Dedication
TO MADAME ZULMA CARRAUD
Note
To whom, madame, but to you should I inscribe this work; to you whose lofty and candid intellect is a treasury to your friends; to you that are to me not only a whole public, but the most indulgent of sisters as well? Will you deign to accept a token of the friendship of which I am proud? You, and some few souls as noble, will grasp the whole of the thought underlying The Firm of Nucingen, appended to Cesar Birotteau. Is there not a whole social lesson in the contrast between the two stories?
DE BALZAC.