Une vieille maîtresse
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Two works in particular of Barbey d'Aurevilly's fired Des Esseintes' imagination: the Prêtre marié ("Married Priest") and the Diabolique. Others, such as l'Ensorcelé ("The Bewitched"), the Chevalier des Touches, Une vieille Maîtresse ("An Old Mistress"), were no doubt better balanced and more complete works, but they appealed less warmly to Des Esseintes, who was genuinely interested only in sickly books with health undermined and exasperated by fever. In these comparatively sane volumes Barbey d'Aurévilly was perpetually tacking to and fro between those two channels of Catholicism which eventually run into one,—mysticism and Sadism." -- À rebours, translation by Havelock Ellis |
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Une vieille maîtresse (An old mistress) is an 1851 novel by the French writer Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. It tells the story of a wayward dandy who falls in love with a young woman but is unable to fully leave his former mistress behind. The book was published by Alexandre Cadot in three volumes, with 327, 316 and 341 pages respectively.
It was the basis for the 2007 film The Last Mistress directed by Catherine Breillat.