his ideas were expressed in brief sententious phrases
who comes to attend you and supply your want, stolidly, pleasantly, or with an independent air
It is a more serious accusation against him that his pleasant likable characters are so invariably the victims of his wicked ones, though it may be thought that this is not really too great a simplification of what is true in life. Mauriac speaks of 'the fundamental manichaeism of Balzac, for whom …
The tides that are sweeping France send their wash into the remote provincial town of Saumur. We watch the forces and passions that are changing the entire social scene in action in this backwater.
Madame Grandet had no completed the woollen sleeves she was knitting, and that for want of them she caught a chill. He is never afraid of bathos.
