La Duchesse de Langeais is an 1834 novel by French author Honor de Balzac (1799-1850) and included in the Sc nes de la vie parisienne section of his novel sequence La Com die humaine. General Armand de Montriveau, a war hero, is enamored of Duchess Antoinette de Langeais, a coquettish, married noblewoman who invites him to a ball but ultimately refuses his sexual advances and then disappears. Assisted by the powerful group known as The...