Louis Lambert, Honoré de Balzac [best fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

perhaps, like a too vast empire, would have been set forth in the narrative of this man's visions--a being incomplete for lack of force or of weakness; but I preferred to give an account of my own impressions rather than to compose a more or less poetical romance.


Louis Lambert died at the age of twenty-eight, September 25, 1824, in his true love's arms. He was buried by her desire in an island in the park at Villenoix. His tombstone is a plain stone cross, without name or date. Like a flower that has blossomed on the margin of a precipice, and drops into it, its colors and fragrance all unknown, it was fitting that he too should fall. Like many another misprized soul, he had often yearned to dive haughtily into the void, and abandon there the secrets of his own life.

Mademoiselle de Villenoix would, however, have been quite justified in recording his name on that cross with her own. Since her partner's death, reunion has been her constant, hourly hope. But the vanities of woe are foreign to faithful souls.

Villenoix is falling into ruin. She no longer resides there; to the end, no doubt, that she may the better picture herself there as she used to be. She had said long ago:

"His heart was mine; his genius is with God."

CHATEAU DE SACHE. June-July 1832.


ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Lambert, Louis
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Seaside Tragedy

Lefebvre
A Seaside Tragedy

Meyraux
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Stael-Holstein (Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baronne de)
The Chouans
Letters of Two Brides

Villenoix, Pauline Salomon de
A Seaside Tragedy
The Vicar of Tours

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Publication Date: 07-22-2010

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