Colonel Chabert (1818,1840)

Wounded in battle during the Napoleonic wars Colonel Chabert is thought dead, buried alive, but manages to escape. Despite injuries to the head that affect his memory, after several years he eventually makes his way back to Paris but by this time his wife has created a new life for herself and disavows him. He accepts it all very stoically and assumes the life of a wandering vagrant.

Chabert himself is able to provide the reader with a metaphorical interpretation of his life: "I was buried beneath a pile of corpses, but now I am buried beneath bodies that are alive, beneath acts and deeds, beneath the whole of society, which wishes to return me underground."

A hollywood movie based on this story was made a few years ago.

(Medium, Le Colonel Chabert, chbrt10.txt)