DEDICATION

To Monsieur Victor Hugo,

It was your birthright to be, like a Rafael or a Pitt, a great
poet at an age when other men are children; it was your fate, the
fate of Chateaubriand and of every man of genius, to struggle
against jealousy skulking behind the columns of a newspaper, or
crouching in the subterranean places of journalism. For this
reason I desired that your victorious name should help to win a
victory for this work that I inscribe to you, a work which, if
some persons are to be believed, is an act of courage as well as a
veracious history. If there had been journalists in the time of
Moliere, who can doubt but that they, like marquises, financiers,
doctors, and lawyers, would have been within the province of the
writer of plays? And why should Comedy, _qui castigat ridendo
mores_, make an exception in favor of one power, when the Parisian
press spares none? I am happy, monsieur, in this opportunity of
subscribing myself your sincere admirer and friend,

DE BALZAC.




TWO POETS