Secrets of The Princess de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac (1839, A Novella, A Component of La Comedie Humaine )

I am currently reading Christoper Isherwood's Berlin Stories, about his years in Weimer Germany.  In the added much latter preface he said at first he wanted to do a grand novel based on all the people he met in Berlin but he soon realized it would take a writer with the power of Balzac to write it.  

I like large scale reading projects.  I am nearing the end now of the twenty novel Rougon Macquart Cycle by Emile Zola, heavily influenced by Balzac.  Balzac's La Comedie Humaine, in the edition I have, contains 91 works.  Included are novels, short stories and novellas.  Reading the full project is not perhaps as daughting as it sounds at first.  I am approaching La Comedie Humaine cautiously for now, reading short stories and novellas.  There are something like thirty five full length novels in the cycle, I have read five of them so far.  I am reading older public domain classics in The Delphi Edition of the Works of Balzac. It does purports to be the full Comedie but not all of Balzac's incredibly huge output. It is organized along the final ideas of Balzac.  

I do intend to post individually on each component of The Comedie Humaine I read, mostly to help me remember them.   

Secrets of the Princess de Cadignan (reading time maybe 75 minutes) focuses on a woman once part of the aristocracy whose but lost her husband in  The July 1830 which overthrew the Bourbon King.  Her husband fled France with King Charles.  She once had a reputation as a "coquette", I admit I am not quite sure what this was a euphemism but she was still quite a beauty.  Since her royal connections were displaced she has been keeping a low profile.  The action of the work  centers on her developing relationship with a famous writer.  It is set in Paris.  I enjoyed reading it.

I am including this written and set in Paris short story as part of my participation in Paris in July, 2014

Mel u