L'Auberge rouge is a tale built as a frame narrative, posing a troubling problem of moral conscience. During a dinner in a Parisian salon, a guest recounts a criminal story that occurred years before, during the wars of the Revolution. Two young French military surgeons, Prosper Magnan and Frédéric, stop at an inn in Germany — the Red Inn — where a rich merchant carrying a large sum of gold also lodges. In the night, Prosper is assailed by the temptation to kill the traveler and seize his treasure; he caresses this crime in thought but, after an inner struggle, renounces it and remains honest. Yet in the morning the merchant is found murdered and robbed: the true murderer is Frédéric, who has committed the crime and cast suspicion on his companion. Prosper, overwhelmed by appearances and by the memory of his own temptation, is accused, condemned, and executed for a crime he did not commit, while the real culprit remains unpunished. The narrative takes on its full scope when the narrator reveals, or lets it be guessed, that the merchant become since a rich and respected Parisian banker, Taillefer (father of the Victorine of Le Père Goriot), is none other than this Frédéric, the assassin who remained free, whose entire fortune rests on that original murder. The listener to the tale then finds himself confronted with a moral dilemma, for he was contemplating allying himself by marriage to this family whose wealth is stained with blood. Balzac explores guilt, fallible justice, criminal thought, and the impure origin of fortunes. L'Auberge rouge meditates on moral responsibility, on the gap between intention and act, and on the secret persistence of crime at the foundation of bourgeois prosperity.