Cousin Bette

Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE LIFE OF A NOBLE WOMAN. " You will be beautiful ten years hence," said Crevel, resuming his position. " Accept me, and Mademoiselle Hortense shall marry at once. Hulot gives me the right, as I have just told you, to drive a straight bargain ; he 'll not object. For the last three years I have been saving money; my little distractions have all been economical. I have three hundred thousand francs laid by, outside of my real property; they are yours — " "Leave my house, monsieur, and never let me see you again !" exclaimed Madame Hulot. " If you had not compelled me to ask the meaning of your base conduct in the matter of my daughter's proposed marriage — yes, base," she repeated, in reply to Crevel's gesture ; " why do you allow such animosities to injure a poor girl, a beautiful, innocent creature? — if it were not for this cruel necessity which wrings my mother-s-heart you should never have spoken to me again ; you should never have re-entered these doors. Thiity-two years of wifely honor and loyalty are not destroyed by the attacks of a Monsieur Crevel — " " Ex-perfumer, successor to Cesar Birotteau at the ' Queen of Roses,' rue Saint-Honore-," said Crevel, jokingly; "formerly assistant-mayor, captain of theNational Guard, chevalier of the Legion of honor, precisely like my predecessor." " Monsieur," said the baroness, " if my husband, after twenty years of constancy, has grown weary of his wife, it concerns me, and only me; and observe, monsieur, that he has carefully concealed his infidelities, for I was not aware that he had succeeded you in the heart of Mademoiselle Josepha." " Ha ! " exclaimed Crevel, " only by dint of money, madame; that little nightingale has cost him over a hundred thousand francs in the last two years. Ha! ha ! there's ...

---

Customer Reviews

Bad Kindle formatting
This review is for the Kindle formatting, not for the novel itself. Unfortunately the publisher has decided that the author should be alphabetized on the Kindle by his first name instead of his last name. Most of the Western world prefers to list authors by last name, but this publisher must be trying out something new.

2010-01-08 | DB (NYC) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

---

Problems with General Books Edition
The following comments are not about the contents of Balzac's Book " Cousin Bette" or the quality of the translation but rather about the inferiority of the printed copy published by General Books. It appears that this edition is printed on demand with Optical Character Recognition software which is not mentioned on the Amazon website sales page. There are so many typographical errors and mistakes that the story quite often becomes baffling. In the first paragraph of this edition the story begins in 1338 (instead of 1838) and it gets worse from then on. Words are often printed without spaces in between as in "shebecame" or "thoughtsreverted". The revolution of 1830 becomes "the Revolution of 18.30". Egyptian becomes "Eg.yptian"; virginity spells "Virginitrj". I have not found a page yet that had not at least one error. I paid $12.78 for this edition and have now bought another copy of a different edition in a used book store. I am appalled that Amazon would sell a product that is so obviously of inferior quality.

2010-01-05 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

---

Strong Stuff
Cousin Bette is not one of Balzac's best, but it is very good. The author says it is a companion piece to Cousin Pons, which is a better novel in my view. But both books pale in comparison to Lost Illusions, which I regard as Balzac's best novel -- just ahead of Peré Goriot. The man can truly write and his view of the human comedy is always instructive. He sees the greed and self-absorption that lies at the heart of modern society and is brutally honest. Balzac characterizes himself as a historian rather than a "writer" in the loose sense. He is that. His novels cut to the heart and tear away pretense. They are, indeed, strong stuff.
This edition of the novel is not of the best. It is large and hard to hold! I would buy the penguin edition next time -- which is also a better translation.

2009-10-15 | Mercer (Minnesota) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

---

tragic, nevertheless human comedy indeed.
Seriously and fatanstically flawed characters---jealousy, lust/addiction, greed, and vengeance--generated and fed by the culture as the significant supporting character and the frailty never stops. A great social commentary and a sad one for our human nature.

2009-04-10 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

---

that's my boy!
i'm not one hundred percent certain, but i'm pretty sure that this book was written by my grandson! i used to babysit him when he was four, and was the one who gave him his first book to read. so, if you connect the dots, i guess you could say that it's me who is responsible for this book (you gotta read before you can write, right?)! anyway, buy the thing. buy a hundred copies. the boy's got my genes - how can you go wrong? you can't.

2009-04-07 (forest lake, mn) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

---

The Hidden Masterpiece

Description

Suddenly he became silent. His grave and earnest face lost its expression of joy; he was comparing the immensity of his hopes with the mediocrity of his means. The walls of the garret were covered with bits of paper on which were crayon sketches; he possessed only four clean canvases. Colors were at that time costly, and the poor gentleman gazed at a palette that was well-nigh bare.

---

Treatise on Elegant Living (Wakefield Handbooks)

Description

Honore de Balzac's 1830 Treatise on Elegant Living was a keystone text on dandyism, preceding Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's Anatomy of Dandyism (1845) and Charles Baudelaire's "The Dandy" (in The Painter of Modern Life, 1863), and marking an important shift from the early dandyism of the British Regency to the intellectual and artistic dandyism of nineteenth-century France. The Treatise is the first true philosophical expression of dandyism, and is full of well-crafted aphorisms: "Elegant living is, in the broad acceptance of the term, the art of animating repose," runs one classic definition of dandyism, and "One must have studied at least as far as rhetoric to lead an elegant life" asserts the importance of verbal pirouette and dexterous quipping to the dandy. Further embellished with anecdotes and historical and personal illustrations, Balzac's Treatise even features a fictitious encounter with the original dandy himself, Beau Brummell. Never before translated into English, this witty tract makes for an illuminating cornerstone to Balzac's Human Comedy (which was originally to have included a never-completed four-part philosophical "Pathology of Social Life"). Above all, it represents a decisive moment in the history of dandyism, and an entertaining exposition on the profundities of what lies deepest within all of us: our appearance.

---

History of the Thirteen

Description

Included in this volume are "Ferragus, Chief of the Devorants" and "La Duchesse de Langeais."

---

Customer Reviews

A lesser-known work, for a reason
I'm a fan of French literature, but no expert on Balzac, having read only a few of his better-known works, which I enjoyed very much. This book is actually a trilogy of three short novels. The common thread linking the three stories is the "Thirteen" mentioned in the title, a secret society of powerful, influential men, sort of a cross between the Order of the Skull and Bones, the Masons, and the Mafia. One would expect a book on such a subject to be full of dastardly deeds, politcal intrigue, and shocking criminal schemes. Unfortunately, the Thirteen only makes cameo appearances in what are basically three unexceptional romance novels. I wanted cloak and dagger; instead I got a meditation on love. To me it seems a waste for the author to have created this intriguing shadowy organization only to waste it on a book that's not really about the Thirteen at all. Quite often in this book Balzac breaks from the narrative to offer expository mini-essays on Parisian society and the politics of the era. While at times these asides are annoying distractions, they may also be the book's saving grace. Scholars or enthusiasts of French history and literature will find them fascinating, and probably more valuable than the love stories themselves.

2007-09-24 (Olathe, KS United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

---

Conspiracies of the Heart
"They were thirteen kings...judges and executioners too, they had equipped themselves with wings in order to soar over society in its heights and depths, and disdained to occupy any place in it because they had unlimited power."

So reads the back-cover blurb for the Penguin Classics edition of _History of the Thirteen_. Balzac had a way with words, and with these the fertile imagination soars: what sort of conspiracy theory would pere Honore, perhaps the most famous French novelist of all time, detail? What feverish secrets of ritualistic skullduggery would the ink-corrupted quill scrawl upon the blank, innocent face of parchment? Given the fact that this was written 160 or so years ago, I assumed that current Conspiracy Theory staples of paranoiac-favor would be missing-it seemed a far cry, that any 4th dimensional reptilian Satan-worshiping aliens would make a cameo appearance in the French salons, perverting the rule of the Bourbons, re-writing the Dead Sea Scrolls in their spare time, and jostling the extras line for a background face-shot in Sightings-yet certainly one could expect, in Balzac's `fictional' account of the Thirteen, the occasional allusion to the `old-skool' *member's only* clubs... perhaps a hint of neo-Templar Egyptian-spiced exclusivity? Or, perhaps, an eyewitness account of the ultra-debauched rites used to entertain and ensnare...? Thus, I plunged into the book with bated breath and no few pulpy expectations, hoping that, once again, the literary pen would raise the ghosts and grandiosity of the bygone age: let nineteenth-century Conspiracy Theory breath the befouled air of its exhumation!

Well, in reflection, the literary pen did revive, to my firmly modern-entrenched mind, the environmental parameters and social paradigms of this long-extinct Parisian era, so turbulent and raw in the aftermath of the Revolution and Napoleon's Grand Vision. Balzac was born on the tip of this generation, and his writings capture the social strata of the time: the continual wrangling for power between the aristocracy and the reformists; the lack of fortitude among the noble-born, the ignorance of the common-man...and, lest I forget, the upjump exploitation of the self-made individual. All and one, they find a place in Balzac's interconnected oeuvre, the Human Comedy, wherein the three novels of _History of the Thirteen_ reside.

Yes, three novels, or more accurately, novellas. Curiously, I could not find the above quote anywhere in the pages between the front and back cover, though its promising eloquence continually mocked me; moreover, the secret society of the Thirteen is left, for the most part, unexamined, their motives mysterious, their origin untold. Balzac instead concerns himself with the trials and turmoil of those in love, covering the three bases of miscommunication, coquetry, and unachieved expectation, afflictions so common and prevalent in matters of the heart.

A closer look:

1) Ferragus:
A tragic tale of a good, honest stockbroker and the wife he comes to suspect of cuckoldry. Miscommunication and the fear of plummeting down the social hierarchy are Balzac's central themes here, with constant asides about the nature of Paris or humanity as a whole. A member of the thirteen is central to this story, though his appearance is late and he reveals precious little of the society's History.

2) The Duchesse de Languais:
Balzac had just emerged from a disastrous fling when he wrote this novel, and it is quite obvious between the lines that he had an o'erbearing spleen to vent: thus we are treated to the oft-silly and ultimately destructive theme of coquetry. In no uncertain terms Balzac savages the "young and the restless" of the 1840's Parisian jet-set in straight language (a venomous critique of the dissipative patterns of the day), and exemplifies this class in one of the two main characters, the Duchess de Languais. The Duchess mercilessly toys with the desires of the honest soldier Montriveau (in essence, Balzac himself) until he, in turn, decides to enact a callous form of silent-treatment revenge... There are some rather piercing statements about the nature of women in this novella; nothing that would turn the eyebrow of Schopenhauer, but more than enough to infuriate the Toni Morrison crowd. Still, Balzac is unequivocal in his treatise on character wiles: Montriveau's pride is just as damaging, ultimately, as the Duchesse Languais' (quite natural) coy instinct.

3) The Girl with Golden Eyes: Here, Balzac abandons narrative and uses the first-quarter of the novella to ruminate on the social strata of Paris, specifically the physiognomy of the artist, the civil servant, and the elevated bourgeois; all enslaved, in their own way, to the lusts of "gold and pleasure." The story, when we eventually get to it, concerns the seduction of a beautiful young woman by a dissipated servant of the Thirteen, and touches on the sensitive (for that time) topic of homosexuality and the human obsession with purity and virginity. The shortest and the least of the three novellas, the Girl with Golden Eyes is still a worthy read for the opening screed and for some of Balzac's delicious descriptive prose.

All in all, although nowhere near as good as Pere Goirot or the Black Sheep, this is a worthwhile read for those who like nineteenth century literature. Balzac knew French society like few others and is happily unsentimental in both conceptual idea and the commencement of the prose. Just don't go in expecting `alternative history'... the only conspiracies here are those of the heart.

2003-10-29 (pagosa springs CO.) | Helpful Votes: 14 | Rating: 4

---

An Interesting Book By Balzac
Most people will not consider this book one of Balzac's best, but I think this collection has some very interesting stories nonetheless. The main theme of each of these stories is love and passion seen through the eyes of Parisians. Some of these passages I consider some of Balzac's best; they are memorable words for anyone who has fallen hopelessly in love. The thoughts and observations of the characters within this collection of books is simply amazing.

2000-02-01 (NE) | Helpful Votes: 10 | Rating: 5

---

A social analyze of Paris in the XIXth century
A definitive contrast between the men called the Thirteen and social life in Paris at the beginning of past century. On one hand, we have men dedicated to their principles and goals, and on the other hand, a declining noble society only busy with itself and its past glory. In the meantime one can feel how the less glamorous society is evolving and maturing.

1999-10-11 (France) | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 3

---

The Black Sheep (Penguin Classics)

Product Details

• <a title='Condition Guide' href='/content/Condition_and_S hipping_Guide.htm' target='_blank'>Click here to take in our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices</a>
• Health circumstances: NEW
• Notes: Marque New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• ISBN13: 9780140442373

Description

Philippe and Joseph Bridau are two extremely different brothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superficially heroic soldier and adored by their mother Agathe. He is nonetheless a bitter figure, secretly gambling away her savings after a brief but glorious career in Napoleon's army. His younger brother Joseph, meanwhile, is fundamentally virtuous - but their mother is blinded to his kindness by her disapproval of his life as an artist. Foolish and prejudiced, Agathe lives on unaware that she is being cynically manipulated by her own favourite child, but will she ever discover which of her sons is truly the black sheep of the family? A dazzling depiction of the power of money and the cruelty of life in nineteenth-century France, The Black Sheep compellingly explores is a compelling exploration of the nature of deceit.

---

Customer Reviews

A Great Surprise
I am fairly new to reading Balzac, and was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I became engrossed in the story. Balzac is a wonderful writer. His characters really come to life, and I became very attached to them, and didn't want the story to end. He touches on the best and worst qualities in people, and while I found I could really relate to his depiction of how "the majority" of people act, his heroes and heroines in the story are people you really grow to like and admire very deeply. And, the story takes some twists which were very unexpected. I loved this book!! What more can I say?

2009-12-28 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

---

Machiavelli for fiction lovers
This might be Balzac's greatest novel, it is certainly his most perfect. Elsewhere Balzac can be garrulous, here not a word is wasted. The plot has a classic, beautiful symmetry. We are driven forward at a rapid pace by the author's logic. (Forgive the cliches.) Balzac greatly admired the Machiavellian element in Stendahl, but in this respect he far surpassed Stendahl. One can be "too good for this world". Nice people finish last. To fight evil you must be almost as bad as the people who threaten you. We need scoundrels to protect us from external enemies, but then who will protect us from our protectors. Anyone interested in the Bush Administration's war on terror must read this novel.

2009-04-26 (Barrie, Ontario) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

---

BRING ON THE IRONY
In his preface to this book, Balzac makes an interesting observation about 19th century France that seems to be a preoccupation of our century as well. Balzac states that young men who grow up without a significant male role model are destined to have a rough go in life. According to him, most of the tribulations that occur in The Black Sheep stem from the very fact that there was no father to steer the Bridau family.

The main focus of the book is upon two brothers, Philippe and Joseph Bridau, whose father has died, leaving their close to destitute mother to raise them. Phillipe ends up becoming an artist with a pretty dependable income. Joseph serves in Napoleon's army for a while until his final defeat and then, too proud to serve under the new government, becomes an unemployed gambler who steals money from his family only to throw it away at the tables.

You would think that their mother would favor Joseph with more love because he looks out for their family and provides a steady income and is completely devoted to her. She puts all of her love upon Phillipe, the ne'er do well who only sees humanity as a tool to further his own ends. She does this because she sees Joseph's profession as a painter as a waste of time in her practical mind. Real men become soldiers like Phillipe. So what if he's a vice filled man? She idealizes him so much that she can't see his faults.

Balzac is a genius. There really isn't a central character is this work. Everytime you think Balzac has settled upon a particular cast of characters, he exits them and enters a new set to interact with the plot. Constant reinvention. While Joseph is in jail for plotting against the government, Phillipe and his mother have to go rescue his rich uncle, who is being hoodwinked out of his fortune (a fortune, by the way, that the Bridau family is due to inherit) by a manipulating mistress and her lover.

This was a great novel. Not perfect, but great. Balzac is to me the most modern of the 19th century novelists writing in the Victorian age. He is not sentimental like Dickens. He was great at watching families squirming to get at money. Squirming to get money not for survival in most cases, but to attain status. All of the characters in this novel were drawn really well. Very strong. I would recommend any of the Penguin Editions of Balzac if you like this book.

2003-08-24 | www.sesho.libsyn.com (Pasadena, TX USA) | Helpful Votes: 39 | Rating: 4

---

Another superb Balzac's novel
Another occasion to live again an exceptionnal human adventure with Balzac.
A lot of emotion and intelligence ...

2002-10-03 (France, Normandy) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

---

A wonderful novel with emotional highs and lows.
As historian and novelist Balzac paints a picture of post Napoleonic France through the eyes of an impoverished family, and the trials of their lives. After a series of emotional hits, Balzac takes the reader through a contest of wits, set amidst a web of intrigue, and a very contorted family tree. The end result is an excellent story with a sophisticated plot which at times gives too accurate a portrait of the detachment of man. The Black Sheep also contains a short social commentary on New York, which though written 150 years ago, is still exceptionaly accurate.

1999-04-15 (Philadelphia, PA) | Helpful Votes: 30 | Rating: 4

---

Selected Short Stories (Dual-Language)

Product Details

• Notes:
• <a title='Condition Guide' href='/content/Condition_and_S hipping_Guide.htm' target='_blank'>Click here to impression our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices</a>
• ISBN13: 9780486408958
• Make ready: USED - VERY GOOD

Description

Stanley Appelbaum (ed.). This convenient volume includes six of the great French writer’s most highly regarded short stories, including: "An Episode During the Terror," "A Passion in the Desert," "The Revolutionary Conscript," "The Forsaken Woman," "The Unknown Masterpiece," two more. Excellent new English translations on facing pages. Introduction. Footnotes.

---

Customer Reviews

Honore de Balzac ~ Selected Short Stories [Penguin Classics]
09/09/2008
Merit-Worthy of Balzac:
Beautiful cover, short stories
filled with Balzac's lively imagination
and minute observations of the details
of everyday life and acute social and
psychological insight coupled with Balzac's
keen sense of irony.
Human Nature doesn't change
as social and economic conditions do.
Tales as mesmerizingly relevant today
as they were when written over a century ago.
Recommended Reading:
La Comedie Humaine:
Honore de Balzac's multi-volume
collection of novels depicting French
society 1815-1848:
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

2008-09-10 | Plus ca change~Factotum (California) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

---

Mixed up editions
I went to the Powell's website and found the following information on the Dover edition:
This convenient volume includes 6 of the great French writer's most highly regarded short stories, including: "An Episode During the Terror," "A Passion in the Desert," "The Revolutionary Conscript," "The Forsaken Woman," "The Unknown Masterpiece," 2 more. Excellent new English translations on facing pages. Introduction. Footnotes.

The Penguin edition table of contents are what you get if you click on table of contents that is linked now for Search Inside. I've read this Penguin edition, and it's a good introduction to Balzac.

I would highly recommend Lost Illusions to anyone who has the time and patience to read a longer Balzac novel. Of the roughly 7 Balzac books I read last year, I consider it my favorite. I wish I could find all Balzac in translation; occasionally, I feel I should learn French just to read Balzac.

I will probably end up picking up this Dover translation eventually as there are some stories I haven't read yet.

2008-06-14 | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 3

---

Looking for facts in book descriptions and reviews
Let's see if we can balance the 5* rating by X. Chen (20 Aug 07) with the 1* review by C. Maurer (1 May 06). It seems that Maurer was looking at the book description placed by Amazon on the page for the book "Selected Short Stories" (Penguin Classics Paperback ISBN-10: 0140443258) which was actually for a different edition, "Selected Short Stories" (Dual-Language_Contes Choisis_, Dover Paperback ISBN-10: 0486408957). Then it seems that X. Chen saw the review for the Penguin edition which Amazon placed on the page for the Dover edition, and compared the Penguin review with the Dover description and his copy of the Dover edition. Perhaps Balzac or Shakespeare could have made us enjoy such a case of mistaken identity, but 21st century web sites only provide us with despair of ever finding a reliable fact.

One helpful solution would be for EVERY book description and review to have a subtitle that indicates to what the writer originally referred. Then an effort should be made to place only the relevant descriptions and reviews on their proper pages (rather than automatically stuffing each page with un-helpful pastings). Finally we find, after a decade of "improvements", that it is still next to impossible to find and compare the facts about various editions and translations, abridged or not, when even the "look inside" often sends one to a different edition.

If the web masters can't help us, then it is up to everyone who posts a review to clearly state what edition (and translator or illustrator) they have actually seen, and provide their view of both the original work, as well as comparing translations if they have seen more than one. And as for those who choose to post on the subject of order fulfillment both good and bad, or the weather, their notes might be placed inside the ads for Amazon Prime.

"What makes a good review?

"* Be detailed and specific. What would you have wanted to know before you purchased the product?"

So far, this title has three reviews, and nothing yet about Balzac's stories. And the book description does not tell us which stories are in the Penguin edition. (Isn't it strange that most collections of stories or poems lack a table of contents directly on the Amazon product page?) Since I have not seen either book (why buy when there is no actionable intelligence?), I hope that someone who has will give of their time to tell us. This is what I needed to know before purchasing a lot of misinformation with my time.

2008-02-22 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 3

---

No editing error.
I have to put a five star rating to nutralize the other 1-star review. What's wrong with you or with your book, my copy contains exactly what it supposed to contain, including, "The forsaken woman".

2007-08-20 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

---

Book Description???
I have no quibbles with Balzac or anything the man wrote.

However, contrary to what the "Book Description" says, "The Forsaken Woman" (or "La Femme Abandonee") is not contained within the pages of this collection.

I would not even bother mentioning this except that I was specifically looking for a copy of that particular story. I've loved it since I read in it its original French back in high school. I just now found a copy of it on the Internet for free thanks to Project Gutenberg -- you may want to do the same thing if you're after a particular story or want a nice sampling of all that M. Balzac has to offer.

Note to AMAZON: It would be nice if whoever writes the book descriptions would actually pick up the item in question and, at the very least, take a look at the Table of Contents.

2006-05-01 (Plymouth, MI United States) | Helpful Votes: 19 | Rating: 1

---