Abstract: This article examines the relationship between courthouse justice and novelistic justice in relation to the transaction, an institution provided for by the Napoleonic Code, often present in Balzac’s novels. In Illusions perdues, Petit-Claud formulates an unjust pact, but this transaction satisfies the parties involved as well as society. In Le Colonel Chabert, Derville proposes a solution that is fair in the eyes of the courts, but this transaction is doomed to fail.
