Honore de Balzac

Pierrette Honore de Balzac

At the dawn of an October day in 1827 a young fellowabout sixteen years of age, whose clothing proclaimedwhat modern phraseology so insolently calls aproletary, was standing in a small square of LowerProvins. At that early hour he could examine withoutbeing observed the various houses surrounding theopen space, which was oblong in form. The mills alongthe river were already working; the whirr of theirwheels, repeated by the echoes of the Upper Town inthe keen air and sparkling clearness of the earlymorning, only intensified the general silence so that thewheels of a diligence could be heard a league awayalong the highroad