In the original, Balzac prints all his lines in italics, and he distorts them to the point of near-unintelligibility in a perfectly systematic fashion, always changing certain vowels and, in the case of consonants, everywhere substituting a voiced for an unvoiced, an unvoiced for a voiced, consonant, i.e., a p for a b but also a b for a p, a t for a d but also a d for a t, a k for a hard g and vice versa, ch for j, j for ch and so on. I have been less systematic. In the result, I fancy that what Nucingen says is in general a bit less immediately unintelligible, though not much. Whenever I saw dialogue in italics coming up, I groaned and was tempted to give up. I did not feel justified in too much pre-alleviating the reader’s inevitable groans. To be largely unintelligible is an essential part of the baron’s character. No doubt to the reader, as it was to the translator, it will be a great relief when he finally disappears on page 290, having been replaced briefly by a supposed Englishman.

An obviously difficult but more interesting problem was the underworld slang largely concentrated in Part Four. There was an English equivalent at the time, some of it already to be found among the Elizabethans, some of it oddly surviving in the form of schoolgirl or Mayfair affectation, some wrongly thought to be of recent American importation. Again, I have been somewhat less systematic than Balzac, who, it may be noted, was himself no great authority on the subject, which could be quickly read up from glossaries published in his day, notably that appended to one of the volumes of Vidocq apocrypha, Les Voleurs. Not all Balzac’s forms can be traced to their sources, however, and some of them suggest that he misunderstood. The most fascinating of all these words was, to me, ‘dab’. I suppose it was of gipsy origin. Certainly it was international, developing in English rather towards the side of practised skill (as in ‘dab hand’ or ‘to be a dab at’), in French towards the side of leadership. At any rate, the reader may be assured that, wherever he reads ‘dab’ in this translation, he would be reading just that also in French. Odd uses of words, as opposed to the use of odd words, I have sometimes translated literally, as in the case of ‘sanglier’ for a priest or ‘la Cigogne’ for what is only very loosely equivalent to the office of our Director of Public Prosecutions. This practice will, I hope, not be found to have introduced any new element of confusion.

Felt by criminals to be the seat of the authority they dread at the Law Courts, what they describe (for no obvious reason) as the Stork is perhaps no less oddly described by lawyers to this day as ‘le Parquet’. This term is, I am told, commonly understood in the legal world to derive from the fact that magistrates from the procuracy take the floor. They belong, that is to say, to the standing magistracy, the magistrature debout, as opposed to the seated magistracy or Bench, the magistrature assise. For prosecuting counsel in French courts of assize are magistrates and wear red gowns. They never speak for the defence in criminal cases, any more than black-gowned advocates ever directly prosecute. To the French, it seems odd that a barrister may, with us, even if he is a Q.C., sometimes present, and sometimes oppose, a case brought by the Crown. As Procureur Général in Paris (there are procureurs-généraux in the departments, just as there are attorneys general in the American states) M. de Granville was, in effect, both Director of Public Prosecutions and Attorney General, with the important difference that, unlike our Attorney General, he was not a member of the government of the day. The Keeper of the Seals, on the other hand, was. ‘Keeper of the Seals’ is, in France, simply another title of the Minister of Justice. Like our Attorney General, M. de Granville might himself speak for the prosecution in court, though some lesser representative of the public ministry might equally, when not on his feet, occupy that little horse-box where prosecuting counsel sits most of the time and for which also ‘le parquet’ is an appropriate name.

Not that we ever, in this novel, find ourselves in court, though in Parts Three and Four lawyers, and especially Parquet personnel, abound. The reader will manage, I hope, without knowing much about the French legal system and its ways of proceeding. If he wants to know more, I might perhaps, without immodesty, direct his attention to the relevant chapters in two books of my own, A Little Pattern of French Crime and French Crime in the Romantic Age. There also he will find something about the Conciergerie and other prisons and the changing organization of the French police, though Balzac, I fancy, is clear enough about all that.