de Remusat's morals; but in memoirs of the
time, he is, I think, accused of a certain selfishness and _hauteur_,
and he certainly made his way, partly by journalism, partly by
society, to power very much as Marsay did. But Marsay would certainly
not have written _Abelard_ and the rest, or have returned to
Ministerial rank in our own time. Marsay, in fact, more fortunate than
Rubempre, and of a higher stamp and flight than Rastignac, makes with
them Balzac's trinity of sketches of the kind of personage whose part,
in his day and since, every young Frenchman has aspired to play, and
some have played. It cannot be said that "a moral man is Marsay"; it
cannot be said that he has the element of good-nature which redeems
Rastignac. But he bears a blame and a burden for which we Britons are
responsible in part--the Byronic ideal of the guilty hero coming to
cross and blacken the old French model of unscrupulous good humor. It
is not a very pretty mixture or a very worthy ideal; but I am not so
sure that it is not still a pretty common one.
The association of the three stories forming the _Histoire des Treize_
is, in book form, original, inasmuch as they filled three out of the
four volumes of _Etudes des Moeurs_ published in 1834-35, and
themselves forming part of the first collection of _Scenes de la Vie
Parisienne_. But _Ferragus_ had appeared in parts (with titles to
each) in the _Revue de Paris_ for March and April 1833, and part of
_La Duchesse de Langeais_ in the _Echo de la Jeune France_ almost
contemporaneously.
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