The Hated Son

In a storm-lashed château in 1591, young Jeanne de Saint-Savin, now the Comtesse d'Herouville, lies awake in childbirth, trapped between maternal terror and the brutal threat her husband once made: if she bore a child seven months after marriage, he would kill them both. Around her, the chamber's heavy grandeur—massive bed, crucifix, carved furniture, and shadowed mirror—becomes a monument to aristocratic pride, superstition, and domestic captivity. Balzac sharpens the scene with the sleeping Comte d'Herouville himself: scarred, war-hardened, jealous, and fanatically severe, a man whose violence has turned marriage into fear. As Jeanne reflects on her childhood, her strict religious upbringing, and her secret love for her cousin Georges de Chaverny, the novel traces the loss of innocence that led her into this misery. Their youthful tenderness, broken by death, war, and inheritance, ended when her mother compelled her to sacrifice happiness for duty. In a later, equally tragic thread, the declining duchess is separated from her son Etienne, whose music becomes a quiet bond amid illness and sorrow. Guided by Beauvouloir and protected by Bertrand, Etienne is left an orphan of grief, his innocence and isolation rendered with haunting tenderness. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.