stylistic:style_transfer, linguistic:paraphrasing
Politics

Balzac was a legitimist; in many ways, his views are the antithesis of Victor Hugo 's democratic republicanism. He wrote, in his essay Society and the Individual:

The only absolute authority which the imagination has been able to conceive, the authority of God, works according to rules which He has imposed on Himself. He can destroy all His worlds and return to His rest, but while He allows them to exist, they continue to be governed by the laws which together create order.

Balzac was influenced by the counter-revolutionary philosopher and statesman Louis de Bonald, and once remarked that "hen it beheaded Louis XVI, the Revolution beheaded in his person all fathers of families." Nevertheless, his keen insight regarding working-class conditions earned him the esteem of many socialists, including Marxists. Engels declared that Balzac was his favorite writer. Marx's Das Kapital also makes some references to the works of Balzac, and Trotsky famously read Balzac in the middle of meetings of the Central Committee, much to the consternation of his colleagues and comrades.