Lucien Leuwen is a romance pages fine, charming, poetic, among the best of the author. Lucien is as Stendhal would have liked to be (provided a rich and brilliant father, protector, tender, tireless Polytechnique and important official of the Ministry of Interior) and as it was, Republican first, then rallied disillusioned with the July Monarchy in love with a pretty woman, intelligent and loves too. The unprincipled ambition and no talent, corruption, subservience of politicians and officials, the death of the ideal, all our history books made. It is also a social and political novel, where many traits seem, alas, today.