INTRODUCTION
Are you a confirmed Balzacian?—to employ a former expression of Gautier in Jeune France on the morrow following the appearance of that mystic Rabelaisian epic, The Magic Skin. Have you experienced, while reading at school or clandestinely some stray volume of the Comedie Humaine, a sort of exaltation such as no other book had aroused hitherto, and few have caused since? Have you dreamed at an age when one plucks in advance all the fruit from the tree of life—yet in blossom—I repeat, have you dreamed of being a Daniel d'Arthez, and of covering yourself with glory by the force of your achievements, in order to be requited, some day, for all the sufferings of your poverty-stricken youth, by the sublime Diane, Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Princesse de Cadignan?
Or, perchance, being more ambitious and less literary, you have desired to see—like a second Rastignac, the doors of high society opened to your eager gaze by means of the golden key suspended from Delphine de Nucingen's bracelet?
Romancist, have you sighed for the angelic tenderness of a Henriette de Mortsauf, and realized in your dreams the innocent emotions excited by culling nosegays, by listening to tales of grief, by furtive hand-clasps on the banks of a narrow river, blue and placid, in a valley where your friendship flourishes like a fair, delicate lily, the ideal, the chaste flower?
Misanthrope, have you caressed the chimera, to ward off the dark hours of advancing age, of a friendship equal to that
