The Project Gutenberg EBook of Facino Cane, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: Facino Cane

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Clara Bell and Others

Release Date: May, 1999 [Etext #1737]
Posting Date: March 1, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FACINO CANE ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

FACINO CANE

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Clara Bell and others

FACINO CANE

I once used to live in a little street which probably is not known
to you--the Rue de Lesdiguieres. It is a turning out of the Rue
Saint-Antoine, beginning just opposite a fountain near the Place de
la Bastille, and ending in the Rue de la Cerisaie. Love of knowledge
stranded me in a garret; my nights I spent in work, my days in reading
at the Bibliotheque d'Orleans, close by. I lived frugally; I had
accepted the conditions of the monastic life, necessary conditions for
every worker, scarcely permitting myself a walk along the Boulevard
Bourdon when the weather was fine. One passion only had power to draw me
from my studies; and yet, what was that passion but a study of another
kind? I used to watch the manners and customs of the Faubourg, its
inhabitants, and their characteristics. As I dressed no better than a
working man, and cared nothing for appearances, I did not put them on
their guard; I could join a group and look on while they drove bargains
or wrangled among themselves on their way home from work. Even then
observation had come to be an instinct with me; a faculty of penetrating
to the soul without neglecting the body; or rather, a power of grasping
external details so thoroughly that they never detained me for a moment,
and at once I passed beyond and through them. I could enter into the
life of the human creatures whom I watched, just as the dervish in the
_Arabian Nights_ could pass into any soul or body after pronouncing a
certain formula.

If I met a working man and his wife in the streets between eleven
o'clock and midnight on their way home from the Ambigu Comique, I used
to amuse myself by following them from the Boulevard du Pont aux Choux
to the Boulevard Beaumarchais.