The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ferragus, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: Ferragus

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: February, 1999 [Etext #1649]
Posting Date: February 27, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FERRAGUS ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

PREPARER'S NOTE:

Ferragus is the first part of a trilogy. Part two is entitled
The Duchesse de Langeais and part three is The Girl with the
Golden Eyes. The three stories are frequently combined under
the title The Thirteen.

DEDICATION

To Hector Berlioz.

PREFACE

Thirteen men were banded together in Paris under the Empire, all imbued
with one and the same sentiment, all gifted with sufficient energy to
be faithful to the same thought, with sufficient honor among themselves
never to betray one another even if their interests clashed; and
sufficiently wily and politic to conceal the sacred ties that united
them, sufficiently strong to maintain themselves above the law, bold
enough to undertake all things, and fortunate enough to succeed, nearly
always, in their undertakings; having run the greatest dangers, but
keeping silence if defeated; inaccessible to fear; trembling neither
before princes, nor executioners, not even before innocence; accepting
each other for such as they were, without social prejudices,--criminals,
no doubt, but certainly remarkable through certain of the qualities that
make great men, and recruiting their number only among men of mark. That
nothing might be lacking to the sombre and mysterious poesy of their
history, these Thirteen men have remained to this day unknown; though
all have realized the most chimerical ideas that the fantastic power
falsely attributed to the Manfreds, the Fausts, and the Melmoths can
suggest to the imagination. To-day, they are broken up, or, at least,
dispersed; they have peaceably put their necks once more under the yoke
of civil law, j