The Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters of Two Brides, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: Letters of Two Brides

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: R. S. Scott

Release Date: October, 1999 [Etext #1941]
Posting Date: November 23, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES ***

Produced by John Bickers and Dagny

LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES

By Honore de Balzac

Translated by R. S. Scott

DEDICATION

To George Sand

Your name, dear George, while casting a reflected radiance on my
book, can gain no new glory from this page. And yet it is neither
self-interest nor diffidence which has led me to place it there,
but only the wish that it should bear witness to the solid
friendship between us, which has survived our wanderings and
separations, and triumphed over the busy malice of the world. This
feeling is hardly likely now to change. The goodly company of
friendly names, which will remain attached to my works, forms an
element of pleasure in the midst of the vexation caused by their
increasing number. Each fresh book, in fact, gives rise to fresh
annoyance, were it only in the reproaches aimed at my too prolific
pen, as though it could rival in fertility the world from which I
draw my models! Would it not be a fine thing, George, if the
future antiquarian of dead literatures were to find in this
company none but great names and generous hearts, friends bound by
pure and holy ties, the illustrious figures of the century? May I
not justly pride myself on this assured possession, rather than on
a popularity necessarily unstable? For him who knows you well, it
is happiness to be able to sign himself, as I do here,

Your friend,
DE BALZAC.

PARIS, June 1840.

LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES

FIRST PART

I. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE. PARIS, September.

Sweetheart, I too am free! And I am the first too, unless you have
written to Blois, at our sweet tryst of letter-writing.

Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my opening sentence,
and keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell