Ferragus

Paris emerges as a city of secrets, where every street seems to carry its own moral weather and every house may conceal a hidden drama. Against this vivid urban backdrop, Balzac opens a darker world of clandestine power: Ferragus, chief of the Devorants, and the legendary Thirteen, a brotherhood of ruthless, brilliant men bound by absolute loyalty, secrecy, ambition, and a belief in concentrated will above ordinary law. The story then turns from shadowy conspiracy to intimate peril when a young aristocrat, Auguste de Maulincour, believes he has seen the married woman he adores entering a suspicious house. His passionate, idealized love is shaken into obsession and disillusionment, while the narrative reveals his noble lineage and the emotional vulnerability left by his background. At the same time, Balzac explores Madame Jules and Clemence's carefully guarded domestic world, where true love depends on privacy, elegance, and devotion. But trust is threatened when Jules, tormented by insinuation, confesses his doubt; Clemence answers with wounded tenderness, and their bond is strained by jealousy, secrecy, and the menace of an unseen enemy. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

Honoré de Balzac : Tour à tour dramaturge, journaliste et écrivain, il est considéré comme l'une des figures majeures du monde des lettres françaises.
Créateur du roman réaliste moderne, il conçut dès 1833 le grand cycle de la Comédie humaine. Dépensier et excentrique, il vécut criblé de dettes ; amoureux de la vie et des femmes, il se fit remarquer dans les salons mondains et littéraires, et connut de tumultueuses et rocambolesques liaisons. Voyageur infatigable et collectionneur, habité par des projets extravagants, il s'aventura dans des contrées lointaines et souvent inhospitalières.
Il laissera à sa mort, à 51 ans, l'une des plus grandes oeuvres de la littérature mondiale. " Il entre le même jour, dans la gloire et dans le tombeau ", dira Victor Hugo dans l'éloge funèbre qu'il prononça au cimetière du Père-Lachaise.