Sinópse: Excerpt from A Marriage Settlement; A Start in Life; A Second Home; Modeste Mignon IF Balzac had been acquainted with the works of Chaucer (which would have been extremely surprising) he might have called Le Contrat de Mariage A Legend of Bad Women. He has not been exactly sparing of studies in that particular kind; but he has surpassed himself here. Mme. De Maufrigneuse redeems herself by her character, however imperfectly supported, of grande dame, Beatrix de Rochefide by a certain naturalness and weakness, Flore Brazier by circumstances and education, others by other things. But Madame Evangelista and her daughter Natalie may be said to be had all through – thoroughly poisonous persons who, much more than the actual Milady of Les Trois Mousquetaires (there was some charm in her) de served to be taken and justified by lynch law. If the Thirteen (who were rather interested in the matter) had descended upon both in the fashion of d’artagnan and his friends, I do not know that any one would have had much right to complain. How far the picture is exaggerated must be a question to be decided partly by individual experience, partly by other arguments. Although I am not always dis posed to defend Balzac from the charge of exaggeration, I think he is fairly free from it here. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.