The Story Archive

Colonel Chabert

Honoré de Balzac · 1832 CE · Novel · French · Romantic

A shabby old man haunts a Paris solicitor's waiting room claiming to be Colonel Chabert, cut down at Eylau, thrown into a mass grave and struck off the register of the living while the Empire he served was still standing. His widow has married a count, spent his money and has every reason to hold that he is dead; the young lawyer Derville takes the case anyway. One of the shortest things in the Comédie humaine and its coldest reckoning with what the Restoration did to Napoleon's leftovers.

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