The country doctor / by Honoré de Balzac.

  • Honoré de Balzac
Date:
[1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The country doctor / by Honoré de Balzac. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    house, healthful, well-aired, the site of which had been selected, the arrangements made, according to my advice. What a triumph, monsieur! I had created an industry in the town, I had brought to it a producer and several workpeople. You will consider my delight childish?—During the first days of the establishment of my basket-maker, I never passed before his shop without feeling the beating of my heart quickened. When, in his new house, with shutters painted in green, and at the door of which is a bench, a vine, and bunches of osiers, 1 saw a woman, clean, well-dressed, nursing a great infant, pink and white, in the midst of workmen all cheerful, singing, actively constructing their wares, and under the direction of a man who, formerly poor and pallid, now breathed happiness, 1 admit to you, monsieur, I could not resist the pleasure of making myself a basket-maker for a moment by entering the shop to enquire after their affairs, and I gave myself up to a contentment which I should not know how to describe. 1 was joyous with the joy of those people and of my own. “ The house of this man, the first who believed firmly in me, became all my hope. Was it not the future of this poor country, monsieur, which already 1 carried in my heart, as the wife of the basket-maker carried in hers her first nursling?—1 had to bring many things to pass, 1 ran against very many prejudices. I encountered a violent opposition instigated by the ignorant mayor, whose place I had taken, whose in- fluence was disappearing before mine; 1 wished to
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