Excerpt from The Member for Arcis; The Seamy Side of History: And Other Stories Le Député d'arcls, like the still less generally known Les Petits Bourgeois, stands on a rather different footing from the rest of Balzac's work. Both were posthumous, and both, having been left unfinished, were completed by the author's friend, Charles Rabou. Rabou is not much known nowadays as a man of letters; he must not be confused with the writer Hippolyte Babou, the friend of Baudelaire, the reputed in ventor of the title Fleurs da Mal, and the author of some very acute articles in the great collection of Crepet's Poetes Prengels. But he figures pretty frequently in association of one kind or another with Balzac, and would appear to have been thoroughly imbued with the scheme and spirit of the Comédie. At the same time, it does not appear that even th indefatigable and most competent M. De Lovenjoul is per fectly certain Where Balzac's labors end and those of Rabou begin. 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.