DEDICATION

To Monsieur Victor Hugo,

It was your birthright to be, like a Rafael or a Pitt, a great

poet at an age when other men are children; it was your fate, the

fate of Chateaubriand and of every man of genius, to struggle

against jealousy skulking behind the columns of a newspaper, or

crouching in the subterranean places of journalism. For this

reason I desired that your victorious name should help to win a

victory for this work that I inscribe to you, a work which, if

some persons are to be believed, is an act of courage as well as a

veracious history. If there had been journalists in the time of

Moliere, who can doubt but that they, like marquises, financiers,

doctors, and lawyers, would have been within the province of the

writer of plays? And why should Comedy, qui castigat ridendo

mores, make an exception in favor of one power, when the Parisian

press spares none? I am happy, monsieur, in this opportunity of

subscribing myself your sincere admirer and friend,

DE BALZAC.