54 minAudiobook4 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if guilt begins its punishment long before a court can pass sentence?
In The Marquise's Crime, E. T. A. Hoffmann brings together forbidden love, a troubled conscience, and the slow machinery of justice in old France. This Gothic tale explores the pressure between private feeling and public judgment, where love runs against society's rules and guilt carries a weight of its own.
Hoffmann knows the law from his work as a judge. Here, legal judgment meets the dark feeling of Romantic fiction. The law remains a human thing, shaped by people who can be wise, hasty, proud, or afraid. The suspense lies as much in questions of conscience as in questions of justice.
What you’ll discover
- Guilt before judgment Explore how a secret can become a punishment before any court speaks.
- Love against duty Feel the pull of forbidden love as private desire presses against society's demands.
- The human face of law Consider justice shaped by human wisdom and weakness, rather than certainty alone.
- A judge's Gothic imagination Discover the meeting of courtroom knowledge and dark feeling in Hoffmann's crime fiction.
- A slower kind of suspense Settle into an older pace that leaves room for fear and moral questions.
Who will love it
Readers who like Gothic atmosphere, courtroom drama and puzzles of guilt, and who enjoy a compact story with a haunted love at its centre and a few vivid scenes.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A father's cold lessons shape Franziska
- A cold marriage and a returning priest
- A husband vanishes and suspicion grows
- What guilt means, and how it is told
Who’s who
- Franziska, the MarquiseA clear-minded woman raised to distrust love, who marries without passion and is later accused of murdering her husband.
- The Marquis de la PivardièreHer indebted husband, a cold man who has lived a double life in Auxerre and returns home for money.
- CharostAn Augustinian friar and her castle chaplain, who once loved her as a young man and now offers comfort.
- The Duchess d'AiguillonA Parisian hostess who loves moral lessons and wants to arrange Franziska's happiness.
- Count de Saint-HermineThe marquis's regimental commander, who brings the shocking news of the murder to the salon.
- BonnetThe passionate, prejudiced magistrate who leads the investigation and presses the maids to confirm his theory.
- Margarete MercierThe marquise's lady's maid, who gives a detailed account of the night that sends her mistress to trial.
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Le Crime de la marquise
A Paris murder trial hangs on a missing husband, a monk who once loved the accused, and two maids' sworn story.
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In short
The Marquise's Crime is a short Gothic tale by E. T.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A father's cold lessons shape Franziska
Franziska Chauvelin loses her mother in early childhood and is raised by her father, a stern chevalier who despises love. He keeps every womanly influence away from her, even playmates and governesses, and he mocks the servants he hires as silly creatures. He wants a daughter who sees feeling as weakness.
He fails in part. Franziska grows up clear-minded, graceful and playful, and Paris society adores her. Yet whenever a man draws her heart, her father's picture of a ridiculous woman in love rises before her eyes, and fear kills the feeling. She is still unmarried at twenty-five, when her father dies and leaves her the Nerbonne estate.
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What is The Marquise's Crime about?
It tells of a French marquise accused, with her confessor, of murdering her husband. The story goes back to her cold upbringing, an early love, a loveless marriage and the night the marquis disappears.
Who is Charost in The Marquise's Crime?
Charost is an Augustinian friar who becomes the chaplain of Nerbonne Castle. Years earlier he loved Franziska Chauvelin as a young man, and he left the world after a letter of rejection.
Is The Marquise's Crime based on a true story?
Hoffmann built the tale around a murder trial in old France, and he gave it his own Gothic tone. Its settings, trial scenes and period details make it feel close to a court record.
The author
E. T. A. Hoffmann
1776–1822 · German Romantic writer
E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) was a German writer, composer, and lawyer. He was born in Königsberg and died in Berlin. He wrote The Golden Pot (1814), The Devil’s Elixirs (1815–1816), Night Pieces (1816–1817), and The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1819–1821).
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