The Elixir of Life

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About this book

The Elixir of Life is a book by Honoré de Balzac, translated by Clara Bell and James Waring. The note To the Reader says that at the very outset of the writer's literary career a friend, long since dead, gave him the subject of this Study. The same note says that, to the best of his belief, the story is some stray fancy of the brain of Hoffmann of Berlin.

The text says that a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad. The text says an eyelid closed and opened again abruptly, like a woman's sign of assent, and that Don Juan could not have been more startled if a voice had cried Yes. A great tear trickles over hollow cheeks and falls on Don Juan's hand. When the hour of triumph arrives, the bells awaken the echoes far and wide, and the whole vast crowd raises to God the first cry of praise that begins the Te Deum.

About the author

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist whose vast Human Comedy, a connected series of novels and stories, is a monument of literary realism and one of the great achievements of world literature.