Le Loup Blanc
1843
In 1720s Brittany, the old forests are dying and the old ways are dying with them. Nicolas Treml de La Tremlays, a proud Breton nobleman, stands at the end of a lineage, his son dead, his grandson young and vulnerable, and French authority pressing ever closer. When his cousin Hervé de Vaunoy circles like a wolf waiting to seize the family estate, Nicolas must make a choice: bend to the king's tax collectors and watch his heritage dissolve, or resist and risk everything. Paul Féval, whose fame in nineteenth-century France rivaled Balzac and Dumas, crafts a sweeping tale of loyalty, betrayal, and the fierce independence of Brittany against the centralizing French crown. Set against the turbulent years of the Regency under Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, this novel pulses with the desperate courage of a people fighting to preserve their identity in an age of consolidation. The white wolf of the title is both Nicolas himself, proud,孤独, untamed, and the shadow of the old Brittany that refuses to quietly disappear.
