文档介绍：MADAME FIRMIANI
MADAME FIRMIANI
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To my dear Alexandre de Berny. His old friend,
De Balzac.
1
MADAME FIRMIANI
Many tales, either rich in situations or made dramatic by some of the
innumerable tricks of chance, carry with them their own particular setting,
which can be rendered artistically or simply by those who narrate them,
without their subjects losing any, even the least of their charms. But there
are some incidents in human experience to which the heart alone is able to
give life; there are certain details --shall we call them anatomical?--the
delicate touches of which cannot be made to reappear unless by an equally
delicate rendering of thought; there are portraits which require the infusion
of a soul, and mean nothing unless the subtlest expression of the speaking
countenance is given; furthermore, there are things which we know not
how to say or do without the aid of secret harmonies which a day, an hour,
a fortunate conjunction of celestial signs, or an inward moral tendency
may produce.
Such mysterious revelations are imperatively needed in order to tell
this simple history, in which we seek to interest those souls that are
naturally grave and reflective and find their sustenance in tender emotions.
If the writer, like the surgeon beside his dying friend, is filled with a
species of reverence for the subject he is handling, should not the reader
share in that inexplicable feeling? Is it so difficult to put ourselves in
unison with the vague and nervous sadness which casts its gray tints all
about us, and is, in fact, a semi-illness, the gentle sufferings of which are
often pleasing? If the reader is of those who sometimes think upon the
dear ones they have lost, if he is alone, if the day is waning or the night
e, let him read on; otherwise, he should lay aside this book at once.
If he has never buried a good old relative, infirm and poor, he