Beatrix. Honore de Balzac

NOTE

       Table of Contents

      It is somewhat remarkable that Balzac, dealing as he did with

       traits of character and the minute and daily circumstances of

       life, has never been accused of representing actual persons in the

       two or three thousand portraits which he painted of human nature.

       In “The Great Man of the Provinces in Paris” some likenesses were

       imagined: Jules Janin in Etienne Lousteau, Armand Carrel in Michel

       Chrestien, and, possibly, Berryer in Daniel d’Arthez. But in the

       present volume, “Beatrix,” he used the characteristics of certain

       persons, which were recognized and admitted at the time of

       publication. Mademoiselle des Touches (Camille Maupin) is George

       Sand in character, and the personal description of her, though

       applied by some to the famous Mademoiselle Georges, is easily

       recognized from Couture’s drawing. Beatrix, Conti, and Claude

       Vignon are sketches of the Comtesse d’Agoult, Liszt, and the

       well-known critic Gustave Planche.

       The opening scene of this volume, representing the manners and

       customs of the old Breton family, a social state existing no

       longer except in history, and the transition period of the

       vieille roche as it passed into the customs and ideas of the present century, is one of Balzac’s remarkable and most famous pictures in the “Comedy of Human Life.” K.P.W.