We must ask pardon of the public for offering it this book, and give it due warning of what it will find therein. The public loves fictitious novels! this is a true novel. It loves books which make a ...

July 22, 1862.⁠—The disease is gradually doing its work of destruction in our poor Rose. It is as if the immaterial manifestations of life that formerly emanated from her body were dying one by one. H...

“Saved! so you are really out of danger, mademoiselle!” exclaimed the maid with a cry of joy, as she closed the door upon the doctor, and, rushing to the bed on which her mistress lay, she began, in a...

The old woman said nothing: she was comparing her own life with her servant’s. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was born in 1782. She first saw the light in a mansion on Rue Royale and Mesdames de France we...

In the course of her reverie, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had closed her eyes. The maid’s story ceased, and the remainder of the history of her life, which was upon her lips that evening, was once more...

Those people who look for the death of the Catholic religion in our day, do not realize by what an infinite number of sturdy roots it still retains its hold upon the hearts of the people. They do not ...

“There, mademoiselle!⁠—Look at me,” said Germinie. It was a few months later. She had asked her mistress’s permission to go that evening to the wedding ball of her grocer’s sister, who had chosen her ...

When she mentioned the subject of marriage to Germinie, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil touched upon the real cause of her trouble. She placed her hand upon the seat of her ennui. Her maid’s uneven temper,...

About this time a small creamery at the end of the street, with few customers, changed hands, as a result of the sale of the real estate by order of court. The shop was renovated and repainted. The fr...

Madame Jupillon, who claimed to have been married and signed herself “Widow Jupillon,” had a son. He was still a child. She had placed him at Saint-Nicholas, the great religious establishment where, f...

About the time that young Jupillon left the boarding-school, a maid in the service of a kept woman who lived on the floor below mademoiselle sometimes passed the evening with Germinie at Madame Jupill...

This happy though unsatisfied love produced a strange physiological phenomenon in Germinie’s physical being. One would have said that the passion that was alive within her renewed and transformed her ...

In the course of a few months, Germinie’s life, her whole life belonged to the crémière. Mademoiselle’s service was not exacting and took but little time. A whiting or a cutlet⁠—that was all the cooki...

When the spring came, Germinie said to Jupillon almost every evening: “Suppose we go as far as the beginning of the fields?” Jupillon would put on his flannel shirt with red and black squares, and his...

Madame Jupillon’s face always wore a pleased expression when Germinie appeared; when she kissed her she was very effusive, when she spoke to her her voice was caressing, when she looked at her her gla...

As Germinie was going down the servant’s staircase one day, she heard Adèle’s voice calling her over the banister and telling her to bring her two sous’ worth of butter and ten of absinthe. “Oh! you c...

So far as young Jupillon was concerned, love was simply the satisfaction of a certain evil curiosity, which sought, in the knowledge and possession of a woman, the privilege and the pleasure of despis...

There was a ball at the Boule-Noire one Thursday. The dancing was in full blast. The ballroom had the ordinary appearance of modern places of amusement for the people. It was brilliant with false rich...

Jupillon promised Germinie not to go to the ball again. But he was just beginning to make a name for himself at La Brididi, among the low haunts near the barrier, the Boule-Noire, the Reine-Blanche an...

Jupillon was constantly complaining that he was tired of working for others, that he could not set up for himself, that he could not find fifteen or eighteen hundred francs in his mother’s purse. He n...

She became enceinte. At first she doubted, she dared not believe it. But when she was certain of the fact, she was filled with immeasurable joy, a joy that overflowed her heart. Her happiness was so g...

Twelfth Night arrived. It was the day on which Mademoiselle de Varandeuil gave a grand dinner-party regularly every year. She invited all the children of her own family or her old friends’ families, g...

Germinie recovered in a few days. The joy and pride of having given birth to a tiny creature in whom her flesh was mingled with the flesh of the man she loved, the bliss of being a mother, saved her f...

On Wednesday morning, when she came downstairs, Germinie found a letter for herself. In that letter, written on the back of a laundry receipt, the Remalard woman informed her that her child had fallen...

Mademoiselle had begun to undress, when Germinie entered her bedroom, walked a few steps, dropped upon a chair, and almost immediately, after two or three long-drawn, deep, heartbreaking sighs, mademo...

As a result of this crisis, Germinie fell into a state of dumb, brutish sorrow. For months she was insensible to everything; for months, completely possessed and absorbed by the thought of the little ...

One morning, after a night passed by her in turning over and over in her mind all her despairing, hate-ridden thoughts, Germinie went to the creamery for her four sous’ worth of milk and found in the ...

One Sunday morning Jupillon was dressing in the room Germinie had furnished for him. His mother was sitting by, gazing at him with the wondering pride expressed in the eyes of mothers among the common...

Mademoiselle was sitting in her large armchair at the corner of the fireplace, where a few live embers were still sleeping under the ashes. Her black cap was pulled down over her wrinkled forehead alm...

The winter of that year should certainly have assured Mademoiselle de Varandeuil a share of paradise hereafter. She had to undergo the reflex action of her maid’s chagrin, her nervous irritability, th...

One evening in March the Jupillons, mother and son, were talking together by the stove in their back-shop. Jupillon had been drafted. The money his mother had put aside to purchase his release had bee...

Jupillon was walking back and forth on the sidewalk in front of Germinie’s house when she came out. “Good evening, Germinie,” he said, behind her. She turned as if she had been struck, and, without an...

For a whole week Germinie did not set foot in the shop again. The Jupillons, when she did not return, began to despair. At last, one evening about half past ten, she pushed the door open, entered the ...

Disorders of the nervous system frequently result in disarranging the natural sequence of human joys and sorrows, in destroying their proportion and equilibrium, and in carrying them to the greatest p...

In the torment of the life she was leading, in which she suffered the horrors of death and of unsatisfied passion, Germinie, seeking to deaden her ghastly thoughts, had remembered the glass she had ta...

Half an hour after the horrible meeting when⁠—her mind having dabbled in crime as if with her fingers⁠—she had determined to disfigure her rival with vitriol and had believed that she had done so, Ger...

Germinie welcomed mademoiselle’s return with melting caresses, wet with tears. Her affectionate manner was like a sick child’s; she had the same clinging gentleness, the imploring expression, the mela...

The miraculous part of this disorderly, abandoned life, this life of shame and misery, was that it did not become known. Germinie allowed no trace of anything to appear outside; she allowed nothing to...

To lie! nothing was left for her but that. She felt that it was an impossibility to draw back from her present position. She did not even entertain the idea of an attempt to escape from it, it seemed ...

“He must have twenty francs,” Germinie mechanically repeated the sentence to herself several times, but her thoughts did not go beyond the words she uttered. The walk and the climb up five flights of ...

Then it was that Germinie’s abasement and degradation began to be visible in her personal appearance, to make her stupid and slovenly. A sort of drowsiness came over her ideas. She was no longer keen ...

“No⁠—not this time, no,” said Germinie, rising from the foot of Jupillon’s bed where she was sitting. “There’s no way. Why, you know perfectly well that I haven’t a sou⁠—anything you can call a sou! Y...

When she returned that evening from a christening dinner, which she had been unable to avoid attending, mademoiselle heard talking in her room. She thought that there was someone with Germinie, and, m...

Soon after this, mademoiselle was amazed to notice an entire change in her maid’s manner and habits. Germinie no longer had her sullen, savage moods, her outbreaks of rebellion, her fits of muttering ...

But the past and its debts were still there, and whispered to her every hour: “If mademoiselle knew!” She lived in the constant panic of a guilty woman, trembling with dread from morning till night. T...

It was a very great trial to Germinie⁠—a trial that she sought, however⁠—to have to pass through a street where there was a school for young girls, when she went out before dinner to buy an evening pa...

To Germinie all days were alike, equally gloomy and desolate. She had reached a point at last where she expected nothing from chance and asked nothing from the unforeseen. Her life seemed to her to be...

The love which she lacked, and which it was her determination to deny herself, became the torment of her life, incessant, abominable torture. She had to defend herself against the fevers of her body a...

The time came at last in this life of torture when Germinie abandoned the conflict. Her conscience yielded, her will succumbed, she bowed her head beneath her destiny. All that remained to her of reso...

“Where are you going in that rig?” said Germinie one Sunday morning to Adèle, as she passed in grand array along the corridor on the sixth floor, in front of her open door. “Ah! there you are! I’m goi...

Médérie Gautruche was one of the wenching, idling, vagabond workmen who make their whole life a Monday. Filled with the love of wine, his lips forever wet with the last drop, his insides as thoroughly...

As Germinie was returning to the house one morning at daybreak, she heard, from the shadows of the porte-cochère as it closed behind her, a voice cry: “Who’s that?” She ran to the servants’ staircase,...

Germinie had not been able to induce Gautruche, who was haunted by a former mistress, to give her the key to his room. When he had not returned she was obliged to await his coming outside, in the cold...

She would then ascend the stairs; that was her last place of refuge. She would fly from the rain and snow and cold, from fear, despair, and fatigue. She would go up and sit on the top step against Gau...

In those days Gautruche became a little disgusted with drinking. He felt the first pangs of the disease of the liver that had long been lurking in his heated, alcoholized blood, under his brick-red ch...

After this rupture Germinie fell where she was sure to fall, below shame, below nature itself. Lower and lower the unhappy, passionate creature fell, until she wallowed in the gutter. She took up the ...

One evening when she was prowling about Rue du Rocher, as she passed a wineshop at the corner of Rue de Labarde, she noticed the back of a man who was drinking at the bar: it was Jupillon. She stopped...

Passion is subject to the most insensate reactions, the most inexplicable revivals. The accursed love that Germinie believed to have been killed by all the wounds and blows Jupillon had inflicted upon...

It was November. For three or four days Germinie had not fallen in with Jupillon. She went to hover about his lodgings, watching for him. When she reached the street on which he lived, she saw a broad...

Two or three days after that night in the rain, Germinie’s features were distorted with pain, her skin was like marble and her eyes blazing. She said nothing, made no complaints, but went about her wo...

Mademoiselle talked and prayed and implored and scolded to no purpose: she could not induce Germinie to lay aside her work for a few days. Germinie would not even listen to the suggestion that she sho...

When August arrived, the doctor had nothing but that to advise or prescribe⁠—the country. Notwithstanding the repugnance of elderly people to move, to change their abode and the habits and regular hou...

When they returned from the country, the doctor, after examining Germinie, said to Mademoiselle: “It has been very rapid, very rapid. The left lung is entirely gone. The right has begun to be affected...

Amid Mademoiselle de Varandeuil’s desperate anxiety concerning her maid’s health, she became conscious of a strange feeling, a sort of fear in the presence of the new, unfamiliar, mysterious creature ...

Throughout the month of October, Germinie obstinately refused to take to her bed. Each day, however, she was weaker and more helpless than the day before. She was hardly able to ascend the flight of s...

At two o’clock the next day the doctor brought the order for her admission to Lariboisière. The invalid was ready to start. Mademoiselle suggested that they should send to the hospital for a litter. “...

On the visiting day, Thursday, mademoiselle started at half-past twelve to go and see Germinie. It was her purpose to be at her bedside at the moment the doors were thrown open, at one o’clock precise...

Mademoiselle had just risen on Saturday morning. She was making a little package of four jars of Bar preserves, which she intended to carry to Germinie the next day, when she heard low voices, a collo...

Prostrated by the excitement and by this last spectacle, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took to her bed on returning home, after she had given the concierge the money for the purchase of a burial lot, and...

“Well! is it all over?” said mademoiselle from her bed, as the concierge entered her room about eleven o’clock, on his return from the cemetery, with the black coat and the sanctimonious manner suited...

As a result of this scene, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kept her bed a week, ill and raging, filled with indignation that shook her whole body, overflowed through her mouth, and tore from her now and ag...

In the distance an enclosure wall extended, perfectly straight, as far as the eye could see. The thread of snow that marked the outline of its coping gave it a dirty, rusty color. In a corner at the l...

Canon is the French word for cannon; it is also used in vulgar parlance to mean a glass of wine drunk at the bar. ↩ Battre les murailles⁠—to beat the walls⁠—has a slang meaning: to be so drunk that yo...