



Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





THE ALKAHEST


By Honore De Balzac


Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley



  DEDICATION

  To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.

  Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I,
  for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will
  equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the
  limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of
  prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work
  we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining
  it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those
  who aspire to such an immortality.

  Yet again I say--May God grant it!

  DE BALZAC.





THE ALKAHEST

(THE HOUSE OF CLAES)




CHAPTER I

There