Already famous for his novels, in the 1830s Honor Balzac undertook a series of tales as full of human understanding as of dalliance and lusty conniving: the rowdy, Rabelasian Droll Stories.

"Who does not love the warm attack of life . . . when it flows thus round the heart and engulfs everything?" None know this better than the good old Canon of Notre Dame. Coming to Paris naked as a dagger, he soon proves a favorite confessor to the ladies. Then a high-born beauty awards him a prize: the relic of a Saint . . . a bone, the ladies say, that will cure anything

This omnibus volume includes all three books of Balzac's Droll Stories, including the tales, "The Fair Imperia," "The Venial Sin," "The King's Sweetheart," "The Devil's Heir," "The Merrie Jests of King Louis the Eleventh," "The High Constable's Wife," "The Maid of Thilouse," "The Brothers-in-Arms," "The Vicar of Azay-le-Rideau," "The Reproach," "The Three Clerks of St. Nicholas," "The Continence of King Francis the First," "The Merry Tattle of the Nuns of Poissy," "How the Chateau d'Azay Came to Be Built," "The False Courtesan," "The Danger of Being too Innocent," "The Dear Night of Love," "The Sermon of the Merry Vicar of Meudon," "The Succubus," "Despair in Love," "Perseverance in Love," "Concerning a Provost Who Did Not Recognize Things," "About the Monk Amador, Who Was a Glorious Abbot of Turpenay" and "Bertha the Penitent."