A young man of the Second Empire decides, on the death of his father, to live entirely without illusions — no religion, no scruple, no love — and applies the program with complete success to politics, marriage and a mistress. Feuillet was the Empress Eugénie's librarian at Fontainebleau and the favorite novelist of the regime; this 1867 novel is his hardest, and the program works exactly as designed. Thirty-seven plates by Manet and Degas, from the execution of Maximilian to the racecourse, catch the hard glitter of the Second Empire this novel dissects.
