“Lily of the Valley” is written in the genre of a confessional novel. Despite his sympathies for the nobility, Balzac showed Mr. Mortsauff as a limited and stupid, worthless person, an eccentric egoist. He wrote: “It was very difficult to paint this figure, but now it has finally been created. I erected a statue of emigration, I collected in this man all the characteristics of an emigrant who returned to his estates.”