The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: The Alkahest

Author: Honore de Balzac

Release Date: June 6, 2004 [EBook #1453]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALKAHEST ***




Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny




THE ALKAHEST
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC




Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley




DEDICATION

To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.

Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I,
for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will
equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the
limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of
prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work
we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining
it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those
who aspire to such an immortality.

Yet again I say--May God grant it!

DE BALZAC.





THE ALKAHEST
(THE HOUSE OF CLAES)



CHAPTER I

There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior
arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than
those of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish
buildings, so naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs
of that excellent land. Before describing this house it may be well,
in the interest of other writers, to explain the necessity for such
didactic preliminaries,--since t