Excerpt from The Gondreville Mystery (Une Tenebreuse Affaire), And, the Muse of the Department I have often felt disposed to ask those who would assert Balzac's absolute infallibility as a gynaecologist to give me a reasoned criticism of the heroine of this novel. I do not en tirely figure to myself Dinah de la Baudraye. It is per fectly possible that she should have loved a sweep like Lousteau; there is certainly nothing extremely unusual in a woman loving worse sweeps even than he. But would she have done it, and having done it, have also done what she did afterwards? These questions may be answered differently; I do not answer them in the negative myself, but I cannot give them an affirmative answer with the conviction which I should like to show. 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."