to Jules Sandeau, who was telling him about a sick sister: "Let us go back to reality. Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?"

Fascination! That is the only word that quite characterizes the sort of influence wielded by Balzac over those who really enjoy him; and it is not to-day that the phenomenon began. Vallies pointed it out long ago in an eloquent page of the /Refractaires/ concerning "book victims." Saint Beuve, who can scarcely be suspected of fondness towards the editor-in-chief of the /Revue Parisienne/, tells a story stranger and more significant than every other. At one time an entire social set in Venice, and the most aristocratic, decided to give out among its members different characters drawn from the /Comedie Humaine/; and some of these roles, the critic adds, mysteriously, were artistically carried out to the very end;--a dangerous experiment, for we are well aware that the heroes and heroines of Balzac often skirt the most treacherous abysses of the social Hell.

All this happened about 1840. The present year is 1887, and there seems no prospect of the sorcery weakening. The work to which these notes serve as an introduction may be taken as proof. Indeed, somebody has said that the men of Balzac have appeared as much in literature as in life, especially since the death of the novelist. Balzac seems to have observed the society of his day less than he contributed to form a new one. Such and such personages are truer to life in 1860 than in 1835. When one considers a phenomenon of such range and intensity, it does not suffice to employ words like infatuation, fashion, mania. The attraction of an author becomes a psychological fact of prime importance and subject to analysis. I think I can see two reasons for this particular strength of Balzac's genius. One dwells in the special character of his vision, the other in the philosophical trend which he succeeded in giving to all his writing.

As to the scope of his vision, this /Repertory/ alone will suffice to show. Turn over the leaves at random and estimate the number of fictitious deeds going to make up these two thousand biographies, each individual, each distinct, and most of them complete--that is to say, taking the character at his birth and leaving him only at his death.

Balzac not only knows the date of birth or of death, he knows as well the local coloring of the time and the country and profession to which the man belongs. He is thoroughly conversant with questions of taxation and income and the agricultural conditions. He is not ignorant of the fact that Grandet cannot make his fortune by the same methods employed by Gobseck, his rival in avarice; nor Ferdinand du Tillet, that jackal, with the same magnitude of operations worked out by that elephant of a Nucingen. He has outlined and measured the exact relation of each character to his environment in the same way he has outlined and measured the bonds uniting the various characters; so well that each individual is defined separately as to his personal and his social side, and in the same manner each family is defined. It is the skeleton of these individuals and of these families that is laid bare for your contemplation in these notes of Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe. But this structure of facts, dependent one upon another by a logic equal to that of life itself, is the smallest effort of Balzac's genius. Does a birth-certificate, a marriage-contract or an inventory of wealth represent a person? Certainly not. There is still lacking, for a bone covering, the flesh, the blood, the muscles and the nerves. A glance from Balzac, and all these tabulated facts become imbued with life; to this circumstantial view of the conditions of existence with certain beings is added as full a view of the beings themselves.

And first of all he knows them physiologically. The inner workings of their corporeal mechanism is no mystery for him. Whether it is Birotteau's gout, or Mortsauf's nervousness, or Fraisier's skin trouble, or the secret reason for Rouget's subjugation by Flore, or Louis Lambert's catalepsy, he is as conversant with the case as though he were a physician; and he is as well informed, also, as a confessor concerning the spiritual mechanism which this animal machine supports.

The slightest frailties of conscience are perceptible to him. From the portress Cibot to the Marquise d'Espard, not one of his women has an evil thought that he does not fathom. With what art, comparable to that of Stendhal, or Laclos, or the most subtle analysts, does he note --in /The Secrets of a Princess/--the transition from comedy to sincerity! He knows when a sentiment is simple and when it is complex, when the heart is a dupe of the mind and when of the senses. And through it all he hears his characters speak, he distinguishes their voices, and we ourselves distinguish them in the dialogue. The growling of Vautrin, the hissing of La Gamard, the melodious tones of Madame de Mortsauf still linger in our ears. For such intensity of evocation is as contagious as an enthusiasm or a panic.