La Grenadiere by Honoré de Balzac - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

By Honoré de Balzac

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘La Grenadiere by Honoré de Balzac - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Collected Works of Honoré de Balzac’.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Balzac includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
* The complete unabridged text of ‘La Grenadiere by Honoré de Balzac - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Balzac’s works
* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
* Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788775144

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.

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HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Resources of Quinola

Parts Edition

By Delphi Classics, 2014

Version 1

COPYRIGHT

‘The Resources of Quinola’

Honoré de Balzac: Parts Edition (in 116 parts)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 90890 966 4

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: [e-mail]

www.delphiclassics.com

Honoré de Balzac: Parts Edition

This eBook is Part 106 of the Delphi Classics edition of Honoré de Balzac in 116 Parts. It features the unabridged text of The Resources of Quinola from the bestselling edition of the author’s Collected Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Honoré de Balzac, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Honoré de Balzac or the Collected Works of Honoré de Balzac in a single eBook.

Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

IN 116 VOLUMES

Parts Edition Contents

Scenes from Private Life

1, At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

2, The Ball at Sceaux

3, Letters of Two Brides

4, The Purse

5, Modeste Mignon

6, A Start in Life

7, Albert Savarus

8, Vendetta

9, A Second Home

10, Domestic Peace

11, Madame Firmiani

12, Study of a Woman

13, The Imaginary Mistress

14, A Daughter of Eve

15, The Message

16, The Grand Breteche

17, La Grenadiere

18, The Deserted Woman

19, Honorine

20, Beatrix

21, Gobseck

22, A Woman of Thirty

23, Father Goriot

24, Colonel Chabert

25, The Atheist’s Mass

26, The Commission in Lunacy

27, The Marriage Contract

28, Another Study of Woman

Scenes from Provincial Life

29, Ursule Mirouet

30, Eugenie Grandet

The Celibates

31, Pierrette

32, The Vicar of Tours

33, The Two Brothers

Parisians in the Country

34, The Illustrious Gaudissart

35, The Muse of the Department

36, The Old Maid

37, The Collection of Antiquities

Lost Illusions

38, Two Poets

39, A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

40, Eve and David

The Thirteen

41, Ferragus

42, The Duchesse de Langeais

43, Girl with the Golden Eyes

44, Rise and Fall of César Birotteau

45, The Firm of Nucingen

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

46, Esther Happy: How a Courtesan Can Love

47, What Love Costs an Old Man

48, The End of Evil Ways

49, Vautrin’s Last Avatar

50, Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan

51, Facino Cane

52, Sarrasine

53, Pierre Grassou

The Poor Relations

54, Cousin Betty

55, Cousin Pons

56, A Man of Business

57, A Prince of Bohemia

58, Gaudissart II

59, Bureaucracy

60, Unconscious Comedians

61, The Lesser Bourgeoisie

The Seamy Side of History

62, Madame de La Chanterie

63, The Initiate

Scenes from Political Life

64, An Episode Under the Terror

65, An Historical Mystery

66, The Deputy of Arcis

67, Monsieur de Sallenauve

68, Z. Marcas

Scenes from Military Life

69, The Chouans

70, A Passion in the Desert

Scenes from Country Life

71, Sons of the Soil

72, The Country Doctor

73, The Village Rector

74, The Lily of the Valley

PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

75, The Magic Skin

76, Christ in Flanders

77, Melmoth Reconciled

78, The Unknown Masterpiece

79, Gambara

80, Massimilla Doni

81, The Alkahest

82, The Hated Son

83, Farewell

84, Juana

85, The Recruit

86, El Verdugo

87, A Drama on the Seashore

88, Maitre Cornelius

89, The Red Inn

Catherine de’ Medici

90, The Calvinist Martyr

91, The Secrets of the Ruggieri

92, The Two Dreams

93, The Elixir of Life

94, The Exiles

95, Louis Lambert

96, Seraphita

ANALYTICAL STUDIES

97, Physiology of Marriage

98, Little Miseries of Conjugal Life

Pathology of Social Life

99, Traité de La Vie Élégante

100, Théorie de La Démarche

101, Traité Des Excitants Modernes

The Short Stories

102, Droll Stories

103, The Napoleon of the People

The Plays

104, Introduction to Balzac’s Dramas by J. Walker Mcspadden

105, Vautrin

106, The Resources of Quinola

107, Pamela Giraud

108, The Stepmother

109, Mercadet

The Criticism

110, The Criticism

The Biographies

111, Honoré de Balzac by Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

112, Honoré de Balzac, His Life and Writings by Mary F. Sandars

113, Balzac and Madame Hanska by Elbert Hubbard

114, Balzac by Frederick Lawton

115, Women in the Life of Balzac by Juanita Helm Floyd

116, Glossary of Characters in ‘La Comédie Humaine’

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The Resources of Quinola

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

First Presented at the Theatre de l’Odeon, Paris March 19, 1842.

CONTENTS

PERSONS OF THE PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

ACT IV

ACT V

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Had the author of the following play written it merely for the purpose of winning for it the universal praise which the journals have lavished upon his romances, and which perhaps transcended their merits, The Resources of Quinola would still have been an excellent literary speculation; but, when he sees himself the object of so much praise and so much condemnation, he has come to the conclusion that it is much more difficult to make successfully a first venture on the stage than in the field of mere literature, and he has armed himself, accordingly, with courage, both for the present and for the future.

The day will come when the piece will be employed by critics as a battering ram to demolish some piece at its first representation, just as they have employed all his novels and even his play entitled Vautrin, to demolish The Resources of Quinola.

However tranquil may be his mood of resignation, the author cannot refrain from making here two suggestive observations.

Not one among fifty feuilleton writers has failed to treat as a fable, invented by the author, the historic fact upon which is founded the present play.

Long before M. Arago mentioned this incident in his history of steam, published in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, the author, to whom the incident was known, had guessed in imagination the great drama that must have led up to that final act of despair, the catastrophe which necessarily ended the career of the unknown inventor, who, in the middle of the sixteenth century, built a ship that moved by steam in the harbor of Barcelona, and then scuttled it with his own hands in the presence of two hundred thousand spectators.

This observation is sufficient answer to the derision which has been flung upon what was supposed to be the author’s hypothesis as to the invention of steam locomotion before the time of the Marquis of Worcester, Salomon de Caus and Papin.

The second observation relates to the strange manner in which almost all the critics have mistaken the character of Lavradi, one of the personages in this comedy, which they have stigmatized as a hideous creation. Any one who reads the piece, of which no critic has given an exact analysis, will see that Lavradi, sentenced to be transported for ten years to the presides, comes to ask pardon of the king. Every one knows how freely the severest penalties were in the sixteenth century measured out for the lightest offences, and how warmly valets in a predicament such as Quinola’s, were welcomed by the spectators in the antique theatres.

Many volumes might be filled with the laments of feuilletonists, who for nearly twenty years have called for comedies in the Italian, Spanish or English style. An attempt has been made to produce one, and the critics would rather eat their own words than miss the opportunity of choking off the man who has been bold enough to venture upon a pathway of such fertile promise, whose very antiquity lends to it in these days the charm of novelty.

Nor must we forget to mention, to the disgrace of our age, the howl of disapprobation which greeted the title Duke of Neptunado, selected by Philip II. for the inventor, a howl in which educated readers will refuse to join, but which was so overwhelming at the presentation of the piece that after its first utterance the actors omitted the term during the remainder of the evening. This howl was raised by an audience of spectators who read in the newspapers every morning the title of the Duke of Vittoria, given to Espartero, and who must have heard of the title Prince of Paz, given to the last favorite of the last but one of the kings of Spain. How could such ignorance as this have been anticipated? Who does not know that the majority of Spanish titles, especially