Punainen akkunaverho

About this book

"Punainen akkunaverho" by J. Barbey d'Aurevilly is a short story written in the late 19th century. It presents a decadent, confessional tale of clandestine passion framed by a chance night journey, as the Vicomte de Brassard recalls a youthful affair with his hosts’ enigmatic daughter, Albertine, under the ominous sign of a red-curtained window. The mood blends military bravado with fatalistic desire and moral unease.

The opening of the story follows an unnamed narrator traveling by post coach through western France, sharing a compartment with the striking Vicomte de Brassard, a famed royalist officer known for courage, insubordination, and prodigious drinking. Passing through a dark, sleeping town, a single lit window with red curtains startles Brassard and draws from him a promise to tell what it means. Before his confession, the narrator sketches Brassard’s past: his glory and wounds from the July days, his charisma with troops, and his flamboyant excesses. Brassard then begins his tale of being a 17-year-old sub-lieutenant billeted with a respectable elderly couple in a dead, provincial town, where their newly returned daughter, Albertine—cool, poised, and unreadable—slowly unsettles him. The opening culminates in a charged dinner scene where, without a word and in full view of her unsuspecting parents, Albertine secretly seizes his hand and presses his leg under the table, igniting the forbidden story to come.