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Show Character of Balzac. 1 Katharine Prescott Thomeley. Driven by the demon of debt he worked unceasingly, day and night, for years until un-til his magnificent health gave way under the strain to which he had so long subjected sub-jected it. In 1S50 he married the woman to whom he had given in his later years tie. the deepest and best affections of his hearty and it seemed as if he was about to enter the . haven of domestic happiness and tranquility for which he had yearned ' so many years. In writing to a friend of his marriage he said: "I believe- . this union to be a compensation which God has held in reserve for me through all my adversities, my years of toil, the difficulties 1 have met with and finally surmounted. I had no happiness in youth, no bossoming, spring-time, but I shall have & brilliant suiat mer and the sweetest of all autumns." His debts were paid, his longed for marriage to a wife who could give hiin the affection and the intellectual companionship for which he had been so hungry, accomplished, and lift seemed to promise a rich store of happiness and glory, but four months after the" mar-riage, mar-riage, Balzac, exhausted by a painful heart trouble, passed away at the early age of 51. Two characteristics of Balzac's career wera remarkable. One was his capacity for rare and delightful friendships with women, which were never sullied by a breath of reproach re-proach or scandal. The other was his purity of life, tbe noble virginity of his senses, and his high ideal of love. Sober in all respects, his morals were pure, be dreaded excesses as the death of talent, and his life from bis earliest years was that of an anchorite. He insisted upon the most absolute chastity, ' which, according to his ideas, developed to the highest the powers of the mind and gave to those who practiced it mysterious faculties. facul-ties. The fame of the author of those imperishable imperish-able novels, Seraphite, Louis Lambert, Albert Al-bert Savarus, and the wonderful Comedia Humaine is every day growing greater, an posterity is beginning to see as his contem-' poraries could not the true perspective of the incomparable studies of this anatomist-' of human nature. |