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EBOOK THE ELIXIR OF LIFE ***
Produced by Dagny
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Clara Bell & James Waring
TO THE READER
At the very outset of the writer's literary career, a friend,
long since dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later on he
found the same story in a collection published about the
beginning of the present century. To the best of his belief, it
is some stray fancy of the brain of Hoffmann of Berlin; probably
it appeared in some German almanac, and was omitted in the
published editions of his collected works. The _Comedie Humaine_
is sufficiently rich in original creations for the author to own
to this innocent piece of plagiarism; when, like the worthy La
Fontaine, he has told unwittingly, and after his own fashion, a
tale already related by another. This is not one of the hoaxes in
vogue in the year 1830, when every author wrote his "tale of
horror" for the amusement of young ladies. When you have read the
account of Don Juan's decorous parricide, try to picture to
yourself the part which would be played under very similar
circumstances by honest folk who, in this nineteenth century,
will take a man's money and undertake to pay him a life annuity
on the faith of a chill, or let a house to an ancient lady for
the term of her natural life! Would they be for resuscitating
their clients? I should dearly like a connoisseur in consciences
to consider how far there is a resemblance between a Don Juan and
fathers who marry their children to great expectations.
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