{"product_id":"the-balzac-collection-volume-liam-ferousse-9798282695915","title":"The Balzac Collection - Volume 9: A New Translation","description":"\u003cp\u003eCalyste du Guénic has grown up in medieval Guérande, beloved and untested, formed entirely by a world that has never refused him anything. The two women who will complete his education are already at work: Camille Maupin, who understands him completely and cannot protect him from himself; and Béatrix de Rochefide, who is exactly what his idealism requires and nothing like what he imagines.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDesplein is the most celebrated surgeon in France and its most committed atheist - a man who has spent his career inside the human body and found there no evidence that requires a God. Four times a year, he attends mass at Saint-Sulpice. His former student Bianchon has seen him there and cannot understand it, until Desplein explains: a water carrier from Saint-Flour named Bourgeat once sustained him through poverty and asked for nothing in return, and died a devout Catholic, and Desplein cannot pray for him and cannot do nothing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePierre Grassou is a mediocre painter and he knows it. He produces copies for a dealer who sells them to bourgeois collectors as old masters, and the collectors are delighted, and Grassou marries one of their daughters and is happy. The real artists he knows are uncompromising and intermittently starving. Balzac presents this without editorial comment, which is the most devastating thing he could do.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis ninth volume of the Balzac Collection brings together \u003ci\u003eBéatrix\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Atheist's Mass\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003ePierre Grassou\u003c\/i\u003e - three works from \u003ci\u003eLa Comédie humaine\u003c\/i\u003e that approach, from entirely different directions, the same persistent Balzacian question: what is the distance between the official account of a life and its actual content, and what does it cost to cross it?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThree masterworks. Three reckonings. One ruthlessly honest intelligence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Liam Ferousse,Honoré de Balzac\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798282695915\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/06\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 364\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.97lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.91d","brand":"Liam Ferousse","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49097147908351,"sku":"9798282695915","price":15.89,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-balzac-collection-volume-liam-ferousse-9798282695915","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}