A Street of Paris and Its Inhabitant

A Street of Paris and Its
Inhabitant

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Title: A Street Of Paris And Its Inhabitant
Author: Honore De Balzac
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STREET
OF PARIS ***

Produced by Dagny, John Bickers and David Widger

A STREET OF PARIS
AND
ITS INHABITANT
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated by
Henri Pene du Bois
Illustrated by
Francois Courboin

PREPARER'S NOTE
This eBook was prepared from an edition published by Meyer Brothers
and Company, New York, 1900.
Of this edition 400 copies were printed. 25 copies on Japan Paper,
numbered 1 to 25. 375 copies on specially made paper, numbered 26 to
400.

PREFACE
This little Parisian silhouette in prose was written by Balzac to be the
first chapter of a new series of the "Comedie Humaine" that he was
preparing while the first was finishing. Balzac was never tired. He said

that the men who were tired were those who rested and tried to work
afterwards.
"A Street of Paris and its Inhabitant" was in its author's mind when
Hetzel, engaged in collecting a copy for the work entitled "Le Diable a
Paris" that all book lovers admire, asked Balzac for an unpublished
manuscript.
Balzac gave him this, after retouching it, in order that it should have the
air of a finished story. Why Hetzel did not use it in "Le Diable a Paris,"
no one knows. He went into exile, in Brussels, at the military
revolution that made Napoleon III Emperor and, needing money, sold
"A Street of Paris and its Inhabitant" with other manuscripts to Le
Siecle.
Balzac's work was printed entire in three pages of the journal Le Siecle,
in Paris, July 28, 1845. M. le Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul owns
Balzac's autograph manuscript of it. These details are given by him and
might be reproduced here with his signature. But the publishers wish
not to be deprived of the pleasure of paying homage to the Vicomte
Spoelberch de Lovenjoul.
He has made in the biography of Balzac, in editions of his books, in the
pious collection of his unpublished writings, the ideal literary man's
monument.
H. P. du B.

I
PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE STREET
Paris has curved streets, streets that are serpentine. It counts, perhaps,
only the Rue Boudreau in the Chaussee d'Antin and the Rue
Duguay-Trouin near the Luxembourg as streets shaped exactly like a
T-square. The Rue Duguay-Trouin extends one of its two arms to the
Rue d'Assas and the other to the Rue de Fleurus.
In 1827 the Rue Duguay-Trouin was paved neither on one side nor on
the other; it was lighted neither at its angle nor at its ends. Perhaps it is
not, even to-day, paved or lighted. In truth, this street has so few houses,
or the houses are so modest, that one does not see them; the city's
forgetfulness of them is explained, then, by their little importance.
Lack of solidity in the soil is a reason for that state of things. The street
is situated on a point of the Catacombs so dangerous that a portion of

the road disappeared recently, leaving an excavation to the astonished
eyes of the scarce inhabitants of that corner of Paris.
A great clamor arose in the newspapers about it. The government
corked up the "Fontis"--such is the name of that territorial
bankruptcy--and the gardens that border the street, destitute of
passers-by, were reassured the more easily because the tax list did not
weigh on them.
The arm of the street that extends to the Rue de Fleurus is entirely
occupied, at the left, by a wall on the