History of the Thirteen (The Human Comedy)

"They were thirteen kings...judges and executioners too, they had equipped themselves with wings in order to soar over society in its heights and depths, and disdained to occupy any place in it because they had unlimited power."So reads the back-cover blurb for the Penguin Classics edition of _History of the Thirteen_. Balzac had a way with words, and with these the fertile imagination soars: what sort of conspiracy theory would pere Honore, perhaps the most famous French novelist of all time, detail? What feverish secrets of ritualistic skullduggery would the ink-corrupted quill scrawl upon the blank, innocent face of parchment? Given the fact that this was written 160 or so years ago, I assumed that current Conspiracy Theory staples of paranoiac-favor would be missing-it seemed a far cry, that any 4th dimensional reptilian Satan-worshiping aliens would make a cameo appearance in the French salons, perverting the rule of the Bourbons, re-writing the Dead Sea Scrolls in their spare time, and jostling the extras line for a background face-shot in Sightings-yet certainly one could expect, in Balzac's `fictional' account of the Thirteen, the occasional allusion to the `old-skool' *member's only* clubs... perhaps a hint of neo-Templar Egyptian-spiced exclusivity? Or, perhaps, an eyewitness account of the ultra-debauched rites used to entertain and ensnare...? Thus, I plunged into the book with bated breath and no few pulpy expectations, hoping that, once again, the literary pen would raise the ghosts and grandiosity of the bygone age: let nineteenth-century Conspiracy Theory breath the befouled air of its exhumation! Well, in reflection, the literary pen did revive, to my firmly modern-entrenched mind, the environmental parameters and social paradigms of this long-extinct Parisian era, so turbulent and raw in the aftermath of the Revolution and Napoleon's Grand Vision. Balzac was born on the tip of this generation, and his writings capture the social strata of the time: the continual wrangling for power between the aristocracy and the reformists; the lack of fortitude among the noble-born, the ignorance of the common-man...and, lest I forget, the upjump exploitation of the self-made individual. All and one, they find a place in Balzac's interconnected oeuvre, the Human Comedy, wherein the three novels of _History of the Thirteen_ reside.Yes, three novels, or more accurately, novellas. Curiously, I could not find the above quote anywhere in the pages between the front and back cover, though its promising eloquence continually mocked me; moreover, the secret society of the Thirteen is left, for the most part, unexamined, their motives mysterious, their origin untold. Balzac instead concerns himself with the trials and turmoil of those in love, covering the three bases of miscommunication, coquetry, and unachieved expectation, afflictions so common and prevalent in matters of the heart.A closer look:1) Ferragus: A tragic tale of a good, honest stoc