In Balzac''s vast Human Comedy, a body of ninety-one completed novels and stories, he endeavoured to create a complete picture of contemporary French society and manners. Within this work is a loving ode to Paris and an incomparable introduction to the first capital of the modern world.

To this ageless city he makes a declaration of love in an accumulation of finely observed detail - the caf�s, landmarks, avenues, parks - and captures the populace in countless meticulously drawn portraits: its lawyers, grisettes, journalists, concierges, usurers, salesmen, speculators.

Balzac gathered the elements of this Paris by sauntering through it. ''To saunter is a science,'' he writes, ''it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live.'' Eric Hazan follows in Balzac''s footsteps, criss-crossing the city in the novelist''s outsize boots, running between printers, publishers, coffee merchants, mistresses and friends, stopping for a moment, struck by a detail that would be fixed in Balzac''s photographic memory.

More than a tour of the city, Balzac''s Paris is an attempt to measure the soul of a city as recovered in its finest literature.