Honoré de Balzac

“ The professor replaced Malus and the essay on him in the ten-sous stall, without remarking how often hope had been lit and extinguished alternately in the gray eyes of an old woman seated on a stool in an angle of the quay.
"He was there," Marmus said, pointing to the Tuileries on the opposite bank of the river. "I saw him reviewing his sublime troops! I saw him thin, ardent as the sands of Egypt; but, as soon as he became Emperor, he grew fat and good-natured, for all fat men are excellent—this is why Sinard is thin, he is a gall-making machine. But would Napoleon have supported my theory?" ”

“ Madame Adolphe said. "Your sister-in-law dines at six. You have three hours before you—Yes—you'll be there, but you'll be late." She searched her apron pocket for two sous, which she handed to the professor.
"Very well, then," she said to him. "Do not eat too much. You are not a glutton, but you think of other things. You are frugal, but you eat when you are absent-minded as if you had no bread at home. Take care not to make Madame Vernet, your sister-in-law, wait. If you make her wait, you will never be permitted again to go there alone, and it will be shameful for you." ”

“ At this moment the professor could talk aloud without trouble to himself or to the passers-by. He was near the Chamber of Deputies, the session was closed, all Paris was at dinner—except the man of science.
Marmus was haranguing the statues which, it must be conceded, are similar to all audiences. In France there is not an audience that is not prohibited from giving marks of approval or disapproval. Otherwise, there is not an audience that would not turn orator.
At the Iena bridge Marmus had a pain in the stomach. He heard the hoarse voice of a cab driver. ”

“ The battered hat, in a constant state of horror in the places where a reddish fuzz endures, would not be picked up by a rag picker, if the little old man let it fall and left it at a street corner.
Too absent-minded to submit to the bother that the wearing of a wig entails, that man of science—he is a man of science—shows, when he makes a bow, a head that, viewed from the top, has the appearance of the Farnese Hercules's knee. ”

“ Above each ear, tufts of twisted white hair shine in the sun like the angry silken hairs of a boar at bay. The neck is athletic and recommends itself to the notice of caricaturists by an infinity of wrinkles, of furrows ”

“ It is Madame returning in great anxiety, I am sure," said Madame Adolphe, giving to the professor his sixth cup of camomile tea. "Now, sir, I hope that you will be able to drink it without me. Do not let it fall all over your bed. You know how Madame would laugh. You are very happy to have a little wife who is so amiable and so joyful."
"Say nothing to her, my child," exclaimed the professor, whose features expressed a sort of childish fear.
The truly great man is always more or less a child.
VIII THIS SHOWS THAT THE WIFE OF
A MAN OF SCIENCE IS VERY UNHAPPY ”

“ He had dined, doubtless, with M. Planchette, one of his friends of the Academy."
"He couldn't tell me his address," says the cab driver.
"He lives in the Rue Duguay-Trouin, Number three," says the janitor.
"What a neighborhood!" exclaims the driver.
"My friend," asks of the janitor the professor who had found the door shut, "is there no meeting of the Academy to-day?"
"To-day!" exclaims the janitor. "At this hour!"
"What is the time?" asks the man of science.
"About eight o'clock," the janitor replies.
"It is late," comments M. Marmus. "Take me home, driver." ”

“ Lack of solidity in the soil is a reason for that state of things. The street is situated on a point of the Catacombs so dangerous that a portion of the road disappeared recently, leaving an excavation to the astonished eyes of the scarce inhabitants of that corner of Paris. ”

“ The constant state of the beard explains at once why the necktie, always crumpled and rolled by the gestures of a disquiet head, has its own beard, infinitely softer than that of the good old man, and formed of threads scratched from its unfortunate tissue. ”

“ Those who know him will admit that he had done nobly, since he had taken only one hour to go through the Luxembourg and down the Rue de Seine.
There a lamentable voice, the voice of a child, plucked from the good man the two sous that Madame Adolphe had given to him. When he reached the Pont des Arts he remembered that he had to pay toll and turned back suddenly to beg for a sou from the child. ”

“ It was the hour at which they went to the dinner table in the house of Marmus's sister-in-law. The professor walked slowly toward the Chamber of Deputies, asking himself if his theory might have had Napoleon's support. He could no longer judge Napoleon save from that point of view. Did Napoleon's genius coincide with that of Marmus in regard to the assimilation of things engendered by an attraction perpetual and continuous?
VI SECOND COURSE
"No, Baron Sinard was a worshipper of power. ”

“ M. le Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul owns Balzac's autograph manuscript of it. These details are given by him and might be reproduced here with his signature. But the publishers wish not to be deprived of the pleasure of paying homage to the Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul.
He has made in the biography of Balzac, in editions of his books, in the pious collection of his unpublished writings, the ideal literary man's monument.
H. P. du B.
I PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE STREET
Paris has curved streets, streets that are serpentine. ”

“ Out of it came a little old man, fat, provided with an abdomen heavy and projecting which obliges him to make many sacrifices. He has to wear trousers excessively wide, not to be troubled in walking. He has renounced, long ago, the use of boots and trouser straps. ”

“ Balzac gave him this, after retouching it, in order that it should have the air of a finished story. Why Hetzel did not use it in "Le Diable a Paris," no one knows. He went into exile, in Brussels, at the military revolution that made Napoleon III Emperor and, needing money, sold "A Street of Paris and its Inhabitant" with other manuscripts to Le Siecle. ”