MELMOTH RECONCILED

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated by
Ellen Marriage



To Monsieur le General Baron de Pommereul, a token of the friendship
between our fathers, which survives in their sons.

DE BALZAC.



There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social
Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener's craft in the
Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house--a species of hybrid
which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is
known as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious
doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to
flourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by his side and an
uninteresting family. The number of cashiers in Paris must always be a
problem for the physiologist. Has any one as yet been able to state
correctly the terms of the proportion sum wherein the cashier figures