THE ATHEIST'S MASS

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated by
Clara Bell



This is dedicated to Auguste Borget by his friend De Balzac




Bianchon, a physician to whom science owes a fine system of theoretical
physiology, and who, while still young, made himself a celebrity in the
medical school of Paris, that central luminary to which European doctors
do homage, practised surgery for a long time before he took up medicine.
His earliest studies were guided by one of the greatest of French
surgeons, the illustrious Desplein, who flashed across science like a
meteor. By the consensus even of his enemies, he took with him to the
tomb an incommunicable method. Like all men of genius, he had no heirs;
he carried everything in him, and carried it away with him. The glory of
a surgeon is like that of an actor: they live only so long as they are
alive, and their talent leaves no trace when they are gone. Actors and
surgeons, like great singers too, like the executants who by their