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BALUCHISTAN 400 BALZAC BALUCHISTAN, a country in Asia, the coast of which is continuous with the N. W. seaboard of India, bounded on the N. by Afghanistan, on the W. by Persia, on the S. by the Arabian Sea, and on the E. by Sind. It has an area of about 135,000 square miles, and a population estimated at 850,000. The general sur- face of the country is rugged and moun- tainous, with some extensive intervals of barren, sandy deserts, and there is a general deficiency of water. The country is almost entirely occupied by pastoral tribes under semi-independent sirdars or chiefs. The inhabitants are divided into two great branches, the Baluchis and Brahuis, differing in their language, figure, and manners. The Baluchis in general have tall figures, long visages, and prominent features; the Brahuis on the contrary, have short, thick bones, vnth round faces and flat lineaments, with hair and beards frequently brown. Both races are zealous Mohammedans, hos- pitable, brave, and capable of enduring much fatigue. The Khan of Khelat is nominal ruler of about one half of the total area, and in 1877 concluded a treaty with Great Britain, which placed the whole country at the disposal of the British for military purposes. Another part, area 46,960 square miles, called British Baluchistan, is administered by a chief commissioner. The balance of the country consists of a native state called Las Bela (7,132 square miles) and va- rious tribal areas (7,268 square miles). BALZAC, HONORE DE (balts-ac'), a French author, born at Tours, May 20, 1799. He was educated at the College de Vendome and studied law at the Sor- bonne. In opposition to his father's wish that he should become a notary, he left Tours in 1819 to seek his fortune as an author in Paris. From 1819 to 1830 he led a life of f I'equent privation and inces- sant industry, producing stories and be- coming burdened with debt. He first tasted success in his 30th year on the publication of "The Last of the Chouans," which was soon afterward followed by "The Magic Skin," a marvelous inter- yeaving of the supernatural into modern life, and the earliest of his great works. After writing several other novels, he formed the design of presenting in the "Human Comedy" a complete picture of modern civilization, especially in France. All ranks, professions, arts, trades, all phases of manners in town and country, were to be represented in his imaginary system of things. In attempting to carry out this impossible design, he produced what is almost in itself a literature. The Stories composing the "Human Comedy" are classified as "Scenes of Private Life, of Parisian Life, of Political Life, of Military Life," etc. Each of the actors in the brilliant crowded drama is mi- HONORE DE BALZAC nutely described and clothed with indi- viduality, while the scenes in which they move are set forth with a picturesqueness and verisimilitude hardly to be matched in fiction. Among the masterpieces which form part of Balzac's vast scheme may be mentioned "Lost Illusions," "The Peasants," "The Woman of Thirty," "Poor Relations," "The Quest of the Absolute," and "Eugenie Grandet." The "Droll Stories" (1833) stand by them- selves. He wrote 85 novels in 20 years, and he was not a ready writer, being very fastidious in regard to style, and often expending more labor on his proof sheets than he had given to his manu- script. In his later years he lived prin- cipally in his villa, Les Jardies, at Sevres. In 1849, when his health had broken ( down, he traveled to Poland to visit Madame Hanska, a rich Polish lady, with whom he had corresponded for more than 15 years. In 1850 she became his wife, and three months after the marriage, in August of the same year, Balzac died at Paris. His influence on literature has been deep and many-sided, and novelists with so little in common as Feuillet and Zola alike claim him for their master. He studied character and the machinery of society in a scientific spirit, but he was not content with the photographic repro- duction of fact. He was a visionary as well as an analyst, an idealist and a realist in one. His work bears trace of