Gambara

By

Honore de Balzac


Translated by
Clara Bell and James Waring




DEDICATION

To Monsieur le Marquis de Belloy

It was sitting by the fire, in a mysterious and magnificent
retreat,--now a thing of the past but surviving in our memory,
--whence our eyes commanded a view of Paris from the heights of
Belleville to those of Belleville, from Montmartre to the
triumphal Arc de l'Etoile, that one morning, refreshed by tea,
amid the myriad suggestions that shoot up and die like rockets
from your sparkling flow of talk, lavish of ideas, you tossed to
my pen a figure worthy of Hoffmann,--that casket of unrecognized
gems, that pilgrim seated at the gate of Paradise with ears to
hear the songs of the angels but no longer a tongue to repeat
them, playing on the ivory keys with fingers crippled by the
stress of divine inspiration, believing that he is expressing
celestial music to his bewildered listeners.