A heartbreaking story

From the "Human Comedy", massive novels are usually retains it "Goriot", "Lost Illusions", "The trickle", etc. But this fresco also includes many short stories that drama seems devote the kind of news. "Farewell" is an example of the art of Balzac news: the author shows himself a fine painter of characters, and above all, a virtuoso of chiaroscuro, who knows shirk insight from the depths of the reader soul of his characters. It is a reading which we do not emerge unscathed.
As the story begins cheerfully by walk two friends Random plains, it leaves him terribly affected by what we read there. It is that in the meantime, one of the walkers, Philip found himself nose to nose with a young woman lost sight of, but he never stopped loving. This has however gone mad ... of his mouth escapes one word: "adieu"; this word, the last she had sent to her lover about 7 years ago, when in his company, she saw the remains of the Grand Army perished on the banks of the Berezina fatal. Philippe, whom chance has rendered his beloved, can not stand this torture imposed on him: his heart still beats for a woman who is little more than a savage. How far can the determination of a man determined to recover a happiness that was taken away?
More than a study of madness, "Farewell" is meant the striking painting of a man who refuses to give up the love of his sweetheart. While presenting Lucette Vidal puts in perspective Balzac look at insanity, I think it was Philip who plays from beginning to end, the heart and the crux of the story. Two former lovers, he is the only one to be aware of having lost something, and the only one who can recover wanting. The epilogue again confirms the richness of the character, much as the tragic sublime, which hides under cheerfully injury that will not be closed.
As often with Balzac, the wanderings of the characters are mixed with an episode of Napoleonic gesture; Here, the sad hours of the crossing of the Berezina. Rarely fiction will also significantly managed to resurrect the inhuman suffering qu'endurèrent the veterans during the terrible winter of 1812. One would feel the cold, hunger, despair, every word you bed Really, do feel such things by reading Balzac ... is a master.