They say the Grand Siècle was an age of splendour. That forgets the shadow beneath the gilding: spies, coded letters, court intrigue, forbidden passions, and silences too heavy to confess.
Two different men, sharing the same name, were among them.
Louis Le Prévost du Barail, a Picard vicomte, serves the King with the sword — from cadet all the way to governor of the fortress of Landrecies. A man of honour, and one whose private truth no sermon and no war will ever force into the open.
Henri de Barail, a Gascon gentleman, serves in the shadows: loyal to the duc de Lauzun, trusted confidant of the duchesse de Montpensier, he knows everything about the Court while never quite appearing in it.
Through the duchess’s memoirs and the archives of the seventeenth century emerges the portrait of these men who cross History without ever stepping into its light — and whose shadow reveals the cracks in power itself. A historical novel drawn from real figures and attested events, where a family’s genealogical search becomes an affair of State.