Excerpt from La Comedie Humaine of Honore De Balzac: Lucien De Rubempre, And, the Duchesse De Langeais The young man interested the mind; as he went and came he aroused curiosity. All things about him gave Signs of a life of elegance. According to a fatal law of our epoch, there was little difference, either physical or moral, between the most distinguished and best-trained son of a duke and peer and this fasci nating young man, whom poverty had lately gripped with her iron hands in the midst of Paris. Beauty and youth must have masked in him profound abysses. 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.