A poor young student living in a garret near the Bastille spends his evenings following working people through the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. At a wedding party he fixes on a blind old clarinet player, who leads him down to the river and confides that he is Facino Cane, a Venetian prince who once knew the secret of a lost treasure.
A compact, haunting story from the Human Comedy, showing Balzac at his most observant of the Paris streets. Download the free EPUB.