If it be true of Moliere that he was not only the greatest of comic authors, but "comedy" itself, it may be said of Balzac that he was not only the greatest, the most fertile and diverse of our novelists, but the "novel" itself; and the object of the present volume is to show that in saying this I say nothing but the absolute and exact truth. For this reason the reader is requested not to seek in the following pages a biography of Honore de Balzac, or what today goes by that name - information about his origin, anecdotes of his college days, the tittle-tattle of his love-affairs, and the...