The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beatrix, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: Beatrix

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: November, 1999 [Etext #1957]
Posting Date: March 8, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEATRIX ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

BEATRIX

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

NOTE

It is somewhat remarkable that Balzac, dealing as he did with
traits of character and the minute and daily circumstances of
life, has never been accused of representing actual persons in the
two or three thousand portraits which he painted of human nature.

In "The Great Man of the Provinces in Paris" some likenesses were
imagined: Jules Janin in Etienne Lousteau, Armand Carrel in Michel
Chrestien, and, possibly, Berryer in Daniel d'Arthez. But in the
present volume, "Beatrix," he used the characteristics of certain
persons, which were recognized and admitted at the time of
publication. Mademoiselle des Touches (Camille Maupin) is George
Sand in character, and the personal description of her, though
applied by some to the famous Mademoiselle Georges, is easily
recognized from Couture's drawing. Beatrix, Conti, and Claude
Vignon are sketches of the Comtesse d'Agoult, Liszt, and the
well-known critic Gustave Planche.

The opening scene of this volume, representing the manners and
customs of the old Breton family, a social state existing no
longer except in history, and the transition period of the
_vieille roche_ as it passed into the customs and ideas of the
present century, is one of Balzac's remarkable and most famous
pictures in the "Comedy of Human Life."

K.P.W.

BEATRIX

I. A BRETON TOWN AND MANSION

France, especially in Brittany, still possesses certain towns completely
outside of the movement which gives to the nineteenth century its
peculiar characteristics. For lack of quick and regular communication
with Paris, scarcely connected by wretched roads with the
sub-prefecture, or the chief city of their own province, these towns