Note 159 — Chapter IV

This is about the best of the batch, and I agree with those who think that it would not have disfigured the Comédie. Indeed the exclusion of these juvenilia from the Édition Définitive was a critical blunder. Even if Balzac did once wish it, the "dead hand" is not to be too implicitly given way to, and he was so constantly changing his views that he probably would have altered this also had he lived.