Amazon.com description: Product Description: Honora de Balzac is considered the founder of social realism. Balzac was the first writer to write about the all social levels of the social scene in France. His vast collection of works encompasses the Restoration period and the July Monarchy. La Comedie Humaine was written between 1799 and 1850. This collection contains 95 novels, stories, and essays. The short story Paz begins, "In September, 1835, one of the richest heiresses of the faubourg Saint-Germain, Mademoiselle du Rouvre, the only daughter of the Marquis du Rouvre, married Comte Adam Mitgislas Laginski, a young Polish exile. We ask permission to write these Polish names as they are pronounced, to spare our readers the aspect of the fortifications of consonants by which the Slave language protects its vowels, --probably not to lose them, considering how few there are."