Lucien Leuwen

“Stendhal's unfinished novel of the July Monarchy. Lucien Leuwen, the idle, idealistic son of a witty Paris banker, is expelled from the École Polytechnique for republican sympathies and sent as a lancer to the provincial garrison of Nancy, where he falls in love with a reserved young royalist widow, Madame de Chasteller. Tricked into leaving her, he returns to Paris to learn the corruption of government from inside a ministry.”