Honoré de Balzac

Le Lys dans la Vallée is an 1835 novel about love and society by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac. It concerns the affection — emotionally vibrant but never consummated — between Felix de Vandenesse and Henriette de Mortsauf. It is part of his series of novels known as La Comédie humaine, which parodies …

The story of a French military hero of the Napoleonic Wars, long assumed to be dead, tries to recover his fortune and former wife through the help of a famous Parisian lawyer. Colonel Chabert, a Napoleonic War hero supposedly killed in the Battle of Eylau, returns to Paris after a long convalescence to find his wife …