Excerpt from The Novels of Honore De Balzac: Now for the First Time Completely Translated Into English The tottering walls of this dilapidated house seemed to have been checkered with hieroglyphics. What better name could the chance observer give to the X and V, traced upon the facade by transversal or diagonal pieces of wood, indicated in the white wash by narrow parallel crevices? The lightest carriage in passing by evidently shook every rafter in its mortice. This venerable edifice was surmounted by a tri angular roof whose like will soon become extinct in Paris. Distorted by the inclemency of the Parisian climate this roof projected three feet over the road, as much to screen the threshold of the door from rain as to shelter the wall of an attic, and its window without a sill. This last story was built of planks nailed one over the other like slates, doubtless to prevent the overburdening of this fragile structure. 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.