Two works of 1829 brought Balzac to the brink of success. Les Chouans, the first novel he felt enough confidence about to have published under his own name, is a historical novel about the Breton peasants called Chouans who took part in a royalist insurrection against Revolutionary France in 1799 that occurred in the region between Brittany and Nantes and Balzac places his story in this accurate historic contest. Balzac is one of Frances greatest storytellers and this particular thriller is one of his most spine-tingling ones. In it, an aristocrat, Marie de Verneuil, is sent by Joseph Fouché, the terrible minister of police to seduce and capture their leader, the Marquis de Montauran, known as the Guy (le Gars). She must be helped by a skillful, ambitious and unscrupulous policeman, Corentin. But Marie falls in love with her target...