Sinópse: Excerpt from Beatrix, And, the Purse (La Bourse) The first and larger part of the book, on the other hand the book proper, as we may call it – is a remarkable, a well designed, and a very interesting study. It is not so much of an additional attraction to me, as it perhaps is to most people, that contemporaries, without much contradiction, or in all cases improbability, chose to regard the parts and personages of Félicité des Touches, Beatrix de Rochefide, Claud Vignon, and the musician Conti, as designed, and pretty closely de signed, after George Sand, Madame d’agoult (known as Daniel Gustave Planche, the critic, and Liszt. As to the first pair, there can, of course, be no doubt; for Balzac, by representing Camille Maupin as George Sand’s rival, and by introducing divers ingenious and legitimate adaptations of the famous she-novelist’s career, both invites and, in a way, authorizes the attribution. There is nothing Offensive in it; indeed, Félicité is one of the most effective and sympathetic Of his female characters, and would always have been incapable Of the rather heartless action by which the actual George Sand amused herself intellectually and senti mentally with lover after lover, and then threw them away. Unless the accounts of Planche that we have are very unfair and they possibly are, for he was a critic, and was particularly Obnoxious to the extreme Romantic school, which was perhaps why Balzac liked him – Claud Vignon is a still more flattered portrait, though Balzac’s low, if not quite impartial, Opinion of critics in general comes out in it. Conti may be fair enough for Liszt; and if Beatrix is certainly a libel on poor Madame d’agoult, it must be remembered that this later Madame de Stael was generally misrepresented in her lifetime, though since her death she has had more justice. 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.