A Prince of Bohemia | Page 3

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Etext prepared by Dagny, [email protected] and John Bickers,
[email protected]

A Prince of Bohemia
by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Clara Bell and others

DEDICATION
To Henri Heine.
I inscribe this to you, my dear Heine, to you that represent in Paris the
ideas and poetry of Germany, in Germany the lively and witty criticism
of France; for you better than any other will know whatsoever this
Study may contain of criticism and of jest, of love and truth.
DE BALZAC.

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

"My dear friend," said Mme. de la Baudraye, drawing a pile of
manuscript from beneath her sofa cushion, "will you pardon me in our
present straits for making a short story of something which you told me
a few weeks ago?"
"Anything is fair in these times. Have you not seen writers serving up
their own hearts to the public, or very often their mistress' hearts when
invention fails? We are coming to this, dear; we shall go in quest of
adventures, not so much for the pleasure of them as for the sake of
having the story to tell afterwards."
"After all, you and the Marquise de Rochefide have paid the rent, and I
do not think, from the way things are going here, that I ever pay yours."
"Who knows? Perhaps the same good luck that befell Mme. de

Rochefide may come to you."
"Do you call it good luck to go back to one's husband?"
"No; only great luck. Come, I am listening."
And Mme. de la Baudraye read as follows:
"Scene--a splendid salon in the Rue de Chartres-du-Roule. One of the
most famous writers of the day discovered sitting on a settee beside a
very illustrious Marquise, with whom he is on such terms of intimacy,
as a man has a right to claim when a woman singles him out and keeps
him at her side as a complacent /souffre- douleur/ rather than a
makeshift."
"Well," says she, "have you found those letters of which you spoke
yesterday? You said that you could not tell me all about /him/ without
them?"
"Yes, I have them."
"It is your turn to speak; I am listening like a child when his mother
begins the tale of /Le Grand Serpentin Vert/."
"I count the young man in question in that group of our acquaintances
which we are wont to style our friends. He comes of a good family; he
is a man of infinite parts and ill-luck, full of excellent dispositions and
most charming conversation; young as he is, he is seen much, and
while awaiting better things, he dwells in Bohemia. Bohemianism,
which by rights should be called the doctrine of the Boulevard des
Italiens, finds its recruits among young men between twenty and thirty,
all of them men of genius in their way, little known, it is true, as yet,
but sure of recognition one day, and when