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There is a great deal of broad gayety and "Gallic wit" in the "Contes Drôlatiques," but it was not broad enough for Doré, and he has converted its most human characters into impossible grotesques. Another thing for which Doré is praised is his wonderful memory. Mr.
When we think of what Sainte-Beuve must have known in this line, these few words acquire a portentous weight. By this time Balzac was, in French phrase, thoroughly lancé. He was doing, among other things, some of his most brilliant work, certain of the "Contes Drôlatiques." These were written, as he tells his mother, for relaxation, as a rest from harder labor.
The "Contes Drolatiques" he is also nervous about, and he is much agitated when he hears that she has read some of them without his permission.
Now if you asked me in what consists, or where comes in, the moral of this tale? I am at liberty to reply to the ladies; that the Cent Contes Drolatiques are made more to teach the moral of pleasure than to procure the pleasure of pointing a moral.
To this insinuation Balzac gave no credence; he naturally found it easy to believe in one more enthusiastic foreign admirer, and he was seriously troubled by the fact that the first dizain of the "Contes Drolatiques," which certainly would not satisfy his correspondent's views on the lofty mission of womanhood, was likely to appear shortly.
Dore was becoming known even in the Five Towns, not, assuredly, by his illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques of Balzac but by his shuddering Biblical conceits. In pious circles Dore was saving art from the reproach of futility and frivolity.
His face was suggestive only of what was sensuous and sensual. At the same time, those few who looked into his heart and mind found there many a sign of the fine inner strain which purified the grosser elements of his nature. He who wrote the roaring Rabelaisian Contes Drolatiques was likewise the author of Seraphita. This mysticism showed itself in many things that Balzac did.
The hard and heartless mother is now transmogrified into the patient and indefatigable runner of errands; and we must admire the business capacity, as well as bodily strength, which Madame de Balzac showed in carrying out her son's various behests. She was to send him her copy of "Contes Drolatiques," and also "Les Chouans," which she would receive corrected from Madame de Berny.
Strenuous, laborious, constantly in felicitous in spite of his great successes, he suggests at times a very different set of influences. But he had his jovial, full-feeding side, the side that comes out in the "Contes Drolatiques," which are the romantic and epicurean chronicle of the old manors and abbeys of this region.
His fits of depression alternated with spurts of cheerfulness nearly every week, according as he had some loss or gain to register; here, a fire at the printer's, where some of his Contes Drolatiques were burned; there, the sale of an article to the Conservateur for three thousand francs.
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