Balzac knew what a picture by Palma Vecchio would fetch, could tell you exactly how much an acre of meadowland would cost, or the price of a piece of lace, the upkeep of a tilbury and manservant. Balzac had but to cast a fleeting glance at something, and he knew it in its smallest particulars. Nay more, he knew the aspect of things he had never seen with his bodily eyes. Thus the fjords of Norway and the walls of Saragossa were as real to him as if he had visited them, and he could make them no less vivid to his readers. The rapidity of his visual intake was extraordinary. It was as if he contemplated things in their starkest nudity and distinctness, where others see them muffled in manifold draperies. With one sweep, he pushed aside all that was immaterial, and disclosed only that which was fundamental. But he did not disclose it slowly, layer by layer.