文档介绍：THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN
THE FIRM OF
NUCINGEN
BY HONORE DE BALZAC
Translator James Waring
TO MADAME ZULMA CARRAUD
1
THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN
To whom, madame, but to you should I inscribe this work; to you
whose lofty and candid intellect is a treasury to your friends; to you that
are to me not only a whole public, but the most indulgent of sisters as well?
Will you deign to accept a token of the friendship of which I am proud?
You, and some few souls as noble, will grasp the whole of the thought
underlying The Firm of Nucingen, appended to Cesar Birotteau. Is there
not a whole social lesson in the contrast between the two stories?
DE BALZAC.
2
THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN
You know how slight the partitions are between the private rooms of
fashionable restaurants in Paris; Very's largest room, for instance, is cut in
two by a removable screen. This Scene is NOT laid at Very's, but in snug
quarters, which for reasons of my own I forbear to specify. We were two,
so I will say, like Henri Monnier's Prudhomme, "I should not like to
compromise HER!"
We had remarked the want of solidity in the wall-structure, so we
talked with lowered voices as we sat together in the little private room,
lingering over the dainty dishes of a dinner exquisite in more senses than
one. We e as far as the roast, however, and still we had no
neighbors; no sound came from the next room save the crackling of the
fire. But when the clock struck eight, we heard voices and noisy footsteps;
the waiters brought candles. Evidently there was a party assembled in the
next room, and at the first words I knew at once with whom we had to do--
four bold cormorants as ever sprang from the foam on the crests of the
ever-rising waves of this present generation--four pleasant young fellows
whose existence was problematical, since they were not known to possess
either stock or landed estates, yet they lived, and lived well. These
ingenious condottieri of a modern industrialism, that