vague in his delineation of the historico-political background. His delineation of the broader social background is far more precise. (2) Illusions perdues is remarkable for its innumerable changes of tempo. Even the change of tempo from Part II to Part III is but a superficial point of contrast between life as it is lived in the capital and life in the provinces. Everywhere the same laws of human behaviour apply. A person's downfall may come from the rapier thrust of the journalist or from the slowly strangling machinations of the law. (3) Most notably in La Cousine Bette Balzac was one of the first novelists to employ the technique of in medias res. In Illusions perdues there is an unusual example of this, Part II of the novel serving as the prelude to the extended flashback which follows in Part III. (4) Illusions perdues is also full of the "sublimities and degradations", "excited emphasis" and "romantic rhetoric" to which F.R. Leavis had objected to in Le Père Goriot. Characters and viewpoints are polarized. There is the strong and perhaps somewhat artificial contrast between Lucien and David, art and science, Lousteau and d’Arthez, journalism and literature, Paris and the provinces, etc. And this polarization reaches the point of melodrama as Balzac appears to draw moral distinctions between "vice" and "virtue". Coralie is the Fallen Woman, Ève an Angel of strength and purity. Yet Balzac also describes Coralie's love for Lucien as a form of redemptive purity, an "absolution" and a "benediction". Thus, through what structurally is melodrama, he underlines what he considers to be the fundamental resemblance of opposites. (5) Introduced into narrative fiction by the Gothic novel (The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk), melodrama was widespread in literature around the time when Illusions perdues was written. Jane Austen satirizes it in Northanger Abbey. Eugène Sue made regular use of it. Instances in Illusions perdues are the use of improbable coincidence; Lucien, in an endeavour to pay Coralie's funeral expenses, writing bawdy love-songs when her body is hardly yet cold; and the deus ex machina (or Satanas ex machina?) in the form of Herrera's appearance at the end of the novel. (6) Like all the major works of the Comédie humaine, Illusions perdues focuses on the social nexus. Within the nexus of love, in her relationship with Lucien, Coralie is life-giving: her love has a sacramental quality.