A short story set in 1793 / 1794. It is a well-written, well-crafted story that sets up its atmosphere of suspense and fear very well at the start, putting across the hard life of panic, mistrust and loneliness that aristocrats and relgious had to contend with during the years following the revolution.

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled Human Comedy, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte.Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multifaceted characters, who are morally ambiguous.