L'enfant des lumières

Description

Ruined by unscrupulous businessmen, the Count of Breyves took his own life: in the 18th century, this was worse than misfortune, it was scandalous. Widowed at thirty, without support or fortune, his wife fled Paris and the Court to take refuge in the remote countryside with her seven-year-old son Alexis. From then on, she devoted her life to her child. She had one fixed idea: to make him invulnerable. Madame de Breyves wanted to turn Alexis, so cheerful and charming, into a man capable of fighting any battle and using any trick. This great love story - that of a mother for her son - is set at the end of the Age of Enlightenment, on the eve of the Revolution. But the questions it raises are also those of today: to face an increasingly harsh world, must we harden our children? What values should we still pass on, when the society around us is falling apart?