El Verdugo

There are dilemmas - and then there are dilemmas. Juanito Leganes faces the sort of choice that is beyond our worst nightmares.

It comes after his father, Marquis of the Spanish town of Menda, leads an uprising against the French occupiers, allowing the British to take the town. When the French retake it, their general orders the hanging of the Marquis and his entire family, including his wife, three sons and two daughters.

However, Marquis asks for beheadings instead and for his eldest son, Juanito, to be spared. The general agrees but on one condition: that Juanito wields the axe.

Will he decapitate them all and live, or will he choose to die with them at the end of a rope?

If you are a fan of Bernard Cornwell's 'Sharpe' novels and the TV series starring Sean Bean, this short story is for you.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright, most famous for a sequence of novels, collectively called 'The Human Comedy'. His signature style was a warts-and-all representation of post-Napoleonic French life, rich in detail and featuring complex, unfiltered characters.

The style means Balzac is regarded as one of the pioneers of European literary realism. He is named as an influence on writers including Emile Zola, Henry James, Charles Dickens, and Gustave Flaubert.

The first novel he published under his own name was 'Les Chouans' in 1829. In 1834 he hit upon the idea of grouping his novels together to record all of society. The result, over a period of years, was 'The Human Comedy', which comprised three categories: 'Analytic Studies'; 'Philosophical Studies'; and 'Studies of Manners'.