The Thirteen eBook

Gruget, Madame Etienne
  The Government Clerks
  A Bachelor’s Establishment

Haudry (doctor)
  Cesar Birotteau
  A Bachelor’s Establishment
  The Seamy Side of History
  Cousin Pons

Langeais, Duchesse Antoinette de
  Father Goriot
  The Duchesse of Langeais

Marsay, Henri de
  The Duchesse of Langeais
  The Girl with the Golden Eyes
  The Unconscious Humorists
  Another Study of Woman
  The Lily of the Valley
  Father Goriot
  Jealousies of a Country Town
  Ursule Mirouet
  A Marriage Settlement
  Lost Illusions
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  Letters of Two Brides
  The Ball at Sceaux
  Modeste Mignon
  The Secrets of a Princess
  The Gondreville Mystery
  A Daughter of Eve

Maulincour, Baronne de
  A Marriage Settlement

Meynardie, Madame
  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
  Father Goriot
  Eugenie Grandet
  Cesar Birotteau
  Melmoth Reconciled
  Lost Illusions
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  The Commission in Lunacy
  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
  Modeste Mignon
  The Firm of Nucingen
  Another Study of Woman
  A Daughter of Eve
  The Member for Arcis

Pamiers, Vidame de
  The Duchesse of Langeais
  Jealousies of a Country Town

Ronquerolles, Marquis de
  The Imaginary Mistress
  The Duchess of Langeais
  The Girl with the Golden Eyes
  The Peasantry
  Ursule Mirouet
  A Woman of Thirty
  Another Study of Woman
  The Member for Arcis

Serizy, Comtesse de
  A Start in Life
  The Duchesse of Langeais
  Ursule Mirouet
  A Woman of Thirty
  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
  Another Study of Woman
  The Imaginary Mistress

II

THE DUCHESSE OF LANGEAIS

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated by
Ellen Marriage

To Franz Liszt

In a Spanish city on an island in the Mediterranean, there stands a convent of the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, where the rule instituted by St. Theresa is still preserved with all the first rigor of the reformation brought about by that illustrious woman.  Extraordinary as this may seem, it is none the less true.  Almost every religious house in the Peninsula, or in Europe for that matter, was either destroyed or disorganized by the outbreak of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars; but as this island was protected through those times by the English fleet, its wealthy convent and peaceable inhabitants were secure from the general trouble and spoliation.  The storms of many kinds which shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century spent their force before they reached those cliffs at so short a distance from the coast of Andalusia.