Excerpt from The Novels of Honore De Balzac: The House of Nucingen; The Secrets of La Princesse De Cadignan; Sarrasine; Facino Cane; A Man of Business; The Involuntary Comedians Knowledge of his own epoch and of its scandalous adventures on the tips of his fingers, ornamenting them with his own droll inventions, leaping on everybody's shoulders like a clown and endeavor ing to leave a mark there like an executioner. 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."