title: At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life
author: Francine Du Plessix Gray
description: Francine du Plessix Gray is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, and the author of <i>Rage and Fire</i>, <i>Lovers and Tyrants</i>, and <i>Soviet Women</i>. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, the painter Cleve Gray.
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  ##### www.blackmask.com
  
  * * *
  
  
    
    
  Study of a Woman  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
  # Study of a Woman
  
  
  ### Honore de Balzac
  
  
  ##### Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  DEDICATION
  
  
  
  
  
  To the Marquis Jean-Charles di Negro.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Marquise de Listomere is one of those young women who have been
  
  
  brought up in the spirit of the Restoration. She has principles, she
  
  
  fasts, takes the sacrament, and goes to balls and operas very
  
  
  elegantly dressed; her confessor permits her to combine the mundane
  
  
  with sanctity. Always in conformity with the Church and with the
  
  
  world, she presents a living image of the present day, which seems to
  
  
  have taken the word "legality" for its motto. The conduct of the
  
  
  marquise shows precisely enough religious devotion to attain under a
  
  
  new Maintenon to the gloomy piety of the last days of Louis XIV., and
  
  
  enough worldliness to adopt the habits of gallantry of the first years
  
  
  of 