Excerpt from Comedie Humaine, Vol. 27 Balzac's standard for the conduct of his actual gentle men was by no means fantastically exquisite or dis couragingly high, and in the case of his Bohemians it was accommodating to the utmost degree. He seems to despise Lousteau, but rather for his insouciance and neglect of his Opportunities of making himself a position than for anything else. I have often felt disposed to ask those who would assert Balzac's absolute infallibility as a gynxcologist to give me a reasoned criticism of the heroine of this novel. I do not entirely figure to myself' Dinah de La Baudraye. It is perfectly possible that she should have loved a sweep like Lousteau; there is certainly nothing extremely unusual in a woman loving worse sweeps even than he. But would she have done it, and having done it, have also done what she did afterwards These questions may be answered differently I do not answer them in the negative myself, but I cannot give them an affirmative answer with the conviction which I should like to show. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.