Repertory of the Comedie Humaine, part 1 | Page 4

/Pierrette/, /The Vicar of Tours/ and /A Bachelor's Establishment/, being detached, are given separately. Other minor instances occur, but should be readily cleared up by reference to the Indices, also to the General Introduction given elsewhere.
In the preparation of this English text, great care has been exercised to gain accuracy--a quality not found in other versions now extant. In one or two instances, errors have been discovered in the original French, notably in dates--probably typographical errors--which have been corrected by means of foot-notes. A few unimportant elisions have been made for the sake of brevity and coherence. Many difficulties confront the translator in the preparation of material of this nature, involving names, dates and titles. Opportunities are constantly afforded for error, and the work must necessarily be painstaking in order to be successful. We desire here to express appreciation for the valuable assistance of Mr. Norman Hinsdale Pitman.
To Balzac, more than to any other author, a Repertory of characters is applicable; for he it was who not only created an entire human society, but placed therein a multitude of personages so real, so distinct with vitality, that biographies of them seem no more than simple justice. We can do no more, then, than follow the advice of Balzac--to quote again from the original title-page--and "give a parallel to the civil register."
J. WALKER McSPADDEN

INTRODUCTION
Are you a confirmed /Balzacian/?--to employ a former expression of Gautier in /Jeune France/ on the morrow following the appearance of that mystic Rabelaisian epic, /The Magic Skin/. Have you experienced, while reading at school or clandestinely some stray volume of the /Comedie Humaine/, a sort of exaltation such as no other book had aroused hitherto, and few have caused since? Have you dreamed at an age when one plucks in advance all the fruit from the tree of life-- yet in blossom--I repeat, have you dreamed of being a Daniel d'Arthez, and of covering yourself with glory by the force of your achievements, in order to be requited, some day, for all the sufferings of your poverty-stricken youth, by the sublime Diane, Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Princesse de Cadignan?
Or, perchance, being more ambitious and less literary, you have desired to see--like a second Rastignac, the doors of high society opened to your eager gaze by means of the golden key suspended from Delphine de Nucingen's bracelet?
Romancist, have you sighed for the angelic tenderness of a Henriette de Mortsauf, and realized in your dreams the innocent emotions excited by culling nosegays, by listening to tales of grief, by furtive hand- clasps on the banks of a narrow river, blue and placid, in a valley where your friendship flourishes like a fair, delicate lily, the ideal, the chaste flower?
Misanthrope, have you caressed the chimera, to ward off the dark hours of advancing age, of a friendship equal to that with which the good Schmucke enveloped even the whims of his poor Pons? Have you appreciated the sovereign power of secret societies, and deliberated with yourself as to which of your acquaintances would be most worthy to enter The Thirteen? In your mind's eye has the map of France ever appeared to be divided into as many provinces as the /Comedie Humaine/ has stories? Has Tours stood for Birotteau, La Gamard, for the formidable Abbe Troubert; Douai, Claes; Limoges, Madame Graslin; Besancon, Savarus and his misguided love; Angouleme, Rubempre; Sancerre, Madame de la Baudraye; Alencon, that touching, artless old maid to whom her uncle, the Abbe de Sponde, remarked with gentle irony: "You have too much wit. You don't need so much to be happy"?
Oh, sorcery of the most wonderful magician of letters the world has seen since Shakespeare! If you have come under the spell of his enchantments, be it only for an hour, here is a book that will delight you, a book that would have pleased Balzac himself--Balzac, who was more the victim of his work than his most fanatical readers, and whose dream was to compete with the civil records. This volume of nearly six hundred pages is really the civil record of all the characters in the /Comedie Humaine/, by which you may locate, detail by detail, the smallest adventures of the heroes who pass and repass through the various novels, and by which you can recall at a moment's notice the emotions once awakened by the perusal of such and such a masterpiece. More modestly, it is a kind of table of contents, of a unique type; a table of living contents!
Many Balzacians have dreamed of compiling such a civil record. I myself have known of five or six who attempted this singular task. To cite only two names out of the many, the idea of this unusual Vapereau ran through the head of that keen and delicate critic, M. Henri Meilhac, and of that