The Lesser Bourgeoisie | Page 3

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

THE LESSER BOURGEOISIE (The Middle Classes)
by HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Constance-Victoire.
Here, madame, is one of those books which come into the mind,
whence no one knows, giving pleasure to the author before he can
foresee what reception the public, our great present judge, will accord
to it. Feeling almost certain of your sympathy in my pleasure, I

dedicate the book to you. Ought it not to belong to you as the tithe
formerly belonged to the Church in memory of God, who makes all
things bud and fruit in the fields and in the intellect?
A few lumps of clay, left by Moliere at the feet of his colossal statue of
Tartuffe, have here been kneaded by a hand more daring than able; but,
at whatever distance I may be from the greatest of comic writers, I shall
still be glad to have used these crumbs in showing the modern
Hypocrite in action. The chief encouragement that I have had in this
difficult undertaking was in finding it apart from all religious
questions,--questions which ought to be kept out of it for the sake of
one so pious as yourself; and also because of what a great writer has
lately called our present "indifference in matters of religion."
May the double signification of your names be for my book a prophecy!
Deign to find here the respectful gratitude of him who ventures to call
himself the most devoted of your servants.
De Balzac.

THE LESSER BOURGEOISIE (The Middle Classes)


PART I
THE LESSER BOURGEOIS OF PARIS


CHAPTER I
DEPARTING PARIS
The tourniquet Saint-Jean, the narrow passage entered through a
turnstile, a description of which was said to be so wearisome in the
study entitled "A Double Life" (Scenes from Private Life), that naive
relic of old Paris, has at the present moment no existence except in our

said typography. The building of the Hotel-de-Ville, such as we now
see it, swept away a whole section of the city.
In 1830, passers along the street could still see the turnstile painted on
the sign of a wine-merchant, but even that house, its last asylum, has
been demolished. Alas! old Paris is disappearing with frightful rapidity.
Here and there, in the course of this history of Parisian life, will be
found preserved, sometimes the type of the dwellings of the middle
ages, like that described in "Fame and Sorrow" (Scenes from Private
Life), one or two specimens of which exist to the present day;
sometimes a house like that of Judge Popinot, rue du Fouarre, a
specimen of the former bourgeoisie; here, the remains of Fulbert's
house; there, the old dock of the Seine as it was under Charles IX. Why
should not the historian of French society, a new Old Mortality,
endeavor to save these curious expressions of the past, as Walter Scott's
old man rubbed up the tombstones? Certainly, for the last ten years the
outcries of literature in this direction have not been superfluous; art is
beginning to disguise beneath its floriated ornaments those ignoble
facades of what are called in Paris "houses of product," which one of
our poets has jocosely compared to chests of drawers.
Let us remark here, that the creation of the municipal commission "del
ornamento" which superintends at Milan the architecture of street
facades, and to which every house owner is compelled to subject his
plan, dates from the seventeenth century. Consequently, we see in that
charming capital the effects of this public spirit on the part of nobles
and burghers, while we admire their buildings so full of character and
originality. Hideous, unrestrained speculation which, year after year,
changes the uniform level of storeys, compresses a whole apartment
into the space of what used to be a salon, and wages war upon gardens,
will infallibly react