The Lesser Bourgeoisie

The Project Guten­berg EBook of The Less­er Bour­geoisie, by Hon­ore de Balzac

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Ti­tle: The Less­er Bour­geoisie

Au­thor: Hon­ore de Balzac

Re­lease Date: De­cem­ber 9, 2004 [EBook #1641]

Lan­guage: En­glish

Char­ac­ter set en­cod­ing: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTEN­BERG EBOOK THE LESS­ER BOUR­GEOISIE ***

Pro­duced by John Bick­ers, Dag­ny, and Bon­nie Sala

THE LESS­ER BOUR­GEOISIE (The Mid­dle Class­es)

BY

HON­ORE DE BALZAC

Trans­lat­ed By Katharine Prescott Worme­ley

DED­ICA­TION

To Con­stance-​Vic­toire.

Here, madame, is one of those books which come in­to the mind, whence no one knows, giv­ing plea­sure to the au­thor be­fore he can fore­see what re­cep­tion the pub­lic, our great present judge, will ac­cord to it. Feel­ing al­most cer­tain of your sym­pa­thy in my plea­sure, I ded­icate the book to you. Ought it not to be­long to you as the tithe for­mer­ly be­longed to the Church in mem­ory of God, who makes all things bud and fruit in the fields and in the in­tel­lect?

A few lumps of clay, left by Moliere at the feet of his colos­sal stat­ue of Tartuffe, have here been knead­ed by a hand more dar­ing than able; but, at what­ev­er dis­tance I may be from the great­est of com­ic writ­ers, I shall still be glad to have used these crumbs in show­ing the mod­ern Hyp­ocrite in ac­tion. The chief en­cour­age­ment that I have had in this dif­fi­cult un­der­tak­ing was in find­ing it apart from all re­li­gious ques­tions,--ques­tions which ought to be kept out of it for the sake of one so pi­ous as your­self; and al­so be­cause of what a great writ­er has late­ly called our present “in­dif­fer­ence in mat­ters of re­li­gion.”

May the dou­ble sig­ni­fi­ca­tion of your names be for my book a prophe­cy! Deign to find here the re­spect­ful grat­itude of him who ven­tures to call him­self the most de­vot­ed of your ser­vants.

De Balzac.

THE LESS­ER BOUR­GEOISIE (The Mid­dle Class­es)

PART I

THE LESS­ER BOUR­GEOIS OF PARIS