



Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





TWO POETS

(Lost Illusions Part I)


By Honore De Balzac



Translated By Ellen Marriage



PREPARER'S NOTE

  Two Poets is part one of a trilogy and begins the story of
  Lucien, his sister Eve, and his friend David in the provincial
  town of Angouleme. Part two, A Distinguished Provincial at
  Paris is centered on Lucien's Parisian life. Part three, Eve
  and David, reverts to the setting of Angouleme. In many
  references parts one and three are combined under the title
  Lost Illusions and A Distinguished Provincial at Paris is given
  its individual title. Following this trilogy Lucien's story
  is continued in another book, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.





                              DEDICATION

  To Monsieur Victor Hugo,

  It was your birthright to be, like a Rafael or a Pitt, a great
  poet at an age when other men are children; it was your fate, the
  fate of Chateaubriand and of every man of genius, to struggle
  against jealousy skulking behind the columns of a newspaper, or
  crouching in the subterranean places of journalism. For this
  reason I desired that your victorious name should help to win a
  victory for this work that I inscribe to you, a work which, if
  some persons are to be believed, is an act of courage as well as a
  veracious history. If there had been journalists in the time of
  Moliere, who can doubt but that they, like marquises, financiers,
  doctors, and lawyers, would have been within