Honoré de Balzac

In the brutal Prussian winter of 1807, Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte’s Grande Armée suffered massive losses to the Russians in the Battle of Eylau. Many thousands died. Young Colonel Chabert falls heroically, his actions having turned the tide of the battle, but he is buried anonymously on the battlefield in a mass grave. Incredibly he is alive but severely injured, and digs himself out. On his eventual return to Paris, he finds his wife, the beautiful and ambitious Rosine, now remarried, his fortune gone. Chabert’s relentless, passionate pursuit of justice, supported by the determined young lawyer Derville, is gripping to the last page. This exquisitely written story has it all: love, hatred, treachery, hope and courage.

Lisbeth Fischer has lived in the shadow of her beautiful cousin Adeline for much of her life. Pampered while Lisbeth works in the fields, Adeline makes an enviable leap in status when Baron Hulot offers her his hand in marriage. Out of kindness, they bring Lisbeth to Paris, where she falls in love with the artist Wenceslas, her protégé. However, when she is jilted for Adeline’s daughter Hortense, her jealousy and rage exponentially intensify, and she resolves to bring the Hulot family to ruin, employing the cold seductress Valérie Marneffe as her vehicle for revenge. A classic tale of obsession, self-destruction and unabated desire, Cousin Bette is a blazing portrayal of libertine France, and the fatal excesses which drive the novel to its dark end.

Impoverished young aristocrat Eugène de Rastignac is determined to climb the social ladder and impress himself on Parisian high society. While staying at the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris’s rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, he encounters Jean-Joachim Goriot, a retired vermicelli maker who has spent his entire fortune supporting his two daughters.

The boarders strike up a friendship and Goriot learns of Rastignac’s feelings for his daughter Delphine. He begins to see Rastignac as the ideal son-in-law, and the perfect substitute for Delphine’s domineering husband. But Rastignac has other opportunities too, as the notorious criminal Vautrin, ‘The Death Dodger’, offers to murder the brother of a wealthy woman, giving the ambitious young lawyer a clear path to her fortune...

Brothers Philippe and Joseph Bridau are completely unalike: Philippe, braggart and soldier, formerly aide-de-camp to Napoleon, is their mother Agathe’s favourite; Joseph, a poor and aspiring artist, is raised in his brother’s shadow. When Agathe is reduced to poverty and Philippe accrues gambling debts, the family join forces to focus their attentions on Agathe’s brother, Jean-Jacques Rouget, heir to the family fortune.

The struggle for his inheritance pits the family against Rouget’s beautiful maid Flore (‘La Rabouilleuse’), the apple of her master’s eye, and her lover, the crafty and manipulative Maxence. Will the greedy Philippe’s efforts save the family, or prove to be their undoing? Will the talented Joseph achieve the acclaim he deserves in the salons of Paris?

All is revealed in the thrilling and compassionate denouement of this wonderful book. Also known as The Black Sheep and The Two Brothers, La Rabouilleuse is one of the Scènes de la vie de province in Balzac’s La Comédie humaine.