The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Recruit, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: The Recruit

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: August, 1998 [Etext #1426]
Posting Date: February 24, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECRUIT ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

THE RECRUIT

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To my dear Albert Marchand de la Ribellerie.

THE RECRUIT

At times they saw him, by a phenomenon of vision or locomotion,
abolish space in its two forms of Time and Distance; the former
being intellectual space, the other physical space.

Intellectual History of Louis Lambert.

On an evening in the month of November, 1793, the principal persons of
Carentan were assembled in the salon of Madame de Dey, where they met
daily. Several circumstances which would never have attracted attention
in a large town, though they greatly preoccupied the little one, gave
to this habitual rendezvous an unusual interest. For the two preceding
evenings Madame de Dey had closed her doors to the little company, on
the ground that she was ill. Such an event would, in ordinary times,
have produced as much effect as the closing of the theatres in Paris;
life under those circumstances seems merely incomplete. But in 1793,
Madame de Dey's action was likely to have fatal results. The slightest
departure from a usual custom became, almost invariably for the nobles,
a matter of life or death. To fully understand the eager curiosity
and searching inquiry which animated on this occasion the Norman
countenances of all these rejected visitors, but more especially to
enter into Madame de Dey's secret anxieties, it is necessary to explain
the role she played at Carentan. The critical position in which she
stood at this moment being that of many others during the Revolution the
sympathies and recollections of more than one reader will help to give
color to this narrative.

Madame de Dey, widow of a lieutenant-general,