DOMESTIC PEACE

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated By
Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell



Dedicated to my dear niece Valentine Surville.



The incident recorded in this sketch took place towards the end of the
month of November, 1809, the moment when Napoleon's fugitive empire
attained the apogee of its splendor. The trumpet-blasts of Wagram were
still sounding an echo in the heart of the Austrian monarchy. Peace
was being signed between France and the Coalition. Kings and princes
came to perform their orbits, like stars, round Napoleon, who gave
himself the pleasure of dragging all Europe in his train--a
magnificent experiment in the power he afterwards displayed at
Dresden. Never, as contemporaries tell us, did Paris see
entertainments more superb than those which preceded and followed the
sovereign's marriage with an Austrian archduchess. Never, in the most
splendid days of the Monarchy, had so many crowned heads thronged the
shores of the Seine, never had the French aristocracy been so rich or