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    A Prince of Bohemia
    A Prince of Bohemia
    A Prince of Bohemia
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    A Prince of Bohemia

    By Honoré de Balzac

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 2004
    A Prince of Bohemia
    Author

    Honoré de Balzac

    Honoré de Balzac (Tours, 1799-París, 1850), el novelista francés más relevante de la primera mitad del siglo XIX y uno de los grandes escritores de todos los tiempos, fue autor de una portentosa y vasta obra literaria, cuyo núcleo central, la Comedia humana, a la que pertenece Eugenia Grandet, no tiene parangón en ninguna otra época anterior o posterior.

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      A Prince of Bohemia - Honoré de Balzac

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Prince of Bohemia, 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 Prince of Bohemia

      Author: Honore de Balzac

      Translator: Clara Bell and Others

      Release Date: July, 1999 [Etext #1812]

      Posting Date: March 2, 2010

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA ***

      Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

      A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

      By Honore De Balzac

      Translated by Clara Bell and others

      DEDICATION

      To Henri Heine.

      I inscribe this to you, my dear Heine, to you that represent in Paris the ideas and poetry of Germany, in Germany the lively and witty criticism of France; for you better than any other will know whatsoever this Study may contain of criticism and of jest, of love and truth.

      DE BALZAC.

      A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

      My dear friend, said Mme. de la Baudraye, drawing a pile of manuscript from beneath her sofa cushion, will you pardon me in our present straits for making a short story of something which you told me a few weeks ago?

      Anything is fair in these times. Have you not seen writers serving up their own hearts to the public, or very often their mistress' hearts when invention fails? We are coming to this, dear; we shall go in quest of adventures, not so much for the pleasure of them as for the sake of having the story to tell afterwards.

      After all, you and the Marquise de Rochefide have paid the rent, and I do not think, from the way things are going here, that I ever pay yours.

      Who knows? Perhaps the same good luck that befell Mme. de Rochefide may come to you.

      Do you call it good luck to go back to one's husband?

      No; only great luck. Come, I am listening.

      And Mme. de la Baudraye read as follows:

      "Scene—a splendid salon in the Rue de Chartres-du-Roule. One of the most famous writers of the day discovered sitting on a settee beside a very illustrious Marquise, with whom he is on such terms of intimacy, as a man has a right to claim when a woman singles him out and keeps him at her side as a complacent souffre-douleur rather than a makeshift."

      Well, says she, "have you found those letters of which you spoke yesterday? You said that you could not tell me all about him without them?"

      Yes, I have them.

      "It is your turn to speak; I am listening like a child when his mother begins the tale of Le Grand Serpentin Vert."

      "I count the young man in question in that group of our acquaintances which we are wont to style our friends. He comes of a good family; he is a man of infinite parts and ill-luck, full of excellent dispositions and most charming conversation; young as he is, he is seen much, and while awaiting better things, he dwells in Bohemia. Bohemianism, which by rights should be called the doctrine of the Boulevard des Italiens, finds its recruits among young men between twenty and thirty, all of them men of genius in their way, little known, it is true, as yet, but sure of recognition one day, and when that day comes, of great distinction. They are distinguished as it is at carnival time, when their exuberant wit, repressed for the rest of the year, finds a vent in more or less ingenious buffoonery.

      "What times we live in! What an irrational central power which allows such tremendous energies to run to waste! There are diplomatists in Bohemia quite capable of overturning Russia's designs, if they but felt the power of France at their backs. There are writers, administrators, soldiers, and artists in Bohemia; every faculty, every kind of brain is represented there. Bohemia is a microcosm. If the Czar would buy Bohemia for a score of millions and set its population down in Odessa—always supposing that they consented to leave the asphalt of the boulevards—Odessa would be Paris with the year. In Bohemia, you find the flower doomed to wither and come to nothing; the flower of the wonderful young manhood of France, so sought after by Napoleon and Louis XIV., so neglected for the last thirty years by the modern Gerontocracy that is blighting everything else—that splendid young manhood of whom a witness so little prejudiced as Professor Tissot wrote, 'On all sides the Emperor employed a younger generation in every way worthy of him; in his councils, in the general administration, in negotiations bristling with difficulties or full of danger, in the government of conquered countries; and in all places Youth responded to his demands upon it. Young men were for Napoleon the missi hominici of Charlemagne.'

      "The word Bohemia tells you everything. Bohemia has nothing and lives upon what it has. Hope is its

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