DEDICATION

To Madame Zulma Carraud

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