Many Balzacians have dreamed of compiling such a civil record.  I myself have known of five or six who attempted this singular task.  To cite only two names out of the many, the idea of this unusual Vapereau ran through the head of that keen and delicate critic, M. Henri Meilhac, and of that detective in continued stories, Emile Gaboriau.  I believe that I also have among the papers of my eighteenth year some sheets covered with notes taken with the same intention.  But the labor was too exhaustive.  It demanded an infinite patience, combined with an inextinguishable ardor and enthusiasm.  The two faithful disciples of the master who have conjoined their efforts to uprear this monument, could not perhaps have overcome the difficulties of the undertaking if they had not supported each other, bringing to the common work, M. Christophe his painstaking method, M. Cerfberr his accurate memory, his passionate faith in the genius of the great Honore, a faith that carried unshakingly whole mountains of documents.

A pleasing chapter of literary gossip might be written about this collaboration; a melancholy chapter, since it brings with it the memory of a charming man, who first brought Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe together, and who has since died under mournful circumstances.  His name was Albert Allenet, and he was chief editor of a courageous little review, La Jeune France, which he maintained for some years with a perseverance worthy of the Man of Business in the Comedie Humaine.  I can see him yet, a feverish fellow, wan and haggard, but with his face always lit up by enthusiasm, stopping me in a theatre lobby to tell me about a plan of M. Cerfberr’s; and almost immediately we discovered that the same plan had been conceived by M. Christophe.  The latter had already prepared a cabinet of pigeon-holes, arranged and classified by the names of Balzacian characters.  When two men encounter in the same enterprise as compilers, they will either hate each other or unite their efforts.  Thanks to the excellent Allenet, the two confirmed Balzacians took to each other wonderfully.

Poor Allenet!  It was not long afterwards that we accompanied his body to the grave, one gloomy afternoon towards the end of autumn—­all of us who had known and loved him.  He is dead also, that other Balzacian who was so much interested in this work, and for whom the Comedie Humaine was an absorbing thought, Honore Granoux.  He was a merchant of Marseilles, with a wan aspect and already an invalid when I met him.  But he became animated when speaking of Balzac; and with what a mysterious, conspiratorlike veneration did he pronounce these words:  “The Vicomte”—­meaning, of course, to the thirty-third degree Balzacolatrites, that incomparable bibliophile to whom we owe the history of the novelist’s works, M. de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul!—­“The Vicomte will approve—­or disapprove.”  That was the unvarying formula for Granoux, who had devoted himself to the enormous task of collecting