A masterful study of a father whose sacrifices for his daughters have become a compulsion, this novel marks Balzac's "real entrée" into La Comédie Humaine, his series of almost one hundred novels and short stories meant to depict "the whole pell-mell of civilization."A masterful study of a father whose sacrifices for his daughters have become a compulsion, this novel marks Balzac's "real entrée" into La Comédie Humaine, his series of almost one hundred novels and short stories meant to depict "the whole pell-mell of civilization."