the country doctor

The Country Doctorby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell"For a wounded heartshadow and silence."To my Mother.CHAPTER ITHE COUNTRYSIDE AND THE MANOn a lovely spring morning in the year 1829, a man of fifty or thereabouts was wending his way on horseback along the mountain road that leads to a large village near the Grande Chartreuse. This village is the market town of a populous canton that lies within the limits of a valley of some considerable length. The melting of the snows had filled the boulder-strewn bed of the torrent (often dry) that flows through this valley, which is closely shut in between two parallel mountain barriers, above which the peaks of Savoy and