Published in 1836, this book belongs to the scenes of private life in The Human Comedy. It depicts a waterbearer who sactifices all he has preserved in order to take care of a young man, showing the good qualities of the labor forces.

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.