Unleashing a perilous scheme of revenge against the Comte de Sainte Vire by transforming his illegitimate, penniless daughter, Leonie, into the toast of the town, Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon, finds
In a grimy boardinghouse in a dismal Parisian neighborhood, Balzac sets the stage for his 1834 study of paternal love, of greed, envy, and despair. Pere Goriot tells the story of a nineteenth-century