The Alkahest

by Honore de Balzac

Read The Alkahest book online free and download in PDF, Kindle and ePub formats.

Copyright Status: Manuscript of this book is available in public domain and copyright already expired.

The Alkahest is a French fiction novel translated to English as The Quest of the Absolute is a novel by Honoré de Balzac. The novel first appeared in 1834, with seven chapter-divisions, as a Scène de la vie privée; was published by itself in 1839.

Excerpts:

There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than those of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish buildings, so naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs of that excellent land. Before describing this house it may be well, in the interest of other writers, to explain the necessity for such didactic preliminaries,—since they have roused a protest from certain ignorant and voracious readers who want emotions without undergoing the generating process, the flower without the seed, the child without gestation. Is Art supposed to have higher powers than Nature?

Books by Honore de Balzac

Seraphita
The Unknown Masterpiece
Father Goriot

Related Genres

Fiction   
Novels   

Related Books

Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana

Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens