Honore de Balzac 
Droll Stories (Contes Drolatiques) 
Collected From the Abbeys of Touraine

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The Contes Drolatiques are submitted without any need of introduction other than being what they are, a chronicle of the men and manners of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They are most assuredly not milk for infants, but strong meat for men. Odious though comparison may be, it enables one to judge with greater accuracy the merits of a work. On this line the Contes Drolatiques stand on no lower plane than the Tom Jones of Henry Fielding; Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle and Humphrey Clinker; or that once be-praised work Pamela, by the immortal Samuel Richardson, or his equally famous Clarissa Harlowe. Even during the present century, indeed when it was well advanced, the former was placed in the hands of young girls as a text-book, the study of which should protect them against the wiles of seducing man. To-day the same work might be considered light-reading even by a courtesan.<br><br>Again, the brutal frankness of the English language does not lend itself kindly to those nice shades and subtleties which above all others is so characteristically beautiful in that of the French. Indecency is always vulgar, and where in these pages vulgarity may be traced it must be ascribed not to the author but to the tawdry clothes in which he is draped.<br><br>The second volume of Droll Stories, in addition to the prologues and epilogues, of which originally they formed part, will also contain Sarrasine, La Fille aux Yeux d’or (The Girl with Golden Eyes), and Une Passion dans le desert (A Passion in the Desert), three of de Balzac’s most powerful works, but too inconvenient for general reading.