Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/195

 THE NOVEL I8I of Balzac. He con sidered the psych ological analysis of his characters the most important part of his work, and always strove to discover the mental process which led a n individual to decide upon a certain action. In depicting love, he shows in each particutar case what part is played by interest, sensuality, vanity, by the instinct of imitation, by the imagination and the mocie of life. His desire was to penetrate to the depths of the greatest of mysteries, the human soul. Even in his historical novels it is no mere o u tward pictu re of the age wh ich he presents to us ; it was not the daring adventures and multi-coloured events which attractell him most, as was the case with Jósika, but the inner man, and the ruling passions of the time. His guidi ng principle was that we cannot under­ stand an epo ch until we enter into the mental world of the people who Iived in it. In one of his novels, The Enthusiasts, he gives the psych ology o f rel igiaus enthusiasm and sect formation. The enthusiasts were the Sabbatarians, whose follo wers may still be found in Transylvania, the o riginal home of the sect. Th ey receíved their name b e cause, Iike the Jews, they kept Saturday i n stead of Sunday as their Sabbath. The action falls within the seventeenth century. One of the heroes is a Sabbatarian minister. A powerful n obleman, Kassai, the ChanceHor of the Rege nt, George Rákóczy, wishes to use this mi nister as a tool for the destruction of his adve rsary, Simon Pécsi, the leader of the Sabbatarians. The minister cannot co nsent to be so used, but unfortunately he was originally a serf who had fled from his master, and as Kassai knows this, the minister's life, and the fate of his young wife, are in his bands. Mental strain deprives the poor fellow of his