Le Colonel Chabert Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Restoration

The Hundred Years' War with England took place in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with a hiatus in the late 1340's for the Black Death. The French Revolution began in 1789 and the period it ushered in lasted until Napoleon seized power in 1799, crowning himself Emperor in 1804.

His Empire had two phases, the second of which ended in 1815 with his defeat at Waterloo. After his exile to the island of St. Helena, the remaining powers of Europe restored the Bourbon dynasty to the throne of France.

It is during this Restoration, with its social (but bloodless) upheaval, that 'Le Colonel Chabert' takes place.

Answer: Chabert seeks his services as a lawyer

Chabert arrives at Derville's office dirty and bedraggled. The law clerks mock him and, in an attempt to drive him away, tell him he can only meet with Derville at one in the morning when the famous lawyer goes over the next day's cases. Chabert arrives unintimidated, and Derville hears his story.

Answer: The famous Colonel Chabert had died at the Battle of Eylau

Chabert, the hero of Eylau and pet of Napoleon, had devised the strategy for the cavalry charge that enabled the French to escape defeat. Dozens of people, however, had seen him fall with a saber wound to the head, and Napoleon's own doctors had declared him dead.

In reality he was only stunned and sick, and the doctors had examined him only perfunctorily; Chabert dug himself out of a mass grave of soldiers and was saved by a Prussian couple.

Answer: His wife, now the Comtesse Ferraud, has his fortune and won't acknowledge his existence.

His wife, declared a widow by Napoleon and given Chabert's pension, used the fortune left her to marry a Count and gain impressive social standing. When her first husband turns up alive, she is frightened that he will destroy her new marriage -- and so she accuses him of being an impostor and refuses to part with any of the fortune he had made. Chabert, once Napoleon's right hand, thus lives in abject poverty.

Answer: The Comte Ferraud can achieve his political goals only by divorcing her.

The Comte Ferraud wants, above all else, to be a peer of France. Although his Comtesse is fabulously wealthy, she is of low birth and cannot offer him the political connections he needs for a peerage. On the other hand, if he divorces her he can marry one of the daughters of a peer -- and eventually inherit his father-in-law's position.

Answer: By suing the Comtesse Ferraud.

Although his best witness -- his old quartermaster Boutin -- is dead at Waterloo, Chabert feels he can win a lawsuit with the aid of some papers from Germany. He intends to win back his fortune and humiliate his wife for having abandoned him. Derville, however, points out that the Ferrauds have powerful connections with the judges of France, and that Chabert's share of the fortune has already been distributed according to his will. Chabert, therefore, agrees to try for a compromise, outside the courts.

Answer: By ensuring that the Comte doesn't know he has grounds for divorce.

The Comtesse believes that if her husband isn't given a good, non-political reason to divorce her, he won't. This is why she goes to such lengths to cover up her first husband's existence once she learns that he is alive and that she is a bigamist; she must also conceal her past as a prostitute.

She is willing to reach an agreement with Chabert and Derville so that Chabert will not reveal himself to her husband.

Answer: To regain his name in all its honor.

Although he certainly wants the other three goals, the most important thing to Chabert is that he be able, once again, to honorably use the name he had built up from his childhood in an orphanage. His name is at the core of his being; it is the loss of his identity that he resents the most.

Answer: Because of the Comtesse's manipulations

The Comtesse tries first to seduce Chabert and then to awaken his pity for her as a mother in danger of being separated from her children (whose father is the Comte). Moved by her sudden emotion, Chabert agrees to accept a relatively small monthly stipend and to never again approach the Ferrauds or reveal his true identity. On reading the contract her lawyer Delbecq has drawn up, however, Chabert realizes that it is all a sham: she has nearly manipulated him into declaring himself a fraud and giving up the last scraps of his personal honor.

He storms out angrily, swearing he will live on whatever he can earn and that he will no longer give her the satisfaction of having an enemy.

Answer: In court and at an insane asylum

Giving up his hard-earned name kills something inside Chabert. Derville meets him, hopeless and awaiting sentencing for vagrancy, during one of his court appearances. Years later, after his retirement, he finds Chabert completely insane, using a stick to fight imaginary Prussians at an asylum outside Paris; the Comtesse Ferraud had made sure that her first husband was confined somewhere he could not reach her.

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