Honorine is the painful tale of a woman who cannot be won back. Count Octave, a magistrate of high worth, married young Honorine for love; but she, married too early and ignorant of her own heart, fell in love with another man, followed him, then was abandoned by him, finding herself alone, dishonored, and pregnant. Rather than return to a husband she has betrayed, Honorine chooses independence and poverty: she earns her living making artificial flowers, unaware that it is her husband himself who, through an intermediary, buys her output at a high price to support her without her knowing. The count, who still loves her with an absolute and respectful love, has not given up the hope of reclaiming her, but refuses to compel her. He charges a young secretary, Maurice de l'Hostal — the narrator of the tale — to approach her and gently prepare the way for a return. The stratagem succeeds: Honorine returns to the conjugal home. But the drama is that she returns out of duty and gratitude, not love; unable to give the count the feeling he bears her, and torn between thankfulness and the impossibility of loving, she lets herself die. Balzac explores the idea that certain hearts, once broken or led astray, can no longer recover themselves, and that the most generous love does not suffice to resurrect an extinguished feeling. The novel, of great psychological subtlety, paints the delicacy of a loving husband effacing himself to the point of self-erasure and the tragedy of a woman prisoner of her own nature. It is a meditation on the freedom of the heart, on the irreversible, and on the limits of devotion — among the finest analyses of feeling in La Comédie humaine.