[...] This M. de Bargeton, the alderman's grandson, lived up to his quality so strenuously that he ran through the family property and checked the course of its fortunes. [...]
[...] Fancy had scattered flowers and crimson gems over the gloomy little yard, and Chenier's Camille became for David the Eve whom he worshiped, for Lucien a great lady to whom he paid his homage. Poetry had shaken out her starry robe above the workshop where the "monkeys" and "bears" were grotesq…
Then David endured the most painful of humiliations--the sense of shame for a parent; there was nothing for it but to be passive while his father poured out a flood of reasons--sordid, whining, contemptible, money-getting reasons--in which the niggardly old man wrapped his refusal. David crushed do…
In 1795 Jerome-Nicolas had not known how to read or write; in 1802 he had made no progress in either art; but by allowing a handsome margin for "wear and tear" in his estimates, he managed to pay a foreman's wages. The once easy-going journeyman was a terror to his "bears" and "monkeys." Where pove…
Honoré de Balzac, often said to be the greatest of French novel-ists, was born in Tours on May 20, 1799. His father was a civil servant who had survived the Revolution and risen under Napoleon; his mother came from a middle-class Parisian family. Raised by a wet nurse until the age of four, he was …
