The art of Balzac

Lost in the countryside around the forest of l'Isle-Adam, two hunters friends, the Marquis d'Albon, a magistrate, and Baron de Sucy, a former colonel in the imperial army, were surprised to see, in the Park property abandoned, a very strange female figure. This young woman who lives as a primitive being current in nature, jumping from branch to branch, dressed anyhow. She is unable to communicate with other humans except in mechanically repeating a single word: "Goodbye." Sucy recognizes, this is Stephanie Vandières, the woman he once loved passionately and which he was tragically separated during the terrible passage of the Berezina in 1812. We are in 1819. Captured by the Russians, it not to know what Stephanie had to undergo all these years. It has just been found in a Strasbourg inn, wandering like a wandering dazed. To restore it to reason, Sucy will try one last stratagem ...
Very beautiful new novel or short (93 pages) of the immense Honoré de Balzac, "Farewell" was published in the magazine "Fashion" in spring 1830 and should have been part of a larger corpus entitled "Scenes from the Life military. " This story is a little female counterpart of the most famous "Colonel Chabert". Its showpiece is the episode of the Berezina that is perfectly described. Balzac was much documented (General de Segur) and even have the testimony of a friend present at the scene. The language is beautiful, of course, and treatment of this touching romantic story is done with delicacy and tact. One can imagine what one of our modern writers have made the ordeal suffered by that poor woman. No detail, even the most sordid, would have been spared us. With Balzac, nothing like that. He suggests, we guess. There is the real art and not in the big-horn.