La Duchesse de Langeais

Like the Princesse de Clèves and the Sanseverina, the Duchess of Langeais is one of the great feminine divinities of our literature. She embodies in herself the triple prestige of beauty, birth, and misfortune. Born of illustrious blood, Antoinette de Navarreins came into the world in 1794, under the Terror, a very dark star that would become for her the mark of destiny. Some twenty years later, separated from the husband she abhorred whom an indifferent father had imposed on her, she is one of the worldly glories of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. But what does the icy coquetry of this aristocratic Célimène conceal? And by what strange spell will the incandescent passion of Armand de Montriveau in turn consume her? Like every true masterpiece, this " roman noir " - originally entitled " Ne touchez pas à la hache " - is in part a sublimated autobiography, that is to say the opposite of a roman à clefs. " I alone know what is horrible in The Duchess of Langeais ", Balzac confided to one of his close friends. That is why the work has, for more than a century and a half, retained its mystery and its power of seduction.