The Chouans - Honoré de Balzac

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Résumé :
'Early in the year VIII., at the beginning of Vendemiaire, or, to conform to our own calendar, towards the close of September, 1799, a hundred or so of peasants and a large number of citizens, who had left Foug?res in the morning on their way to Mayenne, were going up the little mountain of La P?lerine, half-way between Foug?res and Ern?e, a small town where travellers along that road are in the habit of resting. This company, divided into groups that were more or less numerous, presented a collection of such fantastic costumes and a mixture of individuals belonging to so many and diverse localities and professions that it will be well to describe their characteristic differences, in order to give to this history the vivid local coloring to which so much value is attached in these days, - though some critics do assert that it injures the representation of sentiments.'... This famous historical novel of Honor? de Balzac is set in Brittany, 1799, during the royalist revolt against the Republic....

Biographie:
Honor? de Balzac was a French novelist and dramatist who lived from 1799 to 1850. One of the most significant writers of the 19th century, he is regarded as such. Many people believe La Com?die Humaine, his masterwork, to be his finest work. His mother was Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, and his father was Bernard-Fran?ois Balssa. He was the Balzacs' second child. Honor? Balzac spent his first two years of life living with a wet nurse after being abandoned as a newborn. From the age of 10, Balzac attended the Oratorian grammar school in Vend?me. Look at the beautiful ones we sent the academy back! was how his grandma put it. On a bridge over the River Loire, he attempted suicide. Balzac wrote El Verdugo shortly after his father died. It is the story of a 30-year-old man who kills his father (Balzac was 30 years old at the time). This was Honor? de Balzac's first piece of work. After courting her for five years, Balzac wed Countess Eve de Balzac (formerly Countess Haska) in Ukraine in 1850. On Sunday, August 18, 1850, five months after his wedding, Balzac died in the company of his mother...

Sommaire:
Early in the year VIII., at the beginning of Vendemiaire, or, to conform to our own calendar, towards the close of September, 1799, a hundred or so of peasants and a large number of citizens, who had left Foug?res in the morning on their way to Mayenne, were going up the little mountain of La P?lerine, half-way between Foug?res and Ern?e, a small town where travellers along that road are in the habit of resting. This company, divided into groups that were more or less numerous, presented a collection of such fantastic costumes and a mixture of individuals belonging to so many and diverse localities and professions that it will be well to describe their characteristic differences, in order to give to this history the vivid local coloring to which so much value is attached in these days, - though some critics do assert that it injures the representation of sentiments.... This famous historical novel of Honor? de Balzac is set in Brittany, 1799, during the royalist revolt against the Republic....