Duchess of Langeais

“The Duchess of Langeais” (1834) is part of Balzac’s great life’s work, the sprawling novel series called “The Human Comedy.” This novel is set in Paris, in the years after Napoleon’s fall and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. In Balzac’s view, the aristocracy had squandered its chance to bring leadership and stability to France, and was instead seduced by a sense of entitlement, wasting away in “the sterility of the salons.” We follow the story of a love affair that is frustrated by the