The superb and the incomparable (On Bertrand’s ‘Le Raffiné’)

Two famous swordsmen from the 1820s and 1830s may have inspired Bertrand’s Raffiné: Chodruc-Duclos and Adolphe Choquart. But identifying the two monarchists with dissimilar destinies should not hide the network of references which points especially in the direction of the libertines and their questioning of political and religious imposture.