Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny A MAN OF BUSINESS By Honore De Balzac Translated by Clara Bell and Others DEDICATION To Monsieur le Baron James de Rothschild, Banker and Austrian Consul-General at Paris. A MAN OF BUSINESS The word _lorette_ is a euphemism invented to describe the status of a personage, or a personage of a status, of which it is awkward to speak; the French Academie, in its modesty, having omitted to supply a definition out of regard for the age of its forty members. Whenever a new word comes to supply the place of an unwieldy circumlocution, its fortune is assured; the word _lorette_ has passed into the language of every class of society, even where the lorette herself will never gain an entrance. It was only invented in 1840, and derived beyond a doubt from the agglomeration of such swallows’ nests about the Church of Our Lady of Loretto. This information is for etymoligists only. Those gentlemen would not be so often in a quandary if mediaeval writers had only taken such pains with details of contemporary manners as we take in these days of analysis and description. Mlle. Turquet, or Malaga, for she is better known by her pseudonym (See _La fausse Maitresse_.), was one of the earliest parishioners of that charming church. At the time to which this story belongs, that lighthearted and lively damsel gladdened the existence of a notary with a wife somewhat too bigoted, rigid, and frigid for domestic happiness. Now, it so fell out that one Carnival evening Maitre Cardot was entertaining guests at Mlle. Turquet’s house--Desroches the attorney, Bixiou of the caricatures, Lousteau the journalist, Nathan, and others; it is quite unnecessary to give any further description of these personages, all bearers of illustrious names in the _Comedie Humaine_. Young La Palferine, in spite of his title of Count and his great descent, which, alas! means a great descent in fortune likewise, had honored the notary’s little establishment with his presence.