A Daughter of Eve | Page 3

equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small

Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following
each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual
(or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon
University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and
Dagny, [email protected]

A DAUGHTER OF EVE by HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Madame la Comtesse Bolognini, nee Vimercati.
If you remember, madame, the pleasure your conversation gave to a
traveller by recalling Paris to his memory in Milan, you will not be
surprised to find him testifying his gratitude for many pleasant
evenings passed beside you by laying one of his works at your feet, and
begging you to protect it with your name, as in former days that name

protected the tales of an ancient writer dear to the Milanese.
You have an Eugenie, already beautiful, whose intelligent smile gives
promise that she has inherited from you the most precious gifts of
womanhood, and who will certainly enjoy during her childhood and
youth all those happinesses which a rigid mother denied to the Eugenie
of these pages. Though Frenchmen are taxed with inconstancy, you will
find me Italian in faithfulness and memory. While writing the name of
"Eugenie," my thoughts have often led me back to that cool stuccoed
salon and little garden in the Vicolo dei Cappucini, which echoed to the
laughter of that dear child, to our sportive quarrels and our chatter. But
you have left the Corso for the Tre Monasteri, and I know not how you
are placed there; consequently, I am forced to think of you, not among
the charming things with which no doubt you have surrounded yourself,
but like one of those fine figures due to Raffaelle, Titian, Correggio,
Allori, which seem abstractions, so distant are they from our daily
lives.
If this book should wing its way across the Alps, it will prove to you
the lively gratitude and respectful friendship of
Your devoted servant, De Balzac.

A DAUGHTER OF EVE


CHAPTER I
THE TWO MARIES
In one of the finest houses of the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, at half- past
eleven at night, two young women were sitting before the fireplace of a
boudoir hung with blue velvet of that tender shade, with shimmering
reflections, which French industry has lately learned to fabricate. Over
the doors and windows were draped soft folds of blue cashmere, the tint
of the hangings, the work of one of those upholsterers who have just
missed being artists. A silver lamp studded with turquoise, and
suspended by chains of beautiful workmanship, hung from the centre of
the ceiling. The same system of decoration was followed in the smallest

details, and even to the ceiling of fluted blue silk, with long bands of
white cashmere falling at equal distances on the hangings, where they
were caught back by ropes of pearl. A warm Belgian carpet, thick as
turf, of a gray ground with blue posies, covered the floor. The furniture,
of carved ebony, after a fine model of the old school, gave substance
and richness to the rather too decorative quality, as a painter might call
it, of the rest of the room. On either side of a large window, two
etageres displayed a hundred precious trifles, flowers of mechanical art
brought into bloom by the fire of thought. On a chimney-piece of
slate-blue marble were figures in old Dresden, shepherds in bridal garb,
with delicate bouquets in their hands, German fantasticalities
surrounding a platinum clock, inlaid with arabesques. Above it
sparkled the brilliant facets of a Venice mirror framed in ebony, with
figures carved in relief, evidently obtained from some former royal
residence. Two jardinieres were filled with the exotic product of a
hot-house, pale, but divine flowers, the treasures of botany.
In this cold, orderly boudoir, where all things were in place as if for
sale, no sign existed of the gay and capricious disorder of a happy
home. At the present moment, the two young women were weeping.
Pain seemed to predominate. The name of the owner, Ferdinand du
Tillet, one of the richest bankers