The words of the American poet rattle in my head and then I turn my eyes to the floor where my destroyed Balzac is lying. The soft brown leather back is uninjured and now again, in fancy, the name of the author is staring at me. The name is stamped on the back of the book in letters of gold. From the floor of my room the name Balzac is grinning ironically up into my own American face. =TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES= Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.