Читать книгу Honoré de Balzac: Premium Collection - Honoré de Balzac - Страница 103

To Madame la Comtesse Bolognini, nee Vimercati.

If you remember, madame, the pleasure your conversation gave to a

traveller by recalling Paris to his memory in Milan, you will not

be surprised to find him testifying his gratitude for many

pleasant evenings passed beside you by laying one of his works at

your feet, and begging you to protect it with your name, as in

former days that name protected the tales of an ancient writer

dear to the Milanese.

You have an Eugenie, already beautiful, whose intelligent smile

gives promise that she has inherited from you the most precious

gifts of womanhood, and who will certainly enjoy during her

childhood and youth all those happinesses which a rigid mother

denied to the Eugenie of these pages. Though Frenchmen are taxed

with inconstancy, you will find me Italian in faithfulness and

memory. While writing the name of “Eugenie,” my thoughts have

often led me back to that cool stuccoed salon and little garden in

the Vicolo dei Cappucini, which echoed to the laughter of that

dear child, to our sportive quarrels and our chatter. But you have

left the Corso for the Tre Monasteri, and I know not how you are

placed there; consequently, I am forced to think of you, not among

the charming things with which no doubt you have surrounded

yourself, but like one of those fine figures due to Raffaelle,

Titian, Correggio, Allori, which seem abstractions, so distant are

they from our daily lives.

If this book should wing its way across the Alps, it will prove to

you the lively gratitude and respectful friendship of

Your devoted servant,

De Balzac.