Scenes From a Courtesan’s Life
Preface
Honore de Balzac
下载：Scenes From a Courtesan’s Life.txt
_ Title: Scenes From a Courtesan's Life
Author: Honore de Balzac
Translated by
James Waring
PREPARER'S NOTE
Note: The story of Lucien de Rubempre begins in the Lost Illusions trilogy which consists of Two Poets, A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, and Eve and David. The action in Scenes From A Courtesan's Life commences directly after the end of Eve and David.
DEDICATION
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.
SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE _