It is the fifth work of Honoré de Balzac, one of the oldest texts of The Human Comedy. The first edition of this novella was published in 1830. Balzac seems to have been inspired by the fables of La Fontaine, especially La fille ("The Girl") and Héron ("The Heron").

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.