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Title: A Man of Business

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Clara Bell and Others

Release Date: July, 1999 [Etext #1813]
Posting Date: March 2, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MAN OF BUSINESS ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

A MAN OF BUSINESS

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Clara Bell and Others

DEDICATION

To Monsieur le Baron James de Rothschild, Banker and
Austrian Consul-General at Paris.

A MAN OF BUSINESS

The word _lorette_ is a euphemism invented to describe the status of a
personage, or a personage of a status, of which it is awkward to
speak; the French Academie, in its modesty, having omitted to supply a
definition out of regard for the age of its forty members. Whenever a
new word comes to supply the place of an unwieldy circumlocution, its
fortune is assured; the word _lorette_ has passed into the language of
every class of society, even where the lorette herself will never gain
an entrance. It was only invented in 1840, and derived beyond a doubt
from the agglomeration of such swallows' nests about the Church of
Our Lady of Loretto. This information is for etymoligists only. Those
gentlemen would not be so often in a quandary if mediaeval writers had
only taken such pains with details of contemporary manners as we take in
these days of analysis and description.

Mlle. Turquet, or Malaga, for she is better known by her pseudonym (See
_La fausse Maitresse_.), was one of the earliest parishioners of
that charming church. At the time to which this story belongs, that
lighthearted and lively damsel gladdened the existence of a notary with
a wife somewhat too bigoted, rigid, and frigid for domestic happiness.

Now, it so fell out that one Carnival evening Maitre Cardot was
entertaining guests at Mlle. Turquet's house--Desroches the attorney,
Bixiou of the caricatures, Lousteau the journalist, Nathan, and others;
it is quite unnecessary to give any further description of these
personages, all bearers of illustrious