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.