In "The Abbess of Castro", Stendhal tells the story set in Lazio (Italy) of two doomed young lovers—one the daughter of the wealthiest man in the district, the other a brigand. It’s a genuinely moving tale of impossible love—with plenty of sword fights thrown in—that’s unique in Stendhal’s oeuvre, not least in its portrait of an intelligent woman who, ill-starred in love, turns to worldly power. There’s also some sparkling analysis of the conditions that produced the great art of the Renaissance.

But "The Abbess of Castro" —first published in the same year as Stendhal’s novel "The Charterhouse of Parma"—is also characterised by themes that pervade his longer novels: political and familial machinations, a profoundly unsentimental view of war, ambitious individuals undone by passion.