The Collection of Antiquities | Page 3

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

THE COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated By Ellen Marriage

DEDICATION
To Baron Von Hammer-Purgstall, Member of the Aulic Council,
Author of the History of the Ottoman Empire.
Dear Baron,--You have taken so warm an interest in my long, vast
"History of French Manners in the Nineteenth Century," you have

given me so much encouragement to persevere with my work, that you
have given me a right to associate your name with some portion of it.
Are you not one of the most important representatives of conscientious,
studious Germany? Will not your approval win for me the approval of
others, and protect this attempt of mine? So proud am I to have gained
your good opinion, that I have striven to deserve it by continuing my
labors with the unflagging courage characteristic of your methods of
study, and of that exhaustive research among documents without which
you could never have given your monumental work to the world of
letters. Your sympathy with such labor as you yourself have bestowed
upon the most brilliant civilization of the East, has often sustained my
ardor through nights of toil given to the details of our modern
civilization. And will not you, whose naive kindliness can only be
compared with that of our own La Fontaine, be glad to know of this?
May this token of my respect for you and your work find you at
Dobling, dear Baron, and put you and yours in mind of one of your
most sincere admirers and friends.
DE BALZAC.

THE COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES

There stands a house at a corner of a street, in the middle of a town, in
one of the least important prefectures in France, but the name of the
street and the name of the town must be suppressed here. Every one
will appreciate the motives of this sage reticence demanded by
convention; for if a writer takes upon himself the office of annalist of
his own time, he is bound to touch on many sore subjects. The house
was called the Hotel d'Esgrignon; but let d'Esgrignon be considered a
mere fancy name, neither more nor less connected with real people than
the conventional Belval, Floricour, or Derville of the stage, or the
Adalberts and Mombreuses of romance. After all, the names of the
principal characters will be quite as much disguised; for though in this
history the chronicler would prefer to conceal the facts under a mass of
contradictions, anachronisms, improbabilities, and absurdities, the truth
will out in spite of him. You uproot a vine- stock, as you imagine, and
the stem will send up lusty shoots after you have ploughed your
vineyard over.

The "Hotel d'Esgrignon" was nothing more nor less than the house in
which the old Marquis lived; or, in the style of ancient documents,
Charles Marie Victor Ange Carol, Marquis d'Esgrignon. It was only an
ordinary house, but the townspeople and tradesmen had begun by
calling it the Hotel d'Esgrignon in jest, and ended after a score of years
by giving it that name in earnest.
The name of Carol, or Karawl, as the Thierrys would have spelt it, was
glorious among the names of the most powerful chieftains of the
Northmen who conquered Gaul and established the feudal system there.
Never had Carol bent his head before King or Communes, the Church
or Finance. Intrusted in the days of yore with the keeping of a French
March, the title of marquis in their family meant no shadow of
imaginary office; it had been a post of honor with duties to discharge.
Their fief had always been their domain. Provincial nobles were they in
every sense of the word; they might boast of an unbroken line of great
descent; they had been neglected by the court for two hundred years;
they were lords paramount in the estates of a province where the people
looked up