ithout
restraint. May a society which is based solely on the power of
wealth shudder as it sees the impotence of the law in dealing
with the workings of a system which deifies success, and
pardons every means of attaining it. May it return to the
Catholic religion, for the purification of its masses through
the inspiration of religious feeling, and by means of an
education other than that of a lay university.

In the "Scenes from Military Life" so many fine natures, so
many high and noble self-devotions will be set forth, that I
may here be allowed to point out the depraving effect of the
necessities of war upon certain minds who venture to act in
domestic life as if upon the field of battle.

You have cast a sagacious glance over the events of our own
time; its philosophy shines, in more than one bitter
reflection, through your elegant pages; you have appreciated,
more clearly than other men, the havoc wrought in the mind of
our country by the existence of four distinct political
systems. I cannot, therefore, place this history under the
protection of a more competent authority. Your name may,
perhaps, defend my work against the criticisms that are
certain to follow it,--for where is the patient who keeps
silence when the surgeon lifts the dressing from his wound?

To the pleasure of dedicating this Scene to you, is joined the
pride I feel in thus making known your friendship for one who
here subscribes himself

Your sincere admirer,

De Balzac
Paris, November, 1842.

THE TWO BROTHERS

CHAPTER I

In 1792 the townspeople of Issoudun enjoyed the services of a
physician named Rouget, whom they held to be a man of consummate
malignity. Were we to believe certain bold tongues, he made his wife
extremely unhappy, although she was the most beautiful woman of the
neighborhood. Perhaps, indeed, she was rather silly. But the prying of
friends, the slander of enemies, and the gossip of acquaintances, had
never succeeded in laying bare the interior of that household. Doctor
Rouget was a man of whom we say in common parlance, "He is not
pleasant to deal with." Consequently, during his lifetime, his
townsmen kept silence about him and treated him civilly. His wife, a
demoiselle Descoings, feeble in health during her girlhood (which was