At a dinner in Genoa, the French consul tells how, as a young man, he served as secretary to Count Octave, a Parisian magistrate whose wife Honorine had run away. Abandoned by her lover, she lives alone making artificial flowers, unaware that her husband secretly pays for everything and longs only for her return.
One of Balzac’s most delicate studies of marriage and pride from The Human Comedy, in Clara Bell’s translation. Download the free EPUB.