General Montcornet has bought the splendid Burgundian estate of Les Aigues, but the peasants of the valley, egged on by a usurer, a former steward and other local schemers, treat its woods and fields as their own. Poaching, gleaning, petty theft and legal chicanery gradually wear down the landowner in Balzac’s unsentimental picture of rural France after the Revolution.
A powerful and unsparing study of class and land, from The Human Comedy. Download the free EPUB.