It was subsequently published in 1832 by Mame et Delaunay as part of Balzac's Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes from Private Life).

Madame du Granville's home is, in his eyes: a place of cold, arid solemnity, of moral rectitude and narrow-mindedness.

Caroline Crochard, a delightful young girl living with her mother in squalid conditions, spends her time sewing in the window.

The Comte de Granville, an aristocrat who was married at too young an age to a bigoted woman, and who is now unhappy in his home, sees the girl and falls in love with her.

The author of La Comédie humaine once again employs the technique of the retrospective illumination when in Une ténébreuse affaire, which Balzac began to write in 1839, we are given a glimpse of the professional and political side of de Granville's life - the upright magistrate, who reappears in Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (Scenes from a Courtesan's Life) of 1838.