Streszczenie książki Pułkownik Chabert

The story in 8 parts

1. Key idea 1 · free to read

   A joke at the lawyer's office goes sour

   The story opens in the office of Maître Derville, an attorney on the Rue Vivienne. The clerks are the first face of the law that Chabert meets.

   An old man climbs the stairs in a worn box coat and leaking boots. This is his fifth visit. He is polite, hungry and tired, and nobody offers him a chair. The clerks tell him the master sees clients only at one in the morning, hoping to be rid of a man who cannot pay.

   Once he leaves, the clerks bet on who he is. They call him back and ask his name. He says Chabert. A clerk jeers that surely this is the colonel killed at Eylau. The same, monsieur, the old man says with plain simplicity, and he goes. One clerk adds that Colonel Chabert is dead and that his widow, now the Comtesse Ferraud, is a client of the office. Chabert is judged by his coat, and nobody looks at the man inside it.

   A true story told by a poor man in a bad coat gets laughed at before it gets heard.

2. 2

   A dead man tells how he left the grave

   That night, at one in the morning, Chabert returns.

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3. 3

   The road home ends at a locked door

   How did Chabert get back to Paris?

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4. 4

   The lawyer frightens the Countess into talking

   Before Derville calls on the Countess, Balzac pauses to describe her.

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5. 5

   A wife who cannot be faced, then a tender drive

   A week later, on a bright June morning, husband and wife arrive at Derville's office.

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6. 6

   A man is more than the papers about him

   The central question of the book is simple.

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7. 7

   Money, ambition and honor pull against each other

   Three kinds of value run through the book.

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8. 8

   A tale told through frames and sharp city pictures

   Balzac tells this story with care for detail.

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