The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Elixir of Life, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: The Elixir of Life

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Clara Bell and James Waring

Release Date: February, 1998 [Etext #1215]
Posting Date: February 20, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

By Honore De Balzac

Translated By Clara Bell and James Waring

TO THE READER

At the very outset of the writer's literary career, a friend, long since
dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later on he found the same
story in a collection published about the beginning of the present
century. To the best of his belief, it is some stray fancy of the brain
of Hoffmann of Berlin; probably it appeared in some German almanac,
and was omitted in the published editions of his collected works. The
_Comedie Humaine_ is sufficiently rich in original creations for the
author to own to this innocent piece of plagiarism; when, like the
worthy La Fontaine, he has told unwittingly, and after his own fashion,
a tale already related by another. This is not one of the hoaxes in
vogue in the year 1830, when every author wrote his "tale of horror"
for the amusement of young ladies. When you have read the account of
Don Juan's decorous parricide, try to picture to yourself the part which
would be played under very similar circumstances by honest folk who, in
this nineteenth century, will take a man's money and undertake to pay
him a life annuity on the faith of a chill, or let a house to an ancient
lady for the term of her natural life! Would they be for resuscitating
their clients? I should dearly like a connoisseur in consciences to
consider how far there is a resemblance between a Don Juan and fathers
who marry their children to great expectations. Does humanity, which,
according to certain philosophers, is making progress, look on the art
of waiting for dead men's shoes as a step in the right direction? To
this art we owe several honorable professions, which open up ways of
living on death. There are people who rely entirely on an expected
demise; who