I have sometimes wondered whether it was accident or intention which made Balzac so frequently combine early and late work in the same volume. The question is certainly insoluble, and perhaps not worth solving, but it presents itself once more in the present instance. _L’Illustre Gaudissart_ is a story of 1832, the very heyday of Balzac’s creative period, when even his pen could hardly keep up with the abundance of his fancy and the gathered stores of his minute observation. _La Muse du Departement_ dates ten years and more later, when, though there was plenty of both left, both sacks had been deeply dipped into. _L’Illustre Gaudissart_ is, of course, slight, not merely in bulk, but in conc…
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