Love in a Mask; Or, Imprudence and Happiness

Balzac, in gratitude to the Duchesse de Dino for her friendship and unfailing kindness to him, one day presented her with the story of L'Amour Masque (Love in a Mask) in his own handwriting. The duchess was one of the few French aristocrats who in Balzac's time welcomed untitled authors to their salons, and her library boasted many such offerings from the literary men of her day. She placed Balzac's unpublished book on her shelves by the side of similarly unpublished poems by Alfred de Musset, and stories by Eugene Sue and others. The Balzac manuscript was incased in a finely tooled binding of great richness and beauty, bearing the ex libris of the ducal family.
For more than half a century the manuscript remained where the duchess had placed it. Then her son, M. Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, the present Duc de Dino, made it a present to his friend, the learned Lucien Aubanel. By him it was given to M. Gillequin, with the suggestion that it be published, and it accordingly appeared in print for the first time in March, 1911. The Duc de Dino, in a letter written to M. Gillequin on this occasion, guaranteed the history of the volume which for so long had been one of the treasured possessions of his family.
THE PUBLISHERS.
Midnight was striking, and all Paris was astir; the streets were filled with people bent on merrymaking; it was the eve of Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday).
Léon de Préval, a young cavalry officer, had just made his way into the Opera Ball. There, for over an hour, he wandered aimlessly amid the throng that seethed forward and backward, finding no one he knew, and quite failing to grasp the meaning of the stupid greetings flung at him from time to time by the women he passed. Finally, choked with dust, overcome with heat, dizzy with the ceaseless buzz of all these black-robed specters, he asked himself impatiently whether this were indeed pleasure, and turned to find the door.
At that moment two masked women came down the steps into the ballroom. Both were strikingly graceful, and both were strikingly well dressed. They were accompanied by a genial looking man without a mask. A little murmur of admiration greeted them, and a band of giddy youths fell in behind them, hurling flippant compliments and extravagant gallantries at the two masks.