A Harlot's Progress Author:Honoré de Balzac Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 1care elsewhere. Madame de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy play important parts ; and many others come and go. But still Esther van Gobseck and Lucien Chardon de Rubempre are as much t... more »he hero and heroine of the story, and make the first three parts as much a story to themselves, as Le Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet are the hero and heroine of the books to which they very justly give their names. I forget whether Lucien de Rubempre, in the numerous and rather idle Balzac ' keys ' which MM. Cerf berr and Christophe have not deigned to include in their textit{Repertoire, is identified with any actual personage. It has been, and will be observed, that Balzac was too great an artist either to need, or, indeed, often to attempt, this commonplace and catchpenny means of interest. But in the world of fiction in general, and of the textit{Comedle in particular, Lucien is half-complement, half-counterpart of Eugene de Rastignac. He is the adventurer, not entirely without good blood in his veins, who ventures into the intersecting or overlapping worlds of fashion, of journalism, of speculation, and of politics, but who has not, like Rastignac, either strength or coolness of head to swim through the whirlpool and reach the shore. It may be interesting to the reader to form his own opinion how far Lucien's ruin—brought about, be it remembered, by charges of which he is actually innocent—is due to the evil, though not in his case intentionally hostile, influence of Vautrin, how far it is due to his own weakness. Balzac was too much of an artist to decide very definitely either way ; but despite his rather mistaken admiration of Vautrin, I think he had the sense togive most weight to the internal causes. The moral— for there is always a moral in Balzac—is, of course, the old one of a thousand fables and a thousand...« less