some have played. It cannot be said that "a moral man is Marsay"; it
cannot be said that he has the element of good-nature which redeems
Rastignac. But he bears a blame and a burden for which we Britons are
responsible in part--the Byronic ideal of the guilty hero coming to
cross and blacken the old French model of unscrupulous good humor. It
is not a very pretty mixture or a very worthy ideal; but I am not so
sure that it is not still a pretty common one.

The association of the three stories forming the _Histoire des Treize_
is, in book form, original, inasmuch as they filled three out of the
four volumes of _Etudes des Moeurs_ published in 1834-35, and
themselves forming part of the first collection of _Scenes de la Vie
Parisienne_. But _Ferragus_ had appeared in parts (with titles to
each) in the _Revue de Paris_ for March and April 1833, and part of
_La Duchesse de Langeais_ in the _Echo de la Jeune France_ almost
contemporaneously. There are divisions in this also. _Ferragus_ and
_La Duchesse_ also appeared without _La Fille aux Yeux d'Or_ in 1839,
published in one volume by Charpentier, before their absorption at the
usual time in the _Comedie_.

George Saintsbury




THE THIRTEEN



AUTHOR'S PREFACE