The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Village Rector, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: The Village Rector

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: September, 1999 [Etext #1899]
Posting Date: March 5, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VILLAGE RECTOR ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

THE VILLAGE RECTOR

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Helene.

The tiniest boat is not launched upon the sea without the
protection of some living emblem or revered name, placed upon it
by the mariners. In accordance with this time-honored custom,
Madame, I pray you to be the protectress of this book now launched
upon our literary ocean; and may the Imperial name which the
Church has canonized and your devotion has doubly sanctified for
me guard it from perils.

De Balzac.

THE VILLAGE RECTOR

I. THE SAUVIATS

In the lower town of Limoges, at the corner of the rue de la
Vieille-Poste and the rue de la Cite might have been seen, a generation
ago, one of those shops which were scarcely changed from the period of
the middle-ages. Large tiles seamed with a thousand cracks lay on the
soil itself, which was damp in places, and would have tripped up those
who failed to observe the hollows and ridges of this singular flooring.
The dusty walls exhibited a curious mosaic of wood and brick, stones and
iron, welded together with a solidity due to time, possibly to chance.
For more than a hundred years the ceiling, formed of colossal beams,
bent beneath the weight of the upper stories, though it had never given
way under them. Built _en colombage_, that is to say, with a wooden
frontage, the whole facade was covered with slates, so put on as to
form geometrical figures,--thus preserving a naive image of the burgher
habitations of the olden time.

None of the windows, cased in wood and formerly adorned with carvings,
now destroyed by the action of the weather, had continued plumb; some
bobb