Beatrix

Оглавление

Honoré de Balzac. Beatrix

I. A BRETON TOWN AND MANSION

II. THE BARON, HIS WIFE, AND SISTER

III. THREE BRETON SILHOUETTES

IV. A NORMAL EVENING

V. CALYSTE

VI. BIOGRAPHY OF CAMILLE MAUPIN

VII. LES TOUCHES

VIII. LA MARQUISE BEATRIX

IX. A FIRST MEETING

X. DRAMA

XI. FEMALE DIPLOMACY

XII. CORRESPONDENCE

XIII. DUEL BETWEEN WOMEN

XIV. AN EXCURSION TO CROISIC

XV. CONTI

XVI. SICKNESS UNTO DEATH

XVII. A DEATH: A MARRIAGE

XVIII. THE END OF A HONEY-MOON

XIX. THE FIRST LIE OF A PIOUS DUCHESS

XX. A SHORT TREATISE ON CERTAINTY: BUT NOT FROM PASCAL’S POINT OF VIEW

XXI. THE WICKEDNESS OF A GOOD WOMAN

XXII. THE NORMAL HISTORY OF AN UPPER-CLASS GRISETTE

XXIII. ONE OF THE DISEASES OF THE AGE

XXIV. THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL RELATIONS AND POSITION

XXV. A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

XXVI. DISILLUSIONS – IN ALL BUT LA FONTAINE’S FABLES

ADDENDUM

Отрывок из книги

France, especially in Brittany, still possesses certain towns completely outside of the movement which gives to the nineteenth century its peculiar characteristics. For lack of quick and regular communication with Paris, scarcely connected by wretched roads with the sub-prefecture, or the chief city of their own province, these towns regard the new civilization as a spectacle to be gazed at; it amazes them, but they never applaud it; and, whether they fear or scoff at it, they continue faithful to the old manners and customs which have come down to them. Whoso would travel as a moral archaeologist, observing men instead of stones, would find images of the time of Louis XV. in many a village of Provence, of the time of Louis XIV. in the depths of Pitou, and of still more ancient times in the towns of Brittany. Most of these towns have fallen from states of splendor never mentioned by historians, who are always more concerned with facts and dates than with the truer history of manners and customs. The tradition of this splendor still lives in the memory of the people, – as in Brittany, where the native character allows no forgetfulness of things which concern its own land. Many of these towns were once the capitals of a little feudal State, – a county or duchy conquered by the crown or divided among many heirs, if the male line failed. Disinherited from active life, these heads became arms; and arms deprived of nourishment, wither and barely vegetate.

For the last thirty years, however, these pictures of ancient times are beginning to fade and disappear. Modern industry, working for the masses, goes on destroying the creations of ancient art, the works of which were once as personal to the consumer as to the artisan. Nowadays we have products, we no longer have works. Public buildings, monuments of the past, count for much in the phenomena of retrospection; but the monuments of modern industry are freestone quarries, saltpetre mines, cotton factories. A few more years and even these old cities will be transformed and seen no more except in the pages of this iconography.

.....

“Her property?” continued the old maid. “Oh, she is running through it.”

“The game is mine!” said the baroness. “See, I have king, queen, knave of trumps, Mistigris, and a king. We win the basket, sister.”

.....