Les Proscrits is a French novel by Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

, published in 1831 by éditions Gosselin, then in 1846 by Furne, Dubochet, Hetzel in Études philosophiques. He subtitled it an esquisse historique. It forms part of the Livre Mystique, as do Louis Lambert

Louis Lambert (novel)

Louis Lambert is an 1832 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac , included in the Études philosophiques section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine...

and Séraphîta

Séraphîta

Séraphîta is a French novel by Honoré de Balzac with themes of androgyny. It was published in the Revue de Paris in 1834.The work plunges into the fantastic and the supernatural self ....

, and shares several of the themes of Louis Lambert - doctor Sigier's theory that intelligence knows several avatars, from animal intelligence to angels' intelligence, and the idea that angels live among men, which often recurs in Balzacs' descriptions of women (Esther, the fallen angel in Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes

Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes

Honoré de Balzac's Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, translated either as The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans or as A Harlot High and Low, was published in four parts from 1838-1847. It continues the story of Lucien de Rubempré, who was a main character in Illusions perdues, a preceding...

, looks like an angel and ends her life in a kind of angelic redemption).

Plot

At the start of the 14th century, sergeant Tirechair lives in a dark house near Notre-Dame de Paris. He plays host to two strangers, who frighten him and who he believes can carry out sorcery. The eldest is a gentleman who attends the royal court, while the youngest, (Godefroy, count of Gand

Ghent

Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...

), is the son of countess Mahaut and is taken on as a servant in the Tirechairs's house. The sergeant is preparing to throw them out the very same evening as they assist in a course in mystical theology. Doctor Sigier is introduced, as is his theory on the mysteries of creation.

The old gentleman, proscribed by his native land of Italy, is none other than the poet Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...

. A knight arrives to tell Dante he has been allowed to return to Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, his native town. As for Godefroy, about to commit suicide to rejoin the angels, Dante saves him in extremis and Godefroy ends by re-assuming his position as a nobleman and rediscovering his mother.

In his introduction to Études philosophiques, Balzac stated: