A Man of Business
()
Honoré De Balzac
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Regarded as one of the key figures of French and European literature, Balzac’s realist approach to writing would influence Charles Dickens, Émile Zola, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, and Karl Marx. With a precocious attitude and fierce intellect, Balzac struggled first in school and then in business before dedicating himself to the pursuit of writing as both an art and a profession. His distinctly industrious work routine—he spent hours each day writing furiously by hand and made extensive edits during the publication process—led to a prodigious output of dozens of novels, stories, plays, and novellas. La Comédie humaine, Balzac’s most famous work, is a sequence of 91 finished and 46 unfinished stories, novels, and essays with which he attempted to realistically and exhaustively portray every aspect of French society during the early-nineteenth century.
Read more from Honoré De Balzac
Collected Works of Honore de Balzac. Illustrated: The Complete Human Comedy, Father Goriot, Eugenie Grandet, Cousin Betty and others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Great Love Letters You Have To Read (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Woman of Thirty Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cousin Bette Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Illusions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Droll Stories Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Sarrasine: Bilingual Edition (English – French) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTreatise on Elegant Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Athiest's Mass Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Chouans Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Cousin Bette (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Short Stories (Dual-Language) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to A Man of Business
Related ebooks
A Man of Business Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScenes from a Courtesan's Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudies of Manners: Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsModeste Mignon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Prince of Bohemia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGaudissart II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCousin Betty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFANTÔMAS – Crime & Mystery Series: Fantômas, The Exploits of Juve, Messengers of Evil, A Nest of Spies & A Royal Prisoner Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsD'Artagnan and the Musketeers: The Complete Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCousin Bette Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poor Relations: Cousin Betty & Cousin Pons Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Three Musketeers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDroll Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Louise de la Valliere Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAcrobats and Mountebanks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCousin Betty & Cousin Pons: The Poor Relations Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Thirteen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLa Constantin (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Sea Adventure Books of All Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEldorado: A Story of the Scarlet Pimpernel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFantômas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amaury Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEsther Happy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJason A Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRepertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo classic novels ESTP will love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSarrasine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fantômas Collection: Fantômas, The Exploits of Juve, Messengers of Evil, A Nest of Spies & A Royal Prisoner Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPunch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 107 July 7, 1894, by Various Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Three Musketeers Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Reviews for A Man of Business
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A Man of Business - Honoré De Balzac
The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Man of Business, by Honore de Balzac
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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
*** 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 names in the Comedie Humaine. Young La Palferine, in spite of his title of Count and his great descent, which, alas! means a great descent in fortune likewise, had honored the notary's little establishment with his presence.
At dinner, in such a house, one does not expect to meet the patriarchal beef, the skinny fowl and salad of domestic and family life, nor is there any attempt at the hypocritical conversation of drawing-rooms furnished with highly respectable matrons. When, alas! will respectability be charming? When will the women in good society vouchsafe to show rather less of their shoulders and rather more wit or geniality? Marguerite Turquet, the Aspasia of the Cirque-Olympique, is one of those frank, very living personalities to whom all is forgiven, such unconscious sinners are they, such intelligent penitents; of such as Malaga one might ask, like Cardot—a witty man enough, albeit a