Used book – The Lily of the Valley, Honoré de Balzac

1995 edition, updated in 2021.

Félix de Vandenesse suffers from Henriette de Mortsauf's reserve. Since his adolescence, he has devoted his complete love to her; yet he kills this woman by idealizing her, by imposing upon her a purity against which she revolts at the moment of her agony. Le Lys dans la vallée is a novel of intertwining desires and letters that fail to create a true exchange. In a long epistolary confession addressed to his fiancée Natalie, Félix recounts this love. Natalie's ironic reply seals the breaking of their engagement.

Le Lys dans la vallée is a novel of all ambiguities. The pure Henriette is also a Machiavellian strategist who teaches Félix the art of power. Written under the July Monarchy by an author who advocated for a reform of the aristocracy while defending it, Le Lys dans la vallée offers a glimpse of criticism of the Restoration within a scene of private life.