The Recruit

By Honoré de Balzac

The Recruit is a novel by the French novelist and writer Honoré de Balzac. It was first published in 1831 in the Revue de Paris to become later part of The Human Comedy. The story is set in late eighteenth-century France and centers around the character of the Countess de Dey, a respectable lady who runs a cultural and literary salon in her house. When one day she decides not to open the salon, her assembly, composed mainly of intellectuals and friends, find her decision unexpected and start to question about the reason behind it. The readers later learn that Madame de Dey has received a letter from her only son telling her that if he does not show up within three days this will mean that he was shot dead. A large part of the novel follows the Countess as she is waiting for her son’s arrival. On the last of the three days, she decides to reopen her salon and receive her guests while expecting the coming of her son the same night. She is informed that he is on his way to her. However, to her great misfortune, when the young man arrives she discovers that he is not her son. She is shocked and dies at the same moment her son is shot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Word To The Wise
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780006734

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Regarded as one of the key figures of French and European literature, Balzac’s realist approach to writing would influence Charles Dickens, Émile Zola, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, and Karl Marx. With a precocious attitude and fierce intellect, Balzac struggled first in school and then in business before dedicating himself to the pursuit of writing as both an art and a profession. His distinctly industrious work routine—he spent hours each day writing furiously by hand and made extensive edits during the publication process—led to a prodigious output of dozens of novels, stories, plays, and novellas. La Comédie humaine, Balzac’s most famous work, is a sequence of 91 finished and 46 unfinished stories, novels, and essays with which he attempted to realistically and exhaustively portray every aspect of French society during the early-nineteenth century.

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