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El Verdugo

Livre numérique


There are dilemmas - and then there are dilemmas. Juanito Leganes faces the sort of choice that is beyond our worst nightmares.

It comes after his father, Marquis of the Spanish town of Menda, leads an uprising against the French occupiers, allowing the British to take the town. When the French retake it, their general orders the hanging of the Marquis and his entire family, including his wife, three sons and two daughters.

However, Marquis asks for beheadings instead and for his eldest son, Juanito, to be spared. The general agrees but on one condition: that Juanito wields the axe.

Will he decapitate them all and live, or will he choose to die with them at the end of a rope?

If you are a fan of Bernard Cornwell's 'Sharpe' novels and the TV series starring Sean Bean, this short story is for you.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright, most famous for a sequence of novels, collectively called 'The Human Comedy'. His signature style was a warts-and-all representation of post-Napoleonic French life, rich in detail and featuring complex, unfiltered characters.

The style means Balzac is regarded as one of the pioneers of European literary realism. He is named as an influence on writers including Emile Zola, Henry James, Charles Dickens, and Gustave Flaubert.

The first novel he published under his own name was 'Les Chouans' in 1829. In 1834 he hit upon the idea of grouping his novels together to record all of society. The result, over a period of years, was 'The Human Comedy', which comprised three categories: 'Analytic Studies'; 'Philosophical Studies'; and 'Studies of Manners'.



  1. La peau de chagrin :

    Honoré de Balzac

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  2. Développer sa culture générale avec 10 nouvelles essentielles

    Leonid Andreïev, Honoré de Balzac, Guy de Maupassant, Fiodor Dostoïevski, Arthur Conan Doyle, Théophile Gautier, Nicolas Gogol, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Anton Tchekhov

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  3. La Peau de chagrin

    Honoré de Balzac

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  4. Le Colonel Chabert

    Honoré de Balzac

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  5. La Comédie Humaine: Le Père Goriot

    Honoré de Balzac

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  6. Manon lescaut + La peau de chagrin : Bundle (2 livres audios)

    Abbé Prévost, Honoré de Balzac

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  7. 50 Masterpieces You Must Read Before You Die: Volume 2 : Timeless Classics That Will Enrich Your Mind and Soul

    Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, George Eliot, Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Honoré de Balzac, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Miguel de Cervantes, E. E. Cummings, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Daniel Defoe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, Victor Hugo, The griffin classics

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  8. Manger : À travers 19 textes cultes commentés de la littérature classique

    Sylvain Trias, Brillat-savarin, Jean de La Bruyère, Horace Raisson, Théophile Gauthier, Émile Zola, Madame de Sévigné, Marcel Proust, Alphonse Daudet, Rabelais, Gustave Flaubert, Pétrone, Honoré de Balzac, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Guy de Maupassant, Goncourt, Molière, Victor Hugo

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  9. Les Chats : À travers 17 textes cultes commentés de la littérature classique

    Sylvain Trias, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Renard, Charles Perrault, Jean de La Fontaine, Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac, Octave Mirbeau, Rudyard Kipling, Michel de Montaigne, Joachim du Bellay, Hyppolite Taine, Champfleury, François-Augustin Paradis de Moncrif

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  10. La femme de trente ans

    Honoré de Balzac

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  11. La cousine Bette

    Honoré de Balzac

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  12. Histoire de la grandeur et de la décadence de César Birotteau

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