文档介绍：THE DESERTED WOMAN
THE DESERTED
WOMAN
by HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By Ellen Marriage
1
THE DESERTED WOMAN
DEDICATION
To Her Grace the Duchesse d'Abrantes, from her devoted servant,
Honore de Balzac. PARIS, August 1835.
In the early spring of 1822, the Paris doctors sent to Lower Normandy
a young man just recovering from an plaint, brought on
by overstudy, or perhaps by excess of some other kind. His convalescence
plete rest, a light diet, bracing air, and freedom from
excitement of every kind, and the fat lands of Bessin seemed to offer all
these conditions of recovery. To Bayeux, a picturesque place about six
miles from the sea, the patient therefore betook himself, and was received
with the cordiality characteristic of relatives who lead very retired lives,
and regard a new arrival as a godsend.
All little towns are alike, save for a few local customs. When M. le
Baron Gaston de Nueil, the young Parisian in question, had spent two or
three evenings in his cousin's house, or with the friends who made up
Mme. de Sainte-Severe's circle, he very soon had made the acquaintance
of the persons whom this exclusive society considered to be "the whole
town." Gaston de Nueil recognized in them the invariable stock characters
which every observer finds in every one of the many capitals of the little
States which made up the France of an older day.
First of es the family whose claims to nobility are regarded as
incontestable, and of the highest antiquity in the department, though no
one has so much as heard of them a bare fifty leagues away. This species
of royal family on a small scale is distantly, but unmistakably, connected
with the Navarreins and the Grandlieu family, and related to the Cadignans,
and the Blamont-Chauvrys. The head of the illustrious house is invariably
a determined sportsman. He has no manners, crushes everybody else with
his nominal superiority, tolerates the sub-prefect much as he submits to the
taxes, and