Paris is perhaps the greatest character in Balzac’s Human Comedy

Open one of the major novels by Honoré de Balzac and you are likely to encounter a sentence such as this, from Cousin Bette: ‘Towards the middle of July, in the year 1838, one of those vehicles called milords, then appearing in the Paris squares for the first time, was driving along the rue de l’Université.’ Or this (from César Birroteau): ‘On winter nights there is no more than a momentary lull in the noise of the rue Saint-Honoré.’ It is the same story in Père Goriot (rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève), Cousin Pons (Boulevard des Italiens) and others. From the first words of the tale, the reader is cast into the drama of the street.

Few people can be as familiar with the Paris of Balzac as Eric Hazan, both in its literary manifestation and its lamentably scarce surviving patches. In the roughly 90 volumes of The Human Comedy, Hazan writes, Balzac ‘portrayed many female beauties, but he certainly never imagined or met a creature as “sparkling and proud” as his beloved city’.

Hazan, the founder of the left-wing publishing house La Fabrique, loves it almost as much, in his own exasperated way. In his earlier, encyclopedic book, The Invention of Paris, he deplored the car-dependent abasements, the money-making demolitions and Pompidou-inspired defacements the city has suffered in recent times. The Invention of Paris was described by one reviewer as ‘fierce’. Balzac’s Paris is a more genial affair. Hazan is charmed to be in the company of his hero, and for the course of a 200-page tour we are pleased to follow along.

One of the first things to beware of is the mud – screen adaptations don’t mention this. White silk stockings, white waistcoats, shiny shoes – all are at risk.