Audiobook The Conscript, a Short Story by Honoré de Balzac. Honoré de Balzac is one of the most renowned French novelists. His magnum opus, La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy) is a panorama of life in France in the years after the fall of Napoleon; his keen observation of detail, subtle psychology and unfiltered representation of society gave him his place as one of the founders and great masters of realism in European literature.