In an old Flemish house at Douai, Balthazar Claes, a wealthy and loving husband, becomes obsessed with chemistry after a visiting Polish officer speaks of the Absolute, the single substance underlying all matter. His experiments devour his fortune, his wife Joséphine’s health and his children’s inheritance, until his daughter Marguerite must fight to save the family.
One of Balzac’s great studies of monomania, also known as The Quest of the Absolute. Download the free EPUB.