Book excerpt: After Father Goriot and Lost Illusions, Splendours et misères des courtisanes completes "Vautrin's trilogy". This hero of the lowlands, a forger and murderer, is also a sublime lover and a poet in his own way, who devotes his Titanic strengths and infernal imagination to the fortune of the man he adores: Lucien de Rubempré. Balzac never cruelly took off againhis masks to a society whose secrets he penetrates compromises. From the underworld and prostitution circles to those of the police and the judiciary, to the highest levels of the State, he makes a merciless diagnosis of widespread gangrene, leading his captivated reader to discover the adventures of desire in the jungle of Paris, with superb energy.