Front jacket illustration - Balzac wearing his monk's robe, by Boulanger. Also Page 76 - Balzac in his monk's habit by Louis Boulanger, 1829. Gautier wrote of it: "There is in this head of a monk and a trooper, a rare mixture of reflection and good humour, of resolution and high temper: the thinker and the man of action mingle in an odd harmony."