IV. Balzac's Style

No part of Balzac's work bas been more vituperated than his style. Evidently those who demand language of such purity and such perfect finish as that of Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Gautier, and Victor Hugo, vvill find Balzac wanting. He is sometimes heavy and bombastic, his novels bristle with technical expressions of ail kinds ? occasionally his language is slipshod, and this is scarcely surprising if one bears in mind the rapidity with which he was obliged to write. Yet what energy, what wordpainting, what a wealth of vocabulary ! Each layer of Society, each profession speaks a characteristic language of its own, fuU of telling metapliors and expressive forms of speech. Balzac probably did not exaggerate greatly w^hen he said : — ^ Il n'y a que trois hommes à

xxii CÉSAR BIROTTEAU

Paris qui sachent leur langue : Hugo, Gautier et moi/