Cousin Bette is, in the opinion of many critics, one of Balzac's finest novels —if not, indeed, his finest. Paris during the last century comes alive in this novel as Balzac unfolds the dramatic story of men and women driven by greed, hatred, lust, envy, and ambition. With unsurpassed realism, he depicts their gradual moral and physical degeneration. This "fast-moving, brilliantly conceived study of unbridled brute passion," as Professor Zulli describes Cousin Bette in his Introduction, is added to the Modern Library with pride because it is without doubt one of the great books of our culture.