Balzac's erotically charged tale of a rich and ruthless young man in nineteenth-century Paris is a daring classic. The hero, jaded in his pursuit of pleasure and novelty, falls into an amorous entanglement with a mysterious beauty. Through his growing attachment to her, he falls deeper and deeper into a dangerous web of forbidden desire. Incest, homosexuality, sexual slavery, and violence combine in the shocking conclusion of this taboo-breaking work.