In The Celibates , Balzac forms a unit of three unrelated stories concerning bachelors and old maids.

In the first, “Pierette,” a young woman is sent to live with her aunt and uncle, an unmarried brother and sister who view her as a leech on their business earnings and hound her beyond endurance.

In the second, “The Vicar of Tours,” a socially unaware priest who has inherited the furniture, books, and rooms in a lodging house of a fellow priest, is put to grief by his landlord, an elderly unmarried woman who takes her new lodger’s social awkwardness for insults and decides to retaliate.

In the third, “A Bachelor’s Establishment,” a widow has two adult sons, a painter and a soldier. The painter is poor but loves her dearly; the soldier is arrogant, completely indifferent to her, and has a gambling addiction that leads him to steal from everyone around him, including his family. Nevertheless, it’s the soldier who is her favorite, and it’s him to whom she turns when she finds her inheritance at risk from a ruffian and his girlfriend.