Besancon, Savarus and his misguided love; Angouleme, Rubempre;
Sancerre, Madame de la Baudraye; Alencon, that touching, artless old
maid to whom her uncle, the Abbe de Sponde, remarked with gentle
irony: "You have too much wit. You don't need so much to be happy"?

Oh, sorcery of the most wonderful magician of letters the world has
seen since Shakespeare! If you have come under the spell of his
enchantments, be it only for an hour, here is a book that will delight
you, a book that would have pleased Balzac himself--Balzac, who was
more the victim of his work than his most fanatical readers, and whose
dream was to compete with the civil records. This volume of nearly six
hundred pages is really the civil record of all the characters in the
_Comedie Humaine_, by which you may locate, detail by detail, the
smallest adventures of the heroes who pass and repass through the
various novels, and by which you can recall at a moment's notice the
emotions once awakened by the perusal of such and such a masterpiece.
More modestly, it is a kind of table of contents, of a unique type; a
table of living contents!

Many Balzacians have dreamed of compiling such a civil record. I
myself have known of five or six who attempted this singular task. To
cite only two names out of the many, the idea of this unusual Vapereau
ran through the head of that keen and delicate critic, M. Henri
Meilhac, and of that detective in continued stories, Emile Gaboriau. I
believe that I also have among the papers of my eighteenth year some
sheets covered with notes taken with the same intention. But the labor
was too exhaustive. It demanded an infinite patience, combined with an
inextinguishable ardor and enthusiasm. The two faithful disciples of
the master who have conjoined their efforts to uprear this monument,
could not perhaps have overcome the difficulties of the undertaking if