This other sympathy has resulted in the addition to Pons
himself of the figure of Schmucke, a minor and more parochial figure,
but good in itself, and very much appreciated, I believe, by fellow
_melomanes_.
It is with even more than his usual art that Balzac has surrounded
these two originals--these "humorists," as our own ancestors would
have called them--with figures much, very much, more of the ordinary
world than themselves. The grasping worldliness of the _parvenue_
family of Camusot in one degree and the greed of the portress, Madame
Cibot, in the other, are admirably represented; the latter, in
particular, must always hold a very high place among Balzac's greatest
successes. She is, indeed a sort of companion sketch to Cousine Bette
herself in a still lower rank of life representing the diabolical in
woman; and perhaps we should not wrong the author's intentions if we
suspected that Diane de Maufrigneuse has some claims to make up the
trio in a sphere even more above Lisbeth's than Lisbeth's is above
Madame Cibot's own.
Different opinions have been held of the actual "bric-a-bracery" of
this piece--that is to say, not of Balzac's competence in the matter
but of the artistic value of his introduction of it. Perhaps his
enthusiasm does a little run away with him; perhaps he gives us a
little too much of it, and avails himself too freely of the license,
at least of the temptation, to digress which the introduction of such
persons as Elie Magus affords.
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