Book account

Beatrix, Conti, and Claude
Vignon are sketches of the Comtesse d'Agoult, Liszt, and the
well-known critic Gustave Planche.
The opening scene of this volume, representing the manners and
customs of the old Breton family, a social state existing no
longer except in history, and the transition period of the
/vieille roche/ as it passed into the customs and ideas of the
present century, is one of Balzac's remarkable and most famous
pictures in the "Comedy of Human Life."
K.P.W.


BEATRIX


I
A BRETON TOWN AND MANSION
France, especially in Brittany, still possesses certain towns
completely outside of the movement which gives to the nineteenth
century its peculiar characteristics. For lack of quick and regular
communication with Paris, scarcely connected by wretched roads with
the sub-prefecture, or the chief city of their own province, these
towns regard the new civilization as a spectacle to be gazed at; it
amazes them, but they never applaud it; and, whether they fear or
scoff at it, they continue faithful to the old manners and customs
which have come down to them.


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