Before You Begin

Before you begin.

Paris, Balzac tells us, is "the most delightful and varied of monsters" — a living creature whose streets each have a face and a fate. Into one of its narrowest, most disreputable alleys, on a February evening, a young officer of the Royal Guard follows the woman he secretly adores and watches his whole world of belief collapse. From that single glimpse springs one of the most feverish dramas the city ever hid.

Ferragus is the first of the three tales that make up Balzac's History of the Thirteen — the saga of a secret brotherhood of powerful men, the Dévorants, bound to aid one another by any means, fair or foul. But at its heart this is an intimate tragedy: of a perfect marriage, an innocent secret, and the terrible speed with which suspicion, once admitted, can poison love and kill.

Around the mysterious figure of Ferragus — beggar and count, criminal and devoted father — Balzac weaves curiosity punished, a husband's jealousy, and a wife whose only crime is loving too faithfully. It endures because it understands how a whisper can undo a happiness that everything else in the world had spared.

This illustrated edition gathers the story into six visual movements — recap plates you unlock as you read, each drawing together the small cast, the secret city, and the turns of the story so far, with never a glimpse of what lies ahead. Turn the page and step into the shadowed streets of Restoration Paris, where a single glimpse begins the ruin of them all.