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To His Highness

Prince Alfonso Serafino di Porcia.

Allow me to place your name at the beginning of an essentially

Parisian work, thought out in your house during these latter days.

Is it not natural that I should offer you the flowers of rhetoric

that blossomed in your garden, watered with the regrets I suffered

from home-sickness, which you soothed, as I wandered under the

boschetti whose elms reminded me of the Champs-Elysees? Thus,

perchance, may I expiate the crime of having dreamed of Paris

under the shadow of the Duomo, of having longed for our muddy

streets on the clean and elegant flagstones of Porta-Renza. When I

have some book to publish which may be dedicated to a Milanese

lady, I shall have the happiness of finding names already dear to

your old Italian romancers among those of women whom we love, and

to whose memory I would beg you to recall your sincerely

affectionate

DE BALZAC.

July 1838.