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Title: An Episode Under the Terror

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Clara Bell and Others

Release Date: September, 1998 [Etext #1456]
Posting Date: February 25, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR ***

Produced by Dagny, and Bonnie Sala

AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Clara Bell and Others

DEDICATION

To Monsieur Guyonnet-Merville.

Is it not a necessity to explain to a public curious to know
everything, how I came to be sufficiently learned in the law to
carry on the business of my little world? And in so doing, am I
not bound to put on record the memory of the amiable and
intelligent man who, meeting the Scribe (another clerk-amateur) at
a ball, said, "Just give the office a turn; there is work for you
there, I assure you." But do you need this public testimony to
feel assured of the affection of the writer?

DE BALZAC.

AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR

On the 22nd of January, 1793, towards eight o'clock in the evening, an
old lady came down the steep street that comes to an end opposite the
Church of Saint Laurent in the Faubourg Saint Martin. It had snowed so
heavily all day long that the lady's footsteps were scarcely audible;
the streets were deserted, and a feeling of dread, not unnatural amid
the silence, was further increased by the whole extent of the Terror
beneath which France was groaning in those days; what was more, the old
lady so far had met no one by the way. Her sight had long been failing,
so that the few foot passengers dispersed like shadows in the distance
over the wide thoroughfare through the faubourg, were quite invisible to
her by the light of the lanterns.

She had passed the end of the Rue des Morts, when she fancied that she
could hear the firm, heavy tread of a man walking behind her. Then it
seemed to her that she had heard that sound before, and dismayed by the
idea of b