A Street of Paris and Its Inhabitant

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Honoré de Balzac. A Street of Paris and Its Inhabitant

PREFACE

I. PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE STREET

II. SILHOUETTE OF THE INHABITANT

III. MADAME ADOLPHE

IV. INCONVENIENCE OF QUAYS WHERE ARE BOOK STALLS

V. FIRST COURSE

VI. SECOND COURSE

VII. DESSERT

VIII. THIS SHOWS THAT THE WIFE OF A MAN OF SCIENCE IS VERY UNHAPPY

Отрывок из книги

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.

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The arm of the street that extends to the Rue de Fleurus is entirely occupied, at the left, by a wall on the top of which shine broken bottles and iron lances fixed in the plaster – a sort of warning to hands of lovers and of thieves.

In this wall is a door, the famous little garden door, so necessary to dramas and to novels, which is beginning to disappear from Paris.

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