# Horace Bianchon — Shorts from Scenes from Private Life character guide

> Horace Bianchon in Shorts from Scenes from Private Life by Honoré de Balzac.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Bianchon, Horace, Doctor Bianchon, Doctor Horace Bianchon

**First appearance:** 0019-the-atheist-s-mass

## Snapshot

A celebrated young physician whose blunt, clear-eyed judgments cut through the illusions of Parisian society and its ambitious men.

## Who they are

Horace Bianchon is the famous doctor whom Balzac's Paris trusts with its bodies and its secrets, a friend of Rastignac and a fixture of the great houses. He reads women's ages in their temples and noses, and he reads men's ambitions with the same clinical detachment, warning Rastignac against trading one illusion for another. His friendship and his candor make him the moral sounding board against which the follies of the fashionable world are measured.

## In the story

### [A Second Home](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/chapters/a-second-home)

The doctor encounters the Count walking late at night and offers his arm, engaging in a conversation about the Count's melancholy and indifference to life.

### [Another Study of Woman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/chapters/another-study-of-woman)

Addressed by General de Montriveau as 'Doctor Bianchon'; present as a listener and potential commentator.

### [La Grande Bretêche](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/chapters/la-grande-bret-che)

The doctor who narrates the story of La Grande Bretêche, having been left in Vendôme by Despleins to attend a rich patient.

### [The Atheist’s Mass](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/chapters/the-atheist-s-mass)

Desplein's devoted student and friend, to whom the story is told.

### [The Commission in Lunacy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/chapters/the-commission-in-lunacy)

Bianchon delivers a scathing critique of women of fashion, using Madame d'Espard as an example of moral emptiness and calculated charm.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/characters/horace_bianchon
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/characters