The Lily of the Valley

Name: The Lily of the Valley
Author: Honoré de Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

Pages: about 367
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 6.7 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 3.7 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

To Monsieur J. B. Nacquart, Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine.
Dear Doctor--Here is one of the most carefully hewn stones in the second course of the foundation of a literary edifice which I have slowly and laboriously constructed. I wish to inscribe your name upon it, as much to thank the man whose science once saved me as to honor the friend of my daily life.
I yield to your wishes. It is the privilege of the women whom we love more than they love us to make the men who love them ignore the ordinary rules of common-sense. To smooth the frown upon their brow, to soften the pout upon their lips, what obstacles we miraculously overcome! We shed our blood, we risk our future!
You exact the history of my past life; here it is. But remember this, Natalie; in obeying you I crush under foot a reluctance hitherto unconquerable. Why are you jealous of the sudden reveries which overtake me in the midst of our happiness? Why show the pretty anger of a petted woman when silence grasps me? Could you not play upon the contradictions of my character without inquiring into the causes of them? Are there secrets in your heart which seek absolution through a knowledge of mine? Ah! Natalie, you have guessed mine; and it is better you should know the whole truth. Yes, my life is shadowed by a phantom; a word evokes it; it hovers vaguely above me and about me; within my soul are solemn memories, buried in its depths like those marine productions seen in calmest weather and which the storms of ocean cast in fragments on the shore.

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The Lily of the Valley

From the opening

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