Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with his friend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion t
Characterized by amoral ruthlessness, the politics of A Murky Business would seem to bear out Balzac's questionable precept.Set earlier than most of Balzac's Comedie Humaine, the novel covers the years 1803-6, when Napolean was making himself first Consul
Le Colonel Chabert est supposé avoir été tué sur le champ d'honneur dans l'une des batailles de Napoléon. Laissé pour mort sur le champ de bataille d'Eylau et ayant perdu sa mémoire, il a passé un an dans un asile. Le roman commence quand il
Dans une auberge au bord du Rhin sont réunis par le hasard deux jeunes Français et un riche négociant allemand qui passent une agréable soirée avant d'aller se coucher. Au petit matin, on retrouve le négociant décapité... Dans les brumes de l'Alle
1819.On a hot day of summer two hunters, two friends - the Marquis d'Albon and Baron Philippe de Sucy - lost in a forest in the Ile-de-France see a feminine silhouette under the foliage of a abandoned park. In this young woman, unable to do anything but m
Emilie de Fontaine is a spoiled and pround brat. She rejects all suitors her father proposes. She will only marry a peer of France - or not at all! At a ball, she meets the handsome Maximilian. They fall in love. But one day, Emily discovers that Maximili
Formerly an aide-de-camp to Napoleon but now without prospects, Phillippe Bridau and his younger brother Joseph, a shiftless artist, become entangled in a struggle to recover the family inheritance in a world where "to be without money is to be without po
Finance, fashionable society, and the intrigues of the underworld and the police system form the heart of this powerful novel, which introduces the satanic genius Vautrin, one of the greatest villains in world literature.