The Alkahest
- Author
- Honoré de Balzac and Katharine Prescott [Translator] Wormeley
- Language
- English
- Subjects
- Philosophical anthropology · French fiction
- Shelves
- Category: Novels · Category: French Literature
The opening, in English.
DEDICATION
To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.
Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I, for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those who aspire to such an immortality.
