Led Astray

Octave Feuillet was a French novelist and dramatist. He began his writing career as a collaborator of Dumas the elder, but then branched out into his own work. He was popular in the Second Empire, and the Empress Eugenie once took a part in one of his plays.

"Led Astray" is a short novel in which a man of letters, on a government commission to survey an old abbey, meets the Countess of Palme, a typical fast young lady of the Second Empire. Inability to admit to and act upon their feelings for each other has tragic consequences.

As one critic of the time commented on Feuillet, "He has to do with things as he finds them, and if we are to believe him, what he finds is a lack of culture in women, and lack of sympathy in men, and a lack of principle in both."